can't be yours - kagehina

chapter seven

"Hey, Shoyo!" Yamaguchi called, running up to Hinata in the hallway a few days later. "Um, hey!"

"Hello," Hinata greeted, flipping through the papers in his hands.

"Can we talk? I haven't been able to talk to you much lately, and I wanna have a heart-to-heart conversation with you."

Hinata slowed down, looking up at Yamaguchi curiously. "A heart-to-heart? Why? Is something wrong?"

"Oh, um, no, I just wanted to talk to you about a few things that have been bothering me. Every time I try to talk to you, though, you seem super busy, so I haven't bothered you."

Hinata smiled. "Yeah, that's fine. We can talk after school, though, because I've gotta get back to class." He held up the papers. "I had to grab some papers from my locker. It's almost the end of the semester, so I've gotta get my grades up if I don't want to fail."

"Homework?"

"Yep." Hinata stopped in front of his classroom. "Find me after school. Okay?"

Yamaguchi nodded. "Okay. See you!"

"Bye." Hinata disappeared into his classroom, and Yamaguchi watched him shut the door.

"Huh."

"He's been acting weird lately, right...?" Yachi asked. Yamaguchi, who hadn't noticed her, gasped, jumping backwards. "Oh! I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to scare you!"

"It's okay."

She frowned. "Right, though? He seems sad, doesn't he?"

He glanced back over to Hinata's classroom. "Yeah."

"Yachi twirled a strand of hair around her finger. "Do you have any ideas as to why that might be?"

Yamaguchi furrowed his eyebrows. "Maybe he's just stressed about the end of the semester approaching."

"Or maybe he likes someone."

Yamaguchi paused, then raised his eyebrows. "You think that's it?"

Yachi shrugged, looking down at her feet. "I don't know. Maybe." She glanced up at Yamaguchi. "I think he's been acting weird since I told you guys who I liked."

"Huh..." Yamaguchi thought for a moment. "Wait, yeah! He's been acting super weird for, like, two weeks now, and I only really remember it because he and Kei had some weird conversation that Kei won't tell me about. Now that I think about it, that was, like, a couple days after you told us."

"Right," Yachi muttered. "Now, think about this, okay?" Yachi raised her eyebrows at him, and Yamaguchi nodded back at her. "Okay... Hinata was eager to hear about a person I potentially had feelings for. It's normal for someone to be excited to hear about a person their best friend has a crush on, right?" Yamaguchi nodded again. "But then you mentioned something about me possibly liking someone on our team. Did you notice how Hinata reacted?"

"No... What happened?"

"He sort of... tensed up, almost? He looked over at you, but you weren't paying attention to him. He looked like he wanted you to stop talking." 

"Huh."

"Yeah..."

"I guess I didn't notice that."

Yachi had a guilty look on her face. "I wish I'd noticed earlier how uncomfortable he was. Maybe then I wouldn't have..." She trailed off.

"What?"

"Um, nothing. Anyway... You also continued on and asked if it was him, and he, like, freaked out. He wanted to make it known that I did not like him."