the lucky ones
Oct. 12th, 2021 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
softpunksmiya atsumu & miya osamu // ~2k
> It's nothing personal, the world says, when Osamu is approached by the scouts and not Atsumu. That's just how life is.
To Osamu, the world stops spinning on its axis not in a single moment, but in a series of them: the kind that pile up on your shoulders until you’re forced to the ground, trying to lift the weight, the kind that expand in your stomach until you’re ready to burst, the kind that clogs up your throat and constricts your lungs, as if no one in the room wants you to be able to breathe. But really, past all the woven metaphors and complicated mix of feelings, the world stops spinning on its axis when he is sixteen and finally told, like this had been a long time coming, give up. You don’t have a shot.
Atsumu calls him dramatic, says, since when was I related to such a quitter? but that’s until they’re walking away from the court, still riding on the high of winning Nationals, and none of the scouts approach Atsumu, ushering someone else aside instead.
“Osamu,” they say, even though the first thing that comes to Osamu’s mind is the wrongness of the situation, the thought of, shouldn’t you be callin’ for ‘Tsumu? “Would you like to play for us?”
The world never makes things easy. Direct messages are always said in the vaguest manners, implied in past and never-ending discussions he’s had with counsellors, teachers, parents—adults, always adults, who are older and wiser and never fail to remind him of those very facts—saying in patronizing voices, food business? You? What can you offer that the rest can’t? You’re normal. The words are always weighted and covered in layers upon layers, reminding him in the most roundabout but clearest of ways that this is not the road he can take. Give up. You don’t have a shot.
Yet here these people are, pristine and professional in their unwrinkled suits and their cut-throat voices, new but not unfamiliar, potential Osamu has thought about but never dwelled on, giving him an answer on what he can give, what road he can take.
Would you like to play for us? Meaning: you do have a shot.
Osamu sees Atsumu from the corner of his eye, leaning against the wall, patiently waiting for him to finish his conversation even though it’d been a given that he should’ve left. If Osamu was someone born naïve, he would have thought that the sight of his brother was something he conjured up in his head, like a reminder of what this moment costs.
The reality is this: Osamu is not naïve. Atsumu is there. And Osamu is well-aware of the price he has to pay for every decision he makes.
Osamu meets the scout’s eyes and says, “Sure.”
(With the road clearing up in front of him, all he sees is a hollow victory.)
Volleyball is not the same. It’s not something that comes as a package deal with existing, but somehow it becomes so ingrained in their lives that to be separated from it seems impossible.
This is how Atsumu sees it anyway. Even without words—they’ve never really been good at those—Osamu can tell. The day Atsumu enters the world, there is no volleyball by his side, but he asks and asks and wants and wants that it seems like he was born for the sport. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t have the hands for it, doesn’t look like the type who would stick to it just because all his past ventures had been fleeting and meaningless and forgettable and volleyball seems like it’s going to be yet another one. It doesn’t matter, because Atsumu loves it. Breathes it. Can’t see a life without it.
The first time they tell others that Atsumu is going to set and Osamu is going to spike, they tut at Osamu and grab his hands, turning them over like admiring distant jewels and discovering secrets, before they sigh, “What a waste. But what else can these hands do?”
Osamu doesn’t have an answer and his hands hold no secrets, so they don’t tell him anything either. Atsumu’s IQ is equivalent to whatever a volleyball is made of, and it’s definitely not anything intellectual, so he doesn’t help him either. Soon enough though, Osamu gets his answer, passing by a shop where he knows Aran’s older sister works and seeing past the display window the workers make onigiri. Seeing the way she grabs the filling, slips it into the rice, and compresses into her palms to form something different than it once was, Osamu thinks his hands are ones that want to create.
When he tells them, they look at him in disappointment and shake their heads, mourning, ah, what a waste.
Over the years, he’ll come back and tell them with the hope that they’ll change their minds, but the only things that change are the way they say their words and the looks they give him.
“It’s nothing personal, dear,” they finally reassure him, except he feels nothing but familiar disappointment that drapes over him. “But you were born for so much more than that.”
(Yet he can’t forget the echoing words that emphasized you, like for once, the focus was only on him.
Would you like to play for us? They asked.
You were born for so much more than that, they said.)
