Chapter Text
Kei hates receiving. Which is why he doesn’t know how he’s ended up here at this park by the school, practicing receives with Hinata. Alone.
There’s no reason why Hinata’s incessant begging and whining yesterday should have swayed him, just as there’s no reason he should have come back today, too, to do the same boring, horrible back-and-forth all over again. Then again, his own motives have been making less and less sense to him, ever since the summer training camp at Fukurodani. So perhaps it was in this nonsensical delirium that he was persuaded to follow Hinata to the park under the premise of hitting volleyballs back and forth after practice.
There’s no one else in the park, and the sun is just now descending below the trees that surround them, deep shadows being chased away by the fluorescent lamp posts that are scattered around the area. It’s not too late yet, and still there’s an angry rumble in his stomach that’s begging him to eat. But this extended practice is so exhausting that’s he’s positive he’ll pass out as soon as he gets home, dinner be damned.
The constant strain of practice is finally taking its toll on him, he notes wearily as he lifts his hands over his head to pass the ball back to Hinata, who shuffles to the side to catch it. Kei rubs a hand down his face to stifle a yawn before readjusting his arms to receive the ball Hinata sends back to him.
The ball is neatly returned to Hinata’s arms, and Kei is almost impressed at how clean his receives are. Just a couple months ago, neither of them were any good at receiving (though he’d never admit it out loud). Maybe that’s why Hinata came up to him after the summer training camp and begged him for extra practice. And while two days are hardly enough to bring about any real improvement, they’re both a little more sure of themselves now. It’s in the way they position themselves, from their footwork and arms to the subtle lean and arch of their backs. Thinking about it fills Kei with something he might describe as pride.
Of course, compared to the shrimp’s overbearing emotions, Kei’s pride would be little more than a soft hum of approval. Kei can barely will a smile onto his face, and yet Hinata is a tidal wave of determination and pride and intense feeling. He jumps around from one extreme to another without ever calming down.
So he takes it back. He wouldn’t describe the warm sensation in his chest as pride, but maybe something more wishy-washy, something more colored in disdain and sarcasm. Perhaps the emotional embodiment of a monotonously spoken “interesting.”
“Oops!” Hinata calls when he overcorrects on a pass and send the ball flying upward over Kei’s head. Kei watches Hinata’s eyes as they follow the ball’s trajectory, right up until it lands. Kei is expecting a thud on the sidewalk behind them, but there’s only a rustle of leaves. He grimaces and turns to see that it’s snagged on a tree branch.
He sighs, already taking a step toward the tree, but Hinata darts past him and reaches the spindly trunk before Kei makes another move.
“I’ll get it,” Hinata explains with a shake of his head. “It’s my fault, anyway.”
Kei eyes him warily, not trusting him to not hurt himself, but Hinata is already shimmying up the tree, grasping at lower branches to help him climb higher and higher until he’s eye-level with the volleyball.
“Toss it down to me,” Kei says, moving to stand under the branches so that Hinata won’t have to throw it and upset his already precarious balance.
Hinata doesn’t say anything, but Kei catches a nod despite his concentration as he wiggles further out across the thick branch. With every motion, the ball jiggles around in its nest, but it’s lodged firmly in place.
He’s almost directly above Kei when his fingertips finally graze against the ball, and Kei can feel his heart pounding with nerves. Hinata’s up so high, and if he falls—
He jinxed it.
With a yelp, Hinata loses his balance and falls out of the tree, his arm securely wrapped around the volleyball as if it’s a lifeline. His tiny body gets bigger and bigger as Kei watches him fall, knowing he won’t be able to dodge the impact.
He’s going to murder Hinata for this.
Kei’s body hits the ground in an awkward position, and he can feel the ball pressed between his and Hinata’s bellies. He groans, feeling pain split through his head and legs. Bile rises in his throat and his stomach roils with nausea.
“Sorry, Tsukishima,” Hinata says with way too much enthusiasm, and if something sounds off when he speaks, Kei can’t tell through the fog in his brain and the pain in his joints. “I thought I could get it!”
“Get off of me, moron,” Kei snaps. He realizes, in the back of his mind, that Hinata’s body isn’t actually pressing down on him, but his head hurts too much to think about it clearly. “I could have gotten the ball without hurting anyone.”
Hinata huffs and wiggles around, and Kei learns that he’s the one on top of Hinata and not the other way around.
