Losing is Winning

Chapter 16

For anyone who might need it, tw for some mean comments/light bullying. If you want to skip that section, stop reading after the match when they go to cool down, you can pick back up after the blank line<3

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The drive from Karasuno to Nihonmatsu took a while and Tobio spent the time glaring at the back of Tsukishima's head to the point that Hinata had to tug on his sleeve to get his attention.

"If you keep that up, you'll mess up the team's entire dynamic," he murmured. "Rather spend the way home staring at him."

Tobio mumbled something unintelligible but turned his gaze away like Hinata asked him to.

"What did you say?" Hinata asked.

"That I would rather not look at him at all," Tobio repeated rumbly.

"Well," Hinata said lightheartedly, "then I'd say not looking in his direction would be a great start." Tobio scowled at the unhelpful comment.

About an hour later, Tobio realized just how unhelpful Hinata had been. Tobio's teamwork with Tsukishima was just as passably functioning as usual—however, Hinata himself turned out to be, once again, Tobio's main source of frustration.

It wasn't as bad as during practice, at least not really. Hinata didn't forget to run for the ball as often, which Tobio counted that as a success by now—he wasn't sure what that said about the whole situation, though. Instead, Hinata now tripped over his own feet, stumbled over the court, ran into his teammates and posed an even bigger hindrance to the entire team than usual.

Tobio tried slowing down their attack, changing it to a normal speed so Hinata would maybe have the time to check his footing, but Hinata didn't notice the change in tempo and instead ran up to the net way too quickly for anything to work out.

Tobio felt ready to bury his face in his palms and to be swallowed by the ground. He was running out of ideas to make Hinata score some points, but even if he didn't toss in Hinata's direction, Hinata either was in the way of other spikers or ran off and tried to spike the ball even though it obviously wasn't meant to be his.

In the end, they lost. It didn't come as a surprise, to none of them, but the defeat weighed heavy on them nonetheless.

"Don't sweat it," Coach Ukai told them when they gathered around him. "You didn't lose because of your skills, you lost because you didn't have your head in the game. So focus on getting back into your rhythm from now on, especially you, Hinata." Hinata lowered his head and mumbled an apology. "I will go and discuss a few things with Coach Ito, Sawamura, you're in charge of everyone."

Daichi nodded and turned to face the team.

"I'm so sorry," Hinata scrambled as soon as Ukai had left and bowed deeply in front of everyone.

"It's okay, Hinata," Sugawara reassured him, placing a comforting hand on his back. "You're just having a bad week, it happens to everyone at some point."

Hinata bit his lip as if he was about to disagree but nodded his head.

"Don't lose your head over it," Daichi added. "Let's cool down and help to clean everything up, and then we call it a day. Tomorrow will be better again."

"Yes, Captain!"

"Well, well, well," a voice interrupted them before anyone could move to stretch. "I gotta say, I expected more of Miyagi's top team." A spiker from Ohashi approached them with a grin that unpleasantly reminded Tobio of Tsukishima's sneers. "Are you sure Ushijima didn't just get something in his eye and couldn't aim anymore?"