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She probably won’t even come.
Right. It makes no sense to get all worked up about it, when the likelihood is that Yachi Hitoka will not be seeing Shimizu Kiyoko tonight for the first time in four years.
There are plenty of other things to obsess over. The credibility of Shouchan and Tobio’s reunion-planning skills (though she’d checked twice to make sure they’d actually sent the invitations to all members from their time at Karasuno), the very real possibility that Tsukishima will sneak out if a friendly match starts up (Hinata had declared one most certainly would), whether or not the food spread will be enough (do all the boys still eat like when they were teenagers?), and so on.
Unfortunately Yachi counts obsessing among her many talents, and manages to worry about all of this while simultaneously panicking over Kiyoko-san’s non-existent RSVP.
“I’m sure she’ll be here,” Shouchan tells her, managing to stuff a piece of chicken in his mouth at the same time they’re hanging a banner in the gym. Welcome back, Karasuno Boys Volleyball Club. Yachi cringes at the sight of him wiping a little grease from his fingers on the sign, and because he doesn’t even know why Yachi has latched on to this uncertainty so tightly. Kiyoko-san herself doesn’t know, probably, Yachi hopes—if she did, Yachi couldn’t stand the embarrassment. Not that she can stand the secret, either, but it’s slightly better than the alternative.
She spots Hinata as he climbs down the ladder and starts yelling at Kageyama, parked on the other end of the gym blowing up balloons. “Can’t you make them any bigger? Do you even have lungs?” She smiles at Hinata stomping over to “help” and at the glower on Kageyama’s face; when she and Kageyama had both chosen universities in Sendai after graduating last year, she’d been quietly delighted that the friendship the three of them built through high school would be able to continue. And she’s still delighted, even if they’re going to turn her prematurely deaf with their shouting.
Her watch says it’s fifteen to seven, which gives them a quarter of an hour before people start arriving. Yachi peers around the gym, at the finger food and drinks, at the table of board games and other activities she had neatly gathered and arranged, the net strung over the court, the scorecard reading 26-28—the score of the final set in their victory against Shiratorizawa in their first year. This, too, had been Yachi’s touch; Shouchan screamed and hugged her when she’d suggested it.
“Where’s Ukai-san? And Takeda-sensei?” Kageyama barks to no one in particular, as he tries to bat Hinata away with a half-filled balloon.
“I think they’re in Takeda-sensei’s office. They’ll be come down at seven with everyone else.” Instinctively she is still searching for something to do with her hands, even though the gym looks about as perfect as it could, being a gym, and minus the balloons, and she has no desire to get in the middle of that. “I’ll check on them after I use the restroom,” she decides out loud, earning nods from her distracted companions, and she slips outside the gym into the walkway.
The late March night is chilly and she shoves her hands under her arms while she scurries to the main school building. It must be strange for the third years—she always thinks of them as the third years, even after being a third year herself—to come back here after so long. As she pads across the courtyard she wonders if it will look exactly the same to them in the way it looks exactly the same to her. Or if there had been changes she hadn’t noticed, in the two years she attended Karasuno without them.
Inside she feels a hint of surprise that the girls’ bathroom, too, seems exactly like she had left it. The little mirrors over the sinks, the worn greyish tile, stalls with names and hearts and rude things scratched into the paint. She assess her reflection, lifts her fingers to her chin to try and stop it wobbling.
Her clothes are cute. Just cute, a sweater and skirt. Almost... childish, and she sighs and tries to tug the sweater around, like maybe that will suddenly make her look like a sexy grown person, and not a twenty-year-old girl who has a crush on a twenty-three-year-old woman.
She shuts her eyes and tilts her head back. Who had a crush. You can’t still have a crush on someone after not seeing them for four years, that would be silly, and Yachi isn’t silly, except… sometimes, when she is very silly, but doesn’t knowing you’re silly make you less silly, at least a little bit? This is silly.