He pushes himself up with one hand and rubs his bleary eyes with the other. He notes absentmindedly that his glasses aren’t on his face, and he realizes he must have dropped them during the fall. Only when he’s sitting upright does he look down at Hinata to make sure he’s okay.
He wishes he hadn’t.
Golden brown eyes are staring up at him from behind thick-rimmed glasses. Blond hair is tousled and messy despite being short. Cheeks are heated, pink and embarrassed, in an expression that doesn’t belong on that face.
His face.
“Wh—? What the hell?” Kei scrambles away, landing hard on the grass as he falls backward in shock. The other person, the one who looks like him, is slower to rise, and the gentle worry and flushed embarrassment is no less prominent when he looks back at Kei with eyes he’s only ever seen in a mirror.
“You’re me,” and the voice that comes out of his mouth is familiar and foreign all at once. Kei thinks he must have hit his head too hard when Hinata landed. Maybe he’s in a coma. Maybe he’s dead.
He’d prefer to be dead.
Then the meaning of the words registers in his mind and he looks down frantically to see tiny hands connected to tiny arms connected to a tiny body in tiny clothes and everything’s tiny tiny tiny.
He brings one of those tiny hands up and feels his face, feels his hair, and a shock of bright orange falls into his eyes and he realizes—
Well, he realizes way too much to complete that thought.
Kei looks back at his face, at his body, which is so far away from him, and he thinks he really did die.
Or if he’s not dead yet, he better be within the hour.
Because he can’t—
He can’t be—
“Did we switch bodies?” Kei’s voice asks, and it’s weird and unnerving to hear his voice not come from himself. It’s weirder yet to hear such open and innocent awe in his voice, something he could never muster on his own if he tried. It must be Hinata controlling his voice, because he can’t think of any other person on this planet who could look at a situation like this and sound amazed, even excited.
Hinata claps his hands together, a twinkle in his eyes behind the glint of Kei’s glasses, and it looks so weird. Too weird. He hates this.
“We switched bodies!” Hinata exclaims, shifting around until he’s on his hands and knees, crawling over to where Kei is still on the ground, elbows digging into the dirt under him. “How did that happen?” He doesn’t sound upset or confused or worried in any way. It’s just the opposite, in fact.
Kei’s heart pounds in his—in Hinata’s?—chest.
“It–it must have happened when you, when you fell,” Kei says. He winces at the high-pitched, boyish voice that comes out of his throat.
Hinata lurches forward, shoving his face into Kei’s, and it would almost feel like he’s looking in a mirror, if the face in front of him wasn’t contorted in some horrible, exuberant joy, the likes of which he’s never even attempted on his own features. “You’re right! That must be it.”
Suddenly, he looks very serious, as if he’s actually thinking for once in his life. Kei is afraid to breathe.
With steeled determination that looks so out of place on his face, Hinata pushes himself off the ground and stands up, barely pausing to brush the dirt off the baggy T-shirt he’s wearing. There’s a look of wonder and surprise on his face as he turns his head, seeing the world from so high up.
“You’re so tall!” Hinata gushes, stooping low to help Kei stand. He grins so widely that it squints his eyes and reddens his cheeks, and Kei is embarrassed to see such an expression on his face. It looks wrong. He hasn’t seen his own face twist in such emotive ways in years. It looks like it hurts.
Kei takes the offered hand and scowls at the way his own is engulfed by the larger one. Without any apparent effort, Hinata lifts Kei off the ground, and he’s able to register the differences immediately.
Hinata’s body is so small. Impossibly small. Kei can barely remember a time when he was this short; it must have been ages ago. He feels like he’s on his knees, or sitting down, or something because there’s just no way he can be standing up right now.
He hears snickering above him and he has to crane his neck upwards to meet Hinata’s gaze.
“Tsukki, you’re so short,” he sing-songs, eyes narrowed playfully as he hides a grin behind a large hand. Were his hands always so big?
“Don’t call me that,” he snaps, balling his hands into fists. He doesn’t have the energy to rise to Hinata’s bait right now, not when he’s still trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
“I guess you’re the shrimp now!” he teases, leaning down and ruffling Kei’s hair. It’s weird and uncomfortable and the orange hair is so messy and heavy and Kei wonders how Hinata has dealt with this kind of thing his whole life.
Kei pushes Hinata’s hand away. “Aren’t you even a little worried about this?”
Hinata hums as if he’s thinking it over, but his eyes are still wandering as they take in the world around him. Kei’s neck is starting to hurt from looking up so constantly. “Well, I guess, but just think! With this height, I can definitely become Karasuno’s ace!”
