Archive of Our Own

"Damn it all," Megumi swears as the ball just barely lands inside the white line. He looks at Yuji, drawing his lips into a tight line. “We’re getting our asses kicked.”

Yuji, per usual, is here for the thrill of the game and nothing else. “But it’s fun!” he chirps, and Megumi rolls his eyes, long-suffering. You clap Maki on the back as you pass each other, switching sides on the court as Megumi tosses the ball your way.

“Thirty-fifteen,” you call, stepping back and preparing to serve, lining the ball up in the triangular cutout of your racket. Your palm is sweaty around the barely-white grip tape—it’s so goddamn hot today. You hit the ball with a solid thwack, and Yuji dives to slam it back in a perfect backhand. It flies toward Maki’s domain, and she barely has to move to send it back across the net. The four of you volley for a while, sweat beading on your brow, before you finally hit the back corner just out of Megumi’s reach.

“Aha!” you shout, victorious, and Maki knocks elbows with you as she heads for the water bottles lined up near the side of the court. “Suck it, boys.”

“I can’t believe you’re leaving for two months,” you groan, trailing her and leaning your racket against the chain-link fence. You grab your Gatorade water bottle and spray it directly into your face, trying to relieve the heat. You definitely burned today.

“You’ll live,” Maki says as the boys join you, Yuji flopping dramatically onto the hard ground, Megumi staring down at him judgmentally.

“I disagree.”

Maki is going overseas to train one-on-one with a pro tennis player for sixty-three days, leaving you to the wolves. But the wolves are just Megumi and Yuji. And loneliness.

Part of you is worried she’ll come back and just be exponentially better than you. You want her to get better, obviously. But you don’t want to get left behind.

“Aw, would ya look at that!” a familiar voice crows from up the hill leading down to the courts. Gojo grins as he ambles toward you with Shoko trailing behind, like she’s embarrassed to be seen in public with him, which is fair. “Our star pupils practicing all on their own. On a weekend!” He lets himself in through the rickety gate, bowing dramatically to Shoko as he holds it open. She purposely takes a full five seconds to step through, making him stand there.

Shoko raises a hand in your direction, nodding at Maki. “Last day, Zenin?”

“Yes,” you answer for her, trying to cram two months of agony into the single breath of air and directing it right at your best friend. Megumi rolls his eyes, but Yuji hops over and gives Maki a sweaty hug, proclaiming loudly that he’s going to “handle” her cousin in her absence. At some point you figure Megumi’s life has just become one continuous, very long eye roll, for how often it’s his reaction.

“Five tomorrow?” he asks Maki. He’s driving her to the airport at the buttcrack of dawn, which is as close as Megumi Fushiguro gets to an expression of love. You’re just glad you don’t have to get up that early on a Saturday.

She nods, and Yuji sticks out his bottom lip. “I still don’t understand why you have to leave.”

Maki rolls her eyes. “Because when Mei Mei calls and tells you to go to Japan, you fucking go to Japan.”

Yes, you realize that if an Olympian called you to go train abroad for the summer, you’d go. But you’re upholding a double standard and being angsty because you can.

“She’s gonna be brutal,” Gojo whistles lowly, wincing a little as though the thought of training under Mei Mei is less appetizing than going through a meat grinder. But Maki only nods.

“I’m counting on it.” She puts her racket away and slings her bag over one shoulder, taking a step toward the gate of the courts. “You coming?”

Yuji scrambles to his feet and drags Megumi after her, but you wave for them to go on without you.

“I’ll catch up.”

Maki gives you a weird look but doesn’t ask questions, and you watch them start the trek up the hill to the student apartments before turning back to your coaches.

“And what can we do for you?” Shoko asks, brow raised. The speech you rehearsed as you tried to sleep last night seems stupid, now. It’s just Shoko, Gojo, the people who have shepherded you from a high school recruit to a rising D1 star. They’re not going to ridicule you for a request like this.

You know you’re a damn good tennis player. Nobody walks away with this many NCAA accolades without a combination of raw talent and hard work. But all of those titles are only half yours—you and Maki are the most fearsome duo on the court, but you want to be able to hold your own.

“I was thinking,” you start, gaze bouncing between Shoko and Gojo, “that I should try to get some individual training in while Maki’s gone.”

Gojo and Shoko exchange a look that you can’t quite decipher. Sometimes it’s infuriating how long they’ve known each other—they’ve got a whole wordless language down pat.

“I don’t want to hold her back when she comes home some Olympic-level tennis goddess,” you offer, filling the silence.

Shoko gives you a once-over and asks, “Why do you really want it?”

Well, that’s Shoko for you. No mercy.

“Because I’m not the best singles player on this team. I need to get better.” You cross your arms, worrying at your bottom lip. It’s not some form of self-deprecation—it’s just the truth. You’re lethal in doubles, but you want to be on Maki’s level when she gets back, and you want to dominate in singles this season.

“You want to win singles, then,” Gojo says. “For the Accelerator qualification.”

You’ve been read straight through. Open book. Sheer curtain. Only the players who get to the finals in the NCAA Championships qualify for the ITF College Accelerator Program. For singles, not doubles. That program will get you draws in pro tournaments. It’s your golden ticket to your end goal of making it to the Olympics.

There’s also the fact that it’s the second year of the NCAA’s pilot program, the one that puts individual championships before team championships. It basically makes tennis a year-round sport, and the season starts in September for you now, not January. You can feel the clock ticking, constricting around your chest like someone’s hugging you too tight.

“Listen, kid,” Shoko says in that aloof way of hers, smoke-scratchy voice and utter nonchalance always at odds with her sincerity. “You’re the heart of this team. It’s your last year. There’s only so much a couple old guys like us can teach you.”

Gojo’s jaw drops, obviously affronted at being lumped in as a fellow “old guy,” but then he turns to you and sighs. “She’s not wrong. Your skill level’s getting to be beyond this. You’re going places.”

Something in you warms at the praise—Gojo and Shoko were both such phenomenal players in their own primes, and if they really think you’ve exceeded their instruction, that’s more than you ever thought you could do.

