Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ushijima Wakatoshi is deep in thought.

This is not so unusual that anyone takes time to stop by his neat little cubicle and point it out. It isn’t that he isn’t capable of deep thinking, or even that he is opposed to doing so. On the contrary, Ushijima is often caught sitting pin-straight in his rolling chair—his knees bent, with the backs of his nicely shined black loafers resting against the small wheels, and his elbows on his well-kept, obsessively clean desk—staring at his computer screen.

So it isn’t out of the ordinary, per se.

It’s just that usually Ushijima Wakatoshi is sitting pin-straight in his rolling chair—with his knees bent and his elbows on his well-kept, obsessively clean desk—staring at his computer screen because someone has emailed the Sports Education Division with some ludicrous, bordering impossible request like: can you teach volleyball to the village of Kawagoe?

It’s not that Ushijima couldn’t, technically, teach volleyball to an entire village. He has been around and loved volleyball his entire life. Ushijima had been the ace of his high school volleyball team and he’d even helped take his teammates to nationals twice. He was—and still is—from a skills point-of-view, very good at volleyball. He even knows all of the rules. So the problem isn’t one of knowledge. The problem is that one, Kawagoe is not a village, but a city, and two, it has a population of over 350,000, and so, three, it would be extremely difficult for Ushijima to, by himself, teach volleyball to every person in Kawagoe.

He would still be willing to try, but he thinks that, overall, it would likely be an enormous waste of everyone’s time. (Luckily, Ukai Keishin, his direct superior, is of the same general opinion. When Ushijima—at a loss for how to respond to the very kindly worded but otherwise potentially impossible request—presented his quandary to his director, Ukai had done a single read-through and sputtered out loud, “Have people lost their goddamned minds?”)

Anyway, the point is that this isn’t that.

Ushijima Wakatoshi isn’t deep in thought because someone sent him an email in a professional capacity that has temporarily rendered him nearly immobile with dilemma.

No, Ushijima Wakatoshi is deep in thought because when he’d arrived this morning, he’d peeled a pink post-it note off the top of his computer monitor.

On the post-it note was scribbled the question:

So what were you like in high school?

If he’s being honest, it’s not a question he’s thought about very deeply. Ushijima thinks he had an above-average experience in high school. He was recruited to attend one of the best schools in Miyagi prefecture, in part because of his excellence in volleyball. He’d attended school, passed his courses, and led his rather formidable volleyball team. He doesn’t think he was any particular way while doing any of it, or at least he isn’t aware of having been so.

He supposes he’d probably been a strong leader, and a perfectly adequate friend. One of his friends—Ohira Reon—had even helped him secure this position after Ushijima had graduated from college with his degree in Sports Management and Business. Reon has since moved to a different company, but they text sporadically and once a month they will even get dinner together.

If Ushijima had been particularly unwelcoming or terrible, he thinks Reon probably would not get dinner with him every month.

“Hey, do you have a min—why do you look like someone asked you to solve for pi?”

Ushijima pauses his contemplation just long enough to turn slightly in his chair.

“Is pie something to be solved?” he asks, a little perplexed.

“Well, typically yes,” Shirabu says. Shirabu Kenjiro works in Community Engagement. He’s relatively short, definitely loud, and has a sense of humor that could sharpen a razor. Ushijima has worked with him for the past four years and in that time, he has not once understood a single joke that Shirabu has offered. Shirabu has told him this himself, in no uncertain terms.

Shirabu pauses at the corner of Ushijima’s cubicle, a spiral notepad and a pen in his hand. “They’ve been trying to figure it out for hundreds of years, right? Or something.”

Ushijima considers this and straightens in his seat. “I see. Well, I do not have much of a sweet tooth, but I occasionally enjoy a rose pie. I appreciate the way the layers are crafted to look like a flower. I could not do that with apples myself.” He pauses. “Or with anything else.”

He looks at Shirabu apologetically. “I do not have much of a creative brain, I’m afraid.”

“What? That’s not what I—” Shirabu starts and then stops and shakes his head. His asymmetrical fringe swishes across his forehead. “Nevermind. I don’t think you need to be that creative to do what we do, so that’s probably fine.”

“Ukai-san has not had any complaints so far,” Ushijima says with a nod. “Did you need help with something?”

“I got a few calls about organizing a tournament for a local elementary school,” Shirabu says. “I had some questions but—nevermind. Is that another note?”

Ushijima, who had set the post-it-note on the base of his monitor stand, freezes. He hesitates for some reason, although there is nothing to hide here.

“Ah. You know—”

“Goshiki,” Shirabu explains. He grins and shuffles into the cubicle.

“I told Tsutomu that this was personal,” Ushijima says, lightly scandalized.

“It’s not his fault,” Shirabu says. “It’s kind of your fault. He can’t keep a secret to save his life.”

“Well, it wasn’t life-threatening,” Ushijma says reasonably.

Shirabu waves away Ushijima’s attempts to give Goshiki the benefit of the doubt. He leans over Ushijima’s shoulder, trying to get a better look at the post-it note. “Anyway, I’ve been wanting to see one myself! Nothing interesting ever happens around here, and you’ve been keeping this from us!”

“It isn’t something to be shared,” Ushijima says. He frowns. “They are merely messages.”

“Secret messages,” Shirabu says. “From a secret person!”

“We share a cubicle.”

“You’ve never met them before!” Shirabu exclaims. “You don’t know them! It could be anyone. It could be—”

Ushijima waits.

“A serial killer. Or a pop star. Oh, royalty in disguise?”

“Why would royalty be working at the Japanese National Volleyball Association?” Ushijima asks.

“I don’t know, I’ve watched a few movies with that kind of thing. Maybe they’re trying to see how commoners live. Or they’re the family disgrace and this is their last chance to prove themselves before they take the crown.” Shirabu’s eyes gleam in the fluorescent office lighting. He looks a little unhinged. “And this is their last chance. You’re their only hope!”

“Me?” Ushijima is confused again.

“Well, if the movies are to be believed, you will definitely fall in love,” Shirabu says.

Ushijima shakes his head. “That is unlikely.”

“Love can happen anywhere, Wakatoshi-kun,” Shirabu says. “And to anyone. Even to you. Even here, at the Japanese National Volleyball Association.”

Ushijima has never been in love. He’s been on dates certainly, and even had a few short-lived relationships. But his feelings were never strong enough to overlook the little things that can build up and dismantle two people. By the time they’d had the conversation—usually initiated by Ushijima himself—it was clear that it was the right decision to not continue. Compatibility problems.

But then, who could be compatible with someone like him?

So what were you like in high school?

He sticks the post-it note onto the bottom of the computer monitor, thinking. The note is written in ink, the words curved in cramped, spiky handwriting that is now so familiar it is almost a point of comfort.

Ushijima has a small metal tin of them, an entire personal collection—messages written on post-it notes, short letters on company letterhead, doodles on cute little anime stationary, and a few notable napkins with a Sorry! Had to get this thought out as fast as I could and this was all I had around! He keeps them carefully, safe and unwrinkled so that he can reread them whenever he wants.

“So?” Shirabu asks. He’s fully ignoring his own task now, the volleyball for elementary children campaign entirely forgotten. “What are you going to say?”

“I will have to think,” Ushijima says noncommittally.

“Boo,” Shirabu says. He crosses his arms at his chest, rustling his plain, white button-up as he does so. “It’s an easy answer for me. Although it probably wouldn’t win me any secret admirers.”

“They are not an admirer,” Ushijima says, frowning. “We are simply—”

Shirabu waits.

“Cubicle partners,” Ushijima finishes.

Shirabu raises an eyebrow.

“My cubicle partner doesn’t know I even exist,” he says. “No one’s been leaving me cute little notes or asking me what I was like in high school.”

“What were you like in high school, Kenjiro?” Ushijima asks.

“A little bitch,” Shirabu says and grins. “Don’t suppose you can relate.”

Ushijima does give this some thought, to his credit. “I don’t believe so. Although I suppose I would be a poor judge of my own character.”

“No, trust me, if you were a little bitch, you’d definitely know,” Shirabu says. He pushes his fringe out of his eyes. “There’s no mistaking that kind of thing.”

Ushijima thinks this is more than he needs to know about his coworker. But Shirabu looks like he’s amused by his own revelation, so maybe it’s okay.

“I’m not sure what to say,” Ushijima admits. “I do not think I was particularly interesting or noteworthy.”

“No teenager really is.” Shirabu shrugs. “But they asked you for a reason, didn’t they?”

Ushijima supposes so.

Shirabu claps Ushijima on his shoulder and straightens.

“Just be honest! And then tell me what they say. I’m invested now and if I don’t learn all of the office gossip I will literally die.”

“How?” Ushijima asks, curious.

“Spontaneous combustion,” Shirabu says. “I read about it in a medical journal.”

Ushijima gives him a dubious look and Shirabu grins.

“I’ll email you about the elementary kids. Kuroo hasn’t been by about it has he?”

“No.” Ushijima shakes his head.

“Figures. He’s the one who set it up.” Shirabu tuts and straightens. “All right. See you at the staff meeting later. And don’t forget!”

Ushijima blinks.

Shirabu motions spontaneously combusting and then slinks away, leaving Ushijima slightly bewildered and alone with his thoughts.

Ushijima begins his work for the day. A lot of his work day consists of answering emails or answering phone calls, but there are other tasks on his plate too, depending on what campaigns Sports Education is running that season. Sometimes he has to write different materials, or create slideshows, or, on the rare occasion, record videos to educate different groups about volleyball. He likes his job well enough. He had once had aspirations of becoming a professional volleyball player, but an unfortunate knee injury his third year had ruled that out. It hadn’t been a realistic dream anyway. So few players were ever good enough to be recruited to play in the V.League and the salary wasn’t particularly great either.

Reon had interned at the JVA during college and got Ushijima an interview his first year out. It had been easy enough to convince them that he was perfect for the role—Ushijima had been captain of Miyagi’s best volleyball team after all. Also, as mentioned, he knew all the rules.

So he likes what he does and it was the closest to his childhood dream that he was ever going to get anyway. But it does leave so many of his days looking the same. Ushijima comes in to work, he does his tasks, and he leaves. He goes back home, changes to go to the gym, works out for an hour or two, showers, prepares dinner, watches whatever game is being broadcast, and is asleep no later than 10 pm on the dot every evening. It’s not a glamorous existence by any means, but he’s never aspired to live anything like that. He likes his life, and sometimes on the weekends, he will even disrupt his routine to go to a game in person or meet friends for dinner.

There’s just little that’s disruptive or spontaneous about it. He has been living the same life—the same routine—for years.

Then, one day, he’d come into his cubicle and found a note on the keyboard.

It had started on an unmemorable, nondescript any-other-Tuesday at the beginning of summer. Ushijima had been in the middle of launching a Community Volleyball series among local elders seeking to stay connected and it had been taking more coordination and work than anticipated. Ushijima wasn’t afraid of work, but admittedly this was more than he and Ukai had calculated for. To make up for the sheer volume of it, he’d started to come in earlier than he usually did—at seven in the morning—and leave an hour past his usual departure time—at six in the evening.

The building was relatively quiet at seven in the morning. There were other companies they shared the space with—Bouncing Ball itself was two floors above the JVA—but most kept normal hours, meaning it was just Ushijima, the man watching the security desk, and the one person he would always find himself passing to get into the elevator. He didn’t recognize the other man, but their paths seemed to cross in a funny way, the elevator door opening to the tired, young man nearly slumped against the side while Ushijima waited patiently to take the elevator car up.

(The first time it had happened, the young man had appeared straight up unconscious. Heedless of the door opening and certainly of Ushijima standing there, waiting quietly to step in, the young man had remained stubbornly unmoving, eyes closed, with his head tilted against the mirrored side of the elevator car. Ushijima wondered if he might be dead. He hoped that was not the case.

The ding of the door, the rush of fresh air—none of it made a difference. The man remained comatose.

It wasn’t until Ushijima had cautiously stepped into the car and pressed his hand against the man’s bony shoulder and, shaking him gently, said, “Excuse me, are you all right?” that his eyes had flown open.

“Shit!” That was the first thing he’d ever said to Ushijima. He looked utterly startled, his wide, red eyes electric from surprise. “Fuck, did I fall asleep?”

“I believe so,” Ushijima said.

“That’s so embarrassing! How does someone fall asleep on an elevator ride?”

Ushijima had no answer for him.

“I was just so tired so I thought I’d just close my eyes for a second and then one thing led to another and I guess I passed out. While standing up! That’s never happened to me before. Well, first time for everything I guess, although your bad luck that you had to see for yourself and—shit! The door is closing! Hold on!” The young man thrust out a leg to hold the door open, which was barely effective and extremely dangerous.

Ushijima barely had the chance to step aside before the stranger flung himself bodily out of the elevator.

“Thanks!” he shouted as the door started to close. “Have a good day!”

And then the door had slammed shut, leaving nothing behind except a whirlwind of departing energy and the knowledge that something strange had just happened to him.

The entire encounter was so out of the ordinary that it had startled Ushijima, but it had only derailed his morning somewhat. He had assumed at the time that it would be a bemusing, one-time occurrence, something for him to shuffle into the back of his mind and forget. He’d only lingered on it for a few confused minutes when back at his desk. Then he’d opened his email and been lost to the pull of the day.)

On that unmemorable, nondescript, any-other-Tuesday morning, Ushijima had done everything the same way he always did. He had swiped into the office and turned on the lights. He had crossed the maze of similar, bland grey-toned cubicles to his bland grey-toned cubicle. He had shrugged off his jacket and hung it from the hook that was attached to one of the little grey walls. He had turned on his computer and then allowed it time to boot up while he had started the coffee machine in the break room. Ushijima didn’t need caffeine, but he liked the bitter taste of coffee, especially in the morning. He had completed the methodical and ultimately soothing task of filling the coffee basket, replenishing the water, and setting it to brew before pouring himself a cup of coffee, black. He had taken a sip to taste the quality and then, satisfied, made his long journey back to his bland, grey-toned cubicle.

Ushijima had gotten so far as setting his coffee mug—a plain white ceramic one with only a large volleyball printed onto it—down on his desk when he’d finally seen it. Nestled beside his keyboard was a folded piece of light blue stationary paper.

Curious, Ushijima had opened it. On the paper, there was a note. No, it was longer than a note. On multiple pages of light blue stationary paper, there was a letter. And it was addressed to Ushijima.

Technically.

It said this:

Hiya Cubicle-chan!

It is me, Other Cubicle-chan. Your night-time cubicle-mate, your sleepy owl counterpart! I bet you don’t know anything about me, which makes sense. I don’t know anything about you either! We share the same desk but I have no idea who you are or what your name is or what you do or what you look like. I don’t even know if you’re a boy or a girl! Or neither? Or both?? I guess you could be anything and I would support you, Cubicle-chan. You in particular and I think the general “you” too. People are allowed to be the things they want to be, right? And the things they’re born as? That feel right? I always thought it was so silly that people took things like that personally. What does it matter to me what your truth is? As long as it’s your truth! And as long as it isn’t hurting other people any!

Although I guess I can’t imagine what someone’s truth could be that would hurt someone else. Maybe if they were a serial killer, I guess. Or an evil dictator. Or a bloodthirsty creature of the night. Or a zombie. Although I guess maybe bloodthirsty creatures of the night and zombies can’t really help themselves. Once you’re biologically predisposed to crave human brains, what are you supposed to do about it, right?

Anyway, I’m rambling! I’m always rambling, but you don’t know that about me yet. Or I guess you do now.

The thing is, I’ve been debating leaving you a little note for a while now. I like my job enough, but it gets boring sometimes. Do you ever feel like that? Like—this is fine, it pays fine, I’m good at it, I even signed up for it! No complaints! Well, maybe a little complaints. One complaint.

Night shift is great, but it’s still very much the middle of the night. And the middle of the night is when everyone else is asleep. And when your brain starts thinking of weird things. Like, would I want to be a zombie or a bloodthirsty creature of the night? Is there an ethical difference between drinking someone’s blood for a living and eating someone’s brain? Do people have different tasting blood? What about different tasting brains? What if, as a zombie, you turn into the personality of the person whose brain you just ate? That would be so weird right? Would you have any control over that kind of thing? And then how long would it last…

Oh, sorry, I got distracted again! See—this is what I mean. The night shift gives you a lot of time to think and for better or for worse, I’m always thinking.

So one day I was sitting here doing that—thinking—and it occurred to me that you—my cubicle-mate, my day shift partner in cubicle crimes—are a complete mystery to me. Who is the Cubicle-san who sits where I sit, but during the day? Who comes into this place—my place, at least at night—in the morning and uses the computer that I’ve just turned off, maybe a few hours before? Who is my counterpart, living the same life as me, in the same place as me, but in the sunlight? (btw is this is how vampires think?)

Who are you? What are you like? What do you like? What division do you work in? How long have you worked here? Is this what you always wanted to do? What are your hopes and dreams? Do you like the desktop background that I picked for our shared computer? I thought the little chibi alien on the rocket ship was so cute!

Maybe you’ll write back and maybe you won’t. I hope you do!

You don’t have to answer all of my questions. Just answer some. Or answer nothing at all. Write me back something else! Or draw me something!

Tell me what happens on the day shift.

Yours,

Cubicle-chan (Night Shift)

To this day, Ushijima doesn’t really understand why he had chosen to write back.

He’d read the note the first time and been utterly bewildered—confused and perplexed and a little annoyed. Why was a stranger writing to him? Why was he using company hours to do so? Did Ushijima have to write him back now? Would it be rude to not?

At first, he had resolved to not address it at all. It was a waste of company resources to spend time writing to a stranger for leisure purposes instead of doing your job. He’d set the letter on top of a tray at the far end of the cubicle and determined to forget about it.

And it had almost worked. Ushijima returned to his emails. He pulled up a document he had been working on for the past week. He typed some things. But then he’d turned his head to pick out a pen from the little pen cup he kept at his desk and a flash of light blue caught his eyes.

He paused. He hesitated. It felt wrong—inappropriate and possibly improper—to give the letter more attention when he had work to do. But when he turned his attention back to his computer, he found that he couldn’t concentrate. He typed the same sentence once—twice—three times before he finally stopped.

Ushijima took a bracing breath and turned back to the letter. He picked it up and read it all the way through again. And then he did so a third time.

The note was spontaneous and presumptuous and nearly incoherent with stream-of-conscious thinking. There were parts Ushijima could hardly read because the handwriting was so cramped and spiky. There was a sticker of a little smiling sushi stuck to the end, next to the signature. It stared up at him like a joke he couldn’t quite decipher. The entire thing was so extremely absurd he wondered if someone—perhaps Shirabu—was playing a prank on him.

He put the letter back in the tray and turned back to his computer. Then he stopped and turned back to the letter.

Ushijima did this three more times.

It was on the fourth pass that he finally gave in.

Frustrated and puzzled and a little embarrassed, Ushijima Wakatoshi turned to a fresh page in his lined notepad. He picked up his favorite blue-ink pen, considering what he wanted to say, and started writing.

*

That had been four months ago. Ushijima could not have anticipated then that his decision to write back his cubicle partner would not have concluded by now.

(He was now referred to as Kappa-san. Ushijima had refused to call him Cubicle-chan and Cubicle-chan had refused to give his real name, so a few days into their newly minted correspondence, Ushijima had received a new letter—on the back of a torn page from a word of the day calendar—from his cubicle mate saying:

Now you can’t just not address your notes to me, Cubicle-chan! How will I know who they’re supposed to be for? I can’t be reading letters meant for just anyone, you know? That’s not very nice! And possibly is even illegal. Hmm if you don’t want to call me Cubicle-chan or Night Shift, how about Kappa-chan? When I was little, the kids used to call me little monster. That wasn’t very nice of them, but then one day I decided I liked little monsters anyway and Kappas are very scary so if I was going to be called a monster I might as well be a scary one!

Ushijima hadn’t cared for that much either, but he supposed there was something sweet and empowering about reclaiming a nickname that used to hurt you. He had addressed the next letter with, Dear Kappa-san, and his cubicle partner had been immediately delighted by the change.)

Maybe Ushijima had thought his cubicle-mate would have grown tired of him by now. Or maybe he’d assumed that he would be the one to stop replying. He had never cared to prolong things he did not particularly understand, and this—leaving notes for a complete stranger—was definitely something he did not understand.

Somehow, this seeming inevitability never comes to pass. Despite even his own past tendencies, Ushijima comes into his cubicle every morning and scans his desk area. Sometimes it’s stuck onto the computer monitor. Other times it’s on top of the keyboard, or placed in the little metal cabinet above their desk, taped under the desktop, or buried in the letter tray, or pinned to the cloth board. Sometimes, Kappa-san makes Ushijima work for his note, hiding it somewhere he will have to look for it. He looks for it all the same, and every time—no matter how practical Ushijima tries to be, or how resigned he makes himself to their correspondence one day ending—Ushijima’s heart lifts to find a scribbled little note somewhere in his cubicle, left just for him.

Good morning, Cubicle-chan! every note, letter, and scribble will read. And every morning, Ushijima will sit down at his desk to read it, and after he finishes doing so, he will smile very politely and say back out loud, “Good morning.”

Ushijima spends the morning revising an educational campaign plan that he and Ukai have been going back and forth on for the past week. It’s part of an ambitious new project that had come out of an all-staff meeting when Kuroo Tetsurou, from the Sports Promotion Division, seized by some sort of semi-misunderstood genius, sat straight up in his chair, gasped, and exclaimed, “Inter-sports tournament!”

“Is that words?” Shirabu had asked, raising his head from where he’d been in a fierce phone game against Goshiki Tsutomu, the guy with the dark bowlcut hair next to him. “Does modern Japanese accommodate for that?”

“Shush,” Ukai said, waving a hand at Shirabu. “Talk, Kuroo.”

Someone—probably Miya—groaned. Kuroo ignored him and stood up with an expression on his face that spelled long nights, insane deadlines, and trouble.

“No, listen—it can be an educational opportunity across multiple sports!” Kuroo said excitedly, his golden eyes a little crazed and his hair standing up taller than usual. “Different Japanese professional athletes competing against each other in sports that they don’t play! It can be a competition because what do athletes love more than a competition, but also a—I guess exhibition of different sports? We can draw a diverse crowd across different audiences and sports fans, teach them volleyball, draw them in, and get them hooked!”

“Huh,” Ukai said, stroking his chin. “That’s not bad.”

It had been a good idea once the rest of the staff had been able to unsnarl Kuroo’s brilliance from his usual cocktail of good, but borderline unrealistic propositions. It was also going to be a massive undertaking involving most of the different divisions, but especially Sports Education and Sports Promotion.

Ergo, the campaign plan. On its fourth—possibly sixth—iteration.

He spends a good two hours working through the revisions, then an hour responding to emails. Ushijima is interrupted sporadically.

Shirabu stops by again, to update him on Kuroo’s newest brilliant idea—with the elementary children—and bitch about the extra work this creates for both of them in tones that are moderately accessible to those in the surrounding cubicles. After Shirabu leaves, Ukai stops by to ask Ushijima for clarifications on a V.League recruitment pamphlet that they’re in the middle of completely rewriting. Ukai leaves too and Ushijima is allowed thirty minutes of peace before he hears—

“Is that new?”

Ushijima finishes typing the sentence he was in the middle of thinking through, reads through the email, and presses send.

Then he turns around in his chair.

“It wasn’t there before,” a tall, surly-looking man says. He’s dressed in plain black slacks and a nondescript, light-blue button up shirt over a dark turtleneck. There’s a black mask stretched across his face and pristine ringlets curling over his forehead. Just under the curl, there are two moles peeking out just above his left eye.

