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It comes to Ennoshita in the cool of the library.
That’s literally cool: his desk is almost directly under an AC unit, which really doesn't need to be on this early in the year. It is keeping him awake though, which is useful because he’s supposed to be memorising forms of muscle tear, only his notes are accompanied by some pretty grim pictures so he’s been putting it off all evening. Letting himself get distracted (as if he'd be able to focus anyway, after earlier). Until suddenly, it’s ten at night. It’s the end of his first year at university. It’s almost exactly a year since he last passed a volleyball.
(The remaining members of Karasuno Boy’s Volleyball Club 2013-2014 come to wave them off at graduation, and Ennoshita is very calm and does not tear up, not even a little.
And of course a volleyball appears. Ennoshita has wondered many times whether his kohai would fade away, or melt, or combust, if they stop thinking about volleyball for five seconds. Not if they would cease to exist, because that’s a given, just which form of destruction would occur. Hm. He’s going to miss them so much.
They end up in a circle, passing the ball around in something impressively close to silence. It’s just for a couple of minutes, until Narita’s parents come to find him, and then the group dissolves under spring afternoon light. Ennoshita ends up with the ball, so he meaningfully hands it to Yamaguchi, from whom it is promptly stolen by Hinata. And that’s it. No more volleyball.)
What he realises in the library is this: not playing volleyball is okay.
With that comes pity. It’s not self-pity, even though it definitely is pity for himself. For it to be self-pity, he thinks, he would have to feel like the same person as the one he is pitying. But that’s a different Ennoshita, one in his first year at high school. Also sat at a desk, also under air conditioning. Unable to leave volleyball behind, though.
He’s sorry that that Ennoshita doesn’t know what’s coming. How good it will be. How good it was.
But he’s also sorry that he felt like he couldn’t do anything except go back.
🏐🏐🏐
When Ennoshita starts university, he’s still unsure if he’s going to continue playing volleyball. This does not mean he hasn't thought about it. He has, at great length, considering the pros and cons of carrying on, of letting go (always thinking around phrases like running away, giving up). Ultimately, he decides to just see what happens. A physical therapy degree has a lot of things to learn, a lot of compulsory sessions, a lot of expectations of its students, and Ennoshita is well aware of how much time volleyball can swallow. He'll need to settle in, orientate himself, meet new people, learn new things. So. He'll focus on class for the first few months, work out how much spare time he has, and perhaps join the club later.
Ennoshita leaves university, having continued not playing volleyball.
Tanaka seems personally offended by that, when Ennoshita sees him on the couple of occasions when Karasuno have matches whilst he’s back in Miyagi on break. College volleyball! It’s so intense! A chance to play against some real competition! And so on, as though their high school experience was no sweat.
At first Ennoshita appeases him with the same vague ‘I’m still working out whether I can make the commitment’ reasoning which he’s using on himself too. Eventually though – and by this point everyone they know has graduated from Karasuno and so it’s Adlers matches they’re meeting for, watching them on TV, first in their parents homes and then in newly rented flats, whilst Kageyama is off all over Japan and sometimes the world – Tanaka accepts that Ennoshita isn’t going to go back to volleyball, not anytime soon, not anytime seriously. Not that that stops him complaining.
Tanaka’s stopped playing too, of course, so his annoyance confuses Ennoshita at first. Eventually though, he realises that Tanaka sees university as a continuation of high school. He expects all that volleyball momentum to roll right along, and for Ennoshita to keep climbing, to keep playing amongst the monsters, to do it all just a little bit longer. Ennoshita, whose first act as captain was banning ‘rolling thunder’, does not want his momentum to roll over. He wants it to just stay still, please, so he can get something done without having to constantly check on it.
To Ennoshita, there is before, and there is now. They are separate, and volleyball is behind him.
🏐🏐🏐
It takes most of his first year to get round to it, but eventually Ennoshita scrapes together a free afternoon and goes to see his university's team play.