“But,” Gojo adds, smirking, “I hear ya. And I agree. No better time for some one-on-one training.” He glances at Shoko, who nods, some unspoken confirmation passing between the two.

“What’re you thinking?” you ask, spinning the grip of your racket between your hands.

Gojo grins. “I know a guy.”

—

It’s weird, being here over the summer without Maki. She’s never really had the best relationship with her family, so she’s stayed on campus with you every year since you met as freshmen.

You know you’re just being dramatic—she only left this morning—but something about knowing that she’s not coming back until August makes it all feel different. Your room feels so vacant.

So you haven’t been spending a lot of time there. Instead, you’re sandwiched between Megumi and Yuji on the couch, eyes glued to the screen of Yuji’s shitty TV as the French Open plays. The men’s singles final.

Everyone knows Ishigori, two-time champion and media favorite (even though you’ve always kind of gotten the impression he’s an asshole), but the guy across the court is a new sensation in the tennis world. You’re pretty sure he’s not much older than you, and he’s already dominating every tournament he enters. You’ve probably crossed paths at tournaments before and just never realized it—there’s something vaguely familiar about his playstyle, the fluid back-and-forth.

“That Okkotsu guy is on something,” Megumi snorts, side-eyeing Yuji as he watches in an absolute rapture. You watch as his hand unconsciously goes back to his bowl for another concerningly large mouthful of popcorn and finds it empty, his eyes never leaving the screen.

“You’re an athlete iPad baby,” you say.

He takes a solid three seconds to register that you were speaking to him and turns with a mouthful of popcorn, which he stole from Megumi’s bowl. “Hmmngnh?”

Your phone buzzes, and you glance down to see a string of disjointed texts.

     nobara: THID SUCKS

     nobara: I MISS MY FVCIIJG GIRLFIRND

     nobara: is life worth living. is it

     nobara: the light of my life is in ANOTHER TIME ZONE

     nobara: AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

There’s a brief pause, and then: 

     nobara: okay i’m done now

     nobara: wyd

“Kugisaki’s coming over,” you warn, because her text was rhetorical. She has your location and Yuji’s, and one of these days she fully intends to hijack Megumi’s phone and add herself to Find My Friends. Which is probably why he groans and shoves his phone deep into his pocket, unreachable, at your announcement. “She’s having Maki withdrawals.”

“It’s been,” Megumi checks his watch, “thirteen hours.”

Nobara practically busts down the door moments later—meaning she was already well on her way when she started texting you—and flops onto the couch across your lap. “She’s not answering my texts!” she cries, pressing the back of her hand to her head like she’s fainting. “She hates me.”

“She’s on a plane,” Megumi says flatly, not even glancing at Nobara. She’s still in her volleyball shorts, wearing a too-long tennis tournament shirt over it, undoubtedly Maki’s.

She sighs, then mournfully continues as if Megumi hasn’t spoken. “She wants me dead.”

You pull up your messages and shove your phone in her face. “I thought you were done?”

“I’m going through the stages of grief.” She cracks one eye open to glare at you. “Let me live. No, let me die.” Her attention finally turns to the screen as Yuji gasps, nearly dropping his stolen popcorn.

“What?” you ask. “Play it back.”

“No, it’s your fault you weren’t paying attention,” Megumi says, but Nobara wrenches the remote from his hands and skips back ten seconds for you. You smirk at him, victorious.

It’s game point, fifth set, and Okkotsu shifts his weight, lifting the ball to his lips.

“Did he just fucking kiss it?” Nobara asks, and you can’t tell if she’s disgusted or impressed.

He serves. He serves the ball in such a flawless arc that Ishigori can’t possibly reach it, even as he dives to the far back corner of the court. It looks like it’s going out, but Okkotsu is entirely calm.

The ball hits just inside the line. Game over.

“What—who?” Nobara shrieks, whipping out her phone, and you know you don’t have to do any research because your overcurious search engine is still sprawled across your lap. On screen, Ishigori has thrown his racket to the ground, arguing furiously with the ump while Okkotsu strolls calmly off the court, a soft smile on his face.

“Jesus,” you murmur.

“Yuta Okkotsu. I guess he went out to Africa to train up when he was in high school… what the fuck? His ITF rank was forty-two while he was still in college?” Nobara gapes at the screen, scrolling up and down as if the words will change with the movement. “Wait, no, he didn’t go D1. He just came up in the ITF system. So, like, he was in the Olympics. Last year.”

He didn’t look familiar because you crossed paths in D1 competition. He looked familiar because he was in the motherfucking Olympics.

And he just won the French Open. The actual Roland-Garros. Who is this guy?

They’re replaying his ace on the screen, slowing it down, and you watch in complete awe. The trajectory is flawless. There’s no hesitation in his movement. He owns the court.

You’ve seen Olympians play a thousand times before. Legends like Gojo and Geto and Shoko, young stars like Hajime and Tsukomo. But this is something else. How do you not remember watching his matches?

You should go to sleep. Rest, get up early to hit the gym tomorrow, keep on with your summer routine even without Maki at your side. But even as you bid your friends goodnight and settle down in your vacant room, you’re replaying that ace in the back of your mind, over and over and over.

Maybe you’ll do that tomorrow, just drill your serve until you can do what that Okkotsu guy did. Gojo hasn’t given you any more insight on his “guy,” so you’re in the dark until he decides to be forthcoming. He has connections everywhere—that’s what happens when you’re a former Olympian, you figure—but he’s kind of distanced himself from the whole thing, aside from Geto and the other coaches at Kyoto just up the coast. Your best guess is some successful alum.

You’d never say this to his face, but if it’s good enough for Gojo, you trust it’s good enough for you.

—

You’ve been first to the court every day since recruitment, save for that one time you were puking your guts out. That day, you were second.

The sun isn’t even visible in the sky yet, the Thursday morning atmosphere hazy and gray, as you reach the crest of the hill that leads down to the tennis courts, and it takes a moment for you to resolve the movement you’re seeing near the edge of the fence.

