Work Text:
what is it they say about
love? that it’s only possession reimagined. that
it lives outside the body. that it’s florid & empty
& cheating & thankful for so much, so much
it doesn’t know how to name.
i. wake
(this is a story about girls who devour all they love.)
tobio’s volleyball bag hangs heavy on her shoulder as she recounts the new toss she’s been trying out. her arms ache but she’s satisfied from today’s practice. from the back row — aim for the front, curved wrist, then off & away.
she pictures hinata’s running jump from the back line, hitting the ball dead centre down the other side of the court with a solid thunk.
that annoying tangerine is the best part of practice these days. she’s the only one who can keep up with tobio’s demands & energy, & have the audacity to ask for more. tobio likes it, in a way. this is the closest she’s ever gotten to having a best friend, or at least someone who doesn’t ignore her when they get tired of her.
somehow, all the hits in her mind end up coordinating themselves with the rhythm of the rain on the street outside. too fast & chaotic for her liking, so she shifts her attention elsewhere.
tobio glances over the magazine rack beside her. the latest magazine issues have just come in, strategically placed at eye level. she reaches out for two of them quickly.
tooru oikawa, senior in aoba johsai high school is smiling on the cover of both volleyball monthly & seventeen.
in the centrepiece of volleyball monthly they’ve captured her mid jump-serve. something about how she’s the hottest new sports star in miyagi. she has a little interview about her diet & training regime. the side columns are small comments from her teammates about how lucky they are to have a captain like her.
on the cover of seventeen she’s posing in her school uniform & holding a lipgloss wand to her cheek. surrounded by catchy titles about how to accessorise your boring school uniform.
it’s nothing like the girl she knows in real life. the editing team has airbrushed all her moles & whitened her teeth to hell & back. there’d be nothing amiss to the average looker, but it’s weirdly uncanny to tobio & she can’t look for too long.
(she knows by now that it’s hard to know someone, to truly see them up close if you haven’t fought them. there’s something about being good enough to face someone down, & if you’re even better you can be under the weight of their body in the dark.)
“what’chu looking at, kageyama?” hinata barges her way into the magazine section, with one arm full of snacks & the other shoved deep into a colourful bag of chips. if she wasn’t so energetic, she’d have gotten high blood sugar or whatever it is they show in health education posters in hospital corridors.
it’s terrifying to think about the concept of blood so sweet, it destroys your insides. luckily, tobio has more important things going on at the moment.
she rolls her eyes, not bothering to fully turn around. “you could at least pay for stuff before eating it, idiot.”
“i was about to!” hinata insists. she shoves the last of the chips into her mouth, crunching them loudly like she hasn’t eaten for a fortnight.
“sure, tell that to coach - oh.” tobio nods towards the cashier counter, where a little cardboard sign with be back later hastily scrawled on it has been put up. it’s coach ukai’s shorthand for i’m out to smoke. don’t try anything funny because i’ll find out. i’m talking about you, karasuno girls’ volleyball club.
“ooooh. it’s oikawa.” hinata glances over the covers of the magazines, nodding in approval. she offers the bag of chips to tobio, shaking it gently. “wow, she’s, like… perfect.”
tobio can’t think of a way to say i know, right? & well, actually… at the same time, so she settles for a noncommittal half-nod & reaches into the bag for a handful of chips.
“i mean, if i was that good at volleyball & looked like a freaking supermodel, i’d be happy for the rest of my life. & i’d never shut up about it, either.” hinata clicks her tongue, scrunching up the empty packet in her hand. “ah, damn. sometimes i wish i was like her.”
“i wish i was her,” tobio says with her mouth full, before she can stop herself. it’s a cuttingly honest sentiment out of nowhere. but she meant it when oikawa left her alone in the dark last week & she still means it now.
she swallows quickly & turns around in alarm to see if hinata was listening, but the silly goldfish has turned around to add a handful of lollipops to the growing mountain of snacks in her arms.
“... sorry. what was that?” hinata finally asks.
tobio exhales shakily. repeating her thoughts would feel like pressing on a fresh bruise, & she doubts she’ll ever have the vocabulary or courage to say them out loud.
she does what she’s learned to do lately — consciously slows her breath & waits for the moment to pass. the aftertaste of the fried potatoes in her mouth is sugar-sweet.
“nothing.”
ii. notice
tobio bounces on the balls of her feet, clutching the small bouquet close to her chest — a bunch of pink roses she folded from origami paper. she spent the whole of last night watching a youtube tutorial on how to make them, & they’re definitely not perfect, but still a lot more affordable than anything she might find at the florist’s.
her flowers are nothing compared to all the graduation gifts oikawa definitely received, but she figures it’s worth a shot. anything to have oikawa’s attention for even a single fleeting moment is worth it.
she looks up at the familiar door, her heart pounding. she’s still in her volleyball uniform, she came here right after practice. it’s already eight p.m. & only the streetlights are on.
she remembers the last time she was here. she went up to oikawa’s room & something happened & she’s not quite sure what it was. it felt good. & bad. & good even though (or even because) it was bad.
the details are fuzzy in her mind, like her brain is blocking them out on purpose. all she knows is that she wants oikawa’s lipgloss on her neck again, smothering her pulse like a chokehold.
her finger hovers over the doorbell, her stomach flipping over.
the light pressure of a few drops of rain land on her jacket, reminding her that she forgot her umbrella. she curses softly & covers her paper flowers with her jacket.
she presses it once & retracts her finger like she’s been burned.
a minute passes, then two, but nobody answers. the oikawa family have probably all gone out for dinner or something. if anything, she’s the weird one right now.
tobio takes a deep breath & steps away slowly. something’s not right about any of this, but she’s not quite sure what.
by midnight, she’s asked everyone around the neighbourhood where oikawa is, even showed them pictures of oikawa on her phone. everyone was either too busy to give her an answer or thought she was a rabid stalker.
she doesn’t feel like going home to sleep. no one’s at home except her aunt, & her sister hasn’t been back from tokyo in weeks.
she texts everyone she knows, but doesn’t get a reply. well - it is a school night & everyone is probably asleep. what she’s doing isn’t normal & she should probably give it up already.
instead, she stands at the sidewalk until the sky grows dark with rainclouds, the first drops of water falling to the pavement. then she remembers: there’s one person she could ask, but she doesn’t particularly want to talk to them, especially not at this hour.
she ends up knocking on iwaizumi’s door. luckily for her, it’s iwaizumi herself who answers & not any annoyed adults who might call the police.