Sakusa Kiyoomi is on the team Ennoshita’s team are playing against. Well, not Ennoshita’s team. That’s sort of why it’s taken him so long to make his way to the stands.
Seeing Sakusa almost makes him laugh. He looks exactly the same as he did both times Ennoshita was at Nationals, which is to say, totally pissed to be on court. He doesn’t play like that though. He’s one of the only ranked aces which Karasuno managed to avoid being matched up against, and when Itachiyama were playing and Karasuno wasn’t, meals and rest were normally bigger priorities, so this game is kind of a revelation. Because Sakusa’s good. No, more than that, he’s good. Like, to be said with a raised eyebrow and a low whistle. It's his first year on this team and he is the unequivocal star of the match. This isn’t unexpected, but. Just the idea of playing on the same level as someone like that is ridiculous.
Ennoshita wonders what Sakusa studies. How he exists outside of sports halls.
Nearby, some guys cheer for him, and talk loudly about V League prospects and getting an autograph and definitely being picked for the Olympics. (Sakusa doesn’t go to Rio, but Ennoshita remembers this conversation whilst watching a replay of one Kageyama’s service aces, and feels victorious by proxy.) At one point, one of them yells Sakusa’s name after a particularly nasty kill and the man himself glares up at them. It almost seems like he’s looking directly at Ennoshita. For a second, he kids himself they might recognise each other, but that’s stupid, obviously. Not a chance without Karasuno as context.
Ennoshita’s university plays pretty well too. They lose to Sakusa’s team, but they take one set, and almost get another. Ennoshita is impressed, and a little relieved he hasn’t had to compete with anyone on court. Still, at one point a wing spiker fumbles a receive that Ennoshita thinks – and only thinks – he could have got, could have passed to the setter, and he sits a little straighter.
His forearms, where he would have picked the ball up from, suddenly feel like they feel like they’re burning.
That evening, Ennoshita goes to the library, because exams are coming up and if there’s one thing he has unquestionably brought with him from high school, it’s diligence. He still feels hyper-aware of his arms and the air conditioning is on too high, but he settles down anyway. He manages to mostly focus for about an hour before he is totally distracted by thoughts of what was.
(Although, after all that, not of what might have been.)
🏐🏐🏐
And suddenly, it’s the end.
In his final year at university, Ennoshita decides he’s had enough of having any free time, ever, and takes on a placement position with the physical therapy unit at the university’s sport’s centre. He signs up to work with the volleyball team.
This means that, at least once a week, he has to stand on the sideline and watch other people play on a team he maybe – and only maybe – could have been part of. He makes a joke in his group chat with Kinoshita and Narita about this being masochistic of him. He accompanies it with a volleyball emoji, because it's still sitting in the 'most used' section of his keyboard.
It's not actually painful though. Even if he wanted to play, he knows his strength and agility have decreased, so it probably wouldn't go very well. He's practical like that. He does remember it all though, from elation to despair, and this includes which muscles are most likely to pull and which joints to click. He's practical like this, too. His supervisor is very impressed by his quick diagnoses.
And, it’s just a lot more fun for him to watch volleyball than anything else. He can appreciate the techniques, the tactics, the connection. If he was stuck on soccer duty, say, his work placement would actually feel like work. Especially because he'd have to be outside. For the first time since high school, Ennoshita wakes up on rainy days thankful that volleyball is an indoor sport, and the familiarity of the thought is nice.
Ennoshita gets to know the volleyball team a little, faces and positions. For a while, he doesn’t tell anyone that he played, which kind of makes him feel like he’s undercover. One time, between sets, he’s checking how a middle blocker’s knee is holding up whilst the setter quietly outlines a new strategy over Ennoshita’s head. He’s deliberately turned away from the other team so it's extra secret, and the whole time Ennoshita knows what they're planning, and knows they don’t know he knows. It’s obscurely funny to him, and gets funnier when he sees the plan get completely derailed by the opponent's defence ten minutes later.
