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Ushijima Wakatoshi is quiet.
He sits in the back of classrooms, of locker rooms, of bleachers and watches – he carefully takes in all the information he can, but never volunteers any answers unless he’s certain he’s correct. He never speaks unless he has something to say. He never makes challenges unless he knows he can win.
He sits in after-practice meetings like a storm cloud – you could almost forget he’s there, if it weren’t for the shadow he casts.
Ushijima is quiet, but his volleyball is loud.
He plays like a thunderstorm rolling in from the coast. He glares at the other team first, dark clouds piling in the distance, bright sun slowly fading into dark blue-gray. Then, he stands, looming above almost every other person on the court, the first drops of rain pounding the pavement. And when he plays – when he plays – his limbs move like wind and water packed into steel spears, a torrential downpour that leaves anyone it touches soaked to the very core. His spikes are cracks of thunder – rattling the gym floor and echoing for miles – but his serves are whips of lightning – devouring everything in their path.
When Ushijima Wakatoshi plays volleyball, the whole world knows. People stop and stare, goosebumps rising on their arms. Birds stop chirping, dogs stop barking. Nothing dares to compete with his perfectly chaotic storm. And when Tendou Satori watches – eyes wide, hands clasped into fists, heart pounding a thunderous beat – he thinks that he has never before wanted this much to be struck by lightning.
The coach warned Satori, before he agreed to attend Shiratorizawa.
“You can never be the ace, here,” he told Satori. “I’m telling you this because I want to make it absolutely clear. Don’t expect to steal the spotlight.”
“Why?” Satori asked. It was the wrong response, but it tumbled out anyway, like an unstoppable river. People were always telling him that he talked too much – that he needed to think before he opened his mouth – but he was never able to follow their advice.
“Because we already have an ace. Not just any ace,” the coach said, mouth curving into a grin like a shark that just spotted its next meal. “Ushijima Wakatoshi.”
“Ushijima Wakatoshi,” Satori repeated. The syllables rolled off his tongue easily, as though pulled by a current. He’d heard this name before, he thought, but he couldn’t remember where.
The coach nods. “He’s one of the best spikers in the prefecture, if not the country. And he’s going to carry us to nationals.”
Satori’s eyes widen. “Nationals,” he whispers. He could picture it – a huge stadium, thousands of people cheering, his shouts echoing as though there were a hundred Tendou Satoris all hitting the best spikes of their lives. He had never played on a team that even considered going to Nationals, let alone one that expected it, sure and confident, like a birthright.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” the coach asked, putting a stop to Satori’s fantasies.
“Yes, sensei!” Satori nodded, perhaps too quickly.
“Good. And do you want to play on this team?”
“Yes! I don’t mind not being the ace – I’m better at blocking, and that’s almost as cool as spiking. It’s really fun!” Satori exclaimed, almost bouncing in his seat.
He would’ve elaborated further if the coach hadn’t cut him off. “Shiratorizawa doesn’t play to have fun, Tendou. We play to win.”
And Satori knew – knew the school’s reputation, knew that it’s been Miyagi’s representative at Nationals for years, but he didn’t quite understand how the coach can be so certain they’ll win. At least, not until the first practice.
At the first practice – when he sees Ushijima Wakatoshi slam a serve across the court like a giant, given super-strength by the gods so that he can defeat every obstacle in his path - he thinks he understands.
“Hey – Ushijima, right?”
“Ushijima Wakatoshi.”
“I’m Tendou Satori. I’m a new first-year, from Kannari Middle School. And I’m so excited to go to Shiratorizawa, everything here is so big and so cool –”
“What position do you play?”
“Middle blocker. At my old school I was a spiker, but Coach Washijo wants me to change positions now, which is exciting, because blocking is so fun –”
“Are you good?”
“Yeah. I – I think so.”
“I don’t play with anyone who isn’t good.”
The first time they lose, it’s in the semifinals of nationals their first year.
Satori watches from the bench as the last of Ushijima’s spikes gets blocked – as three of their teammates dive after it – as the referee’s hand moves – up – across – down – to grant the final point to the other side. Most his teammates pick themselves up and head to the sidelines, heads hanging low, unable to look each other in the eyes – but Ushijima doesn’t move. Ushijima stays still.
