A/N: Hello everyone! I'm back. Sorry for the long wait. I've been very busy with work, I don't even have time for myself.
First of all, I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas. Hope you are all safe and healthy.
Going back to the story, Jiro fainted last chapter and Chizuko asked him to tell everyone the truth. There was some confusion about it, but everything will be explained in this chapter. You can star reasured, Jiro will be eventually fine, he's not going to die. I'm not that mean.
Enjoy the reading!
I do not own Haikyuu or its characters
CHAPTER FOURTY FOUR
Honesty
Jiro changed his position again for the umpteenth time. He placed the pillow well and rested his back on it.
"Would you stop moving, for God's sake? You're going to rip out your IV and unintentionally take away your oxygen." His sister looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "You're nervous."
He scoffed. "Of course I am"
Jiro barely had time to deal with everything that had happened. Not even 24 hours had passed since he had woken up after two days unconscious in the hospital. Chizuko, who had been by his side during that time, had ordered him to explain to the team members what happened to him. Everyone was very worried about him, especially Mayu and Noa. Both had been with him when he had finally lost consciousness. Now, Jiro had to tell them the truth and that made him feel anxious because he was convinced that they were going to be angry with him. And that was what he feared the most.
"I don't think you have anything to worry about," his sister added. "Tell them what's wrong with you. Of course they'll worry about you, because they consider you a friend. But try to be positive, okay?"
Jiro clicked his tongue. It was much easier said than done.
A few minutes later someone knocked on the door. Iyo stood up to open it.
"They've all come to see you," she said to Jiro with a smile and inviting all the girls to come in.
The group was led by the coach and Chizuko. All of them dispersed around the room. However, at the door remained Nagisa. Jiro noticed that Noa was slightly sticking her head out, hidden behind him. She was clinging to Nagisa's coat sleeve.
"Hi, Furi-chan," Jiro said with an innocent smile and trying to soften the mood.
Noa leaned on Nagisa's back, hiding her face from the rest.
"Noa-san, you have to stop hiding," Nagisa whispered, stepping aside. Jiro could then see his friend's face. Noa was fiddling with her fingers and when she looked up and her eyes met Jiro's, tears began to fall down her cheeks.
"You're an idiot," she babbled.
"I know. I get that a lot," Jiro shrugged and opened his arms, inviting Noa to hug him. She ran towards him and hugged him tightly, as if she wanted to make sure Jiro was really there. Everyone smiled.
"Noa-san has been very scared and worried about you," Nagisa scolded him.
"Are you going to lecture me too?"
Noa separated from him. "I'm sorry I forced you. You fainted because of me. It was my fault"
Jiro shook his head. "It wasn't just that," he looked at everyone. "I feel I owe you an apology and an explanation. Well, that and that Chizuko-san told me off yesterday"
"Don't leave me now as the bad one," Chizuko crossed her arms.
"Chizuko-san knew what was going on?" Yoshino asked confused.
"I forced Watanabe-san to tell me. I suspected something was wrong with Jiro-kun, but he wouldn't tell us"
"Is it severe?" Yui seemed very scared.
"It has its severity, yes," Iyo, Jiro's sister, who had not intervened so far, approached the door.
"And you are?" The coach asked.
"I'm Jiro's older sister. My name is Iyo. Thank you for taking care of him," she bowed. "I leave you so you can talk"
"I'll go with you, so the two of us can talk then," Iyo nodded at Hatsue's offer. "See you in a few minutes. The boys are expecting us in an hour or so"
"Well. Continue, please," Ayako insisted when Jiro's sister and the coach left the room.
"I lied a little bit about myself," explained Jiro. "As you know, I really should be in second grade, but I missed one year of high school"
"Yes, you told us that you had a knee injury playing soccer and that rehabilitation didn't allow you to join your first year at Karasuno," Noriko recalled.
