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Meian had been a dreamer once, too—a doe-eyed 20-year-old athlete who lived and breathed volleyball, right before the grim realities of life fell upon him. A time when he tunnel-visioned on a slot on a Division 1 team, a shot at captaincy, and maybe even a spot in the National Team. And all the sports anime he had watched had made the found family that came with it so enticing too.
Except this is not the volleyball he’s come to love. This is pure madness, extreme mental gymnastics, and, as much as he loves this team, he’s secretly counting the days until he gets out of here. Because he hadn’t expected to be playing it off the court too.
Pots and pans clang from the kitchen and Meian sighs, grunting as he leaves his room and walks to the kitchen where Barnes is leaning against the doorway, grinning like a demon amidst the havoc.
“What is it this time?”
Barnes flashes an empathetic smile in time with a deafening scream from the kitchen. Meian groans. “At least tell me we’re getting something out of this.”
His stomach only lurched at the coy twist of Barnes’ lips. He knew he shouldn’t have expected much. “It’s Without A Recipe from the Try Guys.”
Oh, god.
The dull ache in his head drowns Barnes’ flimsy half-hearted apology. It was already bad when their rookies fixated on British Bake Off for a week and the team had to excruciatingly work through the tons of pastries they had baked. They ate nothing but bread, quiche, cupcakes, brownies, and bagels for a week from breakfast to dinner.
At least those had been edible. This week— well.
True to its namesake, Bokuto, Hinata, Atsumu, and Sakusa decided to make dumplings from scratch, but without a recipe. The entire thing is just asking for trouble, and Meian walked into their trap like a fool.
“Meian-san! Come judge our dumplings!”
Meian sighs. Then he sits, grabs a fork, and takes a bite.
***
Several attempts have been made to rein in the rookies: he had used rewards and penalties; he spent a week being stern; another week using the concept of gentle parenting that he learned about in the parenting books he has been reading for the past few months—all to no avail. (Because, as it turns out, that while they come off as childish they still are, at their very core, young adults, even if it feels like the contrary to Meian.)
In the end, what worked best was volleyball. Because what else would work on these monster generation kids?
Atsumu is practically bouncing by the balls of his feet as Meian approaches. “It’s time to prove to Omi-kun that I am a good cook—the best cook—even without a recipe!” Meian throws him a tired look that flies right past his head as Atsumu reveals a plate of oddly wet dumplings.
Miya Atsumu, a true setter, is the mastermind. He makes the plays and sets ideas into action rooted in his impulsivity and brazenness to do anything he sets his mind to, regardless of whether he is on the court or not. Meian can tell as he scans the room that this is Atsumu’s brainchild again, evident in the fancy kitchen tools dumped on the sink that the other three would have never known about had it not been for Osamu’s extensive culinary knowledge.
Still, no amount of culinary skill from Osamu can save Atsumu. His dumplings begin weeping as Meian picked them up, the bottom sogging from the broth nestled within the wrapper and breaking from where the wrapper stuck to the parchment paper.
“I challenged myself and made soup dumplings, cap, unlike some cowards who play it safe,” Atsumu boasts not-so-subtly as Sakusa scowls. And it is delicious, but the broth made it messy and left Meian’s hands sticky.
Meian only has a second of reprieve to wash his hands before Bokuto presents his dumplings, and Meian reconsiders filing his resignation earlier than planned.
Bokuto Koutarou, a true-born ace, carries out any set regardless of its quality with a high success rate. After all, no amount of crazy from Atsumu will ever lead to anything if no one jumps to meet it, and that’s Bokuto for you. Number one yes man, always willing to do anything.
“Meian-san! Here, try mine next!” Bokuto beams as he slides a plate full of concerningly red dumplings that make Meian reconsider filing his resignation a bit earlier than planned. “What did you put in here?”
“That’s the twist, cap! It’s a surprise!” Which are the last words he wants to hear from Bokuto, but those wide eyes refuse to die down, so Meian accepts his fate and takes a bite.
A bite of what turns out to be ketchup in a fried dumpling.
“I want to make a dumpling that kids would like, and kids really like ketchup. Colors, too!” Meian forces the dumpling down, the odd taste of ketchup already mixed into the ground meat leaving a weird aftertaste in his mouth that he fears will stay there for a while.
