Chapter Text
Oikawa Tooru awoke that morning to the most satisfying undisturbed silence he’d ever had the privilege of hearing. And perhaps a few months ago, that would’ve felt amazing, would’ve been the perfect start to what was otherwise—most probably—going to be a disappointingly average day. But the thing was, peacefully waking up this way was no longer a privilege he had; not since he’d slept 40 minutes too many and nearly had his eyes pried open by a rushing, yelling Iwaizumi who then proceeded to storm out, leaving a disgruntled Oikawa to spend the next five minutes piecing together that he’d be running to school all alone.
He’d decided to properly get his life together after that, and proceeded to switch his alarm up, from the sound of flutes and chirping birds in the forest to one of nails scratching a chalkboard, and the morning had never been quiet again. Except today apparently. Whether he’d accidentally switched it off last night or it wasn’t his time to get up and he could still cozy up for a few more minutes (he would really, really like that), he didn’t know. Either way, eyes still closed, he slowly inched to the edge of his bed and allowed a single hand to aimlessly grope around for his phone, which he definitely places there without fail every night, no doubt about that—
—before promptly falling off.
Now if the brightness of morning hadn’t been enough to get him on his feet, this definitely was. Falling off the bed first thing in the morning was never fun; everyone with a Western-style bed knew that, but what made it so jolting was that Oikawa didn’t. He didn’t know that because he didn’t have a Western-styled bed; he slept flat on the ground, a complete stranger to any sensation related to beds that were more than ten inches above it. But here he was, on the floor after experiencing what should have been impossible, eyes wide open now, staring into the space that should have been his bedroom.
It wasn’t.
He’d been sleeping on a futon for as long as he could remember, and he’d decided to move it right at the centre of the bedroom, right next to a desk where he could easily crawl over and use his computer or read his books by a lamplight. His uniform always hung on the wall ready for wearing during weekdays, and on the weekends, he could also quite easily crawl to the dresser beside him and pull out anything that might keep him warm enough to go outside. But the room he was in was a little bit smaller, with plain white walls and a dull-looking carpet. The desk was also right beside the bed, but rather than a computer, it held a mess of what looked to be magazines littered on the surface, a swivel chair standing right before it. What concerned him the most, however, was that a gakuran hung on the wall by the foot of the bed.
That definitely wasn’t Aoba Johsai’s uniform, and though quite a number of schools in the prefecture made use of that same black variant, only one popped into his mind.
With a hurried, incomplete breath, Oikawa hopped to his feet, looking down at his body and realizing that he was in a pair of matching pyjamas he certainly didn’t own. The cotton of the shirt was soft and a plain white, a great contrast to his hands peeking out of the sleeves, skin a little bit darker than he remembered. The callouses from volleyball were still present, thank god, but his nails were overwhelmingly neat, better-kempt than they usually were, almost like he’d gotten them done.
The sight of them, along with that of literally everything else he’d just looked at in the last minute, sent a tightness to his chest that he’d never quite experienced before—one that screamed at him to stop gawking like an idiot and go look into a mirror. It wasn’t something he often did, not right after waking anyway. But the bed wasn’t his, the room wasn’t his, the clothes weren’t his, the integumentary system (for Christ’s sake) wasn’t his, and so the least he could do for his sanity was check his reflection, to be assured that at least the face that would greet him was still his.
But it wasn’t.
It was Kageyama Tobio’s.
Roughly 24 hours before this major life crisis, Sugawara Koushi was leisurely strolling the streets neighboring Karasuno, an evident bounce in his step as he made his way to school. His bag filled with quizzes sporting top grades slung over his shoulder and his favourite scarf—light blue, personally made by his mother—wound around his neck, there was absolutely nothing in the world that could ruin the morning for him. And given that his class standing was skyrocketing, that the cafeteria tofu had only gotten spicier, and that his volleyball team was training more rigorously than ever before in preparation for their grand comeback to the National tournament, not to brag or anything, but it felt as though nothing in the world could ruin on any morning, or afternoon, or evening ever again.
Well, okay, he was bragging a little bit.
But he, like everybody should have been if he did say so himself, was of the belief that he couldn’t be blamed for it, and so he was enthusiastic just examining birds mindlessly perched on transmission lines above him, exceedingly entertained even watching grade schoolers run past him yelling childish insults at one another. Typical sights, all of them were, but there was nothing boring or mundane in the face of an excellent mood.
