Chapter Text
Imabetsu in Aomori Prefecture is just under five hours from Miyagi if you take three different trains and then a longish car ride. This feels like approximately an eternity when Daichi is tasked with spending the whole trip preventing his younger siblings from racing up and down the aisle.
(“Stop texting your friends and help me watch the kids,” Daichi snaps eventually at Kaori, the second-oldest.
“You’ve got it under control, niichan,” she insists, without bothering to glance up from her phone.)
Imabetsu in Aomori Prefecture is barely a town. Today—Daichi looked it up before he left his parents’ house—it has a population of under three thousand people. Back when Daichi was a kid, squirming restlessly on the long train ride himself, the population was closer to eight thousand—but like every other small town in the area, it’s been hemorrhaging citizens, who move to Aomori City and then sometimes south to Niigata or Sendai or Tokyo or all the way down to Osaka for better prospects.
(“‘Cause Imabetsu’s boring,” Kaori complains, rolling her eyes. “There’s nothing to do.”
“There’s the beach,” Daichi says half-heartedly. There are also… trees. And… rice paddies. And… that’s it, basically.)
Imabetsu in Aomori Prefecture is where Sawamura Koharu, Daichi’s dad’s sister, lives. Well—sort of. She doesn’t actually live in town, but outside of it, right on the coast, in one of a cluster of spread-out houses too insignificant to have their own name; getting into town requires half an hour on a bike or fifteen minutes in Koharu’s paleolithic Toyota. She grows vegetables and raises chickens for eggs and sometimes has a pig or two snuffling around over the summers, fattening up on her kitchen scraps. When Daichi was younger, his family used to visit her every summer on his school break in August—but he got busier when he started high school, and then it became unwieldy to travel with so many kids, so his family stopped.
(“Why can’t she visit us for once?” Kaori whines as she slumps in her seat. The train is going through an area with patchy service; none of her texts are going through.
“She has a lot of animals. It’s hard to get someone to look after the house,” Daichi explains, although in truth his dad has told him that the only way Koharu will ever leave Aomori is in an urn.)
Ostensibly, the Sawamura kids are renewing this family tradition for the sake of Kaori, Saki, Norio, and Nanako, who have been instructed to Build Character by spending time out in the country. In practice, the Sawamura kids are going all the way up to the northernmost tip of Honshu for a slightly different reason. Until this last winter, Koharu lived with a… friend (this is how Daichi’s parents always say it, stepping around the word politely): Tamaki Mao. Forty-nine, unmarried, an electrician; Daichi remembers her with her salt-and-pepper hair cropped close to her head, always stomping around in hand-me-down men’s clothing, smoking cigarette after cigarette and grumbling at Koharu, who always snipped right back. But all Tamaki-san’s smoking has made her sick, and so her family has brought her back down to Tokyo to get treatment. Daichi’s parents have suggested, in an authoritative way, that perhaps he and his siblings will be able to Cheer Koharu Up A Bit.
(“Is obachan a lesbian?” Kaori asks bluntly somewhere around the Iwate-Aomori border, when Saki, Norio, and Nanako have finally worn themselves out.
“That’s none of our business,” says Daichi. For some reason he can’t help thinking about last summer, that training camp in Tokyo, the way shaking hands with a certain Tokyo team captain before practice matches had an odd tendency to get his heart thumping overtime. He shifts in his seat and looks out the window. Outside, some of Aomori’s famous apple orchards are flashing by, too fast to see anything more than a blur of leaves.)
***
“Tch! It’s that Kimura-san,” says Koharu. She slices through another apple, her knife hitting the wooden cutting board underneath with a decisive thunk , and squints out the window for a better look as her neighbour’s car pulls up in the driveway next door. “Buying groceries! Ha! And she’s brought her no-good grandson!”
“What’s wrong with her grandson?” Daichi asks. He’s washing the dishes. Again. They’ve been piling up, in part because Koharu’s household has suddenly ballooned to six people, but also because Koharu has spent an average of five hours a day for the last three days baking. It’s apple season, so: apple bread. Apple pies. Apple strudel. Apple cake. Kininaru ringo. Apple daifuku. Pancakes with apple. The whole kitchen smells like yeast and butter and apples. Daichi loves his obachan’s baking, but even he thinks he might throw up if he has to eat even one more bite.
