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

Some Princes Don't Become Kings || Kinoshita Hisashi

There's a kind of somber resolve in knowing that everything you are and ever will be, is just the background noise of something much larger and more beautiful. My parents used to tell me that life could never be boring or worthless as long as you accepted that you were the hero of your own story, but I've always known that I was nothing special. And that has always been okay.

Because even if there is a somberness to knowing you're unimportant, the acceptance of such can be so freeing.

Sometimes, when I watch Hisashi's games, I get this overwhelming sense that I'm witnessing greatness. The way those boys move around the court fills me with the kind of electricity that only follows in the wake of those truly meant to shine — the kind that truly carry the titles of "hero," "genius," "king." The buzz in those moments fills my head with visions of what it must be like to be so bright that everyone has a stake in your future and I'm left shuddering feeling the weight on their promising shoulders.

There are moments when I look at Hisashi and I can tell that he feels the same. Maybe not about the acceptance of our normalcy, but that he is surrounded by the type of people whom the spotlight follows without them trying. In those moments, I can see him lost in a frost of his own terror — as if the people surrounding him and the opponents he is playing aren't made of the same elements of him. As if they are made of otherworldly materials rather than carbon and calcium. Like they breathe pure success rather than oxygen and he can only crave it.

At night, when we sit together on the front porch of his house, he likes to tell me about his team — about how amazing the people he plays with are and how, he hopes, one day he will have his "hero" moment too. He wants to show off and be just as free as them.

"Even if I'm just a pinch server," he said to me. "I'm going to show everyone that I deserve to be on the court too."

As I hold his hand and listen to his dreams, I have to fight the urge to tell him that he doesn't have to be extraordinary. He doesn't need to be a hero to the world, because he's already everything to me. But I know that's not what he wants to hear. He's not quite ready to accept the freedom of our normalcy yet, which is why he still apologizes for "wasting" my time asking me to come to games where he doesn't play. (I don't mind. I've never minded. I'd support him in any endeavor no matter the cost.)

I think it all gets to him sometimes — the feeling that he's fading into the background. It's like he's watching his life slowly fade into beige, following a rudimentary formula for success: decent grades, average athletic ability, dating the perfectly average girl next door while studying together on the weekends, only being lectured for zoning out during class, never setting a toe out of line.

Still, I think there is a beauty in being perfectly ordinary together. Out of all the people in all of the world, in all of time and space, the two of us managed to meet and kindle a flame. If my mother hadn't tripped over the leash of my father's dog 20 years ago while she was rushing to meet her friend, I would have never even existed. If grandmother had never taught mother to make her super-secret chocolate cake recipe, my father's boss may have never been satiated enough to give him that raise that finally allowed my parents to buy that perfect house right next to the home the Kinoshita's had lived in for the past three generations. And if that thunderstorm hadn't knocked out the power for two entire days during that spring in 1995, Hisashi and I would have never had joint birthday parties until we were 13.

The thing is, that even if Hisashi and I are perfectly bland — the type of people who will never make a scene, who are happy eating the same meal for lunch every day and find joy in the most mundane of activities, like taking walks around the neighborhood right as the sun goes down — the circumstances of our love are anything but, because even the most quiet of love stories are beautiful. Because there is just so much fuzzy contentment in knowing, that some things are just meant to be.

So, sure, I'm nothing but a regular, boring woman and he is nothing but a perfectly ordinary man. But to him, I will always be something else and to me, Hisashi is the king of kings. 

[The title of this drabble is a line from Fall Out Boy's "Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea" that I can never get out of my head because of how much it resonates with me. So, thanks for that FOB.]