Kei runs a hand down his face. “Even in my body, you’re still just a middle blocker, peabrain.”
“Oh.” Hinata brings a hand to his chin, undeterred by Kei’s efforts to shoot him down. “Maybe I can ask the captain or Coach Ukai about switching my position.”
“You mean my position,” Kei corrects. “That’s my body, and you’re not just going to do whatever you want with it.”
Hinata slumps over, like he hadn’t even considered that this wasn’t a temporary situation and that body did, in fact, belong to someone else. Idiot.
“But what if we’re stuck like this?” Hinata asks, and there’s almost a hint of worry in his voice. Almost.
“We are not stuck like this,” Kei says forcefully, but it comes out way less certain than he had intended. “We just… have to fix it. Somehow.”
Hinata stares down at him. “So what do we do?”
Kei feels restless under the same piercing gaze that he has directed at so many people in the past. “How should I know? You’re the reason we’re in this situation.”
Hinata squints as his face falls into a frown. “Um… I don’t know. I was just trying to get the ball and—”
“The tree.”
“Huh?” Hinata leans down so they’re closer to eye level, and Kei can’t help but think he’s getting too comfortable with this reversed height difference. It irritates him.
“It’s the tree,” Kei repeats. “You fell out of the tree and landed on me, and then we switched.”
“Oh!” Hinata says, lighting up at Kei’s revelation. “Then all we have to do is…”
He breaks off, and Kei really doesn’t like where this is going. He watches Hinata run back to the tree, tripping awkwardly over gangly legs, and Kei breathes out a resigned, “Oh, no.” Because he knows what’s about to happen. And sure enough, Hinata is climbing the tree again, his tongue sticking out in concentration as he hops from branch to branch until he’s halfway up the tree.
“I’m going to jump!” he calls down, and Kei braces himself for the impact because there’s absolutely no way he’s going to convince Hinata that this is the stupidest idea he’s ever had in his life.
Hinata launches himself directly at Kei, and they land on the ground in a heap.
Kei’s head knocks against the ground, but the blow is softened by Hinata’s hand which has somehow snaked its way around his neck, as if to protect him from the fall. How thoughtful.
(Or maybe not thoughtful, per se, since it was rare that Hinata thought about something other than volleyball.)
But Kei looks up at his own face made foreign by unhidden emotions. He knew that this wouldn’t change anything, but he can’t help the disappointment that sinks in his stomach when he finds out they’re still in each other’s bodies.
“Nothing happened,” Hinata sighs, pushing himself off of him. Kei’s head falls with a dull thud back against the grass, and he stares up at the purple hues of the evening sky. It’s getting darker, and he can see a few stars shining through, but even for all its beauty, Kei can’t enjoy it. Not after something like this.
“I knew it wouldn’t,” Kei says, condescension dripping in his every word. It sounds weird on Hinata’s tongue.
Hinata’s brow furrows, and Kei thinks that he’s going to get premature wrinkles before they manage to fix this situation they’re in. “Well, maybe if you—”
“No.”
“You didn’t even let me finish!” Hinata pouts, crossing his arms over his chest and sticking out his bottom lip.
“You were going to tell me to climb that tree and jump on you,” Kei says with a deadpan. “And I’m not going to do it. It’s a stupid idea.”
“But—”
“Absolutely not.”
Hinata sticks his tongue out. “Stingyshima. You’re the one who wanted to go back to normal.”
“Are you saying you don’t want to go back to normal?” Kei raises an eyebrow, both in taunt and in exasperation.
Hinata stumbles over his words. “Well—uh, no, I didn’t—ugh, you know what I mean!”
Kei laughs, and it sounds far more genuine than he intended. It’s probably the voice.
A familiar alarm rings out, and Kei looks down at his wrist only to see it bare. It’s an annoying reminder of their current situation, and with a scowl he looks at his body to see a watch blinking with a reminder that they’ve run out of time.
Hinata is a bit slower to catch up, and he lazily looks down at his own arm, blinking a few times in confusion. “Huh?”
“It’s an alarm, dumbass,” Kei explains through clenched teeth. “I set it because I knew you’d get carried away, and I didn’t want to spend all night here.”
Hinata grins. “Good idea! You’re so smart.”
Kei stares blandly, wondering how Hinata reached that conclusion. “I was just being prepared.”
Hinata pushes himself up before offering yet another helping hand to Kei, who grudgingly accepts it. He’s once again faced with a world that’s bigger than he’s used to, but he pushes down the discomfort and unease and grapples with their newest hurdle.
