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

Ain't Seen You Like This Before || Yamamoto Taketora

Was it normal for his palms to be this sweaty? Like, he knew he was nervous, but he wasn't expecting the collective humidity of the entire expanse of the Amazon Rainforest to collect in the center of his hands. He could write off the heart palpitations and the foreboding sense that something was going to go awry. Those were the sort of things he was used to whenever he knew he was going to interact with a girl. Right now, though, he was a little afraid his hands were going to soak straight through his jeans to the skin on his knees, where he'd rested them for the past half hour.

Yamamoto Taketora wasn't supposed to have been sitting on that blue fountain in the middle of the shopping center for going on two hours now, but he'd already gotten ready four hours before and by the time he was three hours out from the meeting time, he was too nervous to keep still. He'd decided that being early was leagues better than the possibility of being even 30 seconds late to meet her. Not when he still couldn't believe that she'd agreed to a date with him in the first place.

It had taken him a total of four months to even work up the courage to ask — and maybe that had been some sort of cosmic punishment for him because she'd been there, basically next to him, since middle school and he hadn't taken notice of her until his last year of high school. It wasn't that Enomoto Chiharu lacked charm or the type of qualities that made someone special. She just wasn't the type of girl that overthought her impact on the world and, therefore, didn't attract the eyes of boys who often lingered at the type of girls who needed the extra fuel of attention to get through the day.

For Taketora, Chiharu never occupied the same place in his heart and head as all the frilly girls fluttering about in his imagination. Not once during all those years of middle and high school did she make him want to fall to his knees in reverence. But, to be fair, she was never trying to elicit such reactions. Other matters held more importance to her, like fighting against every wrong she witnessed in the hallways or being sure that her project partner kept his head in the books rather than in the clouds.

Chiharu, on the other hand, had always had something of a soft spot for the obnoxious oaf that the teachers kept pairing her with, as if they were certain she was the only one that could reign him in long enough to actually complete a project. She wouldn't have called it a crush (at least not until much, much later), but more of a mild fascination — in his reasoning for not only choosing to sport a Mohawk but to also dye it; in why, exactly, he was so enamored with the female sex and why that obsession never translated to action; in his tendency to relate everything to "needing more guts" and in his passion for volleyball.

She'd discovered her feelings during their first year of high school, much to her chagrin. It wasn't that she found love particularly distasteful and the distraction of a crush wasn't entirely unwanted, but there was something about finding herself helplessly blushing over the actions of such a rambunctious and, frankly, embarrassing man that was humiliating. Sure, they'd sat next to each other for basically three years. Sure, she more often than not was paired with him for group projects and peer reviews and all that time together was bound to lead to some sort of feeling but...

"Yamamoto? Really?" Her best friend Suda Hitomi had asked, incredulous during a lunch break in the first three months of first year. "But, he's so...so...Yamamoto."

Chiharu had just shrugged at her friend, nonchalantly mumbling something about the heart wanting what it will and feigning the calmness she wished she could feel in the moment because, really, of all the people her soul could have wanted to reach out to, it just had to be Yamamoto- I-faint-when-a-pretty-girl-looks-at-me-Taketora.

The crush was something she was sure she would grow out of — that she would see him face plant in the quad or watch him drool at the sight of a particularly short skirt and all the rose-colored feelings would break apart and float away on the breeze. But that damn affliction stuck to her like the remnants of a thrift store price tag she'd spent more time than she cared to admit trying to get rid of. He still made a fool of himself, there was no doubting that, but instead of turning her heart to stone, his fumbling only made her mumble about not believing she was in love with such an idiot while she struggled to keep the corners of her mouth from turning upward.