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Kageyama paced around his room, wondering how he got himself into this mess. After an age of walking back and forth, back and forth, he sat himself down on his bed, hands to face. He did his best to keep as far away from his laptop as he could – the very evil that led him to this state in the first place.
The root of this problem started many months ago, on an online role-playing game by the name of World of Wincraft. This game was Kageyama’s life. He was on the highest level possible with the best gear, could defeat even the most elite bosses and always got the most kills in Player VS Player matches. His guild was one of the most well known in the Wincraft universe, competing against the other elite guilds. His title amongst other players was “the King”.
How does this relate to the matter at hand? That’s simple – this was all down to a young boy who went by the username “shouyou_meister_69”, also known as Hinata Shouyou. Hinata had joined the game a few months prior, due to another guild member, Kenma Kozume. Together they had quickly levelled Hinata’s character, which led to the addition of him to the guild. Even with this levelling, the first month was horrendous for the guild. Hinata always pulled in bosses when he was supposed to be attacking from the sidelines, died twice the amount that everybody else did, looted the great gear that he did not need but others did and, worst of all, always got confused with what he was supposed to do. This ticked Kageyama off immensely, and often he posed the question “Why don’t we kick him?” However, this was always replied with criticism, although he never knew why.
Despite this, Hinata was an enthusiastic player, and even when the guild was not doing well he’d keep their spirits high. He was good at gathering and alchemy, the two perks that nobody else did simultaneously, which meant extra bonuses to them. After a while, Hinata started to get better and better. Soon enough, he even became a better player than some of the other guild members. Everybody praised him for how fast he picked everything up – everybody except from Kageyama, of course. The others called him a spoilsport for not being encouraging to Hinata, but he didn’t take any note of it. Some more time passed, and soon Hinata achieved a feat that even Kageyama had to applaud.
Though they disliked each other at first, Kageyama and Hinata gradually warmed up to each other. They exchanged profiles on different social media websites and eventually phone numbers. Frequently they contacted each other and soon not a day had gone by without some form of contact, whether it was an hour-long phone call or just a single line of text. This had been going on for a few months before Hinata had an idea that Kageyama agreed to without thinking it through – meeting each other in real life.
And then, there he was, worrying about what he has gotten himself into, regretting everything he has ever done in his life. There were many, many things wrong with this situation; the potential catfishing was only one of these problems. Of course, it is likely that it is the most serious one, but Kageyama let that one go over his head. No, what Kageyama was dealing with are problems about his feelings. First off, he is terrible at talking to people in real life, no matter who they are. He was never the best at making friends with people, and did not think that this meeting would go so well. Along with this, Kageyama had started to develop a small crush on his new online friend – or at least, how he made himself appear. So not only would he be completely and utterly stuck on how to speak to someone, but Kageyama would also have to fight the urge to embarrass himself in front of Hinata.
A couple of days passed, and it was time for the two to meet each other at the designated place, which in this case was a quiet local café. Kageyama left twenty minutes early in case of anything that was sure to hinder his path. However, for the first time in a long, long time, Kageyama has no interruptions and gets there with twenty minutes to spare – which is by no means a good thing, as it means he has to stand outside the café with his phone for a whole twenty minutes, looking like a complete loser.
During this waiting, the crow-haired boy went through three stages. The first one was likelihood – the likelihood of this person he met online not being the cute, orange-haired boy he was sent photos of and instead being a seventy-nine year old man who somehow got pictures of a cute, orange-haired boy. This troubled Kageyama for the first ten minutes, until the second stage kicked in; panic. What would Kageyama panic about? Nothing else but the horrible fear of interaction and his lack of knowing how to make conversation. If he was not being catfished, and it truly was the Hinata Shouyou that was described, Kageyama would almost definitely do something out of line – whether it was saying something wrong, doing something wrong, or simply saying or doing nothing at all whatsoever. This went on for quite a while, realizing that he had been waiting for half an hour when he next checked his watch. After another fifteen minutes, the last stage finally came to be; acceptance. Acceptance that there was a large probability that he was being stood up, whether it really was a young boy named Hinata Shouyou or an old man.
Kageyama sighed and decided to stop leaning on the brick exterior of the café, preparing to leave, until a small child bumped into him. This did not put Kageyama in a better mood. Before he could say anything, he realized that this was not a young child but in fact a teenager like him – and not just any teenager, either. It was the Hinata Shouyou that he had been waiting fifty minutes for, bright orange hair and all.