Koharu sniffs. “Well, he’s too tall. And I don’t like his face. He always looks like he’s up to no good.”
“Okay,” says Daichi. Privately, he thinks Kimura-san’s grandson probably has a face that is just fine, and that his only crime is the providence of his grandparentage.
Koharu sniffs again. “Did I tell you Kimura-san is growing kabocha this year? If that old crone thinks hers will get bigger than mine, well, good luck!”
“You did tell me that,” says Daichi. He glances down at his phone, resting on the counter beside the sink; three texts from Suga, two from Asahi, one from Tanaka. Suga and Asahi are enjoying their first summer vacation post-high school loafing around at the beach in Miyagi; Tanaka is working his ass off at summer training camp with the rest of the team. Daichi has a lot of fond memories of Imabetsu and, as he has been pointing out to Kaori in an effort to deter her whining, the landscape is beautiful, all rocky beaches and rolling fields and quiet forests—but, okay, he has to admit that he’s kind of bored. Like, out of his mind.
“Can I take the kids for ice cream this afternoon?” Daichi asks. There isn’t really much to do in town, but at least it’s a change of scene.
“Hm? Oh, sure, sure,” says Koharu distractedly, still focused on spying on her neighbour. “Fill up the car while you’re in town, will you? There’s money in the teapot by the door. Take whatever you—hey! Hey! Look! Did you see that? Did you—she’s pruning my hydrangea! My hydrangea! Why, that—”
Sensing impending disaster, Daichi drops the bowl he’s washing back into the soapy water and hastily dries off his hands, saying, “Obachan, hang on—”
—but Koharu is already tearing across the kitchen, still in her flour-streaked apron, barely pausing to tug on her shoes in the genkan as she shouts out the open front door, “Kimura-san, you drop those damn pruners right now or you’ll regret it! ”
Daichi jogs after her, slipping on his own sandals and thinking oh boy, here we go…
They’re already at it by the time he catches up, bickering at each other from either side of the sprawling hydrangea that spills over the fence into Kimura-san’s yard. Kimura-san’s grandson is there too, half-hidden behind the bush, but Daichi is paying more attention to his obachan, who bats aside a big spray of pink blossoms so she can point a threatening finger at Kimura-san and snap, “If I see one more twig hit the ground, Kimura Hanako, I’ll—”
Kimura-san cackles and waves her pruning shears menacingly. At her heels, her Sheltie, Udon, barks excitedly. “You’ll what, hm? Let’s hear it, Sa’amura-chan. Hm? You’ll what? These branches are in my yard, after all!”
“They’re not! They’re not! If the fence went back up—”
“Obachan, don’t start that again…” says Daichi, but both women ignore him.
“Oh, and who’s going to put it back up, hm? Hm?” demands Kimura-san. “You’re finally going to pay for that, are you? Well?”
“Tch! Me, pay for it? When it was your dog that knocked it down?”
“My dog, chasing your cat!”
The fence in question zigzags crazily along the property line, in some places flat against the ground, in some places missing entirely, but in all places warped and rotting and half-decomposed. From what Daichi has heard via his dad, its demise had more to do with the typhoon that blew in here five years ago and ripped half the tiles off Koharu’s roof. He opens his mouth to point this out, and gets as far as saying, “Actually—”
“Sawamura? ” says the grandson, and Daichi frowns. That voice—that voice—
“Yes?” says Koharu.
“I meant him,” says the grandson. He steps out from around the hydrangea, and Daichi stares.
***
When Daichi first met Kuroo Tetsurou last year, he remembers being struck by the immediate impression that Nekoma’s captain was a grade-A jerk. It wasn’t personal. No. Kuroo just gave off that kind of energy. And in fact, as it turned out, Kuroo was kind of a jerk. But… he was interesting to play against. And… he also had an interesting face. Not handsome, no, Daichi wouldn’t necessarily say handsome, but… interesting, yes. And he was obviously a good captain, which of course Daichi respected.