But it’s different with firsts, especially the first person who makes you realize something about yourself. Like you owe that sliver of your identity to that individual who came into your life and was so beautiful, you realized what you wanted.
Her eyes pop open. The ceiling of the bathroom was probably white, once, but now is stained grey.
“Hitoka-chan.”
She hears herself make a noise, a gasp turning into a shriek, as she wheels around to gape at the figure in the doorway.
Kiyoko looks incredible. It’s not surprising. Her dark hair pulled back into a bun, wearing a black dress with a plunging neckline, the handsome curves of her neck and collarbone stand out. It’s so simple, the dress and the hair and little bit of make-up she wears, but she’s stunning. She doesn’t need anything more than that.
So maybe you can still have a crush on someone after not seeing them for four years.
“You came,” Yachi squeaks, barely coherent.
“I wasn’t sure I could make it up from Tokyo in time, but yes.” Kiyoko steps forward, a little tentative when she extends her arms to Yachi. A hug. She wants to hug me. Yachi moves like a particularly speedy zombie into the embrace. The smell—a little perfume and what must just be her natural, incredible scent—makes Yachi feel faint. Everything about Kiyoko is soft, her skin and her breasts and her voice in Yachi’s ear. “You’re taller. Are you bigger than Hinata-kun now?” Kiyoko moves away and it’s everything Yachi has not to whimper in disappointment.
“Only by a couple of centimeters, but he’s really upset about it.” Kiyoko laughs and moves toward one of the mirrors, fishing through her purse. “You look great,” Yachi blurts. She sounds so shrill she’s surprised the mirrors don’t shatter.
Kiyoko gives her a sideways look that lingers half a second longer than it should, then smiles. “So do you.”
“How is Tokyo? I heard you were thinking of graduate school?”
“Tokyo is always busy,” Kiyoko says in her warm lilt. She carefully selects a lipstick from her small purse—everything she does is dainty, when Yachi feels as though she might trip while standing still. “It tires a person out. I’m thinking of graduate school, but here in Sendai.” Kiyoko applies a layer of pinkish color to her lips, and Yachi’s mouth hangs open. Kiyoko, living here. In Sendai. She could…
“HITOKA-CHAN,” comes a holler, echoing in the hall outside the bathroom. They both turn to what’s clearly Hinata’s voice growing louder. “HITOKA-CHAN, KAGEYAMA POPPED ALL THE BALLOONS.” Yachi scurries to the door and sees that Hinata has stopped ten feet short of the open bathroom door, and is screaming to make up the distance.
“Come here!”
“That’s the girls’ room!”
“Why would he pop all the balloons?” says Yachi in a fierce whisper. She doesn’t want Kiyoko to know the extent to which Hinata and Kageyama haven’t changed—like it would reflect on her, having been their manager for so long.
Hinata’s face burns red. “Because I told him they were too small… but it wasn’t my fault!”
Yachi glances over her shoulder at Kiyoko, apologetic, but the older woman gives her a tiny smile. “Go on, do damage control. I’ll see you later tonight.” So Yachi nods and lets herself be tugged down the hall, trying not to obsess again—this time over Kiyoko’s smell.
By the time she’s run Kageyama and Hinata through clearing the gym floor of balloon carcass, half the party has arrived. Ukai-san and Takeda-senpai have made their way to the gym without Yachi’s help. Their old senpai come in predictable pairs and groups: Suga and Daichi and Azumane all together, Tanaka and Nishinoya dragging Ennoshita, who then leaves again to gather Narita and Kinoshita from the parking lot. Tsukishima and Yamaguchi arrive together, of course, along with some of their kouhai from later years, needing Captain Tsukishima-san’s calming presence to endear them to meeting older alums.
