Ace of Hearts - Haikyuu || Short Stories || One Shots || Creative Rambles

Chasing Summer Days || Hinata Shoyo

Falling in love with the sun is colder than you'd ever expect it to be, though. It is so vibrant, so full of life and so, so far away. Far enough away that your love might not register on its radar and yet, somehow, that's okay because just like spring after a harsh winter, nothing feels better than those brief moments when your star turns back to you and you finally feel like you can bloom again.

But I wanted more. I wanted the sun to notice me. I wanted his eyes to shine the way they did when he held a ball and his heart to race the way it did when he stepped on court. All those emotions he put behind describing a game and what it meant for him, I dreamt he'd use for me and I'd get to keep the contentment of knowing that those cozy feelings were just for me. To have caught my own star and stashed it away in the pockets of my heart.

Maybe the universe wished spring upon me in second year, when he finally turned around and actually saw me. When that radiant smile was mine and he said "Kodama you're third in the class aren't you? Do you think you could explain this to me?" and I told him that nothing would make me more happy.

Or maybe it's that when you love something enough, you learn to make your own seasons. And maybe I learned that from watching him. From watching the master of taking what life has given you and turning it into your wildest dreams. He'd laughed in the face of every passing statement about his height, worked in the midst of being told he needed more experience, and blew past everyone's expectations of him in just a year.

I couldn't wait to see what else he'd do and I thought, this time, I'd do more to make him notice me too. I, too, would take what was given to me and turn it into more. Make each second in the ray last for all their worth and bloom into my own sense of beauty when the sun wasn't looking. Until I became a star he couldn't look away from.

And then, finally, I could hold the sun and he, in turn, decided I was his shooting star.

Third year with him was summer. It held all the joy of finally standing in sunbeams and feeling all of their warmth at once. It was the feeling of closing your eyes and still being able to tell it was daylight. It was holding hands while running and strawberry ice cream melting down your wrist as you tried to savor the taste of every instant. It was bumps and bruises, whispers through the phone and stolen kisses on park benches. Being loved by Shoyo was pink cheeks and calloused hands, clear nights filled with stars and picnic blankets on grassy hills, bugs singing in the nighttime and cotton candy skies. To have his heart and to give mine in return — it was happiness and sunshine and everything I could have possibly wished it to be.

In hushed whispers, like we held the secrets of the universe, we shared our dreams and I told him that big wishful heart of his could power him to the moon. If the Olympics were his goal then nothing on the Earth would stop him from getting there. And in turn he said I had the ability to turn any vision of mine into the beauty of the galaxies. That was the ability of his shooting star.

I should have told him, then, that shooting stars are nothing special — just pieces of leftover rock in space caught in the gravitational pull of some larger body, slowly burning as they fall toward their beckoning. The name was rather apt then; if Shoyo was my sun then I was the rubbish caught in his orbit just praying to land instead of burning up.

Yet, he loved me and that was enough. I could make it through the world knowing I was a big heap of flaming space garbage as long as he saw me as a shooting star. And I would grow and thrive in the summertime of his eyes on me and his hand in mine.

I lived to watch him soar on the court; to be the one to cheer him on the loudest. My lungs were fueled by the breath he stole with soft touches and returned with chapped lips on mine, my soul lifted with his smile and the fire in my heart kindled in every moment he was at my side.

Still, if there is any one thing true about summer, it's that it is always followed by the fall.

The sky was beautiful when he told me, caught in that perfect phase of orange and purple right before plunging into that inky navy — caught between the ending of day and the rise of the moon. His hands were shaking as they grabbed mine, and his voice pitched in a way I hadn't heard since first year, but his eyes were set and clearer than I'd ever seen them.

He had work to do, he said. There was still so much space between where he was and what he wanted to be, and the future was calling with options to propel him toward his goal. He was sure, he said, that the sand would teach him — it was the only way forward to learning how to do everything. Time and time again he'd learned he couldn't win by himself, but the great teams weren't going to take him, the best setters wouldn't be there to set for him, unless he became great on his own. It was a decision he had come to in second year, but until recently it had just been fantasy, a dream that he thought was just out of reach. But his support system had helped him make it come to fruition. Rio was calling him.

It wasn't the end just yet. He'd need a year after graduating to prepare, to get everything together, and to say his goodbyes. He was steadfast in this choice but, still, he was scared to tell me. He was afraid of how selfish he had been in deciding his future without once talking to me, despite countless nights of laying with our heads together, hands grasped in each others' as we took to writing our lives in the stars.

His news was shocking in the same way a winter chill hits when you open the door to step outside. It's instant and destabilizing — something you're expecting but never quite ready for. Still, it would be hard to be in love with Shoyo and not know that, one day, he would be moving onto bigger and better things. That he was a star that needed fuel and a stage to shine and I could only hover in orbit around him for so long.

So, in the end there was sadness. So much sorrow and heartache, but never anger. As if I could ever fault him for being exactly the man I loved, for following after the same passion that once made flowers blossom in my heart. As if it never once occurred to me that he would chase his dreams to the ends of the earth. Still it's weird to stand in the heat of summer one day and wake up the next to leaves falling and clouds hovering in the skies. To love on a deadline as if you're not wishing for every day to last a little longer when you know the days are always shorter in autumn. Because we both knew him flying away was the end.

Sometimes, though, the finality in goodbye hurts less than holding onto the half-baked promises of 'see you later'. And he knew I'd never forgive him if he didn't soak up every moment of this opportunity — if he threw away his chance by longing for home more than he should.

It was no surprise that it was raining that dark morning we rode to the airport in silence, holding hands straight through checking his bags and walking to security, knowing we may never exist in the same time and place ever again. But, I always thought moments like these would play through in slow motion, like they did in dramas. That our embrace would feel like it could last forever, that the parting of final grasps would take minutes instead of moments and that every step he took further away from me would be these big, difficult movements, as if he was fighting his heart to keep pushing forward. It didn't. He wasn't.

And I knew. I knew he would never stop flying — never stop reaching and reaching and reaching to the sky to become the star we all knew he would one day be. But I wished, maybe just a little too much, that he would have looked back, even once, before he left.

It's winter again. My star is shining in Brazil and I have to be okay trying to find my way now that I'm just a falling rock without a pull.

It was inevitable, though, wasn't it? The sun never shines for one person anyway.