“good evening -” she checks her watch. three a.m. “good morning, iwaizumi-san. is oikawa-san okay?”
“no, she’s moved… oh.” iwaizumi’s eyes darken slightly. a mix of pity & anger. tobio can’t read it in the dark. “because you don’t know.”
“what don’t i know?” tobio is frustrated. she has no idea what’s going on. “wasn’t your graduation ceremony today?”
“it was last week, actually.” iwaizumi says carefully. her face screws up a little, like she’s got something bad to say & she can’t believe she has to be the one to say it. “okay, look. i don’t know a better way to tell you this but oikawa’s in argentina.”
“what happened? has she been kidnapped?” tobio steps back in alarm, despite how ridiculous her own words sound to herself. she moves her bike in the direction of the main road. as if she can jump on the next flight to argentina already. her brain is subconsciously thinking she can catch up with oikawa if she pedals fast enough.
iwaizumi notices the movement, & places her hand on the handlebars of tobio’s bike, effectively stopping any movement. “a few days ago.”
“can we call her?” tobio’s mind goes blank. she’s been waiting for answers all night long but now that’s she’s got one, her own mind doesn’t want to be here for this moment.
“oh, yeah. we’ll call her right fucking now.” iwaizumi looks absolutely livid as she pulls out her phone. she mumbles under her breath about how irresponsible oikawa is.
tobio waits through the beeping, her heart racing.
“shittykawa, do you know what you’ve done?” iwaizumi wastes no time tearing into oikawa.
they argue back & forth over the phone for a while, iwaizumi raising her voice loud enough to warrant a noise complaint from the neighbours.
tobio listens in silence, lacing her fingers together. even if oikawa & iwaizumi broke up last year, they act like a married couple in a way where they can say whatever’s on their minds without missing a beat.
what is it like to date a childhood friend, anyway? not that tobio would have a clue. she has no childhood friends to speak of. everyone who knew her in middle school hates her guts, even - especially -
“she was about to bike to the airport,” iwaizumi says loudly, & tobio nods emphatically in agreement even though no one notices. she feels tears stinging the corner of her eyes & realises maybe everyone does hate her.
“please, iwaizumi-san, let me talk to oikawa-san, is she safe? i want to hear her voice, just for a second, please.” tobio puts her hands out for the phone.
iwaizumi says a few more things over the phone, but tobio barely processes them until the phone is in her hands.
she clutches the device, listening to the sound of background traffic, trying hard to distinguish it from the sound of the rain on her end. it must be morning in argentina or something.
she says the first thing that comes into her mind. it’s hello, oikawa-san or something similarly stupid. she can’t remember it being very long, because her throat is closing up & nothing makes sense anymore.
in return, there’s no dramatic speech or frenzied screeching on the other end. no snide remarks about how stupid tobio-chan is, to call at this hour when everyone is busy with their lives.
tobio filters out everything but the sound of oikawa’s breathing, & holds on to every second like a lifeline, like the beat-to-beat of a heart monitor in a hospital room.
a sudden crash & the line goes dead with a high-pitched beep.
“why won’t she talk to me?” tobio asks, staring at the “call ended” phone screen. for whatever reason she feels like this is the point where she should scream her lungs out but she doesn’t. her eyes are gritty from all her dried tears.
iwaizumi shakes her head, like she has a laundry list of reasons about why oikawa wouldn’t want to talk to anyone. she puts a firm hand on tobio’s shoulder. “give her time. she’ll come round.”
whenever that will be. tobio doesn’t know what time will do to this, to her.
she’s only read about argentina in passing, in online articles about volleyball. it’s ten thousand miles & god knows how many light-years away.
she can hear oikawa’s voice in the wind: don’t even try looking for me, brat.
she nods at iwaizumi as politely as she can & turns her bike around, wheeling it back home in the light of the sunrise.
just as well she has answers now. or else she’d end up doing something even more stupid like sticking oikawa’s photo all over the neighbourhood - i don’t mean to be a bother, but have you seen this girl?
she looks into a puddle & sees a distorted version of herself, muddy & pulled every which way by countless ripples. her flowers, wet from the rain, fall out of her jacket pocket into the water. the paper thins out, turns muddy & disintegrates into mush, petal by pink petal.
she loves me, she loves me not.
a car runs them over, sending a fresh wave of water over her. she takes a deep breath & keeps walking. it’s not like she can get wet twice.
iii. accident
“… go on, kageyama.” okamoto-sensei taps his chalk on the blackboard. he’s one of the better algebra teachers she’s had in her life, but judging from his small frown, he’s definitely on the verge of giving up on her.
tobio jolts, looks at the whiteboard. she feels like she’s floating in an aquarium, where there’s a glass barrier between her & everything around her & no one is allowed to tap on the glass or she’ll bite them.
she struggles to piece the equation together. the numbers swim before her eyes like white koi fish, mockingly flicking their tails at her. her calculating skills are bad on the best of days, but…
“three… point… five,” she says softly, after what feels like a minute of racking her brain.
the class remains (mostly) quiet. a few people snicker out loud, but the people at the neighbouring desks tell them to shut up.
no surprises here. this is classic kageyama: total academic flop. head & shoulders above most of the other girls with the resting bitch face to match. undisputed queen of the court… except, obviously, when she’s not on that court.
it’s almost unheard of in this day & age for a girl to be this bad at school. according to the vice-principal, tobio is “even worse than hinata from class 1”, which is really saying something. not that she cares for school subjects, but she can’t believe the idiot tangerine is doing better than her.
