When the final bell goes, Yachi, who’s already neatly packed away her pencil case, pushes her chair back, gives the most cursory, absentminded bow she’s ever given in her schooling career, picks up her bag and hightails it out of class like a mini-hurricane.
Her hands are still shaking a little, her knuckles white from where she was gripping the edge of her desk. Her heart sings a pitter-patter rhythm all the way down the corridor.
today – today – today’s the day –
Sunlit sakura, pale pink, delicate like possibilities, greet her as she emerges into the open. She’s wearing her lucky stars in her hair, just for today.
It doesn’t stop her from nearly tripping over her own feet, as she barrels across the courtyard, squeaks out a small apology to a bush she’d collided into and stumbles into the gym.
“Yachi-san?”
The voice that greets her is slightly surprised.
Yachi, startled to hear a voice at all, comes to a flustered halt by the doorstep and looks up.
“Kageyama-kun! Good afternoon,” she calls out, smiling.
Kageyama nods at her from the court, volleyball already in his hands.
“You’re early,” he observes.
Yachi laughs a little sheepishly as she walks over to the benches. “I ran here right after class. I was so nervous… you’re early too, Kageyama-kun?”
“Yeah.”
He tosses the ball in the air. Yachi, expecting a serve, braces herself for the firm sound of impact, but Kageyama lets the ball drop instead, catches it in his hands again with a preoccupied frown, spinning it in between his palms.
Yachi sits down and rummages through her bag for her tracksuit.
“Why are you nervous, Yachi-san?” Kageyama asks.
“Ah, um, that is! You know, today, the new members are coming, and, I…”
Yachi lets her voice trail off as she rests her bag in her lap, feels her pulse quicken again, clenches her fist, small and tight by her side. She tucks her ankles under the bench, one way, then another, and presses her toes into the floor, restless.
Her gaze wanders upwards to meet Kageyama’s, steady, intense.
“Me too,” he admits, with a brusque nod.
Yachi stares. “Huh?”
“I’m nervous about the new members too. I don’t know if I can be a good senpai. Because the last time, at Kitagawa Daiichi, I was. Kind of shitty.”
He says it with a blunt kind of frankness, self-conscious, but honest nonetheless, and Yachi’s the one blushing now even as she fumbles for something she can say, inadequate as it surely is.
“That’s – don’t think about that, Kageyama-kun, that was last time, you’re different now.”
Kageyama takes a short breath, lets it out quickly with a quiet huff.
Unexpectedly, Yachi sees the corners of his lips twitch, into something like a smile – a genuine smile –
“Thanks,” he says. “So are you. So. Don’t worry.”
He turns back to face the other side of the court, tosses the ball high and smashes down a decisive serve. It’s perfect, knocking down the bottle on the other side. Spot on.
Yachi, her cheeks still flushed, thinks:
we’re stronger now. we can do it.
She lets the simplicity of his reassurance wash over her, and her heart brightens, like her stars.
Love!!!!
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