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Escape velocity: In physics (specifically, celestial mechanics ), escape velocity is the minimum speed needed for a free, non- propelled object to escape from the gravitational influence of a massive body, that is, to achieve an infinite distance from it.
i.
Kageyama Tobio is five years old, and he doesn't know how to tie his shoes.
Objectively, yes, he knows how it's done— he knows that you cross right over left and pull the shoelace underneath and pull it tight, that the right lace forms a loop between thumb and forefinger, that the left lace curls around the spot where those fingers are pinched together before being plucked through and pulled tight, tucked away so that Tobio can run free from the fear of tripping over his own two feet— but he doesn't feel like he's doing it right. One loop always ends up a bit bigger than the other, or he tightens the laces so much that the tops of his feet are crisscrossed with angry red indentations when he removes his shoes at the end of the day. No matter how many times he ties and reties the laces, there's always an unequal pressure, an imbalance in the lace-to-lace ratio.
His sister buys him a pair of velcro sneakers. They're cool shoes, really— but Tobio's chest hurts a little when he thinks about his lace-up shoes sitting by the front door; shoes that were a pristine white when his grandfather bought them two months ago but have now adopted a hue reminiscent of the dirty rainwater that collects in the empty flowerpot on Tobio's back lawn, the laces speckled with dried brown blood from the times he tied them and untied them again and again until they didn't feel so foreign on his feet.
The velcro shoes are great, really, they are— and Tobio shoves the unopened box under his bed because the thought of giving up on tying his shoes perfectly, of never achieving that wonderfully balanced pressure, of never getting identical twin loops and even-ended aglets makes his head spin and heart clench because who is he to abandon the shoes waiting for him by the front door before he's mastered their laces?
Two days later, he finally gets it right. He caresses his fingers, picks at chipped fingernails, hisses through his teeth when he washes his hands with hot soapy water, tender and uncalloused skin unfamiliar with the sting, sweeps his thumb across the reddened expanse of his palm, the skin rubbed raw where the laces cut into him over and over again.
Tobio grins and wonders if triumph always tastes this heady.
Kageyama Tobio is nine years old, and reddened palms are typical for him now.
Volleyball is the first thing Tobio wants to commit himself to; soccer was too easy, basketball wasn't challenging, the violin was boring— but volleyball is fun. He's good at all of the positions. His grandfather says it's because he's naturally athletic. His sister says it's because he's a know-it-all and a try-hard. Tobio thinks they're both right, but he's not sure if it matters that he's good at all of the positions because he already knows which one he wants to play forever.
When Tobio tells his grandfather that he likes playing setter the best, he smiles and says he's not surprised. Tobio isn't sure what he means by that, but that's okay.
Kageyama Tobio is 11 years old, and his least favorite word is 'prodigy.'
The first person who had called him a prodigy was his grandfather, and he had said it so kindly, like the word itself was fragile and could break if tossed around too carelessly. Tobio had been ten years old, and the feeling of the ball springing from his fingertips to the spiker's palm to the linoleum flooring across the net felt as natural as breathing. Somewhere between all of the practicing and perfecting, Tobio had ended up miles and miles ahead of his peers. The gap in talent between Tobio and the other players his age was only growing wider, and people were starting to notice.
Coaches from various junior high schools in Miyagi approach him at almost every practice, all asking if he knows where he's going for junior high. Tobio wants to tell them that he doesn't know what he's having for dinner that night, let alone where he'll be attending school next year. But that would be rude, and his mother always frowns when she feels like Tobio has been rude, so he shrugs instead and says he's still 'considering his options,' like he has any clue what that means. At matches, he pretends like he doesn't notice men armed with clipboards seated in the top rows of the gymnasium, scribbling notes so furiously the sounds of pen scratching paper threaten to drown out the noise of the match.