The day he realizes that what he wants to do is not what Atsumu wants to do—one, a starstruck professional athlete, the other, a humble but ultimately successful onigiri shop owner—he daydreams, bit by bit, about all the ways they would start to diverge. He’s never cared much for specificities, prides himself in the fact that he doesn’t overthink or work himself into panics like Atsumu because he actually cares about the trivial things, but this is one thing that refuses to leave Osamu’s mind over the years.
Distantly, he knows it’s because he wants to be prepared for that day to come, mostly in excitement, partially in dread.
With the possibilities laid out in front of him, there is a fog that lingers; the doubt that sneaks in and reminds him of how he has untapped potential never to be discovered. Osamu can shake it off just to be able to see the two roads, but the fog is still there. Every time he thinks about how Atsumu has only seen a single thing right in front of him, Osamu lets his guard down to feel envious.
He’d thought, for the longest time, that he understood what it was like, to want something so terribly that nothing else mattered, nothing else would come to mind. But there’s a calling card in his hands and there’s a reason he can see two paths even amidst the fog. He wonders if it’s because he’s incapable of wholeheartedly craving, of truly chasing. He wonders if it’s because he’s incapable of moving past the murkiness.
“Are you gonna take it?” Atsumu asks during the bus ride home back to their hotel. It’s quiet. The rest of the members are fast asleep or engrossed in their phones, oblivious and uninterested in the conversation. It’s convenient; it’s painful.
Osamu stares at the card. The numbers and words blur together. He doesn’t have to think about it just yet. There’s still time before graduation, still time to make a choice, but the thing is, this isn’t a road he’s ever considered. This isn’t a possibility he’s ever predicted.
If Osamu was someone born courageous, then Atsumu wouldn’t even have to ask, because he’d already know. The reality is this: they’d been born side by side. Twins. It didn’t matter who came out first, but Atsumu always had a backbone to him that Osamu hadn’t been blessed with, and it had been Atsumu who decided to brave the storm and step into the light and decide to really live. Every time he thought about how Atsumu had only seen a single thing right in front of him, it was always with the accompanying realization that Atsumu understood what living was truly like—to do what you loved wholeheartedly, fearlessly.
But just because there’s something you tell the world you love doing doesn’t mean that the world will let you do it, and unlike the endless gestures of disappointment and endless insistences Osamu had to suffer through all the years, the card holds physical weight to it. Real proof of this very fact in life.
“I don’t know,” Osamu replies, because he is a coward, because the fog that he could see past but not shake off has stayed all this time for a reason, and that reason might just be because it’s always been right. You were born for so much more than that.
He understands the weight behind those words, understands that the reality is this: in the real world, he is normal. In the court, he is something special.
“Huh,” says Atsumu, and his tone is hard to read. Osamu braces for a barrage of questions—why, why you, why not me, what do you have that I don’t—that he doesn’t have answers to, because he also thinks, I don’t know, why not you, when what made us special was the fact that we were two and together, when this was what you wanted more than me—
Instead, Atsumu tells him, “This ain’t gonna be the end, y’know. I ain’t quittin’ here and now just ‘cause you got the easy way out, my ticket in.”
The declaration makes the incessant thoughts come to a screeching halt. Then it makes Osamu laugh, and he sounds incredulous, a little bit crazed.
Atsumu scowls. “Why the fuck are you laughin’?”
Because Atsumu is wrong. Because it’s not an easy way out, not some cheat code to get past the hard times, but a well-earned stepping stone to reach a goal that hadn’t even been his in the first place.
Because the fact is that Atsumu isn’t going to quit, because of course he isn’t going to quit, even though they both know, deep inside, that it might as well be the end. The moment the scouts laid their eyes on Osamu, Atsumu became nothing but a shadow with the same face, and no one ever looks back on what was left behind.
Osamu says nothing. Atsumu is clearly annoyed, but he doesn’t seem surprised.
“Just you wait, ‘Samu,” He insists, giving him an arrogant grin, and Osamu thinks of the irony of their lives—how he looked at his hands and wanted nothing but was given everything someone else desired, and how Atsumu looked and his hands and wanted everything but was given nothing in return. “I’ll still be the happier twin.”
It’s not an outcome he’d ever considered, but Osamu knows that this, bit by bit, is where they part.
“Maybe,” he relents.
(Just like that, the world starts to respin.)
> It's nothing personal, the world says, when Osamu is approached by the scouts and not Atsumu. That's just how life is.
