"Um."
Her mother looks across at her, absentmindedly stirring soup around and around in a pot. "What is it, Shoyou?"
"I think I'm gay."
And the world falls away and she's stranded on a pinhead as the air falls and they and the kitchen are sucked out and strained and replaced with a carbon copy, soulless and wavering a little, like Shoyou's stomach is wavering, and she knows within three seconds this is the stupidest decision she's ever made, thing she's ever said.
Her mother's lips are frozen, wooden, and she says, "What?"
Shoyou is silent. She watches her mother's hands, trembling on the rim of the pot. Boiling water spits but it might as well be ice for all either of them know or care to know. Her mother's bright face is terse, plain and pale with fear.
"Tell me this is a joke."
She stays silent and still, and feels the old sickness shiver up her skin from feet to shaking hands, shaking her head, slightly, back and forth, not enough for the motion to be taken as any statement either way. She's never felt anything like it, before. She's never, never pictured, never imagined, well, imagined but never as bad, imagined scenarios but not the creeping shock, sparking like poison in her chest and gut and her soul, into the deepest parts of her.
Her mother's face is slack, immutable.
"It's a joke... I. I'm not. Gay. I just."
Her mother's shoulders slump. The earth turns.
"I'm… I… I don't fit in. At school. I don't really… I mean, the other girls. They're not. Like, I mean, I like sport, and they're not really interested, and I thought it'd be better if I could just fit in somewhere, I mean!"
"Shoyou," says her mother, very gently. Her hands, when they come to rest on her daughter's shoulders – bare under her bright green tank top – are clammy. "Shoyou, liking sport is okay. It's fine not to fit in: not to want to wear makeup or talk about boys. That doesn't make you gay."
She stutters the word. That last one.
"I know," says Shoyou. "It's just…"
"You'll grow into all that," says her mother, "I promise. You're not strange, or different. You're a normal fourteen year old girl. I wasn't interested in boys until I turned sixteen – that doesn't make you gay. And it's not good to fit in with that crowd, anyway. They don't have it as easy as you might think they do."
Shoyou is falling, falling, falling like rain.
..
"Want me to toss to you?"
Shoyou looks at Izumi, whose hair is caught in a cute bobbled ponytail, who stares at Shoyou these days as if she's sick, and Shoyou's looking forward to high school just so she can leave behind the awkward glances during class, the whispering of her friends.
"Thanks, Izumi! But I'm okay, for now."
Izumi looks a bit put out. "You never want me to toss to you anymore. What happened to the Small Giant?"
"I thought that sort of thing annoyed you," Shoyou giggles, her insides slowly ripping themselves to shreds.
"Not anymore," says Izumi. "What happened? After that game?"
"They were really good," says Shoyou, dragging out the really. She'd heard other girls in her class doing that, elongating their words, especially around the boys. Everything was about boys, nowadays. "I don't think I could ever be that good, even if you tossed to me every day!"
Izumi stands, quite abruptly, brushing dirt off the back of her skirt. "Yeah, okay."
"What's wrong? Are you alright?"
"Fine, Hinata." Izumi flashes her a wide smile, her eyes slipping shut for the barest of moments. "See you later, or something."
Shoyou sits on the lawn for a while after she goes. Izumi has left behind a volleyball, the one they normally use to practice with. Shoyou picks it up, turns it over a few times in her hands, familiar callouses falling into the gaps between grooves.
..
When Shoyou lies in bed, she drains all her stress into the mattress and out into the air.
What if I was, she thinks. What if I was straight? What if I am straight?
The summer air buzzes with storm static and mayflies and what if turns into I am like how the seasons change, as easy as the earth continues to turn, easy as Shoyou's old friends fall backwards into the past.
..
Friends are easy to make. Really, really easy. Shoyou grins and falls back into the brilliance of new school and new teachers and new classmates and a whole new ballpark now she's in high school. She meets friends on the way through the orientation day stalls, winding her way past club and society booths, looking a little lost, a little curious, and gets talking to a few girls her age about their middle schools and their hopes for Karasuno.
