Teach Me How To Fly (A Koutaro Bokuto Story)

Kuroo

The next few days passed the same as the first two. Bokuto dragged me along everywhere with him. During school hours I sat at the same tree and waited for Bokuto to come out at lunchtime. I'd made no progress in learning to fly.

Today was going to be an interesting day. Not only was this the day of a practice match, but it was also a practice match with Nekoma. While I may not have known much about the school, I'd heard about it before from Akaashi. That was the school that Bokuto's friend Kuroo went to.

There was little I could do to help out at their practices, but I was there regardless. Though that tended to irritate the rest of the team, the managers, and the coaches. But they didn't dare try to stop Bokuto from bringing me along. An owl is much easier to handle than a moody Bokuto.

Of course, I'm not so sure that everyone from Nekoma thought the same. In fact, the looks on most of their faces were quite interesting. The team members themselves looked interesting.

Some weren't very memorable, but most of them looked like they'd be interesting.

One of them was a guy with dyed blonde hair. He seemed a lot smaller than most of his team, so I guessed he was probably a first year. Maybe a second.

There was one who was really tall with silvery hair. That one was a bit hyperactive and sort of reminded me of Bokuto.

Then there was another short guy with dark hair that was neatly parted in the middle. He was probably one of those guys that played the same position as Komi. What was that called again? Liro? No... Ah, libero. But then again, there were two other guys right about the same height, so I couldn't be sure about that.

Coming in last was a fairly tall guy, maybe even taller than Bokuto. This guy either had the weirdest hairstyle I had ever seen or some really crazy bedhead.

I wondered which one was Bokuto's friend. I also wondered which one was the captain. But I figured that the mature-looking fellow with the shaved head was probably the captain. He certainly seemed the most captain-like. Well, of the ones that actually looked like they could be third years anyway.

The Bedhead looked in my direction and looked more annoyed than surprised. Found him. Kuroo had heard about me before, so it made it obvious that if only one person wasn't surprised about seeing an owl sitting on the shoulder of Fukurodani's ace, then that person was definitely Kuroo.

As the practice match got started, I stayed over on the sidelines with our managers. Occasionally though, I'd take on the task of retrieving the balls that got away. My helpfulness was a bit of a shock to the ones who hadn't met me yet, but Nekoma's older coach seemed to find it amusing.

Kuroo though, seemed a bit irritated. But I guess I couldn't blame him. There had been several nights that he and Bokuto had had picture wars, all of which were Bokuto's wins. All his pictures had been of me, so I might have become a source of annoyance for Kuroo.

Eventually, they took a short break. During that time, Bokuto was talking very excitedly to Kuroo about something, making the bedhead look more and more irritated by the second. But Bokuto was oblivious to his friend's quickly falling mood.

I turned my focus away from them. It was probably better if I didn't know what they were talking about. So instead I focused on retrieving the last of the stray volleyballs.

After some time, I sensed someone stopping near me as I was rolling the last ball. I stopped and shifted my eyes upwards to find out who. Seeing that it was Kuroo was a bit of a surprise. I was beginning to think he hated me, but maybe I was wrong.

He reached down and lifted me up. I didn't squirm or even move at all. In fact, I didn't even think it even the least bit suspicious that he suddenly wanted to see me. Bokuto wasn't even with him, so that made it even made it more strange. Yet I thought nothing of it and just let him do whatever it was he'd wanted to.

That was a bad move, because the next thing I knew, I was being shoved into someone's backpack.