Kuroo would wake me up by viciously poking my stomatch everytime we passed through an especially good bit of scenery. 

Around 2 pm, we arrived at Hakata station, one of the busiest stations in all of Kyushu. I slowly rose my head off of where I had burrowed into my seat to find Kuroo looking at me, bemused. 

"What?" 

"You were drooling in your sleep." 

"NO." 

We had to quick walk off the train to make it to our bus. It was blissfully uncrowded, so we were able to get all three seats in the row to ourselves. 

One seat for me. One seat for Kuroo. One seat for Kuroo's legs. 

Hakata is surrounded by rolling hills of bamboo forests. I could feel Kuroo watching me watch the bamboo, his head cocked slightly, a soft smile floating on his face. It made me self conscious to be observed in such a way. I wonder what he was thinking. 

 "Did your parents ever tell you the story of the wood cutter?" 

Kuroo shook his head, "What's that?" 

"It's apparently like a 10th century folktale. I thought my-", I paused, catching myself.

 "I thought it was something they had made up, until it was mentioned in a lit class in  junior high." 

Kuroo leaned over, looking out the window. I watched the long, green shoots trail by in the reflection of his eyes. 

"Tell me the story." 

There was something so intent and curious about his voice. I felt my face burn, slightly. "Oh, um. I don't remember all of it, but I can try.." I took a breath. 

"So there's this wood cutter. He doesn't have any kids, I think he tried but couldn't or something. He's out doing wood cutter things when he sees a glowing stalk of bamboo." 

"Glowing?" 

"Yeah. He cuts it down and there's this baby girl inside." 

"Dude, what the hell?"

"Stop interupting", I scowled. Kuroo laughed, pulling his knees into his chest, signalling he would be quiet. 

"He takes the baby home and he and his wife essentially adopt her. They love her very much and do the best they can as parents, but they're poor. Until.. quickly after they adopt the baby, the wood cutter  begins to find gold nuggets in the hollow of each bamboo stick he cuts down. They get really rich and the girl grows up to be this beautiful princess named Kaguya, I don't know what eactly made her a princess or how she knew she was a princess-" 

"Kenma, get on with it. She's a princess. What happens to the hot princess?" 

I sighed, smiling. 

"A bunch of men start pulling up, trying to marry her, but the Wood Cutter and his wife turn them all away, because they only want the best man possible for Kaguya. Even the Emperor pulls up, and the Wood Cutter thinks he might be chill, but Kaguya rejects him. She tells him that she's actually not from this world, she's from the moon. There's some series of mystical events revealing that she's from the moon, but honestly, I don't remember them. She's just from the moon." 

Kuroo nodded, "Hot moon princess." 

"Sure. For some reason, Kaguya must return to the moon. The Emperor is madly in love with her, and she kinda likes him too, but she must go back to the moon. Before a beam of light takes her home, she gives him a vial of elixir for eternal life as a gift, but he won't drink it. He can't imagine living for an eternity without her. The emperor sends the elixir to the top of Mt. Fuji so it can be burned, and that's how people used to explain the continuous trail of black smoke back when Fuji was more volcanically active." 

Kuroo sat pensively for awhile. Together, he and I watched the outside move past, the way the snow gathered in clumps on the ground. 

"What about her parents?" 

I looked at him. 

"The Wood Cutter and his wife? Were they sad that she had to go? She didn't give them a gift like the emperor..", Kuroo mumbled. 

I shrugged, "Well, they were super rich from all the gold." 

He pursed his lips, leaning his head against the bus seat. "Yeah, well, what they clearly wanted was a baby. And their kid left them to go back to the moon. I think that's sad.. I bet they missed her a lot." 

Kuroo was a person of very subtle shifts. If you blinked, you may not notice it had happened. When I first met him, I blinked entirely too much. Now, though, I knew if I put more work into observing.. I could catch the change in his moods. It was a progression as subtle as the transition between summer and fall.

He was sad. Not drastically, but there was a bit of it nestled in the folds of his breath. 

"Actually, I bet they were super proud to raise a moon princess. I bet they became astronomers, since he was so rich he probably didn't need to be a wood cutter anymore. They could continue to watch over the moon, and she could watch over them." 

I paused, studying his face. 

"Some kids leave their parents and other parents leave their kids. But..they had the priveledge of being with her their whole lives, just so long as the sun was down." 

The bus hit a pothole and we lurched forward, bonking into each other slightly. Kuroo chuckled, "Yeah."

I stretched, long and luxurious, cracking my spine. "I'm excited to meet your family." 

"Hopefully, we don't have to be around them much." Kuroo looked down at his hands. "That's honestly one of the reasons I invited you. My family doesn't get along very well, so you and I can go do our own thing."

I nodded. I had known something was up. 

"My grandma is excited to meet you, though. She hasn't been able to come to one of my games, since she's too old to travel much on her own. We can show her an ol' set-spike combo." 

I gave Kuroo a warm smile. "As fun as destroying my sleep schedule would have been, I'm glad you invited me." 

It meant a lot to me that he trusted me enough to bring me into this unsteady enviorment with him. I resolved that I would do everything I could to support him, distract him. Give him the vacation he deserved. 

"I'm glad you came."