Rating:

General

Category:

Gen

Fandom:

Haikyuu!!

Relationship:

Kageyama/Hinata

Tags:

animal transformation

Stats:

Posted on:

2014-12-29

Words:

2,243

It’s Tobio’s last day of middle school when he finds the crow.

He’s walking back when he hears a loud chirping and, wide-eyed and concerned, he hunts the source of the noise until he sees a tiny, puffy black bird lying on its side.

All of Tobio’s worries related to volleyball disappear. This crow is now his priority. He picks it up and takes it home.

His mother seems surprised that he’s so concerned, but doesn’t hesitate to help patch the poor guy up. The crow’s foot is crooked like it’s been broken. Tobio’s sure it would’ve been fine flying like this, but the crow doesn’t seem to want to move with its broken foot.

When they’re done, they find that the bird has fallen asleep – it’s still breathing, but doesn’t react when Tobio pokes it.

“Don’t do that,” his mother scolds. “You underestimate your own strength when it comes to small animals.”

So Tobio doesn’t poke the bird again, and keeps watch over it into the evening. After supper he checks on it and makes sure it’s okay. It’s mesmerizing, the way the little guy seems so peaceful.

Tobio falls asleep at the table that night, next to the bird.

He wakes up nightmarishly early to the sound of chirping.

Tobio’s ready to fight. At least, that’s what he tells himself until he sees that the bird with the broken leg yesterday is singing happily at him.

The bird’s not flying, but it’s on its feet, hopping around in Tobio’s face. Despite its noisiness, Tobio can’t help smiling.

“You’re so annoying,” he says fondly.

It seems to understand him, because the bird pauses and even though Tobio doesn’t know the first thing about birds, he’s pretty sure it’s glaring. Tobio chuckles to himself and says, “Well, what? You woke me up this morning, didn’t you?”

It starts chirping again. Tobio stretches out his hand and it hops on willingly.

“I guess it’s time to say goodbye,” he says to it.

But after he puts his slippers on and brings the crow outside to the back porch, it refuses to fly away. Even when Tobio thrusts his hands into the air, it stays stubbornly in his palms. Tobio frowns and brings it close to his face.

“What are you doing that for?” he asks. “Don’t you want to go back to the wild? Your home?”

The bird blinks. Tobio hadn’t even known birds could blink. There’s something about it that tells Tobio that he’s exhausted his attempts, and should bring them both inside already.

“Okay,” he says, turning back inside. “I guess you’re mine, then.”

He and the bird spend a good amount of time together. His parents don’t seem to mind it, and the only slightly bothersome part is when the bird is hungry because it tries to fly out of the closed windows and runs smack into the glass. Tobio laughs when it does.

The chubby bird looks indignant when it picks himself up.

So they leave the windows open so that the bird can go out whenever it wants. Sometimes Tobio wakes up when it’s in his window, fluttering and screeching. Sometimes it’s gone during the morning and then in the afternoon the fluffy ball of black hits him when he’s in the middle of reluctantly doing summer work.

He takes a break next weekend, and comes out in the morning and practice volleyball for the first time since school ended. When he makes it to his front lawn, he spots the bird in the garden.

“Hey,” he says cheerfully, and then notices the kanji next to it, on the dirt.

It reads Shouyou.

The bird chirps at Tobio. Tobio stares at the characters, flummoxed.

“Shouyou?” he says. “What’s that? Did you write this?”

It squeaks happily, and flies to Tobio’s shoulder. It gestures to the kanji with its wings.

“Oh! Is that your name?” Tobio asks.

Shouyou bounces up and down. It’s very loud in Tobio’s ear, and he swats away and bats it off.

Shouyou’s not offended, just lands on the ground and dances around its name.

“I got it, I got it,” he says, but Shouyou’s so small for something to make such a loud noise that he’s kind of charmed.

It must’ve taken a long time to write that in the ground. Either that, or Shouyou’s magic. Tobio laughs to himself at the thought.