The man would be handsome—is handsome—if you ignore the dour aura of absolute disgruntlement that constitutes his baseline mood. Miya Atsumu—in the IT Department—says that it’s either a character flaw or the natural result of having to manage an office like this one. (“What came first, Omi-kun’s scowl or low office morale?” he’d joked one day during a staff happy hour, laughing uproariously at his own sense of humor, shortly before Kiyoomi pulled the back of his high-backed chair and Miya went tumbling over onto his ass.) Ushijima doesn’t mind it, though. Not only is he used to Kiyoomi’s temperament, he has long since come to find it comforting.

“Which?”

“The…plant,” Sakusa Kiyoomi says.

Ushijima stares at the green, leafy fiddle ficus that sits at the far opposite corner of his cubicle.

“Oh,” Ushijima says. He nods. “Yes.”

Kiyoomi stares at him.

“Is there something the matter?” Ushijima asks.

Kiyoomi says nothing, although he looks vaguely perturbed above his mask.

“Are you allergic?” Ushijima thinks to ask.

“No.”

Ushijima considers.

“Do you dislike plants?”

“No.”

“Do you dislike this one?”

“No.”

Ushijima blinks at Kiyoomi.

Kiyoomi’s eyes bug out.

“I once asked you if you wanted a paperweight and you said it would clutter your desk,” he says.

Ushijima remembers this. It had been a large, purple crystal with a yellow flower suspended inside. It was lovely, and completely unneeded.

“I like to keep my desk tidy,” Ushijima explains.

“I know, that’s what I like about—” Kiyoomi stops and shakes his head. “Nevermind. Where did you get the plant? Is it yours?”

Ushijima pauses.

He thinks about a note—written in an old Christmas card—from a week ago, saying: Say, Cubicle-chan. I have an idea. There’s something I’d like to share with you, if you’re open to a little change.

Ushijima’s cheeks warm—but only a little.

“Yes,” he says.

“Never took you to have a green thumb.”

Ushijima’s brows furrow.

“No, my thumbs are the same as the rest of my hand.” He holds them out to Kiyoomi. “See?”

Kiyoomi’s mouth twitches.

“My mistake.” He runs a finger delicately over a waxy, green leaf. “Well it’s nice, I guess. Adds color.” He pauses. “Do you…like color?”

Ushijima has never been asked this question before, so he has never thought what his answer might be.

“I do not dislike color.”

“I don’t know that that’s the same thing,” Kiyoomi mutters under his mask.

“Plants are beneficial for the environment,” Ushijima explains. “They are an important component in producing oxygen, which of course we need to breathe. They also produce food and can be used in a variety of additional important needs, such as fuel and shelter and fiber.”

“Your ficus does all of that?”

“Given the opportunity,” Ushijima says. “But additionally, plants have been proven to provide personal benefits, such as increasing creativity, enhancing mood, and reducing stress.”

“Maybe we can plant a tree in the conference room in that case,” Kiyoomi says.

Ushijima considers this and is about to comment that it would not be a terrible idea but that they would probably need to put the tree in a pot, when Kiyoomi nods at him.

“In four years, I haven’t seen you add a single stapler to your desk, but now you have a plant? And—is that a maneki-neko?”

Ushijima’s cheeks warm. Kappa-san had written to him last month about how uninspired he had been feeling at their cubicle lately. (It’s grey on beige on more grey, Cubicle-chan! Doesn’t it drive you crazy? Doesn’t it just make you want to die from creative unfulfillment?)

Kiyoomi is right—Ushijima had never felt the need to decorate his desk space. He was a man who valued function and form above creativity, and it had never once occurred to him that adding personality to his work area could serve both.

But Kappa-san had seemed so downtrodden in his letter. When he’d suggested adding color to their cubicle, Ushijima hadn’t even thought to say no.

“It is for good luck?” he says.

“Sure. They’re also cute,” Kiyoomi says. “But you know that don’t you?”

“I have been told they are cute,” Ushijima confirms.

(I hope you don’t mind I brought in a little neko-chan, Cubicle-chan! I thought we could use some luck in this place. Also look at his little closed eyes and smile! Isn’t he the cutest? Maybe I should get a cat. Do you think I should get a cat? I wouldn’t bring him into the office though. ….unless you think that would help.)

Kiyoomi looks momentarily triumphant, and then his eyes narrow. “What else are you hiding from me?”

“Why would I be hiding something from you, Kiyoomi?” Ushijima asks blandly.

It’s deflection, which isn’t technically a lie. It just…reroutes from the full truth.

The truth is that the plant and the little maneki-neko are just the two most visible additions to Ushijima’s cubicle. He and Kappa-san have actually been carefully adding small personal touches here and there for the past month—there’s a postcard from Okinawa pinned onto the soft cubicle wall behind their monitor, a little tin of multicolored paperclips sitting next to a clear stapler with the cogs clearly showing inside. Inside their desk is an entire collection of little rubber sushi erasers that Kappa-san had brought one evening and Ushijima—not wanting to not contribute—had responded by buying a case of multicolored pens to add to their collection of office supplies. (The pens have little puns engraved into their sides, most of which Ushijima had not quite understood but recognized as humorous to others. He was right—Kappa-san had spent the next four notes using those very puns against Ushijima, who—charmed but perplexed—had needed Kiyoomi to explain them to him.)

Ushijima doesn’t want to answer for all of that though. So he just gives Kiyoomi a patient look while Kiyoomi squints at him in suspicion.

“There’s a mystery here and I will solve it.”

“Have you been spending much time with Shirabu?” Ushijima asks to which Kiyoomi gasps a little.

“That’s a terrible accusation to make, Wakatoshi-kun.”

“Not an accusation,” Ushijima says. “A question.”

“A deflection.”

“Am I capable of doing those?” Ushijima—who knows his reputation very well—asks.

“You’re not as innocent as you appear, Ushijima Wakatoshi,” Kiyoomi glares at him over his mask and Ushijima’s mouth almost twitches.

“All this over a plant.”

“With anyone else it’s just a plant,” Kiyoomi says. “But with you I know better.”

Ushijima’s not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult. Maybe it’s neither.

“It’s a nice change,” Kiyoomi says after a moment’s quiet. He straightens. “But you haven’t changed in all of the years I’ve known you.”

That startles Ushijima. He knows himself to be steady and reliable and true, but he’s never thought about it in those terms before.

That makes them no less true.

What were you like in high school?

Has he stayed so unmoving all this time? Has he been so stalwart that he’s simply refused to grow?

“Is that a bad thing?” Ushijima asks uncertainly.

Only then does Kiyoomi soften.

“No,” he says. “It’s not bad at all.”

Kiyoomi’s watch beeps to alert him that he has a meeting with Ukai soon.

“See you at lunch?” he asks.

Ushijima nods.

“Wakatoshi-kun,” Kiyoomi says before he leaves.

Ushijima looks up to see Kiyoomi’s expression soft.

“It’s nice,” he says. “To see color in your cubicle.”

Ushijima thinks about that for the rest of the afternoon.

An hour before it’s time for him to leave, he carefully tears off a piece of perforated notepad paper. He pulls out one of the pens with a pun on it (I ink, therefore I am) and begins to write.

In high school, I was unchanging and serious and reliable. I think, perhaps, I have stayed that way for a long time.

Tendou Satori doesn’t sleep much. That’s only partially his fault. He has been running on a very specific cocktail of coffee, energy drinks, and fumes since high school and unfortunately bad habits die hard. He hasn’t taken any significant steps to fix his sleep hygiene, although in his defense, having the sleep schedule of a literal vampire has mostly helped him adjust to being on the night shift.
Still, sometimes the fumes start sputtering and the energy drinks run out and no amount of coffee can make up the difference. That is to say, Tendou managed about two hours of mostly restless sleep in the middle of the day and the four cups of coffee he had inhaled to try and revive himself had almost immediately worn out. It is 11 pm and he is tired. This is made apparent the moment the elevator doors open and he drags himself into the office.

“You look like shit,” Semi Eita, advertising something-or-other, wannabe rockstar, and general pain in Tendou’s extremely cute ass, says.

“Have you considered it’s because I don’t like to see you?” Tendou says, squinting at his coworker. He adjusts his cute little backpack and barely stifles a yawn.

“No,” Semi says. “I just think you always look that way.”

“Correlation or causation, sweet Semi-chan?” Tendou says sweetly.

“If I’m the cause, I’m flattered,” Semi says with a half-cocked smirk. “I knew you were always thinking about me.”

“It’s like a recurring nightmare,” Tendou agrees. “Happens every night, only I never seem to wake up.”

Semi snorts.

“You okay?” he says and nods at Tendou. “Not to be a shit, but your dark circles are starting to concern even me.”

Tendou waves away the concern. “Fine, fine. Just some light insomnia. It could happen to anyone.”

“In the middle of the day?”

“It was the middle of the night somewhere,” Tendou says.

“Not here, though,” Semi says. “In Japan. Where we live.”

“You live here,” Tendou says, grinning. “I live in a beautiful little cottage at the top of a mountain with some lovely rock trolls and a talking eagle who is also the village elder.”

Semi blinks at him.

“What goes on in your brain?”

Tendou yawns. “Entirely too much.”

He gives Semi a little wave and shuffles his way past his friend’s cubicle.

The JVA office is, on the whole, boring and grey and nondescript. If there was ever a place said to have a pulse, it was certainly not this one. For the first two weeks after he started working here, Tendou would get lost on his way to his own cubicle at least three times a night. At first he considered that he might just be stupid, but the truth was much worse. Every cubicle looked largely the same and no one working in this office of volleyball fanatics ever seemed to consider displaying any sort of personality that wasn’t in some way related to the sport and, ergo, their literal jobs.

Not much has changed since then.

After passing the third cubicle with a poster of the most recent V.League All-Star roster, Tendou sighs and drops his backpack onto the ground. His brain is lowkey buzzing from exhaustion, his eyes are tired, and his bones feel like they’re dying. If they could speak, his bones would be saying, Help us, Satori! We’re dying!

He has too much to do this evening to even contemplate taking a nap at his cute little desk and even if he didn’t, he knows that the moment he tries, someone—Semi or Suna, probably—will drop by the first chance they get and either haze him or speak so loudly that they’ll draw Kita’s attention, and Tendou once spent a whole 10 very awkward minutes in the kitchen with the office night manager and he would not like to repeat the experience any time soon. Or ever again.

The only avenue left to him is to do his work in a fugue state. Or simply die at his desk.

At this point in his somewhat dead-end career, it might even be a mercy.

“Stop being morose,” a voice says before Tendou feels a hand clap on his shoulder.

“I’m not being morose,” Tendou says. “I’m being realistic.”

“You have that look on your face that says you’re running through a list of all of the ways you could make dying fun in your four-by-four cubicle.”

“Four by four is a generous estimate,” Tendou says. He turns toward the intruder. “And that was a great list! You said you liked it!”

The man standing next to him—Suna Rintarou—smirks.

“I thought death by stapler sounded pretty metal,” Suna says. “If inefficient.”

He hovers above Tendou, with his calculating, beady eyes and pointy hair, possessing the entire night office’s technological functioning at the tip of his long fingers. Suna joined the JVA shortly after Tendou and although Tendou is fairly certain that they are both genetically and biologically predetermined to lead each other to mutually assured destruction, they’re far more alike than they aren’t and that works for them in the middle of the night when the entirety of Tokyo is asleep and both of them are, well, bored.

“All I said was that the death could be fun and exciting, not that it wouldn’t be messy,” Tendou mutters.

Suna snorts and lets go. “I’m making more coffee in the kitchen. You want?”

“God, yes,” Tendou says, turning and practically launching himself into Suna’s arms. “You’re my hero, my savior, my light in shining armor, my—”

“Enough!” Semi shouts from three cubicles over.

“Aww, Semi-kun!” Suna shouts back. “Still jealous?”

“Still?” Semi says out loud. “Still?”

Tendou squints. “And you two…are still not fucking?”

“Nope,” Suna says and extracts himself from Tendou. “And never will be.”

Tendou’s not sure about all of that, although it would probably help morale long-term if two out of the three demons that stalk the JVA night floor weren’t hooking up.

“By the way,” Suna—one of the aforementioned demons—says and his mouth tilts up at the corner. “There’s a letter for you under the maneki-neko.”

Tendou—who has been veritably drooping from his chair onto the ground this entire time—immediately feels a thrill run down his spine. He feels a shot of adrenaline as he straightens, his heart picking up in his chest.

It’s neatly folded, the way that it always is. Lined, light blue paper, with the word Kappa-san written in evenly-spaced, almost cautious handwriting.

Tendou dumps his jacket onto the back of his chair, grabs the letter, and eagerly slides back into his seat.

Cubicle-chan’s letters are not nearly as long or as rambling as Tendou’s own. It was one of the things that had charmed him immediately. Tendou had taken a shot in the literal dark and had ended up with the strangest, politest, most delightful penpal he could have imagined. He’s never been so pleased.

(In truth, he had been bored out of his mind one evening when he had decided—almost on a whim—that he wanted to know more about the ghost he shared his cubicle with. To Tendou’s sleep-deprived, 3 AM brain, there had been something romantic about it: writing letters. Leaving messages for someone in the same space, so close to the same time, knowing—despite the closeness—you would still never meet. Tendou knew that there was someone who used the same space as him during the day. The cubicle was always left pristine—and without a single addition to speak of personality—but whenever Tendou turned on the computer, he was logged out from his account. There was someone else there; a mystery, his daylight counterpart.

Who were they? What did they do during the day? How old were they? What did they look like? Was this their dream job? Their first job out of college? Had they been here for a decade? For a few months? There was a whole person sharing his workspace with him, but Tendou didn’t know the first thing about them. It was like his cubicle was haunted by the world’s most considerate, enigmatic ghost.

He hadn’t thought that his cubicle-mate would write back to him. After all, receiving a long, charming, rambling note from a stranger sounded like just the kind of whimsy that might kill someone in an office setting. It had been the shock—and delight—of Tendou’s life, when he had come into the office the next night to find a carefully folded letter on lined, light blue paper waiting for him by the keyboard.

The letter had been neatly written, short, to-the-point, and almost impossibly polite. It revealed very little about his cubicle-mate, only that he was the kind of person to reply back to a mysterious letter left for him by someone they had never met or seen before. Tendou had been intrigued by much less.

He had reread that first letter half a dozen times. Then he’d torn off the back of some old report to begin penning a new one. That had been in June. Now, near the middle of October—against literally all odds—they were still writing to each other.

That Tendou could expect a letter nearly every day made it no less thrilling for him to see it sitting there, waiting for him, all the same.)

He spends the next five minutes reading and re-reading Cubicle-chan’s newest letter like a man dying of thirst. When he emerges, he feels much more awake. Tendou smiles and sets the paper down on his desk. He presses his fingers to it to straighten out the few fold marks.

I have watched and played volleyball my entire life. It has been my one constant, even when all else has been in flux. In truth, I have never questioned what might take its place if I were to ever leave the JVA. But your own confession makes me wonder about you. What other interests do you have that you have never shared with anyone else? I would be happy to learn, if you were willing to share.

Tendou holds every small revelation about his cubicle-mate close to him, like treasure in his personal chest. Cubicle-chan is slow to share, but that doesn’t mean Tendou isn’t smart enough to sift through for the little details and piece together the bigger picture. He still doesn’t know what Cubicle-chan looks like. Tendou thinks it would probably be easy enough to find out. He could, for example, look up the JVA directory of employees names and positions. Everyone knows someone on the day shift. Suna’s best friend works in IT during the day and Kuroo Tetsurou is some kind of insane workaholic who seems to work every shift given half a chance. Tendou could ask Kita. He could just ask Cubicle-chan himself.

It would be easy to do so and he thinks that’s why he doesn’t do it. There’s no challenge in just finding out, no mystery. Tendou’s nights are so long and often so uninspiring that he doesn’t want to ruin the one thing that brings him whimsy.

“You played volleyball, then,” Tendou says. He smiles, his wide eyes bright and a little crazy.

That’s not surprising—or at least it shouldn’t be. Half of the JVA staff played volleyball at some point. It’s the confirmation that makes Tendou happy. He adds it to the catalogue of information he’s gathered so far: Cubicle-chan works during the day shift, doing something with external engagement. He’s around Tendou’s age—they seem to have graduated high school around the same time—and even grew up in Miyagi, just like Tendou. He went to college in Tokyo and got a degree in Sports Management and Business. He’s been working at the JVA for at least four years and he likes it here, likes that everyone is volleyball-crazed because he, too, is volleyball-crazed. He’s an only child who was stern and reliable and unchanging in high school. He’s left-handed. Sometimes, when work is slow, he likes to draw at the margins of his notebook, although he thinks he’s not very good at it. He doesn’t have much of a sense of humor, but he appreciates that others do.

His favorite food is Hayashi rice, he doesn’t have a head for numbers, and he has a secret, understated, but fervent fascination with trains.

There’s a photobook to attest to this. It’s a new addition to the cubicle that Tendou guards like a dragon over his hoard. He keeps it in one of the drawers and only takes it out to look at when he’s certain there’s no one in a two cubicle radius around him.

(I believe you were right, Kappa-san. The addition of the plant has been a benefit to my health and general mood. The act of taking care of it is comforting in a way I admit I had not anticipated. When I water it each day and feel the gloss of its leaves, it makes me feel more at peace. My coworkers are intrigued by it—I have been asked by multiple of them where I might have gotten it from and how I could have allowed it into my workspace. They act as though I am a robot, sometimes. I suppose it isn’t entirely out of the question. I do hold a deep fascination with trains.)

How the two thoughts connected, Tendou was unclear, but he knew he had to dig deeper immediately.

Trains, he had written back that night. Say more immediately.

That had led to an entire letter full of information that Cubicle-chan had been storing in his head about trains—their history, how they worked, why they were a revolutionary marvel and even currently a modern technological miracle. Cubicle-chan had told Tendou all about his favorite trains. Then, four days later, Tendou had received a shy letter.

I do not mean to overstep, but as you had so many questions about trains, I thought I would add something to our shared workspace. It is a photobook that my father gave me one holiday. I have looked through it more times than I can count. If it is too gaudy, please let me know and I will remove it immediately.

It had been a glossy photobook about trains. The pictures were a little faded and the edges were worn down. It was clear that someone—a little boy, perhaps—had looked through it dozens of times. It made Tendou’s chest squeeze, imagining his polite, formal cubicle-mate lying on his stomach one holiday, eyes bright and wide, leafing through a book about his favorite thing in the whole world.)

Tendou could lose his entire evening to thinking about his office pen pal. The more he learns about him, the more he wants to know. He doesn’t know what the draw is, exactly. Semi’s asked, a few times, but all Tendou can really manage is, “He’s weird.”

And it’s true! His cubicle-mate is weird and a little stiff and a lot formal and hopelessly tidy and polite. By all accounts, he is not the kind of person who should take an interest in someone like Tendou, but he has. He keeps writing back, keeps asking questions. Keeps revealing small details that—Tendou suspects—he doesn’t share with anyone else. It makes no sense. He’s like a nut waiting to be cracked and Tendou has never liked anything more than splitting someone wide open.

“What other interests?” Tendou mutters Cubicle-chan’s newest question out loud to himself now as he turns on his computer.

He clicks over to his profile and waits for his settings to boot up. He changes the desktop picture once a week, out of boredom and a finely honed sense of chaos. This week, the background is a picture of a little astronaut playing volleyball under the sea. It’s chibi and bright and hopelessly adorable and makes no sense whatsoever. Tendou is fond of things that make no sense.

That’s probably not a great answer for Cubicle-chan, though. After the whole train thing, Tendou has to find something equally nonplussing to divulge. He doubts his baking habit really counts. He guesses he could tell him about how much he loves manga, how he has collected almost every issue of Shonen Jump since he was a child, but that seems fairly juvenile. He could tell him he loves drawing—that he has had grand dreams to illustrate a manga that will one day end up in an issue of Shonen Jump—but that, also, seems a bit embarrassing.

He has no idea what to say.

He sighs and lets the question shift to the back of his mind as he opens the files to his latest project. Tendou was hired onto the marketing team as a graphic designer. At the time, he had been thrilled, and as far as careers go, it’s been fine. He likes graphic design enough and he’s fairly good at it. He has been single-handedly responsible for almost all of the big JVA marketing posters, flyers, social media graphics, and even font choices for the past three years. That’s how long he’s worked here. He had gone to college after high school—away to a baking school in France. He loved to bake, but it hadn’t been a particularly good career. He had come back to Japan, tried to open a bakery, completely failed, took an accelerated vocational course, and then pivoted to graphic design.

He’d had a friend here—Ohira Reon—who had put in a good word for him at the time. Tendou’s spent a perfectly lovely if unremarkable three years here since. He thinks if his brain had been shaped more like a volleyball—like everyone around him—he might like it better.

As it is, he comes in every evening, does his job, stares blankly out the window, writes his cubicle-mate a letter, then drags his tired body home every morning to rest for a few hours and do it all over again. It’s all so very…boring.

Even the cute guy he says good night to in the elevator every morning can only brighten his evening for so long. (They seem to have paths that cross, but are destined to never meet for too long. Tendou hasn’t gotten his name, but when he had been woken up in the elevator at the beginning of summer by a tall, strong man with olive green hair, thick eyebrows, and the most careful and intense expression Tendou has ever seen in this life, well—sue him for thinking he’d died and been woken up by some kind of beefy angel. A guy can dream.)

“Boo!” a peppy voice—accompanied by silver hair, grey-brown eyes with a distinct mole to the left corner, and a mouth curved up in a smile that the devil himself would not trust—says into his ear.

Tendou nearly shrieks. He does not actually, somehow.

“Are you trying to kill me!” he exclaims, rubbing his chest.

“You know I know better than to admit anything on record,” Sugawara Koushi says. Sugawara is a public relations magician, a veritable rockstar on the JVA communication team. He has a scarily good brain for managing public image on behalf of a sport that is always lowkey simmering with scandal just threatening to break out. He is, objectively, fantastic at his job, upbeat, kind, and one of the scariest people Tendou has ever met. He likes him a great deal. “Also I would never do that on company hours.”

“Really?” Tendou says, calming his racing heart. “Never give away your labor for free, Suga-chan.”

“Now you sound like Suna,” Sugawara says. He leans against the entrance to Tendou’s cubicle with a thoughtful expression on his face.

“No one else is willing to eat dinner with me at two in the morning!” Tendou says. Semi says there’s no reason their eating schedule should be insane just because their work schedule is too. Unrelated, Semi is Tendou’s #1 enemy. Suna Rintarou, on the other hand, doesn’t play by any rules. He is there—in his own words—“Just to vibe.”

“Two in the morning is when I get some of my best work done,” Sugawara says, with a smile that could be misinterpreted for sweet and dedicated if you didn’t know any better. Tendou does though, because he has known Sugawara off and on since high school and had helped orient him to the JVA two years ago. That’s why he knows that the twinkle in Sugawara’s eyes is at least as treacherous as the curve of his mouth.

“You’re up to something,” Tendou says. He squints. “Why are you here?”

“I work here, Satori-chan,” Sugawara says. “I come in every single night so that my husband doesn’t have to work so hard.”

“Isn’t your husband on track to be promoted to chief…firefighter?” Tendou asks. He doesn’t know the terminology or, specifically, where in the Tokyo fire department Sawamura works, but he knows that most nights when Sugawara is here putting out proverbial volleyball fires, Sawamura is somewhere out there putting out literal ones. “Head firefighter.” Tendou snaps. “President of fires!”

“That’s the one!” Sugawara says and beams. His eyes crinkle when he talks about Sawamura, which is both endearing and a little gross. “He’s doing so great, I’m so proud of him! Do you want to see pictures?”

“Of your husband and your dogs?” Tendou asks.

“Yes!”

“No thank you,” Tendou says and Sugawara wrinkles his nose.

“They’re very good dogs,” he says. “They’re angels.”

Tendou has a vague memory of two rotund creatures with big eyes and waggy tails chewing on his shoes the last time Sugawara and Sawamura had invited them all over.

