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

Chasing Summer Days || Hinata Shoyo

It started in spring, like most new things do. When the world first catches a glimpse of true sunshine and suddenly everything starts anew. It was the beginning of high school. The beginning of a whole new world, stuck between the honied innocence of the last dregs of childhood and the beckoning reality of adulthood. The beginning of him and me.

We didn't start with a bang. It was nothing like stars colliding and creating an explosive new world. No, it was more like when you first become fully aware of the sky and the quiet acceptance, without thought, that it is blue. I looked up from my desk on the first day of school and suddenly he was there — all wild hair, big, brilliant smiles and bottled up energy escaping through his bouncing legs as he waited to chase his dreams. And I think he looked right through me.

Have you ever been blinded by a smile? Like you were looking right into the sun and instantly realized the world was much too bright for you to handle? That's what noticing Hinata Shoyo was like. One smile and I was done.

Still, there are no meet-cutes with the sun. Instead, it's more like the entirety of your life revolves around it, while it's vaguely aware of your existence. It's not that it's being rude or purposefully setting you aside as the sole person unworthy of time; you're just not that important in its story. Like ships passing in the night, or a falling star never quite special enough to be pulled into his orbit. Our lives were just different — a girl in love with a boy meant for greatness and boy who only saw the future — and there was nothing despicable about that. No ill intentions meant. But I liked to believe that he could tell I was listening when he ranted about his dreams and that I, too, believed in them. That I knew he'd be the star he was always meant to be.

There are people who look at the sun and see nothing. They feel its warmth and see its light but never dream of its potential. Of the power in everything that is locked away inside it. It was the same with him.

Each day with him around brought that same sepia toned happiness accompanied by afternoon rays peeking through the swaying leaves of ginkgo trees and he carried with him that same kind of constant comfort. Not a day went by without the teacher calling on him until his locks of fire were righted with a jolt and his honey brown eyes were focused again. Or when he was lost in his own head about the tingling in his palm and the power that his senpai radiated as he leapt through the air, only to be brought back to the realm of the classroom by a question he didn't have a clue how to answer. But, to me, his excitement was contagious and that buzzing exuberance that laced every word he spoke about reaching the summit and being the ace, filled me with the same anticipation of his ascension .

And still they couldn't see. And even more I felt like he would always want and be and dream of more than me. That he was a far off feeling of something I longed for, but couldn't reach.

That's the thing about the sun though, isn't it? You can stick your hand out to touch it, but you know you never will. And, if you squint, you can cover it with just your thumb and pretend you are strong enough to overcome any power it could have over you, but nothing you do will ever stop its rays from lighting up the world and casting shadows all around you.

I reached and grabbed and tried to hold on, but no matter how hard I tried, I could never really catch him.

For the longest time, I wanted to be Shoyo. I wanted to be so passionate about life that it literally burst out of me wherever I walked. I wanted to be confident enough to state the desires of my heart and chase after them without remorse or fear that I would never reach them. He was unabashedly the protagonist of his own story and I would always settle to be the supporter in another's — to be the sunflower ever chasing the glow of the nearest celestial body, happy to have any of its light.