For a while, his teammates pretend like they don't notice, either. They still thump Tobio on the back when he sends them another perfect toss and cheer him on when it's his serve: but as more scouts corner Tobio after practice, as more potential coaches attend their matches with that are eyes clearly reserved for Tobio and Tobio alone, the high-fives come less frequently, the cheers become quieter. Tobio notices how these days, his teammates fall silent when he walks into the locker room, loud chatter dying down so quickly one could only hear squeaky sneakers on the tiled floor. Tobio starts getting to practices earlier so that he can always be the first one in and the first one out of the locker room because it's getting harder to pretend like he can't hear the quiet snickering on the other side of the door the moment it clicks shut behind him. If they make cruel jokes about Tobio's prodigious skills, he doesn't stick around to hear them.
Eventually, the high-fives stop altogether, and the cheering becomes quiet, unenthused, mechanical. Slowly, the annoyance of his teammates turns to bitterness, and bitterness turns to anger. He's been mocked as a prodigy and a genius behind his back, but the first time one of his teammates calls Tobio a ‘prodigy’ to his face, the word contains none of the awestruck wonder it held when his grandfather uttered it, held the word in his wrinkled and trembling hands, as though it was a bird with a broken wing. This time, his teammate says 'prodigy' like its vowels are acidic and burn the roof of his mouth, like its syllables drip venom, spits it out like spoiled milk chugged from the carton, and Tobio wonders how someone can make a kind word sound so hateful.
The gap in talent between himself and his teammates has turned into a canyon, and instead of sprinting to catch him, his teammates plant their feet and draw a line in the sand. Being a prodigy, Kageyama Tobio decides, is not all it's cracked up to be. Because across the chasm is a team: Tobio might have them beat when it comes to raw talent, but somehow, they still come out on top because they have each other while Tobio has only himself. Across the chasm, his teammates find rivals in one another: they compete to see who will be the starting outside hitter, who can block the most points— and they're all close in talent, no insurmountable gaps separating them, fingers always grasping at one another's back in an attempt to catch them and be the winner.
There are no fingers seeking purchase in the fabric of Tobio's jersey, no one breathing down the back of his neck, nipping at his heels. Instead of fingers on his back, there are only the cold and piercing gazes of players miles and miles behind him. And since there's no way of moving backward, and because Tobio has no intention of slowing down, what choice does he have other than to surge ahead and pray that someday he'll hear footsteps pounding behind him and be forced to pick up his pace?
So when the coach from Kitagawa Daiichi approaches Tobio at the award ceremony of some tournament and asks Tobio if he's made a decision, Tobio ignores the icy glares that grip the back of his neck and scrape down his spine and says that he looks forward to being a member of the Kitagawa Daiichi volleyball club next year.
Oikawa Tooru is 14 years old, and he hears footsteps pounding behind him, feels quick puffs of hot breath on the back of his neck, fingers brushing the fabric on his back— and he runs like hell.
Kageyama Tobio is, objectively, a nice and polite boy. He respects all of his seniors, receives instruction without complaint or hesitation, and stays after practice to put away the balls and take the net down. Kageyama Tobio is, objectively, a perfect junior. Oikawa Tooru, objectively, can't stand Kageyama Tobio, and almost backhands him because of it; but first:
Tooru has a nasty habit (Hajime's words, not his) of overdoing things. He turns simple tasks into massive productions, makes small details into focal points, turns offhand comments into days, and days of anxious contemplation. He turns great jump serves into untouchable jump serves because he overdoes everything, leaves no stone unturned, no flaw unaddressed. Hajime can't stand it; Tooru doesn't know any other way.
Tobio has a nasty habit (Tooru's words) of being a natural at almost everything. Tooru watches as Kunimi receives the ball in a 3-on-3 match during practice, and it's not a great receive. The ball wobbles through the air into an unmanned corner of the court, and somehow, Tobio is there. He maneuvers himself under the ball with ease, like it's the most natural thing in the world, and sends the ball from an impossible spot to Kindaichi. The point scores and Tooru feels as though someone has dumped a cold bucket of water over his head and then pushed him into an active volcano because Tobio is good at volleyball without ever needing to think about it.