He doesn’t even have a second to process it before Hinata presents his dish. “Mine’s next! Barnes-san, Adriah-san, Inunaki-san, try some, too!”
Hinata’s dish looks decent enough that Meian doesn’t find himself reaching for his phone to call for an ambulance. It also helps as the other veterans hesitantly file into the dining table, just shy of being too small to fit eight bulked-up athletes. Suspicion stirs in him when the fork met resistance as it speared the dumpling, but he lets it slide in a blind trust towards Hinata.
Regret with that trust takes root the moment he takes a bite, and all Meian can think of is gummy. The dough wildly resists his molars, persistent.
“Maybe it’s the eggs?”
Meian freezes. “The eggs ? Do dumplings have eggs?”
“I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And eggs are never bad for you, captain!” And the worse—or perhaps good?—thing is, he actually made it work. Gumminess aside, it’s a pretty decent dumpling. It’s still edible. Tasty, even.
Hinata Shouyou, the wildcard: the man who goes through extreme lengths to attain his goals and somehow, in some way, makes it work despite the roughest of odds. An outstanding trait to have in the court, but not so much in the context of maintaining a peaceful apartment complex that Meian lives in.
Not for long, though.
Meian glances at his phone and the polaroid on the back, his smiling face pressed beside another’s, auburn hair flowing with the wind. Her hand is resting on a baby bump, and the diamond on her ring finger is glinting against the sun.
He loves the team, all weird dumplings aside, but there’s a home he has to build other than this chaotic one.
Bokuto distributes his dumplings when he catches Inunaki’s and Adriah’s plates, glaringly free of any monstrous dumpling, and Meian can’t help but snicker as they fight their way through them. If he has to suffer, they should, too.
As they do, though, Sakusa shows them a new plate. It has ten decent-looking dumplings and four sloppy ones on the sides. “You don’t have to try mine. I made sure we cooked a few dumplings with a recipe after so you can still eat. And I’m sorry we emptied the fridge. We’ll go out tomorrow to restock it.”
Sakusa bows as Atsumu waves his chopsticks threateningly and dangerously close over Meian’s face, speaking through a mouthful of dumplings. “ I made that! Stop takin’ credit, Omi!”
Sakusa Kiyoomi, a steadfast receiver and spiker, is the embodiment of his desire to see things through from beginning to end—which, apparently (and unfortunately for Meian), includes the other four’s penchant for chaos. It pains Meian to say that the standoff-ish, anti-social kid is the pillar of most of his off-court game plays, but the process of elimination left him with Sakusa.
Still, Meian looks down at the semi-decent dumplings in front of them and smiles at the thoughtfulness behind them (which honestly just shows how low the bar is, but he intends to appreciate all efforts where he can see them). And sure, ten dumplings might not be enough for all four MSBY veterans, but hey, he’ll take what he can get.
And, Meian thinks as he takes the nth bite of Hinata’s chewy dumpling and looks at the full dining table, a rarity given their jarring personal schedules and varying culinary tastes, maybe suffering through the rookies’ kitchen mishaps together isn’t that bad when they’re suffering through it together.
***
Meian wakes up in a silent house and his court instincts kick in. Quiet is not a word he’d describe the complex with, not since Bokuto joined the team.
The house is never silent for more than half an hour. It’s eerie, like an abandoned children’s park or an empty Tokyo street, an odd liminal space, and there’s a troubling feeling settling in his gut. Then the feeling turns sour as he realizes—
If the complex is peaceful and quiet, then the idiots are destroying the peace and quiet somewhere else.
Meian goes to the living room where Adriah and Inunaki are lounging on the couch streaming some cheesy reality show. “Where are they?”
“They went out to restock the fridge. Why?” Adriah answers as Inunaki swings his legs over Adriah’s lap. Meian takes note of the bags of chips on their laps and makes sure to pass it on to their dietician the next time Meian sees her.
Meian freezes. “Something’s up. I’m following them.”
He power walks his way towards the nearby grocery the team frequents, trying not to stumble after himself as he hears distant screaming, shouting, and squeaking, somehow.
The squeaking, as it turns out, is the wheels of four shopping carts drifting across the grocery with four hilariously tall, muscular men maneuvering them around.
Bokuto and Hinata are racing alongside each other, far too tight a fit in the narrow aisles holding far too many glass bottles, screaming as the wheels squeak under their weight, each with one foot on the bottom of the cart and the other pushing them off against the ground.