Which was why a convenience store with a tarp advertising a ‘BIG SALE TODAY’ was almost like winning the lottery. He had nothing in particular he wanted to buy, but Suga was scurrying into the small, scarcely-populated building like he hadn’t eaten in three days anyway, eager to see how big the discounts could be. He offered a bright smile and nod to the attendant that had greeted and implored him to take a look around, and a little too intently did exactly as he was told, eyeing each item thoroughly, picking up the ones that interested him, putting them back down when something else caught his attention.
It was the fortune cookies that eventually did him in, and for good. The only thing better than sweets were sweets containing paper that told you whether your future would be good or bad, and simply the thought of bringing it to their club session later in the afternoon, seeing his teammates’ faces as their (probably fake) fates were unravelled to them, was enough to push him into decisively approaching the two final bags and making a grab for the one on the right.
And at the exact same time, someone reached for the one on the left.
Perhaps because of his strange tendency to look at everything that morning, perhaps not, Suga found himself locking eyes with the supposed stranger to his left, only to discover that it wasn’t a stranger at all. Not completely at least. He didn’t exactly have a name he could associate with Aoba Johsai’s Number 3, and Suga was most likely nothing more than an eyesore to him, but they both stopped regardless, and there didn’t seem to be any sort of contempt or discomfort in either of their expressions.
In fact, Aoba Johsai’s Number 3 looked nothing but casual as he spoke. “Oh. Hey there.”
“Hello,” Suga replied, putting on one of his friendlier smiles. Not as genuine as the one he’d given the store attendant, but whatever. Nobody had to know that. He glanced at the bag very nearly in his grasp. “Getting cookies?”
“Yep. Figured me and my friends could all use a little guidance in life. Plus, it’s on sale, so I’m sold.”
“Same.” Usually he had a little more conversational prowess than this to boast about, but somehow, talking to the wing spiker of a rival volleyball club they’d beaten a few months back was harder than actually beating them a few months back. He gestured feebly to the counter. “I guess I’ll go pay for this.”
Said wing spiker didn’t seem to be carrying the same burden. “Sure,” was all he said as he shrugged, and it was only when Suga was about two steps away that he continued with, “Congratulations on making Nationals, by the way.”
It wasn’t really something Suga wanted to discuss with anyone who came from or supported Seijoh, because although he couldn’t be happier that his own team had emerged Miyagi’s champion, he was well aware that Seijoh had been thirsting for the chance to beat Shiratorizawa and go to Tokyo for three years and, unlike Karasuno, had a habit of coming extremely close before being let down in the end. But he sent a decent nod in Seijoh’s spiker’s direction anyway, telling himself that an opposing team’s crushed dreams wasn’t supposed to be anybody but that team’s problem, and accompanied it with a gracious smile. “Thank you.”
What he was really thankful for, though, was that their encounter had ended there.
As was the plan, that afternoon, he’d brought the pack of cookies to the rest of the team and happily watched as they each cracked one open in the hope of getting good luck. Suga himself had gotten something quite generic (‘Don’t pursue happiness—create it’) and so he found he’d much rather laugh at Hinata’s wholehearted agreement with his fortune (‘Your shoes will make you happy today’), Tanaka’s excitement and then confusion about his (‘You will marry your lover’; “But I don’t have one,” he said, and threw a hand over his mouth in dismay), and Asahi’s downcast face upon reading his (‘Sometimes you just need to lay on the floor’).
Standing next to Tsukishima, whose brows were furrowed as he stared down at the slip of paper he’d pulled out (‘All your fingers can’t be of the same length’), Suga crossed his arms. “I actually ran into one of Seijoh’s players buying a pack too,” he announced, and every one of his teammates seemed to snap to attention.
“Oh?” said Yamaguchi (‘Everyone agrees. You are the best’). “Which one?”
“Number three. I don’t know his name.” Suga shrugged. “He congratulated us for beating Shiratorizawa.”
Daichi (‘To be old and wise, you must first be young and stupid’) hummed, pocketing his cookie in favour of picking up a ball sitting by his feet. “That’s nice of him. Was he gonna give the cookies away to the rest of his team too?”
“Maybe, but I’m not sure. I mean, volleyball season is over for them.”
At the resounding crack that came from somewhere behind everyone, Suga turned to see Kageyama (...oh, he hadn’t read out a fortune yet), standing alone and completely still, eyes focused on nothing in particular. His cookie seemed to be in his grasp, but he only kept it there without even looking at it.
