You Are My Shelter

Chapter 19

The following practices, Kenma tried his best to ignore the snide comments of the third years. They'll be gone. Not much longer and they'll graduate. The thought that their only reason for staying this long in the club, was to savor their last opportunities of harassing Kenma, grew more reasonable with every practice.

When the day finally came that they left and Kuroo became the new captain for the Nekoma High School Volleyball Team, Kenma felt relief flooding his body. No more stuck-up third years for the rest of his high school life.

Yamamoto, on the other hand, was another difficulty. It was harder than Kuroo made it out to be to simply ignore his annoying attitude and all the talk about having guts. He tried his best, however, for Kuroo, and because lately, he seemed to lack any determination himself to do much against it.

Today, however, was different. It had been a few weeks after Kuroo had become the new captain and Kenma got the position as starting setter, and their first practice game just ended.

Even though he didn't really care about those things, it had been a nice diversion when Yaku and Kai had praised him for his plays in the game. But just as Kenma had played rather well, Yamamoto hadn't been as successful.

Kenma could have told him beforehand that he wouldn't be able to do any good plays if he didn't change something about his uptight way of acting. He didn't, though. In the end, Yamamoto had been way too stiff to play with his teammates and even jumped into Kuroo, once.

Maybe, Kenma should have told him earlier that his attitude wouldn't help him play.

It was a little later, when Yamamoto and he cleaned up the gym, that Kenma hesitated. How about you put at least a little more effort into working together? That's what Kuroo had said.

Kenma took a deep breath, clenching his fists tightly in the pockets of his team jacket. "Uh-" he started, but the words didn't want to come. "Um... Yamamoto-kun?" he said. Yamamoto stopped, but he didn't turn around. Already, Kenma regretted speaking up, but there was no turning back now.

In hindsight, Kenma couldn't really tell if he really regretted speaking his thoughts or not. His throat hurt, after the whole conversation had suddenly evolved into a screaming contest—because Yamamoto was just too bull-headed to actually understand what Kenma was trying to tell him. But it had also changed something about how Kenma saw practices and volleyball. Getting yelled in the face that he didn't have enough determination to win a serious game when he didn't at least show a little more ambition during practice—and the fact that this might hold some truth to it—was something that didn't sit right with Kenma.

He knew that he wasn't the most motivated person in terms of physical exertion, but it had always been more like Kenma to observe and act accordingly instead of bashing through everything, expecting that with enough endeavors it would somehow work out.

He wasn't exactly sure how Yamamoto yelling at him caused him to question this, to question if he should maybe change something about his previous view on things.

Maybe it had been the constant yelling about having guts, that Yamamoto somehow used as an umbrella term for pretty much everything, that caused Kenma to think about it, too. Unvolunteeringly, Kenma started to wonder what he even meant by that.

Much to Kenma's chagrin, it had evoked the feeling in him that he should put at least a little more effort into the training—for his team. Neither did that mean he would suddenly hunt every already lost ball, nor did he exhaust himself more than necessary. But he tried his best to keep up with the others while running laps, tried his best to get them every possible point and stopped missing out on practice matches.