“Anyway,” Tendou says, waving his arms around vaguely. “Did something happen? A volleyball scandal? Oh! A move to a rival team. No! Someone is on steroids. No! A sordid and illicit homosexual affair that will rock the foundations of Japanese volleyball?”

“Bokuto publicly proposed to his boyfriend six months ago, Satori,” Sugawara says, his mouth twitching.

“And?” Tendou asks. He spins around in his chair, just for some movement. “That doesn’t mean there couldn’t be another!”

“I don’t know how sordid or illicit it might be when one of the V.League’s best player’s is engaged to his boyfriend.”

“Hm,” Tendou says. That’s a good point, he guesses. “What about chibi-chan? Do we know what’s going on with him and Kageyama yet?”

Sugawara sighs and makes a disappointed little noise. “Do they know what’s going on with them yet? I have been trying to get them to figure it out for years, Satori-chan. Years! Do you know how many hours I’ve put into this? How many plans Daichi has told me are—” He makes air quotes now, “‘Inappropriate for our former kouhais who are now adults with their own free will.’”

Tendou can only imagine what kinds of plans Sugawara has been planning. “Mm. How many of them involved light kidnapping and false imprisonment?”

Sugawara thinks about this. “At least three.”

Tendou snickers and Sugawara grins before straightening.

“Anyway, nothing like that. Unfortunately, I was sent here on business.”

Tendou gasps at the betrayal.

“Business? In this economy?”

“I’m so sorry,” Sugawara says. “Ukai-san told me during our last face-to-face that we’re expected to do the work that we’re assigned.”

Tendou gasps again.

“Even when we don’t want to.”

“He’s let the power go to his pointy blond head,” Tendou mutters.

“Maybe,” Sugawara says, nodding in agreement. “Either way, I have been sent with the terrible purpose of asking you if you have the initial proposals ready for the All-Japan Inter-Sports Tournament.”

Tendou’s been working on the initial graphics mock-ups for this campaign for the past month. The next time he sees Kuroo Tetsurou, he’s going to shove him into the recycling bin.

“I have some proposals ready,” Tendou says. “And you can see them if you’re fine with mediocre work product.”

“I, personally, am fine with any work product,” Sugawara says. “But I guess we should at least try to aim for more than mediocre?”

“It’s not the aim that’s the problem,” Tendou says. He spins around in his chair again and then sighs, setting his elbows onto his knees and slumping his face down onto his palms. “It’s the inspiration.”

“Hmm, your secret admirer isn’t inspiring you lately?” Sugawara teases and Tendou gasps again and unfolds himself from where he’s trying to crumple his body in on itself.

“My Cubicle-chan is perfect!” Tendou says, his limbs exploding into movement everywhere. “And I resent any implication otherwise!”

“Then why are you so—” Sugawara gestures at Tendou. “—droopy?”

“Lack of caffeine,” Tendou explains with a yawn. He stands to stretch. “Anyway, leave Cubicle-chan out of this. He writes like a repressed archduke from a regency-era romance novel and it’s very cute. We are in what is called a slow burn.”

“Hm,” Sugawara says. He taps his index finger against the point of his chin. “Don’t you need to know of one another’s feelings for it to be a slow burn? Also of…one another?”

“It’s a friendship slow burn!” Tendou says, his cheeks warming. His hands flail up, palms out. “And we know each other! Linguistically speaking. We’re just friends.”

“Friends who write to each other every day?”

“It’s just like texting!” Tendou counters.

“Only they’re going through the trouble of reading your handwriting,” Sugawara says and from somewhere over multiple cubicles, Tendou hears the loud and offensive sound of Semi’s laughter.

“Shut up!” Tendou shouts across the mostly empty floor.

“No!” Semi shouts back.

“It’s sweet,” Sugawara says and it’s with a genuine smile this time. “You seem happier than you have in months.”

That makes Tendou pause. “Really?”

“More engaged, at least,” Sugawara says.

“I couldn’t be less engaged, to be fair,” Tendou mutters.

Sugawara nudges Tendou’s shin with his own nice, shiny loafer. “Stop being a brat. It’s nice to look forward to something, isn’t it?”

Tendou chews on his bottom lip. He could deny it, but that’s too much work and he’s never seen the point in lying anyway. Whose reputation is he trying to save by pretending to be detached and cool? And anyway, everyone knows about the notes and letters and the whole…Cubicle-chan situation. Tendou has rarely done a thing impulsively that he hasn’t also announced to everyone around him.

So, whatever.

He nods, grinning. “Yeah. It is.”

Sugawara looks pleased. He nods.

“Well, if you can finish even one of the mock ups in the next few hours, I’d like to see,” he says. “If that’s okay?”

Tendou salutes him and Sugawara chuckles.

“I will see you for dinner at two in the morning,” he says.

“Is this an intervention?” Tendou asks.

“One Suna Rintarou on the floor is enough,” Sugawara says and, well, who’s going to argue with that?

It’s probably for the best anyway, Tendou thinks, as Sugawara crosses the floor back toward his cubicle. He can’t keep listening to serial killer podcasts with Suna Rintarou in the middle of the night.

Tendou snags a cup of coffee from Suna in the kitchen before returning to his desk. He puts his earbuds in and bounces along to a playlist of mostly Japanese pop music while he spends the next few hours on the poster mock ups for the inter-sports competition. It takes an eye for detail and a certain level of talent, but not a ton of mental energy, technically speaking. Tendou can listen to music, tap his foot to the beat, think about Cubicle-chan, and carefully make edits to graphics all at the same time.

It takes him until two in the morning to finish, at which time he takes a break to eat dinner with Suna, Sugawara, and even Semi in the employee lounge. Suna starts playing a new episode of his latest serial killer podcast obsession despite everyone’s—mostly Semi’s—protests. Ten minutes in, all four of them are engrossed against their will anyway. By the time Tendou finishes his simple, but satisfying salmon teriyaki bento box, Sugawara has started a new notebook full of theories.

“Who’s the most likely to be a serial killer at the JVA?” Tendou pauses to ask as they each clean up.

They all look at one another for two seconds flat before all of them, in unison, say, “Kuroo.”

Within seconds, Kuroo’s head perks up from one of the far cubicles.

“Hey!” he calls across the floor. “Did someone say my name?”

Suna and Tendou and Semi snicker while Sugawara, with an angelic smile, calls back, “No! Must be ghosts!”

By the time he gets back to his cubicle, Tendou is full, entertained, and even in a cheerful mood. He forgets, sometimes, that he doesn’t mind being here. He’s good at what he does and he likes his solidly unhinged coworkers and most days—when his brain isn’t melting because he’s working off of two hours of sleep—the insane dead-of-night schedule even works for his chronic insomnia.

The JVA is a good place to work. Tendou knows this. He just gets a little in his head sometimes.

(Your mind seems to always be at work, Kappa-san, Cubicle-chan had written to him once. This is typically a good thing. It is better to have an active one than an inactive one. Sometimes, however, I wonder if it is a little tiring for you. Forgive me if that is rude to say. I only mean you are always thinking so many things at the same time and that must get tiring. I hope you find ways to take breaks and take care of yourself.)

The reminder of his cubicle-mate makes Tendou smile. He taps their (and it is theirs, not just his, which is a distinction that is silly and makes him terribly happy) maneki-neko and watches the little cat paw swing back and forth.

When he looks at the clock, it reads 04:00.

Tendou pushes away his sketchpad and digs through the desk to find a stationary set he bought at a bookstore last week—purple unlined paper with Snorlax sleeping in the corner. (Cubicle-chan had once written to him that he was unfamiliar with Pokemon, although he was familiar enough with the concept to recognize that people were very fond of them. Tendou spent the next week teaching his deskmate about every single Pokemon he loved, descriptions and drawings included. After six days of letters, Cubicle-chan had settled on a favorite: Snorlax. He seems very happy and peaceful in his slumber. He feels trustworthy to me. I believe he would be a good companion.)

Tendou feels hopelessly fond. He smiles as he starts to write.

Cubicle-chan! Your cute little note filled my heart with delight. I read and re-read it a dozen times, wondering what my answer should be. At first I thought maybe my special interest was how much I love to bake. And then I thought, oh! How about chocolate? You love chocolate, Kappa. But I also like drawing, manga, mythological creatures, and collecting stickers. I like most things if you give me enough time. None of those are my answers, though. (They’re too generic! They say nothing about me! I mean who doesn’t like chocolate and stickers? Unless you also don’t like happiness and joy.)

The real answer took some soul-searching. And an unfortunately absorbing dinner at two in the morning with some of the weirdest people I know. But an answer is an answer, no matter who you have to give credit for it. (We can keep it a secret between us anyway. What Sunarin doesn’t know won’t give him a big(ger) head.)

Tell me, Cubicle-chan. Have you ever listened to a true crime podcast?

Chapter Text

Ushijima is typically a morning person. Or, at least, he’s not not a morning person. After years of waking up early to run and condition before school, his body naturally rouses with the sun. It’s nice because it allows him to have a full morning prior to work. Usually, Ushijima is able to shower, make himself a filling breakfast, and read the news—usually sports-related—all before he needs to leave to catch the bus. The bus ride isn’t terribly long—twenty minutes on a bad day. Ushijima is typically one of the first to arrive at the office in the morning. By the time most of his coworkers tiredly roll in, he’s gotten in a good thirty minutes of work.

It’s harder in the winter. Tokyo temperatures drop as the days become shorter, the air turning from bracing to chilly to outright cold faster than anyone is ever ready for it to. After the first frost of the season, even Ushijima finds it unreasonably unpleasant to leave the warmth of his bed when it’s cold and still dark out. By the middle of December, he’s shifted into a grumpier version of himself than exists the rest of the year.

He realizes this one morning when, tired and dazed, he collides with someone, nearly slamming them into the closing elevator door.

“Ahhgh!” a sound comes from somewhere between his thick coat and the wall of metal.

Ushijima is confused by the yell of distress. Or, at least, he’s confused by where it’s coming from.

“Help!”

Ushijima looks down, startled.

“You’re very large,” a familiar voice says. “Like an extremely solid brick wall. People who are built like extremely solid brick walls should watch where they’re going probably.”

A shock of red hair tickles the bottom of Ushijima’s chin.

“Ah,” Ushijima says. It takes a moment for his sleep-lagged brain to catch up and then all at once, he becomes aware of the entire situation. Pinned between his body and the elevator door, is Ushijima’s daily elevator companion.

(After that first, disorienting meeting in the summer, Ushijima had assumed they would never encounter each other again. The building was large and there were many hours in the day after all. He was wrong.

The next morning, the elevator door had opened and there he was again—the man with the wide eyes and shock of bright red hair. Only this time, he was far more awake.

“It’s you!” the man exclaimed, to which Ushijima offered a mild, “Hello.”

“I’m awake this time,” the man said, beaming. “Wasn’t even a little asleep.”

“I see that,” Ushijima replied.

“Aren’t you proud?” the young man asked as he stepped out of the elevator. He left some room for Ushijima to step past him and take his place inside; it was only then that Ushijima got a better look at him. The man had wide-set, dark red eyes, a small nose, and a mouth that seemed perpetually to quirk up in smile. He was young, but not too young. He seemed to be about Ushijima’s age.

“It is good that you are better rested,” Ushijima replied.

“It’s better to be rested than it isn’t, isn’t it?” the man said with a grin.

“Typically, yes.”

“Is there a time when it’s better not to be rested, though?” the man asked and Ushijima blinked in response. “There has to be, right? Like if it’s true one way, it has to be true the other way too, probably.”

Ushijima wasn’t sure that was true.

“Much to think about!”

Ushijima wasn’t sure there was.

But before he could say anything one way or another, the elevator door began to close. The man waved wildly at him as it did so. “Bye bye! Have a good day!”

It had only been the beginning. Nearly every day that summer, their schedules were perfectly aligned. The elevator doors would open and he would be standing there with his small, black backpack, the man with the wide eyes and the bright smile. The more Ushijima saw him, the clearer it became that he was Ushijima’s peer—a tired, but perennially chipper man in his late 20s, with bright red hair that sometimes drooped down around his ears, large, purple headphones slung around his neck, and a nose ring that sometimes glinted in the terrible elevator light.

Every morning he would step out of the elevator and Ushijima would step in.

“Hi again!” the red-haired man would say, and Ushijima would reply, “Good morning.”

They never got the chance to say much before the doors closed, so after a quick and sometimes nonsensical observation by the other man (usually something like “Well that was a night terribly spent!” or “Did you see the moon? She’s bright this morning!” or “Do you ever think about how underprepared we are in case of an asteroid emergency?” or “Maintenance forgot to clean up the zombie spill on the seventh floor, better watch out for that!”), he would wave and say “Bye bye! Have a good day!” and the elevator would begin its ascent up.

Their encounters always left Ushijima just slightly bewildered. Such a burst of energy and chaotic stream of consciousness greeting him first thing in the morning always felt jarring compared to the rest of his very normal, very routine day. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. As with most things, Ushijima suspected it was just…a thing. He was pretty sure he strangely enjoyed them, all the same.)

Now, Ushijima flushes in mortification.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I did not see you.”

“I think that’s what happens when you’re the size of a mountain,” his elevator companion says. “You’re towering so far above the rest of us that maybe you don’t see the rest of us either. What’s it like up there? Are there birds?”

“No?” Ushijima says, vaguely bewildered.

“That’s fine, I guess,” the red-haired man says. “I don’t care for birds very much anyway. It’s cool that they’re the direct descendants of dinosaurs, but I don’t like how they move. Eagles are pretty neat though. Did you know they mate for life?”

Ushijima did not know that. He’s also not sure what to do with this deluge of information so early in the morning.

“Well they do! Pretty romantic,” the man says. “If you’re into that kind of thing. Or an eagle, I guess.”

Ushijima stares unblinkingly. It’s only then that he realizes he’s made no attempt to help the man he’s crushed against the door up.

“I’m sorry,” he says again with a start and moves away. He clasps his hand around the other man’s arm and helps him straighten. When he does, the man blinks almost directly across from him. “You are the same height as me.”

“So you see why I’m glad you don’t see birds,” the man says with an amused smile. His wide eyes are turned down at the corners, making him look sleepy—but then, from Ushijima’s observation, he always looks a bit sleepy. Ushijima had originally assumed it was because of his nighttime schedule. Now he thinks, maybe that’s just how he looks. It’s…strangely charming.

“I apologize again,” Ushijima says, ignoring the bit about the birds. It is interesting information, but he has nothing to say about it in return. “I should have been looking where I was going.”

“Where you were going was into the elevator,” the man says. “Just like always. Did you get lost along the way?”

“No,” Ushijima says. He stifles a yawn. “I am afraid I was just tired and inattentive.”

“Well that’s reasonable,” the man says. He curls his fingers into the straps of his backpack. It’s a plain, black thing except for all of the buttons pinned on it. There’s a little rainbow attached to one of the straps that Ushijima vaguely notices. “It’s too early to be awake. Or too late. I guess it depends on your perspective.”

“My perspective is that it is very dark,” Ushijima says. He shivers and pulls his green scarf closer around his neck. “And very cold. That is no excuse for assault, however.”

The man’s mouth twitches.

“Is there a good excuse for assault, usually?”

Ushijima thinks about this. “I believe there is. If some wrong has been committed against you. If you are protecting someone or something you cherish.”

“What about when you’re just really, really mad?”

Ushijima shakes his head. “I do not think that’s good precedent.”

“Can’t help when you’re mad, can you?” the man says.

“No,” Ushijima agrees. “But you can help crushing someone against an elevator door.”

“Unless you’re sleepy and cold.”

Ushijima’s mouth twitches.

“Yes,” he says. “That is the only exception.”

The man laughs. He looks happier this morning than he does usually—or maybe the encounter with Ushijima just woke him up. There is something to be said about being unceremoniously shoved into a door. Either way, the man’s expression is bright and his mouth is curved up into a wide smile that lights up his whole face. He’s wearing a long, black peacoat and a loose, slouchy stitched hat. It’s bright yellow, which somehow makes him look even brighter.

He’s exceptionally handsome, Ushijima realizes. He’s never had a chance to really notice before.

“I like our run-ins, stranger-san,” the man says. “It always happens when I’m tired and ready to die, but you always make me smile anyway.”

Ushijima’s eyes widen in surprise. “I do?”

“Yeah! Something about you,” the other man says. He’s smiling again. “I like your energy.”

Ushijima wasn’t aware he was giving off any energy.

“I want to ask your name, but I also want to preserve the mystery,” the man says. “Is that strange?”

Ushijima’s thoughts drift briefly to a tin full of saved letters and notes.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “A mystery can be nice. It is nice to have something to look forward to.”

The man’s eyes widen for just a moment, although Ushijima doesn’t know why. After a brief silence, he nods. “Yeah. It really is.”

Behind him, the elevator door dings again before it starts to open.

“Whoops!” the man says and moves out of the way. “Well, I guess it’s that time again. I hope you have a nice shift, stranger-san! Don’t crush any other cute guys into elevator doors, okay?”

Ushijima’s cheeks warm.

The red-haired man winks at him.

“That can be just for me.”

The encounter—bewildering and unusually charming, as it almost always is—throws Ushijima’s entire morning into a low-grade kind of chaos. First, he somehow manages to lock himself out of his computer. This eats at least thirty minutes of his time because although resetting his password is easy enough, asking Miya Atsumu for help rarely is. (“Well, well, well,” Miya’s voice drawls over the phone when Ushijima calls him. “Will ya look what the cat dragged in.” “There is not supposed to be a cat on the floor, Miya,” Ushijima answers, very seriously. “It is a medical hazard. You may report the situation to Ukai-san and call me back, I am happy to wait.” “Why are you like this,” Miya says, bewilderingly. “It is protocol,” Ushijima answers. “I will forward you the human resources manual again so that you can consult the procedure.”)

Then, Ushijima emails the wrong client the wrong file and has to spend an hour re-emailing, calling, and fixing the situation. He’s called into a meeting about the All-Japan Inter-sports Tournament with Kuroo Tetsurou, Shirabu, and Goshiki and somehow ends up in the wrong conference room. The copier jams in the middle of his print job. When he finally sits down to take a moment’s rest, the light bulb in the lamp on his desk explodes.

“I think someone put a curse on you,” Kiyoomi offers at lunch. He thinks he’s being funny. Ushijima can tell because he has long since memorized Kiyoomi’s sardonic voice. Also Kiyoomi almost always thinks he’s being funny, regardless of the reality of the situation.

“Curses are not real,” Ushijima says. He pauses, his mug lifted halfway to his mouth. “I believe.”

He sounds uncertain, although he’s fairly sure he’s right.

Kiyoomi must have already moved on because now he’s staring at Ushijima in something bordering on disgust.

“What is that?”

“Hm?”

“That,” Kiyoomi says and stares at Ushijima’s hands pointedly. “What is that.”

Ushijima looks down at what he’s holding.

“Ah,” he says. He relaxes. “Hot chocolate.”

“Hot chocolate,” Kiyoomi repeats.

“Yes,” Ushijima says. “It is a warm drink made of melted chocolate. It is pleasant to have during the winter time. It is exactly as it sounds. Sometimes, you can put a marshmallow into it as a treat.”

Kiyoomi looks at Ushijima like he’s lost his mind.

“It’s from his lover,” Shirabu says as he slides into the empty seat next to Kiyoomi.

Ushijima immediately chokes on the hot chocolate.

“I do not—”

“The desk guy?” Kiyoomi asks.

“They’re leaving each other presents now,” Shirabu says. He blows his slanted fringe out of his face and grins. It isn’t a nice grin. It is what Shirabu has self-titled as his bitchy smile. “Isn’t that romantic?”

“Once again, it is not—”

“No guy leaves another guy a ceramic mug with a snowman on it and hot chocolate unless he wants to get into the other guy’s pants,” Shirabu says. He’s opened his bento box and is now waving a carrot stick around menacingly. “Tell him, Sakusa.”

Kiyoomi looks disturbed, perturbed, and a bit like he has no idea what he could possibly say in the face of all of this new information.

“It’s sweet,” Ushijima insists. “It is because it is the holiday season and I told him I had never tried hot chocolate before.”

“It isn’t sweet, it’s horn—,” Shirabu stops dead in the middle of carrot-pointing. “What.”

Ushijima blinks.

“What do you mean you’ve never tried hot chocolate?”

“It has never occurred to me before,” Ushijima explains.

Shirabu stares at him. Ushijima stares back. Kiyoomi stares at both of them.

“Hot chocolate doesn’t occur to you,” Shirabu says. “You just do it! It’s there! You order it off the menu! You just…pour it into a mug and drink it!”

Ushijima considers this and takes a sip. “That is what I have done. Thank you for your validation.”

Shirabu’s face turns a little purple and he looks like he might be choking. Not on the carrot stick, though, because it’s still in his hand.

“Maybe I’m the one who’s cursed,” Kiyoomi says out loud. “That’s a possibility, right?”

“I do not believe in curses,” Ushijima says again. He takes another sip of his hot chocolate just as the door to the employee lounge bursts open and a loud voice rings out saying, “There ya are, Omi-kun! I told ya to wait for me at the elevator!”

Kiyoomi goes stock-still and Ushijima nearly smiles.

“Ah,” he says. “Perhaps I am wrong after all.”

The note is written inside of a Christmas card this time. The card has an enormous Christmas tree on the front, with the snow, cartoon ornaments, and star at the top covered in glitter. There’s writing on it, but it’s in French, so Ushijima isn’t sure what it says.

Happy Holidays, Cubicle-chan! Christmas is my favorite time of year. I know that’s cheesy to say and maybe it’s unpatriotic, but I can’t help it. The cheesy English songs I don’t understand! The trees! The shopping! Every year I watch every single Christmas movie that I can find. Usually they’re terrible, although I can’t tell if that’s because the Japanese translations are bad or because they’re bad no matter what language they’re in. I can’t stop watching them anyway. Is that crazy? It probably says something about me, but I think my therapist has enough on her hands. Chronically addicted to holiday movies about impossible and impractical romances would probably be boring for her to unpack after everything else I give her to work with.

Ha ha! Anyway, I don’t know whether you like Christmas or not. I hope you do! Otherwise, this mug and hot chocolate are going to be very awkward. Although maybe they won’t be! You said you’ve never had hot chocolate and I think that’s criminal. I think it would also be criminal of me—once you had informed me of that—to not share any with you. (As a rule I am not necessarily against crime, but if and when I commit one I want it to be dramatic and dazzling, like an art heist or stealing an airplane from a billionaire’s hangar.) So please accept this gift from me. It’s my favorite hot chocolate from my favorite chocolatier in Paris. It can be your holiday present! Or it can be just a present, just a cute little thing from one cubicle-mate to another.

Anyway, you have to try it and you have to tell me how you like it. If you don’t, I will be very cross. I might even not write you back next time! (That’s a lie—I would never ghost you. Although I think I would be a pretty fun ghost. I have some enemies I would definitely have a good time haunting. Some friends too. One friend in particular. Don’t tell Semi Eita what I’ve written.)

The nights are getting colder and darker and lonelier here. It makes me more depressed than usual and more stir-crazy. So I’ve been thinking about some of the things we’ve been talking about. Who we used to be. What our interests are. Who we are now and who we might want to be in the future. I think the colder the weather gets, the more I get stuck in my own head, in all of these terrible, terrible ideas.

So because it’s almost Christmas and the office is dead quiet at four in the morning and because I need a better distraction than the mess in my brain—tell me, Cubicle-chan. What is your best kept secret?

The JVA holiday party for the day shift is less a party and more a festive luncheon. It’s too early for drinking and there’s a loose expectation that everyone needs to return to work after their shockingly elaborate catered lunch. Ushijima plans to adhere to the expectation—as he always has—although he knows from past experience that he will be one of the only ones to do so.