“Kageyama, aren’t you gonna check what you got?” Suga asked, studying the dark expression on his face. Strictly speaking, his expression was never anything else and he was innately a boy of few words (when he wasn’t talking about volleyball, at least), but there was something about his grim face and silence that seemed different from what could be called his regular state.
It only seemed to get worse once he’d been addressed. Kageyama shook his head. “I’ll look at it later,” he said, and he shoved the probably broken cookie in his pocket.
“Why, are you afraid that you’re gonna get a really bad one and we’re gonna make fun of you for it?” Hinata taunted, leering up at Kageyama as if his words would make up for their 18 centimetre difference in height, and they usually did. That is, until Kageyama rose to his bait and completely overpowered him.
Today though, what he got was only an exasperated roll of eyes and a, “Shut up, dumbass,” with about half the regular conviction, and Hinata looked about as bewildered as Suga felt when Kageyama walked away from the rest of them, marking this as one of the two times he’d ever left the gym in the middle of practice.
At about the same time that day, Hanamaki Takahiro had distributed his freshly-bought cookies to his three favourite friends (though he’d never admit that out loud). Truly, their season was over, and that was incredibly frustrating as it was sad, but they didn’t bother talking about it anymore and simply enjoyed one another’s company, walking home together while the sun was still up rather than just relying on the illumination the street lights gave in the darkness after an afternoon and evening’s worth of practice.
There were only four of them, however, and about fifteen cookies inside the bag, so each of them had cracked and read from exactly three for the sake of equality, still ending up dissatisfied more than half the time.
“So get this,” said Hanamaki (‘You are a lover of words. One day you will write a book’, ‘It never pays to kick a skunk’, ‘You believe in the goodness of mankind’), holding the bag with the remaining three cookies in one hand and his disappointing slips of paper in the other. “I ran into Karasuno’s Number 2 earlier while getting these things.”
“Refreshing-kun?” Oikawa (‘Nothing seems impossible to you’, ‘Emotion is energy in motion’, ‘Enjoyed the meal? Buy one to go too’) asked.
“I don’t know what you want me to say to that. What does Refreshing-kun even mean?”
“What’d he say?” Without giving Oikawa the chance to justify his ridiculous nicknames, Iwaizumi (‘Patience is bitter but its fruit is sweet’, ‘Poverty is no disgrace’, ‘Lend your money or lose your friend’) looked to Hanamaki.
“Not much.” Hanamaki shrugged. “I congratulated him for beating Shiratorizawa but he seemed awkward.”
Matsukawa (‘In case of fire, keep calm, pay bill, and run’, ‘You are broad-minded and socially-active’, ‘You will kiss your crush ohhh lalahh’) let out a short laugh. “Well, duh. We’re the losers they beat to get to Shiratorizawa in the first place.”
“Mattsun, don’t say it like that, I’m still frustrated,” said an already-grimacing Oikawa.
“You say that but you came to their game,” Iwaizumi pointed out. “That, and you sounded pretty pleased knowing Shiratorizawa lost.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t want to be the one to beat them anymore.”
“Come on, it’s been a few months,” Matsukawa said, grinning and wrapping a single arm around his captain, who clearly didn’t appreciate the show of affection, for once. “You should be proud your precious kouhai ‘Tobio’ is going places. He learned everything he knows from you, didn’t he?”
He did, at least by Oikawa’s account, but in all the years that Hanamaki had known him, he found that the days when he could give that account with his usual pomp were just as frequent as the days when he couldn’t. And today, just like every other day Kageyama happened to slither his way into their conversation after their elimination from the Spring High, Oikawa’s entirety seemed to shut down. He allowed his posture to sag for a while, crushed under the weight of Matsukawa’s arm, until he was wordlessly, abruptly reaching for another cookie in Hanamaki’s hands.
“Hey, no fair!” the latter cried, but didn’t bother putting up any sort of fight.
“Something to take home,” Oikawa only said, placing the thing safely inside his pocket. “Maybe if I pray over it, it’ll tell me something I actually want to hear.”
Kageyama really shouldn’t have been thinking about his amazing, older rival setter as he headed for the bathroom, because he’d already been defeated and what did it matter that Kageyama probably still hadn’t quite measured up to the level of skill he exhibited no matter what team he was on? But he was.
Oikawa really shouldn’t have been thinking about his ever-improving, younger rival setter as he headed home, because although their team had won, he undeniably still had a long way to go and what did it matter that he was probably going to work to keep improving without slowing down and leave Oikawa in the dust? But he was.
