For the first time in years, he saw you again.
He never thought the sight of one person could render him so speechless. But it was probably just because it was you. There were so many things he wanted to say, but in the end, he only managed to utter one word.
"...[Name]..."
And when you smiled, the memories came flooding back to him.
Kageyama Tobio never had many friends to begin with; not even when he was a child. You were the only one who approached him and stuck by him since grade school. It was mostly just two of you together, but that didn't matter, because when he was around you, he was happy.
You moved away before middle school even started. It came as a shock to him when you told him the news. He was too stunned for words when he found you crying by the field both of you always played at.
"I don't want to move away."
It hurt him, hearing you cry like that.
"...We can run away together."
"That's stupid, Tobio," you sighed wistfully.
"I know..." The idea was absurd, even to him. It was a stupid, ridiculous notion of a child who couldn't possibly survive on his own in this world. But it was a desperate attempt for a child who didn't want to lose his best friend.
"...I don't want you to leave either."
You cried even more when he said that. And that was one moment he really wished he knew what you meant whenever you told him that he needed to be more 'tactful' when speaking.
A hug was all his eleven-year-old self could offer.
"You have to come back," he remembers himself saying. "No matter how long it takes, you have to come back."
"That's what a damsel in distress would say." Your voice was somewhere between a sob and a hysterical kind of laughter, but he knew you were trying not to cry.
Had it been any other time, he would have shouted at you for calling him that. The usual retorts wouldn't come and all he did was hold his hand out to you.
"Promise me..."
Wiping away the dampness in your eyes, you looked at him with resolve on your features. Neither of you wavered as you lifted your own hand and hooked your pinkies together.
"...I promise."
That summer, you moved away.
Staying in contact was hard, especially since none of you had mobile phones at that time. And within a couple of months, the letters that came dwindled from few to none.
Kageyama often found himself thinking about you. He would even go to the extent of saying that he missed you. But since you were gone, he had no one to admit that too.
Middle school was torture without having you around. In his darkest moments, when he had no one to turn to, he found himself resenting the face that you weren't there for him. And when he realised he was blaming you for something out of your control; out of your knowledge, he hated himself even more.
Slowly, the times he thought of you lessened, especially with volleyball being significant part of his life. High school came as a whirlwind of experiences for him. He made friends; he became part of a team; and he became the setter that he could be proud of.
And whenever he had these moments – these happy moments, these victorious moments – he would wish that you were there to experience them with him.
Sometimes when he heard his classmates talking about love and relationships, you would pop into his mind, and he'd ask himself if he actually did love you. After all, why else would he be thinking of someone who was merely a friend?
For Kageyama, it didn't matter. Be it platonic or romantic, your relationship with him was becoming more like a fleeting memory. You were becoming a mirage of his past, and he had started to give up on you ever returning.
He was starting to lose hope, but he never, never forgot.
Graduation day was a blur for him. His time at Karasuno changed him so much, and stepping out of the school gates for the last time felt so different from usual. He spent some time with his teammates before they parted ways.
As he walked home, he paused when he neared the path that led to that same place he spent much of his childhood with. It wouldn't hurt to take a detour, he decided, when he walked the path towards that field.
What he never could have expected, was to see you there again.