Respect—that was a good word. It summed up Daichi’s feelings towards Kuroo nicely. Respect. Which—to be clear—did not necessarily contraindicate rivalry. Respect. That was how he felt. He’d said as much to Suga after their summer training camp, when Suga made some sly comment about Daichi getting friendly with him.
“I respect him as a captain,” Daichi explained.
“Oh, right. Y’know, I bet he wouldn’t mind you disrespecting him a little more, if you know what I mean,” said Suga, grinning.
“I do not,” Daichi said firmly.
“Asahi knows what I mean.” Suga elbowed Asahi in the ribs. “Right, Asahi? You get it. See, he gets it.”
“I wish I didn’t,” said Asahi, sounding gloomy.
***
And now here he is: Kuroo Tetsurou. All the way up in rural Aomori Prefecture, on the outskirts of a town with probably less than twice the population of his high school, in ripped shorts and a faded sweater, his hair as all-over-the-place as ever. His hands are jammed in his pockets; he’s slouching, and staring, his eyes for once wide open in astonishment.
“Excuse me? You’re the no-good grandson?” says Daichi in disbelief.
“Excuse me?” says Kuroo, looking offended. “No-good—? I’m a good grandson! I’m a great grandson. Right, obaasan?”
“Eh, you’re alright,” says Kimura-san, and lets out a disarmingly familiar cackle.
Daichi ignores this. He’s feeling disoriented. He doesn’t like feeling disoriented. He crosses his arms over his chest and frowns, retreating into the safety of mild disapprobation. Then he remembers he’s wearing an old tank top handed down from his dad, one flecked with faded spots of old wood-stain and tiny tears around the ribs where the fabric has started to wear through—perfect for cutting wood for Koharu, which he was doing earlier this morning; less perfect for a chance meeting with an old high school rival who has an interesting (but not, to be clear, handsome) face. Daichi adjusts his arms to try to at least hide some of the holes, and wishes he’d put on a nicer t-shirt, and then hopes Kuroo can’t tell he’s wishing he’d put on a nicer shirt—but Kuroo seems to be distracted by smoothing the wrinkles out of his own sweater and straightening out of his slouch, so Daichi thinks he might be safe.
“Kuroo,” says Daichi.
“Sawamura,” says Kuroo.
“So your obaasan is trying to prune my obachan’s hydrangea?” says Daichi, and frowns.
“Sounds to me like your obasan’s hydrangea is growing into my obaasan’s yard,” says Kuroo.
“Improper pruning could harm the overall health of my obachan’s plant,” Daichi points out.
“Too much shade could interfere with the growth of my obaasan’s kabocha,” Kuroo counters.
“Tetsurou, you know this bruiser?” says Kimura-san.
“Daichi-kun, don’t tell me you’re friends with this punk,” says Koharu.
And suddenly, the outskirts of Imabetsu in rural Aomori get a lot less boring.
***
“Who’s that guy?” asks Kaori, when Daichi goes back inside to recover. “Do you really know him?”
“He’s—” says Daichi, and then hesitates. A friend? Well, yes. An enemy? Also yes. But how does he encapsulate all of that in one word? A friend, an enemy, a person with a funny crooked smile and objectively nice body proportions, whom Daichi has found himself thinking about quite a lot over the past year-and-a-half—Daichi considers saying he’s someone I respect , but even to his ears that sounds weird. He settles for, “I know him from volleyball.”
“He’s really Kimura-san’s grandson? That’s so crazy,” says Kaori. She follows him into the kitchen. “So he’s your age? He doesn’t have siblings or anything? Even one sibling? Say, around thirteen years old? I’d take fourteen, too. Or twelve. Well, maybe not twelve.”
Daichi shrugs. Kuroo has never mentioned siblings, but he also never mentioned having a grandmother who lived right next door to Daichi’s auntie all the way up in Aomori. Kuroo could be overrun with siblings of around twelve-to-fourteen, for all Daichi knows.