Eventually, though, he is discovered. A week later, the same setter comes off mid match, with something obviously, devastatingly wrong. He can’t walk – it takes two guys to just get him over to where Ennoshita is sat – but he refuses to leave the gym until the game is over, which means they can’t do anything for him except offer ice packs. Ennoshita gets the glamorous job of holding one against his leg, which means he’s very aware of the way the guy flinches every time a spike lands. Ennoshita wonders whether it’s because he’s feeling apprehensive about the slip of court after going down, or because he wants to get up and save each fallen ball. From the way his gaze is fixed on the game, it’s probably the latter.
“It happens to the best,” Ennoshita says, if only to try and get the setter to look away, stop calculating what he could have done instead. “One year at the Spring High, I remember hearing that Iizuna Tsukasa went over on his ankle. His team were favourites to win, up until then. He's the starting setter for the Deseo Hornets now, though, so he must have recovered fine.” Ennoshita pauses. “Ah. Not to say you’ll lose this match. Just that this isn’t the end of the world.” Or even of volleyball.
The setter shrugs and then says, “Yeah, I remember that too. They’d beat us in the summer Interhigh qualifiers that year, so we were all really pissed off. My old high school team, I mean.”
Ennoshita laughs, and tells him that his old team (he doesn’t say ‘us’ or ‘we’: when he discusses Karasuno now, it's always to him something separate) got beaten by Itachiyama too, although that was after he’d graduated.
“Oh?” The setter twists his head at Ennoshita. “You played? Must have been in Tokyo, right? Maybe we saw each other.”
Ennoshita has to shake his head, and his tone is apologetic. “Ah no, I’m from Miyagi. That was at Nationals.”
Well, the setter is very impressed that Ennoshita went to a powerhouse school, and even more impressed when he finds out it’s Karasuno (“That’s where Kageyama Tobio went.” “Yeah. Yeah, I'm very aware.”), and by the time Ennoshita has explained that he was not only a starter but captain, the guy has forgotten there’s a game happening, although not the pain in his ankle; he keeps wincing as that.
Eventually, inevitably, he asks. “What are you doing here, though?”, and gestures at the sideline. “Surely you could be–” He waves towards the match, which is still intensely unfolding, although Ennoshita has no idea what the score is anymore.
It’s the same point that Narita had made, before they’d even graduated. Yamaguchi and Yachi had suggested it basically in union when he caught up with them after a match in their final year at Karasuno. He got a text about it from Futakuchi Kenji of Datekou, of all people, whose number Ennoshita had been given for Official Captaincy Purposes, but now just has. The point is this. Just tell them you’re from Karasuno, and you’re guaranteed a place on the team.
Ennoshita has also had the thought, for the record.
He gives the setter a slightly blank look. “I have a very busy schedule.”
In return, he gets an eye roll, but Ennoshita doesn’t really have a better answer. Not that he can give to this guy, who’s only having this conversation because he refuses to abandon the court.
To make up for his poor response, Ennoshita spends the rest of the match thoroughly demythologising as many V. League players as he can with his vast but underused archive of embarrassing stories.
(He finds out this was a mistake when he turns up during the warm up for the team’s next match. Not only do multiple people ask him for Kageyama’s autograph, but a starry-eyed wing spiker asks if Ennoshita can put him in contact with Bokuto who, despite being the source of several prime anecdotes, Ennoshita has never actually had a conversation with.
He says no, sorry, and then on reflection realises he probably does know about five people who could give him Bokuto's number. He's still not going to ask, probably, but – and not for the first time – he is very aware that his high school volleyball experience was a bit abnormal.)
🏐🏐🏐
Ennoshita likes the library. He likes the presence of other people, not just there, but in general. Physical therapy is about working with people. Volleyball is about working with people. The library is about working around people. Even in the silence, the pressure of the presence of others means he'll get some work done eventually. Well, that's the theory.