Shouyou tries to help him sometimes when he plays volleyball, as Tobio sets, estimating where it might land. Shouyou attaches itself to the volleyball sometimes, throwing it off balance. Sometimes the crow tries to hit the ball while it’s in the air. It never goes really far, but the ball never goes where Tobio wants it to too and he’s too busy laughing to be particularly annoyed.

Eventually he starts adjusting for the crow, setting the ball a little lighter in the air so Shouyou can hit it further. When it does, the bird starts flying in circles and chirping loudly. One time it flies so much that it starts going lopsided, like it’s dizzy.

Tobio’s never had a pet bird before, but he thinks he likes it. Plus, Shouyou’s a better teammate than his old team from middle school.

“You’re so tiny,” he says one morning when they’re in his room. He’s dribbling the ball in the air. His parents don’t usually like it when he plays volleyball indoors, but he just likes holding the ball every once in a while.

Shouyou, who’s as round but not as big as the ball, squeaks indignantly. Tobio says, “You are!” He holds the ball in the air next to Shouyou.

Shouyou pecks defiantly like it wants it to deflate. The ball doesn’t, and Shouyou flies backwards, landing on Tobio’s bed.

Tobio picks the crow up from his bed but Shouyou pecks his hand, too, when he does. It doesn’t quite hurt but Tobio lets it go, anyway.

“Haven’t you seen how small you are?” he asks, gesturing to the mirror on his dresser.

Shouyou flies over to it and tilts its head side to side. Then it pecks the mirror, too.

“You know how small you are,” Tobio says, and then Shouyou’s flitting around his head, tweeting and tickling Tobio’s head and Tobio laughs.

Spring break gets shorter and shorter, and his parents limit the amount of time he’s allowed to practice volleyball. Tobio grumbles over lunch after his parents yet again deny his requests to go outside afterwards.

Shouyou flies through the window, carrying a worm in its beak. When it sees that Tobio looks so glum, it offers the worm to him.

“What – gross, no!” Tobio exclaims when he realizes what’s going on.

Shouyou huffs and slurps the worm down.

Tobio pokes it in the side. Shouyou fluffs its feathers but otherwise doesn’t complain.

“Have fun playing volleyball without me,” Tobio mutters, his chin in his arms.

But when he goes upstairs to study, Shouyou hops on his shoulder and joins him. It dips its feet in ink and tries to help out on his Japanese literature homework. But Shouyou falls over and leaves a big bird stained mark on the paper, and, even though it’s ruined, Tobio laughs anyway.

He pores over his high school acceptance letters when his parents have annoyed him enough. He’s been rejected by Shiratorizawa but has been accepted at a couple of more places. He just wants to go to the best place for volleyball.

Except Aoba Jousai. He’s not taking his chances with playing on the same team as Oikawa again.

Shouyou tries to help. At least, Tobio’s pretty sure it does. The bird bounces on his acceptance letters and pokes at them with its beak.

“What do you think?” Tobio murmurs as he reads each letter over and over again, one by one. “Dateko? Maybe I should try Aoba Jousai anyway?”

Shouyou seems to spot something on one of his letters and tugs at it. It’s staring at a mascot, which is a crow.

“You think that it’s real, don’t you?” Amused, Tobio picks up the letter. Shouyou remains on it, and squeaks when Tobio starts reading it.

It’s an acceptance letter from a place called Karasuno High School, not too far from here. Tobio doesn’t know anything about the volleyball team, but he knows that it exists. It’s foundation enough.

Besides, Shouyou likes the mascot. Or the bird genuinely wants him to go to the high school. Either way, Tobio has a good feeling about it.

It occurs to him, embarrassingly belatedly, that if Shouyou has a name, the name had to come from somewhere. Shouyou had to come from somewhere.

He’s at his desk and, when Shouyou flies in, carrying a bird too big for it in its mouth, asks it, “Are you actually a person?”