“Huh! Of course you get to have a friend here,” Kaori says sulkily. She digs a fingernail into a chip in the kitchen counter, worn smooth from years and years of use. “It’s not fair…”
“It’s not like I planned it,” says Daichi. If he had planned it, he would have arranged for his obachan to neighbour Suga’s grandmother, or Asahi’s, or maybe Kiyoko, or Yui, or even Ikejiri. Kuroo… no, he’s not sure he would have picked Kuroo. Although, now that he’s here, and Daichi is here… well… Daichi has another two weeks up here before he goes home, and suddenly it looks like it will be just him and Kuroo…
“Niichaaaaaan! Saki keeps putting worms down my shirt!” Norio wails tearfully as he stomps into the kitchen, covered in dirt.
Saki, right on his heels and with one hand hidden suspiciously behind her back, slaps him in the back of the head and snaps, “I do not! Don’t be such a tattletale!”
“Ew, ew, you guys are gross,” complains Kaori, and Daichi sighs. Okay, so just him, Kuroo, and Daichi’s entire family. Great.
“Saki, stop bugging your brother. Norio, try to brush the dirt off your pants before you come into the house, okay? And Kaori, can you finish the dishes?”
When Daichi has escaped into the back garden—over by the shed, on the opposite side from Kimura-san’s house, to mitigate the danger of running into her no-good grandson—he pulls out his phone and sends a message to his group chat with Suga and Asahi: So apparently Kuroo Tetsurou is my obachan’s neighbour’s grandson…
Asahi responds first: Really? That’s crazy!
And Suga, unhelpful and incomprehensible as always: Guess you’ve got no choice but to honey-trap him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Then Asahi: No??? Why is that his only choice???
Daichi reads Suga’s text and frowns. “Kaori!” he calls, and Kaori, washing the last of the dishes in the kitchen and looking mad about it, glares at him through the open window by the sink. “What does it mean if you honey-trap someone?”
“Huh? ” Kaori shouts back. “Isn’t it, like, when a hot girl gets with a guy and then steals state secrets from him?”
“So it’s inappropriate?” says Daichi.
“Yeah, or like, illegal,” says Kaori. “Wait, is Suga-niichan trying to talk you into something weird again? Niichan, you know better…”
***
Once Daichi has gotten over the critical psychological damage of being told off by his thirteen-and-a-half-year-old sister, he decides to do the mature thing. He debates changing into a nicer shirt, but then worries he’ll look like he’s trying too hard—trying too hard at what, he doesn’t know, but he worries about it nonetheless. In the end he just grabs one of the infinite apple pies off the counter, slips on his shoes, and—
—looks up to see Kuroo standing in the open doorway, his hand raised hesitantly, poised to knock.
“Uh… I was going to knock,” Kuroo says unnecessarily.
“Right,” says Daichi.
“But the door was open,” Kuroo elaborates.
“Yeah, we usually leave it open during the day,” says Daichi. As subtly as he can, he pushes the pie out of the way, behind the heap of sweaters his siblings have shed by the door. It seems weird to offer a guest in your own home an entire pie. “Come in. It’s nice to see you,” he adds sincerely, because it is. This prompts Kuroo to trip over the step in the genkan as he slips off his sandals.
“You okay?” asks Daichi.
“Yep, yep,” says Kuroo, picking himself back up. “Did that on purpose. To set you at ease.” He rubs at his knee, which has the bright red splotchiness of skin that’s going to bruise badly, and winces.
“Right,” Daichi says again.
Kuroo looks around at the entrance—the scuffed wood in the genkan; the sun-faded tatami that have been flipped and replaced and flipped and replaced more times than Daichi can count; the old-school ima, untouched since probably the 60s, with threadbare pillows on the floor and Koharu’s massive knitting basket spilling yarn everywhere. The house has barely changed since Daichi was a kid; in all likelihood it’s barely changed since Koharu was a kid herself, growing up here with Daichi’s dad. It’s like a run-down museum—or a freakin’ tomb, says Kaori, when she’s feeling dramatic.
“Nice place,” says Kuroo.
Daichi narrows his eyes at him, trying to figure out if he’s being sarcastic. He can’t tell, so to test him he says, “It’s pretty old-fashioned.”