In greeting all of them, Yachi loses Kiyoko. Tanaka and Nishinoya are quick to approach her, both glowing, and she entertains them, unsmiling but not unfriendly. Yachi stuffs away an ill-placed pang of jealousy. By the time she’s free, Kiyoko is deep in conversation with Daichi, and Hinata wants to see if they can remember the choreography they learned to welcome their kouhai in third year, and Tsukki keeps saying never never never over and over again. Another thing for her to manage.
Exhausted, she goes to get some water from the drinks table, and she probably shouldn’t stiffen at the sound of Kiyoko’s name overheard, but she does. “I do feel bad for Kiyoko,” Suga is saying to Asahi. Yachi glances around until she spies the party in question—Kiyoko is on the opposite side of the gym, well out of earshot. So why would Suga— “I mean, I’m happy to have her back in Sendai. But it went on a while.”
“Really? How long?” ask Asahi, sounding disheartened.
“Ah, a year, at least.” Kiyoko-san… in a relationship? Maybe? One that’s ended. Yachi flips open the dispenser to let water flow into her cup. “But Daichi and I had them over once… I thought she seemed nice.” … she? “Maybe not the woman you’d expect to see Kiyoko with, but still.” The woman?
Yachi yelps at the feeling of cold wetness spilling over her hand—her cup had overfilled, and the water dribbles on to the gym floor as she scrambles to shut the spout. Suga-san has stopped talking, until she hears him asking, “Everything all right, Hitoka?” She greets his and Asahi’s expressions of concern with a wobbly smile.
“All fine! Just a little spill!”
She skitters away, distracting herself as best she can by retreating into the club room to look for a towel. Alone, in private and with the sounds of the reunion muffled, she takes a moment to lean against the door and breathe.
Kiyoko-san… is not straight.
Tonight is not the first time in her life where she has felt a physical weight lifting at the realization of another woman’s not-straight-ness, but by golly, this weight was the heaviest. It doesn’t even mean anything, necessarily, but it frees up the situation of queer existential angst, which is a relief. Yachi Hitoka has enough angst in her life, she thinks, what with being afraid of everything and everyone.
There’s scratching at the door and she jumps to attention; Tobio pokes his head in. “We’re going to have a match now. Can I come in? I need balls,” he says, very serious. Yachi nods, and helps him wheel out the cart.
It’s fun to watch them all playing together again. It makes her feel young and excited, like when she was first learning about this sport, how cool it could be, to borrow Shouchan’s word.
With the game started, and the boys (now men, she supposes) rotating in and out constantly, Yachi settles on the side court near but not too near to Takeda-sensei. They exchange a polite word or two.
Then she feels a softer presence settle on to the bench beside her. It’s almost as if Kiyoko’s arrival signals Takeda to leave, because he gives them a nod and gets up, going to chat with Ennoshita. Which leans Kiyoko and Yachi about as alone as you can get, in a gym full of people.
“Finally, a chance to talk,” Kiyoko sighs. Yachi keeps her eyes glued to the game, but she can’t quite focus on the blur of the ball as Tanaka-san goes for a spike. Kiyoko doesn’t seem to mind or notice the lack of eye contact, or maybe she’s just too polite to say anything. “How is your university?”
“Good. Diff… difficult. Um.”
“University sometimes is. Often, actually.” There might be a laugh in her voice. Or it just tinkles, like windchimes.
Yachi swallows hard. How could she have told herself that Kiyoko’s not-straight-ness means nothing when, for this conversation, it means she can hardly speak? Just knowing that—maybe—or if not a maybe, if just no… that’s something entirely different now. Rejection, in a big way. Her nerves bubble up through her stomach, flooding her mouth, she needs to clamp her lips shut before she says something stupid.
“Sitting here with you, watching them play,” says Kiyoko. “It’s just like it was.”
“Mhmm, justlikeitwas, I’msorryaboutyourgirlfriend.”
Oh, no. There it is. Yachi makes a choking sound like a cat struggling with a hairball.
“I mean, I mean,” oh good, there’s more to this disaster, “Girlfriends—I’ve had—I know it can be… be hard when you. Have them. And girls, when you want to—” Stop. Stopstoptosptopst.