To Osamu, the world stops spinning on its axis not in a single moment, but in a series of them: the kind that pile up on your shoulders until you’re forced to the ground, trying to lift the weight, the kind that expand in your stomach until you’re ready to burst, the kind that clogs up your throat and constricts your lungs, as if no one in the room wants you to be able to breathe. But really, past all the woven metaphors and complicated mix of feelings, the world stops spinning on its axis when he is sixteen and finally told, like this had been a long time coming, give up. You don’t have a shot.
Atsumu calls him dramatic, says, since when was I related to such a quitter? but that’s until they’re walking away from the court, still riding on the high of winning Nationals, and none of the scouts approach Atsumu, ushering someone else aside instead.
“Osamu,” they say, even though the first thing that comes to Osamu’s mind is the wrongness of the situation, the thought of, shouldn’t you be callin’ for ‘Tsumu? “Would you like to play for us?”
The world never makes things easy. Direct messages are always said in the vaguest manners, implied in past and never-ending discussions he’s had with counsellors, teachers, parents—adults, always adults, who are older and wiser and never fail to remind him of those very facts—saying in patronizing voices, food business? You? What can you offer that the rest can’t? You’re normal. The words are always weighted and covered in layers upon layers, reminding him in the most roundabout but clearest of ways that this is not the road he can take. Give up. You don’t have a shot.
Yet here these people are, pristine and professional in their unwrinkled suits and their cut-throat voices, new but not unfamiliar, potential Osamu has thought about but never dwelled on, giving him an answer on what he can give, what road he can take.
Would you like to play for us? Meaning: you do have a shot.
Osamu sees Atsumu from the corner of his eye, leaning against the wall, patiently waiting for him to finish his conversation even though it’d been a given that he should’ve left. If Osamu was someone born naïve, he would have thought that the sight of his brother was something he conjured up in his head, like a reminder of what this moment costs.
The reality is this: Osamu is not naïve. Atsumu is there. And Osamu is well-aware of the price he has to pay for every decision he makes.
Osamu meets the scout’s eyes and says, “Sure.”
(With the road clearing up in front of him, all he sees is a hollow victory.)
==
Early on, they tell the twins that Osamu is the one with setter hands. Atsumu sulks about it even though Osamu knows as well as he does that the phrase in itself makes no sense. They never asked for these hands; they were just born with it.Volleyball is not the same. It’s not something that comes as a package deal with existing, but somehow it becomes so ingrained in their lives that to be separated from it seems impossible.
This is how Atsumu sees it anyway. Even without words—they’ve never really been good at those—Osamu can tell. The day Atsumu enters the world, there is no volleyball by his side, but he asks and asks and wants and wants that it seems like he was born for the sport. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t have the hands for it, doesn’t look like the type who would stick to it just because all his past ventures had been fleeting and meaningless and forgettable and volleyball seems like it’s going to be yet another one. It doesn’t matter, because Atsumu loves it. Breathes it. Can’t see a life without it.
The first time they tell others that Atsumu is going to set and Osamu is going to spike, they tut at Osamu and grab his hands, turning them over like admiring distant jewels and discovering secrets, before they sigh, “What a waste. But what else can these hands do?”
Osamu doesn’t have an answer and his hands hold no secrets, so they don’t tell him anything either. Atsumu’s IQ is equivalent to whatever a volleyball is made of, and it’s definitely not anything intellectual, so he doesn’t help him either. Soon enough though, Osamu gets his answer, passing by a shop where he knows Aran’s older sister works and seeing past the display window the workers make onigiri. Seeing the way she grabs the filling, slips it into the rice, and compresses into her palms to form something different than it once was, Osamu thinks his hands are ones that want to create.
When he tells them, they look at him in disappointment and shake their heads, mourning, ah, what a waste.
Over the years, he’ll come back and tell them with the hope that they’ll change their minds, but the only things that change are the way they say their words and the looks they give him.
“It’s nothing personal, dear,” they finally reassure him, except he feels nothing but familiar disappointment that drapes over him. “But you were born for so much more than that.”
==
They’d been born side by side. Twins. It didn’t matter who came out first, who cried first, who was named first. Osamu has never known a world without Atsumu. This is what has always made them different from rest, what made them special in the first place.(Yet he can’t forget the echoing words that emphasized you, like for once, the focus was only on him.
Would you like to play for us? They asked.
You were born for so much more than that, they said.)