“Old-fashioned is fun,” says Kuroo. “It’s fresh.”
“Technically it’s the opposite of fresh,” Daichi points out.
Then they spend a minute standing in silence, sizing each other up. Daichi is used to seeing Kuroo in his uniform, surrounded by his team—Yaku on one side, Kai on the other, Kenma lurking somewhere nearby on his phone, the Nekoma underclassmen generally behaving themselves (Daichi can’t imagine what that would be like). But Kuroo is at Todai now, not Nekoma, no longer team captain, no longer in officially sanctioned competition with Daichi, a natural state that—Daichi is realizing right now—structured most of their conversation up to this moment.
And so, for want of anything else to do, Daichi shows him the sights, such as they are.
“This used to be my grandparents’ house. My obaachan made the cushions,” says Daichi, in the ima.
“They’ve lasted well,” says Kuroo.
“We’ve been doing a lot of baking,” says Daichi, in the kitchen.
“Smells good,” says Kuroo.
“My sister and I are replacing the shoji,” says Daichi, by the windows.
“Helpful,” says Kuroo.
“The garden needs weeding,” says Daichi, by the back door.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” says Kuroo. “What about the small children hitching a wagon to that pig? Is that normal?”
“The what?” says Daichi. He squints over to the distant corner of the yard, where, yes, indeed, the younger Sawamuras are in the midst of a spirited effort to attach an ancient wagon to one of Koharu’s pigs with the help of a very homemade harness consisting mainly of Koharu’s long winter underwear. “Oh, for—guys! Cut it out! Leave the pigs alone!”
Norio looks up guiltily; Saki ignores Daichi entirely, focused on her efforts to heave the pig over so she can get the underwear around its sizeable belly. Kaori, sitting on an overturned bucket nearby, just continues texting on her phone.
“My siblings,” Daichi explains. He cups his hands around his mouth and hollers, “ Guys! Cut it out now! Don’t make me come out there!”
“Siblings? What, all of them?” says Kuroo.
“Well, the baby’s down for her nap inside,” says Daichi. “Alright, I’m counting to five! One—two—three—”
“The baby,” Kuroo repeats flatly, as the kids start scurrying over. “Why are there so many of you?”
“Apparently my parents have a lot of sex,” says Daichi, who, having seen his mom pregnant four times now, has developed a matter-of-fact attitude to certain aspects of life.
“Gross,” says Kuroo, and wrinkles his nose, which is—cute is the word that comes to mind, but—
“I have news about where you came from,” says Daichi, looking away.
“Nice try, Sawamura, but I know my parents found me inside a bamboo stalk,” says Kuroo—which is kind of funny, so Daichi laughs, and Kuroo grins at him, and—
“Oh no you don’t,” says Daichi, grabbing Saki by the back of her shirt as she tries to dart past him inside. “You’re filthy. Go hose off. Take your brother. Kaori, make sure they’re clean before they come in.”
“Why me?” complains Kaori.
“Because I said so,” says Daichi
“Your dad energy is off the charts,” observes Kuroo, as Daichi’s siblings slink off. Daichi doesn’t know what this is supposed to mean, and whether Kuroo sees this as a good or a bad thing, so he just frowns at him until Kuroo starts to fidget, rolling forward onto the balls of his feet and jamming his hands in the pockets of his shorts. Daichi finds himself looking at Kuroo’s wrists, bony and tanned in the scant inch or two between his pockets and the edges of his sleeves. They’re nice wrists, objectively. All the bones seem to be in the right places. Good. That’s good.
“Uh, anyway…” Kuroo says after a while, and Daichi’s head jerks up as he realizes he’s been staring. “I should go help with dinner…”
“Right. Me too,” says Daichi. He follows Kuroo off the engawa and into the house as they head for the front door where Kuroo left his shoes.
