Losing is Winning

Chapter 18

For the entirety of the camp, Tobio regretted not talking to Hinata when he still had the chance. Now, Hinata was barely texting with him and when Tobio tried to call him last afternoon, he didn't pick up, and neither did he call back.

He tried to focus on the good sides of the camp; the things he learned, information he gathered about his own mistakes, but it only worked to a limited degree. The words Miya Atsumu said to him one evening wouldn't leave Tobio's mind, and he didn't know how to handle them.

His entire high school life had been filled with the goal of improving his communication skills, talking with his teammates about his tosses and what he could improve to make them even easier to hit. Now, he suddenly was a Goody Two-Shoes, as the other setter had phrased it, for trying to accommodate to the spikers' wishes?

In the night that followed that practice session, the words kept him awake into the late hours of the night.

It was what Oikawa had told him when Tobio had asked him for advice half a year ago; to see what kind of toss Hinata really wanted. It was what had worked well and improved a lot of their attacks, but Miya's words made Tobio waver.

He had been so scared of ending up the same way as in middle school, had put so much energy into changing and proving to his mother that he could play on a team and wouldn't reign over them as he did in middle school, that he now wondered whether he had maybe overdone it. If he had been so obsessed with changing that he missed the point when he had changed enough.

Was Hinata not talking to him because he didn't communicate his reasons for rejecting him clearly enough, or was he not talking to him because Tobio had gotten so used to holding back his own thoughts, scared that they could turn into something tyrannical, that his mind had automatically shut the pathway between his mouth and his real emotions, and thus, stopped Tobio from explaining why he rejected him?

It wasn't something Tobio had consciously thought about, it just popped into his head, as if the back of his mind had never really put aside the topic of Hinata at all, no matter how hard he had tried to distract himself. He rolled onto the other side, tugging the futon up to his chin.

He didn't know what to make of the words. Was he supposed to be mindful of his teammates' preferences or should he tell them about his own opinion?

Tobio hated that Miya was so hard to talk to. He had tried to get more information out of him, to get some kind of explanation for that statement. But instead, all he had gotten was a scornful smirk and a pat on his shoulder. "You're really an interesting guy, Tobio-kun," he had said, and with that, he had left Tobio standing in the doorway to the canteen. Tobio couldn't do anything but look after him.

Hinata would know what Atsumu meant by that, Tobio thought, not for the first time that night. But there were still a few messages Hinata had yet to read, and anyway, Tobio doubted Hinata would go through the trouble of explaining a statement some guy from Hyogo had made.

No. This time, Tobio would have to deal with the situation by himself. Miya was an amazing player, and Tobio doubted that his advice was worthless. As much as he respected Oikawa as a setter, maybe it was time to take on new advice and change up his approach. Maybe it was time to be less restrained again, to tell his teammates when there was room to improve for them instead of always making the spike easy for them.

Once he had made that decision, he suddenly realized what new possibilities would come with that. Their attacks could become so much stronger if he didn't need to lower his toss, just so Tsukishima didn't complain about how high he needed to jump for it; if he didn't need to slow down the toss even though Asahi could for sure reach them just fine without this single step of hesitation he always made. They could be so much stronger if he wasn't so scared to criticize them—if he wasn't so scared that they would see him as unsatisfiable.