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September in Osaka is unseasonably warm that year. It rains constantly, but the torrential downpour offers no relief; heat clings fast to the city like a sheen of stubborn plastic wrap. Buses are overcrowded as usual, the handrails sticky and air conditioning too weak to disperse the cloying humidity.
Osamu looks at him with pity when he stops by the apartment. Nose scrunched in distaste, he sidesteps a stack of Styrofoam containers. A plastic fork clatters to the floor.
“This is a new low, even for you.”
“Whatever. It’s the weather these days. You can go back to your place if you’re done poking around mine.” He doesn’t bother looking up from the television screen.
“The weather,” Osamu echoes, “so we’re not going to talk about how you’re obviously moping because—”
“I don’t mope.”
The wildlife program he’s watching starts playing a preview of the next segment, and Atsumu turns the volume up.
“Brooding, then. Wallowing. Sulking like Bokuto after he gets shut down—”
If only Atsumu were so easily baited. “Don’t cross the line, ‘Samu.” He jabs a finger in the air for emphasis.
“I’m just surprised no one else has said anything, considering how much time you all spend together. What doesn’t surprise me is how you’re handling this,” he sighs, “but have it your way. Don’t forget to drink the ginseng tea. You know Gran asks about you every time.”
Guilt pricks at his chest like a needling voice, and Atsumu switches the television off at last.
“I’ll call her this week,” he mumbles. “Thanks for bringing the tea.”
⊹
He wakes, disoriented, to the sound of a familiar pop song playing somewhere nearby.
It takes a while for his eyes to adjust to the brightness—he realizes he’d nodded off at the kitchen table, with his laptop gone dark and the dishes forgotten in the sink.
By the time Atsumu picks up his phone, his heart is caught in his throat.
“Hello?”
For a split second, he thinks that something terrible must have happened. Then Shouyou says, ”Atsumu-san, did I wake you? I’m sorry if I did,” and relief bowls him over even as his pulse refuses to quiet down.
“No, no, I was just watching a couple of last season’s matches,” he says. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m fine, please don’t worry! Nothing bad has happened. Ah, I probably should have texted first, right?” Shouyou laughs before quickly lowering his voice again. “Actually, I just wanted to get a Slurpee and I thought I’d see if you wanted to come along.” He sounds sheepish when he continues, “I know your place isn’t too far but I completely forgot about the time and—”
The fondness bubbling up in Atsumu’s chest threatens to swallow him whole. “Just give me five minutes. I’ll meet you out front, then we can head to 7-11 together.”
It doesn’t matter that the convenience store is technically closer to Atsumu’s apartment. So long as Shouyou allows him to, he can pretend.
In this version of their story, the bull learns to tread softly in the china shop.
⊹
From a distance, he sees Shouyou leaning against the streetlight. At twenty minutes to one o’clock, Atsumu can almost hear the sound of his heart hammering away in tandem with his footfalls. He waves when Shouyou turns.
“Midnight rendezvous, eh?”
“You came,” Shouyou says, sounding like what he means is I’m glad you did. His hair sticks up at odd angles, and the One Piece shirt he’s wearing is faded at the seams. He moves by instinct—reaches out to smooth the flyaways back before reason kicks in.
If Shouyou finds anything odd about the gesture, he doesn’t freeze or flinch away from Atsumu’s touch.
A different kind of heat unfurls low in his ribcage, languid and unhurried.
⊹
The blast of air conditioning which greets them is more than welcome—the bored-looking cashier hardly spares them a second glance when the automatic doors slide open. Inside, the aisles are deserted save for a man perusing the beer selection at the back of the store.
Shouyou tugs him over to the snack section with unabashed delight.
“They have all these new Pocky flavors,” he says, pointing. “Almond crush, Yubari melon, coconut… wait, Brazilian orange?”
Atsumu refuses to think it’s cute how his eyes are practically burning holes into the array of boxes. “Looks like we’ll just have to sample them all,” he chances a quick look at the rest of the aisle.
“I’ll grab a basket.”