They have a volleyball club, too, which her parents had told her to join, it would be good for her to meet some 'older girls,' socialise with the boys on the corollary team. She briefly glances at it, the stall – makes eye contact with an 'older girl' with cropped silvery hair and soft amber eyes, holding a stack of fliers, and the girl smiles at Shoyou and Shoyou sort of. Flushes.
Shoyou swallows hard, and turns back to her new friends, passing the blush off as a laugh.
Mari and Rin, of the initial group, are both in her class. Both of them have very long hair, Mari's bleached blonde, tied back with two school ribbons. Shoyou's own hair is shoulder length and vibrant, uncontrollably choppy with curls, and she rubs lightly at her short ponytail and wonders if she should let it grow out too.
..
Shoyou cycles home every day, and uses the bicycle rack as her excuse. She takes a detour past the vending machines on certain afternoons and stands outside the court for a while, watching volleyball.
..
Shoyou's popular – quickly popular, within a matter of weeks, giving warm smiles to everyone she sees and receiving them all back – but her friends are nice, and they don't talk too much about boys. They discuss books and films and games and clothes and hairstyles, and they've all been around to Shoyou's house and met her mother, and both of Shoyou's parents smile at her a lot these days and commend her on what lovely friends she's made. Shoyou's not tracking too well in class, but no worse than she's ever formerly done.
Shoyou's popular – so popular, even the boys like her, as a friend, and they joke around and freak out over the odd sports match together, when Shoyou gives in to the urge to watch them. Shoyou is very friendly, and she makes friends with a boy named Yachi, who sits up the front in the class next door to hers (Shoyou had accidently walked in there once and sat down beside him, striking up a conversation, only to realise when his teacher wandered in and began to laugh). Yachi likes books, likes fantasy and mystery, and is as easily excited as he is scared. Shoyou begins to think she likes him. She sort of tries to like him more, wonders if the warmth she feels when she sees him might be the sort of love the girls in her class go on about, that soul-mate kind of love.
..
Shoyou watches the girls play. They're all reasonably tall, and the silver-haired one is there, too, fluidly setting balls. Her palms itch.
It's enough, enough.
..
Shoyou's popular – quickly popular, within a matter of weeks, giving warm smiles to everyone she sees and receiving almost all of them back. There's one girl who never smiles at her. Shoyou sees her first on orientation day; how could she not? The Queen of the Court, who'd sneered at her and smashed all her pride and left the court to the jeers of her teammates. Kageyama Tobio is very tall, and she's on the Karasuno volleyball team, and the other girls call her weird and stand-offish for the same qualities cool boys possess. Kageyama never smiles at Shoyou.
Shoyou thinks Kageyama's a complete bitch, but so, so talented, and really pretty, with long, glossy hair and deep blue eyes, a colour she's never seen before. Shoyou thinks about her a bit, during class, or while she's trying hard to fall asleep, and that scowl on her face, and wonders what she'd look like caught off-guard.
..
She's seen Kageyama play before, but not under this new team. The Karasuno Seniors are tight-knit, and Shoyou knows their court positions, if not their names. The girl with bulky thighs and stocky shoulders is the Captain. The silvery-haired girl is her Vice. The ace is Azumane Asahi, who almost everyone knows by reputation. Their hyperactively skilled libero is Nishinoya Yuu.
Shoyou blushes a bit over Nishinoya Yuu-chan. A second year, small and petite, who wears her skirt short and her socks long and spends all her time around guys and her teammate, Tanaka… Ryunosuke? Yuu grins as readily as Shoyou and religiously dyes a tuft of her spiky hair; she must use gel in it. Shoyou wonders if Yuu's hair would feel oily, if she ran her fingers through it.
..
People say Asahi's a lesbian. They say it in a strange half-whisper, like they're not quite sure of all the details, or whether they're even pronouncing the word correctly.
..
There's a party at Aya-chan from Class 2C's house. Her parents both work in Tokyo, live together in an apartment there, and Aya-chan lives alone with a monthly allowance. Aya-chan is as popular as Shoyou, but less nice about it, popular for her string of boyfriends and her giggling and the modest house parties she'd put on every month or two – she seems to have taken a liking to Shoyou, ruffling her hair and calling her a little duck, then laughing as if Shoyou's meant to laugh with her.