It's not a fluke; unfortunately— Tobio never needs to overthink or overdo anything. Tooru wonders if maybe Tobio had tiny magnets implanted in his fingertips at birth because the ball never fails to find his two hands, flexed fingers poised to make a miracle out of a mistake, eyes unwavering, stance steadfast, like it's the most natural thing in the world.
Tooru can't stand it, because his fingertips are made from flesh, and sometimes his grip isn't steady and sure, sometimes the toss is too high or too low, sometimes the receive is off, and Tooru can't suddenly make the impossible possible the way Tobio apparently can. Tooru can't stand it because he has a nasty habit of overdoing things, and when Coach blows his whistle after practice and tells everyone to head on home, Tooru stays. Sometimes he can convince Hajime or Kindaichi or some other poor soul to stay and spike a few, and sometimes it's just him, jumping until his thighs burn, setting until the pads of his fingers feel like television static. Tooru can't stand it because he's beaten his own body into submission and cultivated every last talent and skill he could find tucked away deep within the crevices of his skeleton. And Tobio? Tobio just has a knack for it.
Which is how the jump serves happen:
Hajime hangs back with Tooru more often these days, and they both pretend like it's because Hajime just wants the extra practice and not because he caught Tooru coming back from the gym in the dead of night last week, knee swollen and eyes bloodshot. Practice ends at 8:00, and most nights, Hajime can drag Tooru out of there by 11:00. Other nights, he just has to walk back home by himself and lay in his bed, wide awake, eyes glued to Tooru's bedroom window on the other side of the street, and hope that he sees the light come on sometime before 01:00.
Hajime doesn't pretend to understand the obsession with the jump serve. Tooru already had a perfectly good jump serve, but Tooru has a nasty habit of overdoing things— Hajime knows this. Hajime knows this, and when Tooru almost backhands Kageyama Tobio for asking him for advice on jump serves, Hajime thinks he gets it. Hajime intervenes, and he and Tooru both stand there, blood dripping from Tooru's nose and onto Hajime's hand where it clutches the fabric of Tooru's shirt. Tobio figures out the jump serve on his own.
Oikawa Tooru is 14 years old, and yeah, he almost smacked a kid— but he didn't. Surely that counts for something.
Kageyama Tobio is a prodigy: there's no denying that— but Oikawa Tooru was wrong about a few things:
Remember those dirty white lace-up shoes?
Tobio pulled the shoebox with the velcro shoes out from under his bed pretty much the moment he was sure he'd mastered the method of tying his dirty white lace-up shoes. Because the moment he was able to run across the playground at school without feeling like the Earth was tilted wrong on its axis, or that time had decided to start moving backward, or that the one larger loop on his right shoe was threatening to wrap around both of his toothpick ankles and topple him to the ground, the moment he felt like he achieved something close to perfection, he fell out of love with those shoes and was ready for something new and unfamiliar.
Fascination turns to apathy the way milk curdles and sours as it sits abandoned in the back corner of the refrigerator; obsession turns to indifference the way caterpillars emerge from cocoons as butterflies when humid spring bleeds into blistering summer.
Here's the thing about the shoes:
Tobio loves things intensely, relentlessly, ardently. He loves the incomplete, the halfway-there, the diamond in the rough. Kageyama Tobio finds works-in-progress and holds them impossibly close to his chest; he welcomes the misshapen and the jagged into his life with open arms, commits to refining them, polishing them until they're virtually unrecognizable. He kneels in the grass on the vernal equinox, lets sickly green caterpillars climb up his fingers and into his palm, watches them spin cocoons in the thaw of April, and dreams and dreams of what could be.
Here's the thing about the shoes:
When calendar pages turn from April to May, and the air becomes thick with rain, the caterpillars who slept under Tobio's loving and watchful eyes grow wings— and what can Tobio do but watch them test their speckled wings, flap them curiously, before slowly lifting away from his palm, into the air, up, up, up, and away?