Even Ukai has previously come over to Ushijima’s cubicle on the afternoon of the holiday luncheon and asked him what on earth he’s doing. When Ushijima slowly blinked at him and said, “I am returning to work, as instructed,” Ukai laughed in wonder. “The hardest working employee in the JVA,” he’d said and clapped Ushijima on the shoulder. “And possibly the one one.”

Ushijima is contemplating what he wants to select from the lunch options—(the JVA has a contract with a catering vendor, so for the day, the entire employee lounge is taken over with tables laden with delicious courses, almost all of them, strangely, Italian)—when he feels someone bump into his shoulder.

“Here,” Shirabu says and shoves a cup into his hand.

Ushijima stares at the cup in confusion.

“I had not decided yet what I wanted to drink,” he says. Then, realizing he’s being rude, he nods at his coworker. “Thank you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Shirabu says quickly. He leans in closer and whispers, “Drink and don’t ask questions.”

The entire exchange is so sudden and baffling that Ushijima does the only thing he can think to do—he drinks and doesn’t ask questions.

One mouthful is all it takes to enlighten him. He nearly chokes on the flavor of soju mixed with the peach juice.

“Shh!” Shirabu hushes him and waves a hand to keep him quiet. “If they ask, it’s ramune.”

“Why isn’t it ramune?” Ushijima asks. Then, “Who will be inquiring?”

“The authorities,” Shirabu says surreptitiously. His eyes shift as he looks around, as though attempting to catch spies.

“Of the Japanese Volleyball Association?”

“Those are the worst kind,” Shirabu says with a nod. He lifts his own cup to his mouth, takes a sip, then grins. “Ahh, delicious—fuck!”

Ushijima doesn’t follow until Shirabu, quick as lightning, weaves between the bodies of fellow employees to sprint across the room and somehow catch Goshiki before he crashes into the floor Christmas tree.

“I saw Goshiki drink two cups earlier,” a dry voice says next to Ushijima’s shoulder. Even behind his mask, Ushijima can tell Kiyoomi is smirking. “I guess nobody warned him.”

“This is inappropriate,” Ushijima says.

“Yeah,” Kiyoomi replies with a shrug. He tugs his mask down and puts his own cup to his mouth. There’s a smile after he’s had a drink.

“It is always surprising to me how many choose to disregard rules at this organization,” Ushijima says. He doesn’t snitch though. In fact, he takes another sip of his drink. Ushijima respects rules and authority, but he also doesn’t believe in wasting things given to him. It would be extremely rude and at the end of the day, the need to follow certain social protocols wins out over corporate policy. Also he just wants to drink, he guesses.

Around them, their colleagues mingle loudly. There’s some kind of holiday music playing in the background, although it can barely be heard over the sounds of eating, arguing, and laughter. It’s nice, Ushijima thinks. He hasn’t ever had much holiday spirit—his father had been the one to encourage all kinds of celebrations within the family and when he had moved to America, Ushijima’s mother and her family had immediately eschewed all but the most traditional—but there’s something pleasant and buoying about being surrounded by other people who believe in it.

Maybe it’s a holiday spirit contact high. Or maybe he’s still thinking about his little snowman mug.

“Half of this floor used to be high school athletes,” Kiyoomi says.

“Being an athlete requires discipline,” Ushijima says with a frown.

“Sure,” Kiyoomi says. He takes a sip. “But athletes have marbles for brains and zero impulse control. Also we’re all overworked and tired adults. We want to drink.”

Well, Ushijima can’t argue with that.

He stands in line with Kiyoomi, adding food to his plate and listening to Kiyoomi complain about how his situationship with Miya Atsumu is going. (“Terribly. He talks too much and wears too much cologne, his dye job is ugly, he’s rude, conceited, and obsessed with his twin brother.” Ushijima raises an eyebrow. Kiyoomi sighs. “But he’s hot and good in bed and I have shit taste in men. Why won’t you date me again?” Ushijima’s mouth twitches. “Because the one time we attempted, our friendship nearly did not survive the kiss.” Kiyoomi shudders. “It was not an ideal kiss.”)

Across the room, Shirabu and Goshiki are arguing—Goshiki, with his face red and his dark eyes shining bright from too much drink, clutching Shirabu’s shoulders while Shirabu’s expression twists and he desperately tries to (unsuccessfully) pull away—Yaku is beating Lev and Yachi and Nishinoya handily at some card game, and Miya is looking haunted by a Kuroo who has a hand on his shoulder and a sharp grin on his face that looks like Miya is about to be requisitioned into an insane work or volleyball-related project against his will or that Miya’s soul will be sacrificed to some greater (probably volleyball-related) purpose, also possibly against his will.

It’s bordering utter chaos. Ushijima picks a piece of focaccia with a smile.

“Are you…smiling?” Kiyoomi asks suspiciously. “Are you…enjoying yourself?”

“It happens occasionally,” Ushijima says. “I apologize for not warning you in advance.”

“I can’t be that drunk,” Kiyoomi says, staring down at his cup. Then he shakes his head as though to try to bring himself back to reality and lifts it back to his mouth. “I’m going to drink some more just to be sure.”

Ushijima snorts.

He and Kiyoomi stand off to the side of the room and watch the holiday raucous unfold. After Shirabu escapes his semi-drunken clutches, Goshiki joins the group card game with a concerning glint in his eyes, and Miya pulls Shirabu in by the sleeve of his light purple button-up to show him something on his phone. Shirabu looks immediately repulsed and then deeply interested. He sticks his face closer to the phone and Miya’s face lights up in what can only be characterized as a wicked grin.

“I can’t help it,” Kiyoomi sighs. He picks at some salad on his plate and looks almost forlornly across the room.

“Which part?” Ushijima is enjoying the focaccia. He has some more of it.

“My taste in men,” Kiyoomi says. “I have tried multiple times to talk myself out of it.”

“Men or Miya?” Ushijima clarifies.

“Both,” Kiyoomi says and chews on a tomato. “Men in general are never worth the headache and Miya is all of that wrapped in the worst package imaginable. You know how I’m difficult?”

Ushijima wisely chooses not to answer.

“He’s like that but worse,” Kiyoomi says. “I think we make each other more…bad.”

“More bad,” Ushijima says. He sounds disapproving. Since Kiyoomi has been his closest companion for years now, he will know that it isn’t the sentiment but the improper grammar that has him frowning.

“I know,” Kiyoomi says with a gloomy sigh. He spears a cucumber and says again, “I know.”

Ushijima thinks he should probably be supportive. Miya Atsumu is the last person on earth who should be in any kind of relationship, probably, and if it was up to Ushijima he would not pick his closest friend for that companionship, but he supposes you cannot help who you fall in love with.

(Kappa-san taught him this.

I think love is the most beautiful and wretched thing of all. First of all, you don’t even get to have a say in it! You have all of these feelings inside of you, don’t you, Cubicle-chan? It feels like…you’re on top of a mountain—tall, powerful, exhilarating. You’re the happiest you’ve ever been and the most miserable. You have all of these feelings and it’s all carried in the hands of one person. Maybe you’d die for them. Some people don’t love like that, but I do. I think that’s the best way to be in love. What’s the point if it isn’t threatening to tear you apart?

Is that too dramatic? Maybe. I’ve only been in love one time before and the less said about it the better, but I learned that about myself. If I ever fall in love again though, I think that would be it for me. It would be the best thing that could happen and the worst thing.

The stakes are so high. Like, what if the person you love takes all of that love and hope and one day decides they don’t want it anymore? Or that they don’t want it from you? You have no control over it and I think it’s scary not to have control over something like your heart. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing is it makes you a little crazy. Like, for example, the one time I was in love, the person I was in love with was obsessed with those superhero movies. So I made myself believe I liked them too! I didn’t. I don’t really have the attention span for movies and definitely not for movies about flying men of iron, or whoever that man was he liked so much! So why did I pretend? (I know why. It’s because I would have done anything for him.)

Anyway, maybe I’m not making a good case for it. Maybe love isn’t supposed to be that dramatic. Maybe it’s good enough to fall in love with someone who loves you just as much in return. No drama, no high stakes. Just two people who genuinely like each other.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe that would be the best thing. Maybe next time I fall for someone, it can just be sweet and easy. (But hopefully he won’t like superhero movies.))

Ushijima doesn’t think he has ever heard Kiyoomi talk about superheros, but he has never been known to tolerate small talk or people in his space and Ushijima saw Miya in Kiyoomi’s cubicle not one week ago, rambling to him about onigiri while a neat foot away.

“He is not terrible,” Ushijima offers. He twirls some linguine around his fork.

“Are my standards in hell?” Kiyoomi says.

“He could be much worse,” Ushijima says after a pregnant moment.

Kiyoomi sighs and picks up his drink again. “Maybe he’ll do something unforgivable and we will be having a much better conversation in a few months' time.”

“What would be unforgivable to you?” Ushijima asks, curious.

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. He crawled into bed with socks on the other night and I still let him fuck me,” Kiyoomi says. “I’m doomed.”

That is entirely too much information to know about either Kiyoomi or Miya and especially about both of them together, but Ushijima supposes it’s all in his head now. He gives Kiyoomi what he thinks must be an empathetic smile.

Kiyoomi grimaces, so maybe he’s not very successful.

“What about you, Wakatoshi?” Kiyoomi asks.

“Me?”

“Enough about my taste in men, what about yours?”

Ushijima flushes.

“There is nothing to be said there,” he says.

“When’s the last time you went on a date?” Kiyoomi asks.

Ushijima shrugs. “I have been busy.”

“We’re all busy, all the time,” Kiyoomi says. He nods across the room. “Kuroo lives in his cubicle and even he has a boyfriend.”

Ushijima blinks in surprise.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know,” Kiyoomi says. He takes a mouthful of spiked juice. “He couldn’t be more obvious if he tried.”

“I suppose I do not pay enough attention to that sort of thing,” Ushijima says. Now that Kiyoomi mentions it, though, Kuroo is always talking on the phone to someone during his breaks. He’s very cheerful, even when he’s melting under pressure. And once, Ushijima saw him leave at the end of the day with someone small and blond who Ushijima only caught the back of.

“Your work can’t be all that you do,” Kiyoomi says. His mouth curves up at the corner. “Or…that does you. Whatever your preferences are.”

“I do not understand how work would do me?” Ushijima asks in confusion and Kiyoomi looks pained.

“Nevermind,” he says. He nudges Ushijima’s side with his elbow. “So what’s keeping you? From finding a partner? No interest?”

Well, that’s not entirely true.

Ushijima’s feelings alight slowly, but that doesn’t mean he’s incapable of having any. Even if his previous relationships were very short-lived, he still felt for the person he was dating, if…for a limited period of time.

These days, though, he doesn’t really have any interest in that. He doesn’t want something short-term. He doesn’t want to just date someone he will feel compelled to break up with in two weeks time.

(If I ever fall in love again, I think that would be it for me. It would be the best thing that could happen and the worst thing.

Is that something you would like? Ushijima had written back. For some reason his palms had been sweaty as he wrote, his chest strangely tight. Is there someone you could fall in love with?

Kappa-san’s answer had made Ushijima’s head go silent.

I could fall in love with anyone, Cubicle-chan! At any time! It’s about the person, isn’t it? If I found the right person—my right person—there would be no hesitation. I would give them my entire heart. It could be anyone! It could even be you!)

His heart does something weird that makes Ushijima pause mid-bite.

Kiyoomi watches him too closely.

“Do you…already have someone?” he says slowly.

Ushijima swallows the pasta and pauses before shaking his head.

“No.”

Kiyoomi stares at him until Ushijima uncomfortably picks up his cup and drinks half of the spiked juice in a few gulps.

“Are you sure?” Kiyoomi asks.

(That is flattering, of course, Ushijima had written back the next day. It had taken him his entire shift to come up with something. The back of his neck felt hot and his brain felt foggy the entire time. But I am merely your anonymous cubicle-mate. I assume one cannot fall in love with someone solely through letters they leave behind at work.)

“Yes,” Ushijima says, calmly. “I do not have anyone like that.”

He avoids Kiyoomi’s eyes all the same.

When it snows in Tokyo, the entire city sparkles under the layer of white dust. It’s incandescently pretty, a city of glimmering buildings and dark smudges of footsteps in soft streaks of snow. At least until the Tokyo traffic and general grime of commute turns the powder fluff dark with dirt. Still, Tendou loves that first evening—the first few hours when the world is cold and hushed and sparkling like it’s embedded with crystals.

He watches it from the locked perch of his tower, which is to say he spends nearly his entire shift dazed and staring out the nearest window.

My concept of what it must be like on night shift is shaped through what you have told me. I imagine the floor empty and you in your cubicle, and your coworkers in theirs, all working in near silence. That is nothing like it is during the day, when there is always someone talking to someone else, the coffee pot brewing in the kitchen, people typing, phones ringing more often than they are not. Sometimes, it is almost too loud. It does not leave much time to sit with your thoughts.

That does not seem to be the case for you. So tell me. When it is late in the evening and you are still working and everything is quiet around you, what types of things do you think about?

Tendou thinks about almost anything it is possible to think about. That’s not an exaggeration. Sometimes, he will sit at his desk and think about how pandas spend 10 to 16 hours a day eating, or how twins are often said to have some form of telepathy and what might happen when one dies far before the other. He will consider how scientists know more about space than the ocean, or how the Earth’s climate will become nearly uninhabitable within the next few lifetimes, or contemplate how cruel children can be to one another and how long hurt feelings and trauma can mold a person’s life.

When it’s late in the evening and he’s still working and everything is quiet around him and there’s snow gently falling from the Tokyo night sky, Tendou will think about how you can be so comfortable where you are and deeply unsatisfied with staying there.

The third draft of the poster mock up for the inter-sports competition is open on his computer screen. There’s a music player that he’s minimized playing in the background. He has one earbud in and he’s half-listening to something gentle and classic drift out of the speakers as he idly sketches in a notebook.

(He thinks about another letter:

I am ashamed to admit that I do not know very much about popular music. I have never had much of an ear for such things and I, unfortunately, have learned the hard way that I possess a minimum of four left feet. Often, I will pretend to know what popular music my colleagues and friends are talking about, because they seem so very excited and I feel embarrassed admitting that I have the musical taste of someone at least fifty years my senior.

I am not embarrassed about the music itself, however. I find classical music to be soothing. I often run to it in the mornings and if I am feeling particularly upset or frazzled, it can calm my nerves. I hope that does not make me sound boring, Kappa-san. Although maybe I am that, a little. I apologize if that disrupts your expectations of me.)

Tendou’s face is in the palm of his left hand. His right hand idly twirls a pen for his tablet between his long, deft fingers.

There’s a gnawing feeling at the back of his neck. Absurdly, he wishes he wasn’t alone on this beautiful, cold winter night.

He looks down at the neat note on his desk.

He wishes he could see the person who keeps getting into his head.

“Hey,” Suna says, popping his head around the corner and interrupting Tendou’s malaise. “It’s snowing out.”

Tendou tries to gather his scattered focus and straightens, putting the pen down.

“Yes,” he says. “I did notice that on account of—all the white outside the window.”

“Don’t be an ass just because you’re in a bad mood,” Suna says.

“I’m not in a bad mood!” Tendou protests, and then squints. “And you’re always an ass.”

Suna’s mouth quirks up at the corner. He brushes something off his burgundy sweater. “Anyway. A couple of us were thinking about going out for a bit.”

Tendou’s brows furrow.

“Out? We can’t drink on the job.”

“Where did I say we were going to be drinking?” Suna says, being an ass. He nods toward the window. “Just to see the snow. Get fresh air. We’re getting cabin fever.”

Is that what this lazy, melancholic feeling is? Well, maybe.

Tendou doesn’t want to look at his screen for a second longer. He might literally scream.

“Yep,” he says. “I’ll put my coat on and meet you by the elevator!”

Suna salutes him and disappears around the corner, presumably to harass Semi into coming out too.

Tendou takes out his earbud, stands, and stretches his sore arms. Sitting at this desk all day is giving him terrible posture—and he didn’t have great posture to begin with.

He yawns and shuts off his monitor and then reaches for his coat. He stops short, a sudden smile spilling out across his face.

He picks up the nice wool scarf that’s hanging next to it. The scarf is a deep forest green with a little monster (a Kappa) embroidered onto one end. The material is soft and only a little scratchy. It’s custom-designed. Tendou knows that it has to be, because nobody just produces nice wool scarves with monsters embroidered onto them.

(I know you did not gift me the mug with any ulterior motive of soliciting something in return. So please do not take this to be obligated reciprocity. The truth is that I am grateful for your constant companionship, for your thoughts and insights. I did not anticipate needing a writing companion until you wrote to me and now your letters are what I look forward to the most. They make each day a little different, a little unexpected, and as you might have guessed, I am not someone who often indulges in the unexpected. I had not even known I might need something like that.

For you to have come into my life when I did not know I needed you to and for you to continue to be in it—I am deeply thankful.

So as it is cold outside and you have convinced me of holiday cheer and spirit, please let me offer you a small token of my appreciation. I hope that it will keep you warm during these long, cold months and that every time you wear it, you will think of me.)

Tendou’s chest squeezes tight. He winds the scarf around his neck and nestles into it. He smiles, soft and a little gooey, as he warms.

“Hey, if the elevator door starts to close, I’m going to let it!” Semi—bane of Tendou’s existence—shouts across the floor.

Tendou sighs, but he’s still grinning a bit.

“All right, all right, no need to get your volleyball shorts in a twist!”

Semi starts bickering with him the moment he shuffles into the elevator after Komori. He and Tendou continue their verbal sparring as the elevator ticks down the floors, Tendou stirring shit and Semi taunting him back mercilessly. Suna joins in the second he sees an opening and at some point, Sugawara throws his arms over Tendou and Suna’s shoulders and leans in close to whisper something that makes both of them yell. Kita sighs. Kuroo smiles as he texts someone.

The door opens and the group of them nearly fall out into the lobby.

It’s strange to have the doors open empty—Tendou has gotten so used to seeing the same tall, handsome, olive-haired man waiting patiently outside every time they do—but then Semi is shoving him and the two of them shout and race out into the street.

*

Tokyo so close to Christmas, is breathtaking. Tendou has always thought so. He grew up halfway between the countryside and Sendai, so the celebration and glamor of a city like this still captivates him. Everything seems to glitter during the holidays, little fairylights of blue and white and gold twined around rows of trees and across the window facades of enormous glass buildings. There are large Christmas trees—also glittering with light—in common centers, and art structures made of strung lights bent to look like stars. There’s something so alive about this time of year, something thrilling and invigorating in the contrast between the cold biting against your skin and that first bite of a piping hot potato bought from a vendor along the street.

Tendou grins and closes his eyes, spreading his arms and spinning in a circle as snow falls around them. When he opens his eyes again, everything seems to glow in the dark, a hushed world against little falling crystals.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” Sugawara says. He’s bundled in a dark, puffy coat, a warm blue scarf, and a set of overlarge, fuzzy white earmuffs. His cheeks are pink and his eyes are glinting, even in the dark.

“My favorite time of year,” Tendou says. He stops mid-spin and sticks his tongue out to taste some of the wet fluff.

“Really?” Sugawara sounds surprised.

Tendou grins.

“Wouldn’t expect it, right?” Tendou says. “Everyone thinks I’m a summer baby. And I like summer too! But I like being cold because then you can be cozy after!”

“That does sound like you,” Sugawara says with a smile.

Around them, their coworkers walk about, catching snowflakes on their fingertips, looking up into the cascade of flurries from above. Semi and Suna start some insane and impossible competition to count the flakes as they land on them while Kita pulls Komori into a conversation about the last EJP Raijin and Tachibana Red Falcons game (Kita’s high school sweetheart and long-term boyfriend, Ojiro, plays for the Falcons). Next to Tendou and Sugawara, Kuroo stretches his arms and yawns.

“How long have you been here today?” Tendou says, squinting at the tall, absurdly-haired man. Kuroo Tetsurou works on a schedule of his own making. Unlike the rest of the night shift, he’s sometimes here with them and sometimes not. To this day, none of them—except Kita, presumably—can figure out which shift he actually belongs to.

“Oh, not that long,” Kuroo says, blinking. He tries to count on his fingers. “Wait, what time is it now?”

“Half past two,” Sugawara says.

Kuroo stops counting.

“Anyway!” he sounds bright—too bright—for how late it is. Tendou estimates he’s been here for at least twelve hours. He and Sugawara eye each other. He makes a mental note to ask Sugawara later what he thinks about Kuroo’s mental state.

“You’re really dedicated to this place, huh?” Tendou says. His fingers are getting cold now and he wishes, briefly, that he had thought to bring gloves.

“Yeah!” Kuroo says. He blinks. “You were talking to me, right?”

“Yes. I know Sugawara’s dream career is to become the handsome lead in a JDrama,” Tendou says.

“I think I would be very good at wooing women on screen,” Sugawara grins. “It’s all in how you look at them. The problem with movies today is that people don’t look their partners deep in their eyes anymore.”

“That work on Sawamura?” Kuroo asks with one of his usual smirks.

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Sugawara said with a wink and the two of them laugh.

Tendou flexes his fingers in his coat pockets. That’s nice. He likes hearing about his coworkers’ significant others, honestly. It gives him a window into their lives that he would never be privy to otherwise. Sugawara with his hot firefighter husband, and Kita with his hot volleyball boyfriend, and whatever Suna has going on with Semi and/or Komori, depending on the level of sexual tension on the floor on any given evening.

It does make Tendou feel a little unsettled, though. Perhaps a bit lonely. His schedule doesn’t leave room for something like that. It’s never bothered him before, but lately, he’s been wondering if he’s missing out on a great big wonderful thing that everyone gets except for him.

(I do not believe I have ever been in love, admittedly. Cubicle-chan had written on the topic.

No…I am not uncertain. I know that I have never been in love. I have been in a variety of relationships and I have even found some of them fulfilling, if short-lived. But the way you have put it—the kind of consuming, intense love you have described—I have never thought to want something like that. You write about it as though it is something I should want to experience, though, at least once. Am I making a mistake by letting something like that slip me by? By not pursuing the kind of relationship or affection that everyone else wants?

I was not sure before, but you have almost convinced me that I might be.

I am sorry to hear that your heart was so mistreated by someone you entrusted it to. (This is how I interpreted what you revealed in your letter—if I am wrong, please forgive the assumption.) You deserve more than that. You deserve someone who will appreciate you and what you have given, who will love you back the way you have loved them.

You deserve someone as wonderful as you are.)

“That kind of thing never works on Kenma,” Kuroo says. He rolls his stiff shoulders. “Every time I stare at him, he says I’m being a massive creep.”

“Well,” Sugawara says. “Are you?”

“Is it massively creepy to stare into the eyes of your beloved? To watch unblinkingly as he plays video games? To caress his hair while he sleeps because it is so soft and you just want to cut it and put it into a heart-shaped locket and carry it around with you until the day you draw your last breath?” Kuroo asks.

Sugawara stares at him.

“Yes,” Tendou says.

“Yes,” Sugawara says.

“Hey, can you say that again, louder, so I can record it? It’s for a podcast. Don’t worry about the topic!” Suna says loudly from a few feet over.

“Well of course I don’t do any of that,” Kuroo says reasonably. He grins. “I do sometimes stare at him fondly, though.”

“Disgusting,” Semi offers next to Suna.

“That’s what Kenma says!”

Suna squints. “I think we should throw him in jail anyway, just to be safe.”

“Can’t throw him in jail until he’s killed his boyfriend and worn his skin,” Komori says reasonably. “Otherwise it’ll be a short podcast.”

“Damn, you’re right,” Suna says.

Kuroo ignores all of this to shove a picture of his boyfriend into the face of everyone within an arm’s length of him.

“Look at him! He’s so cute! Isn’t he perfect? Couldn’t you just eat him alive?”

Suna and Komori exchange alarmed looks.

The picture is of a young man wrapped in a thick blanket like a human burrito. There are bright red headphones over his ears and an energy drink in the hand that isn’t holding a game controller. His face is blurry in the glare of the monitor in front of him, but even so, Tendou can tell that he has eye bags so big they could be sold separately at a handbag store.