“kageyama,” okamoto-sensei repeats, loudly & slowly, like tobio is deaf or stupid. “are you listening?”
tobio purses her lips & nods. she’s not even upset. she feels like she’s floating in an aquarium, everything distant like a copy of a copy of a copy. yes, but not to you.
“never mind. i was asking you to close the window.”
tobio swallows. “sorry, sir.” she reaches for the window beside her & pretends her heart isn’t sinking like stone. she feels a small, acute sense of shame at finally being the only person dumb enough to make the nicest teacher in school angry.
she’ll have to swallow some facts, both old & new: school will never get easier. there can never be enough volleyball in her life. oikawa will never come back.
she closes the window & pulls down the latch as gently as she can, like she’s closing a chapter of her life.
with or without you, oikawa-senpai.
she sleeps all the way through the next few classes, only waking up at the final bell signalling the ending of the school day.
she gets up slowly, wiggling her right leg to shake off the pins & needles that’ve settled into her nerves. when that fails, she leans against her desk with her leg turned in at an awkward angle, letting the world pass her by.
“you’re crying, kageyama.” hinata pokes her head into the doorway, walking in hesitantly. it must be nice to be that optimistic about life, to be a loveable ball of sunshine no matter how stupid you are.
“yeah, you wish.” tobio wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. her entire forehead has heated up & her nose is stuffy. she needs a pork bun & a menthol inhaler.
“what happened? who hurt you? i’ll beat their brains out, i swear to god.” hinata frowns & puts her fists up, as if some cartoon villain will suddenly materialise & accept the challenge.
tobio snorts, imagining hinata jumping on top of oikawa & cartoonishly strangling her. i wish. “you couldn’t beat a fly up, moron.”
“yeah, yeah.” hinata playfully smacks her on the shoulder, but the blow lacks her usual careless abandon. like she’s scared of accidentally hurting tobio. “c’mon, let’s go or coach will get our asses.”
tobio gets up, her pins & needles all gone. volleyball practice sounds good, yes. she’ll go for volleyball practice & get milk & curry buns with the team afterwards & everything will be all right.
iv. hope
tobio is thinking about her grandfather again, as she’s done for two septembers now.
the morning of kazuyo’s funeral, tobio dressed in her nicely ironed black dress that was a few inches too short for her liking. she wore tights underneath to cover her knees. she remembers everyone telling her how sorry they were, about how wonderful her grandfather was. the thin, colourless sunlight hitting her through the windows of the funeral home, the dry leaves on the ground outside.
after the ceremony, she got changed & went to volleyball practice at kitagawa daiichi gym, because that’s all she knew, & it’s still all she knows. grandpa would probably have wanted her to do that, anyhow.
autumn, beautiful as it is, is about decay. in that moment she realised how alone she was, & that feeling has never really gone away.
all this to say she’s no stranger to wanting, wishing someone would reappear by her side. it’s easy to believe it was all a lifetime ago, when it hasn’t even been two years.
tobio doesn’t really go to cafes. all her friends (read: teammates) would much rather grab a drink from the vending machine, or clear the stock of pork buns at sakanoshita store until coach ukai chases them out with the back end of a feather duster.
but here she’s on a proper date, in one of those expensive new cafes that have wood-panelled countertops & jazz music playing on an actual old-timey gramophone. it smells like fresh coffee & cinnamon here, with lots of natural sunlight & small potted plants.
she doesn’t mind coming along because the other person is paying, so there’s no waste of money on her end. still, it’s funny how she’s agreeing to all this, spending so much time with someone she isn’t sure about.
“sooooo, tobio-chan…”
tobio looks up slowly, right into the honey-brown eyes of atsumu miya.
atsumu lounges, catlike, by the window of the cafe, grinning like she just won the lottery — all blonde & warm & smelling like vanilla. the sunlight through the glass hits her hands, chest, jaw, turning her every shade of gold.
she’s beautiful in a clean, bright, satisfied way. there are no secrets to her, much less hidden truths she craves to unearth & peel from beneath tobio’s skin.
tobio keeps still & quiet, her gaze flitting to the ceiling. she thinks about oikawa’s filthy, insatiable hunger, how it grows in darkness the way mold infests the walls of abandoned houses, the way maggots swarm into the depths of an animal carcass.
(even all the way from argentina, oikawa walks, runs, dances on the air tobio breathes, without a second thought.
this, too, is asphyxiation. tobio feels like if she opens her mouth, rotting flesh will spill out.)
atsumu stretches out her long legs & stirs her drink with her straw, some silly pumpkin spice affair they were advertising on the painted blackboard in front of the cafe. it’s a ridiculously large glass of blended ice with a tower of whipped cream on top. it even matches her outfit: khaki-coloured sweater & jeans, a thin gold chain around her neck with a little fox pendant on it.
tobio isn’t listening. she sips at her glass of warm milk. as comfortable as she is, she feels ridiculously underdressed in her black t-shirt & karasuno track bottoms right now. uhm, did you know your cells will die if there’s too much sugar in your blood? your toes will fall off & everything, she itches to say out loud, but she’s not dumb like hinata, & polite enough to know that no one wants to think about that, especially not on a nice date like this.
oikawa wouldn’t spend so much money in a cafe, if the rumours are true that she lives off sunlight, fresh air & lipgloss sparkles. or maybe she’d turn up to take pictures then leave, if only to give the impression that she eats & other girls should too.