“Oh- oh my God, I’m so sorry sir-” were the first words that came out of his mouth. His voice was quite childish and chirpy, but Kageyama had to admit that it was cute. At being called sir, Kageyama found it hard not to snort.
“Are you, by any chance, Hinata Shouyou?” replied the taller boy, realizing how short the other was – he couldn’t be much taller than 5 feet.
“How do you know my name?” asked Hinata, before the realization hit him. “Of course – you’re Kageyama Tobio, aren’t you? You’re a lot taller than I expected you’d be…” He frowned as he noted the height of the taller boy.
“And you’re a lot – shrimpier than I had expected you yourself to be,” said Kageyama. “So, do you want to enter or are we just going to stand outside for the next five hours?” To this, Hinata pouted at him and opened the café door, being followed by Kageyama.
They chose a table near to the counter, mainly out of laziness as they did not want to have to walk too far to order whatever they were going to get. It was surprisingly empty for midday on a Sunday, meaning it was quite quiet and peaceful in general. For the first ten minutes or so, the two were stuck in a barrier of awkward silence, broken only by Kageyama ordering and buying their food and drink. This was getting unbearable, so Hinata started to make small talk – not making Kageyama any more comfortable than before, but hey, he was trying. This included questions like his favorite color, where he went to school, what he liked to do apart from playing online etc.
This awkward set of icebreakers went on until they had finished their toasted sandwiches and hot drinks. Hinata was talking way too enthusiastically about things that the taller boy didn’t know how to respond to, being quite quiet in general. Subconsciously, Kageyama was tapping his foot and pulling an irritated face, which Hinata saw but chose to ignore at first. He carried on talking, asking a question here and there, but when he saw no change in how Kageyama acted – although maybe looking a bit more distressed than before – he decided to take note of it.
“Hey, Kageyama, is something wrong?” asked the orange-haired boy concernedly.
“Why would you think that?” the other retorted harshly. Of course, he didn’t mean to. It just came out like that unintentionally.
“Well- you’re acting kinda weird and, I mean, you’re responding like that…” Hinata trailed off, slightly hurt. Kageyama sighed and cursed himself under his breath – not only did he hurt the feelings of a cute boy, but it’s something that he does all of the time. So much for trying to make friends in person.
Stumbling over his words, Kageyama tried to reply to Hinata; instead, all he managed to say was a collection of “uh”s and “erm”s. “I’m- uh- I didn’t mean to-” tried the teenage boy, but his lack of social skills were definitely no help. Talking to people in general was hard for him, but apologizing was completely impossible.
However, that small statement was enough to make Hinata realize that it really wasn’t Kageyama’s intention. That statement and the blundering over his words convinced Hinata that Kageyama was probably just shy around other people and didn’t feel extremely comfortable with talking to them; in a way, he found it kind of adorable – if that adjective could be used to describe someone tall and slightly scary-looking. He decided to try to make Kageyama feel more comfortable and apologize for making him feel awkward. This caught Kageyama off guard, but he managed to reply with a shaky “it’s alright”.
After a small while, Hinata tried to slowly pick up conversation again. This time, though, he was careful with what he decided to say. Needless to say, this attempt at conversation was more successful and soon Kageyama felt a little better. Whilst still a bit awkward, the crow-haired boy spoke up a bit more often and even started to pose some of his own questions for Hinata.
They spent a lot longer in the café than they had anticipated, probably having earned some strange looks from the woman behind the counter, but they both could say that they’d enjoyed the day. Kageyama offered to walk Hinata back to the station, who reluctantly agreed, and they were talking the whole way back. When they got there, Kageyama realized that he almost didn’t want to part with Hinata. He never thought that he’d make friends with someone as cheery as him, and he felt a bit sad that he had to leave. Hinata himself didn’t want to leave, but he enthusiastically insisted that they’d have to meet up again and that he’d had a lot of fun. Before he left, he quickly gave Kageyama a big hug – which completely messed with Kageyama’s brain – and then waved at him with a big grin as he entered the station.
Walking back home, Kageyama was a confused, blundering, flustered mess. But even this confused, blundering, flustered mess couldn’t help his mouth from stretching into a small smile.