“Well, come on then,” Kei says dejectedly, not even daring to look Hinata in the eye. “We’re going home.”
“What?” Hinata tilts his head to the side like he’s some kind of confused puppy. He definitely has the energy of one.
“You’re sleeping at my house tonight,” Kei elaborates. “Or rather, I’m sleeping over at my own house.”
Hinata still looks utterly confused.
“Have you forgotten our current situation?” Kei grumbles. “You can’t go home like that.”
Hinata’s face falls, and he looks almost devastated. Kei feels some semblance of sympathy for the kid before metaphorically crushing it between his fingers. He has no intention of sympathizing with someone like Hinata. “I guess not. So then… I have to stay at your house?”
Kei nods. “Unless you want your parents freaking out about there being an intruder in your house.”
Hinata scrunches up his face. “I don’t know anyone in your family,” he says. “It’d be awkward.”
“That’s why I’m sleeping there tonight too, moron.” Kei resists the urge to grab Hinata, as if to force the idea into his brain through osmosis. “It’ll be a sleepover, I guess.”
Hinata perks up at the idea, his face practically glowing as he stretches his arms high above his head. “A sleepover at your house? I’ll get to see your room and everything!”
He bounds ahead toward their discarded backpacks, slinging his over his shoulder with reckless abandon. If it hadn’t been buckled shut, papers and notebooks most certainly would have flown across the park. He hands Kei his and even goes so far to remove the watch and hand that over, too. Kei takes both.
He briefly wonders if he’s imagining all of this, or if he’s dreaming, but he decides it doesn’t matter right now because he has so much more to deal with than the logistics of their situation.
“I’m so excited!” Hinata gushes as he starts walking aimlessly. He steps with conviction, but Kei knows full well that Hinata has never been to his house before and therefore has no idea where he’s going. But Hinata just keeps walking, not even looking back to see if Kei is following him.
But Kei does follow him, because there’s nothing else he can do. They’re both going to the same place—unfortunately. “My brother’s at college, and my mom is working late tonight. It’ll be easier than trying to deal with your family.”
Hinata looks over his shoulder and sticks his tongue out. “You don’t know anything about my family.”
“I know you have a sister, and that’s already too much,” Kei says plainly.
Hinata huffs. “Fine, you’re right. She’s too nosy anyway.”
“I know I’m right.” He ignores the face Hinata makes as he jogs forward. He has to put more energy than he’s used to into keeping up with Hinata’s long strides. “Can you slow down?” Kei grumbles, tripping over his feet in his attempt to keep up with Hinata’s brusque pace.
“What are you talking about?” Hinata asks, looking down at him. “I’m just walking normally.”
“You’re not five centimeters tall anymore, dumbass. You can slow down.”
Hinata slows to something of a crawl, allowing Kei to finally catch his breath. “This is weird,” he says, when they’re finally walking side-by-side. “What are we gonna do?” Kei wonders if Hinata has finally gotten some sense knocked into him.
He looks up, and he hates that he’s getting used to this. “How should I know?”
“In anime, they always have to pretend to be each other,” Hinata muses. Then, with a mischievous glimmer in his eye, he looks down at Kei and flashes a condescending smirk. In a fake deep voice, he says, “Hey shrimpy, how’s the weather down there?”
Kei feels a little nauseous, but he hides it with a blank stare.
“No, no!” Hinata scolds, pressing his fingers against Kei’s face. “That’s now how I’d react at all!” He molds Kei’s mouth into an open-mouthed scowl, using two fingers to push down his eyebrows. It’s way, way too handsy for Kei’s liking, and he swats Hinata away forcefully.
“What are you doing?” he demands, keeping his hands defensively in the air to protect himself from another onslaught.
“You’re supposed to be me!” It comes out almost as a whine. “It’s gotta look convincing.”
Kei sighs. “No one’s going to find out anyway.”
“They’ll know something’s wrong with us,” Hinata counters.
“Maybe, but there’s no one in their right mind who would guess a body swap is the answer.” Kei folds his arms over his chest. “You’re worrying too much about this.”
Hinata’s eyes are clear and wide and sincere when he looks down at him. “I’m not worried at all. I’m actually excited about this!”
“Only a volleyball freak like you would be excited about switching bodies with someone.”
“Well, yeah!” Hinata says, as if Kei wasn’t insulting him. “I’ve always wanted to be tall, and now I’m you! It’s like the gods heard my prayers.”