When Ennoshita, first year of university, thinks about Ennoshita, first year of high school, he thinks that, maybe, the guy had some points. Like, that clubs should be fun. Volleyball is not a moral responsibility. It’s not even an individual one.
He’s glad he went back, of course. Playing volleyball for Karasuno was good. Good as in, good. But he’s sorry that just existing somewhere other the second gym was ever painful. He thinks that’s probably not something the people who join the wind instrument appreciation club go through.
What he realises in the library, a year since he's passed a volleyball but fresh from watching Sakusa Kiyoomi play some higher form of sport which is both totally familiar and totally alien, is that volleyball was always just a club to him. It's almost definitely more than that to Sakusa, just it is like for Hinata and Kageyama, but for Ennoshita, volleyball is not his life. It was only ever ten hours a week. Ennoshita screws his hands into fists against the white library desk, but then brings them together, ready to bump.
He isn’t who he was in his first year at Karasuno. He hasn’t been for a while. For the rest of high school, that meant never running away again. Now, it means he can.
He packs up his stuff soon after that, giving up on studying for the day, and on the way home he texts Narita and Kinnoshita.
I’m glad we played volleyball, he says. That we kept playing.
🏐🏐🏐
Work isn’t everything to Ennoshita, but it’s most of it. Which is okay. As a physical therapist, he helps people, he uses his brain, and he’s never really liked having too much free time anyway.
This means that it’s unusual for him to hurry so quickly out of the office – and it will be commented upon, Ennoshita knows, the medical profession is populated entirely by gossips – but he has to go or he’ll miss his train.
He ends up half running to the station, which is fine, because in lieu of playing volleyball everyday he runs a lot now. He does make it harder for himself though, by watching MSBY Black Jackals and Schweiden Adlers battle for the last ten points on his phone on the way. He thought he’d miss it completely, so feels he should make the most of the fact the match is still going (and of course it’s still going, he’s surprised Hinata and Kageyama haven’t found a way to push it to seven sets) to see how it ends live. In the present. It’ll be inevitably spoilt later tonight anyway, so he may as well.
It’s funny, seeing all these people he knows huddled on his phone screen. Well, half knows. Half knew. Knew of. It’s funny seeing them all together. Hinata travels across the world, and he still comes back and ends up on the same court as Kageyama. His hair is ruffled by Bokuto and he jumps and does quicks and is better than he's ever been before, which is to say, he's exactly like he was in high school. Hinata plays volleyball. Even Sakusa, who Ennoshita realises has somehow ended up associated with the post-volleyball part of his life, is clearly very much not post-anything. Ennoshita wonders what it’s like to want the same thing for so long. He finds he's glad he doesn’t know.
The match’s final whistle goes just after his train departs for Sendai.
He’s even glad he won’t get to go to the stadium. He’s played there, before.
Ennoshita misses volleyball just like he misses Karasuno, and Miyagi, and the people he used to be before he left them all behind. That is to say, a lot, but with total awareness that getting to go back – back as in back, to be said with a raised eyebrow and a whole lot of judgement – would only be at the cost of going backwards.
His train out of Sendai is at 8:43 tomorrow morning.
Before then, Ennoshita has to arrive. It's familiar. He's done it a hundred times: family and friends still live here, the trains are quick. It's not too far. So. He walks for half an hour from Sendai Station to the address in Kokubuncho which Kinoshita has texted him, and the city feels like it always does. At the bar he's making his way towards, Ennoshita is only expecting Karasuno alumni, and not even many of those. Noya is off, doing an excellent job of living a whole new life whilst being the same as always, and Hinata and Kageyama are total wildcards. The excuse for this whole thing is to celebrate Hinata's return and professional debut, but Suga (who is the reason it's happening) had seemed doubtful he'd be able to make it. Something about team commitments and so on. Which is the problem with having the kind of profession which requires a debut, Ennoshita supposes. Still, without the threat of an overly hyped up post-match Kageyama and Hinata, he thinks it could be a fairly relaxed evening.