“He looks like a…dungeon troll,” Tendou says.

“I know,” Kuroo sighs dreamily and puts away his phone. “He’s so handsome. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

Now everyone exchanges alarmed looks. Smitten, Kuroo doesn’t see any of this.

“This is why Daichi drinks,” Sugawara says to Tendou, and whispers, “You should see the text messages.”

Tendou’s about to ask a whole new set of follow up questions when Kita calls to Sugawara from down the sidewalk.

“Ah, be right there, Kita-san!”

“No! Don’t leave me here with him—” Tendou whispers urgently to Sugawara who gives him his brightest and most demonic grin, claps him on the shoulder, and says, “Good luck!”

Sugawara Koushi is a demon and a traitor. Which is the worst kind of demon. Tendou sighs and watches as he goes.

“I’m leaving soon, don’t worry,” Kuroo says, chuckling. “Kenma’s almost finished with work too. We like to go home together.”

Tendou doesn’t need this information. But a part of him is curious. It’s pretty late for normal people.

“He’s on the night shift too?”

“Hm?” Kuroo looks up from his phone and shakes his head. “No, he’s just busy and a terminal night owl. He works at an…I guess you could call it an entertainment company? Video games and other things. So they’re more flexible about that kind of thing.”

“Video games,” Tendou says. He yawns and swings his arms around to try and wake up. “That sounds fun. I love video games!”

“He does too,” Kuroo says. He smiles and it’s soft and fond, so opposite from how ostentatious he can be. This must be how he looks at his boyfriend and if so—well, Tendou gets it, he thinks. Why someone looking at you like they could lay you bare would make you squirm. “Always has. Obsessively so. It’s funny, because now that I think about it, I don’t know what else he would have done.”

“Hm? What d’you mean?”

Kuroo taps his chin consideringly.

“I guess…Kenma’s been obsessed with video games ever since we were kids. Every spare minute he got, he was playing. He’d go through games the way most kids went through—I don’t know. Legos? Candy? I’m too tired to make a good comparison. Anyway, it made him a little crazy, but I think…it made him smarter too. Or I guess, it really suited the kind of smart he is. He’s crazy sharp and has a head for strategy. I personally think he could do anything he set his mind to.”

Tendou senses something more.

“But?”

“But…he’s the kind of person who can’t just do anything. Kenma can’t make himself feel passionate about whatever he’s doing just because you tell him to. That passion has to come from inside him or he just won’t do it.”

Tendou almost smiles and gives Kuroo finger guns.

“Can’t relate,” he says. “You tell me what to do and I do it.”

Kuroo gives him a faint smile.

“Most of us are like that though, I think. We’ll do what we’re told or at least pretend we like it, right?” he says. He puts his hands into his pockets. “Too much risk otherwise. Not Kenma though. So it’s good that he was able to make his love for video games into a career. Otherwise I don’t know what he would do for a living….he’d probably have to become a camboy, but instead of stripping, he would take naps.”

Tendou considers this seriously.

“You know, there’s probably an audience for that,” he says. “He’d make a killing!”

Kuroo laughs.

“So it’s okay when it’s monetized, but not when I do it!”

Tendou grins back.

“He hates being bored and that’s okay,” Kuroo says after a moment. There’s snow drifting into his dark, spiked hair. It makes it look like he’s gone salt and pepper. “I think…when we’re kids we’re told that when we’re bored, we should go do something to make ourselves less bored. And that stops when we become adults. We’re just told now to suck it up and do the thing, even if it kills us a little to do it. That’s weird, right?”

The sentiment makes Tendou feel uneasy. He makes a noncommittal noise.

“That should apply to us too. If adults are bored, they should be able to find the thing they love to do and do that instead.”

Tendou doesn’t think it’s that easy. Sometimes you’re handed a job that sounds great on paper and pays well and is—by all metrics—objectively good. You like your coworkers. You don’t mind taking the night shift. If it kills your creativity a little—if you’re a little more bored each day, a little more uninspired—does that matter when you’re good at what you do?

“Do you love what you do, then?” Tendou asks. His mouth twitches. “You’re here more than all of us combined. Most of us think you need to be committed to a facility.”

Kuroo scratches his chin. “Mental or rehab?”

“Both.”

“Makes sense,” Kuroo says solemnly and nods. His expression softens. “I do like what I do. I love volleyball. I’ve loved volleyball since I was a kid. The feeling I get when I play it…when I watch it—I want others to feel that way too. I want to bring people to volleyball, convince them to give volleyball a chance. I want them to experience the same magic I feel—how when your team loses, you feel completely gutted, so that when they win, it’s the greatest feeling in the world.”

Kuroo lights up as he talks, his expression bright, his entire long body nearly vibrating with belief. Tendou almost buys what he’s saying. He understands why Kuroo Tetsurou is so good at his job.

“You sound the way people do when they’re in love,” Tendou says.

“Yeah? Well, maybe it’s a little like that,” Kuroo says and smiles at Tendou. “Maybe I’m a little in love with volleyball. Maybe I always will be.”

Is there anything Tendou feels like that about? Anything that he can look at and say: that—that is my reason for waking up in the morning. That is my dream—my paradise. He’s not sure. He doesn’t think so.

“Anyway,” Kuroo says and runs a hand through his damp tower of hair. “Sorry, I know I get a little weird and intense after midnight. Kenma just texted he’s wrapped up though, so I’ll be out of your hair.”

“No problem, no problem.”

Tendou waves Kuroo away.

His other coworkers eventually get too wet and too cold and start grumbling to go back inside.

“You coming?” Semi asks over his shoulder.

Tendou tilts his head back up toward the grey-white sky and closes his eyes again. He lets his mind run wild.

He gets a little weird after midnight too. That’s the reason he writes letters.

When it’s late and dark and the world is quiet except for the people working in this building—on this floor, sharing cubicles that are just like ours, doing work just like ours—and it’s almost Christmas and it’s snowing outside the window, what I think about is what it would be like to be someone else. Do you ever think about that, Cubicle-chan? We’re the way we are because of the things we’ve done and the things that have happened to us, right? Maybe I’m the way I am and you’re the way you are because you played volleyball in high school and I didn’t. Maybe if I had played it instead—if we had played it together—we would both be different.

Is it weird to think about those kinds of things?

Maybe if those kids had let me play with them when I was younger, I would have fallen in love with the sport and gotten really good at it. Maybe I would be in the V.League now—a professional player, beloved and well-known by everyone in this building. Maybe you would be writing about me or maybe you would come to my games. We would meet eyes across the court and never cross all of those lines to meet.

Or maybe you could have been a professional player too and we would have been on the same team. Maybe we would have played every game together—come to rely on each other, trust one another—and fallen in love the way teammates sometimes do, or maybe we would have be on different teams, rivals until the bitter end, and when we both retired we would have finally realized that it all meant what it did because we’d done it together.

Doesn’t that sound nice? I wonder what we would have been like—that version of me, and that version of you. Would we have liked each other? Hated each other? Not known each other at all? Now that I’ve met you (proverbially speaking) I don’t think I like that idea. A me who didn’t know you.

Is that ridiculous? It probably is. You’re probably sitting there thinking: is Kappa-san a serial killer?

I’m not! I promise. I’m just a weird little guy with weird little thoughts after midnight.

Do you think you would miss me if I was someone else, Cubicle-chan? If the answer is no, don’t tell me. I think I’d like to live in a fantasy where I’m more than just the person you write letters to.

“Tendou?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says after he opens his eyes again. He tucks his hands into his pockets and nods toward Semi. “Coming!”

Tendou is so tired, so strangely melancholy that evening—morning?—that he almost stumbles out of the elevator without seeing him.

“Stranger-san,” a deep, familiar voice says.

Tendou blinks rapidly as he’s stopped by a hesitant hand to his shoulder. He looks up into the devastatingly handsome face of his elevator companion.

“Oh!” Tendou says and tries to ignore how suddenly flustered he feels.

“I apologize for startling you,” the handsome stranger says and removes his hand. Tendou wishes he wouldn’t.

“No, no, don’t apologize!” Tendou says. “That’s on me! I was distracted.”

“I would not have interrupted, but—” the man pauses. He looks a little embarrassed, but decides to forge ahead anyway. “Forgive me if this is strange to say, but it would not have felt right, if I did not start my day by saying hello to you.”

That shakes Tendou of his residual melancholy. He feels a squirm of something in his stomach—embarrassment or pleasure, he couldn’t say.

“Oh! No, not strange! Not strange at all!” Tendou says, nearly flailing. “If we had missed our morning hello and goodbye, I think it would have ruined the rest of my day. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep!”

“You seem as though you are in need of your sleep,” the stranger says cautiously.

Tendou winces. “Ouch. I look that bad?”

The stranger shakes his head quickly, looking mortified. “No—I apologize, I did not mean it that way—”

“No, it’s okay,” Tendou says. He gives the man a tired smile. “I know I’m not at my best these days. That’s why I almost walked past you and nearly ruined our routine! I’m too much in my head lately.”

The other man—tall, quiet, built like a brick wall, and so devastatingly hot—looks at him curiously.

“Is everything all right?” he asks. “Long night?”

“Aren’t they all?” Tendou says with a yawn.

“I suppose it goes by faster when you are asleep for it,” the man says. His expression—serious, always so serious—lightens.

“It never seems to be long enough when you’re tired and sleeping,” Tendou agrees. He notices a little snowman pin on the stranger’s dark grey muffler and brightens. “Oh! I like your snowman!”

“Oh,” the stranger says and looks down, a little embarrassed. “Is it…cheesy? I am trying to feel the holiday spirit.”

“Do you not usually?”

“We did not celebrate it when I was growing up. So I never paid much attention to it. But I have recently learned it can be…fun.”

Something about the stranger feels so familiar to Tendou. He’s too sleepy to figure out what, though.

“It can be! Or it should be. If you ignore all of the possibilities for family fights.”

“My family does not fight,” the man says, shaking his head. “You are a fan then?”

“Of family fights, no. Of Christmas, yes,” Tendou says, his smile finally brightening. He touches his green wool scarf, the Kappa embroidery tucked neatly inside his coat collar. “I think it’s the most wonderful thing, to eat food and listen to music and enjoy time with your loved ones. There’s snow in the air and it’s so cold outside, but inside everyone feels so alive. There’s just a…spirit to everything, you know? We spend so much of our time just existing, it’s nice to have a few weeks where we can be happy, right?”

The handsome man looks almost startled at that. After a moment, though, he nods.

“I think I understand,” he says and it’s so serious, as though he really was considering everything Tendou said. It’s startlingly cute.

Tendou smiles, his neck warming.

“Well I won’t keep you,” he says. “You have to get to work, right?”

“Yes,” the man says. “I am on the day shift.”

Tendou almost stops then, something niggling at the back of his neck. He can’t quite grasp what it is and the moment he tries to think about it, it disappears.

He shakes his head and blinks it away.

“Have a happy Christmas, Stranger-san!”

The other man nods and steps into the elevator.

“And to you, Stranger-san,” he says. “I am glad we did not miss our—” He pauses and gives a soft smile. “—routine.”

The elevator door closes as he’s waving back to Tendou. He smiles and it makes him look even more wonderfully handsome. Tendou’s stomach flips and his cheeks warm.

He thinks about letters and snow and tall handsome strangers the entire bus ride home.

Chapter Text

SPRING (Day Shift)

By the time spring blooms around Tokyo, Ushijima is working around the clock for the All-Japan Inter-Sports Tournament. It’s tiring, but good work and Ushijima has never minded working hard for something he believes in. He’d had his doubts about the reception of the tournament initially, but as with many of the harebrained ideas that Kuroo Tetsurou has come up with, sleep-deprived and surviving on far too many shots of espresso, it turns out to be golden.

The educational piece of something like an inter-sports tournament where so many athletes have not played professional volleyball before is a necessary, but heavy lift, which means that Ushijima has to work around the clock with Ukai, Kuroo, and Shirabu to build out the program. He has to draft materials, involve community members to help test the materials, revise the materials to make them better, and promote it all across Tokyo and the rest of the country.

He thinks maybe he would feel more tired or burned out if it wasn’t something that he loves so much. As it is, there is a part of him that will never say no to spending more time on volleyball. Ushijima is one of those “volleyball-crazed” people that Kappa-san has written about not infrequently. He is happy to spend all of his time thinking about volleyball, learning new innovations in volleyball, teaching volleyball, and thinking about how to teach volleyball. If he can help educate more people about what volleyball is and why they should all love it as much as he does—if he can put in overtime to create a program for a tournament that will help the entire country become excited about volleyball, then, well.

Okay. Next question. If you had nothing stopping you, where would you go, Cubicle-chan? What would you do instead?

Today’s letter had been written inside a cute little notebook with Vabo-chan on the cover.

(Once, Kappa-san had asked him: Tell me something you wouldn’t tell someone else. In retrospect Ushijima’s not sure why this was the thing he had chosen to admit—that he had loved Vabo-chan as a child and that he still has a well-worn, well-loved plush Vabo-chan plushie he keeps in the back of his closet. Kappa-san had said this was the cutest thing he’d ever heard and a week later, Ushijima had found this notebook in their drawer.)

He thinks this is one of the easier answers he’s had to give. It wasn’t lack of passion that had driven Ushijima into the hands of the JVA. If he hadn’t gotten injured in high school, he would have tried to find a place for himself in the V.League. With that option off the table, though, this had been the next best thing.

Ushijima isn’t upset about it. He likes working at the JVA. He likes being around volleyball all day every day. He likes helping communities learn how to play volleyball, finds genuine pleasure in translating his obsession into something accessible for anyone who wants to give it a try. At most, Ushijima thinks he might have a pipe dream of one day growing into Ukai’s position as director, or maybe in some far-off fantasy, helping coach a V.League team or even the Japanese National Team. He doesn’t know that he has the talent for something like that, though, so a desk job that is all volleyball all the time is the next best thing.

The point is, Ushijima is genuinely happy where he is, doing what he’s doing. He hopes that isn’t a disappointing answer.

“Why won’t Sakusa invite me to his apartment?” a dramatic and over-aggrieved voice cuts into Ushijima’s thoughts.

“Pardon?” Ushijima doesn’t know what he missed, but he assumes he missed something since Miya is slumped against the cabinet behind him and acting as though he’s suffering from terminal illness. Surely there has to be a reason for it.

“We’ve been—y’know—for ages. He never kicks me outta bed, so I know he’s interested! It’s not even not allowed by company policy ‘cause he’s not my supervisor. Or at least company policy is silent on what happens if the guy you’re fucking is in the IT department.”

Ushijima feels his neck warm. He coughs and pauses as the copier starts spitting out copies of the flyers he’s printing.

“Did you need to use the copier?” he asks politely.

“What?” Miya looks confused. “No. I need Sakusa to invite me over! He only ever comes to my place and then we spend the first ten minutes with him wipin’ down every surface he sees while criticizing me even though I just wiped down every surface before he got there!”

Miya throws his hands up in frustration then stops. He looks like something’s dawned on him. Ushijima assumes it’s nothing good.

“And then we usually—you know. Hey, what if that’s all foreplay?”

“I need fifty copies of these flyers,” Ushijima says, with an air of desperation, which for him just means slightly more harried than usual. “But then the machine will be free.”

“What? I said I don’t need copies,” Miya says, frowning. “Are you listening to me?”

Ushijima sighs.

“Yes.”

“I need you to signal that better,” Miya says, sniffling. “Anyway. You’re like. Best friends with him and all, right?”

Ushijima feels this is a trap, but he also doesn’t like to lie.

“We are very close.”

“Okay, so? What’s going on in that gremlin brain of his? What’s the big deal? Why won’t he invite me home? Is he embarrassed of his place?” Miya gasps and clutches a hand to his chest. “Is he embarrassed of being seen with me at his place?”

Ushijima thinks through all of these questions while the copier takes approximately one full human gestational period to print each flyer.

“I think,” he says.

Miya looks up at him eagerly. He straightens to his full height in anticipation. It’s a formidable height although, strangely, the energy he usually exudes is significantly shorter.

“Yeah?”

“That,” Ushijima says.

“Yeah? Go on!”

Ushijima nods. “You should ask Kiyoomi himself.”

Miya stares at him then lets out a groan.

“What help are you!”

“In fairness, I was only in here to make copies,” Ushijima says. He stares at the copy machine as it continues its slow ascent toward his personal death. He’s never been betrayed by office machinery before, but today he has learned better.

“That’s not weird to you?” Miya sighs and asks. He runs a hand through his messy blond hair. “Like—okay. The guy you’re into.”

Ushijima pauses. “I am not into—”

“No, the letter guy,” Miya says, waving a hand. Ushijima flushes. “You’d invite him back to your place, right? Like, say you two met and you began—y’know. Wait—you would…y’know, right?”

Ushijima stares.

“What?”

“Like you’re not against it?” Miya says. “Morally.”

Ushijima has no idea what Miya is talking about.

“No?”

“Oh, okay,” Miya says, nodding. “I mean it could have gone either way. Like on the one hand, you seem like you could fuck, but on the other hand, I don’t think I can imagine you fucking. So that’s really confusing, you know?”

Ushijima nearly chokes.

“Excuse me?”

“Anyway—back to the point. Assuming you and your letter guy meet and start hookin’ up, and it’s been going on a while, and clearly you’re really into it—you’d invite him back to your place, right? Or at least you’d tell him why you couldn’t? Like…maybe you live in a group home with ten other people so it’d be really hard to take a shower the morning after. Or maybe your apartment was once the scene of a brutal murder and you had to set it on fire to get the smell out.”

Ushijima’s balance in this conversation, once lost, was doomed to never again be found.

“I do not live in a group home with ten other people,” he says. “Nor has there been a murder in my home.” He pauses. “To my knowledge.”

Miya sighs and looks gloomy.

“So it’s just me?” he says. “He’s just not that into me?”

Ushijima is not a man predisposed to sighing, but he almost does it now.

He doesn’t answer Miya immediately. He doesn’t want to reward bad, dramatic behavior after all. He watches quietly as the copier whirs and prints out copy after copy of his precious flyers. Once it finishes, he picks up the nice, glossy stack, the paper still hot in his hands.

He turns toward Miya, who looks up at him, expression glum.

“If I were to meet my…cubicle-mate,” Ushijima says slowly. “And we were to…begin sleeping together.” He colors slightly here, but soldiers on. “And if he was uncertain about whether I was returning his affections, I think I would appreciate it if he simply asked.”

Miya chews on his bottom lip.

“Yeah? That easy? Just ask him?”

“There is nothing worth pursuing that isn’t worth directly asking for,” Ushijima says.

“Damn,” Miya says, and lets out a whistle. He stretches his arms above him. The sleeves of his white button-up shirt—rolled up to his elbows—fall a little.

Ushijima thinks that must be the end of the conversation. He certainly has nothing more to add. He’s nearly to the door when Miya stops him again.

“Y’know, Ushiwaka, you’re different than I thought,” he says.

Ushijima frowns.

“What expectations did you have of me?”

“Dunno,” Miya says and shrugs. “But you’re different. Or maybe you’re different than you used to be. A year ago, you’d never have entertained that conversation.”

Ushijima blinks. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Miya pushes himself away from the counter and grins. He claps Ushijima on the shoulder. “It’s nice. Makes me think there’s a human under that robot exterior after all.”

Ushijima can’t make out if that’s a compliment or an insult or both. He thinks about it for a moment—(Sometimes a thing can be all three, Cubicle-chan! Don’t overthink it, that’s my job ha ha!)—and then decides it’s not important either way.

“Thank you,” he says. “Talk to Kiyoomi.”

“Fine,” Miya says. He gives Ushijima a crooked smile as he leaves the room. “But only ‘cause you asked so nice.”

Ushijima gets the flyers over to Shirabu, who calls over Goshiki to discuss a press release and social media post that is scheduled to go out the next day. It’s mostly productive, even if Shirabu and Goshiki derail the conversation for thirty minutes bickering about what causes more suffering—replying to comments from online trolls and people who barely know how to act properly on the Internet or replying to emails from community members who have too many unsolicited ideas about improvements they would personally make to the JVA.

In the end neither wins, because they both turn to Ushijima—furious and expectant—and demand a final call, to which Ushijima answers, “I receive ten to fifteen calls a day from members of various communities asking if I can teach them how to serve a ball.”

Goshiki goes pale and Shirabu looks like he would rather die than have to even contemplate doing that.

“Let me know when the post and release go out,” Ushijima says.

He smiles at them both and goes back to his desk.

There’s light chatter around the office as Ushijima finishes his work day. The windows are open and the sky is blue outside—clearer and brighter than it has been in months. The warm air is drifting in and everyone seems happier, a little more willing to smile and inclined to chatter, even though the workload is tremendous across the floor.

Ushijima works quietly and closely on the second draft of a presentation that’s meant to be part of the launch of the tournament. He lets the warm spirits of his colleagues fade to a pleasant buzz in the back of his mind. Every once in a while he reaches out to touch the top of a cute little anime figure that Kappa-san had introduced to their workspace. (Ushijima doesn’t know who the figure is supposed to be, only that the character has what are ostensibly cat ears peeking out from white hair and big eyes and is in a sitting position. It’s terribly impractical and completely pointless and absurdly cute. Ushijima is enamored with it.)

When he finishes his draft, he emails it to Ukai for review. Then he gets up, stretches, and considers going to the kitchen to see if there is any juice in the fridge. Ushijima luxuriates in the pleasant buzz that comes after being productive. He thinks he will write all about it to Kappa-san in his letter before he leaves for the day.

He doesn’t realize he’s smiling to himself until he hears a familiar voice say, “No one is ever that happy to be here.”

Ushijima turns to find Kuroo standing behind his cubicle with a notepad filled with scribbles, an uncapped pen, and his hair sticking up even more than usual.

“Is it possible that everyone on this floor has a mild case of depression?” Ushijima wonders out loud.

“I think it’s the vitamin D deficiency,” Kuroo says. He grins. “Didn’t take you for an anime guy. Is that Inuyasha?”

Ushijima doesn’t know what an Inuyasha is. He follows Kuroo’s gaze toward the little figure with big eyes.

“Oh,” he says. “No. That’s my…cubicle partner’s.”

Kuroo scrunches his face up.

“Shit, I should know who sits here at night, but I can’t remember.”

Ushijima nearly starts, his stomach twisting in excitement.

“You know him?”

“I know everyone on evening shift,” Kuroo says with a nod. “I work late sometimes.”

Oh that’s….Ushijima hadn’t even thought of that possibility. To engineer a reason to stay late enough in the office to discover who slips into this cubicle when he slips out.

“Semi maybe?” Kuroo stares at Ushijima’s cubicle with a half-frown. “No, he wouldn’t be caught dead with chibi toys at his desk.” Kuroo gives Ushijima an explanatory look followed by, “He’s trying to start a rock band.”

Ushijima nearly reels from the possibility that Kuroo knows who Kappa-san is; that he could just tell him if Ushijima asked.

Part of Ushijima wants desperately to do this. He wants to know who his cubicle-mate might be. Even a name would do. But another part of him wants to respect Kappa-san’s anonymity. He had asked not to exchange names for a reason.

“Are they very different?” Ushijima asks instead.

“Hm? Who?”

“Those on the night shift,” Ushijima says. “I’ve been…wondering.”

Kuroo’s mouth quirks up at the corner as his gaze catches on all of the incongruous little things placed carefully around Ushijima’s desk—the maneki-neko, the anime figure with the large eyes, the stress ball shaped like Kirby, the clear stapler with the colorful gears inside, the postcard from Okinawa, the plant, a little post-it note that Ushijima had saved that’s stuck to the monitor, a tiny, scribbled drawing on it of a little volleyball player jumping in the air for joy. All of the little scraps of whimsy and personality that Ushijima would not have—and in fact had not—thought of even a year ago.