Atsumu and Sakusa are in front of a white-faced worker manning the poultry section, taking two packages of meat before mounting their own carts and running off to another aisle. He watches them reach for the only soy sauce left on the shelf, now on Sakusa’s hand and then on his cart before he starts speeding away.
“Omi! Ya cheatin’ prick!” Atsumu yells as he runs after Sakusa, as unperturbed as can be for someone who is currently sprinting for the nearest cashier.
“It’s called winning, Miya.”
“Not if ya don’t have yer shit anymore, Omi-omi!” Meian has been watching closely, but even he hasn’t noticed the soy sauce is no longer in Sakusa’s cart but is now in Atsumu’s hand.
“Miya! That is cheating!”
Atsumu only turns around and laughs evilly when his cart abruptly stops, jolting him with it.
He turns and finds Meian in front of him, a hand pushing the cart at a standstill.
“Captain! Hello!”
Meian only sighs at Atsumu’s wonky smile, soy sauce still in hand as Sakusa bumps him from behind with his cart.
“Omi, cap is here, say hi!” Atsumu croaks out, throwing pointed looks at Sakusa looks like a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar not-so-subtly alarming the other kids already holding their own forbidden cookies in their own sticky hands, all well within sight of the big bad mom.
“Hey, hey, hey! If you’re not moving, I still have a shot—” Bokuto hits Sakusa with his own cart, sending him careening towards Atsumu. Another wave of crashes comes with a high-pitched yelp, the momentum of Hinata’s run-up so strong Atsumu manages to collide into Meian in the process, looking wholly unimpressed.
“Should I even ask who started this? Or what this is?” Their answer is a shaky grin from Atsumu, its charm long lost on Meian, and pairs of eyes who refuse to meet Meian’s. Well, except one.
“It’s The Amazing Race, cap!” Amazing Race, Meian mouths as Hinata waves his phone despite it being way too far from Meian’s visual field. “We all have the grocery list and we were competing on who can get all the items first in this way too specific order that Omi-san set, but Atsumu-san got the last soy sauce and that’s unfair .”
It only takes one glance at the carts for Meian to start to feel woozy. “We don’t need four sets of all the items here, guys,” Meian murmurs as he realizes that each of them have two dozens of eggs as is written on the list, which means that the team will soon have 96 eggs in their fridge.
Sakusa raises a hand far too respectfully given the situation they are in and wheels his cart out of their sad congo line. “We’ll put some of it back, captain, and please don’t worry, I’ll be paying.” He finishes off with a bow before approaching the cashier, pointedly walking away from Atsumu who’s teasing him with “Ohh, what a sugar daddy.”
Then chaos resumes. A glint surfaces in Hinata’s eyes and Meian sends a prayer. “Race you to put this back, Bokuto-san?”
Bokuto only answers by mounting his cart and dashing away. Atsumu has long left him behind to follow Sakusa and is now diligently following Sakusa’s intricate system of transferring the products to the cashier for the worker to scan.
He is still half-worried that the manager will ban them from the store, but he lets himself smile just a bit. They can’t see it, anyway. It’s fine. They will never know that he finds them all endearing.
Deep down, though. Like, way, way deep.
***
Manipulating them into a manageable, less chaotic show had been easier than Meian had expected. All he has to do is sit at the dining table and play Netflix with the volume up. “I forgot my earphones in our apartment,” he says as an excuse, and the curious bees naturally gravitate towards him.
“Ooh, is that the Marie Kondo thing a few years back, cap?” Bokuto inquires, leaning far too close to the screen.
“Yes. I’m looking for inspiration on how to decorate our place once the baby comes.”
Just in time, the speaker blares Marie Kondo’s famous line: “Does it spark joy?”
Meian glances at Atsumu and Atsumu chimes in, just as he had expected him to. Oh, he had been counting on it. “Bet ya already watched this a lot, huh, Omi-omi?”
Sakusa scowls and crosses his arms as he eyes the screen intently, clearly tamping down a smile. It’s too easy riling up these idiots. “Of course. Her method is great.” Then he lets go and grins slyly at Atsumu, one eyebrow raised provocatively. “Bet your sentimental ass can’t even do that.”