Jiro nodded. "I played soccer as a forward, I didn't lie to you about that, but I didn't really suffer any knee injury. I lost consciousness during a game. Similar to what happened to me in the gym a couple of days ago. They called an ambulance and had to revive me. After that, I needed several medical tests and the doctors finally found out that I have Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, in my case because of a genetic defect. It means that the thick, rigid walls of the ventricles do not relax properly to allow the heart chambers to fill in with blood. This difficulty is aggravated when the heart beats rapidly, for example when exercising, because the time to fill the heart chamber is shorter. Because the heart doesn't fill properly, it pumps less blood with each beat, and it is normal to suffer from arrhythmias that can even cause sudden death"
"And that's how you had to stop doing sport…" said Noriko.
"My family has spent a lot of money to get me a good treatment," Jiro continued. "I had surgery in the United States to fix the pathology. I felt great, even though I couldn't play soccer anymore. During the months I spent in the United States, that's when I met Furi-chan," everyone looked at Noa in surprise. "I saw you on TV. At a beach volleyball championship and I thought you were fantastic. I immeadiately became your fan! When I saw you in Japan, at the same school as me, I knew it was a sign of destiny and that I had to bring back the girls'volleyball team with you. Everything seemed to be going well, but in the last few months I had problems again and started to feel bad again. I immediately knew it was the heart. The difference this time was the quickness at which I got worse. I kept it from you because I didn't want to worry you. I even tried to hide it from my family. But unfortunately it is no longer a secret that I am not well"
"And what's going to happen now?" Mayu asked.
"I promised Chizuko-san that I would be honest with you," Jiro paused. "My heart is not right. I need surgery again. The doctors said they'll put an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator. It's a device that detects any rapid, life-threatening heartbeat and quickly sends a shock to the heart. In my case, it will also be accompanied by a pacemaker"
Everyone kept silent. It was hard to process that a 16-year-old like Jiro had gone through so much. The normal thing was that a young boy like him was healthy. Having such serious heart problems to even need a pacemaker was too much.
"Say something," Jiro smiled. "You're all making me feel bad. Besides, there's a solution. I will have surgery and I'll follow a very strict diet, as well as check-ups, but at least they have ruled out heart trasplant"
"Trasplant?" Yoshino asked surprised.
Jiro nodded. "It depended on the damage to my heart. It's very damaged, but the doctors are confident that the pacemaker and defibrillator will be enough. Needing a transplant would be a very serious problem because I would have to get on the waiting list and we wouldn't know how long it would be before I got one. I would have to stay in the hospital for a very long time and the goal is for me to get my life back to normal as soon as posible"
"I hope that from now on you will take good care of yourself and not keep us all worried," Nagisa scolded him.
"I know," Jiro giggled. "I didn't want you to worry, but in the end I got the opposite effect," he squeezed Noa's hand tightly, which he had never let go. "So it wasn't your fault, Furi-chan. It was mine for believing that I could continue to do things normally when it wasn't true"
"What matters know is that you are okay," said Noriko.
"We are very sorry that you are not with us in Tokyo. We'll miss you," added Yoshino. "Part of the success of the team is also yours"
"I'll go next year to the national championship, but you have to promise me that you will win this time!"
"Well, don't overdo it either," Ayako crossed her arms.
"I'm sick. I could have died. You have to do it for me," he pouted.
"Don't put any more pressure on us!"
Everyone laughed, but Jiro noticed that Noa had not joined them and that she was not saying anything. She was very serious and he could read sadness from her eyes. Jiro wanted to say something to comfort her, but at that moment his sister and the coach came in. They had to leave, the boys' volleyball team had been waiting for a while.
"Don't you want to talk to him before leaving?" Noriko asked Chizuko. The middle blocker had remained at the back of the room and everyone knew that she had feelings for Jiro.
"It's fine," she smiled and she meant it. "We are talking casually to each other again and that's enough for me"
"But have you talked about… You know…" Noriko lowered her voice. "Your feelings?"
"Noy yet," Chizuko shook her head no. "But I'll do it when we came back from Nationals. I made up my mind and I feel confident about it"
"Whoa," Noriko tapped her back.
"You are amazing, Chizuko-san," Yoshino added. "You have all our support"
Yui, Tomone and the twins, who were also listening to the conversation, nodded eagerly.