Ushijima doesn’t explain himself and to his credit, Kuroo neither comments nor asks. Ushijima has no doubt that he knows about the letters, though. Kuroo observes more than he comments on and anyway, if Goshiki knows about Ushijima’s cubicle-mate, surely everyone else on the day shift knows by now too.

“It’s a different feeling, I guess,” Kuroo says eventually. “They’re a little weirder, but I think you need to be, to sign up for something like working on volleyball in the middle of the night.”

“Do you find those of us on the day shift to be…normal,” Ushijima says, without inflection.

Kuroo cackles.

“If you’re asking whether Shirabu and Miya are the weirdest people working at the JVA,” Kuroo says, grinning. “The answer is—” He pauses. “Well, maybe. I think we’d have to put them in a room with Suna and Suga and Tendou to find out.”

Ushijima almost smiles.

“Are you asking for a particular reason, Wakatoshi-kun?” Kuroo asks in that lilting, teasing tone of his.

Ushijima manages not to blush, somehow.

“Just curiosity,” he says. “They are still our colleagues, even if we have never seen nor met them before.”

“Uh huh.” Kuroo knocks on the cubicle wall to signal his imminent departure. “Do you want me to find out for you?”

Ushijima hesitates. He takes a breath and shakes his head.

“No. Thank you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” Kuroo says. He looks at Ushijima consideringly and after a moment, smiles. “They’re good people, though. Good workers and even better guys. I don’t know which one is yours, but any of them would be good for you.”

It’s hard not to acknowledge the curl of pleasure in his chest at that wording—which one is yours—but Ushijima tries.

“I see.”

“If I had to pick though,” Kuroo says and looks at Ushijima consideringly. “Hm.”

Ushijima feels his skin itch, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even move.

Kuroo smiles again.

“Yeah, I think it would be him.”

Ushijima blinks and Kuroo waves at him.

“Later, Ushiwaka!”

Before Ushijima can stop him or second guess himself and really ask for an answer, Kuroo’s disappeared around the cubicle and down the hall.

Ushijima thinks a long time about what he wants to write to Kappa-san in response. In the end, he doesn’t want to be dishonest. Not to the person who has asked nothing of him but the truth, this entire time.

I am not a big dreamer. That is, I do not have the imagination to think about what I might want when I have already achieved what I wanted. I love volleyball. I have always loved volleyball. If I cannot play in a professional capacity, then I would like to stay in the world in whatever way I can.

That is to say, I like where I am and what I do. Maybe one day, if the opportunity presented itself, I could help coach a team—be closer to the court again. But until then, I am quite content where I am. I am happy. I hope you find the thing that makes you happy too.

“You look happy,” the red-haired stranger says the next morning.

Ushijima looks at him with mild surprise.

“What?” the man laughs. “Do you not get that a lot or something?”

Stranger-san has on tight-fitting dark pants and an over-sized, short-sleeve button up that he hasn’t bothered to tuck in. His sneakers are bright blue and he has an assortment of multicolored bracelets gathered around both of his wrists. Lately, he seems to dress at least as bright as he sounds and feels. The warmer the weather gets, the more personality Ushijima glimpses in these brief passings. The more personality he sees, the more it makes Ushijima want to know him better.

He’s not just handsome and charming and funny; he’s interesting too. Ushijima has lately found that he likes it when people are interesting.

“No,” Ushijima admits. “And you are the second person to comment as such lately.”

“So either something’s making you happier lately or you were especially sour before,” Stranger-san says. He grins, which makes Ushijima want to smile in return. “Well, which is it? Are you happier or less sour?”

Ushijima considers this.

“Are they not the same thing?”

“Well, I think you can be less sour but still not happy, you know?” the other man says. He tugs on his backpack straps a little and then gestures widely with his arms. “Happiness is its own thing. A whole different feeling than just being less of something worse. Although I guess in the spring it can be both together. Is it both together?”

Ushijima takes only a moment to answer.

“No,” he says. “I think it is the former.”

“Which one’s that now?”

Ushijima feels a little embarrassed to say, but he says it anyway.

“Happier. I believe I am happier lately.”

“Well don’t say it like you’re shy about it,” the stranger says. He smiles widely. Sometimes he’s so sweet and effusive, he feels utterly familiar. It makes Ushijima feel like he knows him in some way. He doesn’t, of course. He just has one of those warm, enthusiastically inviting personalities. “Isn’t that what we all want? To be happy?”

“Yes,” Ushijima says, nodding. “I believe so.”

“Well then,” the stranger says. He wrinkles his nose and smiles as he passes Ushijima to trade places with him. The look is so cute Ushijima nearly stumbles over his feet to get inside. “I’m glad one of us is!”

It’s only as the doors are closing that it strikes Ushijima how sad that is to hear from someone who is saying it so cheerfully.

There’s a stranger walking around the JVA floor. Tendou thinks this would be less unusual if it was the middle of the day and there were clients and V.League members visiting for meetings and photoshoots, but at two in the morning, it does beg a few questions. Such as: who is it? And how did they get into the building? And why are they…here?

Tendou thinks it’s a man. He’s only seen the back of the stranger’s head and their hair is long and at least partially blond and pulled up into a bun, but the rest of them seems to be traditionally masculine enough. Whatever that means. At least, they’re a little slouched and wearing red sweatpants and an oversized hoodie that says BB on the shoulder. Technically none of that is gendered, but Tendou makes a wild guess from where he spies them from the glass window of the conference room.

“Who’s that?” Tendou asks.

“Hm?” Suna, who has not been paying any attention at all to what Iwaizumi is saying, murmurs. He finishes typing something on his phone and looks up too late.

“There was someone there,” Tendou whispers.

“There’s a lot of someones here,” Suna says. “We’re at work.”

“What are you two whispering about?” Komori, who is also not paying any attention, leans over and asks.

“Tendou saw someone,” Suna says.

“Who someone?” Komori raises his absurd smudges of eyebrows. “There are a lot of someones here. We’re at work.”

“What is wrong with the two of you?” Tendou asks, bewildered. Then he shakes his head. “Nevermind! There’s someone new here! Or not new? A stranger?”

Both Suna’s and Komori’s gazes sharpen at that.

“A stranger…?” Suna says.

“Did he look dangerous?” Komori whispers.

Tendou nearly rolls his eyes. All three of them look toward where Tendou had been gazing out the window, but there’s no one there anymore. In the distance, above a row of cubicles, there’s just the spiky head of Kuroo.

“Was it a ghost?” Komori asks.

Suna turns sharply toward him. “You think the JVA is haunted?”

“Probably,” Tendou says. Then revises, “Actually this place isn’t nearly exciting enough.”

“You don’t know its history!” Komori leans toward him and hisses. “Maybe there was a murder here!”

“What, someone died by volleyball?” Tendou snorts and Suna considers it a little too seriously.

“That’s got to have happened like…at least once. Right?”

The three of them ease into contemplating this just before a stress ball bounces off of Komori’s head.

“Hey!”

“Pay attention, you idiots!” Iwaizumi says, glaring at them.

“What if Iwaizumi threw the volleyball?” Komori asks the second Iwaizumi turns back toward his smart board presentation.

“Oh, that could definitely kill a man,” Suna says.

Tendou considers this and slumps onto his arms on the table.

“You’re right,” he says. “In that case, maybe it was a ghost.”

*

Tendou likes springtime too, although not as much as winter. It’s nice to feel the cold recede from the air, the world turned warm and a little muggy around him. He likes the way the nicer weather brings more people outside, so his commute to work so late at night is a little less lonely. He likes seeing the very faint blur of stars above him and the leaves flowering against the brush of a humid breeze. Springtime is when even cities like Tokyo feel like they’ve taken their first tentative breath after a long, quiet sleep.

The problem is that so much of spring happens during the day, when Tendou is asleep. By the time he settles into his cubicle in the late evening, he’s missed the cherry blossoms and he’s missed the sunshine. He’s missed the people. It’s a little lonely when he thinks about it that way. But mostly he misses the flowers.

(“Hey.” Sugawara had stopped Tendou by the elevator doors one evening, a strange smile on his face. “There’s something for you at your desk.”

It wasn’t just something. It was multiple somethings, and with them, a note.

I do not want you to feel that you are missing a life that everyone else is living. I know this is a poor replacement for the ability to see them yourself. But I hope it is not too forward or cheesy to offer you the chance to have a little bit of spring in our cubicle when you can.

The note was attached to a round, pink candle with pink and white blossoms painted beautifully along the sides. Tendou’s heart did a little stumble as he unscrewed the golden top and smelled it inside. Cherry blossoms.

“Oh.”

There was also a cherry blossom-scented hand lotion, a little bag of cherry blossom-flavored Kit Kats, and a small tin of paper clips with little pink cherry blossoms at the end.

Tendou spent the entire evening opening the candle, closing his eyes, and smelling.

In the morning, when he’d finally put in more hours of work into a campaign poster than he had ever thought himself capable of doing and dragged himself out of the office, his favorite elevator-mate had commented on it.

“You smell nice,” Stranger-san said, his eyes widening a little.

“Yeah? Even after all of those terrible, long, sweaty hours of sitting at my desk doing office work?” Tendou gave him a tired smile.

“It smells like you have had a productive evening,” Stranger-san replied. His mouth softened around the edges, which—Tendou had come to learn over the past few months—was his version of a quiet smile. It never changed the other man’s face terribly much, but it made him feel warmer somehow. More attainable. Well, if someone that handsome and put-together could ever be attained by someone with dark circles under his eyes wearing a wrinkled, plaid button-up over a plain white t-shirt.

“I—thank you?”

“I meant—” Stranger-san’s cheeks tinged pink and Tendou had the absurd urge to lick them, just to feel the warmth under his tongue. The man shook his head. “I only meant that you smell like spring.”

It hadn’t occurred to Tendou until later what Stranger-san had meant. At the time, he had just been too flustered at the compliment and at how embarrassed his elevator-mate looked. (And how charming that was to Tendou, who was almost impossible to embarrass.)

But later—once he’d gotten home and showered and gathered his worn clothes to dump into the laundry basket—he had smelled it too. Cherry blossoms.)

The thing about spring is that it never lasts nearly as long as the other seasons. It’s here and gone, just like the cherry blossoms themselves. The weather turns from a sweet breeze and lovingly mild evenings to the threat of summer humidity to come. Tendou always thinks the switch happens entirely too fast, but maybe that’s just because he’s spent the last few years missing spring days altogether. By the middle of May, Tendou can tell that their respite is nearly over.

It’s warm, verging on humid in the JVA office. They have the windows open, but the air moves less than they want it to. It’s almost stifling. Komori and Suna complain enough that Kita and Iwaizumi drag the electric fans out a month too early.

If spring is busy for the JVA because the V.League season is ending, summer is somehow even busier with the national team picking back up. There’s really only a month or two during the calendar year that Tendou can consider relaxing and he’s nowhere near them. On the one hand, it’s good to be busy. On the other, Tendou spends more time these days wondering if he’s kept himself busy in the right ways or if he’s just wasted the past three years of his life having the same night over and over again.

It is my turn to ask you a question, Kappa-san. Pardon me if it is…unusual or seems out-of-character. I think being out-of-character can be acceptable sometimes, if there’s a reason for it.

Here is my question: if you knew the world was to end in 24 hours, what would be your perfect last day? (I do not usually think so philosophically, but a friend of mine has been watching a television program set during the end of the world and now I cannot seem to stop thinking about the end of the world.)

Tendou had laughed when he’d read the note earlier that evening. He thinks he knows what program Cubicle-chan’s friend has been watching—Reon had spent an entire video chat just last week excitedly explaining an apocalyptic video game show to Tendou.

It’s an interesting question—an exciting one even! Tendou has never been short on enthusiasm and he has all sorts of interests. If he thinks about it, he must be able to construct the perfect last day.

Surely there’s a fun but meaningful answer.

Two hours into his shift, he’s stuck.

All he’s come up with is that maybe he would like to sit outside in the sunshine and re-read all of his favorite issues of Shonen Jump while watching people attempt to play volleyball in the park and then stop by a bakery after for some dango and black sesame mochi. He guesses he’d probably want to visit a friend or two before the world ended. Maybe harass Semi into admitting that Tendou has been his best friend all this time. Get an ice cream cone with his parents.

It’s not bad. It would probably be a good enough day.

But something about it just feels so…uninspired.

Tendou doodles listlessly on a potential Japanese National Team poster design for the upcoming Nations League tournament—so far he has put Hinata Shouyo in a superhero outfit and drawn him flying up into the air in pursuit of a volleyball.

He’s coloring in Hinata’s insanely orange hair when he hears an unfamiliar voice say, “Hey, that looks cool,” from behind him.

Tendou stops mid-stroke and turns quickly.

“I like the outfit,” the stranger says. “Is that a crow?”

“Yeah,” Tendou says. He blinks in surprise.

The stranger is pretty small. He’s maybe tipping somewhere over five feet, with long hair that’s pulled back into a half-bun. The ends are blond, although his roots are dark. He has golden, cat-like eyes, a somewhat bland expression on his face, and he’s wearing a sweatshirt that says BB on the left side of the chest.

It’s the person Tendou caught sight of a few months ago.

“The ghost!” he says in surprise.

The stranger blinks.

“What?”

“I—you’re—nevermind,” Tendou says quickly. He squints a bit. “You don’t work here.”

“Oh,” the guy says and shakes his head. “No.”

“But you exist,” Tendou says with some excitement. He leans forward. “You’re…real.”

He looks familiar, somehow, although Tendou can’t quite place it.

“As far as I know,” the stranger says. He tilts his head a little. “Unless we’re living in a simulation. Which would be pretty cool. But would also kinda suck because then I’d be mad it took me this long to figure it out.”

Tendou grins. “Do they let ghosts into the simulation?”

“Huh.” The man leans against the conference room table and considers this. “If it’s a simulation I guess they could let in anything they wanted. Wouldn’t have to be just humans. Could be ghosts too. Robots. Aliens. Paranormal entities.”

“Is this a confession?” Tendou asks eagerly.

“No,” the man says. He smiles a little and it makes his face look less bored. “If we are in a simulation I’m not going to lose that easily.”

“Lose how?”

“I tell you I’m a ghost and then snipers come in and make me take a pill to wake me up.”

“I thought snipers were to shoot, not for pills?”

The man raises his eyebrows. “You know a lot about snipers. And ghosts.”

“I’m a man of many interests,” Tendou says grinning. He slumps back in his seat. “So you’re not haunting this floor because you disgraced your family and had to take your life using a volleyball?”

“How would I take my own life using a volleyball?”

“Maybe if you threw it at yourself really really hard.”

The stranger laughs. It’s a dry, peppery thing that makes Tendou’s mouth twitch.

“You’re weird,” the guy says. “I like you.”

“Thanks,” Tendou says, nodding. “I get that a lot.”

The guy chuckles and after a moment says, “Kozume Kenma.”

Tendou reaches a hand out for him to shake.

“Tendou Satori.”

“So you draw that all by yourself, Tendou Satori?”

Tendou looks back down at his tablet.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m in graphic design.”

“That’s cool,” the other man says. “You like it?”

“Eh,” Tendou says with a shrug. He flips his tablet pen through his fingers. “Mostly it’s changing fonts and colors in a program and wanting to stab myself between the eyes with a stapler.”

“Ouch.”

Tendou grins.

“Sometimes I get to draw a little, though.”

“Hm.”

Kenma tilts his head and scrutinizes Tendou’s art some more.

“It’s really good. You make him look taller than he is.”

Tendou looks back at his sketch of professional volleyball player Hinata Shouyo and then something clicks.

“Do you know him?”

“Oh, Shouyo?” Kenma says and shrugs. “Yeah. We go back.”

Tendou stares.

“Who are you?”

Kenma smiles. “Just some guy. Anyway, he’ll be thrilled. He has a thing about his height. He’s gotten better about it though.”

“It’s all about perspective, isn’t it? Doesn’t seem to hurt him any.”

“That’s true,” Kenma says. “I guess when he’s playing, he always seems bigger than he is.”

“He’s a monster,” Tendou agrees. He pauses. “Should I have drawn him as one of those instead?”

Kenma laughs. “Maybe. He is kind of scary when you play volleyball against him. Or mention volleyball to him. Or say the word volleyball in a ten foot radius.”

“I guess you’d have to be a monster to be that good at something like that, wouldn’t you?”

Kenma drums his fingers against the desk.

“I guess it depends on your definition of monster,” he says. “And good.”

“To have that kind of hunger for something you might never be the best at…” Tendou says. He flips the pen through his fingers again. “He wants to be the best at it anyway though. I’ve seen his interviews.”

“He’s always had that hunger,” Kenma agrees. “It makes him nearly unbeatable, you’re right. But it helps that he found someone who matches him.”

Tendou looks at Kenma curiously. The other guy gives him a half-smile.

“Kageyama,” Kenma says. “You haven’t noticed?”

“Wait—”

Tendou thinks about the former star setter on the Schweiden Adlers. He’s since moved to the Italian league, but whenever he and Hinata had played against each other in the past, there had been an intensity there that was inexplicable. Usually the competition is between players of the same position, but anyone paying a second’s attention could tell that there was an unusual spark of heat between the Adlers setter and the MSBY hitter. Mostly the media—and the JVA, when playing into it—labeled it as a rivalry. Everyone always needs a rival to drive them to be better.

They had all assumed there was something there that Hinata and Kageyama were too volleyball-dumb to notice.

But what if they had been reading it all wrong? What if, instead—

Tendou gasps.

“Yeah,” Kenma says and he’s grinning now. “It’s not really a secret, but not everyone’s caught on.”

“Wow, Sugawara is going to be so happy,” Tendou says. Then he whistles. “That’s two scary people!”

“You’re telling me,” Kenma says. He scowls. “You should invite them both over for dinner and spend an evening with them.”

“That bad?”

“Everything’s a competition,” Kenma says. “And I mean everything.”

Tendou’s smiling as he thinks about it. He waves his arms a little widely.

“That’s fun though! Right? Having someone who’s just as hungry as you? Having someone to match your level of…crazy?”

“I guess. Is that what love is?” Kenma asks after a moment. “Finding someone who matches you?”

“Or tolerates the parts of you that are too much for other people,” Tendou says.

“Hm,” Kenma says and his eyes flicker toward the cubicles. “I guess that’s right.”

It’s a lovely if lonely thought. Tendou has never really had anyone like that. Well. (Do not shorten your letters on my account or anyone else’s. Nothing about you overwhelms me, Kappa-san. You have no need to ever apologize.) Not anyone he knows personally anyway.

“So what else do you draw?”

Tendou recedes from his daydream, deftly moving past the faint ache in his heart.

“Oh, anything,” he says, waving a hand. “It’s just a hobby. I read a lot of Shonen Jump when I was younger and decided I wanted to be a mangaka. Well that didn’t work out, but I still get to draw sometimes so it’s not so bad!”

Kenma nods.

“Is that true?”

Tendou hesitates. Then he wilts just a little. “Sometimes.”

“Not so bad seems like the bare minimum. It’s not really what we dream of, is it?” Kenma says. “Well, unless it is. I guess I shouldn’t judge.”

Tendou shrugs.

“Not so bad is not so bad,” he says. His mouth twitches at the corner. “Which isn’t so bad.”

Kenma snorts. “Fine. So what else? You don’t seem like someone who just sits there and draws volleyball players for fun.”

“What makes you say that?”

Kenma’s eyes flicker around Tendou’s cubicle. His gaze catches on all of the little toys and colorful office supplies and proof of life that he’s slowly built with Cubicle-chan.

“Call it a hunch,” he says. “So? Villains? Vampires? Apocalyptic worlds for little animals to crawl through?”

“Why is everyone obsessed with the end of the world lately…”

“We’re all depressed millennials,” Kenma says absently. “Also climate change.”

“Don’t let Kuroo hear you say that,” Tendou says under his breath. He’s been on the tail-end of a Kuroo Tetsurou impassioned climate change speech one too many times past two in the morning. For some reason, this makes Kenma grin.

“Well?”

“Yeah, okay,” Tendou says. “All of that stuff, I guess! Just whatever’s going on in my chaotic little brain, and usually it’s nothing that makes sense. Though I do have a comic I started drawing that was—well, it was about a monster who was raised among humans. Didn’t know he was a monster, but the other kids never let him forget it. I guess that’s close enough to reality.”

“Oh? How does it end?”

Tendou taps the edge of his pen against the table top.

“Hm. I don’t know yet,” Tendou says. “I can’t tell if he should be the hero or the villain. Someone can be both, can’t they?”

“Yeah,” Kenma says. “Maybe he’s the villain who’s the hero.”

“Or a hero who the village makes believe is the villain.”

“Or maybe he’s some secret third thing,” Kenma says and that makes Tendou smile wide.

He snaps his fingers. “That’s the one.”

Kenma looks amused at that. He’s about to say something else when there’s voices from the meeting breaking in the other conference room.

“Kyanma!” a voice calls out among the din. “I’m done!”

Tendou can’t place who it is, but Kenma’s eyes light up in response. He pushes himself up from the table and nods at Tendou.

“Well, thanks for entertaining me. This was fun,” he says.

“Yeah,” Tendou says, a bit bemused.

“Finish your comic, Tendou Satori,” Kenma says, tapping a finger next to Tendou’s tablet. “I want to see it when it’s done.”

Tendou’s eyes widen in surprise, but the voice calls for Kenma again and Kenma just nods back.

“See ya later,” he says and leaves with a little wave.

Tendou doodles a little drawing on the side of his letter this time. It’s a robot volleyball player, accidentally shooting laser beams through the net and exploding the volleyball in the middle of the opposing player’s jump serve.

How did you know this question would send me into an existential spiral, Cubicle-chan? Don’t I suffer enough? Are you making friends with the voice in my head or are you just trying to make me fall in love with you??

(That last part is a joke—of course! Ha ha!)

If it was the end of the world and I knew I only had 24 hours left to live, I think I wouldn’t plan it at all. I’d want to spend time with the people I love. My parents. My friends. I would do the first thing that came to mind, and then the second, and then the third, and on and on. I would want it to be an adventure! Unplanned, spontaneous. Just me and the people I care about, not doing anything comfortable or expected. I’d want to do something that scared me, something I would never have had the courage to do if I knew I’d have to make it to the next day.

I’ve never thought of myself as a cautious person or even risk-averse. All my life I’ve been oh, I want this thing, I want to do that thing, so let me just do it! At least that’s what I’ve always thought. I’m starting to wonder if I might have been wrong about all of that though. Have I done the things that I really wanted to do? Have I taken the risks I needed to take? I’m still here, so maybe not. I think in so many ways, maybe I’ve been afraid my whole life.

If the world was ending though, wouldn’t that be my last chance to do something different? Push my boundaries and do something scary and awful and real? I would regret it if I didn’t, I think. I would spend my next life—and the life after that and the one after that—wondering why I wasted the time I had.

So to answer your question, I wouldn’t plan for anything. I’d make a memory instead, Cubicle-chan. The kind I was too scared to make the rest of my life, you know? It would be a memory I’d never forget, only I wouldn’t be there the next day to remember it anyway.

That’s okay, though. I think it’s still worth it to have a day of being fearless even if it happens to you only once.

What do you think? Does that sound completely crazy?

And if I asked, would you do it with me?

* * *

Chapter Text

SUMMER (Night Shift)

Sometime between spring and summer, Tendou finds himself smiling more. There’s no real reason for it that he can offer and it’s not as though he was particularly dour before. It’s part coping mechanism borne from years of childhood bullying (if you can smile through it, you can bear it had been his own survival instinct) and part his general nature; even tired, even worn down, and dispirited, and uninspired, Tendou Satori can put on a smile.

But there’s putting on a smile and there’s actually offering the real thing.

“You have it bad,” Sugawara says at the water cooler.

“What?”