Shoyou's never tasted alcohol before. One drink of something, something that tastes vile and sears the insides of her mouth and throat, and she starts to curl in on herself and all the good in the room is suddenly gone and her friends get bored of her and leave to talk to their other friends and Shoyou winds up on a couch in a corner of the living room next to two girls she only recognises because one's never seen without the other.
Tsukishima Kei looks at her, lips tensed in a sneer, and says, "Pathetic."
They're not popular, Tsukishima and Yamaguchi – more so estranged of their own making, in their disdain for fashion and boys and gossiping and all of the accumulated worst parts of girls and Shoyou gazes blearily up at her, fingers clenching on Yamaguchi Tadashi's shirt.
"She's just an attention seeker, Tadashi. Like all the rest of them."
Yamaguchi smiles apologetically and unravels Shoyou's fingers.
They leave and Shoyou hears Yamaguchi say, "Why do they all look so sad, Tsukki?"
Fake, fake, fake, drummed through her pounding head.
..
"Yeah," says Rin-chan, softly. "Aya-chan says Azumane's even dating a girl here, but no one really knows who."
"Wow, really?" says Shoyou, and she widens her eyes in parody of shock. The nerves in her lips twitch uncontrollably.
"Yeah. Isn't that weird? I think she, like, plays volleyball, too. Imagine changing in a locker room with her. She'd be watching you!"
Shoyou knows she plays volleyball. Asahi is kind and slightly cowardly, carrying herself small despite the breadth of her shoulders and feminine hourglass of her hips and largeness of her breasts. She looks womanly, older, in a way Shoyou used to admire whilst looking in the mirror at her own slight physique, tracing the very slight curve to her own waist and wanting to grow taller. Asahi is very gentle with the ball and her teammates, and seems to be loved by everyone who knows her well.
Most people don't like getting to know things well. Most people like talking. Most people will say anything.
"Mm," she says, "That'd be weird."
Shoyou looks at herself in the mirror and hates herself, hates herself, hates herself. She thinks about Nishinoya Yuu and feels weird. She wants to be a boy so she can play volleyball again.
..
Stuttering, Yachi asks her to go and see a movie with him.
Shoyou smiles blindingly, genuinely, and says yes, and they spend all of Saturday holding hands and curling up in each other in fright as zombie after zombie is decapitated on-screen.
He kisses her gently as they walk home together. It's very chaste and light and glossy, and Shoyou smiles against his lips. She likes him, she likes him.
They stop off at the foothill store to buy candy. The cashier eyes her, looking her up and down, scrutinising her face. "Hey. I know you, don't I?"
"No, I don't think so!" Shoyou twitters, clutching at Yachi's slightly clammy hand. "I kind of want the grape lollipop, what do you think?"
"I know you," says the man, decisively, rising a little in his seat. "You watch the girls' volleyball practices. Look in at the window."
Shoyou pales, and fidgets. She looks at the ground, at Yachi, who's smiling uncertainly. Then she says, "I do, sometimes. They're really good. Just these, thanks." She puts her handful of lollipops and Yachi's gummy worms on the counter and fishes in her pocket for coins.
"No," says Yachi, "it's okay, I'll get them."
Let the boy pay for you, on the first date, said her mother.
"You should come in, sometime. Have you played before?"
Shoyou steps back a little, lets Yachi pay. She's never felt so miserable. "A little. Not really. I'm pretty bad."
The cashier looks unconvinced. "Yeah, okay. Next time you come by the gym, you're coming in. You're starting to creep out Azumane-chan."
Shoyou flushes bright, bright red, snatches her candy off the counter, and hauls Yachi from the shop and up the main street. She apologises, breathless, and Yachi says it's all okay, again, but why doesn't she try out for the volleyball team, if she likes it enough to watch it after school?
She looks helplessly at the sky, the clouds littering rain in the far mountains. She wants to drown. His hand feels wet and gross in hers, and she hates it, hates it. Her lip gloss feels wet and stale on her lips, dragging them down, mascara clumping her eyelashes. He's looking at her, all concerned, too much like Izumi, and she sits down on the roadside and begins to cry.
"Hinata-chan? What's wrong? Did I do something? If you didn't like today, that's… that's okay! We'll keep fighting on as friends, right?"