The day he realizes that what he wants to do is not what Atsumu wants to do—one, a starstruck professional athlete, the other, a humble but ultimately successful onigiri shop owner—he daydreams, bit by bit, about all the ways they would start to diverge. He’s never cared much for specificities, prides himself in the fact that he doesn’t overthink or work himself into panics like Atsumu because he actually cares about the trivial things, but this is one thing that refuses to leave Osamu’s mind over the years.
Distantly, he knows it’s because he wants to be prepared for that day to come, mostly in excitement, partially in dread.
With the possibilities laid out in front of him, there is a fog that lingers; the doubt that sneaks in and reminds him of how he has untapped potential never to be discovered. Osamu can shake it off just to be able to see the two roads, but the fog is still there. Every time he thinks about how Atsumu has only seen a single thing right in front of him, Osamu lets his guard down to feel envious.
He’d thought, for the longest time, that he understood what it was like, to want something so terribly that nothing else mattered, nothing else would come to mind. But there’s a calling card in his hands and there’s a reason he can see two paths even amidst the fog. He wonders if it’s because he’s incapable of wholeheartedly craving, of truly chasing. He wonders if it’s because he’s incapable of moving past the murkiness.
“Are you gonna take it?” Atsumu asks during the bus ride home back to their hotel. It’s quiet. The rest of the members are fast asleep or engrossed in their phones, oblivious and uninterested in the conversation. It’s convenient; it’s painful.
Osamu stares at the card. The numbers and words blur together. He doesn’t have to think about it just yet. There’s still time before graduation, still time to make a choice, but the thing is, this isn’t a road he’s ever considered. This isn’t a possibility he’s ever predicted.
If Osamu was someone born courageous, then Atsumu wouldn’t even have to ask, because he’d already know. The reality is this: they’d been born side by side. Twins. It didn’t matter who came out first, but Atsumu always had a backbone to him that Osamu hadn’t been blessed with, and it had been Atsumu who decided to brave the storm and step into the light and decide to really live. Every time he thought about how Atsumu had only seen a single thing right in front of him, it was always with the accompanying realization that Atsumu understood what living was truly like—to do what you loved wholeheartedly, fearlessly.
But just because there’s something you tell the world you love doing doesn’t mean that the world will let you do it, and unlike the endless gestures of disappointment and endless insistences Osamu had to suffer through all the years, the card holds physical weight to it. Real proof of this very fact in life.
“I don’t know,” Osamu replies, because he is a coward, because the fog that he could see past but not shake off has stayed all this time for a reason, and that reason might just be because it’s always been right. You were born for so much more than that.
He understands the weight behind those words, understands that the reality is this: in the real world, he is normal. In the court, he is something special.
“Huh,” says Atsumu, and his tone is hard to read. Osamu braces for a barrage of questions—why, why you, why not me, what do you have that I don’t—that he doesn’t have answers to, because he also thinks, I don’t know, why not you, when what made us special was the fact that we were two and together, when this was what you wanted more than me—
Instead, Atsumu tells him, “This ain’t gonna be the end, y’know. I ain’t quittin’ here and now just ‘cause you got the easy way out, my ticket in.”
The declaration makes the incessant thoughts come to a screeching halt. Then it makes Osamu laugh, and he sounds incredulous, a little bit crazed.
Atsumu scowls. “Why the fuck are you laughin’?”
Because Atsumu is wrong. Because it’s not an easy way out, not some cheat code to get past the hard times, but a well-earned stepping stone to reach a goal that hadn’t even been his in the first place.
Because the fact is that Atsumu isn’t going to quit, because of course he isn’t going to quit, even though they both know, deep inside, that it might as well be the end. The moment the scouts laid their eyes on Osamu, Atsumu became nothing but a shadow with the same face, and no one ever looks back on what was left behind.
Osamu says nothing. Atsumu is clearly annoyed, but he doesn’t seem surprised.
“Just you wait, ‘Samu,” He insists, giving him an arrogant grin, and Osamu thinks of the irony of their lives—how he looked at his hands and wanted nothing but was given everything someone else desired, and how Atsumu looked and his hands and wanted everything but was given nothing in return. “I’ll still be the happier twin.”
It’s not an outcome he’d ever considered, but Osamu knows that this, bit by bit, is where they part.
“Maybe,” he relents.
(Just like that, the world starts to respin.)