Chapter Text
It is a clear January afternoon, the doors to the Karasuno gymnasium flung wide, when the shelter-in-place order comes through.
The notification alerts all sixteen phones at once: a blaring, panic-inducing alarm that has Hitoka fumbling to get her phone out of her pocket desperately, if only to get it to stop. Mr. Takeda’s phone vibrates itself off of the bench with a clatter, and upstairs in the changing room, a cacophony of noise echoes off of the insides of lockers and is muffled inside gym bags. Comically, it stops Hinata and Kageyama in their tracks like they’re cartoon characters, the ball bouncing off of Kageyama’s shoulder before it hits the floor.
Hitoka gets the notification closed, sighing in relief, before the panic sets in.
EMERGENCY ALERT, the screen reads. SHELTER-IN-PLACE.
“Um,” she says shakily, “Coach?”
“What does it say?” Tanaka asks, craning his neck to look over her shoulder.
By his side, Ennoshita turns towards the changing room, announcing, “I’m gonna go get mine.”
“Everyone go grab your phones!” Ukai shouts. Then, quieter, to Mr. Takeda, Hitoka catches him asking, “What’s it say? Mine’s dead.”
Mr. Takeda mutters something back, too quietly for Hitoka to hear. Her attention returns to her own phone screen.
The highly infectious pathogen, designated OP-C by the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), has been discovered in Miyagi prefecture. To contain the spread as health officials deal with the outbreak, residents are instructed to shelter in place with doors and windows locked until further notice is given. The OP-C infected behave aggressively and pose an immediate danger. If you believe you have encountered someone infected or that you yourself may be infected, call 118 or 119 immediately.
“Coach,” Hitoka says again, but Ukai is already at the gym doors, shutting them tightly and cutting off the cool breeze.
“What’s a ‘pathogen’?” Hinata asks from the balcony. The boys are making their way back down from the changing room, phones clutched in their hands.
“An organism that causes disease,” Tsukishima replies flatly, like he’s reciting it from a textbook.
Yamaguchi shoulders him on their way down the stairs. “So smart, Tsukki.”
“Shut up.”
“Is this the one from Tokyo?” Asahi asks no one in particular. “That one was OP-C too, right?”
“Oh, yeah!” Hinata exclaims. “Kenma was telling me about that! They’ve been in lockdown for, like, weeks.”
“Oh.” Asahi pales visibly at the thought. “W—Weren’t people getting really violent from that one?”
Hinata thinks about it. “I guess so.” He shrugs. “Kenma didn’t really talk about that. I think he’s mostly just sad that he can’t go out to get any more games, and he’s played through all the ones he has.”
Behind Asahi, Kinoshita shivers. “I don’t know if I’d be able to stay inside for that long,” he admits nervously.
“Well,” Tsukishima interjects, “they can’t be expecting to have us inside for too long if they’re telling us to shelter where we are. They’ve got to know that some people won’t have food or water with them.”
Surely it’s meant to be comforting—although, Hitoka tells herself, it is Tsukishima, so maybe not-so-surely—but Kinoshita just blanches. “We don’t have food,” he repeats.
“We won’t be in here long enough to need food,” Tsukishima says, “that’s the point—”
“I’m hungry,” Hinata pouts. Kinoshita looks like he’s about to cry; Hitoka feels the same. We won’t actually be here long enough to starve … will we?
Ever the voice of reason, Daichi steps forwards to place a comforting hand on Kinoshita’s shoulder. “If anyone’s hungry,” he says calmly, “I have a bag of snacks up in my locker. We also have the school’s vending machines, the taps and the water fountains, and even the school’s cafeteria. We have lots of food. And we won’t be in here long enough to need it. If the lockdown does get extended, of course they’ll send us home first—and then you can just think of it as a break from school.” He smiles at that, but Hitoka catches the strain in it. A “break” from school for the third-years right now probably means they’re not coming back.
Still, his words seem to do the trick. Asahi and Kinoshita look less like they’re both about to puke, at least. “Oh,” Asahi says, “alright.”
“Listen up!” Ukai shouts, effectively silencing anyone else’s worries. “Looks like we’ll be hanging out here for the next little while, so why don’t you all call home so your parents aren’t worried?”
“Yes, sir!”
“And get changed,” Ukai adds, nose wrinkling, “you all stink.”
“Hey!” Hinata and Noya exclaim, and for whatever reason, Tanaka whips his shirt off—which they hoot at, but from which Hitoka averts her eyes. One thing leads to another, she supposes, and by the time she looks back the boys are milling around one another with their phones to their ears, and Noya has ended up on Tanaka’s bare shoulders.
Ukai approaches the bench where Hitoka, Mr. Takeda, and Kiyoko are sitting (or in Hitoka’s case, standing nervously by). “Well,” he sighs, just as Mr. Takeda’s phone goes off.
“Parents,” Mr. Takeda sighs after glancing at the screen, and steps away from the group to accept the call with an upbeat, “Hello, Takeda Ittetsu speaking.”
“There’ll probably be a lot more of those,” Ukai says. “Have you two called your parents yet?”
“I’m messaging them now,” Kiyoko replies.
Hitoka looks down as her own phone buzzes in her hands. It’s a text from her mother.
Are you safe? I’m still at the office, they’re keeping us in a conference room upstairs. Are you still at the school?
Yes, Hitoka texts back, we’re still in the gym.
Good. Call me if anything changes, okay? Sounds like it might be a long night.
Hitoka’s stomach turns. How long of a night is her mother expecting? Just how serious is this Tokyo OP-C infection, really? She thinks of the alert’s warning about the infected, as well as Asahi’s words—Weren’t people getting really violent from that one?—and suddenly feels a lot worse about the whole situation.
Love you, she types. She doesn’t say it much, so of course her mother sees right through her, sending back: Don’t be so fatalistic. This will all be sorted out in a few hours.
But her mother only uses big words when she’s anxious, and the next text that comes through is Love you too, though, so Hitoka still feels that same sense of impending doom, her stomach dropping as if she’s falling.
It’s only heightened a few minutes later, at the scrape of a key in the gymnasium door.
Ukai hears it too, before anyone else, and he’s back on his feet, placed between Hitoka—and the rest of the team to her left—and the door before she can blink. She tries not to notice how he grabs one of the water bottles off of the bench—Suga’s, she thinks, a heavy, metal bottle that’s still mostly full—before he approaches the door, swinging it casually at his side.
A man, sweaty-faced with his hair askew, pokes his head in the open door and pales at the sight of Ukai there. Hitoka doesn’t know him, but she thinks she recognizes him as another sports club’s advisor. Basketball, maybe?
“Hey,” she hears Ukai greet faintly, a threatening edge to his voice.
Met with the pissed-off, bleached blond twentysomething hefting a heavy water bottle, the advisor seems to regret having entered the gym. “Um,” he begins. Hitoka can barely make out the tremor in his voice from this distance, but it’s unmistakably there, and only makes the lump in her throat worse. “I didn’t know anyone was using this gym, I apologize.” His next few words are lost under the sound of Kiyoko’s phone ringing right next to Hitoka and her soft Hello? but Hitoka catches the end of his sentence: “… parking the team’s bus before the alert, and with my injury I’m not moving too quickly.” His chuckle seems forced.
“Injury?” Ukai repeats.
Kiyoko is saying, “I can’t, Dad, the alert says to stay where I am,” over most of the man’s response.
“… dog bite,” the man laughs weakly, “so it hurts to walk …”
“Maybe you should go back to the bus, then,” Ukai suggests.
Most of the team is watching at this point, crowding in around the bench; Kiyoko plugs her left ear to drown out their whispers, pressing her phone more firmly against her right.
“Sir …”
“I can’t leave,” Kiyoko says forcefully.