“… i was sayin’, d’ya want to be my girlfriend?”
tobio steps back into reality, a few seconds past apology. “what?”
atsumu doesn’t look disappointed in the slightest at tobio’s inattention. the eager sparkle in her eye is still there. “we have a really nice connection & we could make it work, if ya wanted. i can come here every month...”
tobio blinks. connection? like… volleyball?
suddenly she’s fourteen again with her hands on a casket, willing someone to come back to her.
so many people make fun of tobio at school, it’s not often someone announces they like her & definitely no one has ever confessed to her so boldly.
she shouldn’t overthink this. after all the mocking she gets at school, she should let herself be loved for once. how long has it been since the last time she was wanted? what harm could this new relationship do?
she swallows, her throat suddenly dry. “no, no... i don’t mind. i can be your… girlfriend, miya-san.”
“really?” atsumu looks surprised at first, like she hadn’t expected tobio to say yes so fast. when tobio nods again, she looks even more jubilant.
“i’ll be the best girlfriend in the world,” she declares loudly with a grin, clasping both tobio’s hands. a few people around them look up from their coffees in annoyance, but she ignores them. “better than anyone.”
tobio squeezes back softly, forcing a smile. the affection spreads through her skin like sugar in her blood
in the distance, two voices intertwined:
— someone better will come & find you.
— no way, tobio-chan!
(bone becomes ash, becomes ghost, becomes echo. all the dead do is haunt you.)
atsumu isn’t like oikawa in bed, either. she’s gentle & caring. she presses kisses down tobio’s aching body in a tender act of worship.
tobio lied about this being her first time, but she regrets that now. she doesn’t need any of this gentleness from anyone. she wants to be hunted down like an animal, she wants to feel oikawa’s hands driving through her like a car crash in slow motion.
but she arches her back like some actress in a video she watched once & hopes she’s getting all the sighs & the moans right, that atsumu won’t realise a thing.
& yes, in some other version of this night, oikawa is still here in all her vicious, jagged beauty & everything hurts in all the right ways.
tobio lays back against the pillows, presses her full weight into the softness — pretends her ribs crack the same way in the jaws of this new beast.
her bones feel all wrong, like they’ve been taken out & put back under her skin by someone who had no idea how they fit together to begin with. like her organs have been shoved in alongside as an afterthought.
her gut clenches up in her chest, & she swears there’s a throbbing headache in her throat that feels like choking.
(her heart is missing, because it’s in oikawa’s hands, always has been.)
eventually, when stars explode behind her eyes, it feels like this: the heated aftermath of a volleyball match. cherry lipgloss in the wake of a biting kiss.
call it total dissection by way of open-handed blow, setter dump, brown-eyed glare. call it a final resistance in the face of this grand theft — come back, come back to me.
v. value
tobio walks into the local pharmacy five minutes to closing time, when half the lights are off. alongside all the mountains of chocolates & snacks for tourists, she finds what she’s looking for.
the fruit-flavoured lipglosses are going for half price. tobio’s seen her classmates carrying it in their pockets. even sugawara-san has a mini version in her volleyball bag,
gloss & glow is a faux-deluxe brand, a luxury dupe for teenage girls who’ve saved up the last of their allowance to buy makeup instead of food. it’s not quite real, not quite fake, but enough of a effervescent middle ground that it’s popular with every girl in the country. or at least, every girl who’s pretty, funny & smart, but not intimidatingly so. confident enough to blaze her own trail, but vulnerable enough to be relatable & popular. a wholesome role model every parent wants their daughters to look up to.
tobio looks at the life-size cardboard cutout of tooru beside the shelf. it has an ugly red 50% off sticker over her face — definitely placed there on purpose.
the only other person here is the silver-haired cashier, with her hair up in a claw clip & a lip piercing. tobio recognises her as semi, the setter from shiratorizawa at last year’s spring high finals. she’s in oikawa’s year so she probably graduated last april.
“oh. we’re making room for the new collection,” semi suddenly appears beside tobio, chewing on something that smells like bubblegum. “everything must go, yadda yadda.”
tobio raises an eyebrow. she continues browsing through the lipgloss flavours. cherry, strawberry, watermelon — all artificial & probably tasting like cough medicine.
semi leans over & blows a huge pink bubble. it stretches out slowly & pops uncomfortably close to tobio’s face. it would be cute if oikawa did that, but with everyone else it just seems trashy. “you can have it for free ‘cause i’m cool like that. never liked the bitch anyway.”
she pauses for effect, wiggling her eyebrows. clearly, she’s waiting for tobio to join in the gossip with some choice insults so they can laugh together about how horrible oikawa is.
“… don’t call her that,” tobio says sharply, after a beat. “you’re just jealous of her.”
“jealous of that twig? she should be jealous i can eat three meals a day.” semi cackles. “with dessert.”
tobio takes a tube of strawberry lipgloss from the shelf with enough force to make every other tube on the shelf rattle. “whatever you say.”
“chill, there’s no need to get snippy. you’re the setter from karasuno, right? i thought…” semi tilts her head in confusion. “i thought you hate her.”
“i…” tobio’s not sure how to answer that. her stomach churns. she feels like she’s eaten the entire contents of every tube of lipgloss on the rack.
her phone buzzes in her pocket ten times in a row. that’s probably atsumu sending her a bunch of photos from the day.
“anyways, i’m just saying what everyone’s thinking.” semi puts her hands up in mock surrender. “you don’t have to defend her. it’s not like she can hear us.”
“i know,” tobio says, too quickly. she’s still trying to shape oikawa’s departure into something she can blame herself for, chaining that invisible rock to her ankles & dragging it behind her everywhere.
she wants to go home & have a hot meal. she wants to feel nothing at all. mostly, she just wants semi to stop talking.
she puts some cash on the counter & walks out of the drugstore, her legs heavy from some force she can’t explain. in the middle of the parking lot, she looks up at the sky & wonders if oikawa still wears lipgloss at all.
vi. call
karasuno girls’ volleyball team makes it to nationals in tobio’s final year, a clear moment of happiness in that year of tearful farewells, of college applications & group outings & god knows what else for most people.
after their final match, yamaguchi stands beside her proudly by the side of the court. the shy benchwarmer has grown into a real captain, & a whole person too: someone who’s blindingly good at math & has her own flock of admirers who send her love letters every now & then. if only they knew that she’s in a relationship with tsukishima (tobio thinks yamaguchi could do so much better, but apparently love is blind & deaf & stupid to boot).
the interviewer is a tiny woman in a green vest with nearly as much energy as hinata. she’s accompanied by a bored-looking cameraman.