Here's the thing about the shoes, his signature, the violin, the whistling, and every other thing Tobio finds unpolished, unbalanced, incomplete: he holds it in his palm and doesn't look away until he knows he's made it his:
He loves it until it's perfect— and then he lets it go. Up, up, up, and away.
Kageyama Tobio is 14 years old, and he's terrible with both metaphors and science— but if he wasn't, he might think of something like this:
Here’s how gravity works: larger objects have a greater affinity for attracting objects towards them, meaning that the bigger something is, the stronger its gravitational pull. This is why the moon orbits the Earth, why the Earth orbits the sun, why the Solar System twirls and twirls around some massively intense focal point of the Milky Way. Tobio knows jack-shit about physics, but he knows well enough that gravity is the reason why humans stay tethered to the Earth.
Or most humans, anyway— the boy on the other side of the net must not know much about physics either, or maybe he does and simply doesn't care enough to abide by the rules. Tobio hears the tendons click at the base of his neck before he feels the twinge of pain, that tell-tale crunch of muscle tissue that only happens if you whip your head around too quickly. He ignores the discomfort in favor of watching as the boy's feet abandon the ground beneath him, wings springing from the space between his shoulder blades, and carrying him towards the ceiling. The spike is blocked, and the boy returns to the Earth with the same fury in his eyes that Tobio sees in the mirror sometimes.
Kitagawa Daiichi wins easily. Outside of the gymnasium, the boy stands on the stairs above Tobio and proclaims, with tears streaming down his cheeks, that he'll defeat Tobio someday, that he'll be the one that remains on the court.
And for the first time, Tobio hears the pounding of footsteps that threaten to catch up to him, watches as the boy looks down at the chasm between them— and instead of planting his feet and drawing a line in the sand, decides that canyons mean nothing to humans with wings— and leaps.
Orbital decay: In orbital mechanics, decay is a gradual decrease in the distance between two orbiting bodies at their closest approach (the periapsis) over many orbital periods. If left unchecked, the decay eventually results in termination of the orbit when the smaller object strikes the surface of the primary; or for objects where the primary has an atmosphere, the smaller object burns, explodes, or otherwise breaks up in the more massive object's atmosphere; or for objects where the primary is a star, ends with incineration by the star's radiation (such as for comets), and so on.
ii.
Kageyama Tobio is 15 years old when he meets Hinata Shouyou.
And okay, maybe they "met" at a tournament in junior high. Still, they don't really meet until Hinata bursts through the doors of Karasuno's gym, pointing an accusatory finger at Tobio and demanding to know what he's doing there. It's not the most stellar first (or second) impression. Truthfully, Tobio doesn't know what to make of him at first: objectively, he sucks at volleyball. There's no intellect behind his decisions, no technique in his frenzied movements— and yet, the ball all but demands that Hinata is the one to hit it. Tobio holds off for as long as he can, not yet willing to submit to the tingling in his fingers or the childlike curiosity that just wants to ask: can he really do it?
But of course, Tobio eventually caves in: and when he does, Hinata is somehow already in the air, seemingly floating near the top of the net, eyes squeezed shut: I'm here, I'm here— don't you want to see if it can be done? And Tobio really does want to see it, so he fires the ball off the well-calloused pads of his fingertips at a height and speed he'd never achieved with his former teammates— and somehow, Hinata Shouyou strikes the ball perfectly. It whizzes over the net and blows past the defenders, hitting the ground with a satisfying smack.
Tobio turns his awed gaze to Hinata— Hinata, whose face breaks into a brilliant grin, eyes glued to his rapidly reddening palm— and Tobio feels a pang of resentment because he had planned on being a good setter this time around, a real "team player." He'd walked into Karasuno's gym leaving his crown and scepter at the door, had wrung his hands together and begged them to slow down just a little bit because Tobio has been rejected time and time again, and this time was going to be different—
—except it wasn't, because Hinata had taken Tobio's best-laid plans and spat on them with a single leap into the air, eyes screwed shut, blindly trusting that Tobio would deliver the ball to his hands. And Tobio, perpetually drawn to novelty and works-in-progress and imperfect things, discovers that maybe mass isn't the only thing that determines an object's gravitational pull because he's unable to deny this boy who doesn't believe that gravity has a hold on him.