“You can’t come inside,” Ukai tells the man.
The man’s face drops, then begins to redden. “Respectfully,” he spits, stepping closer to Ukai, “you’re in no place to tell me where to go—”
Ukai slams the door in his face, throwing the deadbolt with an air of finality. The man hits the outside of the door once, twice—Hitoka flinching at each bang—cursing, before his laboured footsteps away are audible on the gravel pathway outside.
“W—Who was that?” Hitoka tries to ask as Ukai turns with a weary sigh to rejoin the group, but her voice is lost under the boys’.
“Badass, Coach!”
“You told him where to go!”
“What did he want?”
“Slammed it right in his face!”
Ukai just sighs again. “How much of that did you all hear?”
“All of it!” Tanaka says—no longer shirtless, thankfully—eyes bright. “Badass! Were you gonna fight him with the water bottle if he didn’t leave?”
“Was I—” Ukai glances down at the water bottle still clutched tightly in his hand, as if he’s forgotten he’d picked it up. “No, I wasn’t going to fight him! What happened to calling your parents and changing?”
“Already did,” Tanaka replies, holding his phone as proof.
“And yet you still stink,” Ukai replies. “Scram.”
“W—What did he want, Coach?” Hitoka asks, as the boys start to lose interest, muted conversation picking up behind her.
Ukai shrugs, settling down on the end of the bench. “To come inside. I don’t know. He’s the basketball club’s advisor and they have an away game tonight, so he was parking the bus and got caught outside, I guess. Seemed nervous.”
Hitoka chews on her lip nervously before asking the next question. “Why … ,” she tries, before she has to start over. “Why didn’t you let him in?” The words blend together in a mess—Whydidn’tyoulethimin—but she hopes Ukai has gotten the gist.
He must, because he shrugs again, this one significantly more forced. “He was being kind of an ass—I mean, a … jerk about it. The school’s right there.”
Something about his tone sets off her nerves. She thinks of the man’s pale, gray face and the thick layer of sweat on his skin, his voice saying dog bite, and of the alert’s language—highly infectious and poses an immediate danger—and, unwillingly, thinks …
Did he look sick to you, too?
She shakes her head, as if that’ll dislodge the thought. Ukai just looks at her funny. “You okay?”
“Yep!” she squeaks.
Kiyoko hangs up then, frowning down at her phone. “My parents want me home,” she tells Ukai. “They say it ‘isn’t safe.’” Her expression remains neutral, but her tone of voice betrays exactly how ridiculous she thinks this sounds.
“Mine too,” Kageyama says, having approached the bench while Hitoka was distracted.
“What really isn’t safe is sending any of you home now,” Ukai says with an air of finality. “Your parents can call me if they have a problem with it, but everyone’s staying in the gym for the time being.”
Kageyama nods, eyes narrowed at the phone in his hands. He’s typing something out, angrily; Hitoka imagines his parents aren’t taking the news well.
Just behind him, Hinata is still on the phone. “Hey, Natsu! I’m okay! Yeah, that alarm was really loud! Here, all the phones went off at once, so it was like WEEEEE OOOOOOO super loud!” He listens for a moment, then enthusiastically adds, “Yeah, me too! I’ll be home soon—this is like a big sleepover, here, right? Be good for Mom, okay? Love you, too!”
Hitoka swallows the lump of nerves in her throat as she watches Hinata hung up, obviously fighting back a frown.
“Excuse me,” she mutters, standing and pushing past Kageyama to get to Hinata’s side. “Shouyou?”
“Yep?” he replies, stuffing his phone back into his pocket.
“Are … Are you alright?” Is she overstepping? Oh no, she probably is—it really isn’t any of her business, is it?—she should apologize—
Hinata’s gaze falls to the floor. “Oh, yeah! Of course. It’s just … it’s just kinda stupid,” he mumbles.
“It’s not stupid,” Hitoka says quickly. “I’m scared too.”
“It’s just … I’ve been hearing about this from Kenma for a while,” Hinata admits, chewing on his lip. “And I think he’s scared, but he’s just pretending to be annoyed so he doesn’t have to talk about it. But I don’t want to be stuck at home for ages, even if it means I don’t have to come to class. And, with the alert, it just seems kinda serious.”
“Yeah.” Hitoka wishes she actually had something reassuring to say. “Well, it’s—it’s like you said, right?” she tries. “A big sleepover, at least until we get out of the gym. Think of it like a lot of extra volleyball practice.”
Hinata perks up at this. “Right!” he exclaims, turning to poke Kageyama in the ribs, who fumbles his phone and swears at him. “Kageyama! We can do extra practice with the whole team! They can’t go home!”
Kageyama’s eyes brighten.
“Fuck no,” Tsukishima grumbles; Yamaguchi elbows him.
“Yes! Noya!” The libero looks over from where he’s been talking to Asahi, who seems disturbingly pale again. “We should try that rolling thunder combo, you’ve gotta teach me—”
“Maybe we shouldn’t keep going,” Ennoshita suggests, but he’s drowned out by Noya’s yell of agreement.
“Coach!” Hinata calls, drawing Ukai’s attention. “Can we try some more synchronized attacks? Now that we have the gym for longer?”
“I don’t know if I’d say we have the gym for longer,” Ukai replies, “considering we’re in lockdown, but …”
“Yes!” Noya and Hinata yell as if he’s agreed to it, bounding over to the court. Ukai just sighs.
“Don’t burn yourselves out!” he bellows after them. “Only a few more drills, then we’re cooling down!”
Daichi claps to get the rest of the team’s attention. “Why don’t we join them?” he begins. (Off to Hitoka’s left, Tsukishima stifles a groan—and not very well. Daichi glares at him, his tone unchanging.) “It’ll be a good way to pass the time, and then we can get changed out and have a snack, okay?”
Everyone nods their agreement, even Tsukishima, and Hitoka moves back towards the sidelines. Usually, during drills, she’s the one who stands off to the side, tossing volleyballs back into play or taking notes on areas the team has to work on. This time, though, Hinata runs right back over to her.
“Yachi! Want to try to play a bit?”
“P—Play?” she stutters. “Um, I don’t know—I’ve never really—done any sports—”
“That’s okay! I can show you!”
“Um—”
“Yachi!” Noya calls. “Are you joining? Is Kiyoko joining too!?”
Tanaka’s head whips around from where he’s fussing with the net.
“I don’t have proper athletic clothes,” Kiyoko says, despite the fact that she’s in yoga pants, sneakers, and a plain T-shirt under her jacket.
Hinata makes a face in her direction. “Yes, you do! And it’s just for fun, c’mon!”
He pouts at Hitoka again, and she breaks.
“Fine. Fine.” She throws her hands in the air, discarding her notebook and jacket in a pile on the bench. “I’m going to be awful, though … I think I’m afraid of the ball.”
“Why?” Hinata asks, dragging her onto the court.
“Because I’m the one that takes down all of your stats,” she says nervously, “and some of your spikes exceed a hundred and forty kilometres per hour.”
“Huh. I could probably do better than that.”
“Don’t try now,” she squeaks.
“Six-v-six, one sub per team!” Tanaka shouts from center court. “Daichi and I are team captains!”
“Why do you get to be team captain?” Suga asks.
“I pick Suga,” Daichi interrupts. Tanaka raises his eyebrows in their direction; Hitoka thinks she catches Suga flip him off behind his back as he joins Daichi’s side of the court without comment.
“Guess I’ll go second, then,” Tanaka grumbles. “I pick Kiyoko.”
“Oh, come on.” There’s a muffled chorus of groans and insults from Ennoshita, Narita, and Kinoshita’s direction.
“I’m not playing,” Kiyoko calls from the bench, still typing something out on her phone.