It was kind of pathetic, really. He knew he looked up to the guy to some degree (some), but to be reminded that Seijoh was out of the tournaments and end up with a ruined mood at the thought of Oikawa’s high school volleyball career having ended, how he might have felt about that, what he planned to do next? It could probably be considered normal if he was equally concerned about Iwaizumi, or Kindaichi, or the rest of the team he’d have to face the following year—but he wasn’t.
It was kind of ridiculous, actually. He knew he tended to make a big deal out of Kageyama and where he stood on the spectrum of skilled setters, but to be reminded that Karasuno was advancing to Nationals and end up with a ruined mood at the thought of how Kageyama was going to do, how much he was going to learn, where Oikawa would stand with him? It could still sort of be considered normal, especially if he was overflowing with rage and envy and bitterness—but he wasn’t.
What he was was standing in a stall in the bathroom, all alone and away from his team despite the fact that practice was ongoing, clutching a fortune cookie in his hand while unable to wish away a certain someone’s face from his thoughts that refused to shut up.
What he was was standing in his room, all alone and away from his friends despite the lovely afternoon calling out to him, clutching a fortune cookie in his hand while unable to drive out a certain someone’s face from his mind that wouldn’t seem to stop yelling.
He figured he needed a distraction; that thinking about something else, something more trivial, could perhaps make things better, could return him to his usual state. And so he looked to the cookie in his hand,
cracked,
unopened,
and thought that he may as well indulge himself in false promises and generalized positivity, that maybe it would allow him to preserve himself, spare him from his own embarrassing brooding, or at the very least, allow him a good laugh. Without thinking and yet still thinking too much, he shattered the thing
further,
completely, in one quick motion,
pulled out the little paper that would supposedly dictate his future, and frowned as he read:
A journey soon begins,
its prize reflected in another’s eyes.
When what you see is what you lack,
then selfless love will change you back.
What,
Weird,
was what first came to mind. The passage was in English, just like the rest had been,
and perhaps because Kageyama sucked at the language
and though Oikawa was proficient as average students went
he couldn’t say he understood what exactly was written. It was definitely longer, definitely less straightforward than what his
teammates
best friends
had gotten, and at this point, he wasn’t even sure if it could be considered a fortune, let alone classify it as good or bad. Perhaps he was just that much of a lost cause, so much so that even novelty that supposedly catered to anybody no longer had any wisdom to give him.
Without warning, the ground began to shake, abrupt and lacking any sort of subtlety.
Kageyama
Oikawa
looked around him, heart stuttering out of time, eyes wide and mouth gaping at the sight of shaking lights and windows and walls and then his body was moving on its own,
backing up against the wall,
crouching down onto the floor,
trying not to scream even as he stumbled on his feet, even as he watched the world around him tremble and felt the floor almost clutching at him, pulling at him, trying to send him crashing painfully into the ground. He shut his eyes so he wouldn’t see his life flashing before them, spent most of his strength hanging onto something, anything that could keep him calm and unharmed despite the reverberating sound of everything around him falling apart, used the feeble strength that remained to remember to breathe.
But as quickly and harshly as they came, the tremors stopped.
Even without them he quivered, but managed to steady himself on his feet, and took a good look around. Nothing in the room looked heavily damaged, much to his relief but also surprise, and when it seemed no other quakes would follow, he
pocketed the cookie and headed back to the gym
tossed the cookie in the trash and headed out of the house
in the hope of finding everyone else safe and sound, given that just seconds ago it felt as though the earth beneath them was about to split into two.
A feeling, he discovered, that nobody else had felt at all.
“There was no earthquake,”
said Hinata, already in a running stance and clutching a ball to throw up to be tossed.
said his next-door neighbour, who was out watering the plants on her front porch.
“Are you sure you didn’t just imagine it?”
He was sure. He saw it, he heard it, he felt it, and he had never been more sure of anything in his life save for his being absolutely certain that imagining an entire earthquake was impossible. But he didn’t press it. He couldn’t, unless he was prepared to assert that all the rest of the world was pulling an elaborate practical joke with the aim to rattle his state of mind. So instead of wasting his energy trying to convince others of the existence of a natural disaster that had him thinking he was about to die, he
gave practice a hundred and ten percent
got his homework done and over with
and, with no better explanation, was content to finally move on from the day and into a better tomorrow.
But this was the truth:
1. There really had been an earthquake, for both of them and no one else, and neither of them should have brushed it off as nothing.
2. Neither of them should have waited to be alone before reading what was written on their cookies.
3. Neither of them should have gone to sleep that night, comfortably wrapped in their blankets and complacency.