Kenma likes calmness. When there's a ruckus in the classroom, you're sure to find him bent over his desk, his gaze glued either to his notebook or the screen of his cell, isolating himself as much as he can. If a fight breaks out on the yard, he'll vanish and then reappear at the farthest corner. Confrontations make him nervous and he invests a good amount of his energy in avoiding them.
He only tolerates a fight inside a videogame, and Yamamoto claims that then is when Kenma takes his chance to let out his most vicious side, but the boy's still miffed since the last time they played and Kenma's character chopped off his character's head.
It was necessary to pass to the next level, there's no need to make such a fuss about it.
He doesn't like parties either, and noisy places filled with people he doesn't know and doesn't feel comfortable with. If it were up to him, he'd spend all weekend nights at home, playing videogames or reading or listening to music or doing anything that doesn't involve interacting with loud, discomfiting strangers. Ever since he was little, he hasn't quite felt like he fits in his own skin whenever he's surrounded by other people. Especially if he hasn't been given enough time to get used to them, to learn their gestures and the way they talk; enough time to figure out what they expect from him and whether they'll be able to understand that, sometimes, he just wants to be left alone and it's nothing personal, really.
Maybe that's why he's always so reluctant to change. Once you've reached a moment of relative calm amidst the everyday chaos, why would you disturb it? Why do people insist, as soon as they get to one place, to go somewhere else? Why don't they stay where they're comfortable instead of always speeding ahead as fast as they can?
Sometimes, he wishes real life came with its own pause button.
He's well aware that there are people who can make new friends wherever they go, in an instant. A glance, a few words and a smile and they feel as though they'd known each other their entire lives. He can't. His best friend is the same one he's had for his entire life, and if Kuroo hadn't pushed him, he would've never started to play volleyball, and he would have remained at the club even less when the third years treated the first and the second years like servants. If it hadn't been for Kuroo, he wouldn't have come out —a bit— from his shell and he would still feel intimidated by a boy as noisy and different from him as Yamamoto.
He won't say that he likes volleyball —it still tires him too much— but it doesn't bother him either. Little by little, once the third years graduated, the team stopped feeling so strange and it became another familiar place where he can feel comfortable. Some of the boys aren't like him at all —Inuoka, Lev, Yamamoto, just to mention a few— but they're no longer strangers: he's gotten used to their idiosyncrasies, he's no longer startled by the way they talk even when they shout and jump, he's not scared if any of them pats his shoulder, and he doesn't feel any inhibitions at giving them a piece of his mind. He tells Lev what he thinks of his terrible plays, often and without hesitation. He could even consider them, tentatively, friends.
He's still very far, though, from appreciating any disturbance of his moments of calm.
Of course he startles when, while lost in an unknown city, all of a sudden a boy with orange hair jumps next to him and starts firing off questions. They're harmless questions, but no interaction with a new person is ever harmless to him. He's always wondering what that person is actually thinking and why they are talking to him and what their intentions are; and he spends half the time trying to decipher their words and gestures and the other half measuring his own.
The boy, though, carries every emotion and thought clearly written on his features, his gestures, his tone, in such a manner it leaves no room for doubt. And when he admits so freely to his insecurities by asking if Kenma didn't find it weird that he's a middle blocker with such height, the last traces of Kenma's perpetual nervousness dissolve and he's surprised at finding himself sharing some of his own insecurities.
So Shouyou becomes the first person that Kenma can say he became friends in just one moment, a friendship that translates inside the court into an exciting rivalry (although he's not willing to admit such thing yet) and outside of it in texts, videogame sessions shared online, in a tour around Tokyo.
He hears Yaku's and Yamamoto's remarks, surprised at listening to him talk to someone outside of Nekoma with such confidence, especially someone so different from himself. Whereas Kenma prefers calm and silence, Shouyou is a whirlwind of constant movement, always running, jumping, talking with his hands and his entire body, incapable of standing still for an instant. Whereas Kenma sometimes feels exhausted just by the idea of making an effort, Shouyou is a boundless source of energy that insists on going on when everyone else is already panting on the floor. Kenma has a hard time handling new situations with unknown people, Shouyou throws himself at them; while Kenma thinks and rethinks each movement, Shouyou darts ahead at top speed without ever slowing down. It should scare him, because Shouyou is a twister capable of messing up everything in its wake, but for some reason, it doesn't. There's something about Shouyou that he finds reassuring instead of upsetting.