All Tendou had come into the kitchen to do was warm up a little tea. Sugawara stands by the water cooler and fills up his water bottle. He’s grinning, but it has less edge than usual.

“Is it your cubicle-mate?” he asks.

“Is what my cubicle-mate?” Tendou blinks.

“The reason you’re smiling,” Sugawara says. Tendou opens his mouth, but Sugawara taps his finger against his mouth. “Now Satori-chan, I can tell the difference.”

Tendou is rarely embarrassed, but this makes him blush a little.

“Sometimes you dance when you’re in your seat,” Sugawara says. “Sometimes you’re whistling. You’re always writing letters. It’s sweet.”

Tendou wrinkles his nose and laughs.

“Oh, it’s not like that,” he says.

“You think I don’t know what it looks like?” Sugawara says, smiling. He brings his filled bottle to his mouth and drinks. “I’m married, remember? How do you think that happened?”

“I assumed a pact with a devil?” Tendou offers. “An ancient and probably illegal seduction technique. Maybe Daichi has more muscle than brain.”

“Mmm he does have a lot of muscles,” Sugawara says dreamily. “But no. See, Satori-chan, when two men have feelings for each other—”

Tendou does flush this time.

“We don’t know each other!”

“You haven’t met each other yet,” Sugawara says, leaning against the door to the kitchen. “That isn’t the same thing as not knowing each other.”

Tendou frowns a little, the back of his neck feeling hot.

“Are you telling me that you have no feelings for him?” Sugawara asks. “That you don’t look forward to your cute little letters back and forth?”

“Um.”

Tendou’s embarrassed to have been so obvious, but he doesn’t want to lie either. He doubts it would be believable anyway.

Sugawara smiles.

“You’ve been writing to each other for nearly a year,” he says. “Right?”

“Well…yeah.”

“You write to him,” Sugawara says kindly. “But doesn’t he write back?”

Tendou swallows.

“Maybe it’s not the same as meeting someone in person,” Sugawara says. “Going out on a date. Texting, even. But you write nearly every day, about nearly everything. Just because it doesn’t look the way it does for others doesn’t mean it’s not the same thing.”

“Oh,” Tendou says. Breathes out, really. He doesn’t know why he feels so flustered. He’s not stupid. It’s not like he hadn’t…known.

About his impossible little crush.

Sugawara straightens and screws the cap back on his water bottle.

“I think it’s nice,” he says warmly. “When you find a reason to really smile.”

Tendou fiddles with the string on his tea bag.

“I bet you make him smile too,” Sugawara says. He winks at Tendou before disappearing around the corner of the door.

Tendou is not a person to hide from his feelings or even be embarrassed by them, but something about being so directly confronted about them—when he was least expecting it—makes him want to squirm.

Sugawara has the tendency to do things like that. Pry apart a person with a well-timed observation. Smile with kindness and mean it. Then once he’s shifted the ground under your feet, he will vanish before you’ve had the chance to process that it’s happened at all. It’s overwhelming and terrifying and wonderful.

Tendou understands, when he thinks about it, why Daichi had so eagerly married him so young.

Is that true? Tendou wonders. Could it happen just like that?

A letter almost every single day, written on stationary and notepads, on scraps of paper and the backs of printed flyers. Can a person you don’t know and you have never met weave himself into the tapestry of your life, make himself an immovable part of you by virtue of patiently allowing you to ramble, by reading the things you write, and offering his thoughts in return? Is it enough for someone to tell you that you don’t overwhelm him, that he looks forward to hearing from you, that you are as much a bright, essential part of his day as his is of your night?

Is it fair to call it a silly little crush, or is that just willingly lying to himself too?

Maybe it’s naivete that had made Tendou swallow it until now. Or maybe it’s just lack of practice. He’s only ever allowed himself the luxury of feeling once before and he has the healed over heart and fortified walls to prove it.

But Sugawara looks Tendou straight in the eyes and says You have it bad and You’re smiling and once something like that is said, it can’t be taken back. All of pandora’s things will never fit back into her carefully made box.

It’s one thing to ignore something that only exists in his thoughts—when it was only him reading and re-reading letters, when it was only him thinking about his cubicle partner on the bus ride to the office and in the middle of the night and the first thing before he fell asleep in the middle of the day, when it was only him pressing his fingers to his chest and ignoring the aching of his heart. It’s another to ignore it when someone else has seen it on his face, when they have noticed, too, his inked-in happiness.

Now when he looks at the cubicle around him—when he sees all of the small touches of things he and this stranger have shared, have built together—when he brushes his fingers over the folded letter next to his keyboard (the 250th—he’s counted), and feels the way his heart drums under his ribcage just to see the words Good evening, Kappa-san across the top of the page, well.

Aw hell. When doesn’t Sugawara Koushi have a point?

You are too unkind to yourself, too unwilling to grant yourself the things you would grant to the people you love.

I think if you do not love the thing you are doing, there is no shame in doing something else. You are talented, Kappa-san. Of this I am sure. And you have given me all of the practical reasons you stay here—that you are good at what you do, and it pays well, and you enjoy the company of your coworkers, and there is no good reason to leave—but none that seems compelling. Are these not easy excuses? We spend so much time at work, why should we treat it differently than other areas in which we are kinder to ourselves?

Why should you not be allowed to be happy?

That is to say that in all of the time we have been writing to one another, you have never seemed to me someone who was timid. But you seem to hesitate now. Why is that?

What is keeping you here if you do not love what you do?

“You’re daydreaming again,” Kenma says.

“How are you always here?” Tendou asks. He’d been staring out the window from his cubicle, but now he swings his chair around to face the person who he is still not completely convinced isn’t a specter of a former JVA employee.

Kenma has been a regular presence on the floor often enough by now that Tendou has seen Kuroo kiss him on the mouth. He’d put two and two together, but there’s something about Kenma that always makes Tendou wonder if his first instinct wasn’t the right one.

Anyway.

“You don’t have to be here!” Tendou says. “The rest of us are suffering, laboring under the uh—” He thinks about how Semi has put it before. “—shackles of capitalism, but you’re here for fun? Is it the grey cubicles? The flickering fluorescent lights?”

“I like the company?” Kenma offers.

Tendou narrows his eyes and Kenma’s mouth quirks up at the corner.

“It’s definitely not the coffee,” Kenma says. He lifts the energy drink that’s in his hand and takes a sip.

“It’s three in the morning!” Tendou exclaims.

“Kuroo says I don’t have to have a bedtime anymore,” Kenma says, grinning as he takes another mouthful.

“I do not need to know any more about that,” Tendou says. Then pauses and perks up. “Unless it’s juicy?”

Kenma winks at him and Tendou groans.

“Figures,” he says and spins in his chair again.

“So, the daydreaming?”

“I think,” Tendou says and stops spinning.

“Uh huh.”

“I am suffering an existential crisis,” Tendou says.

“Isn’t that just—” Kenma waves a hand around. “Millennial angst. Being alive in the world? Every person past two in the morning? This is why I sleep.”

“When do you do that, Kenma-kun?”

“When everyone else is being productive,” Kenma says. “I get the best sleep when I know other people are working hard and I’m not.”

That makes Tendou grin. To be fair, almost everything Kenma says makes Tendou grin. He’s enjoyed Kuroo’s mysterious boyfriend’s company for the past few months.

“Do you like what you do?” Tendou asks.

“For a living?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Kenma says. “I’m pretty lucky.”

“Video games, right?” Tendou says. He remembers Kuroo saying that, months ago.

“Yeah. And other stuff. But mostly a lot of video games.”

“Ahhh lucky,” Tendou says. He sighs and leans back against his chair.

“This again?”

“Someone asked me what was keeping me here,” Tendou says after a moment.

“On Earth?”

“At the JVA.”

Kenma nods. “Good question. What’s the answer?”

Tendou shrugs. “I need a job?”

“Everyone needs a job,” Kenma says. He studies Tendou. “Pretty lame excuse.”

“It’s a good job,” Tendou says. He feels the need to defend himself, although he doesn’t really know why. “It’s easy! I’m good at it! And I don’t hate everyone here, which is pretty exciting.”

“People do suck, generally,” Kenma agrees. He makes a humming noise. “Are those things enough?”

Isn’t that the million yen question?

“I don’t know,” Tendou admits. “I used to think it was. But then…”

Kenma raises an eyebrow and waits.

Tendou wrinkles his nose.

“Someone said I was being timid. That I was being unkind to myself and deserve better if I want it.”

“Do you want it?” Kenma asks.

Tendou swallows. It’s hard to want something better for yourself—something harder, something different—when you’ve spent your entire life being happy to be given what you’ve been given. Tendou has never wanted to be ungrateful.

“Would this other person think you deserve it?” Kenma asks when Tendou doesn’t answer.

(It is not up to me to decide anything for you or to persuade you in one way or another. But I have gotten to know you, Kappa-san. You have given me the honor of knowing you. And it is because of that privilege that I hope you believe me when I say, you are more capable than you let yourself believe. And I believe you deserve whatever dreams make you happiest.)

Tendou’s heart squeezes tight.

“Yes,” he says.

“Do you believe them?” Kenma asks.

Tendou nods. “Yes.”

“Would they lie to you?”

Tendou looks stricken. “Never.”

Kenma’s expression softens. “Then I think you have two choices here.”

Tendou looks at Kenma questioningly.

“You can either decide for yourself that you deserve better,” Kenma says. “Or you can trust this person that you do. Either way, I think the answer is simple.”

“What is it?” Tendou asks.

Kenma grins and kicks Tendou’s shoe with his own.

“It’s time for you to stop whining and do something about it.”

When the elevator doors open, Tendou hopes he’s there waiting. The bell dings and there’s the slight whirr as both sides slide and—

“Stranger-san,” the mysterious, handsome man says.

“Say, Stranger-san,” Tendou says, grinning wide. “How is it that we keep meeting like this?”

The other man blinks. His expression is serious—always so serious—but sometimes there’s something that flickers. Tendou is quick enough to catch it and whenever he does, it makes his head feel a little fuzzy. It’s not so different this morning. The other man pauses and for a moment he looks like the statue of some Greek hero, broad and strong and impossible to catch.

Tendou has no idea why he humors Tendou the way he does, so often and so early.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it can’t be true that our timing is always perfect,” Tendou says. “Do we have perfectly matching schedules? Is it fate? Is it destiny? Is it the mystery of the enigmatic Japanese Volleyball Association?”

The stranger opens his mouth to say one thing and then stops.

“You—do you work for the JVA?”

Tendou smiles a little.

“Eh,” he says.

The stranger looks uncertain, as though he’s not sure what that means. To be fair to him, it is a purposefully ambiguous answer.

“So, which is it?” Tendou presses. “Were we destined to meet? Every morning the elevator opens and I hope you’ll be there and every morning, you are. Could I be so lucky?”

The man’s olive-brown eyes widen slightly.

“You hope to see me?”

“Every morning.” Tendou smiles. “It’s the perfect way to end my night.”

“Oh,” the stranger says. He looks a little as though all this time it has never occurred to him that Tendou might remember him after they’ve parted ways. As though Tendou could ever forget someone as gentle and stern and beautiful as him.

“Does that make you feel uncomfortable?” Tendou asks.

After a moment, the man shakes his head. “No. It makes me…happy.”

Now it’s Tendou’s turn to feel like his world has turned sideways.

“Really?”

“Yes,” Stranger-san says.

“Oh.” Tendou wrinkles his nose a little and laughs. His face feels warm and his neck feels warm and his heart is doing entirely too much in his chest. “Good.”

After a moment, the man speaks again.

“You said it was a routine. We…have a routine.”

“Well yes,” Tendou says, grinning. “So we do.”

The other man seems unsure as he passes into the elevator and Tendou passes out of it. For a moment, their shoulders brush and Tendou feels a shiver run down his spine from the brief touch.

He turns back to face him, the two of them now on opposite sides from where they’d started.

“I enjoy routine,” Stranger-san says from inside. “I do not like stopping the things I have started.”

Tendou’s brows furrow together.

“Wait—what does that mean?”

The elevator bell dings and the other man hesitates for one more second.

“Stranger-san?” Tendou asks.

“My shift starts at nine in the morning,” Stranger-san says. No—admits. Tendou’s eyes widen. He knows what time he gets off of work—it is a full two hours before that. If he looked at his watch right now, it would say 07:15.

But if the other man starts work at nine and Tendou gets off at seven and they always meet at the elevator at 7:15, that would mean—

“Stranger-san,” Tendou starts but the doors start to close.

“I told you once that I like starting each day with our morning greetings,” Stranger-san says. His mouth softens into an impossibly small smile. “I do not mind making sure that they happen.”

Before Tendou can think over his rapidly beating heart enough to respond, the doors close and the other man disappears.

In all of the time we have been writing to one another, you have never seemed to me someone who was timid. But you seem to hesitate now. Why is that?

What is keeping you here if you do not love what you do?

Tendou has been making excuses for himself, giving himself this reason or that reason for why his complacency has been okay. Why it is better to stay somewhere he feels trapped and unfulfilled because having something is better than having nothing and anyway, doesn’t he mostly like what he has?

But is that enough to keep doing what he’s doing? Is it enough to come in each day and laugh with his coworkers, to sketch his daydreams, and look forward to a single letter placed on his desk, a single person standing on the other side of opening elevator doors?

Is it enough to be here in a place that he likes—that is just good enough—a place he could stay at and continue being fine at for as long as he likes?

Tendou hunches over a phone and watches videos from Asian variety shows with Suna and Komori and Semi during their 2:00 AM dinner time, and he teases Kuroo for his obsession with volleyball-themed ties with Iwaizumi, and he and Sugawara race up and down the mostly empty hallway in their rolling chairs for pride and competition. Sometimes they all spend half the night yelling at each other across the tops of their cubicles, because they’re bored and the middle of the night is a strange time to care that much about volleyball.

He laughs more than he doesn’t and drinks more tea than he otherwise would and every day he comes into his once grey-little cubicle and sees a neatly folded letter that makes his heart stumble over itself.

There’s a handsome guy who has changed his schedule to say good morning to him outside the elevators every morning, and there’s a new friend who will wander over to his cubicle in the middle of the night to sit and talk video games with him and walk him through the comic Tendou is still working to finish, and whenever he’s spiraling—whenever it still feels like there’s something missing—he can look out the window and see the the clear, dark sky of a beautiful, hot Tokyo night.

And it’s fine. It’s more than Tendou could ever have hoped for himself, more love and laughter than he could have anticipated when he was a child with no friends and no one to play volleyball with him.

But is it enough?

That’s what Tendou thinks about now—what Cubicle-chan makes him actively question.

What, to Tendou Satori, is enough? And could there be room for something better?

It’s nearly the end of that long, hot, strangely unsettling summer when Tendou finds two things on his desk.

The first is a neatly folded, familiar letter.

The other is a small, black card.

Tendou picks up the card first. There’s a familiar looking BB embossed in orange writing in the middle.

“Wait,” he says, frowning before he turns the card over. “I know that logo.”

He’s seen it a dozen times this summer, bright on the sleeves or on the chest or across the back of multiple dark hoodies.

On the back of the card stock it says—

Kozume Kenma
CEO and President
Bouncing Ball Inc.

“What?” Tendou says out loud.

Written in small, pretty cursive underneath is:

We’re looking for a game artist. Call me when you’re ready for that change.
-K

“Shit,” Tendou says, exhaling. His eyes are wide and his heart is beating too fast and his cheeks and the back of his neck are burning. “Holy shit!”

Kozume Kenma…Kuroo’s boyfriend. The utterly absurd, late night hours. The interest in Tendou’s comic designs. The video game career. How hadn’t Tendou connected the dots? Why had he never asked?

His head feels like it’s full of cotton candy. The sharp spike of shock is just as strong as the surreal feeling of floating in a castle in the clouds and not understanding how he got there.

A job offer? The chance to work in video games…to actually draw? Create the stories and characters that are always buzzing around in his head?

It doesn’t seem like it could possibly be real, but Tendou flips the business card back and forth and it’s all still there: CEO and President, Bouncing Ball Inc. and so is the offer. Call me when you’re ready for that change.

He puts down the business card and reaches for his daily letter.

Inside, the letter is shorter than usual. At first he frowns, not understanding the change in correspodence.

Then he reads the note. And it shifts the ground beneath his feet no less for all that.

Kappa-san, I have been thinking. It has been a year of correspondence. A year of getting to know one another. A year of being your friend.

I eagerly await each of your letters and every morning, when I finish reading, I feel an acute sense of loss. I have been trying to identify the ache I feel and it is not so difficult to understand, even for me. It is obvious, isn’t it?

It is difficult to wait for the next day, and I am not a man who is traditionally impatient. I do not wish to continue holding you at a distance. I do not wish to continue referring to you as Kappa-san.

Haven’t we waited long enough? Is it not time for you to tell me your name?

The last day of summer is so humid it sticks to his skin. By the time Ushijima makes it into the office, he’s red-faced and damp, uncomfortable in nice work clothes that he needs to peel away from his body just to get an ounce of relief. He misses the bus that he needs to catch and despite his best efforts to fight through the muggy morning air, is a full five minutes past 7:15 when the elevator doors open.

Ushijima has never thought to rely on luck before, so it should not be so disappointing when he finds the elevator car empty. It is, though. Where there should be a slightly bewildering, wonderfully charming man, there is nothing and no one. Ushijima feels disappointed.

He’s gotten used to seeing that bright, handsome face light up to greet him when the doors slide open in the mornings. It doesn’t feel right to miss that—to miss the tired, but energetic warble of a greeting and the minute of quick and vaguely incoherent exchange that always follows—although, statistically, it was bound to happen at some point. He’s sure Stranger-san knows that—or, most likely, probably didn’t even notice—but Ushijima feels a strange churn of guilt in his gut anyway for possibly disappointing someone he doesn’t even know.

It throws his entire morning off-balance. He hits the wrong button on the elevator and has to take the car all the way up to the Bouncing Ball headquarters before correcting and coming back down. By the time he makes it into the correct office, he’s sweaty and tired and just a little grumpy.

There are a few people in early for the big All-Japan Inter-Sports Tournament launch meeting that Ukai and Kuroo had scheduled for nine that the morning. Ushijima manages to avoid speaking to or making eye contact with a single one of them on his way to his cubicle. He takes off his jacket to hang on the hook inside and closes his eyes to ground himself before exhaling and looking for his letter.

It’s not on the keyboard today. Nor, after a quick scan, does it appear to be on the chair or anywhere visible on the desk. That’s fine. Sometimes Kappa-san leaves the letter inside of the Kirby notebook in their drawer, or on a page taken from a stationary set, folded and tucked away under the table or inside the drawer or—on one memorable occasion—taped to the back of one of the speakers. Sometimes Kappa-san is feeling whimsical and Ushijima doesn’t mind because he’s never whimsical himself and it’s fun to be forced to be.

He spends the next ten minutes looking through the entire cubicle with this in mind. He looks in every drawer and under the keyboard and along the soft backboard and behind the ficus pot and in all of the notebooks and even in the little trash can they keep under the cubicle desk.

By the time Kuroo sticks his head in and says, “Hey, we’re prepping in the conference room. Wanna join?” Ushijima has spent nearly half an hour turning his cubicle upside down.

There’s nothing. No letter, no note, not even a post-it.

For the first time in over a full year, there is no letter for Ushijima.

His chest feels terribly tight, his head muddy.

That’s…fine. Like Ushijima missing the elevator this morning, it was bound to happen at some point, statistically. People get sick. They have busy days. Maybe Kappa-san took the letter with him instead of leaving it behind. Perhaps he’s on vacation and forgot to say so.

There are a dozen plausible reasons for why there is nothing waiting for Ushijima in their shared cubicle. It’s not normal or fair to expect something nearly every single day.

Especially from someone you’ve never even met.

(Especially from someone who is more interesting than you.)

“Hey,” Kuroo says, eyebrows drawing together in concern. “You okay?”

The disappointment sits in his stomach, dense as a rock. His chest feels terrible. It hurts him more than he could have expected.

“Ah,” Ushijima says and looks up from his empty desk. He curls his hands into fists and takes a deep breath. “Yes. Of course.”

“Are you sure?”

Ushijima collects his things—a notepad and a pen and a file folder he has been using to keep everything organized—and nods.

“Yes,” he says. Even and toneless. “I am ready to go.”

Ushijima schools his expression into something carefully blank to make what he’s saying look believable. Kuroo still seems like he doesn’t quite believe him, but he doesn’t push and Ushijima follows him quietly into the conference room.

The conference room is fairly full for a meeting so early in the morning. Usually, Ushijima only sees this level of attendance when Ukai forces a staff meeting that everyone groans through. Ushijima doesn’t usually groan. He is appreciative of the effort it takes to gather the entire staff to provide necessary updates and he sees the value of seeing all of his coworkers together in one room.

Today, not even watching Goshiki sit too close to Shirabu and steal a piece of his milk bread only to have Shirabu retaliate by shoving his face into the table has a curative effect on Ushijima. He sits across from Miya stiffly and blankly watches him irritate Kiyoomi into a worse and worse mood.

“All right, all right, everyone settle down!”

Ukai comes into the room followed by Takeda Ittetsu, the Assistant Director. Takeda is smiling and carrying a large white box of something while Ukai chugs at his extra large morning coffee.

The chatter in the room—always loud, never contained—abates with anticipation.

“What’s that?” Miya asks, abandoning his attempts at getting Kiyoomi to singlehandedly punt him out the window to focus on the new fun thing. “That looks good. Is it good? Is it for us? Is it for me?”

“Looks like treats,” Shirabu says. “I can always tell.”

“Have we earned treats?” Kuroo muses out loud.

“Well I have,” Miya says, grinning. “I don’t know about all of you. I probably won’t share.”

“Who is going to want your leftover treats, Miya?” Kiyoomi asks, eyes narrowing above his mask. “That you’ve touched with your bare hands?”

Miya smirks. “You don’t seem to care about my bare hands when they’re touching—”

He lets out a muffled shriek as Kiyoomi sharply elbows him and covers his mouth with his hand.

“I hope it’s donuts,” Goshiki says, perking up. He looks at Ukai and Takeda eagerly. “Is it donuts?”

“It’s about to be nothing if you all don’t shut the hell up,” Ukai says, grouchy and over his staff, as usual.

That makes the rest of the room quiet down…a little. Mostly they continue to look at Takeda with high anticipation.

“It is treats,” Takeda whispers from over Ukai’s shoulder and the entire room nearly cheers.

“Not that any of you have earned it,” Ukai says, glaring. Takeda leans forward and says something in Ukai’s ear and Ukai sighs. “Okay, some of you have earned it. That’s why we’re here today.”

Takeda puts the box on the table and steps back.

Ukai puts down his coffee cup and nods at everyone.

“Listen, I know it’s been a long few months. You all have been working your asses off to make this competition happen. As an idea, it’s big and innovative. We don’t usually do things like that at the JVA. We stick to what we know and it’s worked well enough for us so far. So this? It’s been a huge undertaking.” He smiles and it’s not even one of his sarcastic ones. “We’ve gotten great reception so far. People are excited—people are talking about the tournament. Isn’t that right, Goshiki?”

Goshiki grins and salutes Ukai.

“We’ve got all sorts of celebrities posting about it,” he says excitedly. “The last promotional interview with Bokuto and Hinata went viral!”

“It’s a great idea,” Ukai says and nods at Kuroo. Kuroo sits up straight and grins a little as others pat him on the back. “The kind that takes a unique combination of guts and insanity. But the Board trusts in us—they think we’ll get a ton of new people into the game this way.”

There’s a lot of good cheer around the room.

“I know something like this doesn’t happen on its own,” Ukai says. “You guys have taken this idea and built it from the ground up. Sports Promotion, Education, and Community Engagement—if I asked for call and email volume stats, everyone else in this room would probably have a heart attack on the spot. No one person should ever have to answer that many emails.”

Everyone laughs.