At her side, Kiyoko has shifted in her seat, and Yachi has to will herself to turn her head and look at the other woman, her only motivation being that the horror-stricken impression on her face will emphasize how truly, deeply sorry she is for bringing it up.
But the weirdest thing happens.
Kiyoko… smiles.
And she laughs. Like a real laugh, not a big one or anything, more of a giggle, but that noise is unmistakeable. And beautiful.
“Thank you, Hitoka.”
“I’m sorry, I really—I didn’t…”
“No, I appreciate it. It can be especially difficult.” Kiyoko pauses, with Yachi tries to catch her breath. Her smile shrinks. “I didn’t know that you had…”
Oh. Well, there goes any attempt to settle her heart rate. Yachi’s hands cling to her knees, she’s looking at the game again, and shaking. Like a leaf! A little shaky stupid leaf! “Yes. I have. I—am. I was. Always. Whole time.” She gestures broadly, to signal the breadth of her gayness. Her voice climbs octave as she gets progressively more nervous, and the intensity of Kiyoko’s eyes on her gets harder to bear. “My whole life… born this—this way. Excuse me, Kiyoko-san,” she finally bleats, throwing herself off the bench and flying toward the exit. “I need some air!” She doesn’t hear a protest behind her, but maybe it’s swallowed by the din of her peers being more successful at reliving the past than her.
She bursts out into the covered walkway, gasping, her legs trembling so fiercely that she sinks to the concrete, back against one of the partitions. A minute goes by, and then five, and she hears her stupid blubbering words in her head again and again, worse every time. She could swear she’ll die like this, melt into a puddle in the courtyard and be evaporated into the clouds and get rained out somewhere far away from here. Maybe water some plants if she’s lucky. Probably won’t be, though.
But around minute ten it starts to get better. Her pulse slows down. She starts to actually feel the cold on her skin, and it draws her attention away from the swell of anxiety. She takes a deep breath, and then exhales. The air in front of her curls out lily white.
The door to the gymnasium creaks open.
She half-turns, expecting to greet Shouchan or Tobio, maybe just because she wants comfort and the thought of her friends right now gives her a good feeling like that.
But there is Kiyoko’s face, hovering over her, radiant even in the darkness. She wears her coat and has Yachi’s on her arm.
“Can I join you?”
Yachi nods, numbly. Her body is exhausted from her previous overreaction, and she’s cold, so she doesn’t feel the rush of bad energy from earlier when Kiyoko settles down beside her.
“Here.” Kiyoko offers her the jacket, and Yachi tugs it on straight away, nestling into the familiar warmth. Then she stares at her knees, waiting for Kiyoko to speak—maybe a lecture, though that’s not really her style, but at least Yachi will be forced to talk about it, to explain why she’d left so abruptly. And she doesn’t even know if she has the words, so that should be fun.
Yet a minute goes by in silence, and another.
She feels a nudge at her arm: Kiyoko has extended her hand. Yachi stares at it, how delicate it looks, how cold it must be… but when she laces her fingers with Kiyoko’s, they’re still warm from the inside. Kiyoko is warm, she realizes, as they nudge toward each other. She’s warm and they sit in the cold quiet, staring up at what they can see of the stars in between the walkway partition and the roof, holding hands. Yachi’s breathing normalizes, slowly but surely. She starts to feel sleepy and her head lolls against Kiyoko’s shoulder, not minding the scratchiness of jacket against her cheek.
For all Yachi’s expectations, they have been sitting there for a long while before Kiyoko finally speaks.
“When I come to Sendai.”
Yachi lifts her head. Their noses are close, as close as she can ever remember them being. That closeness is a powerful maybe. Kiyoko smiles again, a lovely little miracle.
“When I come to Sendai, Hitoka,” she repeats, the words coming out lily white. “Would you like to go out sometime?”