"No, no," Shoyou sobs. Her makeup is tracking her cheeks. "No, it's not you, never. You, everyone else, you're all fine."
"Is it volleyball? I didn't know you liked it that much."
"I don't," she sniffs, "not really."
"Yes, you do. What's so wrong with volleyball? Did your parents say it was too boyish, or something?"
"No," Shoyou sniffs, wiping her eyes. She laughs. "I'm all melting. See, Yachi? I don't think I can do this anymore."
Yachi thinks for a minute. He's always been a little sensitive, for a guy. Gets teased by his classmates. No one ever mentions the word 'gay.' That's too far out of bounds. "When he mentioned Asahi. Are you scared of her, or something?"
Shoyou laughs, laughs and laughs, like she hasn't laughed enough in the last few weeks – who knew high school would be so fucking terrible – and she's bitter and vindictive and wants to crawl inside of herself and decay, saying, "What about her?"
"You know." Yachi shuffles. "The rumours."
"Do you care about them?"
"Not really," he says, looking startled. "It's not really any of our business."
Shoyou sniffs into her palms. The air smells like coming rain. "I'm sorry, Yachi. For making your day bad. I liked the movie."
Yachi helps her fix her makeup. They wipe most of it off with tissues, throw them in the bin. He looks at her sideways a few times, and doesn't try to kiss her again.
Shoyou's mother twitters all over her as they eat dinner, until she goes to bed. Shoyou sits up and looks at herself in the mirror, and looks at her face, drawn and scared, pats at her growing hips, slim but a little curvy. This was it forever it was happening starting and she sits in the shower and chops at her growing hair until it sits back at her shoulders in choppy red curls and she feels a little like Hinata Shoyou again.
..
"How?" Shoyou gasps. She doesn't wear makeup to school anymore. She ties her hair up in an elastic, like she had in middle school.
Rin-chan giggles and giggles, like she's discovered the secret to the universe. "There's a little nub. And you just. Touch it. Like, moving your fingers back and forth over it. Or circles."
"Maybe you have discovered the secret to the universe!"
Rin-chan looks at her oddly, but dismisses the statement as one of Shoyou's little quirks.
..
Shoyou thinks of Yachi. It feels good, but not that good – not the all-consuming flood of good Rin-chan had described, saying she'd thought of her second year boyfriend.
Shoyou drifts off to sleep, and wakes up in the middle of the night to find herself with her hand slipped inside her pants and thinking she's still in a dream, can't ever feel guilty for dreaming, thinks of Yuu-chan, and then of Kageyama, and she cries out so loud.
..
It's raining, when she next visits the volleyball club. She stands under the narrow awning above one of the windows, pressing her body up close to the brick, and peers over the top just in time to see Asahi slam one into the court. Yuu-chan and almost everyone else clap with awed approval, and Asahi looks incredibly sheepish as Yuu-chan nearly skips over to her, hi-fiving her and running her fingers gently over the taller curve of Asahi's shoulder.
Oh. Shoyou feels a little crushed, but not much. That's how it was. No one else in there seemed to be paying them much mind.
The Vice is staring at Shoyou, straight out through the window. Her eyes soften. Like she knows everything, or at least a little of it. Their coach – the foothill employee – is staring at her too. He rolls his eyes and jerks his thumb, beckoning her inside.
And it's like some sort of confession, opening the unlocked gymnasium doors.
Like a surrender.
As if breathing the same air as them is tantamount to a second um I think I think I lied I lied again Shoyou the liar, like all that's being washed away as she opens the door and breathes in sweat and body heat and warmth.
They're all staring at her like they recognise her. They all seem to.
The Vice Captain smiles at her, already moving to greet her, the stocky Captain at her heels. "Hinata Shoyou?"
Shoyou nods, jerkily. Her lips are tightly pressed and trembling like the storm battering the roof. Falls with the rain.
"Do you want to trial volleyball? Have you ever played before?"
Shoyou tries to open her mouth, but it doesn't matter, just as it doesn't matter how kind Sugawara is being, because she can't speak, it's like she's just barfed all her words up and left them festering behind her teeth, and Nishinoya Yuu is bobbing on the balls of her small sneakers, looking curiously over Sugawara's shoulder.