“Please,” Tanaka whines—really throwing his whole body into it—, “otherwise the teams won’t be even, and it’ll be awful, and there’ll be one poor person as the odd one out …”
Kiyoko sighs heavily. “Okay,” she relents, “fine.”
Tanaka pretends to drop to his knees and thank God; Kiyoko kicks him as she goes by.
“Noya,” Daichi says, before Tanaka can even relinquish his turn.
“Rude,” Tanaka mock-whispers. “Asahi, then.”
Unlike Noya, Asahi doesn’t look thrilled about this arrangement, but he joins Tanaka’s side of the court without complaint, exchanging a soft smile with Kiyoko.
The teams end up fairly even—Tanaka, Hinata, Kageyama, Hitoka, Kiyoko, Asahi, and Kinoshita on one side, Daichi, Suga, Tsukishima, Yamaguchi, Narita, and Ennoshita on the other—though Hitoka would say if either team had the disadvantage, it’d be Tanaka’s, as he somehow managed to end up with both inexperienced players on his side of the court. He makes up for it with Hinata and Kageyama, though, Yachi tells herself, though they have Tsukishima. … She eyes the middle blocker through the net. He really does seem taller when she’s looking at him from the other side of the court; Hitoka doesn’t think she likes this development. Daichi has the more experienced team, definitely—Tsukishima and Yamaguchi are the only first years, and Tsukishima’s been a starter since the beginning, and Yamaguchi’s been on a lot recently. … Sure, Narita and Ennoshita don’t have much experience in games … but could that really level the playing field between them and Hitoka?
I hope not, she thinks, not if we’re going to Nationals again next year.
Then Yamaguchi serves, not with one of his regular jump floats, but one of his powerful new jump serves—some of which have been clocking in at an impressive 110 km/h—and Hitoka screams and ducks.
The rest of the scrimmage goes about as well as Hitoka expected.
By the time she limps off with the rest of Tanaka’s team, exhausted and thoroughly defeated, the sky outside is stained a pale orange and the sun is setting below the trees. Hitoka watches it through the bars over one of the windows, dabbing at her face with a towel borrowed from Hinata and catching her breath. Ukai and Mr. Takeda are side-by-side on the bench, listening to something on Mr. Takeda’s phone—from what Hitoka catches, it sounds like a radio channel. “No update on the shelter-in-place order,” a chipper woman’s voice is reporting, “or on the situation elsewhere in Miyagi, though thousands in the prefecture have been in lockdown for over an hour since the alert.”
The girls’ changing room is empty and cold, and Hitoka showers and changes into the extra pants she keeps in her bag for emergencies quickly, shivering. Reluctantly, she goes to slip the same shirt back on—she wasn’t expecting to sweat this much, and it’s uncomfortably damp—but Kiyoko knocks on the wall next to her stall before she can.
“Yes?” Hitoka stammers.
“Do you have a shirt to change into?”
“Um. Actually, no.”
“Here.”
Through the gap under the door, Kiyoko offers a simple black tee. It’s long on Hitoka, the short sleeves pooling around her elbows, but she accepts it gratefully. She stuffs her clothes that need to be washed into the bottom of her bag, and decides to carry the whole thing back down to the gym with her anyway. They’ll probably be getting an update soon, she reasons. It is getting dark, after all.
They won’t be in lockdown here at the gym all night, will they?
Most of the boys are already waiting for her and Kiyoko down in the gymnasium; they sit in a semi-circle at center court (though the net has been taken down) with a pile of granola bars, gummy packets, protein powder and an assortment of change between them.
“What’s this?” Kiyoko asks, taking a seat next to Tanaka, who looks thrilled.
“We’re pooling our resources,” he explains proudly. “We’re hungry.”
Hitoka digs through the side pocket of her own bag as she settles down on the other side of the semi-circle, next to Tsukishima. There—she tosses the three chocolate bars into the pile.
“Yachi!” Hinata gasps. “Is that chocolate?”
“Yes,” she says. “It’s just … yes, it’s chocolate.”
“Dibs!” Noya shouts, diving for it, but Suga has him by the collar of his shirt before he gets far.
“No one eats chocolate before supper,” Suga orders.
“‘Supper’?” Noya repeats, scoffing.
“Yep.” Behind Suga, Daichi holds up a large Ziplock bag of more snacks. “Supper.”
The snacks are divided equally, and though Hitoka’s stomach is still turning over, she makes it through three granola bars before she has to stop, stuffing the remainder of her pile into her bag. By the time the squares of chocolate are being passed around, she has to decline Suga’s offer of one. The weight in her stomach is preferable to the hollowness, but does nothing to quell the nausea—the nausea that spikes when another hour goes by without update, while the sky edges away from burnt orange towards navy blue, and every time Daichi checks his phone, frowning, and biting his nails whenever he thinks the team isn’t looking.
Hitoka overheard him talking to Suga earlier—something she assumed was inconsequential at the time, but that now plays again and again in her mind.
“My mom isn’t answering,” Daichi had said. “Neither are any of my siblings.”
“They’re probably just busy calming down after the alert.” Suga’s voice was soft, gentle. “I’m sure it scared the younger ones. Your mom just might have her hands full.”
“Yuta … Yuta was coming down with something this morning. He didn’t go to school.”
“Doesn’t he get sinus infections every year, though? I’m sure it’s just that.”
“Right.” But Daichi’s frown never wavered, and his mother never answered, and now Hitoka is watching him obsessively check his phone waiting for a call she is beginning to believe won’t be coming.
“How are we all feeling?” Mr. Takeda and Ukai have joined the team’s circle, settling down onto the ground with them. Mr. Takeda’s grin is easy, but there are dark circles under his eyes. Ukai is rolling a lighter between his fingers; Hitoka recognizes it as a nervous tic.
“Not great,” Yamaguchi admits at the same time Suga says, “Hanging in there.” Yamaguchi immediately squeaks out a “Fine, actually, sorry” but Mr. Takeda interrupts his rambled apologies.
“I’d be surprised if any of you were doing ‘good,’” he admits. “You don’t have to pretend this is an ideal Friday night for any of you. It’s certainly not how I was planning on starting the weekend.”
“How were you planning on starting the weekend?” Noya asks. Hitoka recognizes this for what it is, too: a safe topic of conversation. Something that will distract from the worry, keep the talk away from their predicament, keep the silence from settling back over the gym like a funeral shroud.
“Drinking,” Mr. Takeda deadpans, and it’s unexpected enough that Hitoka snorts before she can stop herself. She’s not the only one, and Mr. Takeda’s grin widens ever so slightly. He looks quite proud of himself. “Why are you laughing? I’ll have you know, Tanaka, that I held my own against your sister in a drinking match last training camp!”
“Maybe we shouldn’t admit to drinking while chaperoning the kids,” Ukai suggests, obviously biting back a laugh. “Besides,” he adds under his breath, “I wouldn’t say you ‘held your own’ since it took three of us to drag you back to your room afterwards …”
Tanaka cackles as Mr. Takeda swats Ukai in the arm, which only sets the rest of them off—the combination of their shared anxiety and the rising tension as they wait for news, any news, spilling over into nervous, raucous laughter. Hitoka even catches Tsukishima stubbornly fighting back a grin as he watches Yamaguchi lose his composure.
“Why was Big Sis drinking with you?” Noya asks, grinning widely. “You invited her?”
“She invited us, actually,” Ukai says. “None of you tell this to your parents, I swear—”
“You were being chaperoned properly at all times, I promise,” Mr. Takeda interjects lightly. “We’d never let anything happen to any of you, don’t you worry.”
The words cut through the easy laughter lingering in the air as the weight of them settles into the context of their current situation. Mr. Takeda seems to realize it, too. His grin fades, his expression settling into something much more serious. “I promise,” he says. “As long as we’re here, you will all be safe.”