Somebody else is there first.

You try not to be irritated as you make your way down to the courts, trying to figure out which of the guys has pulled their ass out of bed early enough to get here before you. But the closer you get, the clearer the figure slamming balls off the fence gets… it’s not any of them. You know all of the guys’ playstyles, their form, like the back of your hand.

This guy is tall, lanky but lean, and he swings in movements that feel so casual but are so quick that they have to be calculated. He’s just warming up, but you can tell he’s good.

When you reach the gate, you sling your bag onto a bench and dig around inside for a few balls to use for warmups.

And when you turn around, you come face-to-face with an incredibly attractive, very unexpected man. Dark hair, wide brown eyes that close as he sheepishly grins at you, then look down and finally up.

“Holy shit!”

You last saw this guy on the screen the same day Maki left, dominating the French Open like it was an afterthought. And now he’s standing on your court, the fingers of one hand curled around the chain link, and he’s smiling like this is an everyday occurrence.

“Sorry!” he laughs. “Did I scare you?”

All the words that might’ve been adequate responses wither away and die in your throat. You stare blankly at Yuta Okkotsu and open your mouth, close it, clear your throat. “Um—I—you’re…”

“Oh my gosh, sorry,” he says, scratching the back of his neck like he’s the one who should be self-conscious right now. “I should’ve introduced myself. I’m Yuta.” He holds out a hand, and it’s taking everything you have to not immediately say I know. “My coach is an old friend of your coach’s. You must be the prodigy looking for extra training, huh?”

You take his hand robotically—warm—and stutter out your own name, nodding. Get your shit together. “Sorry,” you say sheepishly. “I just—Gojo didn’t tell me you were coming today. Unsurprisingly. He likes to be cryptic, y’know.”

Yuta smiles fondly. “Yeah, I remember.”

Remember?

“You’re here to train me,” you say, meaning it to be a statement, but it comes out like a question, words tilting up unsteadily at the end.

Yuta nods, like it’s not a big deal at all that an actual Olympian is standing right in front of you pledging to shepherd you to singles tennis victory. You can’t stop seeing him on Yuji’s TV screen, movements fluid and sharp all at once. Decisive, immediate, victorious. Suddenly your palms are sweating, and the fact that there’s nobody else on these courts feels like a very important fact, something real and expansive.

You, and Yuta Okkotsu.

Well, you think, spinning your racket once in your grip. Time to find out what you’re made of.

“Let’s go, then.” You crack a grin, and Yuta looks pleasantly surprised at the abruptness. Maybe you should be asking him more questions—how he knows Gojo, why he’s helping you, what he wants. But you can’t help but immediately start to size him up as an opponent; the feints and serves and backhands you watched so raptly the other day become calculations, matters of gaining or losing points.

“You don’t want to warm up or anything?” Yuta asks, and it feels like a test. The moment you step onto the court, your exhaustion zaps itself away, melts into the air with the morning dew. You are here to play tennis, and you are here to do it well.

“This is my warmup.” You know you’re out of your depth saying shit like this to a player like him, but you can’t help it. The game is already in your veins, better than caffeine, waking you up and setting you on fire. “I’ll let you start, new guy.”

Yuta doesn’t hesitate for a millisecond. You hadn’t even realized he was holding a ball in his free hand, but it’s coming at you in a half-moment, and you jump back to give yourself enough space to return. You’re not fast enough. The ball’s headed right for no man’s land, and you don’t stand a chance.

“Christ,” you mutter, blinking across the court at Yuta.

He just did the exact same thing to you that he did to Ishigori at the French Open.

Yuta’s eyes are dark even from here, the sunrise making his tensed silhouette appear backlit and imposing. Gone is the happy-go-lucky, shyly smiling boy who introduced himself outside the tennis courts.

This is an Olympian.

“Oh,” you breathe. “So that’s how you wanna play it.”

“New guy, huh?” he says, and it’s still teasing, but not in the light-hearted manner he was speaking before. This is tennis trash talk.

That’s your first language.

You don’t warn him before you pull a ball from your pocket and send it at him, but he doesn’t miss a beat, bringing his racket back with the movement of the ball and then hurtling it back through the air—you can see it in his stroke, the downward slope, he’s doing it again I have to back up—

It hits the ground.

“Fuck!”

Yuta is unfazed. “Again,” he calls, and you don’t question where the balls are coming from, you don’t protest, you just reset, grit your teeth and wait for the strike.

This time, you anticipate the landing spot and you’re ready, slamming the ball back into the air. It’s not a great curve, but it won’t go out. Yuta effortlessly backhands it, and you send it back higher this time, make him reach for it, and—

The ball hits the ground behind you.

“What,” you pant, staring at it, “the fuck.”

“Again.”

Serve. Hit. Volley. Backhand. There’s a curve on that one, little bit of a spiral, underhand, you’ve got it—no man’s land.

“Again.”

Ace.

“Again.”

You’re sweating, and the sun isn’t even all the way above the horizon.

“Again.”

You want to scream, but you just hit the ball harder. Let me be lethal, you think. It doesn’t matter that this man is a professional tennis player. He’s your opponent, and you want to win.

Again.

This one is yours. You can feel it even as you raise your arm for the serve—the wind is barely there but it’s blowing to the right, the ball is an extension of your fingers, the racket is an extension of your mind.

Bam.

It hits Yuta’s far corner. Point, you.

You spin the racket in your hand out of habit, scanning the balls scattered across the far court, and Yuta’s low whistle draws your gaze back to him.

“Damn, Ace,” he says approvingly. Something in you preens a little at the recognition.

“Ace?”

“I’ve never seen an ace like that. The way you move your wrist is…” His eyes are boring into you, like he’s analyzing the very fabric of your being. You don’t let yourself break the eye contact. “This, I can work with.” His smile is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. It’s entirely different from the one he flashed you when he ran into you outside the court. This is sharp, calculating, excited. “So, yes. Ace.”

One small victory in dozens, but somehow it feels more earned than any of your victories, your titles. You’re frustrated and tense and absolutely wired and alive. This is what you wanted.