“So—”
“What—”
“Oh, sorry—”
“No, go ahead—”
Awkward, thinks Daichi, as Kuroo mutters something about seeing him around later and then slips back out into the front yard. Why are we so awkward…? It’s never been a problem before. Daichi is generally good at talking to people. He’s not used to feeling awkward. And he’s not used to this lightheadedness either, the way his heart starts going nervously—the same feeling he gets when he sticks his head under the water down at the beach below the cliffs here, the cold seawater rushing over him, pounding in his ears.
***
Way too early in the morning, Daichi is out in the yard with Koharu, wearing a thick sweater against the damp chill in the air, squinting through the fog that rolled in off the ocean overnight and stifling jaw-cracking yawn after jaw-cracking yawn as he helps Koharu feed the chickens.
“Morning, Sawamura,” says Kuroo, and nearly gets a face full of chicken feed.
“Don’t sneak up on me,” Daichi snaps, as his pulse settles back to normal (or what passes for normal, when Kuroo’s around).
“Tch!” snorts Koharu, glaring at Kuroo, who is leaning on the fence surrounding the nearby pigpen—although Daichi can’t help noticing his obachan hangs around to eavesdrop.
“I’ve been standing here for five minutes,” Kuroo points out. He’s wearing a threadbare t-shirt ragged with holes and a pair of equally aged sweatpants; the straps of his sandals are undone, like he just got out of bed and wandered out here. Between his feet is one of the felled posts of the old fence, mouldering into the damp grass as it hints vaguely at the property line.
“Why are you up so early?” Daichi demands.
“Just taking in the country life,” says Kuroo. The way he’s eyeing Daichi suggests Daichi is included in this category.
“Go take it in somewhere else.”
“Oh, come on, Sawamura. You can’t tell me you don’t enjoy my company,” says Kuroo.
Technically, Daichi cannot, at least not without lying. This is annoying, so Daichi switches gears. “What do you want?” he asks, as he returns to sprinkling feed on the pecked-clean dirt.
“I have a proposal,” says Kuroo.
“Sorry, but I don’t want to get married until I have my degree,” says Daichi.
“Not that kind of proposal,” says Kuroo. “However, duly noted. No, I was thinking—you’re here till term starts back up? How about we make things interesting? A little competition? Like the good old days?”
Daichi nudges away the two overenthusiastic chickens currently trying to eat his shoelaces and considers the offer. The part of him that has spent too much time around Asahi is instinctively wary—DON’T DO IT, DAICHI, yells Inner Asahi in a panic. The part of him that has spent too much time around Suga, on the other hand, is instinctively ready to throw hands—KICK HIS ASS, DAICHI, hollers Inner Suga, already foaming at the mouth. And the part of him that is one-hundred-percent Daichi? That part says tch, you can beat him easily and also, a little bit quieter, you’ll get to spend more time with him…
“What are we competing in?” Daichi asks.
Kuroo shrugs—a fascinating gesture on someone so lanky, producing as it does the distinct impression of a marionette with half its strings cut. “Bet I can husk corn faster than you.”
“Bet you can’t,” says Daichi. He dumps the remainder of the chicken feed on the ground in front of him and adds, “That’s an electric fence you’re leaning on, by the way.”
“Ah,” says Kuroo, hastily straightening up. “I was wondering why my arm was twitching.”
***
The competition takes place in Kimura-san’s backyard, over by the compost heap, around eight a.m. Kuroo sits cross-legged in the dew-damp grass; Daichi (the guest) has been respectfully offered an overturned bucket as a seat, to promote good corn-husking posture and avoid muddy shorts. Between them is a pile of unhusked corn of dubious origins. Around them curl shreds of mist, thick enough to make Kimura-san’s house loom ghostly behind them. And in front of them are all four Sawamura siblings, ready to pass judgement.
“Count us in, Kaori,” Daichi instructs. He has his hands on his thighs, tensed and ready to lunge forward for the nearest ear of corn.
“This is stupid,” Kaori mutters.
“If you’re bored, I’m sure obachan would appreciate a hand cleaning the cobwebs out of the shed,” says Daichi. Kaori grumbles, but she counts them in—and then Daichi’s hand is shooting out to grab an ear from the pile, as is Kuroo’s beside him just a fraction of a second later—ha , thinks Daichi, as he grabs the tassel and rips it down with the husk. He tugs off the rest of the leaves, breaks off the steam at the bottom, and tosses it in the bowl beside him.