He knows that's likely wishful thinking, but he's still hoping that the chaos can be limited to Tanaka right up until he gets to the bar. That hope is then immediately spiked straight to the ground. Inside is an absolute mess of what seems like every volleyball player. All of them. Ever. Suga has managed to get Hinata there, and then some. Almost immediately upon entering, he has to dodge Bokuto's windmilling arms, as he wildly explains something to Hoshiumi Kourai. Ennoshita's university’s team would love this.
He greets as many people as he can, from Kiyoko to Tsukishima's brother to Akaashi Kenji all the way from Tokyo. It’s as loud as you'd it expect it to be, though, so he resorts to just ruffling hair a few times, getting particular joy out of subjecting Kageyama, Japan’s own volleyball superstar, to this treatment. He gets even more joy when Kageyama then calls him Ennoshita-san, like they’re still at Karasuno and Kageyama is just an awkward kid with bad social skills and an over inflated ego. To be fair, the only thing that’s really changed is that the ego is probably justified now.
Eventually, though, he finds an empty seat between Futakuchi Kenji and Datekou’s libero, whose name is possibly Sakunami although Ennoshita doesn’t want to check that by saying it out loud. That this seating arrangement is happening is ridiculous but at least these two are local.
“So.” Ennoshita starts. “No offence, but why are you here?”
Futakuchi shrugs, and waves towards where Hinata’s sat. He's the centre of attention, attention being a big group of tall people, two of which are particularly familiar. “Aone and Koganegawa wanted to see your shortie, and your captain – the captain before you – said he might turn up to this when he overheard Kogane yelling about that. I wanted to drink.”
“You went and saw the match today, then?” Ennoshita asks.
Probably-Sakunami nods. “It was very impressive!”
“They’re all such pains in the ass!” Futakuchi interjects. “Me and Sakunami–” (Ennoshita is proud of himself for remembering that. It seems like he couldn't forget high school, even if he tried.) “We were just discussing how many people on court we’d played against and we worked out that, basically, it's too many. My palms ached just watching. They piss me off, honestly. No wonder I had a headache after every high school match.”
“I mean, that was probably dehydration.”
“We already know you’re a medical professional, Ennoshita, get off duty for once.”
Ennoshita finishes his drink in one go as a response.
“What do you do?” asks Sakunami, like a nice adult.
“Did you seen the match?” interrupts Futakuchi, like a jerk teenager. “Even if you didn’t, I’m sure someone here will happily reenact it for you.”
“I caught the end. I’m planning to watch it all later, so long as I’m not too scarred by any, uh, performances.”
Futakuchi sighs incredibly dramatically at that. Ennoshita arrived more than an hour late, so he’s definitely playing catch up with regards to making use of the purpose of a bar. Which is to say, Futakuchi makes him feel very sober. Although his normal personality kind of has that effect anyway. “Y’know what gets me? Seeing someone like Romero playing with these guys we played – and beat –” He nudges Ennoshita in the ribs, and doesn’t need to specify that he’s talking about Interhigh because he's brought it up so much over the last five years that it’s basically subtext to everything he ever says. “We really were part of something.”
Futakuchi was always much better at volleyball than Ennoshita. Futakuchi still plays. He's never stopped. Ennoshita laughs lightly, and thinks about the past tense.
He doesn’t think about it for long though because amongst, or at least through, mostly familiar high school faces, Ennoshita sees top three high school ace, collegiate volleyball MVP, V. League Division 1 player Sakusa Kiyooshi glowering in a corner. The surrealness of the whole situation makes Ennoshita very glad his glass is empty, because otherwise he’d probably do a spit-take.
That something which they were part of is still happening, and right now it’s happening in the same place as him. Volleyball carried on without Ennoshita Chikara, and Ennoshita Chikara carried on without volleyball. But he still made it to the bar, only slightly late.
After that, Ennoshita focuses on the present.