This is how you become the best.

—

“It’s the way you had an Olympic tennis player in your back pocket this entire time and said nothing,” you say flatly, leaning over Gojo’s messy desk to flick him square on the forehead. He yelps, pulling his legs off the desk and glaring at you. Yuta chuckles from behind you in the doorway, a quiet, shy sound.

“It was a good surprise! Yuta, defend me.”

He steps into the room after you, nudging the door partially closed with his foot. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell her anything.”

“Oh, betrayal.” Gojo clutches at his chest in mock agony. “From the ones I trusted the most… the future of my program…”

“Oh, shut up,” you snort, collapsing into the chair on the other side of the desk. You’ve sat here more times than you can count, felt every emotion there is to feel in this faux-leather chair in the corner office of the athletic department. “I’m not sure I can trust you, anymore. Who else you got up in your contacts, Coach? Beyoncé? Yuki Tsukomo?”

Gojo frowns mournfully. “She blocked me.”

“Which one?”

“Both.”

You tilt your head back to meet Yuta’s gaze, half upside-down from his position in the doorway. You’re glad to find your own confusion mirrored on his face—you’re not the only one who can never tell if Gojo’s joking.

“Okkotsu here knows exactly what you need to learn,” Gojo continues before you can ask any follow-up questions. “You want personal training, this guy can give it to you. I trust him.”

Yuta’s answering smile is soft and almost sheepish, like he thinks he’s undeserving of all the praise. Even the way he holds himself is a total 180 from the way he behaved on the court. You noticed it earlier, the difference between his frazzled introduction and his brutal first training, but this man has a split persona—Olympic athlete, and… Yuta.

You really aren’t sure what to do with either of them.

“How long are you here?” you ask Yuta, kicking out the chair beside yours to gesture for him to take a seat. He doesn’t collapse into it like you did, instead perching on the edge, straight-backed, all proper. You have to bite the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing. Manners, in Gojo’s office.

“I’ll be in and out, probably,” he says, tilting his head, considering. “I, uh, don’t really need to hit too many competitions since I already…”

“Destroyed everyone in the French Open and secured your inarguable place in the Olympics?” you interject, wry. He blushes, genuinely, just a little, and you lean in despite yourself. “Don’t be shy.”

Gojo, uncharacteristically, doesn’t say anything. He’s leaned back in his rolling chair, studying the both of you like he knows something you don’t.

Yuta clears his throat. “I’ll hit the major slams and a few other comps,” he says. “Might be kind of sporadic.”

“I’ll take what I can get.” And you mean it. As long as this resource is at your disposal, you’re going to take it for all it’s worth—Maki is in Japan training under one of the best tennis players of all time. You’ll be damned if you let her down when she comes back.

Plus, there’s the Accelerator Program. It’s no small motivation.

“And it’s just you?” Yuta asks, glancing between you and Gojo. You hum, considering. It’s not like the rest of your team wouldn’t jump at the opportunity, but selfishly, you want to keep this to yourself. You also don’t want to dump a whole group of college students on Yuta when he only agreed to train one.

“She’s my most motivated player,” Gojo says, “and a lot of the others are working over the summer or are already involved in third-party training programs. I have a pair of guys who might want in on it eventually, but there’s no pressure. I brought you here for Ms. Star Player over here, and I intend for her to have the best season of her career to date.”

You know Gojo recognizes your talent. He’s proven it time and time again, putting in the hours and the words and the competition entries to back them up. But hearing him lay out so plainly that you’re the best player on this team… something about it has heat rising to your cheeks, your eyes trying to find somewhere else to land. It feels stupid to say it’s an honor about a compliment from your coach. But… it kind of is.

He might be a moron, but he’s also gold medalist Satoru Gojo.

“Thanks,” you say, crossing your legs and aiming for casual. If Gojo detects how affected by his words you actually are, he doesn’t mention it.

“You have free reign of the south courts whenever you want,” he says instead, looking at Yuta. “She’s got a key, I’ll get one for you too. Come to me if you need anything, but I know you guys are more than capable of pacing yourselves.”

There’s an easy familiarity when Yuta nods, and now that you’re not on the court, the curiosity is almost all-consuming. “How do you know each other?” you ask, leveling each of them with an appraising look. “I know you said your coach knows Gojo, but who’s your coach?”

Yuta says, perfectly easily, “Miguel Oduol.”

Your jaw hits the ground.

“What?”

You spin to look accusingly at Gojo. “You know Miguel Oduol? And you just never thought to say—oh my God! One of these days I’m enlisting Nobara to steal your phone and go through your contacts.”

She may not be on the tennis team, but she’s around enough that she and Gojo have developed the sort of relationship where they’re constant nuisances to each other. Nobara almost always wins their petty arguments, and she would truly have no qualms about invading Gojo’s privacy.

He rolls his eyes, laughing. “He’s an old friend. We met at the Olympics. I gotta be honest, he’s some of the toughest competition I’ve ever had. Kinda guy that makes you want to get better, so you can hold up against him.” He nods to Yuta. “When I went to see him in Africa, he was already training Okkotsu here, and we played a couple rounds.” He puffs out his chest. “Not just anyone can hold their own against the Satoru Gojo. So I kept in touch.”

And just like that, he’s annoying again.

“I can’t believe you trained under Miguel Oduolo,” you mutter, in awe. “He’s…”

“Okay, yes, he’s cool, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Gojo says placatingly, holding up both hands. “The best coach on the entire planet is sitting right here. So.”

“Cocky,” you say dryly.

Yuta smiles. “Ah, you haven’t changed, have you?”

You snort, Yuta chuckles, and your dynamic has fallen into place just like that. You’re exhausted from the morning’s training, but all you want to do is get back out there, pick apart Yuta’s playstyle even more, serve and rally and hit until he gives you that nod of approval again.

“Yeah,” Gojo says, smirking as he kicks his feet up on his own desk. You reach over and shove his legs off, but he’s unbothered. “I think you’re gonna get along just fine.”