“& over here we have vice captain of karasuno high school girls’ volleyball team, tobio kageyama. she’s the finest setter in this tournament & one half of the freak duo.” she points the microphone at tobio. “kageyama-senshu! how are you feeling?”
“i’m alright,” tobio says, very honestly. it wasn’t the best or even the most memorable game she’s played in her life, & of course there’ll be so much more, but she wipes the sweat off her brow & leans forward to indicate she’s listening.
“everyone’s talking about it, it’s official: you’re the best setter in the tournament. they say you’re the next atsumu miya. or tooru oikawa.”
tobio purses her lips, which taste like strawberry, & tilts her head to the side. the next tooru oikawa. what’s that even supposed to mean?
oikawa has always been… well, oikawa. she’s utterly incomparable, up for auction to the highest bidder, her love for volleyball blazing like the last of an argentinian sunset. she’s only as beautiful as she’s ephemeral.
it’s pointless trying to forget oikawa. maybe it’s better that tobio remember things in a different light, instead: tooru oikawa as a living legend, just a story everyone’s been told. a swift-running river of a girl who’s all water, movement & sound — with sharp, sharp teeth.
tobio sees yamaguchi’s encouraging smile, her entire team gathering behind the interviewer. shouyou pulls a quick series of funny faces to make them laugh on camera, & in that split second, it doesn’t really matter because this is her story now & she has the power to write it.
she breaks into a grin. she knows what she’ll say, because everyone here believes it, believes in her.
“i’m the first tobio kageyama.”
& that’s the end of it, that’s all anyone needs to know.
the schweiden adlers call her first, right after the spring high finals. joining the team is easy; she made a promise to wait for hinata & she’s not going back on it.
it’s all fine, it’s great until the morning she sees a new instagram post of oikawa & hinata on the beach a million miles away & bile rises in her throat.
her world tilts slightly like she’s stopped breathing & she realises that’s exactly what happened. her chest aches, bringing up memories from the spaces between her ribs. it isn’t in her heart so much as it’s all up in her lungs like smoke.
a few text notifications pop up on her screen, obscuring oikawa’s face for a second: it’s atsumu, of course.
» see u later bb!!! 💗💋
» we can get lunch at that new curry place hehehe
tobio doesn’t have the heart to swipe the notification bubbles away, so she waits for them to disappear. doesn’t know how long all this will last but it feels like forever. something will have to give.
then there’s italy, where she finds solace in the embrace of a strange city. she learns the language & the culture, the way her teammates train.
on one of her off days, she visits a museum with atsumu. as expected, this one has plenty of ancient statues, the kind she’s seen in the tourism advertisements about italy.
in the great, high-ceilinged halls, she stares at thousand-year-old statues of women — finest marble rendered into curvaceous figures, their skin pale & pearly, their mouths soft bows.
she wonders if it would be easier or more difficult for the ancients to make a statue of a woman who’s all skin & bones, carved from hatred instead of love. or even a monster, some strange being that might have been human once but grew twisted in blind rage.
by the time she realises she has someone in mind, she feels atsumu at her shoulder, that familiar bright presence.
“hi, baby,” atsumu, in her leopard-print fur coat, drapes her arms around tobio. she presses their cheeks together in her usual flirty way, then turns to look at the row of statues with a joking scoff. “ya look way better than all of them, by the way.”
“uh-huh.” tobio gestures at the statue in front of her vaguely, pretending to read the english description on the wall beside it. she wishes she could leave here right now, go back home & pretend none of it ever happened.
(leave, but to where? the truth has always been this: wherever you go, there you are.)
vii. need
tobio stares around her house in near-disbelief, putting her volleyball bag down at the door. she’d forgotten it was her birthday, but leave it to atsumu to remind her in this way.
even in the darkness she can see the single room has been decorated with pale pink ribbons & heart-shaped balloons from wall to wall. a vase of real flowers (not paper ones) sits on the small dining table, vibrant blue against the brown wood.
there’s even a little chanel box next to the flowers. tobio knows it’s the matte lipstick from the holiday collection, probably the wine-red one in the candy cane-striped case. a whole lot classier than anything from her teenage years,
the cake is obviously meant to be the highlight. it’s a little round thing, with blue chantilly cream & fresh blueberries on top. a mini cinnamoroll toy stands to one side, hugging the pile of blueberries. there’s a message, too: happy 22nd birthday, tobio-chan in blue icing, surrounded by two brightly burning large pink candles & two small ones.
no wonder atsumu asked her to come back from training on time. nobody’s done this for her in her entire life & it makes her dizzy just to think about.
“happy birthday, baby!” atsumu trills, from behind her candy-pink phone. she moves it around to capture every angle of the room on camera. “there, now make a wish.”
tobio only has one wish, & she’s repeated it in her mind every day for the past eight years, she feels like she’s going absolutely insane.
she could say i wish the jnt wins gold at the olympics next year or even something sappy like thank you for the surprise, i wish we could be together forever!
she feels awful about all of this already, she’s always been too stupid to lie under pressure, & hiding the truth for a single minute more would probably burst a blood vessel in her brain.
as it is, she opens her mouth & the years-old rot she’s been holding back finally spills out.
“i wish oikawa-san was here.”
atsumu bursts into laughter, still holding her phone up. “oh, my god! yer so funny, babe.”
tobio shakes her head slowly, her throat already closing up with regret. atsumu closes her mouth too, & ends the video with a click.
silence settles between them like bones in a grave. all the remnants of what they almost were, what they never could've been.