He stays still – chin lifted, staring at the spot where the ball hit. Satori looks closer – sees that his shoulders are shaking.
“That’ll be one hundred spikes when we get back,” the coach says.
And Satori wants to scream – Ushijima got half of the points they scored in that match, even as the only first-year on the court – he fought so hard and so long, even when the other team marked him with three blockers for every single spike – it’s not his fault that their opponents were the best in the country at blocking, it’s not his fault –
Satori wants to scream. He wants to run up there and punch the coach in the face. He wants to tell Ushijima that he did the best he could. He wants to do anything, anything that would make Ushijima stop looking like that – empty, as though the storm was all bled out of him. But all he can do is get up, follow his teammates, march slowly back to the bus.
Ushijima is the last person to get on the bus. They nearly leave without him, call his parents to pick him up instead, but he runs up just as the engine is starting, expression blank and hair wet from where he must have dunked it in a bathroom sink.
He slides into the empty seat next to Satori. He leans his head back, resting it against the dingy black leather, and closes his eyes. Something in the look on his face makes Satori scared he’ll never open them again.
“I read this really cool shounen manga the other day!” he says. The team stares at him. Coach Washijo stares at him. Even the bus driver stares at him.
But he pushes on. “There was this weird guy – he could see dead people. Only they weren’t dead people, really, they were these spirits fighting in this war for, like, souls, or something. This whole big good versus evil battle! Oh, and this one character – he was really big and strong, didn’t talk much, but super dedicated to the cause. He kind-of reminded me of you.”
Ushijima opens his eyes. He gives Satori the smallest look – not a smile, but not a frown, either. Not disappointed, not angry – if Satori didn’t know better, he’d say Ushijima was interested.
He talks about shounen manga for the duration of the drive home.
It isn’t easy, talking to Ushijima.
He doesn’t know a lot, for one thing. Sure, he has every volleyball play they’ve ever practiced filed away in his mind somewhere, and he gets by in school (Shiratorizawa doesn’t want its athletes failing out), but he hardly ever reads, besides textbooks and biographies of famous volleyball players. He almost never goes to the movies, and Satori doesn’t think there’s a TV in his house, let alone in his room. Cultural references slip past him like water down a playground slide.
And yet Satori – who communicates in references as much as he communicates in shouts – isn’t discouraged. He decides to make it his personal goal to help Ushijima become a normally-functioning human being before they graduate, even if that means personally explaining every single entertainment headline in the county newspaper.
But then comes the second problem: Ushijima isn’t interested in anything. He wants to become the strongest spiker, and that’s about it. No matter how much Satori rants about why some anime is cool, or why some actress is attractive, or why he might actually want to think about something besides volleyball, Ushijima just looks at him with that same vaguely bored expression. Satori even tries explaining things with volleyball metaphors, although his metaphors are usually less like cool poetry and more like shouting out two unrelated concepts, then smacking his hands together and hoping Ushijima gets it – he was never very good at literature.
Still, Satori isn’t the type to give up easily. He eats lunch with Ushijima every day and talks to him about everything he’s read and watched, even if he only gets confused stares in return. He brings in manga, magazines, books - anything he can think of to get his teammate to engage with the outside world.
And then, one day – near the end of their first year, on the first warm day of spring, with sunlight streaming in through the classroom windows – Satori tells Ushijima a joke he read online, and Ushijima laughs. He opens his mouth, smiles ever so slightly – and then wider, wider, until he’s throwing his head back, his whole body shaking. He’s got a ridiculous laugh, a deep laugh, a strange laugh – but Satori finds himself speechless watching, a strange tightness in his chest.
Satori doesn’t remember the joke, afterwards – it was something dumb about American farm animals, horses or cows or something – but he remembers Ushijima laughing, and he remembers that feeling – as though, for a second, his body forgot how to breathe.
The first time he calls Ushijima by his given name, it’s during a practice match near the start of their second year.