—

“Yuta Okkotsu!” Nobara screeches, grabbing your hands and pressing her face too close to yours. “Yuta. Okkotsu. Yuta Okkotsu!”

“Yes, I heard you the first time, thank you.” You wrench one of your hands free and gently push her face away. “Yeah, I knew he had connections, but it was kind of crazy. He just showed up.”

“Dramatic ass,” Nobara huffs, probably about Gojo. “I cannot believe him. I’m gonna steal his phone and see who else he’s got in his contacts list. I bet he knows some famous volleyball player somehow and he’s just been holding out on me!” She’s too busy rambling for you to explain your laughter, the fact that you already promised him you’d get Nobara to do just that.

“What’s he like?” Yuji asks, peeking over the back of the couch, resting his chin on his folded arms. “Is he crazy? He looks so serious on TV. Did he even talk? Was he awesome?”

“Did he destroy you?” Megumi asks, and you flip him off.

“Ye of little faith.” But—well. Again. Again. Again. “Okay, yeah, a little.”

“Sucker.”

“Nepo baby.”

“Gojo’s not my dad!”

“Yes, he is,” you and Yuji and Nobara say in tandem, and Megumi groans and walks into the other room. You and Nobara high-five without even looking at each other.

“You have to come back,” Yuji yells in Megumi’s general direction. “We’re calling Maki soon!”

It’s a hassle to arrange video calls with your best friend when the time difference is a whopping sixteen hours, but it’s almost eight, which means you should be able to grab her on her lunch break soon. You want to hear all about Mei Mei and Japan, but you also desperately want to tell her about Yuta. About the way he plays, his insane backhand, his killer serve. You need to share this with someone who’s going to be as calculated about it as you are.

Right at eight, your phone lights up with the familiar .5 photo of Maki at last year’s finals. She looks insane with the visor pulled half-down her face (Megumi’s doing) and her hair matted to her face with sweat (tennis’s doing), but you know your contact photo on her phone matches.

You slide to the right without hesitating. “Maki!”

It takes a second for her to settle her phone, probably leaning it against her water bottle on the table, but then she’s there in front of you and it’s like nothing ever changed. The boys and Nobara crowd you in—you’re not sure when Megumi actually did come out of his room—and you grin as Nobara tries to wrestle the phone away from you because oh my god you have to let me say hi to my wife, no I don’t care if she’s not my wife yet, girlfriend privilege comes first, you heathens!

“I leave for a week and you’re all feral,” she rolls her eyes when things have marginally settled down.

“No,” Megumi sighs. “They were like this before.”

He has a point, but Nobara makes an offended noise anyway.

“Maki! Guess who’s fucking training—”

“Hey!” You clap a hand over her mouth. “My story, thank you very much—”

“It’s Yuta Okkotsu!” Yuji shouts, and you groan, releasing Nobara from your hold when she licks your hand in retaliation.

“Okay, first of all, gross.” Nobara beams. “Second of all, shut up.” Yuji looks like a kicked puppy, so you pat him on the head and he perks back up. “Third of all, yes, Yuta Okkotsu showed up at the court with no warning and we played for like, three hours and it was insane and ridiculous and he’s amazing, Maki. Also, I miss you and I can’t take much more of this so please come home.”

Maki stares at the camera and just blinks slowly before letting out a long breath. “Okay. Wow.” She snorts, digging into her food. “First of all, I miss you too, and I am not coming home because this is the most brutal training I have ever experienced and it’s phenomenal.”

She does look exhausted, but in that kind of glowy way you do after a really good practice, when you know you got better because you pushed so hard. Her eternal ponytail is a mess, strands plastered to the side of her face and frizzing out on top, and she’s inhaling her food like she’s never eaten lunch in her life, but you can tell from the set of her shoulders and the way her racket is leaned right up against the table that she already can’t wait to get back to it. She is the only person who’s ever loved this sport as much as you. A kindred spirit. You respected each other from the start, and the friendship built on that respect is one of the best you’ve ever had.

“Homophobic,” Nobara groans.

“We’re literally dating.”

“Ho. Mo. Pho. Bic.”

“Sure, babe.”

Nobara brightens at the term of endearment. “Aw, you do love me!”

“Second of all,” Maki continues through a mouthful of rice, “what the fuck?”

“I know!” You throw your hands up, Yuji having propped your phone up on the crooked coffee table so you’re all in frame. You and Yuji are on the couch with Nobara in front of you on the floor, and Megumi is leaning against the couch’s back, pretending he doesn’t care.

“That’s good, right? You wanted individual pro training,” Maki notes. The thing about Maki is that she only really expresses emotion in three default expressions, which people who don’t know her probably interpret as what the fuck, oh my god, and I hate you. But because you do know her, almost as well as you know your own tennis racket, you read the slight furrow in her brows, the angle of her head, the barely-there nod for what it is: Maki immediately reevaluating her own training in her head, stacking it up against yours, taking what she knows of both of your trainers and figuring out how to best build off each other the moment she gets back.

You nod. “And he’s crazy. Like, he’s nice and everything, don’t get me wrong, but when he plays? He’s so locked in, it’s intimidating. He just served me aces for like, twenty straight minutes until I adapted and then we went from there.”

Yuji’s eyes are wide, paying rapt attention to every word. As you speak, even Megumi seems to tune in with mild interest. “I think this is gonna be really good,” you say, and you mean it.

“Good.” Maki nods once, firmly, and you know she’ll text you about this later, that you’ll give her more details when she’s not in a rush to get back to the court.

“And you?” you push. “Is Mei Mei still making you use the ball machine?”

Maki groans, pitching slightly forward. “Yes, but I swear this thing is on crack cocaine. It is not a normal ball machine, it does three at once and I think I’m bruising from it.”

“So stop getting hit,” Megumi offers unhelpfully, and Maki flips him off.

“You’re gonna get it and then come back here and play like you have six arms,” you say with absolutely zero doubt. Nobody adapts to situations quite like Maki Zenin. She shrugs, which you know is her acknowledging that you’re right.