Shouyou catches his sleeve before he turns, and his thoughts skitter to a screeching halt. “It’s my treat,” he makes a sweeping gesture, “so make sure you get lots of snacks you like, too, okay?”
“You can treat me next time, Atsumu-san.”
It’s unfair, really, how two words can hold so much weight when he says them like that. Atsumu folds under the fluorescent lighting, floored by how much he wants—to let go of that last figment of uncertainty, to hold on even tighter to any part of him within reach.
Before Shouyou leaves, he imagines making a mumbled confession. It’s taken you this long, a voice in his head hisses. Two years of seeing him at practice almost every day, of team dinners ending in tipsy debates over nonsense, and all this time Osamu was right.
“Alright,” he says. “Next time you’re back in Japan, I’ll take you anywhere you like, Shouyou-kun.”
⊹
“Maybe we did go slightly overboard.”
They sit on the curb in front of the empty lot, plastic bags rustling as Shouyou rummages around for a paper napkin. Drops of condensation are fast gathering into rivulets running down the side of his plastic cup, glistening before they disappear into the gravel.
Atsumu watches with amusement. “I’d offer a handkerchief if I had one.”
The words are no sooner out before he feels the corners of his mouth twitch at Shouyou’s answering grin.
“Omi-kun would have one,” he says, snickering. “And so would Ushijima-san.”
“Ugh, they would.” Atsumu stretches his legs out.
“They’d make you fold the handkerchief with the wet part on the inside, though.”
This sets Shouyou off again, bending over his knees as his shoulders shake silently.
“It’s not—it’s not even that funny,” he finally manages.
“If you say so, Shouyou-kun.”
He shakes his head, eyes impossibly bright. “It’s objectively less funny than when you called Omi-kun a sea urchin.”
Atsumu buries his face in his hands.
“Yer killing me,” he complains. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
He can hear the smile in Shouyou’s voice, “I think most of your jokes are pretty good, Atsumu-san.”
Then, without warning, he adds, almost in the same breath, “I’m going to miss you, you know.”
His mind stills for the second time that night. Slowly, Atsumu drops his hands from his face, feeling for all the world as if there is a gaping disconnect between his body and his movements.
It’s moments like this which remind him just how much he stupidly likes Shouyou—Shouyou, with his unflinching honesty; Shouyou, who wears his heart on his sleeve with reckless abandon. Atsumu tries to find the words for I miss you already, but the words catch like a fishbone in his throat.
“Call me sometimes, okay?”
He’s horrified to find the corners of his vision swimming.
“I will,” he says, “of course I will.”
“Shouyou-kun,” he says helplessly. “I like you.”
The answer is more of an exhale than a one-word reply, and Atsumu thinks there is some semblance of surprise flashing in Shouyou’s eyes—except the moment is over before he can begin to decipher its significance, before he has the chance to plunge down a rabbit hole of his own making.
“I feel the same way about you, Atsumu-san.”
“But I think… I think there’s a reason why we’re having this conversation now.”
“Now, as opposed to any point over the past two years, you mean?”
“Yeah.” Shouyou scuffs the toe of his sneaker against a stray pebble, watches it roll a few feet away, clattering noisily, before disappearing into a pothole.
“It’s not that I haven’t thought of asking you out, Atsumu-san. We spend so much time together, and it feels so natural. I guess I just imagined this happening in a different way. Like, I figured if we were ever to become more than friends, it’d be less on a whim and more—”
“It would be real.”
Not a fling, not a whirlwind of impulse and white hot attraction burning too much too soon. Atsumu says real because he knows it to be true, knows with a quiet certainty that sits low and guttural in his chest. These days, he learns to want without sawtooth edges and tunnel vision. Accepts the feelings too big for classification as they are.
When Shouyou speaks again, his voice breaks just a little, wistfulness an undercurrent running through the admission.
“I would want that, with you.”
For a moment, Atsumu allows his thoughts to linger on the wildly impossible—he could uproot his life, contract be damned, could book a one-way ticket and follow Shouyou to the other end of the world. Except even in entertaining the hypothetical, he knows deep down he could never give up on the path he’s walked this far, any more than he could ask Shouyou to stay.