Nagisa stayed a while longer to keep Jiro company in the hospital, so he said goodbye to the girls and wished them all good luck for the championship. The rest of the team arrived half an hour later at the school, where the boys were already waiting. They got on the bus and took their seats, Noa's fulfulling her promise to sit next to Asahi. However, neither of them expected the girl to be so distressed instead of optimistic and Asahi couldn't blame her for that. Everyone in Karasuno had heard the news and Asahi understood that it must have been a very stressful situation for her.
"I'm sorry, Asahi-san," Noa muttered suddenly, as they were just over half an hour away from Sendai. Asahi looked at her worried. Noa's head was down and he couldn't see his face, but he did see some tears fall. "I am a terrible traveling companion"
Asahi started panicking, unable to say anything coherent to her to make her feel better. But Daichi, who was sitting in the front seats next to Suga, spoke. "Cry all you need, Noa. It will do you good"
Noa began to cry in silence. At that moment, Daichi seemed to Asahi to be an extraordinary guy. It wasn't easy for him to say such words so naturally and cause such an effect on other people. That's why Asahi felt a little angry with himself. He considered Noa his friend and he hadn't been able to comfort her. He swallowed and plucked up the courage to pat her on the back, trying to confort her. Noa cried for several more minutes until she got tired and fell asleep leaning on Asahi. The boy smiled, she must have been exhausted. He was sure she wouldn't have been able to sleep the night before.
When they arrived in Tokyo, their paths diverged. The girls got off the bus and walked to their hotel. They were surprised by the height of the building and how modern it looked just by standing in the lobby.
"Welcome!"
"Aimi-san!" they all exclaimed when they saw Nagisa's sister appear.
"I hope you had a good trip," she smiled gently.
"Do you work in this hotel?" Mayu asked curiously.
"No. Actually I work in the offices, but since I was the one who insisted so much on getting this for you, I should at least give you a proper welcome"
Aimi asked them to follow her. She went to the reception and picked up several keys that she gave them. Their rooms, with three beds each (except for the coach's, which had a single room) were on the seventh floor. Aimi also explained to them that on the top floor they had a gym where they could train and which they would share with the hotel guests, as well as with other team that was also staying in the same hotel.
"Another team?!" The twins asked excited.
"Is it famous?" Noriko seemed also to be interested.
"Mmmm..." Aimi shrugged. "I've been told the name, but I don't remember it. It's a boys' team. I think it's important... "
Everyone's eyes sparkled.
"Don't get excited," Hatsue warned them. "You go about your own business. Do not be distracted by foolish things.
"Yes…"
Once they settled in and left their bags in their respective rooms, Hatsue gathered them in her room, where they went over their rivals the next day. First they would face Beppu Shoushei High, from Oita Prefecture. Like them, the team had won one of the two extra places created that year to promote the competitiveness of women's volleyball in Japan, as the number of teams had decreased in recent years. Like Karasuno, it was a small team and although Hatsue was convinced that her players could easily beat them, she didn't want them to take victory for granted. It was the first time they played in an environment like Nationals and the pressure and nerves could play against them. Ukai had already warned her. The room of the gym, its high ceiling, would be the first battle they would have to fight.
When Hatsue let them go to rest, some of them went for a walk around the hotel to explore a little while the others went to eat something to return to the room as soon as possible, take a bath and go to sleep. It had been an exhausting trip and they wanted to rest.
The twins took a look around some of the hotel corridors. They were spacious and the decoration was modern and not too fussy. As they turned one of the corridors, they saw them. They recognized them instantly, they looked just like in the videos and photos. They were arguing, so they didn't even notice their presence. The two girls turned around and ran to the hotel's dining area, where the rest of their teammates were already eating dinner.
"What the hell are you doing?" Yoshino scolded them as she saw them running towards them. "You have to behave yourselves. We're here as guests and we can't bother other people"
"Something happened, right?" Yui became interested.
"You can't possibly imagine who we saw," Ayaka's eyes lit up. "You're going to freak out!"
"We already know who the other team that is also staying in this hotel is!" Ayako added with a smile.