They’re playing this team from Tokyo – a strong team, an incredibly strong team, that the coach arranged for a practice match with because they’re famously skilled at receives. Shiratorizawa takes the first set without too much difficulty, slamming through blocks and targeting weak points – but during the second set, something clicks with the other team and they fall into a rhythm – blocking and receiving, blocking and receiving, blocking and receiving and returning. Ushijima’s spikes don’t quite hit right, like raindrops slipping off a slanted roof into the gutter below –
Until he hits one perfect toss at the perfect angle. A straight spike directly into the center of the court. Untouchable.
And it tips the balance, it leaves the other team’s mouths hanging open – it’s the first crack of thunder, the first sign that they’re going to win this match and every match after it – and Satori is jumping up and down before he can stop himself, the words pouring from within him as though somebody else put them there, only waited until now to flip the switch, let the dam open –
“Miracle boy Wakaaaaaaatoshi!” he hollers. “That’s our ace! That’s our ace!”
He runs up to Ushijima and holds his hands up for high-fives, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Ushijima hesitates for a second, then hits – forceful as one of his spikes, but Satori doesn’t care. He’d be happy to have sore palms for days.
And Satori cheers at every game, for every member of the team – shouts in excitement when Semi makes a perfect pinpoint toss, or when Yamagata receives an incredible serve, or when Ohira maneuvers his way around a block – but he never cheers for them quite as loudly as he does for Ushijima. He never finds himself yelling on instinct for them quite the same way as he does for Ushijima. He never calls any of them by their given names.
Satori can tell himself – tries to tell himself – that it’s only because Ushijima is the ace, because he’s one of the most powerful spikers in the country. But then he watches Ushijima move – the way he leaps and swings, as though the ball has no choice but to go where he wants it to – and he knows he’s only kidding himself.
Ushijima Wakatoshi is like a hero out of one of Satori’s mangas, powerful and confident and larger than life. He might as well be a miracle.
They run together, sometimes.
Or, well, Ushijima runs, and Satori struggles to keep up. Ushijima’s fast – incredibly fast, ridiculously fast, lightning fast – and he can keep going for hours at a time, only stopping to stretch or grab a drink of water when he feels that he absolutely has to. Satori’s more the type to sprint for a few minutes, run out of wind, then drag himself along for half an hour until he builds up the energy to sprint again. Ushijima tells him that he needs to learn how to pace himself, but try as he might, he can never really figure it out. He just doesn’t see the point of running slowly when your limbs are begging you to move faster, faster.
But Ushijima waits for Satori, when he gets tired. Ushijima stops on the side of the street and stretches, or practices his form, or runs volleyball plays in his head, or something, until Satori runs up behind him and drops flat on his back in the grass, panting like a dog that just played one hundred rounds of fetch. Ushijima usually watches Satori for a second, something like amusement dancing across his stark features, before running off again – but sometimes, he doesn’t. Sometimes, he offers Satori a hand up, or stretching advice. Sometimes, he even talks.
“I ran into Oikawa from Aoba Johsai here once,” he says one afternoon, standing on a patch of grass next to a convenience store that claims to sell the least expensive ramen in Miyagi.
“What? The great setter?” Satori asks. He tries to push himself up into a sitting position, but can only manage to get his head up to a thirty degree angle before he falls back down on the grass. The grass is scratchy, a little damp from rain earlier in the day, but it’s nice. Satori would gladly lie in this grass for hours.
Ushijima nods. “I think he might’ve been trying to spy on me. Don’t know how he figured out my route, though.”
“Creepy weirdo,” Satori says. “Trying to steal our secrets. Like he can change the fact that our team’s better than his.” He’s struck by a strange urge to find Oikawa and challenge him to a duel, samurai-style – but then, he’s not exactly in a good position to challenge anyone, not while his limbs feel as though they’ve been filled with lead.
“He should’ve come to Shiratorizawa,” Ushijima remarks. He’s staring up at the sky – it’s darkening, Satori notices for the first time. The sun is sinking slowly, weighted down, like a rock dropped into a clear blue-gray lake.