“Excuse me, our high school motto was literally ‘we don’t need memories’! Maybe Shouyou-kun and Bokkun can’t, but I totally can. Watch me!”
As Atsumu dashes off, Hinata blabbers something about “You’ve never been abroad, so you’ve never been forced to only have one baggage full of belongings! I am the best at this, Atsumu-san!” Bokuto immediately follows as he murmurs about watching Akaashi clean out their apartment multiple times and Sakusa trails after them with a satisfied grin.
Meian sags over the counter as the four rookies rush to their rooms. “Thank god Sakusa took the bite on that one. I thought that was a lost cause.”
Inunaki snorts from the other side of the counter as he downs his instant coffee. “ Are you kidding me? Of course, he will. He’s always the one provoking them, after all.”
Meian’s back straightens as he processes Inunaki’s words, the feeling of betrayal sinking deep down his bones. Sakusa? That’s not possible. “What?”
“Yup, it’s all him. I mean, he’s the one who watches all those YouTube videos and TV shows. Plus he’s more antagonistic than you think, captain. Especially with Atsumu. Atsumu’s so fun to piss off, though, so I get it.”
Inunaki goes off on another tangent that goes unheard as Meian takes in the new information. Then it dawns upon him.
His pillar was never a pillar. His pillar isn’t a reliable receiver that saves everyone in the middle of a losing rally, no. He’s the little critter responsible for the first receive that begins a deadly set, the one who plants the seeds of mayhem that becomes Atsumu’s schemes. He’s the one who riles them up just as much as he’s the one who cleans up their messes because there would be nothing to clean up had he not stirred up the pot to begin with.
Meian is still reeling from the betrayal when the bedroom doors open four hours later. Hinata has two medium-sized cardboard boxes full to the brim, a true testament to how he had learned to detach himself from certain possessions as he uprooted his life to move halfway across the world.
Bokuto only has one box but it is the biggest, holding several clothes he can no longer wear and some knickknacks from high school. “I did it! I’m untethered from the material world!
“That’s not fair, Bokuto-san, most of your things are already in Akaashi-san’s place,” Hinata whines, kicking his own boxes further out into the hallway. “Of course, everything’s that left here are things you no longer need.”
Two doors down, Atsumu pushes two huge boxes with evident hesitation, a ratty Inarizaki PE shirt and a jersey that looks alarmingly like it was from middle school still clutched in his hands.
Bokuto takes only one look and guffaws. “You okay there, Tsum-tsum?”
Atsumu presses both clothes to his chest protectively with a scowl. “I’m just strugglin’, okay, but I did it! And I definitely did better than Omi. I mean, look at ‘im. That’s barely a box!”
Everyone then turns to the man in question, holding a single box that’s light enough to be tucked under his armpit with ease. “This is all I don’t need and want in my room.”
“Okay, that’s unfair. You’re the one who goaded us into this and that’s all you’re givin’ away?” Atsumu chides him from across the hallway as Bokuto and Hinata boo in unison.
Meian hatches his gameplay then, standing up to stop their setter from metaphorically yeeting the ball right into their spiker. “Come on, maybe he doesn’t even have that many things to begin with.”
But here is the problem with a riled-up Miya: he does not stop for anyone or anything. Instead, Atsumu only squints at Sakusa who’s leaning against the door adjacent to his own. “Nah. I’m not buyin’ it.”
And just when he thinks he already found out enough about Sakusa today, Sakusa surprises him by blocking the doorway to his room. “ Miya. Drop it.”
His tiny advantage in height, unfortunately, has no chance against Atsumu’s snooping skills as he gasps theatrically and points inside. “Hey! There’s still a lot of shit in yer room, and you’re askin’ us to throw away ours? Unfair!”
“Miya—”
Meian moves as soon as Atsumu ignores Sakusa and barges into the room with Bokuto and Hinata following suit. To Meian’s surprise, instead of the rummaging and pillaging that Meian has expected, Atsumu stands frozen by the threshold.
“Miya, leave Sakusa alone—”
Then he sees the inside of Sakusa’s room and he understands the silence all at once.
Sakusa’s room isn’t pristine nor minimalistic. It isn’t disgustingly messy either.
No, Sakusa’s room is homey, and not just because of the surprising abundance of wooden accents and warm tones, but because of the knickknacks littered around the space that knock too close to home, even for Meian.