Tobio, perpetually drawn to the novelty of unearthed gems, hates that his radar is so finely attuned to Hinata, calibrated to pick him out of a crowd like a metal detector striking buried steel— because here's the thing:
Years ago, Tobio said he liked playing setter best, and his grandfather nodded his head with a knowing smile and said that he wasn't surprised. Tobio didn't know what he meant at the time, but he thinks he might get it now because when the ball arcs towards Tobio's waiting fingers, he doesn't hesitate. He doesn't look for blockers, doesn't for a single moment consider that the attack might be stopped: he only finds Hinata, airborne, frozen in place, waiting for the ball to choose him— and caves in. And he hates it because Tobio is supposed to be the conductor of the orchestra, is supposed to be the one calling the shots: but Hinata laughs and dances on Isaac Newton's grave and abandons the ground like he belongs in the sky; Hinata demands to hit the ball, and the ball demands that Hinata hit it.
But Tobio knows that the more massive an object is, the stronger its gravitational pull. Hinata's force tries to pull Tobio into orbit, tries to add him to the order of planets that march in ellipses around his ever-glowing spirit, and Tobio resists. He makes Hinata beg for tosses, makes him earn each and every ball sent in his direction like it's his last vestige of control because it is.
Somewhere along the way— maybe after Hinata's heart breaks in the wake of their defeat against Seijoh, or when Karasuno loses nearly every match they play during the Tokyo training camps— Hinata seems to have decided that he can fly with eyes wide open, that he can soar without a tether connecting him to Tobio. He jumps higher, runs harder, coaxes every last ounce of raw talent and willpower that he can from himself, and forces Tobio to match his pace. Tobio bends to Hinata’s will, sends his tosses higher and faster, each one a silent question: can you make a miracle out of this one, as well? And the answer, time and time again: of course.
When Hinata leaps over Ushijima Wakatoshi's head and says that he's sprouted from the dry and infertile concrete and claims that he will be the victor, Tobio knows that Hinata Shouyou has seen this future in a vision and wills himself to piece it together. Concrete, Tobio learns, is nothing compared to the resilience of life, the tenacity of existence, the inevitability of primary ecological succession: for if only a meager amount of soil accumulates in the fractures of cement, if the wind blows the microscopic seeds of a flower or a weed in just the right direction, if a mere few raindrops soak through the asphalt and moisten the dirt within— something can grow there.
And isn't it amazing that people pick up gardening as a hobby, cherish their green thumbs, cultivate life in the loving embrace of topsoil teeming with nutrients— and sometimes end up with nothing but wilted stems? Isn't it incredible that a single dry season, a single infestation of vine borers or aphids, or a poorly timed drenching rain can destroy all that burgeoning new life— yet microorganisms can wriggle their way into the cracks and crevices of unloving places, can take the bare minimum required to sustain growth, and thrive in ecosystems not meant to accommodate something with the desire to live?
Somewhere along the way— maybe after they beat Ushijima Wakatoshi, maybe after Tobio was chosen to train among the cream of the crop at the Youth Training Camp in Tokyo and Hinata was left behind, forced to watch as the canyon between them widened a little further— Hinata seems to have learned that all life is subject to evolution, that natural selection is an inevitability, that adaptability is a choice. Every time Hinata improves his skills, every time he proves that he still has room to grow, Tobio wonders when he'll hit a brick wall that he can't break down with sheer determination, when he'll truly hit his ceiling and Tobio will be forced to continue on without him, no longer hounded by pounding footsteps, no longer plagued by sharpened teeth nipping at his heels.
