Chapter 3

Why was he so surprised that things were steadily getting weirder?

xxx

Dealing with an annoying, talking crow for a part of the day was one thing.

Seeing it turn into a human and lounge on Kageyama's bed like he was his closest friend was another.

(Wait a minute – a human?)

The setter's mind was so blank with shock at the moment, so he managed to surprise even himself with he finally spoke in a low calm voice to the orange-haired boy in front of him. (He is human, right? Are humans supposed to have wings?)

"...what are you doing?" he asked. Hinata lightly jumped off his bed and grinned. He twirled around once, as if to check his surroundings, and after gazing around for a second, he turned to Kageyama, his eyes large and expressive. Kageyama thought that he was about to burst out in joy over something, but as soon as he thought that, the other boy's happy expression turned into something that was basically the pure embodiment of disappointment. The setter immediately scowled, going into the defensive. He could already feel the insult coming. Here comes the spike -

"What's with that face?" he grumbled. Hinata sighed.

"Your room is so boring."

The deadpan in the smaller boy's voice took Kageyama aback considerably. - and the block failed. (Keeping things in a perspective similar to volleyball helped. Sort of.)

Hinata gestured to the walls (a plain white), to the shelves (which held almost nothing but a few scattered volleyball magazines), to the plain bed (in Kageyama's defense, blue is a nice color), to the floor (yes, those are weights – and don't forget that volleyball in the corner), and he eventually finished by throwing his arms upward, gesturing to the entire room. "I can already tell that you're a tiny bit too obsessed with volleyball at the moment, but it won't hurt to add a little decoration and, I don't know, some festive things in here!"

"How would a freaking bird know about decoration and things that, you know, have to do with humans, anyway?" Kageyama shot back. Hinata rolled his eyes.

"You're not the first human I visited, you know!"

"Well, excuse me - "

"Kageyama!"

The boys immediately flinched, and a millisecond later, the door to the room opened with Kageyama's mother peering inside. "What's going on in here?" Kageyama gulped. Oh, crap. How was he going to explain that a boy with wings had invaded his room? He knew his mother loved him, but he also knew that she would take him to a psychologist without a second thought if he ever said that a freaking tengu had been bugging him the entire day, and... well...

"I, uh - "

"Oh, wow! What a cute little bird you have there!"

What.

Kageyama whirled around to find not an orange-haired kid with wings, but a tiny crow who was ruffling its feathers, looking up at Kageyama's mom with large, curious eyes. His mom, meanwhile, crossed the room in a single stride, and she knelt on the floor and admired the baby crow. She gave it a light tap on the head, and the crow (HINATA) chirped happily. The setter could only look on with shock and utter confusion.

"Oh, you're so cute!" the said boy's mom cooed, and turned to her son. "Where did you find him?"

A bit taken aback by both his mom's and Hinata's (undoubtedly fast) reaction to the sudden situation (he thought that the trend of animal-attacking-for-simply-being-a-Kageyama was genetic, and apparently it wasn't), Kageyama slumped, scowling a bit.

"I found him next to the vending machine at school, and Suga-senpai told me to take care of him, so..." He trailed off and fidgeted a bit. That was the entire truth, anyway. He decided to conveniently leave out the part about that stupid crow turning into a human. Now that's going to give his mom the impression of deteriorating mental health.

His mom straightened, unaware of any other facts that Kageyama might have been hiding, and dusted off her pants. "Well, in any case," she spoke, patting her son's head, "at least you've made a new friend! Now come along, dinner's ready, and Dad should be here any minute!" With that, she walked off, humming a cheery tune. As soon as she left, Kageyama swung around to glare at Hinata. The tiny crow flinched for a second, and then stared back indignantly.

"What?" he asked, ruffling his feathers once more. Kageyama huffed and looked away.

"Nothing." Being his usual self, he trudged away and slammed the door to his room, making Hinata jump. The retaliation was immediate.

"'Nothing,'" he imitated childishly, making a face, and in a flash of feathers, he turned back into a human and jumped back on Kageyama's bed. He put his arm over his eyes and sighed, his wings folding over him protectively.