There’s a weathered secondhand skateboard on the corner from their skateboarding attempts after watching Sk8 and they went back inside with bruises and scrapes that Meian had to frustratingly deal with. (He can never forget seeing Sakusa come in with every single joint padded, how Hinata had poured liters of alcohol straight to a gaping wound without any indicator that he’s in pain, how Atsumu whined about the wounds on his legs reducing the aesthetic cost of his thighs, or how Bokuto ended up with an abrasion on his forehead and literally nowhere else, only for it to form a faded jagged scar that he now claims to be his calling as the new Harry Potter.) Still, Atsumu, Hinata, and Bokuto had long gotten rid of theirs.
On the nightstand is a thick notebook that Atsumu picks up, containing all the recipes they had used during their poor mimicry of The Great British Bake Off carefully handwritten in Sakusa’s tiny, neat penmanship.
Bokuto picks up the wooden bat and the battered ball from when they played baseball after watching Ace of Diamond, while Hinata stares at the chessboard nestled beside Sakusa’s nightstand after watching The Queen’s Gambit, the one Sakusa claimed he borrowed from Motoya when Hinata said it looked new, the same one that is very much still in Sakusa’s room and not with Motoya months later.
“Omi-kun,” Atsumu whispers in equal parts awe and surprise.
Sakusa walks towards Atsumu and takes the notebook away, shockingly gentle as he thumbs through the pages. There are more pages in the notebook: notes from all the different things they have tried before. There is a whole page dedicated to the baseball terminologies and its scoring system, and another for chess rules and moves.
“I can’t let go of it,” Sakusa begins hesitantly, so soft Meian has to crane his neck to hear him better. “I’ve gotten used to sticking with a team for more than three years from middle school until college. I’m not good at socializing, so I often need a long time to adjust to new people. I thought I had that much time with this team, but I don’t.”
When Sakusa looks up, there is a bittersweet smile on his face, nearly imperceptible had Meian not been looking closely. “It’s the first time I’ve been in a team who is just as dedicated as I am, and now everyone’s leaving. Meian’s having a child, Hinata’s going back to Brazil, Miya’s going to France, Bokuto’s getting married, and I feel like I haven’t really connected with anyone yet, and I don’t want to leave it at that.”
Meian remembers the quiet when the boys left. He recalls the unease at its silence, then the sudden relief when these noises flooded the apartment again. He thinks about Sakusa, only a month from experiencing the same thing but without the certainty of the noises ever coming back and his heart aches a little.
“That’s why you’ve been challenging us to do all these. So you can spend more time with us,” Bokuto points out, and Sakusa shrugs with a tiny smile on his lips. “It’s pretty easy to rile you all up. Especially Miya.”
“Aw, Omi-san,” Hinata coos. The inevitable group hug follows then, somehow simultaneously tensing and relaxing Sakusa in their crowded circle of bodies.
“You know, Sakusa, if you wanted to hang out with us more, you should have just said something. We won’t say no.”
Meian looks up to the new voice and catches Barnes with Inunaki and Adriah hovering outside the room. He grins and jerks his head towards them. “Come on in, guys.”
“More affection for Sakusa, coming right up!” Inunaki screams before barreling towards their huddle and plowing them down to the floor.
In the middle of the lump of athletes, though, Sakusa is softly smiling even as Atsumu’s elbow digs into his ribcage and as Bokuto’s hair pokes into his cheek. Barnes is crushing Meian’s stomach and it’s hard to breathe, and Inunaki is definitely stepping on his thighs, and it’s so chaotic but also amusing and fun.
“Should we go to the skating rink?” Meian offers, and an affirmative wave of nods follows. “Pretend it’s Yuri on Ice? That’ll be fun.”
“Oh, I’m definitely going to pulverize ya there, Omi.”
A soft oof later, which Meian suspects is Sakusa elbowing Miya in the stomach, and Sakusa speaks. “Dream on, Miya.”
The room erupts into chaos as full-grown athletes fight for who gets which character and Meian laughs. He’ll probably hate himself when Bokuto or Hinata inevitably injures themselves by trying some ridiculous step they saw on YouTube, and he’ll have to find a way to make sure Atsumu won’t be goaded into doing a triple axle by Sakusa.
It’s true that found family looked better in the movies, and sure, this is difficult, but this is real, and chaotic, and messy, and most of all, his.