As long as we’re here, Hitoka thinks. As long as we’re here.
… What happens if there comes a time when they aren’t here?
She doesn’t think she is the only one thinking this.
“I didn’t mean—,” Mr. Takeda begins, cutting himself off almost immediately to start again. “I mean, we’ll always be here. Everything is going to be alright.”
His gaze drifts across the faces of each member of the circle, meeting their eyes, one by one. Hitoka senses the weight of the words—a promise. Things are strange right now, his eyes say, and I don’t know what is going on any more than you do. But I am going to do everything in my power—and more—to keep you safe.
He meets Hitoka’s gaze.
Then Daichi’s phone rings.
“Mom,” he answers immediately, before the call’s even connected. “Mom, is everything okay? Are the kids—?” He cuts himself off to listen as someone begins speaking on the other end. Then, “You need to slow down—What’s wrong with her? I need you to—Mom, I can’t understand you.”
“Daichi, what’s going on?” Suga asks, eyes wide with concern, but Daichi ignores him.
“Sawamura?” Ukai says.
There’s a muffled, hurried answer from Daichi’s mother, one that has Daichi replying, again, “I can’t understand you, I need you to speak slowly. Do you need help? Do you need me to call—”
Then there’s a scream audible to the rest of the team even through the phone’s tinny speakers, one that has the blood draining from Daichi’s face even as he jerks the phone away from his ear.
“Daichi?” Suga asks again, also pale.
“Mom,” Daichi just says into the phone, voice tinged with panic, “please answer me, what’s—”
There’s another scream that resembles a sob more than anything else, and Daichi answers it with a deep, jagged breath, then addresses the team. “Someone call help—send them to my house, I—I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Doesn’t sound like it …”
—the sound of someone being hit—
“Ow! I just said—”
Half the team—namely Suga, Asahi, and Mr. Takeda—are wrestling with their phones to call 119, and Daichi’s back to addressing his mother. “Help is coming, Mom, someone’s on the way, please tell me what’s wrong with her, I—” There’s more yelling from the other end, the word sick sickeningly audible in her answer, and then there’s just this pure, terrified sobbing and this awful, awful choking noise that has Hitoka swallowing bile, and then all of a sudden Daichi’s phone is torn out of his hands and Tsukishima is pressing Hang Up, cutting off a gargled sob, before anyone realizes what’s happening. Hitoka blinks. She hadn’t even realized he got up from beside her.
“What the hell, Tsukishima!?” Suga says; next to him, Asahi is chanting Daichi’s address into his phone, hands shaking, begging them to hurry.
Tsukishima is pale, the corner of his mouth twitching. “He didn’t need to hear that.”
“We don’t know what that was!” Suga shouts back. Hitoka has never, ever heard him raise his voice. In anger, she should say, she supposes, but it’s scary. Scarier than the alert. Scarier than the screams on the other end of the telephone. Suga isn’t supposed to act like this.
Tsukishima’s mouth keeps twitching, and Hitoka never thought she’d say it, but—he looks like he might cry. “I …”
“Dai, what was she saying?” Suga doesn’t even give him the chance to apologize.
Daichi’s eyes seem a million miles away, glassy, scarily bright. Of everything so far, actually—including the alerts, OP-C rumours, the man at the door, even Suga’s lividity—she thinks this is what scares her the most. The sight of Daichi, their confident, collected captain, fumbling with his phone, eyes bright with tears, looking terrified, while the rest of the team—Ukai and Mr. Takeda, the adults included—can only sit by, at a loss for what to do. Daichi isn’t supposed to act like this. None of us are. None of this is supposed to happen. Why is this happening?
“My mom … ,” Daichi mumbles, scrolling through his phone desperately. “She—She said something was wrong with Mai and Yuta. That they were sick, I think—she was talking so fast, I couldn’t understand half of what she was saying, but—then—then she just started screaming.” He brings the phone back to his ear for a moment, then lowers it with a muffled Fuck. Hitoka has never heard Daichi swear. He staggers unsteadily to his feet—Suga tries to place a reassuring hand on his arm but he only shakes it off. “She’s not answering.”
“Okay,” Ukai tries, also climbing to his feet, “let’s think. Did you get through to 119?” This, he directs to Asahi, who looks more shaken than even Daichi—though it’s certainly less uncharacteristic of him—and who nods fervently.
“Okay. Help is on the way.” Ukai steps in front of Daichi, taking a long look at him; Daichi doesn’t meet his eyes. “Sit down,” Ukai suggests.
“I need to go help them,” Daichi replies, stepping towards the doors instead.
“Woah, woah—”
It’s Asahi that makes it to Daichi first, his phone clattering, discarded, on the gym’s hardwood flooring, though the rest of the team surges to their feet as well. Ukai and Suga both stop an arm’s length away, hands outstretched in aborted movements to prevent Daichi from leaving the gym, and Mr. Takeda watches them with worry clear in his eyes. “I called help,” Asahi tells a struggling Daichi, “and they’re heading to your house.”
“I’m going too,” Daichi insists, elbowing him in the ribs; Asahi drops him with a pained gasp.
“Daichi.” That’s Suga, taking another step forward.
“You guys stay here.” Daichi steps away from him, moving quickly to the doors. “It’s not too far, I can run over.”
“Sawamura, get away from the doors,” Ukai orders.
Daichi’s hand lands on the handle. “I can’t.”
“Dai, you’re acting crazy,” Suga says; Daichi pauses, but for only a moment.
“Captain.” Hitoka doesn’t recognize her own voice, high and reedy. She can’t remember having decided to speak up. “Captain, you’re scaring us.”
Daichi freezes.
“Please stay,” Hitoka begs pathetically. Her mouth is full of bile; she swallows in a desperate attempt to avoid throwing up. Her throat burns with the effort, but—it’s worth it. Suga has made it to Daichi now, wrapping an arm around his shoulders where he still stands, frozen, with his hand on the door’s latch. “C’mere,” he murmurs, just to Daichi, “come back, we’ll try and call them again. Please.”
“I’m sorry.” Hitoka hears the whispered apology come from Tsukishima and Yamaguchi’s direction, followed by hushed reassurances from the latter.
Slowly—slowly—Daichi lets go of the door, and nods.
Asahi picks Daichi’s phone up from the floor, inspecting it for cracks, before handing it back. Hitoka thinks she hears Daichi whisper Sorry to him, but she can’t be sure. The two of them lead him away from the doors, past Ukai, heading back towards the group, and Hitoka looks at the deadbolt thrown across the gym doors and thanks every higher power she can name that it remains intact. It’s surely just her tendency to catastrophize, her anxiety, whatever you want to call it, but she can’t help but think that if Daichi had managed to open that door, something horrible would have happened.
Then something from outside slams into it so hard it makes a dent.
“What the fuck!” Tanaka yells eloquently, and Hitoka agrees, screaming wordlessly along with him. Everyone scrambles away from the door—Asahi and Suga dragging Daichi back, though he’s cooperating now—except for Ukai, who runs towards it as the thing hits it again, cracking one of the hinges. Again, the door rattles, and this one hits the door hard enough that it bends the metal, creating a gap between the two doors beyond which Hitoka can just make out a head of hair and a sunken, glassy eye.
The basketball club advisor, she thinks immediately. Then corrects herself: No, what am I thinking, it can’t be—
“Get back!” Ukai roars at them, and as the thing approaches again—it’s wearing a tie, Hitoka notes, stomach sinking, why is it wearing a tie?—Ukai throws himself at the door to meet it, just in time to catch it as the thing’s charge breaks the rest of the hinges and the deadbolt in half, knocking the heavy metal door, now dented and warped, into the gym. Ukai loses his footing as the thing steps over him, pinned under the door, fighting his way back to his feet hopelessly—“The equipment—!” he shouts, and then the thing stomps on the door again and he screams in pain, and then it’s in the gymnasium, in all of its horror and glory, and it whips its head around to meet Hitoka’s eyes.