"I wonder if I was right."

/

When Kageyama came back up to his room, holding a granola bar in his hand for Hinata to snack on (he didn't want the bird kid to starve to death – that's too cruel), he found Hinata back in human form, dozing lightly on his bed. The setter stared at him for a second, his mind blank, and he then resorted to a light kick on Hinata's leg. "Oi, wake up. Don't drool on my bed."

There was a blur of orange hair and black feathers, and Hinata jumped up from the bed, his hair a mess. "W-WHAT?" he spluttered, and Kageyama stared at the state that the other boy was in.

"I leave you for like, what, thirty minutes and it looks like you've been sleeping for hours," he scoffed, and he handed Hinata the granola bar. "Here." The orange-haired boy took the granola bar and inspected it.

"...is this supposed to be good?" he asked a bit tentatively, and Kageyama rolled his eyes.

"I'm supposed to give you food, so that's what you get. Don't complain."

Hinata didn't move for a few seconds, staring at the granola bar, until he finally fidgeted and glanced at Kageyama. "Thanks, I guess..." He turned the granola bar over, and he held it delicately on both ends, his pinky fingers up like he was trying to be fancy.

"This is how humans open the wrapper thing, right?"

Oh.

This guy's human form was seriously throwing him off.

Sighing, Kageyama grabbed the granola bar and opened it for Hinata, who made a noise of awe at the way he easily opened the wrapper. The setter then handed back the granola bar to Hinata, who grabbed it without hesitation this time and gobbled it down with a few gulps.

"Huh, not bad! Say..." Hinata wiped his mouth, grinning.

"What?"

"I'm still hungry. Do you have any mice around here?"

"That's fricking disgusting." The answer was immediate.

The orange-haired boy rolled his eyes and sat down on the ground, propping his head on his arm. "I'm not actually a human, you know! What do you expect me to eat? Those – those meat thingies - "

"Meat thingies."

"Shut up! You know what I mean!"

After much of the pointless bickering that was slowly becoming more and more common, the room was finally silent. Mustering up his courage, Kageyama spoke up, asking the much avoided question.

"What are you even doing here?" he asked, but he surprisingly managed to make the question not sound rude. "I mean, how come you just showed up out of nowhere?"

Hinata blinked at him, and looked down a the ground. "Oh. Er..." He fidgeted, and sighed after a moment's pause. "Well, I might as well tell you. You'd probably believe it anyway, since you've already seen me and all." Kageyama rolled his eyes.

"No kidding. I'd believe anything at this point," he scoffed. Hinata sighed once more.

"Okay, well... I kind of... I kind of ran away."

That answer was too plain compared to what Kageyama had expected, like I'm actually here to conquer the world, or something along the lines of that. (He'd been watching too much of the anime that Noya and Tanaka were showing him, seriously.)

Hinata was staring at him, expecting some kind of reaction, but the only thing that Kageyama gave him was a nod.

"Okay? And?"

"Uh, yeah, that's it! I ran away!" He ended the response with a laugh; it had a nervous tone in it, but Kageyama shrugged it off. He probably had imagined it.

"So you ran away. Will anyone go and come looking for you?" he asked. Hinata paled slightly at the question.

"...I hope not," he muttered, putting his head down. Kageyama leaned forward and narrowed his eyes.

"Wait, what - "

"OKAY I'M KIND OF TIRED AND I'LL JUST SLEEP AT THE TREE NEXT TO YOUR HOUSE OKAY? OKAY. GOOD NIGHT!" With the sudden outburst, Hinata suddenly jumped off the bed and out the window, all in no time flat and giving no time for Kageyama to react. The setter was staring at the now empty bed for a few seconds until he blinked and looked around. Huh?! Where did he go?

There was a rustling outside his window, and Kageyama ran over and looked outside. The tree directly to the left of the house rustled a bit, and the boy saw a tuft of orange hair sticking out among the leaves. Kageyama sighed. "Well, that was weird."

Maybe he'll learn more about the weird crow boy the next day.