Satori pictures it – Oikawa attending to Shiratorizawa, having to set for Ushijima, probably whining about how he wants to be the star of the team, how he can’t possibly share the spotlight with some big mule who barely talks and doesn’t care about girls – and the image is so funny that he starts laughing. He brings his arms up, interlocking his hands beneath his head – watches the sky, watches Ushijima, watches Ushijima’s shadow, darkening the road behind him like a giant.
Ushijima watches him back for a moment, an unreadable expression in his dark eyes – then reaches a hand down. Satori takes it.
“I can’t give you what you want.”
They’re the last two left in the locker room, spring of their second year. They won a practice match today – two straight sets against a college team, with Ushijima sending down untouchable spikes quick as lightning and twice as electric. And then, after the match was over, Ushijima looked at Satori – stared at him, a wordless command sharp and quick and burning hot – and the two of them stayed for an hour, practicing spike after spike with the rest of the gym empty, except for one of their managers tossing.
Satori is the only one who can block Ushijima’s spikes. He thinks it’s guesswork, luck, something above the ordinary – he wonders if he’s lying to himself.
“What?” Satori looks up from his bag. Looks at his captain.
Ushijima stares at him head-on – his fists clenched, his stance the same as it is when they lose a match. “I can’t,” he says. “I can’t give you what you want.”
Satori smiles lazily, but it doesn’t fit right – stretches his face at an odd angle. “I heard you, Ushijima. I’m not an old man yet – my hearing’s still good.”
Ushijima only stares. He never was great at taking a joke, and this is no time for exceptions.
“Okay,” Satori says. He drops his uniform shirt on the bench, turns, takes a step forward. “Tell me, then. What is it that I want?”
“I’m no good at –” Ushijima starts. Stops. Tries again. (He never speaks unless he has something to say.) “I don’t have any experience with romance. Relationships. Holding hands. Giving chocolate on Valentine’s Day.”
For a moment, Satori can feel the world spinning beneath his feet. There’s a revolution starting – but without guns, without warcries – a revolution here, now, in the Shiratorizawa boys’ locker room, with quiet voices and fragile truths shattering in the air like glass.
Satori takes one step forward. Two. Three. Tells himself he didn’t get to be a starter on the best team in the prefecture by being a coward.
“And what makes you think I want any of that?” he asks.
Ushijima’s eyes widen, almost imperceptibly. Anybody else would look at him and see only careful consideration, but Satori watches confusion, anger, and something close to fear pass like shadows across his face.
“The way you look at me,” he says. “Like I’m something unbelievable.”
Satori takes another step forward. Tilts his head up. Ushijima’s eyes are very dark brown, almost black – like storm clouds, maybe, or bitter dark chocolate.
Satori imagines that this is a volleyball game – that he’s jumping, raising his arms, trusting that he knows where the ball will go and connecting.
“You are,” he says. The words tumble out like water over a burst dam, like his cheers when their team wins a point. “You’re unbelievable, incredible, impossible – the way you spike, the way you serve, the way you slam past blocks like they’re nothing – you’re a miracle. But I’m happy being near you – watching you and talking to you and standing on the court with you. Anything else you want to give me – anything else you’re willing to give me – is just bonus.”
Ushijima stares at him. And this time, Satori can’t read the expressions dancing across his face.
And then something shifts, something breaks – and Ushijima is striding forward and Satori is pedaling backward, nearly tripping over bags and papers and his own feet until his back hits the lockers – and Ushijima pins him determined as an untouchable serve determined as a team that has to win determined as a force of nature –
He stops.
“Anything.” Ushijima’s voice sounds hoarse. “Even if it’s barely something.”
Satori reaches up and closes the distance. It’s the hardest guess he’s ever had to make. (But some deity or spirit or monster must be looking out for him, because Ushijima kisses back.)
Ushijima’s kisses are nothing like his volleyball.
His volleyball is confident, sure, powerful. It rings out clear as a drumbeat. It booms and it crackles and it soars. Satori thinks, sometimes, that Ushijima was born to play volleyball – that the moment he opened his eyes, he reached for the ball and he hasn’t stopped reaching since. It’s the one thing he’s good at, the one thing that never fails him.