“Did you name your racket yet?” Yuji interrupts. He’s very insistent that naming tennis rackets creates… something, something about bonding or luck or skill or attachment, between player and equipment. His racket is named Human Earthworm. He very clearly wanted you to ask, so you didn’t.

Nobara named Megumi’s Gerard Way because of the time she caught him listening to Welcome to the Black Parade years ago. Yuji likes to call yours Lightning McQueen because you once made the mistake of saying “kachow” after kicking his ass. The day you started thinking of your racket as Lightning in your head, you almost slammed it into a wall. You can’t believe he got you to do it.

Maki, however, is unrelenting.

“I’m not naming my racket,” she says, and Yuji is already spouting off new suggestions. They get worse every time he tries.

“Tennis Demon,” he says. He’s been really fixated on the demon thing lately. “Slaughter Demon.”

“That’s fucking stupid.”

“You can call it SD for short! Nobody will know—”

“Why are we talking about San Diego?” Gojo asks, poking his head into the room. You didn’t even hear him come in. Megumi pushes off the couch, so evidently Gojo’s here for him—not my dad, sure—but Yuji is now fervently explaining to Gojo that Maki needs to name her racket or she’ll regret it for the rest of her life, which is simply not true.

“Slaughter Demon,” Gojo says slowly. You hope he’s about to ridicule it, but he tilts his head thoughtfully and goes, “Not bad.”

“Oh my god.” You facepalm. “You guys are so stupid.”

“We agree on that, at least,” Megumi says.

“At least? What do you mean, at least?”

“Oh, look at the time,” Megumi says, not looking at his watch or his phone or any form of time-telling device. “Gotta run.”

“Fushiguro, you are going to get it on the court tomorrow!” you say to his back.

“Yep, okay. Going.”

“Where?” Yuji asks, flipping himself upside down on the couch so his pink hair brushes the floor. “Woah,” he murmurs as the blood rush evidently hits.

Megumi is already pulling on his boots. “Tsumiki’s.”

“Family dinner!” Gojo sings.

“It’s not family dinner—”

The sound of their arguing continues all the way into the hall, muffled by the closing of the door. Moments later, Gojo nearly gives you a heart attack when he pops his head back in and points directly at you. “By the way, little star player, you’re meeting Yuta on the court at six. So get some sleep! Or don’t, your funeral.”

And he’s gone.

Nobara snorts and exchanges a look with you, then Yuji. And she says, “It’s so family dinner.”

—

Every morning, you meet Yuta on the court just as the sun is fighting its way over the horizon line. You sweat and hit and rally and serve until your arms feel like they’re going to fall off, and then you run and do weight training and go back to the court until the sun sets. It’s the most brutal training you’ve ever experienced. Sometimes you join the boys in the afternoon, or other teammates will pop in and out of the other complexes. But they gravitate away from you and Yuta most of the time, after they’ve gotten past the novelty of his presence.

Because on the court, he’s a force. He’s a whirlwind. Sharp, fast, unforgiving. You can’t even blame Ino when he sees the pair of you hitting and slinks off the court. Anyone too close will get pulled into this orbit, and you’re pretty sure once you’re in, you can’t ever escape.

You can already feel the results of your training when you play with Megumi or Yuji or the others. Yeah, your muscles burn and you want to sleep for ten years, but you have never been this sharp. You’re playing with a new kind of spatial awareness and anticipation of movement that you know is tangible. You can’t wait to test it against Maki when she gets back, and then with her.

Yuta’s praise is sparse but genuine, and when he tells you you’ve got something right, you know he means it. You find yourself reaching for that acknowledgement day after day, night after night, sunrise to sunset and sometimes in your dreams. It’s become a way of life for you, lately.

He was right about his presence being sporadic. He always tells you when he’s leaving, but he never tells you when he gets back. One day, you just show up to the court and there he is, like the first day all over again, and he says, “So what’d you learn without me?”

And then you play, and play, and play.

After training, you huddle in Gojo’s office to watch film or old matches, sometimes even Gojo’s or Yuta’s or Miguel’s, piecing together different techniques and analyzing your own shortcomings. Conversations about the sport turn into conversations over dinner, and then suddenly sometimes they’re not about the sport at all.

For all his acclaim as a player, off the court, he’s… kind. And shy, sometimes. And interesting.

He started young, like most pros do, and was making waves in ITF by his early teens. He got eliminated back in the 2020 Olympics about halfway through. When Miguel found him, it wasn’t hard to convince him to pack up everything and go to Africa. You don’t talk much about family, but you’ve gathered that he doesn’t have much of it, or at least much that he cares to talk about.

You can’t help thinking of Maki, all the way across the sea in Japan. But it’s different with her, with a number of days to count down, the knowledge that she’s coming back. The concept of her just up and leaving… you know she wouldn’t, and neither would you. You’ve got too much here.

Kenya is even farther from the West Coast than Japan. Did Yuta have nobody to miss?

You learn that he likes soba, and old movies, and running in the cold. He smiles when he’s nervous and kisses the ball before he serves and never talks while chewing. But the most interesting thing you find, you discover when you’re watching your own practice recordings, alone in Gojo’s office with hardly any space between you. You’re both leaning toward the screen, passing a bowl of popcorn back and forth.

“I don’t understand how you move like that,” you admit, side-eyeing him. There’s a grace to his hits that feels unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Like a dance.

“You wanna know the secret?” he asks, his voice a little teasing, so you raise a brow in response and give him your full attention, waiting. His cheeks get a little red, and his hand goes up to fiddle with a strand of his hair, sheepish. “I, uh, actually trained with a katana for a while. Surprisingly transferable skill set. Who knew?”

“The katana? Like—you—the fucking sword?” You find yourself studying him at this new revelation, the set of his shoulders, the definition of his muscles. You can see it, actually, now that he’s said it. He moves like the racket is an extension of himself, but in a wholly different way than you do.

You use it. He wields it.

“That’s what you were doing with Miguel? Being an actual ninja?” you muse. “Damn, Yuta.”