"She has."
They turn, surprised, to Kageyama, who turns a volleyball back and forth between her hands. Shoyou thinks of grass and of leaving a volleyball in the grass and the court she'd played on when Kageyama's middle school had thrashed her and how she'd felt. Kageyama is almost, if possible, taller, more impressive on the court than in the halls with her modestly long skirt. Here, she's empowered, glittering, her eyes trained back on Shoyou.
"She's played against you, Tobio-chan?"
Kageyama nods woodenly. "Yeah. She can jump. But aside from that, she's pretty useless."
Sugawara looks her over, appraisingly. "Well," she says. "Do you want to try jumping for us? If you really hate it, you can leave and not have to come back."
"I. I don't have. Gear. Gym gear. I threw it out."
Asahi sort of startles. Maybe she can't fathom the idea of throwing out gym gear.
"I have some!" says Yuu-chan, and Shoyou nearly coughs up a lung as she's hauled off to the locker room by, by… and she's sort of cuter in person, Yuu-chan, with her roguish grin and flyaway hair and the strength in her wiry arms.
The locker room is absolutely, completely normal, just as Shoyou had remembered it, and she wonders how she could ever have thought otherwise. Yuu-chan rummages through layers of caked-up papers and old socks before finding her gym bag, tugging it out and turning to Shoyou with a smile.
"My stuff's probably small on you, sorry. What size shoe do you take?"
"My feet are small," says Shoyou, attempting to smile back. She takes the Karasuno shirt and a pair of gym shorts and wonders if she'll have to change in front of Yuu-chan - she lingers for a minute in the doorway.
Past her, the court is bright with laughter and the ringing smack of volleyball on palms. She's very little, even littler than Shoyou.
"Are you okay?"
Shoyou touches her own face, subconsciously, patting at her lips. "Don't I look okay, or something?"
"Nah," says Yuu-chan, shrugging. "Just. You've been watching us for a while, right?"
"Yes! You're a great libero, you're all really good, the way you capture lost shots like Gwahh!"
"I know, right?! Libero's the best position, I think, 'cause you're always assisting your team, and they can't really do without you. What position did you play, Sho-chan?"
Sho-chan. Shoyou feels her face warm under her fingers. "Middle blocker," she mumbles, grinning a little.
"Ah, really? But you're so small! I guess that doesn't matter much, though, if you can jump."
"I can jump! I can jump really high!"
..
She jumps. She jumps high. But she can't quite jump as high as she could before the summer, before she stopped training, before she gave up on volleyball the first time.
Still, almost all of them – the Vice Captain, Sugawara, the Captain, Daichi, Yuu-chan and even Asahi – gasp and clap, like she's done something incredible. Tsukishima and Yamaguchi are eyeing her from across the court, whispering to each other behind palms.
"Can you spike, Hinata-chan?" asks Sugawara, kindly.
Hinata nods rapidly, and then looks down at her borrowed shoes and shakes her head. "I don't know. I haven't spiked in ages."
"Let me set to you, then. You can get back in practice."
"Keep tossing!" Daichi calls out, and the alto of her voice blasts the hall. She throws her own across to Suga, and the way she catches it with an answering nod speaks of practice, practice, friendship and years of synchronised movement, of knowing each other as well as you know your own soul.
Suga's tosses are soft and well-timed, good, but not spectacular, and Hinata brings her palm down only for it to miss the ball completely and she's drowning in mortification as Yuu-chan pats her on the back and tells her to try again, and she does, and she spikes the next one a little better, hits it hard into the court.
"Come on, Ojou-sama," leers Tsukishima, "Won't you toss to Hinata-chan?"
Yamaguchi laughs.
Sugawara shakes her head slowly, turning to look at Kageyama. "Do you know Hinata-chan?"
"Not really."
"Go on, Ojou-sama. See if Hinata-chan can spike your demon tosses."
"Hinata doesn't know what she's doing," says Kageyama, "but you talk as if you can spike my sets, Tsukki."
Tsukishima tosses her thick blonde braid over her shoulder – that expression on her face is awful, ||