But Tobio returns from Tokyo after being gone for less than a week, and the boy in front of him now is not the same boy that he left behind a few days ago. Because when they race for what feels like the thousandth time, Hinata rockets ahead of him to win, and his eyes are sharp with the thrill of victory, it occurs to Tobio that Hinata's victories are no longer flukes, no longer strokes of good luck— and Tobio wonders if Hinata discovered that the life that sprouts from concrete is harder to kill than the pretty flowers housed in the dark topsoil of raised-bed gardens, bricked-in with stacked slabs of stone, high and mighty like castle walls. Weeds poke out of the spaces between bricks and mortar, grow in between the tile squares of backyard patios, and glue themselves to roof shingles. Tobio thinks of gardeners who curse the weeds that leech sunlight and nutrients from the delicate bulbs of newborn flowers, and rip the weeds out at the root, and douse their lawns with targeted chemicals and warn them to stay away; and the next day, or week, or season, when the gardener returns to shower their flowers with love and water: the weed has grown back.
They race each other for what feels like the thousandth time, and Tobio thinks that if he stretched his arm in front of him, extended his fingers to their full length, and reached: he'd manage to grasp the back of Hinata's shirt.
Miya Atsumu is 17 years old, and he thinks everyone else has the wrong idea about this whole thing.
To be fair, he had the wrong idea at first, too. He met Kageyama Tobio at the Youth Training Camp in Tokyo and could tell that he was a talented volleyball player and a prodigious setter just as everyone had claimed— but he was too cautious in his gameplay. He gauged every attacker's abilities and styles, pinpointed the spot where the spiker could hit the ball most comfortably, and delivered it with practiced precision and elegance. There was no challenging taunt in the arc of the toss, no expectations for the attack to go above and beyond, no surprises.
He watches Karasuno's game footage on the night before their match at Nationals, and his suspicions are confirmed: #3 has the strongest spike, so he likes the toss to be high; #1 has an impressive line shot, so he wants the ball head-on; #11 likes to attack the center, #5 has a powerful cross-shot— and #10 can jump. Tobio meets them all halfway and never coaxes them to jump a little higher, a little faster. Kageyama Tobio is a goody-two-shoes who is too scared of the past to push his teammates to the absolute limit. Atsumu finds that disappointing.
But under the bright lights of the gym in Tokyo, he admits to himself that he was wrong— at least in part. Karasuno's #10 plants his feet and jumps, and Atsumu is certain that this leap is higher than the ones he's seen on tape by far. He wonders if maybe the team had strategically hidden #10's true talents, waited for the right moment to reveal that #10 doesn't just jump, he flies— but then he doesn't spike the ball and lands back on the Earth looking just as shocked as everyone else. Atsumu looks to Tobio, wondering if he's the one who enticed that gravity-defying display— but Tobio also wears an expression of awed shock, and Atsumu gets it. #10 (Hinata Shouyou, he thinks) flounders for a moment, apologizing for forgetting to hit the ball, before turning to Tobio and silently daring him to toss the next one even higher.
See, everyone seems to think that Kageyama Tobio is some sort of dog walker, that he has a five-pronged leash wrapped around his wrist, that he brings his spikers to heel and coordinates their attacks like a well-rehearsed symphony orchestra, flicks his wrist and waves the conductor's baton to produce harmonies and melodies. Tobio stands at the control tower, and his attackers fall into their ranks behind him, ready to do his bidding should they be lucky enough to be chosen. But Hinata Shouyou lifts his chin in silent challenge, waits to see if Tobio will rise to meet him where he waits, a few centimeters closer to the sky than anyone thought possible, and Atsumu sees that he was wrong.
What a shame, he thinks, that Hinata Shouyou was gifted with wings only for his setter to drape a delicate chain around his ankle and tether him to the ground. He thinks that Kageyama Tobio is sort of like a child and Hinata Shouyou is like a balloon, and Tobio is petrified that the string might slip from his fingers, and the balloon will fly up, up, up and away. Atsumu thinks he'd like to snap that chain, wants to see how many more physical laws of the universe Hinata Shouyou is capable of defying. When the match ends, and the whistle blows, Atsumu points a steady finger across the net. "Shouyou-kun, I'm gonna set for you someday."