It wouldn’t be fair to either of them.
Even so, he can’t help but ask.
“D’you think we’ve blown it up, Shouyou-kun? I’ve been a real idiot, haven’t I?’
Because Atsumu has never been good at letting sleeping dogs lie, because he still hopes, however stubbornly. There is no way to tell Shouyou that he feels jealous of an entire country sometimes, more than ten thousand miles away and twelve hours apart. Numbers he’s memorized without meaning to—he wonders if practice the next day will be the same without Shouyou.
It will be fine; Atsumu will score and the win will feel just as exhilarating as always; he will go through the same drills and the same training, fine-tune his serves and sets until Meian hollers at them to call it a day. He’s not looking to cross an ocean for the international stadiums, or to play with the wind under his feet the way Shouyou does.
Not seeing him will be hard. There will be times when Atsumu forgets, if for a moment, that Brazil is a distant reality. And when it all comes back, high tide crashing down on the coastline, the longing will corrode whatever barrier he’s built on the foundation of normalcy.
Still, he thinks, there is bravery in Shouyou leaving behind everything that holds him close and vice versa.
Faith has never been a part of Atsumu’s repertoire, but he believes anyway. In the hand he wields now, palpable and irrefutable in its calluses, in the way palm yields against knuckle.
Shouyou takes a second to consider his question.
“Maybe so, but we’re kind of in the same boat, aren’t we? Besides, when I think of the past two years, it really doesn’t feel that way at all, at least not to me.”
“I got to enjoy so many meals with you, Atsumu-san. After practice, I got to nod off on the bus because you were there to wake me. You send me cat videos. Oh, and we watched so many bad movies just to make fun of them later. I don’t know anyone else who would sit through late night television with me. And now, here we are.”
His bottom lip quivers, then steadies. There are no waterworks.
“Indulging in Slurpees?”
“That, too. What I mean is—not being in a romantic relationship hasn’t changed the way I feel about you.”
It’s his turn for an exhale, more lungs collapsing than conscious reply. “Oh.”
Reflexively, he says, “It won’t be the same, though, when you’re off taking the Brazilian League by storm.”
The words sit off-kilter on his tongue, too close to childishness for comfort.
Shouyou bares his teeth just shy of a grin.
“No, but you’ll play against so many new opponents, Atsumu-san. You’ll get to perfect your tosses even more—there’s no way the Jackals will be the same months from now, either.”
He wilts abruptly.
“I know,” Shouyou says. “I know what you meant.”
“I’m coming back,” he says, “I don’t know how long it’ll take, but I’m going to get even better this time, too.”
Shouyou holds out his hand. “Toss to me again when I’m back, okay?”
At that, something gradually loosens in his chest.
It’s the same question he poses without hesitance at every practice—Atsumu prides himself in his prowess as a setter, of course he does—but even he has to admit there are days where his toss veers off by a degree or two, or else the ball falls spectacularly short of the net. And yet—tossing to Shouyou never does lose its thrill, not when he is met with the same readiness to win no matter the odds.
Atsumu will set the ball to his spiker, and Shouyou will meet him stride for stride. Most of the time, the answer comes before he even has to ask. A faster toss—the next ball is airborne without delay, the force behind it adjusted a notch. Their quick, refined—the resounding slap of the ball slamming into hardwood floor.
He tosses to Shouyou again, again, and again.
Heart thudding, he reaches out to grasp Shouyou’s outstretched hand before changing his mind at the last second. Instead of a handshake, Atsumu hooks his pinky around Shouyou’s.
“Alright,” he says, “it’s a promise.”
⊹
In some ways, Shouyou leaving for Brazil feels like a caesura of sorts.
The extra pair of slippers remain untouched by the foyer, where a thin layer of dust settles over time. He never does get around to finishing the show they’d started together some months ago. At the convenience store, Atsumu stares a little too long at the Slurpee machine before reaching for the freezer door in the next aisle.
They stay in touch as promised.
