Iwaizumi Hajime stumbles into the shower at three-thirty in the morning, attempting to yank the vivid memory of his dream out of his brain by pulling vainly at his hair. He succeeds only in inducing a pounding headache. Perfect. This is exactly what he needs on arguably one of the most important days of his career. Dread pools in the pit of his stomach, and he steps out feeling worse than when he got in.
Unable to fall back asleep, he spends the next two hours doom-scrolling on Tiktok. He mostly gets stupid clips and gym videos, but that doesn't come without its pitfalls. Every time he sees a girl and guy lifting weights together or playing around on the machines, Iwaizumi has the urge to throw up his dinner and sling his phone across the room.
The video where two best friends created a montage of their time spent traveling South America does make him curse out loud, sending him into a ten-minute spiral that he sincerely regrets.
The second the time hits six o'clock, he clicks his phone off with more force than necessary and dresses with equal parts aggression and perturbation. His fingers tremble, and his vision blur at the edges.
He can still smell the airport, can still feel the throng of people moving around him with their suitcases rolling loudly on the ground. They all had a destination in mind: a place to be or a person to meet, setting out on a new adventure or returning home to their old comforts.
But not Iwaizumi. Iwaizumi was losing everything.
He shakes his hands vigorously as if he's somehow shedding away his dream. His job demands the utmost attention and patience from him. He can't risk fraying his nerves on the shit going on in his own head. His team needs him at his functional best, all prevailing circumstances considered.
He meets the Men's National Volleyball Team in their main dining hall, determined to keep them on a proper eating schedule to help with both their diets and his own. Nobody commented on his admittedly picky eating and slightly shorter temper, for a bundle of anxiety is circulating through the players themselves. After two days' rest from participating in competitive games, they have the most important match to play against one of the strongest teams in this year's Olympics:
Argentina.
The Japanese National Team is good. The whole world recognizes their player powerhouses, and their ability to strategize and adapt has helped them immensely in the games they'd already played. But they aren't going against the weaker teams anymore. This is the Olympic gold game. Everything is on the line.1
And somehow, they hadn't been seeded against Argentina yet.2
It's been by pure luck and happenstance. It's not the first time it's happened, and it likely won't be the last. But still. It would've been nice to have played against them at least once before they had to fight for a shiny piece of metal. Their strategy is formed based solely on the games they've watched both in-person and on television instead of the lived experience of coming toe-to-toe with the unrelenting Argentinian players.
These facts are what the players are worried about, anyway.
Iwaizumi Hajime is not a player.
No one on the team has mentioned it to him yet, and he prefers to keep it that way. They likely don't remember that he and Oikawa Tooru, #13 of the Argentinian Men's National Volleyball Team, played on the same team in high school. And even if they do, they certainly wouldn't know that they were closer than just the ace and his setter.
Except for Kageyama and Hinata, maybe. But Kageyama is still far too awkward and anti-social to say something like that, nor does Iwaizumi believe he cares enough to antagonize him. As for Hinata, he'd mentioned playing beach volleyball with Oikawa a couple of times with a few unsubtle side glances at Iwaizumi. However, Hinata had never talked to him about it, and Iwaizumi had never pushed for him to do so. Iwaizumi thinks that if the opposite hitter wants to say something, he would've done it by now.
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if you need me, dear, i'm the same as i was
Fanfiction"No one on the team has mentioned it to him yet, and he prefers to keep it that way. They likely don't remember that he and Oikawa Tooru, #13 of the Men's Argentina National Volleyball Team, played on the same team in high school. And even if they d...