“If you say this—” he gestures between them, “—is because of divine intervention, I’m becoming an atheist right now.”
Hinata laughs and elbows him playfully, knocking Kei off balance. He takes a moment to correct himself and wonders just how Hinata plans to play volleyball like this. Then again, he’s long since given up on trying to understand his thought process at all. He’s too single-minded without thinking of the consequences.
He can’t relate.
“What if someone’s home when we get there?” Hinata asks. “Am I supposed to pretend to be you?”
He says it so earnestly that Kei can’t help but wonder if he’s a better actor than he gives him credit for. He can’t imagine that being the case, though, so he discards the thought as soon as he thinks it. “I guess so. Just don’t be an idiot and no one will suspect anything. The house will probably be empty when we get there, anyway.”
Hinata breathes out a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank goodness.”
“You can’t hide from everyone forever,” Kei points out, even though they’re the last words he, himself, wants to hear right now. Truthfully, he wants nothing more than to hide in his room until some miracle occurs and he’s back in his own body again.
“You’d be freaked out too if you were meeting my parents like this!” Hinata’s right, but Kei refuses to give him that satisfaction.
He sighs. “This is the worst day of my life.”
“Tell me about it,” Hinata agrees, and then groans pitifully. “Ugh, I can’t believe I’m agreeing with you on something! This really is the worst day ever.” He brings his hands to his face in distress.
“Don’t sound so happy about it,” Kei says sarcastically, rolling his eyes. “Now shut up, we’re here.”
Hinata stops dead in his tracks and looks up at Kei’s house. It’s nothing special, but he looks at it like he’s just witnessed a rare natural phenomenon. “It’s your house!” he exclaims, pointing at it excitedly.
“Why are you so excited about this?” Kei asks with a raised eyebrow. “It’s just a house.”
“I haven’t had a sleepover in years!” Hinata explains. “The last I had was at Izumin’s house in seventh grade, I think.”
“Wow, I can’t even begin to imagine why,” Kei says, wielding sarcasm like a blade meant to pierce Hinata’s heart. “It certainly can’t be because of how loud and obnoxious you are, right?”
Hinata huffs. “Shut it. It’s because of my sister. I have to watch her a lot so she doesn’t get eaten by boars.”
“Eaten… by boars?” He definitely doesn’t want to spend any amount of time at Hinata’s house if there are man-eating boars around.
“Well, maybe not eaten, but they can get pretty aggressive. So I have to watch Natsu so she doesn’t get into any trouble.” He shrugs like it’s no big deal.
“I doubt any boars would be deterred by your presence,” Kei says. “You’re about as intimidating as a goldfish.”
Hinata grumbles to himself and puckers his lips in an angry pout. “I’m plenty intimidating.” It’s not very convincing.
Kei lets it drop regardless. “When you go inside, make sure your shoes are put away properly and you greet whoever’s home. Make sure to introduce me to everyone, and then we can go up to my room. No one should bother us until dinner. And don’t act all happy-go-lucky, either. They’ll think I’m sick or maybe dying, and I don’t want to deal with that.”
“You wouldn’t have to deal with it anyway.” And Hinata has a point, but not one that Kei is willing to entertain at the moment.
“Whatever. Just don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do,” he says. He reaches into his bag to find his house key, pointedly ignoring the slight tremble in his hand as he fumbles with the keyring.
He opens the door but lets Hinata go in before him, far too conscious of how he’ll be perceived by his family while he looks like this. He can see Hinata shaking, terrified of the oncoming confrontation that he can’t avoid, but Kei pushes him past the threshold and takes off his shoes. Hinata may be a coward, but he can perform spectacularly under pressure, and he has no doubts in his ability to keep up as much of an appearance as he can muster.
“I’m—I’m home!” Hinata announces, but he’s met with an uncomfortable silence. His mom is still working, then. Good.
Kei breathes out a sigh of relief and retrieves his phone. “My mom isn't home, so I’ll let her know you came home with me. You tell your parents you’re sleeping here tonight.”
“O–oh, okay,” Hinata says, flipping open his phone to send the email. “So what now?” He looks around wondrously at Kei’s house.
“We can, uh, go hang out in my room, I guess…” Kei says. “Unless you want a snack first.”
“No, I’m not… very hungry.” Hinata pauses, looks down at his stomach, and scrunches up his face. “That doesn’t happen often.”
