The Seventeenth Promise
𝐊𝐨𝐬𝐡𝐢 𝐒𝐮𝐠𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐚 𝐗 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫
Mᴀsᴛᴇʀʟɪsᴛ
----𖤓⋆˖⁺‧₊𖤐₊‧⁺˖⋆☾--------𖤓⋆˖⁺‧₊𖤐₊‧⁺˖⋆☾----
“One of these days, I'm going to stop being nice.” He said.
“You’ve threatened that about seventeen times. I'm going to be honest; I don't believe you.” (Y/N) giggled, stirring the milk into her coffee with a slow, careless swirl, watching the cream lace like a pale wave across the cup. Outside, evening leaked itself into the city with the soft, distant rumble of a departing train. Koshi Sugawara watched her laugh, the slight crinkles at the corners of her eyes, and for a moment the world narrowed to the cramped table at the back of the café and the soft halo of lamplight above their heads.
Koshi smiled the way he always did when she teased him — gentle, a little sheepish. He liked being teased. He liked how easily she shook the stiffness out of him. Yet underneath the quirk of his mouth, there was a thread of something more stubborn; his hands, folded on the table, tightened imperceptibly. “Seventeen?” he repeated, as if counting the number in his head would make the weight behind it lighter. "Maybe more."
(Y/N) shook her head, leaning back. Her school was two train stops and a different timetable away, but nights like this — Wednesdays after Karasuno's longer practice, when Sugawara's voice carried a tired but warm echo — she made it a point to meet him. She liked how the city smelled after rain, how the neon signs smeared into watercolor at night. And she liked him — the vice captain who could be both fierce on the court and impossibly soft at a midnight café.
“You know it's your niceness that makes people rely on you,” she said, not unkindly. “Not necessarily the best trait for a vice captain, actually. You end up taking more blame than you should.”
Koshi gave a small laugh that carried both apology and deflection. “Blame and praise are both exaggerated, Y/N. It’s easier to accept both if you don’t make a fuss.”
“That's not how it works with you,” she said. “You do make a fuss. You take the fuss for everyone.”
He looked down at his hands again. “It’s not just fuss. They trust me. I want to be someone they can count on.”
“Even when they drift into your kindness and forget how to stand on their own?” she asked quietly.
He tilted his head, taken by the gravity in her voice. The café had emptied; the barista wiped down the counter in a rhythm that matched the tick of their cups. “Sometimes,” he admitted, “I worry about that.”
She reached across and brushed her fingers against his knuckles. The touch was ordinary and intimate at once. “That’s why you keep saying you'll stop,” she said. “It’s like a rehearsal for you. But it's just words until you actually mean it.”
Koshi's eyes found hers. For a third-year in Karasuno's volleyball program — the vice captain, the substitute setter and pinch server — he had learned a lot about timing and the small languages of gesture. The pitch of a serve, the squeeze of a hand in the huddle, the tilt of a head when a teammate needed direction — he read and answered them. But love, he found, was a lesson in different timing. Not everything required a set, not every spike needed to be covered.
He thought about the day's practice. The team had been tense; Aoba Johsai had scouted the gym, and Sugawara had felt the familiar responsibility to steady the shaky plays. A first-year had been overwhelmed during drills and started to shut down — the kind of thing that lodged like a splinter in Sugawara's chest. He had stepped in with a joke, a quick, encouraging nudge, and the kid had brightened. On the bus home, he had offered his seat to someone else and given up the last onigiri he had saved. To anyone else, these were small, forgettable gestures. To him, they were how he kept the team's rhythm intact.
“That’s you,” (Y/N) said softly. “You give, and then you give some more, and you don't notice how thin that leaves you sometimes.”
Koshi's laugh this time was rueful. “I don't feel thin.”
"But you are," she countered. "Little by little. It's like... like watering ten pots with one small can while all you have is one plant you need to save from withering."
He considered the metaphor, then nodded slowly. “I get it.”
“And when you say you’ll stop being nice, what do you mean?” she asked, curious rather than accusatory.
He let out a breath that sounded almost like a smile. “I mean… if someone’s being unfair, I’ll call them out. If someone expects me to do everything, I’ll say no. If my kindness is hurting someone else or is being used as a crutch, I’ll stop being the crutch.”
(Y/N) watched him with an expression both affectionate and teasing. “You sound like a manifesto.”
“It’s a small manifesto,” he said, lightly. “People don't change overnight.”
“Do you want to change?” she asked. There, the question pressed against the edge of her composure — not because she wanted to punish him, but because she wanted him whole. She wanted him to be someone who could keep giving without losing his edges, someone who balanced empathy with boundaries.
The answer came in a way that was simple and honest. “I want to be better,” he said. “For them. For me. For you.”
She considered his words. Their relationship, as comfortable as it was, had its own rhythms of compromise and care. Being in different schools meant there were fewer shared classrooms and more stolen evenings; it also meant that when he showed up — defensively tired, hands smelling faintly of chalk and sweat — she knew it was because he had chosen to. She loved choosing him back.
They left the café together, sharing his umbrella against a light drizzle. People flowed around them, umbrellas bobbing like tiny planets. Under the weak light, Sugawara took her hand, fingers wrapping around hers with an effortless familiarity. His grip was a promise of sorts — small, solid.
“Promise me something,” (Y/N) said after a moment, voice half-playful, half-serious. “If you ever actually stop being nice? Tell me first. So I can adjust my expectations.”
