4-vatar

yk how Tendou wanted to offer Hinata a place to sleep during the training camp but Ushijima said no? Yea what if Ushijima had said "Sure" instead and then Hinata stayed over at Shiratorizawa instead biking back to Karasuno

If someone can write a fic abt this, even if its one chapter ill read it

When Tendou had returned back from visiting his family in France, he hugged Ushijima tightly, winding them both. When Ushijima asked why he did it, Tendou declared that was what people did when they missed someone. It was a passing phrase, just one moment out of many that Tendou had spent explaining to Ushijima something small and obscure and not meant to be taken seriously at all. He should've known better than that. Ushijima took everything seriously.

Tendou had only been off sick for a few days with a cold. He'd been resigned to his bed until he fully recovered, not chancing passing it on to the team. But he had only stepped a couple feet into the Shiratorizawa gym before someone had grabbed him and wrapped him tightly in a hug, squeezing the frail bit of life barely left in him.

Tendou saw a flash of dark green hair and tanned skin, putting two and two together. He patted Ushijima's back as best he could with his restrained arms, "Uh, bud? What are you doing?"

"This is what people do when they have missed someone," Ushijima returns flatly, his arms still wrapped tightly around Tendou. "I have missed you."

Heat creeps onto Tendou's face and he's glad at that moment, as the other boys start to crowd around them and question what they're doing, that they can't see his face as he lets it fall into the crook of Ushijima's neck.

Now imagine this—they're already dating, and Kageyama goes to pick up Hinata at the airport or something. They haven't seen each other in a while, missed you lots, etc etc. So the moment Kageyama spots Hinata, it's kinda like those cliche scenes in movies when a couple gets reunited: running towards each other in slow motion, dramatic background music, all that shebang.

Except Kageyama isn't moving in slow motion at all. So Hinata sees him approaching at full speed, with a look on his face that's sort of terrifying. Instinct takes over, and suddenly the only thought in Hinata's mind is RACE!

So he just abandons his luggage and darts in the opposite direction.

Kageyama chases after him, screaming, "Why are you running away, dumbass?!" Without slowing down, Hinata shouts over his shoulder, "I won't let you win!"

Kageyama's backstory only being revealed near the very end of the series is really interesting from a meta perspective.

For reference, his chapter is 387 out of 402. That's 96% of the way in.

To contrast, other characters like Tsukishima and Yamaguchi's backstories are shown in Chapters 87-88.

Now, we do get the explanation for his "King of the Court" title in Chapter 6, at the start of the series, but we don't see how he got to that point, or why he started playing volleyball in the first place like Tsukishima's and Yamaguchi's stories show.

It creates this situation where, despite being the deuteragonist, the character our protagonist, Hinata, is practically glued to the entire series, we barely know anything about him.

See ya later! 😄✨

I think it's safe to assume that these numbers cover only their 3 years of high school - Hinata says later on that he hasn't counted his beach volleyball games yet. Meaning, they got into roughly ~2200 competitions over the course of three years, though not all of them were volleyball games (they also compete in races, and other silly things like who can eat faster and etc.)

(It's a little unclear whether the tally only accounts for wins when they're competing against each other, though - I'll assume that's the case since it'd be kinda unfair otherwise lol)

BUT. Here comes the interesting part. This is their updated tally, as of 2022 (the All-Stars special match):

According to the Haikyuu wiki, the Black Jackals vs. Schweiden Adlers game happened in November 2018. The All-stars match happened in August 2022. That's about 45 months later - meaning, they got into another 1852 competitions in the span of almost four years.

But, but.... before, during high school, these morons saw each other almost every single day. They competed on almost EVERYTHING, and averaged a total of 2 competitions per day.

Now, though- they lived in different cities during Hinata's first year in the V.League, and after that Kageyama moved to Italy. As of 2022, Hinata is back in Brazil playing for Asas São Paulo. Meaning, for the better part of these last 4 years, these two weren't even in the same country.

And yet they kept the tally going, counting almost religiously. So that's 1852 competitions over 45 months - average of 1,37 competitions per day. Meaning, on average, Hinata and Kageyama must've talked to each other at least once a day, for four years, to update their tally.