She does throw up then, gagging as she stares at it, powerless to look away.
It is the basketball club advisor—except, at the same time, it’s not. It can’t be. Or, maybe, it was the basketball club advisor—but it hasn’t been for a long time. Long enough for his skin to have rotted, hanging off his frail frame in strips, joints misshapen and swollen. His tie is knotted haphazardly, loose around his throat, as if someone was clawing at it to rip it off; his button-down, so neatly ironed only two hours earlier, is smeared with dirt … dirt in both earthly brown colours and a deep, crimson red. Somewhere along the way, he has lost a shoe; Hitoka notes, distantly, that he is missing three of the toes on his left foot—and that loss must be fresh, too, because the area is still sluggishly pumping blood. It looks like someone took a bite out of him, she thinks. The … The dog bite? But worse than the rotting skin, the missing, bitten toes, and the blood-stained—because who is she kidding, the crimson stains aren’t dirt—clothing, though, is his face. His eyes.
They’re bright, feverish, and filled with blood.
The shadow of his pupil is barely a suggestion through the red, and patches of white sclera are only visible around the edges of his eyes as his gaze finally—mercifully—falls from Hitoka’s to flit crazily around the gymnasium.
Mr. Takeda is shouting something—something Hitoka doesn’t hear, though she watches his mouth move; something that she thinks could be Run or Hide or Get back or anything of the sort—and she watches as the former advisor’s bloated, bleeding eyes are drawn towards the sound of his voice and land on Mr. Takeda, and she watches as the thing’s chapped lips pull back from its teeth in a snarl, and she suddenly knows. Just knows, with sickening certainty, what it’s about to do.
Then someone grabs her arm, grip so tight it hurts, ripping her off of her feet as they pull her back, shouting something, too—this time Hitoka makes out the words equipment room, but can’t make them make sense in this context.
The context of the thing that used to be the basketball club’s advisor pouncing towards Mr. Takeda with inhuman speed, taking one, two—two and a half steps before it’s on him, his phone splitting in two as it hits the gym floor, his head following it a moment later. The crack of his skull on the hardwood is finally enough to knock Hitoka out of her stupor, the present and its terrible noise crashing over her like a tsunami.
“Mr. Takeda!” someone is screaming, and Ennoshita—it’s Ennoshita that has her by the arm, dragging her towards the equipment room as she tries to regain her footing—is shouting, “This way, the room, the equipment room!” and someone else must have 119 on the phone again, because she can hear them pleading, “The gym, please, we need help at the gym!” and then there’s a horrible screeching noise from over where Ukai has leveraged the heavy gymnasium door off of him and is fighting his way to his feet, even though his arm looks funny and crooked and his face is deathly pale, and Mr. Takeda’s not saying anything, not even screaming as he fights to keep the thing’s teeth from his neck, not even as its nails leave deep, red gouges on his shoulders, not even as the weight of it slowly crushes his arms and it gets closer, rivulets of pink, blood-tinged drool spilling from its mouth, closer to sinking its teeth into his neck and ripping his throat out—this, another thing Hitoka just knows, surer than her own name, because this has suddenly turned into some sort of zombie apocalypse-type horror with warning, and all she can think besides that is oh my god, Mr. Takeda is about to get killed, right in front of me.
And right before its teeth break his skin, the thing’s head snaps back.
“Fuck!” Tanaka yells, and hits it with the fire extinguisher again before it can collect itself enough to fight him.
The thing stumbles to the side, obviously dazed, growling and snapping at the air. Mr. Takeda scrambles back, clutching the open wounds in his arm, but it seems to have lost interest in him entirely; in fact, it steps over him to get closer to Tanaka—who is pale, mouth trembling, but readying the fire extinguisher for another go—and then Ukai’s there, swinging Suga’s water bottle one-handed and catching the thing in the temple, hard enough to make its head snap to the side with an audible crack.
It hits the ground limply, and does not move.
Ennoshita stops dragging Hitoka back. The only sound in the gymnasium is everyone’s ragged, desperate breaths and the sound of their shoes squeaking to abrupt stops on the hardwood.
“Takeda?” is the next thing Hitoka hears in the silence. She isn’t sure who says it, other than that it comes from behind her.
“I’m,” Mr. Takeda gasps, still sitting, shocked, on the floor. “I’m—I’m okay. I’m fine.”
“Shit.” That’s Ukai, staring at the crumpled heap of the basketball club’s advisor. “Shit.”
There’s a noise from outside. Nothing more than a rustle, really; the sound of footsteps on gravel, the brush of a jacket against a wall. But Hitoka’s blood runs cold, and judging by the way Ennoshita’s grip tightens on her arm, she’s not the only one. No, she thinks senselessly. Close the doors! But the doors have been knocked off of their hinges, and have already been proven to do next to nothing against—against one of them.
The OP-C infected.
Because what else could they be? And so far, it seems Hitoka is safer with a fire extinguisher or Suga’s water bottle in hand than sheltering-in-place in a gymnasium that’s been cracked open like an egg. A gymnasium that now has blood-stained hardwood and a dead man on the court.
“We,” Mr. Takeda starts, his voice breaking. He winces, then starts again, “We have to go.”
“Shit,” Ukai says again.
“Keishen,” Mr. Takeda says.
“Okay. Shit. Okay. I’m okay.” Ukai doesn’t relax his grip on the water bottle, though it now sports a sizable dent that matches the one in the basketball club advisor’s skull, and his eyes don’t move from the body. But he’s speaking in complete sentences. “Okay. We need to get out of here. We can’t stay here. Where do we go?”
Hitoka isn’t sure who he’s asking.
“The school isn’t safe,” Tanaka says. He’s still standing in the middle of the gym, blood splattered on his chin—the fire extinguisher just as bloody, but still in hand. He’s looking at the body like he’s daring it to get back up, and Hitoka thinks that if she didn’t know him, she’d be terrified.
“What?” someone asks weakly.
“The school isn’t safe,” he repeats. “Earlier, Ukai sent him”—he nods at the body—“back to the school, and now …”
The state of the advisor’s body is explanation enough. If he’d been in the school, then the school isn’t safe.
“Where else can we go?”
Outside, there’s that sound again. The distant crunch of gravel, the shuffling of feet.
“The bus.”
Again, Hitoka can’t remember having made the decision to speak, but the words hang insubstantially in the air. Mr. Takeda is the only one that hears her under the boys’ whispers.
“Yachi,” he says, and even despite the situation, the boys stop to hear him speak. Hear her speak, because he goes on, “What did you say?”
“The bus.” Her voice is dry and weak, and there’s vomit on her chin. She thinks that, at some point, she has started crying, because her cheeks are wet. “The basketball advisor. He—He was parking the bus. They have … They—They have a bus that could—fit all of us. To l—leave.”
“We can go to the store,” Tanaka says. His eyes leave the body, turning to Ukai. “The corner store isn’t open on Fridays, right? Do you have a key?”
“I …” Ukai nods, once. “Yeah. Yeah, I have a key. That’s good. There won’t be anyone there.”
“We’ll stay there for the night.” Mr. Takeda’s voice is tight with pain, and rivulets of blood run through his fingers from the cuts in his arms. “We should go before it gets dark.”
