If someone asked Daichi Sawamura who he liked back in high school, the answer people expected was always the same.

Yui Michimiya.

Captain of the girls’ volleyball team. Confident. Strong. Close enough to Karasuno’s boys that rumors practically wrote themselves.

Daichi never corrected them.

Not because they were right— but because explaining the truth felt unnecessary.

The truth went further back. Two years back, to his first year of high school.

It was sports festival day. Loud, crowded, overwhelming. He was walking with his friends when someone slammed straight into his chest, hard enough to make him stagger.

“Sorry—!”

You looked up at him, breathless, then laughed like it was funny.

Before he could say anything, you shoved a plate into his hands.

“Apology food.”

Cooking club. Still warm. Still steaming.

His friends stared. He stared. You smiled, completely unbothered.

“Eat it,” you said. “You look like someone who forgets.”

You weren’t wrong.

After that, you were just… there.

Waiting near the gym after practice. Dropping off food “because there was extra.” Talking to his teammates like you’d always belonged there.

People joked about him and Michimiya. You never did.

You just smiled at him, asked if he was tired, told him to eat properly.

Somehow, that stayed with him more.

They only had a year. Graduation came fast.

You waved at him that day, told him to take care of everyone like always, then left town for university. People said he should’ve gone after you.

He didn’t.

Years later, when he runs into you again, older and unmistakably real, something clicks uncomfortably into place.

You were never a rumor. Never an assumption.

You were the one he noticed without trying.

And suddenly, the idea that everyone thought it was someone else feels… wrong.