But his kisses – his kisses are slow, hesitant, careful. If his volleyball is a thunderstorm, his kisses are the first few drops of rain, not quite sure if they want to stay. He cradles Satori’s face in his hands – hands that can spike a volleyball at a hundred kilometers an hour suddenly gentle, as though holding a sculpture of glass. He kisses softly, always close-mouthed at first, then opening, opening, improving with practice. He always asks permission.
It only ever happens after practice – in the locker room, or behind the school, or in the park next to Satori’s house. Satori can never tell quite when it will happen – sometimes after more successful practices, sometimes after less, sometimes on days when everything clicks and Satori knows somewhere deep and real that this is the team he was meant to play on, this is why he loves volleyball. Sometimes it doesn’t happen for weeks at a time, sometimes it happens for days in a row. Sometimes it goes on for hours, moments building on each other into shining golden eternities, and sometimes Ushijima stops mere minutes after they’ve begun.
Satori knows that this isn’t normal. If he was a heroine in some romantic drama, he’d demand promises or presents, or something to prove Ushijima’s commitment. But Ushijima is no prince, Satori’s no princess – and anyway, what he has is enough. More than enough.
He has Ushijima on the court – spiking stronger every day, blazing the way to lift their team to new heights – and he has Ushijima off of it – running his fingers down Satori’s chest up his legs up, taking him apart as meticulously as he learns a new volleyball play, working him working him playing him taking him apart and putting him back together until he gasps, head thrown back –
“You’re a miracle. A fucking miracle. Miracle boy Wakatoshi.”
And Ushijima grins, confident and sure only when he has Satori slumped against the lockers gasping for breath, and rumbles, “Say my name again.”
Ushijima plays for Japan in the Youth World Championship, and Satori goes to watch.
He doesn’t tell anyone he’s going – not his parents, not his teachers, and definitely not Ushijima. He feigns sick for a few hours, then sneaks out, buys a train ticket to the airport and an airplane ticket to the competition. His parents don’t care, not really – as long as his grades are decent and he doesn’t damage the family’s reputation, he could be the leader of a gang in his spare time, for all they’d notice – and he has the money, enough allowance saved up from a couple of months of cutting back on manga and graphic T-shirts.
And then, Satori is sitting in this massive stadium, probably a hundred times bigger than the Shiratorizawa gym, and watching Ushijima Wakatoshi spike as though a spotlight is focused on him. He told himself he’d keep a low profile – wear a big sweatshirt and a hat, pretend he’d wandered into the competition by accident while looking for something else if anyone asks – but he can’t. He just can’t. He cheers on instinct, leaps out of his seat without realizing what he’s doing.
Ushijima hits spikes that tear through three blockers, he hits serves that slam with so much force, Satori’s surprised to see that they don’t leave smoking holes in the floor – and the American team has stronger blocks, the Finnish team has more complex plays, the Chinese team has the most solid receives he’s ever seen, but nobody hits quite like this player from Japan. They can hold him back, but they can’t stop him.
Satori yells, “Miracle boy Wakaaaatoshi!” until his voice gives out. And even then, he keeps yelling.
After the competition is over – Japan comes in sixth, thanks in no small part to its ace – Satori returns to Shiratorizawa, where the lights are dimmer and the people are familiar. At practice the next week, everyone crowds around Ushijima, asking him what it was like, playing on such a skilled team, and it takes all the willpower Satori can muster not to rant for long minutes about their ace. About the best ace in the country.
But after practice – after practice, Ushijima waits outside the locker room until Satori is done changing, then falls in step with him as they start walking home.
“Thank you for attending the matches,” he says. He’s formal when he says it, not looking Satori in the eyes, but there’s a hint of pride in his voice.
“What – how –” Satori splutters, freezing in place. “How’d you know I was there?”
“I could hear you,” Ushijima admits. There’s the tiniest smile on his face. Satori wonders if this is what they make movies and dramas and two-hundred-chapter-long mangas about – this lightness in his chest, this invincibility.
They lose to Karasuno.
The ball lands on the court, loud as the silence after a storm. Nobody can reach it. Time stops.