Kageyama Tobio is 16 years old, and the sting of defeat was always going to hurt, but this one burns particularly fierce.
Hinata doesn't sit next to anyone on the bus ride back to Miyagi. He sits in a seat by himself near the front and stares out the window for nearly the entire drive. It would be easier, Tobio thinks, if Hinata was angry at someone other than himself. He wishes Hinata would turn around and snap at one of them, any of them, wishes he would yell and scream until his throat scrapes over heated words, raspy, raw, and wrecked.
He realizes, belatedly, that that's what Tobio would have done a year or two ago: pin the blame on anyone or anything but himself. When had that changed? When had he learned to share in the saltwater-sting of defeat the same way he shares in the euphoric high of victory? He looks around at his teammates scattered across the bus. They look sad, yes, cheeks no longer painted with dried tears but sullen nonetheless— and some of them look angry: but none of that anger is directed anywhere but inward, none of that sadness permeates beyond themselves.
The heartbreak hasn't altogether disappeared when the bus pulls up to the gym— but it has dissipated, if only slightly. The purple-blue of dusk is beginning to bleed into night, and Ukai doesn't want the boys walking home in the pitch black, exhausted, so he keeps his speeches short and to the point. When the third years rise to give their farewell speeches, Daichi doesn't cry— at least, not until Sugawara and Asahi cry, and then he sheds a few tears. Takeda gives the boys huddled on the floor a wobbly smile and tells them that everything they've just done— all of the practices, and team dinners, and road trips, all of the victories, and even the gut-wrenching losses— all of it is the most fun he's ever had. Everyone leaves the gym with red-rimmed eyes and tight throats— but they do it together. Tobio wishes he could show this scene to his 11-year-old self: because he finally has teammates that love him, prodigious abilities and callous attitude included, and it's more than Tobio could have ever asked for.
When Tobio arrives at the gym the next morning, Hinata is already there, waiting for him. He stands on the court's backline and sends a high toss to Tobio, but instead of setting the ball, Tobio catches it and raises an eyebrow at Hinata. Hinata rolls his eyes. "Just once?"
Tobio laughs through his nose and shakes his head, and Hinata throws another ball to Tobio. His fingers reach towards it, drawn towards the ball like a magnet, like he’s a moth in the dead of night gravitating towards a single porchlight in the moonlit humidity, and the ball jumps from fingertips to palm to court. Hinata's face lights up like it's the very first time, like the novelty of a ball hitting the court won't ever wear off.
He turns that sunny grin to Tobio, and Tobio is sure that they'll be okay.
Remember those dirty white lace-up shoes?
Kageyama Tobio has a knack for sculpting jagged edges into works of art. He finds shards of glass, chunks of earthy sediment, pages of poetry ripped from book bindings, and painstakingly finds the edges where they can fit together and makes them a mosaic. He falls in love with the imperfect, the work-in-progress, the halfway-incomplete. He becomes infatuated with the novelty of things, becomes obsessed with the enigmatic, solves the people and problems in his life like a Rubik's cube— and when he becomes bored, he moves on.
Kageyama Tobio stands in the Karasuno gymnasium one last time, sends jump serve after jump serve into the back-left corner. Hinata rushes in, makes a perfect dig, sends the ball in a neat arc directly to where a setter would be waiting for it, fingers poised to deliver a toss like a gift, and Tobio’s heart breaks a little bit because it's almost the end of April, and broken, wilted cocoons litter forest floors, emptied of sleeping bodies, transformed life fluttering further and further into the sky.
Away from Tobio’s gentle palm - up, up, up, and away.
Aphelion: the farthest point of a planetary body’s direct orbit around the sun.
iii.
Kageyama Tobio is 19, and it's strange how easily he adapts to playing on a court without him.
He stands at the backline of the court and allows the cacophony of the arena to overtake him. The air in the stadium is surprisingly frigid as if an air-conditioner on full blast can counteract the blazing heat outside.