“Okay,” Ukai says, finally moving from where he’s standing over the body, just watching it, to look at the team. “We’re getting out of here. Someone—Someone help me with—”
Hitoka isn’t sure who he is asking for help, just that Ennoshita releases the grip he has on her arm with a quiet, “Sorry. I was trying—I’m sorry. Are you okay?” She can only manage a nod in response as he moves away, before someone else places a tentative hand on her shoulder. She can’t tell if it’s herself who is shaking, or them. (Odds are probably on it being them both.) She meets their wide eyes—Hinata’s wide eyes—irises ringed with white, and offers a whispered, “Thanks” as he helps her to her feet. He doesn’t say a word in return.
Once she’s on her feet, he keeps a tight grip on her hand, and she holds him back just as tightly.
Ennoshita is helping Ukai and Asahi with Mr. Takeda—whose head is bleeding, blood smeared all down the back of his neck—Suga having taken over Asahi’s role of comforting Daichi, who is staring at the club advisor’s body, deathly still. As Hitoka watches, Ennoshita steps forward to take Ukai’s place supporting Mr. Takeda’s head as they help him to unsteady feet. She remembers something about not moving people, especially after they’ve had head injuries, and wonders if they should stop. They shouldn’t be moving Mr. Takeda, right? They should wait for the paramedics.
Outside—distantly, but not distantly enough—someone shouts, and there’s a loud bang. Behind Hitoka, someone starts crying.
They probably don’t have enough time to wait for the paramedics.
“Look at me.”
Ukai’s voice is gravelly, also rough with pain, but the authority in it draws everyone’s eyes—all wide with terror—to him.
“I need you all to grab your bags,” he says. “If you don’t have a bag down here, then I need you to grab your water bottle, and any snacks you still have on you. Can you do that?”
Hitoka nods, over and over again, as if her head’s on a string. But neither she nor Hinata lets the other’s hand go as she gets the strap of her backpack over one shoulder, and they shuffle over to where Hinata was sitting—so close to the dead man, the metallic scent of his blood overpowering—to grab his messenger bag as a single unit.
“We need the key to the bus,” Tanaka says.
“I know.” Ukai is staring at the dead thing. “Give me a second.”
“Keishen,” Mr. Takeda says, swaying on his feet. Ennoshita and Asahi flanking him seem to be the only thing keeping him upright. “We need the key.”
“I know. Just—Just one second.”
“I’ll get it.”
Tsukishima’s voice wavers, just the slightest bit, but he steps towards the club advisor’s body with his jaw set, despite Yamaguchi’s muffled, “Tsukki.”
“Be ready to hit it if it gets up again,” he tells Ukai. It doesn’t seem far-fetched to think that, after what they’ve just seen—considering the state of the advisor’s body, the madness in his eyes—the thing might be back on its feet in just a moment … even with bits of its brain leaking out of the dent in its temple. The team watches with bated breath as Tsukishima rolls the thing’s body over by its shoulder, nose wrinkling in disgust, and Hitoka immediately looks away. From what she does see … well. Its face is caved in, splinters of stark white bone clearly visible, and its eyes … its eyes have burst. Not just burst— exploded. Chunks of sclera are stuck to the thing’s forehead.
Did Tanaka do that? With just a fire extinguisher?
Hitoka’s face is buried in her elbow, but she hears someone else lose their lunch at the sight, and thinks that if she hadn’t already vomited, she might’ve been joining them.
“Here,” she hears Tsukishima say weakly, accompanied by the jingle of keys.
“Thanks,” Ukai replies gruffly. “Let’s go.”
It takes everything in Hitoka to move along with the team, towards the open door.
The sky outside is a deep, starless blue, with a hint of orange bleeding from the horizon. Hinata drags her with him, over to the bench, on their way past, to grab his half-empty water bottle and sweater, which he immediately hands to Hitoka.
“What?” she asks quietly.
“You’re shaking,” he whispers.
So are you, she wants to point out, but chooses to slip the sweater on without protest instead. It smells faintly of sweat, but she accepts it gratefully. Having the hood flipped up over her head immediately calms Hitoka down, despite her knowing that, if anything, having her peripheral vision cut off is putting her in more danger.
“This too,” Hinata rasps, handing her one of the towels used for wiping off sweat. He helps her wipe the bile off of her chin, then grabs her hand once again.
The rest of the team is just as deathly silent, any questions or comments whispered, any breathing shaky and quiet, as they step outside. Hitoka shivers in the sudden cold, and Hinata only squeezes her hand tighter in response. They hop down the steps quickly, and though the crunch of gravel under their shoes makes Hitoka wince, she knows what they’re both thinking, however irrational it may seem: Get out of the gym, away from the doors, before it wakes up.
“This way,” Ukai says quietly, pointing to the right towards the teacher’s parking lot.
Karasuno follows obediently.
“The girls were having a friendly match today with the neighbourhood team,” Hitoka hears Daichi whisper to Suga just behind her. “Michimiya was telling me about it—they’re in Gym Two.”
“They’re sheltering,” Suga replies, just as softly. “I’m sure they’re alright.”
“Should we get them?”
“We’re not passing Gym Two,” Suga points out.
There’s absolute silence for a moment, broken only by the scoffing of their footsteps on the pavement. Then Daichi asks, “What if someone got into Gym Two?”
“Something,” Suga corrects.
“Suga.”
“Then there’s nothing we can do.”
The words turn Hitoka’s stomach. She can tell the rest of the team is listening, too; beside her, Hinata stifles a gasp, and Yamaguchi sniffles from somewhere off to her right.
“They’re alright,” Kiyoko says.
Daichi sighs, shaking his head—Hitoka can hear the rustling of fabric the action creates, it’s that quiet—but before he can say anything, Kiyoko continues, “I can see the doors to Gym Two from here. They’re still closed tightly. Nothing has come in or out.”
Daichi says, “Oh.”
They move forward in silence once again.
“Here,” Ukai says, once they’ve reached the parking lot. The bus the basketball team has rented for this afternoon sits empty across two parking spaces, ready for the taking. “Everyone in.”
No one moves to go first.
“Where’s the driver?” Kinoshita asks. They all know what he’s thinking—the driver’s seat is empty, so is the driver one of … them? Like the basketball club’s advisor? Hiding under the seats, or in the back, waiting for them to get on … ?
“No driver,” Ukai says. “They were driving themselves. Cut costs, or something. Let’s go.”
They load onto the bus, Tanaka moving to go first, fire extinguisher still firmly in hand. Hitoka pretends not to notice him peeking under every seat as he goes down the aisle, but breathes a sigh of relief when he makes it to the end unscathed. Asahi and Ennoshita help Mr. Takeda into one of the seats near the front, Asahi stuffing his jacket under his neck as a pillow. Blood immediately seeps into the fabric. Mr. Takeda smiles up at him gratefully, but is otherwise silent; from this angle, on her way by, Hitoka can see for the first time how deathly pale Mr. Takeda’s face is.
At the driver’s seat, Ukai is holding his injured arm to his chest and staring at the controls, brow furrowed. He starts to climb into the seat, wincing, but Kiyoko stops him.
“I can drive,” she says.
Ukai gives her a look that says, Really? “A bus?”
“I can drive a car,” she admits, “but neither you nor Mr. Takeda is in any condition to drive the bus right now, so I can figure it out.”
Ukai doesn’t look convinced.
“There won’t be anyone on the roads,” Kiyoko presses. “It’s just down the street.”
Mr. Takeda says, “She’s right.”
“Fine,” Ukai sighs. “Just … be careful. Go slowly.”
Kiyoko nods.
“Everyone hold on!” Ukai calls back to the rest of the team, settling into the seat across from Mr. Takeda’s. Kiyoko has to use the steering wheel to pull herself up into the driver’s seat, and Hitoka thinks, not without humour, that wouldn’t this be an ironic way to go, after the thing in the gym? At the mercy of an eighteen-year-old at the wheel of a bus?
