The arrivals hall at Rio De Janeiro was loud in a way that felt strangely muted to Kageyama Tobio. He’d been in enough airports over the past half-year that the chaos—the tumble of languages, the squeak of rolling suitcases, the half-shouted greetings—had dulled into background noise. What wasn’t dulled was the way his pulse always ticked a little faster when the weekend was one of these weekends. Brazil. Shōyō.

Six months out of Karasuno, they lived on parallel tracks that somehow still intersected with metronome regularity: one trip to Tokyo, one trip to São Paulo, every month. Tobio’s calendar had become less about national team training blocks and more about those alternating red circles where the time zones collapsed, where the rhythm of flights and goodbyes and reunions carved out a pattern only they could keep.

It was ridiculous, really—flying across an ocean just for two days. And yet, standing in the back of a rattling taxi now, São Paulo’s sprawl flashing past the window, Tobio felt that familiar twinge of anticipation winding tight in his chest. He imagined Shōyō’s stupid grin already waiting for him upstairs, barefoot probably, still dusted with sand no matter how carefully he’d “cleaned up” after practice.

The city smelled different here: sharper, humid, tinged with the sea even though it sat miles inland. Tobio didn’t like admitting it, but by now that smell tugged at him with a kind of inevitability, the same way a tossed set demanded a spike. Brazil wasn’t home. Neither was Tokyo, really. But for forty-eight hours at a time, whichever apartment they ended up in was.

And with each trip, he found himself thinking less about how far the flight was, and more about how close the door was—just a few more blocks until Shōyō’s voice broke through the muffled city noise like it always did, cutting clean, unmistakable, impossible to ignore.

The taxi jolted to a stop in front of a sun-faded apartment block, its paint the color of bleached coral. Tobio handed over the fare with a clipped “Obrigado” that still felt foreign in his mouth, then hauled his duffel onto one shoulder. The building wasn’t much—narrow stairwell, potted plants spilling over balconies, the hum of someone’s radio drifting down—but he recognized it instantly. He’d climbed these same stairs every month, and somehow they always felt steeper when he was impatient.

By the time he reached the third floor, his pulse was drumming higher than the climb deserved. He raised a fist to knock, but barely made contact before the door flew open.