Sometimes Shouyou will send him the link to a song without explanation, and Atsumu will save it to a private playlist he reserves for dreary bus rides. He snaps an unfocused shot of the team at dinner, to see his screen light up with a string of exclamation marks and seconds later, an image attachment of a rosy dawn.
There are the calls, too, where Shouyou asks about his day and Atsumu mentions one of the Brazilian League’s recent matches in passing.
They stay on the phone for hours once when Atsumu is driving down to Tokyo at night. So you don’t fall asleep, Shouyou says, and Atsumu has no way of telling him he’s never felt more alive at the wheel.
The world doesn’t cave in, and surprisingly, most days it feels like enough.
⊹
During the off-season, Atsumu takes the bullet train back to his grandmother’s. The commute unfolds in a reel of sprawling scenery—skyscrapers dotted with pinpricks of light, billboards flashing neon lettering, the Yamato river flickering like a candle in the breeze.
He thinks back to the last time he’d spent more than a weekend at home. A few years back, the first summer he’d signed with the Jackals, Osamu had driven the two of them in a rented Jeep. The car ride had been rife with bickering over the radio station, interspersed every now and then by the engine sputtering and stalling.
He’d been looking forward to practicing in their grandmother’s backyard, the same way he and Osamu used to pass the long evening hours just before dinner. As it turned out, July was spent in a haze of sun-soaked chores—gathering fresh-tilled hay by the armful, stepping barefoot into the wooden basins his grandmother used for laundry, keeping an eye on the apricot preserve bubbling over the stove.
By the time Atsumu wheedled his way out of errands for the day, his muscles had been aching as he set up the fraying net behind the house. Still, he’d strong-armed Osamu into joining him for practice, as long as there was still enough daylight lingering over the tree line out west.
Sleep came in the form of a dreamless weight settling over his eyelids, thick and saccharine. It was the most well-rested he’d felt in ages.
He thinks of Osamu scowling as he spits out, When you’re eighty and have the confidence to say that you’re happier than me, make fun of me then; he thinks of Kita-san in a floppy straw hat and the sacks of rice stacked carefully in his brother's storeroom.
The train ride home passes in a blur.
⊹
Atsumu-san,
How have you been? I heard it snowed in Osaka for the first time yesterday—did it affect practice at all? I just remembered there was a whiteout one year, back when we were in high school. Our afternoon classes were canceled, and some of the buses were stuck in the snowdrift for hours. The best part was making mochi with my mom, though. She made these huge, steaming mugs of hot chocolate for us after dinner. They went so well with the strawberry mochi!
The kitchen was a mess—Natsu spilled flour on the counter, and everything she touched ended up in the sink. We had to redo so many dishes, too.
Writing this feels kind of strange, but I think it’s maybe because holding a pen feels different these days? Atsumu-san, you know what I mean, right? I had to borrow this pen from a stranger, a lady with her two kids. Oh, I’m at the Metropolitan Cathedral— Catedral da Sé —and I’m writing this in the corner of the gift shop. I think you’d like it here, at the cathedral, I mean—not the gift shop, though they do have some pretty cool t-shirts and other touristy souvenirs.
The cathedral is definitely big enough to get lost in. I don’t know much about architecture and whatnot, but the dome is beautiful. Everything is on such a grand scale, from the marble sculptures to the stained glass windows.
If you stand under one of the windows and wait for the right moment, it’s almost like being underwater—there’s so much light moving around on the ground. I wish you could see the pineapple and armadillo sculptures, too. (I thought あるまじろwas a kind of rodent…kanji is still so confusing.)
Atsumu-san, I miss you a lot. Japan as well, but mostly you. I wish I could find the words for what I feel—I’m not as homesick anymore. Not when I’m writing to you, not having to filter my thoughts or wrest them into an approximation of English.
Can this be my answer, then, to your question?
⊹
Do you think we’ve blown it up, Shouyou-kun?
⊹
In some ways, Shouyou leaving for Brazil feels like this—December in Osaka is mercilessly cold.
The temperature dips to a stark five degrees above zero; forecasts predict a record low in the weeks to follow. There is no interim between long sunlit hours and overcast skies hanging heavy. The cold is a reminder, after all, that Indian summers are just that—fleeting, temporal in their defiance of months long past.
