When COVID-19 became the center of 2020, it brought with it anxiety, isolation, and a life where people close to me never felt farther away. 2021 worsened the negative feelings eating away at me, and after the death of my aunt I was hit with the sudden realization that the amount of time between initial cancer diagnosis and funeral may be only a handful of weeks. As my fear of losing loved ones grew stronger and every mild symptom sounded like a death sentence, I began living a life detached. One that was guided by the principle that, “People can come without warning, and they may leave as soon and as quietly as they arrived.”
Whenever the heartaches of these years became too much to bear, the fanfiction I turned to again and again was a sprinkle of cinnamon, a dash of sunshine by tinygumdrops. While the work is nearly sixty-thousand words, it is summarized in two simple sentences: “A new guy around Shouyou’s age comes to Satomori. Nobody goes to Satomori.” Fans of Haikyuu!! are already familiar with how Hinata Shouyou uses every opportunity to not only grow himself, but to act as the sunshine that allows others to grow alongside him. And with every reread of this work—every visit to the forgotten Japanese countryside, where the hearth goddess leaves her blessings in magic and people are transient but love remains—I found myself basking in this sunshine. a sprinkle of cinnamon is a tender reminder that feeling trapped is an inevitability of life, but it is fleeting and leaves in its wake something better.
While Shouyou loves his town, from its quiet harvest season to the bustling summer Mud Sports Festival, he feels stuck in its sleepy monotony. At twenty-seven, he’s one of the youngest still living in Satomori, the rest of his generation leaving as soon as they could to chase big dreams in bigger cities. And as my access to the world and the people in it steadily shrunk, his loneliness became achingly familiar. “Is he staying for a while?” Shouyou asks himself when he first becomes close to his new neighbor Kageyama, much in the same tone I began to question the amount of time I had left with my friends and family. And like Shouyou, I “wouldn’t dare hope” that they would stay with me, too afraid of the pain I’d feel when that hope proved false.
As the work draws nearer to a close, Shouyou’s story doesn’t end when his worst fears of a love leaving him behind come true. Instead, he uses his newfound appreciation for the transience of human connection and the realization that people long gone “have remained so close to his heart” to persevere. When he goes back to the city, Kageyama leaves Shouyou an article called Growing Your Own Persimmons: Do It In Six Easy Steps, with step number three circled. “Flowers will begin to appear 3-4 years or 5-6 years after planting,” it reads, a reminder that in time, happiness will return.
And while that time will be filled by pruning and cultivating and counting down fruitless days, it will come. For Shouyou, this meant his love would return to him. For me, the ending of a dash of cinnamon, a sprinkle of sunshine was more personal. It was an assertion that my life may be full of grief and fear now, but in only a few years everything will be changed and life will give me something new. Something better, if I’ve grown enough to see it that way.
RED INC. 