“i mean, thank you for…” tobio gestures around the room lamely, in a last-ditch effort to save the scene. “… all this.”
“shut up. shut up,” atsumu replies. her brow furrows as she crosses her arms around her middle in what looks like a hug, something to prevent herself from imploding. “i thought… you liked me, or something.”
tobio knows what it is to feel like a drugstore imitation of the real thing. that doesn’t make it any easier to think of the right words to say. “i did. i mean, i do but not in that way.”
“you’ve been lying to me,” atsumu says, only a little louder. “for goddamn years now.”
“it’s not like that,” tobio insists, but of course that’s a lie too.
“oh my god.” atsumu runs her hands through her hair, clutching at her scalp. her eyes are narrowed in rage. “when i asked ya out… i didn’t want t’be a replacement for her. i wanted to be my own person to ya. create our own life together -.”
“it’s not your fault -”
“ah, fuck that. if ya like her so damn much, where the hell is she now?” atsumu scoffs, picking up her purse from one of the kitchen chairs.
“i don’t know about oikawa-san, but i do know someone better will come & find you,” tobio says, without thinking. she doesn’t know if it’s true in this case but she figures it’s a good enough saying so long as the blonde doesn’t think too much about it.
“oikawa-san this, oikawa-san that. does she know ya like i do? ya really think she likes ya back?”
“it’s not fair for you. i’m sorry for wasting your time.” tobio pauses, avoiding any & all questions directed at her. “i think you should go.”
“wow. can’t believe i flew all the way here for this shit.” atsumu scoffs quietly & somehow it’s worse than all her tears. “yer fuckin’ impossible, ya know that?”
tobio’s about to say something, but closes her mouth again. nothing can make this better. what’s the point of holding onto a mere reminder of what you’ve truly set your heart on?
atsumu moves in a honey-blonde blur, heading for the door. somewhere between all her erratic movements, she rants about how oikawa is a pile of flaming garbage with a horrible eating disorder. about how tobio, too, is a lying bitch who wouldn’t know a good thing if it came up & slit her throat.
tobio still doesn’t react. she keeps her head down & stares at the table. none of this feels real to her; it’s all a fever dream & she’ll wake up in her childhood bedroom in miyagi, all of sixteen years old & ready to go to school for morning volleyball practice with her carton of milk in hand. a complete do-over of the last ten years & she’ll get it right this time, she swears to all the gods.
by the time the door has slammed behind atsumu, the candles on the cake have melted into stumps, the flames burning ever brighter. the cream has slid off the side of the cake from the heat, rendering all the icing unreadable. even cinnamoroll has fallen over onto its back.
tobio inhales deeply & extinguishes all her candles in a single breath. she puts cinnamoroll upright again, sticking it deeper into the partially ruined cake.
when there’s nothing left but thin trails of smoke wafting up from the pink wax, she sits at the table in the total darkness, listening to the insistent ticking of the wall clock & waiting for the sun to rise.
viii. say
it’s strange, bringing someone home after dinner. she usually goes out to eat with her teammates or cooks herself some rice in her apartment. she’s never had company like this.
oikawa still has that ritual before she eats. tobio’s seen it in buenos aires some years ago.
oikawa doesn’t just put her hands together like most people would. instead, she interlocks her fingers one by one until her hands are tightly clasped. she closes her eyes, then takes exactly three deep breaths. thank you for the food, a whisper with genuine intent behind it.
tobio found it fascinating once & she still does. she likes watching oikawa eat. strangely, it feels like seeing the older woman come back from the dead.
now, on her balcony, she realises she’d never taken someone home in high school. never had time for anything besides volleyball. the only thing she’d done was ride her bike to oikawa’s childhood home.
& as always, oikawa & volleyball are intertwined to her. she’s never been able to love one without the other.
they’re not enemies. now that tobio thinks about it, they never have been. they’re not quite friends either. this is some grey area that she doesn’t dare put a name to in case it becomes real & she’s not sure how she’ll bear the weight of it all.
it’s evening in italy but only half the sky knows it, like it’s confused by the summer heat. there’s still the vestiges of the bright blue of the day, the light silhouette of drifting clouds above.
“you know how they call us the monster generation?” oikawa says. it comes out slowly but surely, as if she’s been searching for someone to tell this to for years now.
tobio nods. she’s never really cared for the name. it feels wrong in a way she can’t quite put her finger on.
“do you know how it started?” oikawa looks towards the sky, clasping her hands in her lap so tightly her veins pop.
tobio shakes her head, looking at oikawa’s chipped blue nail polish. she’s seen the title in the news, but never paid it much mind. not like it has any particular bearing on her life. she does what she likes & tunes out everything else.
“ah, it’s actually ushiwaka’s fault. six foot five type of bitch, basically a brick shithouse. & terrible at interviews. she just says what she thinks all the time.”
tobio agrees silently. ushijima is nothing if not direct.
“she’s not like me, you know. i mean, no one’s like me but you get the point.” oikawa sighs dramatically. “so the interview went on tv & everyone said oh, she’s so rude. oh, she acts like a man. she doesn’t listen to anyone except her coach, she’s basically a volleyball monster. & it stuck.”
“so now…” tobio starts. the words die in her mouth before her tongue can shape them.
“mhm.” oikawa draws a circle in the air with her index finger. “... all of us who went pro, we’re monsters.”
there’s a light behind her eyes. not a warm glow, but a flash of the same caged-beast hunger she’s had since tobio knew her. tobio inexplicably understands why oikawa doesn’t want to return to japan.