“But you three did it. You got out there and grit your teeth and worked the long hours and—you did good. All of you did good. The tournament this weekend is going to be huge for us. And it’s all thanks to your work.”

Takeda starts a round of applause that turns into cheers. Kuroo claps Ushijima on the back and Miya offers him two cheesy thumbs up. Ushijima manages a smile in return, he thinks.

“Anyway,” Ukai says. “I guess what I’m trying to say is thanks for the hard work. It’ll be easier once we’re past this. But in the meantime, a small token of our appreciation.”

“Treats!” Goshiki yells.

Takeda opens the box and Goshiki gasps in excitement.

“Donuts!”

The meeting devolves after that, with everyone chattering around mouthfuls of donut. Ushijima doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth to begin with and being around his coworkers when his mood doesn’t match theirs is disconcerting to him, so he bows and politely takes his leave.

He thinks it’s the wrong choice when he gets back to his cubicle and is faced with the reality of the situation: nothing. Not even a scrap of paper with a single line on it.

Was it because he had asked Kappa-san to reveal his name? He knew he’d be crossing an unspoken line by suggesting it, but he had suddenly felt so tired of it—of talking to someone faceless, someone who he couldn’t even name. He had brushed into Stranger-san on the elevator one morning and the gnawing ache in his stomach hadn’t gone away. He wanted to get to know him better. He wanted to be able to name the person he spends all of his time thinking about and writing to.

Kappa-san hadn’t answered Ushijima’s question. Not directly. His next letter had been as friendly as usual, just as sweet and silly and winding. But not once had he made mention of it or attempted to give an answer. Ushijima had wanted to press back, but ultimately had decided against it.

If Kappa-san was uncomfortable making this more than it was—if he didn’t want to give name to it, then, it wasn’t Ushijima’s place to force that on him. Even if it did make him…sad.

Ushijima sits down and turns his computer back on. He’s not used to feeling so dejected, so it takes him by surprise. He tries to reason with himself: it’s natural to feel disappointed when you miss something you were looking forward to. He is a person who likes routine—who lives by routine—and now he’s missed two of them in a row. In a world of nothing but volleyball, it’s been nice to have something else to focus on, other questions to think about. So to have that taken from him, even momentarily—

It’s all excuses.

Ushijima knows that.

It isn’t the questions he misses, or the routine, or even the simple act of opening up a letter and taking a few minutes to read it.

It isn’t the letters or the notes themselves. Of course. It’s the person writing them.

*

Ushijima manages to open a document. He spends a half an hour staring blankly at it and another half an hour trying to put the final edits on the guidebook. He reads the same three sentences over and over again, deletes an entire paragraph on accident, and tries to rephrase something that ends up making no sense at all.

His head is all over the place. Even thinking about volleyball isn’t enough to distract him from how he’s feeling, which is not an experience he has ever borne witness to in his life. He doesn’t know what to do about it. Mostly, he stares blankly at his workspace—his shared workspace, the one he has slowly been building with one other person for months—hurt and confused and thoroughly wretched.

It’s unsustainable. He almost can’t stand to be here at all.

Ushijima’s on the verge of giving up and taking an unprecedented sick day when he hears footsteps and a familiar voice somewhere behind him.

“—and we’re going to be best friends. I told him when I accepted and he agreed. Are you jealous, Kuroo-chan?” The person cackles. “I’m going to know all of your secrets soon.”

“Your mistake is thinking I have any secrets,” Kuroo’s voice comes, loud and animated. “Ask me a question, any question. You can’t have power over me if I tell you everything you never wanted to know.”

“Like what…?”

“I can tell you everything Ken-chan likes. For example if you kiss the cute little spot behind his right ear, he’ll—”

“Blegh! Don’t tell me anything!”

Kuroo’s cackles accompany the footsteps coming closer. They stop just outside of Ushijima’s cubicle.

“This is the one. It won’t take long.”

“Hm. Are you sure this box will be large enough?”

“Yeah, I want to leave most of it for my cubicle-mate. I just really need to write something—”

“Wait,” Kuroo says suddenly. “This is your cubicle?”

“Yeah, why—” the voice says and then Ushijima hears a loud gasp behind him.

“Oh my god,” Kuroo’s voice comes. “You’re the mystery cubicle guy.”

Ushijima’s mind goes blank. He turns around in his chair slowly.

His eyes widen with shock.

Ushijima barely gets a chance to inhale before a tall, handsome, red-haired, slightly bewildering, utterly charming man throws up his arms and says, “It’s you!”

Ushijima feels recognition rock through him. He takes in a quick, surprised breath and stands without thinking.

“Stranger-san,” he says, his voice shaken with awe.

“You’re my cubicle-mate?” Ushijima’s elevator companion says. His unusual eyes are bright, his smile wide with absolute delight. “You were Cubicle-chan this entire time?”

“I did not know—” Ushijima starts and stops. His head is buzzing. His heart is pounding in his chest and his throat is dry. He is, against all odds, by all accounts, flustered. “That is to say, if I had known—”

“Me too!” Stranger-san says and wheels his arms about. “Me too!”

“You are—” Ushijima tries again. He’s almost overwhelmed by the force of his feelings, by the quick turn of them. A minute ago he had felt nearly gutted with grief. Now all of it is turning over in him, his heart stumbling in his chest. “Kappa-san?”

“Kappa-san?” Kuroo says behind the stranger. “Is that what you’ve been calling yourself?”

“Can you shut up,” Stranger-san (Kappa-san?) says and shoves his hand into Kuroo’s face. “Can you not see I am having a moment with—” The man pauses and looks at Ushijima eagerly.

“Ushijima,” Ushijima says and it feels so strange to say out loud, like a secret he’s kept against his will. Strange and wonderful and a huge relief.

The stranger’s eyes widen at that too, so maybe he’s feeling the same way—maybe he also feels like he is floating in a sea of clouds. “Ushijima Wakatoshi.”

“Wakatoshi-kun,” the man says softly and Ushijima’s cheeks burn to hear how much he likes his name in his mouth.

“What is your—” Ushijima starts and then stops. He remembers his unanswered letter. His chest squeezes tight.

“Oh,” the man says and for a moment Ushijima feels the familiar call of disappointment. But then his expression brightens again. “Oh! Tendou Satori. It’s not a secret. Not anymore. Especially not from you. Oh, I wanted to tell you, but I completely forgot! I’m so sorry!”

Tendou Satori beams at Ushijima and Ushijima feels his neck burn. His chest feels funny and there’s something silly happening in his stomach. He’s not so out-of-touch that he doesn’t know what it is.

Tendou steps closer.

“You did not answer my last letter,” Ushijima says. “I thought perhaps I had offended you somehow.”

Tendou stops. He looks, momentarily, stricken.

“What? Oh, no! No, of course not. You could never offend me, Wakatoshi-kun!”

Ushijima is so thrilled to hear Kappa-san—no, Tendou—say his name again that he’s momentarily distracted.

“I was too forward,” Ushijima says after a moment. “I knew it when I wrote. But I wanted to know you more. I wanted to know you so much. I apologize if that made you uncomfortable.”

Tendou’s expression lights up and then softens in awe.

“You didn’t! You weren’t!” He steps forward again and again and one more time until he’s standing only a few inches away from Ushijima. “Oh, I wanted to know you so much too.”

Ushijima has never been this close to him before. Even in the elevator, they’re usually standing across from each other, Tendou slumped with exhaustion and Ushijima passing him only to exchange spots. Ushijima can see now what he had missed all of those mornings in the dim, tired light. How Tendou is almost exactly his height. Thin and willowy where Ushijima is broad, his hair bright red and long—nearly past his ears when he’s not wearing it up tall and spiky. His eyes are large and pupils are small, but the red of his irises are just as bright this close as they are from far away. Tendou’s nose is a small point with the curve of his silver nose ring and his mouth is a sweet, cute curve. When he smiles, his eyes squint a little and his entire face lights up.

He smells, Ushijima realizes, like cherry blossoms.

Ushijma’s heart stumbles over itself. He can’t stop looking.

Tendou looks like he’s going to hesitate for a moment and then, surprising maybe both of them (and Kuroo, if he’s still there watching—Ushijima has long since lost sight of and interest in him), he gently touches Ushijma’s face.

Every part of Ushijima feels hot.

“You didn’t make me uncomfortable,” Tendou says. “Or scare me. Or offend me. I’m sorry. In all of the excitement this weekend, I forgot to leave you a letter! That’s why I came back here. I didn’t want to leave without saying something. And getting my things.”

“Your things?” Ushijima asks, his brows contracting.

“Some of my things,” Tendou says. “I was going to leave the rest to you. To…remember me by.”

Ushijima looks stricken.

“Are you ill?”

“What? No!” Tendou says, laughing.

Ushijima exhales in relief.

“Then I don’t understand.”

“Oh!” Tendou lets go. Absurdly, Ushijima almost reaches up to bring his hand back to his cheek. “Oh. I was going to put it in my letter. But I guess I can tell you in person now.”

“What is it?” Ushijima asks. He sounds as serious as he looks. “You can tell me.” Pause. “Tendou.”

Tendou seems taken aback by that for a moment. His cheeks pink. Ushijima thinks he understands how he feels.

“Well, do you remember all of those times I complained? You must remember. I was complaining so much.”

Ushijima’s brows furrow.

“You asked me what I was waiting for. Why I was still here if my heart wasn’t in it anymore,” Tendou looks down and Ushijima follows his gaze. He’s twisting his hands together, his long, nimble fingers folding like pretzels. Tendou takes a breath and looks up again. “You told me I wasn’t timid, but I was acting like it.”

“Oh,” Ushijima says, immediately mortified. “I overstepped, I am sor—”

“Don’t apologize!” Tendou says quickly. He smiles—grins broadly. “You were right, Wakatoshi-kun. I was being timid. I was scared shitless. And I’m not, not normally. I try not to be because that's never served me well before. If you want something, you have to take it for yourself, right? Closed mouths don’t get fed, or whatever the saying is.”

Ushijima is only barely following.

“Yes,” he says. “I have heard that saying.”

“I was being timid. I was so comfortable, see. I was complacent. Stuck in place. I needed you to tell me that, Wakatoshi-kun,” Tendou says and Ushijima’s name goes down like honey. Tendou seems to forget himself and reaches forward in excitement, his fingers clasping onto Ushijima’s shoulders. “You helped me see I was being a coward!”

Ushijima just shakes his head, a little dazed.

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” Tendou says. “I owe it all to you!”

“But what, Tendou?” Ushijima asks gently. “What couldn’t you have done without me?”

“Oh, I still haven’t said have I!”

Ushijima gives him a stern and somewhat impatient look and Tendou laughs again. It makes Ushijima feel like he’s buzzing, just to hear it in person.

“I’m leaving!” Tendou says excitedly, his arms wide and animated. “I’m leaving the JVA!”

“Oh,” Ushijima says and he can’t help the way his stomach plummets. He tries to smile, but he’s not good at that even when he is pleased. But Tendou is so excited and Ushijima knows—he knows—how long he’s felt stuck here, how listless he’s been. If Tendou is going somewhere else, then that’s a good thing. It’s wonderful.

All Ushijima wants is for his cubicle-mate to be happy.

It’s just…he’s only just met him—finally found him, and to lose him just when he’s gotten him hurts.

But he’s being selfish.

“That’s…wonderful,” Ushijima says quietly. “Where are you going?”

Tendou smiles at him—really, brightly smiles. Behind him, for some reason, Ushijima hears Kuroo chuckle.

Suddenly Ushijima feels Tendou’s hands on his face again—both of them this time. His fingers curve around Ushijima’s cheeks and Ushijima finds himself face-to-face with a beaming, excited, absolutely wriggling Tendou Satori.

He feels horribly overwhelmed. His emotions are everywhere. What it comes down to is that Ushijima wants desperately to kiss him.

“That’s the best part, Wakatoshi-kun!” Tendou says. “I’m not going very far.”

Ushijima feels dazed. His heart is racing, his skin is overheated. His every sense is overrun.

Temdou laughs.

“Bouncing Ball is just two floors above us.”

Bouncing Ball? Ushijima knows what that is. He’s heard of it. He blinks and looks at Tendou and then, suddenly, looks behind him to see Kuroo Tetsurou smiling. Not one of his crooked smiles or his smirks, but a genuine, happy smile.

“They have emails up there,” Kuroo says. “Not the same as a handwritten letter, but you know. You can sign it with your names, at least.”

Ushijima blushes.

“I’ll email you,” Tendou says immediately. “You’ll email me too, won’t you?”

Ushijima looks at Tendou again. He’s about to say yes—is on the verge of it even. Of course he’ll email him. Why wouldn’t he? How could he stop, after all of this? After the strangest and most wonderful year of his life?

Then, for some reason, he says: “No.”

Tendou’s mouth drops open.

“No?”

Ushijima shakes his head firmly.

“No.”

“Oh,” Tendou says. He looks stricken. A bit…devastated. “Oh—all right. I see. Um, well—”

He tries to pull away, but Ushijima covers his hands with his own. Keeps him there.

Maybe this is forward of him. No—it’s definitely forward of him. But Ushijima has unintentionally and without malice broken enough hearts to know what that looks like. And Tendou looks almost heartbroken.

So it’s forward of him, but Ushijima doesn’t think it’s unwarranted when he says—

“Not if that is all,” he adds.

Tendou looks confused.

“What do you mean?”

“I won’t email you,” Ushijima says. And clarifies, “If that is the only way I will see you.”

“I don’t…” Tendou looks even more confused.

Behind him, Kuroo lets out one of his rooster laughs.

“I think he’s trying to ask you out!”

“What?” There’s suddenly voices from other cubicles.

“Who’s asking who out?”

“What?”

“Someone’s getting asked out?”

“Who?”

Tendou’s eyes widen.

“I merely mean,” Ushijima says gently, ignoring his insane coworkers, “I have gotten used to seeing you each day. And writing to you each day. You are a part of every day that I have, Tendou. And I do not plan on stopping that.”

“Hmmm,” Tendou says. His hurt expression softens, fades away until what’s left behind is hopeful and happy and sweet. “Is that so?”

“Yes,” Ushijima says, seriously. “Very much.”

“And I guess if I work somewhere else, I’ll be on a different schedule.”

“That is likely.”

“And if that’s the case, we probably won’t be running into each other in the elevator each morning.”

“It does not seem likely.”

“And if we don’t see each other in the elevator, we might never see each other at all.”

Ushijima touches Tendou’s cheek.

“I would not care for that. If I am being honest.”

Tendou laughs.

“Me neither. Guess we should find a way to fix that.”

“There must be a way.”

“I think I have an idea,” Tendou says.

Ushijima nods. He was hoping Tendou would say that.

Tendou smiles at him—sweet and bright as the sun.

He throws his arms around Ushijima with a laugh.

“Wait for me!” he says and then pulls back, grinning. “At the end of the day. Meet me in the elevator, Wakatoshi-kun.”

Ushijima’s heart is beating fast. He’s smiling too. He’s smiling so widely that Kuroo—and Shirabu and Kiyoomi and Miya and everyone else who has gathered around the entrance of his cubicle to notice this spectacle—gasps.

“Okay,” Ushijima says. “I will wait for you.”

Tendou leans forward and kisses Ushijima on the cheek.

“We can take the elevator down together. I’ll tell you my idea then.”

Chapter Text

EPILOGUE: FALL (Day Shift)

Ushijima Wakatoshi is deep in thought. He’s had a relatively busy day and an unusually busy week, so it isn’t as though anyone questions him on it. He’s in the middle of a nationwide campaign to make volleyball more accessible to more rural communities and it’s involved dozens of phone calls, possibly hundreds of emails, a few work trips to more remote towns, and multiple rounds of back and forths on educational campaign materials—flyers and guidebooks and tool kits and little videos. It has been as enjoyable as it has been tiring. Kiyoomi says he gets secondhand exhaustion every time he’s within proximity of his cubicle. (“Do you live here now too?” Kiyoomi asks suspiciously. “There’s only room for one JVA live-in and rooster head counts for at least five.”)

“Are you listening?” Shirabu asks, waving his hand in front of Ushijima’s face.

Ushijima snaps out of his daze. Now that Shirabu is looking at him with an impatient expression (to be fair, Shirabu is usually looking at everyone with an impatient expression) he’s not entirely sure what he had been so deeply contemplating.

It had been a question, he thinks. An email he had received earlier that day. Say, if you were given a different name when you were born, do you think you’d have been a different person?

“Yes, of course,” Ushijima says carefully. “Goshiki has gotten a new haircut and now you cannot concentrate on your work.”

“Yeah,” Shirabu says, sighing. “Is it because it’s worse and I think it’s cute or because it’s cute and that makes it worse?”

“Have you considered not looking at his haircut while you are completing your work?” Ushijima asks.

Shirabu looks at him like he’s insane.

“No?”

“Ah,” Ushijima says. He nods. “I understand.”

Shirabu sighs and leans against Ushijima’s cubicle.

“If he asks, can you tell him that I hate him?”

“No,” Ushijima says.

Shirabu gives him a hurt, sour look and Ushijima smiles. He closes his inbox, saves his files, and shuts down his computer.

“I thought you would be more fun,” Shirabu says. “Now that you’re—”

He waves his hand in disgust.

Ushijima smiles some more. He gets up and shrugs on his jacket. He pushes his chair under his desk, replies to a text message, and puts his phone in his pocket.

“Oh no,” he says to Shirabu amiably. “I am constitutionally incapable of being that way.”

Shirabu lets out an aggrieved huff and Ushijima presses a large hand to his shoulder.

“Talk to Miya,” he says. “I believe he will be able to help you.”

Ushijima has only just passed his cubicle when he feels a tall, looming shadow at his shoulder.

“Why would you say that?”

Ushijima—who has returned to thinking about names and the impact they have on people—slows his pace.

“He’s proven successful in his efforts, hasn’t he?”

“Ugh,” Kiyoomi says. “Ugh.”

Ushijima chuckles. Nearly.

“He was very happy at lunch,” he says. “He announced his intentions to the entire lunch room.”

Kiyoomi freezes.

“Wait, what? What do you mean the entire lunch room? What do you mean intentions?”

Ushijima hums.

“It is not my place to get between…lovers, of course.”

“Why not? Of course it’s your place. What did that idiot say?” Kiyoomi pauses in disgust. “Did you say lovers?”

“Paramours? I apologize, I do not know your official status,” Ushijima says. He looks over his shoulder at a glowering, disgusted, horrified Sakusa Kiyoomi. “Although I did hear about the exchange of keys. As did everyone in the lunch room.”

“I’m going to kill him.”

Ushijima doesn’t think so. Or at least, the optimal time to have killed Miya Atsumu would have been before growing an emotional attachment to Miya Atsumu. Unfortunately, Miya had already announced the emotional attachment to a room of their half-interested colleagues and now being experienced in such things, Ushijima could tell it was genuine.

“It’s all right,” Ushijima says.

“What is?”

“That your taste is…questionable,” Ushijma says. “I am told we cannot help who we fall in love with. But that it is wonderful all the same.”

“Ugh,” Kiyoomi says again. “What has that man been putting in your head?”

Ushijima stops at the corner of the last cubicle. He turns toward Kiyoomi. When he does, he’s smiling.

“We have been watching romantic comedies,” Ushijima says. “He says movies are bearable when we watch them together, and my education has been lax.”

“You look happy,” Kiyoomi observes.

Ushijima touches the corner of his smile.

“I suppose I am.”

“As your best friend, I’m happy for you,” Kiyoomi says. He sniffs. “As someone who’s known you for almost half a decade, I’m appalled.”

Ushijima considers this.

“All things considered, that is as balanced a response as I could expect from you,” he says. “So thank you.”

Kiyoomi snorts, but his expression softens.

“Tell Tendou I say hi.”

Ushijima smiles again and nods.

“I will.”

It’s a quarter past six in the evening when Ushijima presses the elevator button. He waits a minute before the light dings and he gets inside.

The elevator doors close and the car lurches up.

When the elevator doors open, there’s someone standing on the other side. It still feels surreal sometimes, when they’re standing on opposite sides of where they feel they should be. Sometimes, Ushijima wonders if he’s made the entire thing up.

But then Tendou will smile brightly and say, “Hello, Stranger.”

“I have decided I cannot answer your question,” Ushijima says as Tendou shuffles into the elevator. He’s wearing jeans and a black sweatshirt with a BB logo printed on the right side of the chest. His hair is down and he has on his cute little backpack.

“That’s such a cop out!” Tendou complains. “But okay, tell me.”

“The premise is unreasonable,” Ushijima says. “There is no way of answering it because there is no way of knowing what other names I could have possibly been named. If my personality depends on the name, then wouldn’t I need to know the name to determine if it would be a different personality?”

“Hmm,” Tendou says. “Good point. But!”

Ushijima’s eyebrows furrow.

“But?”

“If you’re considering that your personality’s gonna be different if you have a different name, then do you need to know what that name is? Doesn’t that mean it’s gonna be different no matter what?”

Ushijima’s frown deepens.

“I did not say it would be a different personality,” he says. “I said I could not know unless I knew the name possibility. Say, for example, my name was…”

“Akira!”

“Akira,” Ushijma repeats. “I could be exactly myself and be Ushijima Akira.”

Even as he says it it sounds wrong.

Tendou makes a face.

“Oh no,” he says. “I don’t like that at all.”

“It does feel…uncomfortable,” Ushijima agrees.

Tendou gives him a lopsided grin and reaches up to take Ushijima’s face between his palms.

“Nevermind,” he says. “Sorry I asked. I take it back.”

Ushijima watches him, amused.

“You do?”

“Yes, no other name can replace my Wakatoshi-kun,” Tendou says. He reaches up and kisses Ushijima softly on the mouth.

It makes Ushijima’s spine melt a little, his broad-shouldered stance droop forward so that he can kiss Tendou back better.

“My sweet little miracle guy,” Tendou murmurs into Ushijima’s mouth.

Ushijima is tempted to cup Tendou by the back of the neck. His hair is getting longer, but it’s soft and Ushijima loves to feel the bristles against his fingers.

“Mmm,” Tendou says and Ushijima tempts fate by shifting a little closer, pressing his tongue to the seam of Tendou’s mouth. Tendou immediately laughs and breaks away. “Wakatoshi-kun!”

Ushijima is not in the business of pouting. But by God, he almost does.

“I think they have cameras in this thing,” Tendou says, pink and a little breathless.

“And?”

Tendou laughs, a bright peal of laughter.

“Very bold of a stranger-san to kiss someone they barely know in public like this,” Tendou says, teasing. He also slips his hand into Ushijima’s though, so Ushijima doesn’t mind.

“I wouldn’t say I barely know you,” Ushijima says. “I have it on good authority that we have been writing letters back and forth to each other nearly every day for an entire year. More than, in fact.”

“This wouldn’t have been a problem if you ever told me your name,” Tendou says grinning. “Or slipped a photograph into one of the letters.”

Ushijima considers this.

“Then it would be appropriate to kiss you in the elevator?”

“Well I don’t know about appropriate but…”

Tendou grins. He leans forward to press another quick kiss to Ushijima’s mouth.

“It would have helped us start kissing earlier, maybe,” he says.

“That was my mistake,” Ushijima says and tightens their fingers together. “Had I known what was at stake, I would have revealed myself much much sooner.”

Tendou laughs again and Ushijima feels it against the back of his neck, warm and fizzy.

“Well we got there in the end,” he says and squeezes Ushijima’s fingers back. “Thanks for waiting for me. At the elevator.”

“It is the best part of my day,” Ushijima says. He’s stern and devoted and utterly so serious.

Tendou smiles, a happy, dreamy, lovely thing.

“The day huh? Well, wouldn’t you know?” he says and runs his thumb over the curve of Ushijima’s own. “It’s mine too.”

The elevator dings as they reach the lobby floor. The doors slide open and the two of them step out, hand-in-hand, having finished their day shifts together.

* * *