The vending machine hummed at the corner of the empty street, a mechanical note that sounded nothing like the gym.
Tsukishima fed it a coin and waited for the cold can to drop.
The air had gone cool.
The streetlights had clicked on somewhere between the gym and here, and the sky had drained to the color of an old bruise.
Yamaguchi was still talking about the morning.
“You really did sound like a coach,” he said, for the third time since they’d left the gym.
His own can was sweating in his hand, unopened.
He kept turning it over, the aluminum catching the streetlight.
“I mean, I know you said it was nothing.
But it wasn’t nothing.
Kageyama’s face went through, like, four expressions.” “Kageyama only has one expression.” “He has at least two.
He has angry and angrier.” “And you think I inspired a third.” “I think you inspired a confused version of the angry one.” Yamaguchi finally cracked the can.
The hiss of carbonation was too loud for a street this quiet.
“Which is basically a new expression.
For him.” Tsukishima took a drink instead of answering.
The soda was too sweet and too cold.
He’d picked the wrong button.
He always picked the wrong button.
What Yamaguchi wanted — and Tsukishima could read this as clearly as he’d read Kageyama’s hip angle, clearer, the overlay on his oldest friend was so sharp it was almost uncomfortable, was for the morning to mean something.
Not in a dramatic way.
Just in the way that meant Tsukishima might actually be invested in the team.
Might care.
Might be the impressive person Yamaguchi had glimpsed during that half-second of accidental honesty.
The desire was written all over him: the tight grip on the can, how often he kept bringing it up, the slight, hopeful slant of his shoulders.
Tsukishima could see it.
He didn’t want to see it.
The overlay was giving him too much and he’d been asking it for too little, and the result was that he could see exactly what Yamaguchi wanted from him, and exactly how cruel it would be to acknowledge it.
“You’ve said that,” Tsukishima said.
“About six times.
Are you writing a biography?” “I’m just saying.” “You’re just repeating.” Yamaguchi’s mouth twitched.
“You’re deflecting.” “I’m walking home.” Tsukishima adjusted his glasses.
The gesture had become a punctuation mark somewhere in the last four years.
Full stop.
End of discussion.
“You can walk somewhere else if you want to keep talking about it.” “Your house is the same direction as mine.” “A tragic coincidence I deal with every day.” Yamaguchi laughed.
The sound was small and real and completely disarmed the deflection, same as it always did.
Yamaguchi had been laughing at him since elementary school.
The laughter was the one weapon Tsukishima had no counter for, because deploying it meant Yamaguchi was happy, and Tsukishima had never quite managed to treat Yamaguchi being happy as a problem to solve.
The street curved.
A cat watched them from a low wall.
The vending machine hum receded behind them and the night filled in the silence.
Tsukishima read his own read on Yamaguchi without meaning to.
The overlay gave him crisp edges.
Stamina flagging.
Serve confidence improving by small increments.
The specific tension in the shoulders that meant Yamaguchi was working up to saying something harder than the joke.
The data was cleaner than anything else in the gym.
Cleaner than Daichi’s.
Cleaner than Kageyama’s.
The difference was measurable and the measurement pointed at exactly one thing Tsukishima had been avoiding since the overlay activated.
He looked away from it.
Not physically.
The street was still the street, and Yamaguchi was still beside him, and the can was still too cold.
But his attention — the instrument’s attention, the focused edge of the cool line — he pulled back from that.
Too much data.
Bad data.
Data he didn’t need.
“That thing you do,” Yamaguchi said.
His voice had shifted.
Less joke.
More weight.
“Where you know where the set is going before the setter does.
You’ve always kind of done it.
But it’s sharper now.” “It’s not sharper.
You’re just paying attention.” “I always pay attention.” “To the wrong things.” Yamaguchi didn’t answer right away.
The cat jumped off the wall.
The streetlight flickered once and steadied.
“It’s good,” Yamaguchi said.
“Whatever it is.
It’s weird, but it’s good.” Tsukishima felt the overlay sharpen a degree at the compliment.
He killed the reaction before it reached his face.
The instrument had no right to have opinions about things people said to him.
The instrument was a tool.
Tools didn’t feel.
“It’s nothing,” he said.
“If you say so.” “I do say so.
In fact I just said so.” “Right.
Sure.” Yamaguchi’s voice had gone soft, the tone he used when he let Tsukishima win an argument neither of them was having.
“Keep your scary genius thing to yourself.
I’ll just.
be impressed from over here, I guess.” “Acceptable.” They walked another block.
Yamaguchi’s street peeled off to the left.
He stopped at the corner, one hand in his pocket, the other still holding the empty can.
“See you tomorrow, Tsukki.” “You say that like it’s a threat.” The grin Yamaguchi shot over his shoulder was the most unguarded thing Tsukishima had seen all day.
“Maybe it is.” He disappeared around the corner, and Tsukishima stood alone under the streetlight for longer than he meant to.
The read on Yamaguchi was the clearest thing in his instrument.
By a margin.
The instrument knew his friend better than it knew anyone else because he’d spent years watching him, cataloguing him, filing the data without ever calling it data.
The fidelity was perfect.
The implication was intolerable.
He finished the soda.
Threw the can in the recycling bin that was bolted to the streetlight.
Walked the rest of the way home with his hands in his pockets and his face arranged in its default expression of mild distaste.
Upstairs, he put on his headphones and let the music refill the bar.
The coolness edged up a few notches.
The city outside his window kept going, indifferent and loud, and inside his room the only light was the blue glow of the screen showing him songs he’d heard a hundred times.
The “coach voice” was a thing between them now.
Yamaguchi would bring it up again.
The team had probably already forgotten.
Hinata’s attention span was measured in seconds, and Kageyama’s in grudges, and neither of them had the bandwidth to add a new category for Tsukishima’s accidental competence, but Yamaguchi would remember.
Yamaguchi remembered everything.
He gave up hoping this would go away on its own.
The instrument was part of him now.
Yamaguchi knew something was different.
The only question left was what Tsukishima would do with the thing he’d noticed and refused to name.
He let the music end.
The song.
The album.
Then silence.
The cool line at the edge of his awareness dimmed to its resting state.
Tomorrow would be another practice.
Another set of drills.
Another chance for the overlay to sharpen on someone who mattered and go dark on someone who didn’t.
The math was honest whether he liked the equation or not.
He closed his eyes.
The instrument stayed online, waiting to be aimed at a friend, a teammate, a brother.
The brother was a different problem.
The brother was a problem he refused to load at all.
The overlay couldn’t read what he wouldn’t look at, and Tsukishima had been not looking at Akiteru for years.
That was a tomorrow problem.
Or a next-week problem.
Or a never problem, if he could hold the line.
The instrument didn’t argue.
Tools didn’t argue.
They just waited.
And Tsukishima had learned, in the past two days, that the waiting was its own kind of pressure.