In a five-kid family, any period of silence longer than thirty seconds is rare—but Daichi’s siblings are all watching with rapt attention, even little two-year-old Nanako. There’s the occasional cluck from Koharu’s chickens nearby, and the distant roar of the waves slapping the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs—but other than that, the only sound is the ripping of corn husks, followed by the regular thud as another corn cob hits one of their two bowls. The rhythm is kind of soothing. Daichi really feels like he’s getting in the zone. Whether or not the corn-husking zone is a desirable psychological space to occupy is another question—but it does give Daichi the opportunity to sneak a peek at Kuroo on the ground beside him, his face focused and intense, his hair familiarly messy, his long fingers stripping off thick leaves and soft silk with efficient ease.
Kuroo tosses his most recent cob in his bowl and grabs another one from the rapidly dwindling pile. He jerks his head in a futile attempt to flip his hair out of his face. Then he glances up, right at Daichi, and his mouth sort of twitches in a half-smile, one that says obviously I’m going to beat you, but this is kind of goofy, right? Daichi smiles back. And fumbles his corn. Mortifying.
Still, he’s feeling pretty confident when he grabs the last ear right out from under Kuroo’s fingers and rips the husk off it. A decisive victory. That’s what he’s anticipating.
“Seventeen,” says Kaori, when she’s finished counting Daichi’s bowl. Seventeen—that seems good. Respectable, definitely. It’s only been a couple minutes. Daichi risks shooting Kuroo a moderately smug smile, which—
“Nineteen,” says Kaori as sets aside Kuroo’s bowl, and Daichi’s grin vanishes.
“More like eighteen and a half, ‘cause the baby’s chewing on that one,” Saki points out.
Nanako pauses her efforts to gnaw raw corn right off the cob to let her lip wobble in a way clearly meant to induce sympathy as she insists, “Not a baby .”
“If you’re not a baby then how come you act like such a baby, huh?”
“Not a—”
“You cheated,” Daichi accuses Kuroo, ignoring his family’s squabbling.
Kuroo just cackles. “Oh yeah? How do you figure that, Sawamura? Never took you for a sore loser…”
“I want a rematch,” says Daichi.
“Tell you what—find another thirty-six ears of corn and you’re on,” says Kuroo.
“Don’t do that,” says Kaori, looking horrified.
“Then something else,” Kuroo suggests. “Hey—wait one minute—”
He gets to his feet, brushing damp earth off his butt, and lopes towards Kimura-san’s house. The Sawamura kids watch him. Daichi removes the corn from his two-year-old sister’s chubby little hands and pulls her into his lap before she starts wailing over it. Then he looks at all the corn and wonders what they’re going to do with it. What the heck came over him? He hates wasting food. Is he losing his mind? This is the kind of ridiculous no-brain idea Hinata and Kageyama would come up with…
Kuroo comes back a moment later with a scrap of paper—it looks like an old receipt—and a pen. He flips the receipt over, draws a T-chart, and labels the columns: TETSUROU on the right, DAICHI on the left. Then he puts one tick-mark under the column with his name.
“We’ll keep track,” he explains, grinning at Daichi. “So we have an official record of how badly I kick your ass.”
“Fat chance,” says Daichi, but there isn’t much heat in it. He’s staring at the scorecard. DAICHI—not SAWAMURA. DAICHI, right there in Kuroo’s neat handwriting. He feels weirdly jittery. But—not exactly in a bad way.
***
“Obachan!” Daichi calls, setting the bowl down on the kitchen counter. “Do you need any corn?”
The muted buzz of the TV and the steady click-clack of knitting needles suggest Koharu is busy in the living room—but the clicking of the needles pauses, and she appears in the doorway a minute later, where she crosses her arms and frowns down at the enormous bowl of uncooked corn.
“I hope you put that Kimura boy in his place,” is all she says.
“Next time,” Daichi promises.
“You’d better,” says Koharu. She sighs. “Alright, cut some onions. Looks like I’m making soup.”