Koshi's brow arched. “Adjust?”
“So I don’t miss the old you too suddenly,” she said, smiling.
He squeezed her hand. “I’ll tell you. But it might not be something that you can...practice for.”
“You'll give me a heads-up. Fine.”
The next week brought the first real test. Karasuno had a tournament match on Saturday; the gym smelled like rubber and determination. Coach Ukai had been frank: rotations needed tightening, first-years needed more conviction. Sugawara had spent the week juggling tutoring sessions for club teammates and last-minute strategy talks. He'd been the kind of tireless, patient presence he always was — until Kiyoko, the team manager, came hurrying to him after practice.
“There's a problem with the lineup for tomorrow,” she said. “Nakamura's been called in for work, and Azumane's ankle isn't 100%. Coach wants you to step up as starting setter.”
Sugawara's stomach gave an involuntary flip — a mix of responsibility and the sense that his steadiness was required again. He nodded. “I’ll do it.”
He didn't flinch at the pressure; it was part of the role he had learned to accept. Yet the night's last drill pivoted on Misugi's errant serves, and when he tried to correct him, the older player's defense flared into irritation. “You're overcorrecting,” Misugi snapped. “Let me do my thing.”
Sugawara had smiled, an apology wrapped in an apology. “Sorry. Just thought—”
“Just thought you knew better,” Misugi cut in, louder. “You always think you do. It’s getting old.”
The gym went quiet enough that the scoreboard's hum pulsed in their ears. Sugawara's heart did that soft, familiar squeeze; he had been called out before, but the words this time landed with a different weight. Around them, teammates shifted, some avoiding eyes, others watching with the sharp curiosity of the invested.
For a moment, Sugawara wanted to laugh — not because it was funny, but because the absurdity of being rebuked for the very thing that kept the team steady felt like an irony he didn't know how to swallow. He had a hundred ways to reply: a joke, a calm correction, a letting-it-go. But the phrase he'd promised himself had been brewing: a day to stop being nice.
He took a breath. The words that came were softer than a spike and clearer than a joke. “I'm not trying to control you,” he said. “I just want us to function. If my corrections sound like commands, tell me. But if we keep letting avoidable mistakes slide because we don’t want to hurt each other’s feelings, we’ll lose more than pride.”
Misugi's mouth tightened. Around them, the murmurs rose. Sugawara's statement wasn't an accusation; it was a boundary dressed in sincerity. It landed like a tiny stone causing ripples.
(Y/N) wasn't in the gym that night — she had an exam the following morning and had stayed home — but the echo of that evening reached her anyway, through the voicemail Sugawara left her later. “It was…weird,” he said into the phone, voice low, not the jovial timbre he'd used with the freshmen. “I said something that wasn't exactly me. I don't know if it changed anything.”
She listened to him, imagining him: tall in the half-lit locker room, hair damp with sweat, an intensity in his jaw she only saw when the team made demands of him. She wanted to reassure him. “Maybe you didn't become unkind,” she said when she returned the call. “You just decided not to be a people-pleaser anymore.”
“Is that better?” he asked.
“For you? Yes,” she said. “For everyone else? They'll figure it out.”
He laughed then, a short, bright sound. “You always sound so sure.”
She smiled into the receiver. “I don't always. But I believe in you, you idiot.”
There was silence, then the slam of a locker in his background, the low murmur of boys winding down. “I won't be mean,” he said. “I just—maybe I'll be clearer.”
“That's fair,” she said. “And if anyone tries to take advantage of your kindness, I will personally thwack them with my umbrella.”
He made a small, incredulous noise. “Well, that's something.”
The next day, Sugarawa's steadying presence on the court felt different — not colder, not harsher, but edged with a quiet clarity; a refusal to smooth over problems into complacency. It unsettled some and steadied others. (Y/N) watched the match streamed on her phone between classes, heart turning as he soared through a set that ended in a winning point. The crowd erupted; his teammates lifted him for a brief, clumsy celebration. He looked at her, just for a beat, as if seeing her through the distance between phones and train lines. He mouthed something she couldn't make out.
Later, when they walked home together, the world mellowed. He held her hand in his palm like a tiny, perfect thing. “I didn't stop being nice,” he said quietly. “I just stopped being everything for everyone at once.”
She looked up at him, her smile wide enough to feel like home. “That sounds like progress.”
He grinned back, that familiar tilt returning. “So you don't think I’ll ever actually stop?”
She shook her head. “No. You'd have to stop liking people first.”
He feigned offense. “That sounds like a verdict.”
“It’s a compliment,” she said. “People matter to you. It's not going anywhere.”
His eyes softened. “Then I’ll learn to be nicer in better ways.”
She laughed. “Don't trade one kind for another garbage-can full. Balance, Sugawara.”
He let out a contented sigh and spared a look for the darkening sky above them, for the small houses and the traffic that blinked like stars. “Balance,” he repeated. “One day, if I ever do stop being nice, I'll tell you.”
(Y/N) squeezed his hand. For now, she thought, listening to the steady cadence of his breathing, that was enough — a promise wrapped not in threat but in the gentle certainty that he was trying, and that could be the truest kind of kindness of all. Their footsteps fell in time as they headed home, two silhouettes sharing an umbrella and a world that, for the moment, felt manageable.
----𖤓⋆˖⁺‧₊𖤐₊‧⁺˖⋆☾--------𖤓⋆˖⁺‧₊𖤐₊‧⁺˖⋆☾----