The engine turns over twice, finally catching, and the bus crawls towards the parking lot’s exit.
“Watch—,” Ukai starts, before there’s an awful crunch and the bus lurches to a stop. He sighs. “The curb.”
“Sorry,” Kiyoko says, but Hitoka catches the edge of her small grin in the mirror, the faint impression of a dimple. Then they’re off again, and as the rumble of the engine grows steadier—as they make it out of the parking lot, onto empty roads—the whispers begin in earnest.
“It went through the door like it was nothing.”
“My mom’s at work … she said everything was fine, but what if … ?”
“It … He …”
“My brother’s home alone, he’s saying something’s going on at the neighbours’ … should I tell him to hide?”
“She’s still not picking up.”
“What was that?”
“How did it know we were there?”
“Should we be leaving … ? Isn’t 119 on their way?”
“I don’t know … I don’t know.”
“My mom said she and Natsu were okay,” Hinata whispers. “My house is way out of town. So they’ll be okay.”
“Yes,” Hitoka says, squeezing his hand, “they will be.”
Under it all, the question repeats: What is happening?
And with it—
Where can we be safe?
“I’ll go. Let me open the door and take a look around, then I’ll wave you in.”
It’s no surprise that Ukai volunteers to be the first out of the bus—what is a surprise is how many of Karasuno get up to follow him immediately. Tanaka, fire extinguisher hanging at his side; Kiyoko, slipping out of the driver’s seat; Ennoshita, a steadying hand on Mr. Takeda’s shoulder, since the teacher has only grown more pale during the drive; Daichi, still blank-faced, and beside him Suga, visibly concerned; Tsukishima, standing up from the seat behind Hitoka; and Hitoka herself, using the back of the seat in front of her to pull herself up, her right hand numb in Hinata’s grip. It seems to surprise Ukai, too—this show of support, of blind trust. His expression only grows more strained.
“You wait here,” he says, as if they didn’t understand the first time.
“We heard you,” Tanaka says. “But you can’t go in alone.” He points to Ukai’s arm, hanging crookedly—uselessly—at his side. “What if there’s another one of those things in there?”
“That’s why I’m going in alone.”
“Bit early for self-sacrifice, isn’t it?” Tsukishima’s voice has regained its condescending edge, and Hitoka is more relieved to hear it than she’d care to admit.
“It’s not self-sacrifice, you brat,” Ukai replies without any heat. “It’s strategic. But if you want to follow me in, what the hell. I’m too tired to care.”
He does sound tired—exhausted is a more appropriate adjective, and a weak one at that. It doesn’t do justice to the weariness in his voice, or to the way his shoulders slump.
Once again, Karasuno follows him. Out of the bus, almost in single-file, to the entrance of the corner store. The building is dark, its windows intact—some part of Hitoka had been expecting apocalypse-type damage already, the empty store surely a tempting target for looters—but from what she can tell, all looks well.
The doors open easily, the soft jingling of keys the only sound besides Karasuno’s bated breaths, and immediately a distant beep sounds, heralding their entry into what Hitoka mentally deems their safe haven. For the time being, at least—though the all-around windows do make her nervous.
Ukai pads off to punch in the security alarm’s code, and for the second time this night, Karasuno settles down.
Tsukishima—with a pale, trembling Yamaguchi in tow—disappears down one of the aisles and returns with an armful of bandages, First Aid kits, and bottles of pills. He settles down with them in front of where Mr. Takeda is leaning against the front of the cash desk without a word to anyone, and sets about ripping the supplies out of their packaging with Yamaguchi’s help.
“What are you doing?” Hinata asks, uncharacteristically quiet.
“First Aid,” Tsukishima says shortly.
Mr. Takeda just watches him unpack the First Aid kits, laying out their contents. From the other side of the store, Tanaka gets to his feet, too, leaving the fire extinguisher behind. “Good idea,” he says, then, nodding to Ennoshita, who’s sitting over by Suga and Daichi, says, “Why don’t we go see if we can find any meals? Or something comfortable to sleep on?”
“Isn’t this kind of stealing?” Asahi asks nervously.
“Who’s stealing?” Ukai chooses this moment to rejoin the conversation, emerging from the aisle behind Asahi, who jumps nearly a foot in surprise.
“Tsukishima,” Noya tattles.
Hitoka can’t see the blocker’s face, but she can just feel him rolling his eyes. “I am not stealing,” he says, “I am doing First Aid. Who knows what kind of bacteria that—thing had on its nails? We need to clean these scratches.”
“He’s right,” Ukai says. “Specs, how are you holding up?”
Mr. Takeda blinks sluggishly before replying, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in his reply. “I’m alright. Don’t worry.”
“Right.” Ukai is obviously doubtful. “Here, let me help.”
“You’re hurt too, Coach,” Yamaguchi points out.
Ukai waves him off with his good arm. “It’s fine. You’ve got pain meds there, right?”
“We should probably put you in a sling,” Tsukishima says, eyes still trained on the cuts on Mr. Takeda’s shoulders.
“What, were you in Boy Scouts or some shit? I’m fine.”
“They’re right,” Mr. Takeda says. “Please let them look at your arm.”
Reluctantly, Ukai sits down next to them, shrugging off his jacket with obvious difficulty (he winces, swearing under breath, all the while) to allow Yamaguchi to look at his arm. Without the jacket to cover the injury, it looks even worse—bruises are already forming around his elbow and up his shoulder, and his shoulder itself is misshapen and obviously out of place.
Narita crosses the store to settle down next to them as well. “I was a lifeguard last summer,” he says. “I did a lot of First Aid courses for it, so maybe I can help?”
“You know more than I do,” Yamaguchi admits, waving him forwards. “Do you think it looks dislocated?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Awesome,” Ukai grumbles. “Can you put it back in place?”
Narita blanches at the thought. “Um … I mean, theoretically, but I’ve never actually tried.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for a professional?” Kinoshita says. “I mean … we called 119, right? They should be here soon. Maybe we shouldn’t try to put it back in place ourselves.”
“We called 119 back at the gym,” Tsukishima points out. “They don’t know where we are now. And probably aren’t looking.”
“Why … Why not?” Hitoka asks.
Tsukishima sighs. “We’re definitely not the only ones who got attacked by someone with OP-C. We called 119 twice in, what, ten minutes? Even if they did send someone to the gym, they’ve got to be stretched thin with all of the requests for help coming in. They wouldn’t be looking for us.”
The rest of the team falls silent as the weight of his words sinks in.
“We could call them again?” Kinoshita says. “Tell them where we are, that we need an ambulance.”
“We don’t need an ambulance,” Ukai protests.
Tsukishima’s mouth settles into a thin line. “Takeda could probably use one,” he admits. “He hit his head hard, and …” He falls silent, looking at the wounds on Mr. Takeda’s arms.
“And what?” Kinoshita asks.
Tsukishima just shakes his head, going back to cleaning out the scratches. “Nothing. It’s worth a try.”
Kinoshita pulls his phone out of his bag. The rest of Karasuno listens as he types in the number, and then as the phone dials.
And dials.
And dials.
And dials.
And no one picks up.
Kinoshita lowers the phone.
“Well,” Tsukishima says, and then falls silent.
“What does that mean?” Hinata asks. “Why won’t they answer?”
“Did you type the right number?” Narita asks, eyes wide.
“Of course I did,” Kinoshita snaps back. “I’ll—I’ll try again.”
Again, no one answers.
“119 is down?” Hitoka says, shocked by the hoarseness of her voice. “Then …”
She trails off, but Hinata finishes the thought for her. “We can’t call for help.”
“Good thing we don’t need help, then,” Mr. Takeda says, though his eyes are glassy, and blood still trickles down his neck. “Is anyone else hurt?”
