After the incident with Kageyama, Hinata and I both decided it would be best to keep our current relationship private to ensure we kept everything courteous to the team's wellbeing.

This meant keeping our interactions strictly as friends and teammates. I continued working playbooks and film for Kageyama and the rest of upperclassman to review. We also asked Kageyama and Hitoka to keep things amongst us. Hitoka reluctantly agreed while Kageyama, though he wasn't 100% on board with the idea of us involving ourselves romantically, understood our reasoning and appreciated our maturity towards the subject.

Although, there were some close calls..

During another bus trip, Hinata and I were sitting with Tsukishima and Yamaguchi playing a go-cart racing game against one another on our portable gaming systems.

Hinata was staring intently at his screen, his tongue sticking out, showing how serious he was about winning. The guys began shouting at one another for setting traps and during their bickering I took my shot and sped past their characters and won the race with seconds to spare. They all fell silent and stared, jaws wide.

"Sorry boys.. gotta be quicker," I teased.

Out of the blue, Hinata pecked me on the cheek.

We both froze.

"Uhhhhh..." both Tsukishima and Yamaguchi stared confused.

"Ohhh umm..." Hinata stammered.

My quickest reaction was to smack Hinata in the arm and call him a pervert to which most of the bus laughed.

I glared sternly at Hinata for forgetting our agreement and he gave me his saddest puppy face. I sighed but I knew I couldn't stay angry with him for long.

As we played some more, Tsukishima taunted Hinata for his display, "SOOO where's my victory kiss Hinata?"

"Oooohhh Tsukiiii.." he fake swooned and began making kissy faces towards him.

Tsukishima instantly became disgusted and started shoving Hinata's advances away.

We all watched the two struggle for a while but after some time the bus got quieter and everyone had fallen asleep.

Soon after, Hinata moved to sit with me and offered to help me organize paperwork. As I sifted through, Hinata began playing with locks of my hair and twirling them in between his fingers and he concentrated on which notes he felt took priority for the next team meeting.

The sensation was strangely soothing. I had trouble focusing. Then, I felt his fingers begin to intertwine strands of my hair into a loose braid.

I turned, "Since when could you braid?"

"Oh," he chuckled, "My sister sometimes needed help getting ready and mom would be juggling a lot of things so I figured I'd try my hand to help out."

The more he experimented the more I slipped into a daze. I felt my eyelids fall and I leaned into Hinata's shoulder.

I felt him tense, and shift a little to be leaning against the window. Probably to avoid detection. It wasn't much. But, still, I was glad for the moments we shared together.

~~

Once we unloaded, Kageyama asked everyone to head home and I decided to stay behind since I still had some notes to go over.

We briefly read over every page and sat mostly in silence. Until he flipped to Hinata's page, and he stared at the notes I had written.

I had marked the consistency of his shots and even made suggestions on what could improve his success percentage:

"He really could stand to adjust his form, that would increase his power and reduce pressure on his ankle."

"Yeah, kinda mirrored the idea from what we do for services during tennis."

"I half expected to flip to his section and find hearts and love notes."

"Oh shut up Kageyama you know I'm nothing like that.."

"I have to admit," he continued, " I was worried you two would lose consistency after your relationship began.. but, it's almost like his focus has increased since then."

"Heh.. I think sometimes he does it to show off," I laughed.

"And what about you? It's only a month until spring comes and registration opens up. How will you feel once your focus is drawn elsewhere?"

It dawned on me. Hinata and the team and become the center of my attention. What would happen once I got back onto the court?

Could we make it work? I didn't want to distract Hinata, especially, so close to the Spring Tournament. What was I going to do?