Except for a day like today.
Nekoma, fortunately, isn't playing against Karasuno when Shouyou loses it and begins yelling at his setter in front of everybody. Karasuno's main setter, with his eternally hyper focused expression and his narrowed eyes, still makes Kenma nervous and more so now that his face is turning purple. Far from getting scared —even though the other boy has almost twenty centimeters and several kilos on him— Shouyou grows more incensed and another teammate, the one that reminds him so much of Yamamoto, has to grab him from beneath his armpits and hold him up to prevent him from jumping at his setter. The rest of the team intervenes and the ruckus fades away, but everyone who is not currently playing their own match keep gawking at the scene, stupefied.
"But what did the guy do to make Shrimpy that angry?" Kuroo asks. "That toss looked flawless to me and it let him score, didn't it? What else did he want?"
Kenma narrows his eyes, pensive. Yes, it's true that toss had no flaw he could see. It was, perhaps, perfect: the ball drawing a parable, its highest point coinciding with the spiker's outstretched hand, easy to hit, certain to score.
"Maybe that was the problem," he mutters mostly to himself, because he doesn't have the answer yet but it's taking shape in his head. Karasuno always has a new trick up their sleeve and Shouyou never wants to be left behind. The perfect toss from Karasuno's setter, that genius whose abilities surpass by far everyone else's, wasn't what Shouyou wanted.
Shouyou doesn't want easy: he wants to graze the sky with his fingertips and make the impossible happen.
When he dares to ask him, Shouyou shrugs with nonchalance.
"Oh, we're trying something new, you'll see. It still needs to be polished, but Kageyama'll get it in no time," he adds, with a smile of absolute, unshakeable trust. He doesn't see them play or train together from that moment onwards, but the air between them has stopped feeling tense and volatile. When he sees them exchanging glances from opposite ends of the gym, Kenma is surprised to find out that the always loud Shouyou is capable of holding entire conversations in silence.
You'll see Hinata said and the day comes when everyone does.
Nekoma is taking a break after their latest match and everyone's gaze is drawn to the court where Fukurodani faces Karasuno. Fukurodani is the best team at the camp, Karasuno's the one that's been doing the worst, but it's always fascinating to watch them play despite their systematic losing. There's something about their playing that's always amazing, constantly changing, unpredictable from one moment to the next.
That day they do not disappoint.
Kema can sense it almost before seeing it. There's a strange electrical aura surrounding Shouyou. His movements are precise; his eyes have that intensity that can at times become creepy. He starts to run for the spike almost too soon, before the setter even raises his arms and, if it were anyone else, the ball would never catch up with him.
But Karasuno's setter isn't anyone else.
Kenma widens his eyes, certain he'll see something extraordinary and yet, it's hard to believe. The boy tosses a ball that seems drawn to Shouyou's open palm.
And then, in midair, right in front of Shouyou, the ball stops.
For a fraction of a second, perhaps, the ball remains suspended in midair until Shouyou spikes it and it falls with a thud on the other side of the net, at the gawking of Fukurodani's blockers, any one of them unable to react in time.
The burst of joy explodes in unison and at that moment, Karasuno's setter doesn't look that intimidating, when he's squealing inarticulate sounds just like Shouyou. Even when his face darkens, Shouyou's enthusiasm is electrifying, and when he pretty much shouts his admiration at him, the boy looks kind of dazzled. Who could blame him? Shouyou at the moment is a supernova, and all that explosion of light aimed at you must be too much to bear for any mortal.
Perhaps Karasuno's setter isn't that scary after all.
Kenma could never be part of the same team as Shouyou. The boy has the unquenchable yearning to pull himself forward at all times; the constant urge to improve, to make the jump that will give him wings. He tries to explain it to Kuroo: someone like him, who likes the quiet, who has to be dragged to practice, would never be a right fit on the court with someone like Shouyou, all the time propelling himself a little farther, a little higher, a little closer to the impossible. He's not sure many people exist capable of keeping up with him without falling down along the way.
Maybe, he thinks as he hears them yell one more time! in unison, only that boy with the hyper focused and serious look can be the one able to keep up with the hurricane of electric energy that makes Shouyou. Maybe he's the only one not to be dragged down by the current, but who manages to remain by his side as they jump a little farther, a little higher, a little closer to the unreachable sky.