“that makes sense.” tobio shrugs. her pr manager had told them as much. be confident but not arrogant. sexy but not slutty. intelligent but not a know-it-all.
it’s so confusing to act as a woman should, but she’d just nodded & said she understood. when in fact she didn’t get it any more than her high school math classes.
there’s a few beats of silence before oikawa speaks again. this time her voice is soft, regretful. the tears in her eyes sparkle like crushed diamonds in the weak light. “funny how i tortured myself my whole life so people wouldn’t call me an animal but it all circled back to me in the end.” she wipes her eyes roughly. “whatever, you little genius - brat - never mind. not like you’d get it. you always did things your way.”
a hunger delicious enough to live off. tobio’s played enough volleyball to know what that feels like. thankfully she’s never given into it. or maybe that’s what makes a truly great player, being “stupid” enough not to think about anything else besides the game in front of her.
oikawa continues. “i’m friends with ushiwaka now… friends-ish, anyway. she’s like you, she doesn’t care about any of this shit. also, she’s a horrible texter. i actually made her some potato salad once in argentina…” she starts to smile, but it doesn’t entirely materialise, like she’s out of practice. her gaze drops into her lap, like she’s accidentally dropped something fragile. “god, i’m rambling.”
“it’s fine.” tobio shakes her head. she tries & fails to imagine oikawa eating a bowl of potato salad with ushijima. it’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad. “i’ve always thought you were perfect.”
“perfect? me? have you ever met anyone else in your entire life?” oikawa smiles softly, bitterly. “seriously, all the things i had back then… they were never worth what they cost.”
“but you’ve always been my goal, oikawa-san,” tobio insists. she decides not to mention anything about atsumu, at least not for the time being.
what she really wants to say is. you’re my someone better. i’d fall for anything if you were the one who set it up.
“your goal? i’m tobio kageyama’s goal? god, i hate when you’re modest. it’s so beneath you,” oikawa snaps. it’s not in a mean way. it’s like she’s so tired, she can’t even hide it any more. “i was fifteen, i wanted everything & i was willing to kill for it. how does that make me anything to you?”
“i - i lo - ” tobio takes a slow breath, but it still feels sharp in her lungs. her next question materialises from that razor’s edge. “why didn’t you tell me where - when - how you were going to argentina?”
she’s asked this before, back in buenos aires. but oikawa hadn’t answered, just shrugged & kept eating. tobio hadn’t pressed on, content to see oikawa eating mouthful after mouthful of rice in a moment that felt too sacred to break.
“oh, that.” oikawa laughs now, like it’s a tiny throwaway incident that tobio hasn’t been thinking about for the past ten years. tobio wants to grab her by the shoulders & shake her: so many people missed you, oikawa-san. you don’t even know.
it’s a while before oikawa continues, as if she’s been finding the right words to say. she turns in tobio’s direction, but her gaze is still distant, fixed on some invisible point above the younger girl’s head like she’s aiming a toss.
“i didn’t want you to find me before i found myself…” oikawa’s hand rests on her thigh, curling into a loose fist. her voice drops to a near-whisper.
tobio has to lean in to catch the next few words, picking up every last one like shards of glass on the ground. she doesn’t care if she bleeds out this way through every last vein in her fingers. she only needs to hear oikawa say it once.
“… but you do that every single time.” oikawa looks up, & back into tobio’s eyes. her voice is still soft, tinged a few shades between regret & resignation. “i’m sorry for everything… tobio.”
tobio waits for the sting, the inevitable recoil, the ha ha, sorry not sorry cute-poisonous whiplash where oikawa sticks out her tongue & pulls down her pale lower eyelid. where the big reveal is this was a joke to get tobio to expose her own weakness.
the moment never comes. there’s nothing hidden in the apology, & tobio finally sees it — the massive haemorrhage in oikawa’s hands, invisible blood dripping from between her teeth like she’s been hunting herself for sport all these years. a body covered in open wounds from where she’s bitten herself down to the bone.
i don’t hate myself any more, but my body is taking a bit longer to learn that, oikawa had joked earlier while eating, & tobio realises the truth of it now.
up close, oikawa’s lips are flaking away, tiny, translucent pieces of skin mixed with little spots of blood. a kiss would taste metallic, the lightning zip of a licked battery. the stark absence of her usual lipgloss is jarring, & even tobio has to blink a little at how achingly clear this all is.
one piece, two pieces, three. she loves me, she loves me not, she -
“thank you for saying that. i appreciate it.” tobio puts her head on oikawa’s shoulder. not instinctively, but carefully. it’s something she feels like she can do now. “you know, all i ever wanted was for you to see me. to care about me.”
“well, i'm here now. & i do care, i do…” oikawa shakes her head, as if she’s just come to her senses. she’s so close & she still looks nothing like the magazines. she’s not wearing perfume, especially not the kind she advertised back in japan. instead, she smells like all the sweat & smoke from the eatery. she’s hauntingly human at the end of this long, long day. “but i know i’m the worst, so…”
are you disappointed? her brown eyes, still glassy with tears, seem to ask.
tobio swallows. she doesn’t apologise — not for her questions, anyway — but her guts twist in on themselves all the same. she recalls how atsumu smelled like warm honey, & the only thing sweeter than that is oikawa’s deep, cloying rot, vestiges of a picture-perfect life stripped to the bone.
being the worst is about leaving the nicest girl in the world for one she’s drawn to in inexplicable ways. it’s an unsettling weight in her stomach. sure, she’s inflicted her own harm — i never loved you, i wanted someone else would cut as deep as any blade — but it goes far beyond that.
being the worst is also about the little violences of all the girls who made her cry at volleyball youth camp. the knowing smirks she got in the hallways at school — kageyama’s a lesbian, you know. this is semi eita scrawling graffiti & pasting 50% OFF stickers over oikawa’s cardboard figure at the pharmacy. this is the backstabbing & lying she’s seen in a world she isn’t built for, & is still learning to navigate — a maze with walls fifty metres tall. walls that shift position every day & all tobio does is collide with the concrete the way a spiked volleyball bounces off the court.
maybe the fiercest carnivores are like this — dazzlingly sleek surfaces & tender, roiling undersides. & if you spill your guts the world will never look at you the same way again.