“That’s because I don’t eat like a pig,” Kei spats even as his own stomach growls. “You, on the other hand…”
“I keep telling you, you should eat more properly.” Hinata huffs, already making his way toward the kitchen. Kei follows after and takes a seat at the table, if only to mercilessly scrutinize Hinata’s every move. “I’ll make you a sandwich.”
“I can make it myself…” Kei trails off, then realizes the implications of what Hinata said. “Wait. Do you even know how to cook?” he asks suspiciously. He’d rather not be poisoned. If he dies, then they’re both screwed.
“Yes!” Hinata scoffs, offended. “I cook with my mom all the time!”
“Hm.” Kei watches in silence as Hinata scurries about the kitchen, only speaking to point him in the direction of ingredients. Hinata, too, makes no effort to keep up a conversation, instead completely focused on the task at hand. It’s in his personality to give one hundred percent in everything he does.
If it means he’s leaving Kei alone, then he supposes it’s a good thing for now.
He pops a piece of bread into the toaster and cracks an egg into a pan on the stovetop and moves it around with a fork because he got frustrated looking for a spatula and refused Kei’s help. It’s only a few minutes before the timer on the toaster pings and startles Hinata, and then he’s scrambling for a plate and putting everything together. Even then he doesn’t say anything at all, putting all his effort and concentration into the food he’s preparing.
The egg sandwich is nothing fancy, lacking even salt for seasoning. Kei thinks that even a cat could make this meal, but Hinata presents it with all the flourish of a five star chef, setting the plate down with a clink on the table in front of him. “Eat up!”
Kei stifles a sigh. To be honest, he’s way too hungry to refuse this. So he mumbles, “thanks for the food,” and picks up the sandwich, eyeing it warily before shoving it into his mouth. It’s beyond bland, but the taste only fuels his hunger, and he ends up scarfing down the entire thing faster than he’s eaten anything before in his life.
“You really were hungry!” Hinata says, overjoyed that his cooking was so well-received. He takes the plate back and sets it on the counter as if he lives here before returning to where Kei sits.
“It’s your fault,” Kei grumbles as Hinata takes a seat opposite of him. “How do you have so much room for food in this tiny body?”
“I could ask the same to you!” Hinata nearly shouts, pointing an accusatory finger toward Kei. Then his eyebrows furrow, and he brings that same finger to his lips as he thinks. “Or maybe not the same. More like the opposite. How can you get by just eating the bare minimum! That clearly means you don’t exercise enough. I’ll have to fix that—”
“You’re not doing anything with my body,” Kei growls, leaning over the table to glare at Hinata. “You’re just borrowing it right now, so you’re not allowed to do anything to it.”
“But I’d just be helping you!” Hinata protests, completely ignoring the malice in Kei’s tone. “If you work harder, you’ll get better at volleyball! Isn’t that what you want?”
“Not everyone is as obsessed with volleyball as you are.”
Hinata makes a face, about as confused as if Kei has started speaking in English without any warning. But that confusion leads into some kind of realization, and his eyes widen, his eyebrows comically drawn together. “You better not mess my body up, either! If you don’t work hard, I’ll waste away! And then I’ll never be the ace.”
“You’re still trying to be the ace?” Kei asks, his lips drawing up in a mocking smirk.
“I’m serious!” Hinata says with a scowl. Kei wants to argue, but there’s something about Hinata’s tone that puts out his fire. “If you want me to keep up your habits so you can return to the body you’re familiar with, I will. But you have to do the same for me.”
Kei sighs. “Maybe we should make some ground rules. But not here. Let’s go to my room.”
All the gravity of Hinata’s expression lifts, and he jumps up from the table with an excited, wordless shout, already bouncing out of the kitchen. “I get to see Tsukishima’s room!”
“Do you even know where my room is?” Kei calls after him, raising an eyebrow at the empty archway.
Hinata pops his head back in after a second. “No, I don’t. Show me!”
Kei pulls his lips back in a grimace and stands, then leads Hinata up the stairs and toward his room.
It’s almost nerve-wracking, since he’s only ever shown his room to Yamaguchi. Then again, Yamaguchi has been his only friend since grade school. He wonders if this means that Hinata is his friend now, but he quickly banishes the thought with a shake of his head. They’re not friends, not yet. Just unwilling, begrudging allies in an unfortunate, surreal situation. He has no choice but to get along with him for now, and when they fix this mess, they can part ways and go back to hating each other.
They’ll definitely get back to normal. They have to. He just hopes it’ll be sooner rather than later.