“Well, we didn’t start out like that,” he shrugs, avoiding eye contact now. This is another thing you’ve learned: He’s wary of praise, even if he knows he’s earned it.

You’re perched atop Gojo’s desk, having shoved his mess of disorganized paperwork and god knows what else to the side to make room for yourself. Your laptop is resting atop a crooked pile of books you’re sure Gojo has never touched in his life, hooked up to the TV with an HDMI cord you rescued from the bottom drawer, and you reach forward and tap the space bar to pause the playback.

Yuta’s taken Gojo’s spinning desk chair, and as you tug your legs up onto the desk and sit cross-legged, he turns to face you, one ankle resting atop his knee.

It’s an odd shift in perspective, you being above him. You’ve grown used to the several inches he’s got on you, but now you’re a bit above his eye level. But he still meets your gaze unwaveringly. You like this about him, that he’s always ready to reciprocate the attentiveness you show him.

“So how did you start out?”

He hums for a moment, like he’s piecing his thoughts together. “Miguel found me when I was trying to adapt to a different playstyle than I was used to,” he finally says. “He said I had a potential he hadn’t seen in a long time, but I didn’t know what to do with it. And I kind of felt that, too. I was… lost in it, I guess.”

The weight of his words is tangible, and you know there are more he’s dredging up, so you don’t speak. You lean forward and place an elbow on your knee, resting your chin in your hand, studying him.

The both of you came here right from the courts, so he’s in his standard practice gear, his hair tousled and the hem of his shirt dark with drying sweat. You don’t look much better, loose hair plastered to your temples, and you don’t even want to know what it would smell like if you gave in to your whims and kicked off your sneakers right now. But somehow Yuta makes the disheveled athlete look… attractive. His tee is cut off at the sleeves, and as much as you try to avert your gaze, you can’t help noticing the definition of his abs visible past the stretched-out fabric. The logo on the shirt from some ancient Challenger is faded, the shirt clearly loved and used to its fullest.

You need to stop looking at him so intently. But he doesn’t seem to mind.

“I think he found me at a time when I was really desperate for the guidance,” he finally continues. “I had all this energy. I so badly wanted to play and I just didn’t know how to get to the next level, didn’t know where I was going. I was so… overwhelmed with the competition and the stakes and the schedule and I needed to take a step back and find my roots again. Miguel saw that. He took me right back to the basics, made me build myself up from the ground.”

It’s not dissimilar to what Gojo and Shoko had done to your whole squad the day you first arrived on campus. “You’re here because you’re good enough to play D1,” Shoko had said, pacing the floor of the gym, “but you’re not D1 yet.”

It had been the hardest season of your life.

It made you the player you are today. You wouldn’t trade it for the world.

“And then he said what I was missing was the fluidity,” Yuta goes on. “I think I actually squeaked when he just whipped out a sword. I had no idea what was going on. But I trusted him, so I let him do his thing. And I got better with the sword, and then I realized when the racket was in my hands, it felt the same. I could move with it instead of against it. I could let it lead.” He shrugs. “I got so much better when I was in Kenya. The commentators, the journals, they all said I was a different player when I came back. They… weren’t wrong, I don’t think.”

You’re filing the words into the relevant boxes in your mind as he speaks, holding onto some more than others, fitting pieces together. A different playstyle. Lost. Guidance.

“You were a doubles player,” you realize aloud, everything clicking into place. “In the Olympics. You didn’t play singles. Why…?”

You’re racking your brain trying to figure out if you’ve heard of whoever his doubles partner was, but you’re coming up empty.

“Doubles was my first love,” he shrugs. “I mean, I still love it. But you know as well as anyone there’s more of a pro market for singles. And I’d had the same thought as you, y’know? Had to be able to stand alone.” He bites his lip, considering. “And I couldn’t. I wasn’t a singles player. I didn’t know what I was doing. Miguel, he took everything I was good at from doubles and reworked it into my singles playstyle. I owe him everything, for that.”

You are no stranger to secrets, to the walls people build up around their histories. You’ve encountered it again and again. When you first met Megumi—before you ever called him Megumi, when he was just Fushiguro to you—he hardly even spoke to you. You clocked his weird relationship with Gojo immediately, but whenever you pushed, he shut down. It took a long time for him to actually open up, on his own time, and talk about his dad. Toji Fushiguro, an Olympic sensation who racked up repeat titles before he got caught on steroids and went off the grid. Gojo was a better role model to Megumi than his real dad ever was.

And Maki, her stilted relationship with her twin sister, the complicated network of her family and their absurd expectations. Nobara, how she left everything she knew to get to a city where she could really get good at volleyball, where she could find her own way. Even your coaches and their bizarre histories are still unfolding around you these days. The first time you saw Gojo interact with Geto from the university up the coast, you couldn’t tell if they hated each other or were secretly hooking up.

You know these things take time, and you aren’t a naturally patient person, but tennis has taught you discipline more than anything else. If Yuta wants to tell you why he quit doubles, why he struck out on his own, he’ll do that in his own time.

Even if you really, really want to force it out of him right now.

“I don’t know,” he murmurs, his gaze distant now. “The Olympics… sometimes I think I should switch back. I know Inumaki would. But it might be too late, now, I guess. And…” Yuta shakes out his shoulders, as if to dislodge the concept with it. A nonverbal well, anyway.

Inumaki. It doesn’t ring a bell, and you resolve to look him up later.

“Thanks,” you murmur, trying to channel your appreciation into the word. “For…”

You feel ridiculous, fumbling for words, but he just gives you that soft, off-the-court smile. “No, thank you, actually. For… listening.”

There’s still about twenty minutes left on the film, but it feels like the wrong time to press play. To sink into silence without offering anything in return for Yuta’s openness.

“I don’t know how to be great without Maki,” you confess. He raises a brow, leaning forward a little in his seat.

“It’s always been the two of us. I was never good at singles in the same way—I’ve always operated better as a unit, as a team. And they all say tennis is an individual sport. I feel like I’ve always been behind, in that regard. And I… I’m never gonna make it, if I can’t do both.”

He nods, considering. “Maki,” he says. “She’s older than you, right?”