A murmur runs through the stands – their classmates, friends, family members, everyone who had screamed Shiratorizawa until they went hoarse is now asking how. How is this possible? How could this happen? Aren’t we supposed to be the best team in the prefecture?
Satori clenches his fists so tightly, his fingernails cut into his palms. It takes all of his strength to keep from screaming.
On the other side of the net, Karasuno is gathering into some kind of group hug that looks more dangerous than it’s worth. They’re all yelling, wide smiles on their faces. That genius setter is hoisting that tiny number ten in the air. Satori wants to punch every single one of them. He wants to rip their uniforms to shreds. He wants to scream and scream until they admit they were wrong – until they cast away their victory – until they give Shiratorizawa back what’s rightfully theirs –
The slow march back to the bus is the longest ten minutes in Satori’s life.
The bus is silent on the way home. Their coach doesn’t speak – Ushijima doesn’t speak – nobody speaks. Each and every one of Satori’s teammates sits perfectly still, eyes closed – not sleeping. If he looked closely, he might see damp trails tracing down their faces. He doesn’t look.
They return to the gym, and practice begins. One hundred blocks for Tendou. One hundred tosses for Shirabu. One hundred spikes for Ohira. And one hundred – two hundred – five hundred – one thousand serves for Ushijima. As many serves as it takes until every single one is untouchable. As many serves as it takes until his palms are blistering burnt red. As many serves as it takes until he can make himself believe he won’t lose any more.
Satori watches him, long after the rest of the team leaves. He doesn’t say anything. For once, there’s nothing he can say.
“Where are you going to college?” Ushijima asks him, afterwards.
They walk home through the twilight, a few stars poking out through the dark clouds shrouding the sky. They’re a few steps apart – the distance hangs between them, tangible, like an unspoken apology.
“I don’t know,” Satori says, honestly. He kicks at the dusty path, watches faint clouds vanish into the cool night air. “I haven’t thought about it much yet.”
Ushijima is silent for a moment. Then, he replies, “You should go to the same college as I do.” He says it not like a question, not a suggestion, but like a command – as though they’re still on the volleyball court, faces shiny with sweat and limbs aching with every jump.
Satori stops walking. Stares at his ace. Ushijima’s expression is unreadable, cloaked in shadow.
“What? Why?”
“Because,” Ushijima says. He stops, and Satori almost thinks that’s the whole reason, but then he continues – steadier now, less of a command and more of an unquestionable truth – he continues, “I want to come up with more strategies, learn new attacks, like Karasuno and all the teams we lost to at nationals. I want to keep getting stronger and stronger, until nobody can stand in my way. But I don’t want ... I don’t want to do it on my own. I want to do it with you. I want to keep playing volleyball with you.”
I want to keep playing volleyball with you.
Satori holds onto that sentence. He turns it over in his mind. He tries – he tries to think before he speaks, put a stopper on the words threatening to bubble over in his throat.
They aren’t partners, Tendou Satori and Ushijima Wakatoshi. They don’t have a special quick or years of shared strategy, like those two first years from Karasuno or Oikawa and Iwaizumi from Aoba Johsai. They don’t need each other to play. But Ushijima makes Satori stronger – standing on the court next to him makes Satori determined to time all his jumps correctly, hit all his spikes with furious accuracy, taunt the other team into submission. Playing for Shiratorizawa is a lot of pressure, sure – but more than anything else it’s Ushijima Wakatoshi, standing larger than life and spiking like a thunderstorm, who makes Satori want to play as well as he possibly can.
He never before thought that maybe it went the other way, too.
“Okay,” he says, finally. “Yeah. I want that. I want that, too.”
Ushijima’s face is cloaked in shadow – but Satori can glimpse the hint of a smile in the faint starlight.
Satori jumps up, suddenly – leaps into the air, whooping for joy. They lost today, sure, but they have tomorrow, and the next day, and the next to keep getting better – better and better until nobody can take them down.
“Yeah!” Satori shouts, loudly enough that it echoes along the empty road and up to the stars. “We’re gonna take on the world! Miracle boy Wakatoshi and Tendou Satori!”