A swan song to recall the husk of warmer, brighter days.
The story goes like this—an ancient epitaph reads, Here Phaethon lies who in the sun-god's chariot fared. And though greatly he failed, more greatly he dared.
Engraved in stone, an inventory of grief: seven poplar trees, fossilized sorrow glistening on the river bank.
The king of Liguria—Cygnus—mourned Phaethon alongside his sister nymphs. The river Eridanus bore witness to his lamentation, or so they say. His grief—silvered hair turned feather turned constellation.
Half god and all divine, his descent a brief stitch in the fabric of history.
The world doesn’t cave in.
⊹
Atsumu misses Shouyou anyway, misses him the way an exit wound is shaped by its becoming. The question, which isn’t really a question but waits to hear the drop all the same.
⊹
Shouyou-kun,
You asked if your postcard could be an answer to what I never asked. Not in any straightforward manner, anyhow. You know how I am—a compulsive liar, and not a very brave one at that. You’d argue with me, if you were here, and I’d love you for stubbornly being on my side, even if I was the one poking fun at myself.
Shouyou-kun, I don’t know if you’ve noticed—I’m excellent at deflecting, at keeping my distance from people I can’t stand for the life of me. It’s a fine art I’ve kept at for as long as I can remember. But because I don’t think I have it in me to be savvy with you, to play it cool or mince words for the sake of dignity—not any longer—you changed that.
From the first time I played against you, probably, even before I made that promise. The question was, did we miss our chance? You’ve given me hope in your answer. So, here’s my next question—will you go out with me, however long it takes you to come back?
⊹
At six AM, the first hints of light give shape to a room he knows by heart—a painstakingly assembled IKEA bookshelf, a tangled cable charger dangling from its socket, a sweater draped over the door knob as an afterthought. The tangible weight of his blanket settles as Atsumu shifts his weight to the side, mind still foggy and cotton-thick from sleep.
It takes a few seconds for him to remember: the hazy stupor of stumbling into the apartment complex last night, arms knocking against each other and keys jingling, laughter hollowing out a familiar space deep in his sternum.
He startles. Next to him, Shouyou stirs for a moment before falling still, one hand sticking out of the blanket to rest on the edge of his pillow.
The last time Atsumu had seen him asleep, the bus ride through downtown Osaka had been bumpy and loud, the two of them exhausted from practice running late. Even then, as he’d fought the heaviness weighing his eyelids down, Atsumu had turned in his seat so that their bodies were angled just a little closer.
Shouyou is a light sleeper, this he knows from experience—jetlagged and worn out from a twenty-one hour flight is pretty much the only time he sleeps in, and by extension, the only time Atsumu gets to watch him wake up, hair pillow-mussed and lashes fanning across his cheeks.
When Shouyou wakes, he stretches his arms, which inevitably hit the headboard, and the dazed confusion coloring his face is enough to unearth a well of fondness so deep it engulfs.
The sky outside lightens from gunmetal into a pale bone china, tinged with pink.
Atsumu kisses Shouyou on the forehead.
“Hi.”
He’s pulled back in for another peck, this one landing on the curve of his cheek.
“You’re up early.” Shouyou smiles as he kicks the blanket back in one fluid motion, an arm hooked around Atsumu, half clinging and half sitting up.
“I was going to make us breakfast. Y’know, I thought we could eat outside if the weather was nice.” He frowns, “But it’s already close to eight, I think.”
He can tell Shouyou is trying not to laugh from the way his eyes crinkle around the edges.
“You wanted to watch the sunrise.”
“With you.” Like they do in those Western romances, he doesn’t add.
Shouyou twines their hands together and presses a kiss to the jut of Atsumu’s wrist. “Your hands are cold,” he murmurs, “we should bring blankets outside next time. I won’t oversleep.”
“You looked so comfortable I didn’t want to wake you.”
⊹
There are sunrises, and then there is this—thumbs mapping out weathered heart lines, touch molded into the shape of longing.
Atsumu’s hands, holding what holds him back.