“Mm. She stretched her eligibility to fifth year.” A lot of athletes do, but you don’t plan on it yourself. Maki wouldn’t be there with you.

“Wait, how old are you? Is that rude to ask?” You grin. You could just ask Nobara, who has bookmarked Yuta’s Wikipedia page like the stalker she is, but the primary source is right here.

“Twenty-two,” he says. The same age as Maki.

“Damn.” You sigh, stretching out your legs and letting them thunk against the side of Gojo’s desk. “One year on me and you’re already an Olympian. What am I doing with my life?”

He laughs, a bright, quiet sound. “Earning it,” he says. “Skipping out on the college thing—sometimes I wonder if that was the wrong move. I guess everything worked out. But your coaches, your teammates? That’s what’s making you better every day. I don’t know that there’s anything more valuable than that.” He shrugs. “So hang onto it while you can.”

You nod, thinking of your teammates, your friends. Not just on the women’s team, but the boys, too. Kirara and Riko, Mimiko and Nanako. Megumi and Yuji, Ino and Hakari. Maki. Gojo. Shoko. Kusakabe and Akari, your assistant coaches.

Yeah. You wouldn’t give them up.

“Yuta?”

“Hm?”

“You’re making me better, too. So thanks for that.”

He smiles and reaches for the remote. “I’m glad.” He presses play, gaze shifting from you back to the screen. But very quietly, so much so that you almost convince yourself you didn’t hear it, he says, “You make me better, too.”

—

The summer goes on, heat blazing and muscles burning, and you train and train and train. More and more of your teammates filter onto campus, returning from various summer trips or training camps, and sometimes you and Yuta play with them or against them, pairing up and splitting off and running drills until his presence feels almost normal. Just another Olympian in your midst, yelling in the early-morning fog.

At some point, it starts to feel as if he’s one of you. He’s the same age as Maki and Hakari and Kirara, and he just falls right into step. It helps that he’s already familiar with Gojo, and apparently Shoko too.

When he’s around, he’s in Gojo’s office or at the courts or in the gym or even leeching off your summer meal plan and eating in the campus dining center. And then he’ll be gone again, and you’ll follow his progress online—well, Nobara will—and you’re reminded all over again that he is in a class all his own.

You can feel yourself getting better. Your weakest spot, that fated area between the baseline and the service line, becomes a more familiar territory. Yuta’s aces are less and less frequent, his absolutely brutal serve finding your racket more and more.

You’re still hopelessly outmatched, but the progress is worth it.

When he flies out for Wimbledon at the end of June, you’re up at the ass crack of dawn to drive him to the airport. Megumi gives you some weird look you can’t parse when you explain why you need to go to bed early the night before, but you gave up trying to understand the intricacies of Megumi’s facial expressions ages ago. That’s Yuji’s job.

Then you watch, all of you, on Yuji and Megumi’s TV as Yuta sweeps the whole thing.

“I can’t believe this guy is training you,” Yuji marvels, not an ounce of jealousy in his voice, only that familiar joy.

“Yeah.” Your laugh is more of a disbelieving breath as you sink back into the couch cushions, sprawling your legs across Nobara’s without tearing your gaze from the screen. “Yeah, neither can I.”

It’s only after Wimbledon, when you’re watching doubles after all the singles matches wrap up, that you remember what Yuta said about his partner. Inumaki.

“Hey, chronically online love of my life?”

“Hm?” Nobara sits up from her place sprawled across the couch, head on Yuji’s lap.

“Can you look up the name Inumaki for me? Inumaki tennis. Or just like, Inumaki Olympics. Yuta mentioned his doubles partner and I was gonna look into it.”

“And you aren’t capable of typing two words into a search engine yourself?” Megumi drawls. You point to your phone, on the uneven coffee table in the center of the room.

“Dude, it’s so far away.”

Megumi just rolls his eyes.

Nobara’s usually quick to report, but her brows are furrowed as she scrolls, swiping in and out of tabs and making confused noises to herself. You watch about ten different emotions play across her face in the span of two seconds. “What?”

“Toge Inumaki,” she says, looking up from her phone to meet your gaze. “Accomplished doubles and singles player. Played with Yuta.”

That’s what you expected. So why is Nobara looking at you like that?

“But…?” you prompt, frowning as the match on screen wraps up and Yuji silently fist pumps because the girls he was rooting for won.

“But,” Nobara says, “he was never in the Olympics.”

“What?”

You know for a fact that Yuta played doubles in the 2020 Olympics. He split off and started playing singles after that. He… this doesn’t make sense.

“He and Yuta weren’t partners in the Olympics,” she repeats. “They just did some pro circuits together, but not for that long. It looks like they went to high school together, probably played doubles there and tried to go pro before they split... Actually, it’s not saying Yuta did men’s doubles at the Olympics at all?”

“No,” you murmur aloud. “But he did, I—what?” You talked about this with him. He didn’t switch to singles until the 2024 Olympics.

Would he lie to you?

Even Megumi’s brows are knitted, and he’s leaning toward Nobara, curious. Yuji is evidently just very confused, but he doesn’t seem too bothered about it.

“Oh, found it,” Nobara says, sitting up completely now. “Wait, guys, he did do doubles.” She cocks her head. “Mixed doubles. Someone girl named Rika Orimoto. She’s got a page, too, let me…”

Nobara is leaning forward now, elbows on her knees, curtain of hair blocking off her face as she reads. Then her thumb goes still over the screen, and she looks up like the breath has been knocked out of her.

It’s not often you see Nobara Kugisaki at a loss for words. You can count the times on one hand. There was first time Maki said I love you, which you learned from Maki after the fact. And the time she walked in on Gojo and Geto making out in his office, which might be a stretch because her dead silence did very quickly give way to shrieking about how you owed her money. Also, the entire second half of Mockingjay, when she was too busy crying over Finnick to say anything.

And now.

“Okay,” Megumi prompts, losing patience. “What about Rika?”

Nobara swallows, placing her phone face-down beside her on the couch.

“She… she’s dead.”