He tosses the ball into the air, takes one, two, three steps. He wonders if, somewhere in this city, Hinata Shouyou is watching this game.
He propels his arms behind him, bends his knees, and explodes from the ground. There are fewer miles between the two of them at this very moment than there have been in nearly 18 months.
His palm finds the ball's center, and he hits it, hard, over the net, and just within the backline: the whistle blows— service ace.
Tobio laughs through his nose silently, because he knows Hinata is nowhere near a television right now. The sun has almost sunk entirely below the horizon, the sky is turning quickly from blue to orange to reddish-purple: but when has receding daylight ever stopped Hinata?
13 kilometers away from the Olympics venue, Hinata Shouyou plants his foot in the sand and reaches for the sky.
They're not within the same national borders at the same time again until a year later, and Tobio finds out through Hoshiumi who finds out through Miya Atsumu's Instagram.
The blurry photo shows Atsumu, Bokuto Koutarou, and a despairing Sakusa Kiyoomi holding a horizontal Hinata Shouyou, and the caption reads the newest jackal!!!
21:39 hoshiumi (hinata w/ white hair?)
*click to download image* LMAO do u think he picked #21 because it's better than 20 hahahah
Tobio nearly throws his phone, because that's probably exactly why he picked it.
Remember those dirty white lace-up shoes?
Tobio never got rid of them. They sit in an old shoebox next to a battered soccer ball and a broken violin near the back of his closet. They're shoes meant for a five-year-old, so Tobio can obviously never wear them again— but he also can't bring himself to get rid of them, and this is important, so pay attention:
Kageyama Tobio falls in love with the novelty of things, and he loves them until they're perfect, and then he gets bored, and obsession becomes indifference and so on and so on— but even at five years old, he knows that there are different kinds of love, and just because he's no longer in love with something doesn't mean he doesn't still love it.
Tobio had been infatuated with what he could make of Hinata Shouyou. Tobio's hands had been rejected for as long as he could remember, moving too fast and too angrily to touch anything tenderly— and the universe saw this, caressed his calloused hands in its embrace, and said here, this is for you, and gifted him with something malleable and endless. And Tobio, like a Renaissance sculptor, wanted to chisel Hinata's jagged edges into something with the potential to be loved forever— but then the marble came to life, and the art learned how to exist without the artist.
Hinata Shouyou, like every other thing Tobio has loved before, loses his novelty— he emerges from a shell with brightly spotted wings, steps down from a pedestal with legs sculpted from marble, turns an abandoned concrete parking lot into an ecosystem teeming with the thrill that comes from being alive— so Tobio adds his name to a pile of things he loves, hidden away in the back of his closet with a soccer ball, a violin, and a pair of dirty white shoes, and lets him go. Up, up, up, and away.
Kageyama Tobio is 21 years old— but just for a moment, he's 14 years old again.
The gymnasium isn't the same, and the net is positioned higher, and Hinata is dressed in black instead of lime green, Tobio in white instead of Kitagawa Daiichi blue: but this angle feels awfully familiar, Tobio thinks, as he tilts his head backward and looks skyward. Hinata, closer to the ceiling than anyone ought to be, right arm poised to strike, eyes open and locked onto Tobio's: yes, I've seen this before. The ball blasts past Tobio's outstretched hand and hits the linoleum. Where the ball ends up, he's not entirely sure, because his eyes are locked onto Hinata's, both their faces split open into identical grins.
Bokuto scores the final point for the Jackals, and the whistle blows twice— and Tobio catches a glimpse of himself in Miya Atsumu, as Atsumu grabs both of Hinata's hands, spins him in a circle before clutching him close to his chest— and Tobio is nothing but grateful. Grateful that art can exist without its artist, can find new and different hands to shape it differently; that weeds can settle their roots into cracks in the concrete and grow back stronger every time they're cut back; and grateful, most of all, to have spent even a moment caught in the light of the sun, suspended in its orbit, an apostate to the laws of gravity.