…
The sound of the elevator indicated to Noa that she was already in the top floor of the hotel. After her coach's talk, her teammates had gone for a walk around the hotel and for dinner, but she preferred to be alone for the moment, trying to assimilate everything that had happened in the last few hours. It wasn't that she wanted to drown herself in sad and distressing thoughts about Jiro, but she didn't feel like talking and didn't want to have any fun at the moment. And most of all she didn't want the team to worry and let alone pity her if they saw her like that.
It had been traumatic to see Jiro on the floor, call him and not have him wake up. And the worst thing was the helplessness and despair she had felt because she couldn't do anything to save him. She had truly feared that Jiro might have died and she would have just watched. Yet, Noa was convinced that she would be fine eventually, she just needed some time.
The hotel gym was bigger than she expected. It had numerous exercise machines and a stretching area, which was actually what interested her. After the long bus ride, she needed to relax and stretch her muscles to feel great for the next day.
She was surprised when she found out that she wasn't alone. There was a boy. His hair was light gray with black tips at the ends. His fringe was parted in the middle of his forehead, with one clump of hair hanging down in the middle just above his eyes. He watched her carefully, reading the kanji on her tracksuit jacket and immediately getting the information that she belonged to Karasuno. Noa bowed a little as a greeting, but he didn't even bother. He picked up a couple of water bottles and some towels that someone seemed to have left there and walked to the door. However, before leaving, he stopped.
"You shouldn't be training at this hour. You should rest to compete well tomorrow," his voice was surprisingly soft, but also somewhat monotonous.
"I-I just came to do some stretching," Noa was a little confused. Although his voice was soft, it seemed like he was giving her a lecture even though he didn't know her at all. He curved the corner of his lips slightly upward and nodded to finally leave Noa alone.
Noa watched the door for a few more seconds. She found it weird that a stranger had dared to give her advice. She shook her head to dispel her thoughts and picked up one of the mats in the corner of the gym to put it on the floor.
Noa stretched her muscles for several minutes. She had slept most of the trip and, after being in the same position all the time without moving, she felt stiff. When she finished and went down to dinner, none of her teammates were already in the dining area. There were still some people eating, but she didn't feel much like sitting at a table to eat alone. She left the hotel and walked a couple of blocks until she found a convenience store. She bought some onigiri and sat down on a curb to eat it. As in Sendai, it was very cold in Tokyo. However, the sky seemed a little less beautiful to her. The light pollution meant that you couldn't see many stars in the sky at night, but you couldn't see any of them in Tokyo.
It had been many years since she set foot in Tokyo. She had left when she was 6 years old and the few memories she had were of life at home or at school, not of the atmosphere or the streets of the city. She had been born there and felt almost like an outsider.
"How depressing," she muttered to herself. "I'm pathetic."
She stood up and returned to the hotel. Before opening the door to the room, she heard the voices of Tomone and Mayu, who were laughing. However, when they saw her enter, they stood still.
"Where were you?" The libero asked. "Are you hungry? I think the dining area is still open"
"I've already had dinner," Noa took her underwear and pajamas and went into the bathroom.
The heat of the bath water and the silence drowned her out. She felt exhausted. She took longer to dry her long hair, making sure it wasn't wet to avoid catching a cold. When she came out of the bathroom, she went straight to bed, without even saying good night to her teammates. Not that she wanted to have a conversation with anyone in the first place.
Mayu looked at her concerned. Noa would be tired, just like everyone else, but she was worried for her best friend. She had barely spoken since what had happened to Jiro, she had cried on the bus and at that moment she didn't interact with them either. She seemed serious, sad and spiritless. Nationals began the next day, the championship started in just a few hours. Noa could be one of their best assets for the championship, they all saw a lot of potential in her, they even believed they had a chance to reach the quarterfinals because Noa was in the team. And yet, for the first time, Mayu really feared for the team's performance. If their best player was so discouraged, what would become of them?
And that's all. Short chapter, sorry, but I didn't want to start writing the next day. Nationals oficially star! Do you think Noa will be in top form for the first match? The title of the next chapter will give you a hint.
Next: The beast awakens
See you soon!