Shouyou doesn’t answer, just swallows the worm. Tobio knows it can understand him, so why doesn’t it respond properly?

“I mean,” he says slowly. “Birds aren’t supposed to understand humans, aren’t they? Only humans can understand humans. So you had to be a human at some point.”

Shouyou does that weird humanlike blinking thing again. Maybe it’s a signal.

“Where are you from?” Tobio asks.

Shouyou goes back to the window and flies within the frame. Tobio’s bedroom has always had a good view of the mountain and, Tobio thinks, that’s what Shouyou’s trying to point to. That’s where this crow is from.

He picks the bird up between his fingers and observes it. It looks like a crow through and through, albeit a little fat.

“I mean, you look like a bird to me,” he says. He can see the sun in its eyes.

Shouyou squawks suddenly and flies out of his hands. When Tobio realizes that there’s not really much more information he can get out of a very birdlike bird, he sighs and leans back on his chair.

“I like you like this,” he says. “I mean. It’d probably be easier to talk to you if you were a person. But I like you.”

Shouyou’s flying, and then suddenly Tobio feels something plop into his hair. Shouting, he jumps up.

Shouyou shrieks happily. It’s hard to tell if he’s trying to laugh or mimic the sentiment.

“You took a shit in my hair,” Tobio says, and Shouyou’s tone changes, and definitely sounds like laughter.

On the last day of spring break, Shouyou disappears.

It happens in the morning, when Tobio wakes up too late and not to the squeaks of an overexcited bird. Maybe Shouyou’s catching breakfast. But when the afternoon comes around Shouyou doesn’t come to bother him, and doesn’t even appear when his parents let him take a break to go outside.

He calls, “Shouyou! Shouyou!” but doesn’t get anything in response. No tiny chubby black birds, no squeaks of laughter. Shouyou was terrible at being silent when they used to play hide and seek.

“He’s probably gone back off to his family,” his mother says when he walks back in with wet eyes.

Tobio nods. He’s fifteen; he understands that animals should go back to where belong. A part of him still wants the tiny crow around, though.

He’s in the Karasuno gym on the first day of school when that orange haired kid from the first game of the year before bursts in and yells at him. Tobio drops the ball.

By way of introduction, the kid shouts, “I’m Hinata Shouyou!”

Tobio drops the ball again.

Then the captain and the rest of the volleyball team come and they get distracted and fight and knock over the vice principal’s wig and kicked out.

While they’re outside, practicing what they want to say to get back in, Tobio pauses.

Hinata’s stretching and muttering under his breath.

“What’d you do this spring?” he asks.

Hinata narrows his eyes.

“Visited my friends. Why?”

“Did you,” Tobio hesitates. There’s no way he can ask “did you turn into a crow” without coming off as sounding completely out of it. “Do you remember all of it?” he asks instead.

Hinata doesn’t seem to be harboring any recent I-just-got-transformed-into-and-from-a-crow post trauma. He frowns at Tobio and says, “I guess not? It all seemed to go by so fast.”

There’s no way Tobio would have a pet bird named Shouyou over break and then meet a guy named Shouyou just a few days after it disappeared. There’s no way any other bird would’ve been able to write such distinctive kanji and respond to it like a human. There’s no way a crow like that would guide him to pick Karasuno, and then have Tobio run into a guy like Hinata when he gets there.

Tobio decides to ask later what his friend’s name is and check.

But he soon forgets this, and then when Hinata spikes his set for the first time, he flies.

And Tobio briefly remembers his pet crow from the spring, and how he wouldn’t be surprised if they were the same.

Hinata doesn’t poop on his head or offer him pieces of worm. But he spikes better than anyone Tobio’s ever known. And when Tobio says he can make Hinata invincible, Hinata shines so bright like he’s about to burst.

Tobio doesn’t know if he’s the crow or not. But he likes Hinata more.