“every girl is the worst,” tobio replies, firmly. she’s never been able to look in oikawa’s eyes & lie. all these years, she only got away with anything by keeping her mouth shut & her eyes focused on the volleyball in the air.
“great.” oikawa holds both tobio’s hands & inhales deeply, shakily. she smiles hesitantly, with a touch of sadness in her eyes. “now we can be the worst together.”
for a minute, tobio thinks they might kiss like in the movies. but oikawa stays where she is, & so tobio doesn’t move either. for the time being, she hums softly, & shifts her attention back to the sunlit sky, with its glowing hues of burnt orange & deep pink. there’s nothing in the universe gentler than this.
karasuno & ali roma have given her all the wings she needs. it may not be today, or tomorrow, but one day, she’ll take oikawa’s hand & they’ll collide with the sky instead.
ix. where is your girl?
at last, there’s the tokyo 2020 summer olympics: the argentinian women's national volleyball team wins the gold by a frustratingly small margin, which of course makes it all the more glorious for them.
tooru oikawa is the starting setter, the woman of the match. they say she’ll be the national team captain next year if she keeps this up at the world championships. she’s surrounded by ecstatic fans & all her friends who can’t wait to celebrate her. everyone knows she’s the world’s best setter, & now she has the olympic crown to go with it.
tobio can’t even be properly angry, not while oikawa is right up on the podium looking so radiant, decked in the dazzling white & pale blue of her new country, her arms full of mascot plushes & extravagant flower bouquets instead of blood.
tooru oikawa is still as deep as she is tall, as suffocating as she is beautiful. she’s decayed right down to her hollow bones & still as dazzling as any sunset. tobio doesn’t have the heart to face her again, at least not today. she could cry from how perfect oikawa still is to her, despite all the older girl’s persuasions to the contrary.
at the end of the day, when everyone is celebrating down at the hotel bar, tobio sits cross-legged on her bed, in the silence of her room. it’s still perfectly clean, because she never bothered to unpack much.
a text from bokuto pops up on her notification screen, then another.
» heyyyyyy girlllll
» come join usssss
» we can get u some warm milk!!!
she watches the next few messages appear. a large sticker of a shy cinnamoroll half-hiding behind a blue milk carton. a string of puppy-eye emojis. a video of the bar, which pans back around to a clearly tipsy bokuto & an extremely sober sakusa waving at the camera.
sakusa texts next, with her usual quiet propriety.
» it would be nice to see you here. bokuto’s driving me crazy.
atsumu, predictably, is silent.
tobio exhales softly. she turns to the evening dress hanging on the wardrobe door, a filmy 90’s versace piece her sister miraculously procured from a secondhand store in ginza. it’s deep blue like an italian night under the stars, which is the only thing she likes about it.
she eyes the off-shoulder neckline, the tiered fabric at the bust, the high thigh slit. it’s more red carpet than party, definitely too fancy for the bar downstairs.
she should’ve asked asahi to design a dress for her, it would probably suit her better anyway. though asahi’s been busy travelling the world with noya lately so that might not have worked either.
she tries it on anyway, just so she can give her honest feedback to miwa. as she expected, it doesn’t suit her. the fabric is cold & itchy & clings to her in the wrong places. it was clearly designed for someone slimmer, with less stretch marks on their thighs. one of those stick-figure models with an overwhelming heroin addiction. then again, if there’s anything she’s learned from these few years it’s that a thirst for victory hits harder than any drug.
after a minute of consideration, she tosses it aside & changes into her black t-shirt & red flannel pants instead. she feels herself relax fully.
tobio opens her instagram for the hell of it, & the first post pops up: oikawa resplendent in a strapless turquoise dress, holding a full glass of champagne. her gold medal hangs around her neck, sparkling in the neon lights of the bar. she’s laughing at some joke her teammates are making, all her teeth on full display.
the fact is, happiness looks so good on oikawa it hurts.
—— i wish i was her, sixteen-year-old tobio says, in front of the magazine rack in sakanoshita store.
“me too,” twenty three-year-old tobio replies out loud.
there’s a short video clip too, posted by one of the other argentinian athletes. tobio watches all ten seconds of it, oikawa’s iridescent eyeshadow & wing-sharp eyeliner evident as she twirls on the dancefloor, led by someone tobio can’t quite make out before the video ends. she puts it on repeat, then watches it in reverse until her eyes sting.
she turns off her phone & puts it on her nightstand. she’ll text miwa about the dress in the morning.
it might be good for her to sleep early, even though she’s decided to stay in tokyo for the next few days. meet tsukishima & yamaguchi for lunch tomorrow, visit karasuno high school to speak to the volleyball team. a bunch of bright-eyed girls who still strive to be loved by a world who hates them, girls who aren’t ready to be the worst by any means.
(no matter. they’ll get there, as all women eventually do.)
naturally, hinata will be doing most of the talking. tobio’s just there to nod & say some choice words to keep morale up, then oversee their training session for the day.
she drinks a glass of water, sip by slow, cool sip. it does little to soothe the ache in her throat. she wonders what atsumu is doing, & wonders if she should’ve just gone down to the party so she wouldn’t be thinking about stupid things like this.
the knock on her door is sudden, & it catapults her back into the moment. she gets up to respond. her legs are shaking uncontrollably & she doesn’t understand why, only that she has to keep moving or she’ll crumple to the floor in a heap.
she opens the door slowly, & everything is thrown into sharp relief, jagged edges of a mirror slicing deep into her flesh.
this is a river through her door, hot & cold all at once, pushing her into freefall off the edge of everything she’s built for herself. a million little deaths for this, & tonight she’ll be reborn.
all her life the girl
has eaten. now it’s your turn. doorbell ring.
quiet bruise. price of deadly. anything is yours
if you swallow it.