The team shakes their heads, but Yamaguchi protests, “But …” He trails off immediately, but the rest of them know what he’s thinking—everyone else is alright, at least physically, but Mr. Takeda’s eyes are glassy and distant, and he seems to be having trouble keeping his head up. There’s blood everywhere, and streaks of thick, pink-tinged spit from the thing in the gymnasium are smeared all over his arm—and the cuts there. Tsukishima’s right. They need to disinfect the cuts, not only stop the bleeding.
Once again, the words from the alert earlier come back to her. Highly infectious pathogen.
“It’s alright, then,” Mr. Takeda says. “We’ll go to a doctor’s in the morning, or try 119 again if the lockdown hasn’t been lifted.” He smiles, and Hitoka’s anxious, mess of a mind can’t help but note that one side of his mouth lifts higher than the other.
“Guess you’ll get to practice,” Ukai says, offering his arm to Narita, who just looks nauseous.
“Okay,” he says weakly. “Um.”
“Why don’t you give me some pain meds first.”
“Um—yes. Good idea.”
Hitoka listens to pills rattling, and rustling as Narita inspects Ukai’s arm, readying himself to try moving it back into place. Yamaguchi helps as well, commenting on how swollen it is in places, or the pattern of the bruising, though it’s obvious neither of them really understands what any of it means. Ukai is patient, though, even telling Narita, “You can’t make it worse, can you? You relocate it, or I stay like this until the morning.”
Narita just replies, “It’s going to hurt.”
“I’m sure it will. Get on with it.”
Narita gulps, and then Hitoka listens to Ukai swearing up a storm, peppered with apologies, and one Don’t tell your parents—fuck, as he shoves the shoulder back into its socket. And the whole time, throughout and afterwards—when Ukai laughs, hiding how badly it must hurt, and congratulates Narita by slapping him on the back with his good arm, and when Narita stares at the floor, obviously trying not to throw up—Hitoka thinks of the alert’s warning, and looks at the red scratches and streaks of spit on Mr. Takeda’s arms, and eventually can’t stop herself from asking.
“How does OP-C spread, again?”
It’s obvious where she’s looking. Tsukishima’s gaze meets hers, mouth thin, and, again, she just knows. Knows that he knows, too, knows that disinfecting Mr. Takeda’s wounds will probably mean nothing, that it’s only a last-ditch effort.
“… I read it was from bites,” Asahi says.
“Like zombie shit?” Noya pipes up. He, Tanaka, Suga, and Daichi have rejoined the group, carrying armfuls of ramen packets and boxes of snacks, alongside a case of plastic water bottles.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“‘Zombie shit,’” Ukai snorts. “What the fuck is going on.”
“So …” Hitoka feels sick, so sick, to her stomach. “So, like, saliva?”
The rest of the team catches on quickly.
“Oh.”
“I.” Hitoka doesn’t know where she was going with that. “I don’t know,” she tries again.
“That’s a good point, Yachi,” Mr. Takeda says.
He says it so warmly, evenly—it just feels like a punch to the gut.
“The, um.” He trips over his words, ever so slightly, but otherwise there’s no suggestion of nerves from him as he continues. “The basketball club’s advisor. After he scratched me, he was drooling quite a bit. Some of his saliva definitely got into the cuts, so Yachi has a point. If it is true that OP-C spreads from saliva getting into the blood, then …” He straightens his glasses, blocking the team’s view of his face for a moment. “Ukai,” he says evenly. “Does the store have a back room?”
“Yes,” Ukai says, “but, c’mon, you’re not—I mean, you’re okay. The thing in the gym—”
“His name was Tanji Ima,” Mr. Takeda interrupts. “We’d been working together for three years. He has two daughters, one of whom just started at Karasuno this year. He was a good man. If the virus did that to him, then”—Mr. Takeda’s voice falters, for just a moment—“then it’s irresponsible to leave me here with the rest of you. Does the back room lock from the outside?”
It takes Ukai a long, long moment to answer, and when he does, his voice is thick. “Yes.”
“Good.” Mr. Takeda nods, mouth set. “Thank you for the First Aid, Tsukishima, but you should go wash your hands.”
Tsukishima sits back on his heels, then gets to his feet and pads off without a word. Yamaguchi follows him.
“Any of you that have my blood on you should do the same,” Mr. Takeda says.
“Mr. Takeda,” Hitoka begins, but—what can she say? I’m sorry for pointing out that you might be infected? It feels like an accusation, and guilt curdles in her gut. How could she even suggest that Mr. Takeda would ever do something like the basketball club’s advisor?
Not the basketball club’s advisor, she corrects herself, Tanji Ima. Father of two. And it just makes her feel worse.
“I’m sorry,” she finishes lamely.
“For what?” he asks.
She doesn’t answer, and then Ukai, Narita, and Ennoshita are helping him to the back of the store, and Hitoka wants to throw up again.
“Yachi?” Hinata says.
She grabs his outstretched hand again, and holds it tightly.
“We should get ready for bed,” Suga suggests. “We found toothbrushes if anyone wants them, and there are some windbreakers here we can use for blankets. Why doesn’t everyone take one, and we can figure everything else out in the morning?”
Karasuno moves slowly, but they listen. Shortly after, Ennoshita and Narita are rejoining the group, faces dark, and there’s a soft jingling of keys before Ukai emerges from the aisle behind them. Narita has arranged his now-relocated arm into a sling made from bandages Tsukishima salvaged from the First Aid kits, and with it combined with the pain meds, some colour has returned to his cheeks.
“Yachi,” he says, gesturing her forwards. “C’mere.”
Hitoka’s stomach sinks, again filled with guilt. Hinata squeezes her hand once in encouragement, then lets it fall, and she rises unsteadily to her feet.
Ukai leads her to the back room. “Takeda just wanted to talk to you.”
“Oh.” Her voice is weak. Ukai glances at her from the corner of his eye.
“You’re not in trouble,” he says gruffly. “Pointing out that one of us might be infected was the right move.”
She doesn’t reply.
Mr. Takeda is set up on what looks like a plastic tarp in the back room, with what Hitoka recognizes as Asahi’s (now blood-soaked) jacket pillowed under his head and Ukai’s over him like a blanket. The bandages Tsukishima put on his arms are already stained red, and the one around his head wound is slipping down over his eyes. He’s pushing it up as Hitoka enters the room and hovers near the door, nervously.
“Yachi,” Mr. Takeda says in greeting.
“I’m sorry!” she blurts out again before he can continue.
“Why are you sorry?”
“I …” She struggles to put the feeling into words. “I … I accused you of—of being like— that. I mean, Mr. Tanji. In the gymnasium. And now you’re back here, l—locked here, like you’re a prisoner, and I—I didn’t want that—”
“Yachi,” he interrupts gently, “you shouldn’t feel guilty at all.”
Her eyes are burning. She thinks she’s about to cry.
“I wanted to thank you,” he continues. “I didn’t even think of OP-C spreading. I mean, I blame it on the head injury, but.” He shrugs, chuckling, and it doesn’t sound forced, and it all just makes the burning behind Hitoka’s eyes worse. “Thank you, for looking out for yourself and your teammates, and speaking up for yourself. I wanted to thank you, and to tell you that I’m proud of you for doing so.”
Hitoka does start crying, then.
Ukai leads her back to the front of the store where the rest of Karasuno is, locking the back room’s doors behind them, and, mercifully, none of her teammates mention her tears. She lays down next to Hinata, gripping his hand with both of her own, and tries to forget the look in Mr. Takeda’s eyes when he thanked her, and told her he was proud. A terrifying, hopeless sort of calm. An acceptance. One that scares Hitoka more than anything else that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours.
It is the last time she ever sees Mr. Takeda alive.