Archive of Our Own

“That title… don’t call me that ever again.”

Yet, no matter how many times he made it clear how abhorrent this nickname was to Tobio Kageyama, people still threw it around like free candy. 

Even the name itself was vague. Volleyball teams all around the city as well as his own teammates came up with rumour after rumour about where it came from and why he despised it so much.

Sometimes, a person would ask him these questions directly to him in an attempt to uncover the truth, but somehow this annoyed him even more than simply being called the nickname in itself.

What especially irked him about it all is the one thing that most of the people who did this said.

“You know, if you never tell the struggles that you are holding inside your heart to anyone, then how do you expect us to help you with them?”

Just the thought of that sentence was what really made him want to vomit all over.

“These idiots… They act as if they’ve known me intimately for years, when they don’t know jack shit about me! And I hate it when people say sappy stuff about ‘hearts’ and ‘love’ and whatnot… None of it is real, anyway. What do you even call a ‘struggle?’ Why can’t they understand that I’m just used to it already?”

This thought was running in his mind as he was walking home alone from volleyball practice. This sport was pretty much his only strength in life, and yet sometimes he couldn’t tolerate the behaviour of his teammates at practices.

Whether it was actually true or not, sometimes he felt as if the others regarded his volleyball skill as his only personality trait. Although, to their credit, this issue was partially his fault as well; his reserved nature inhibited him from talking to anyone.

“They’re always saying shit like ‘Kageyama, please help us in the upcoming practice match!,’ ‘Kageyama, you’ll set the ball for me like always, won’t you?,’ and ‘Your quick set with Hinata is what helps Karasuno reach the top!’”

Hinata. As much as the moral part of him wanted to be a good teammate to him, he always despised how the short orange-haired boy was always the centre of attention.

Whenever Hinata achieved any success, the upperclassmen would always go overboard in congratulating him. Whenever he failed in something, they always passed it off as beginners’ nerves. To him, this was quite frankly a stupid argument. Since now a significant time had passed since him joining the team, Hinata wasn’t exactly the innocent cinnamon roll novice that everyone coddled him as anymore.

To add insult to Kageyama’s injury, whenever he would attempt to reprimand him for his mistakes or when his nerves would boil over while dealing with Hinata’s stubbornness, Kageyama was the one who received the scoldings every single time.

“Kageyama, don’t be so mean! Hinata’s your teammate, after all!”

“Kageyma, you’re hindering the team’s performance when you say things like that!”

“My, my, there’s that king-like behaviour again.”

The last statement was an exclusive of the one person in the team that had ever intrigued Kageyama in a good way, although he would much rather die than admit that to the person himself.

Kei Tsukishima.

Out of all the people in the team, he was the only one who was impartial when it came to criticising others. He dished out his snarky remarks only when someone did something that warranted them. Tsukishima had little bias favouring people he liked, because to be blunt, he hated everyone equally.

Most of all, just like Kageyama, he could be scolded when he didn’t even deserve it.

As a result, whenever Tsukishima teased him, it sent strange shivers down Kageyama’s spine rather than the anger he attributed towards everyone else.

He knew that the tall boy’s comments towards him usually only came when he had actually screwed up, but the reality of this couldn’t help but disappoint him.

He wanted to find some way to tell him, “Hey, I just wanted to let you know that we’re on the same side here.” If he literally said that to him, though, he knew that his reply would most likely come in the form of a firm kick to the face.

Therefore, he came to the conclusion that nobody on the Karasuno volleyball team really cared for him. He vowed to never let himself cry about it, though, not even in private.

It was okay. It was all okay. He was used to it, he became used to this stuff a long time ago.

Still, just for the heck of it, he found himself about to punch a tree as a way of making sure that whatever little emotion was left in him was released.

However, a split second before his knuckles came into contact with the hard bark, he stopped dead in his tracks when the sight of his house caught the corner of his eye.

He had become so engrossed in his own thought process that he lost track of where he was going, and he reached here on a sort of ‘autopilot’ without even noticing.

Usually, he would have no regard of who was around during the few times he felt like being particularly loud. This was the only place where he took every precaution possible to make sure he was as dead silent as a mouse.

The reason for this sudden change was because, the moment his parents were alerted of his presence, all hell would break loose.

He gave up on the fantasy notion of ever receiving genuine love from those two way back when he was merely a child, and at this point, he didn’t even love them all that much anymore.

If he admitted this to anyone else, he would undoubtedly get even stronger side eyes than usual. Wherever he went, so many clichés about respecting your parents regardless of what they did to you, regardless of how much they hurt you or even ruined your life, overflowed in his ears.

In the end, he figured that those were just even more examples of people assuming his situation without knowing anything about him, as if he didn’t have enough already.

He had spent years toughening himself up to endure the arrows of the sheer ignorance coming from his parents. Still, the small inner child that was looking for the love that it had always missed out on was the only force compelling him to care about what they thought about him.

There was a practical aspect to it as well, that Kageyama was beginning to consider with increasing frequency.

“I’m still financially dependent on them… If they kick me out, I definitely can’t explain to someone how I’m suddenly homeless, so I’d have nowhere to go. If I snap too hard at them, they might beat me straight into the hospital with crippling debt, and that’s even more of a no-go. I wonder how much longer I can keep telling others stories about how my non-volleyball related bruises and scratches came from tripping and falling somewhere… I guess I just won’t be able to escape from this hellhole for the foreseeable future. Meh, it’s still no big deal though… right?”

The real answer to this was a resounding ‘no’; this was only his attempt to reassure himself as he opened the painstakingly creaky door and stepped inside.

All the lights were off, and he didn’t hear any yelling or arguing, so he thought he would actually be safe for once.

To his dismay, they flickered on once again. He made eye contact with his mom’s expression, which was known for being devoid of empathy for any living being (much less him). Once, some years ago, he had even heard a rumour among some relatives that she used to take joy in killing small and helpless animals when she was a child.

Most of all, Kageyama realised just how wrong he was to have any hope at all.

“You worthless bitch, why do you have to stay out late at those useless sports practices all the time? Who the fuck do you think is supposed to help me set the table? You’re just like your ass excuse for a father, neither of you ever help with anything!”

Of course. She didn’t even take enough interest in his life to know which sport he played. Back in middle school, the two of them would often get into screaming matches about this. After some time, however, Kageyama learned just how insufferably unrelenting his ‘mother’ was. The best strategy for these kinds of situations, which occurred almost everyday, was to just stomp over to his room and lock the door without saying a word.

He reached over to grab his depressing-looking dinner before storming off. Normally, his mom didn’t give a damn about whether he ate or not, but this time she caught him off guard by slapping his hand away. This wasn’t any regular slap either; Kageyama’s hand was now a painfully stinging red.

The first instinct that someone has when confronted physically like this is to fight back. Kageyama, on the other hand, chose not to take this route for a number of reasons. Firstly, although he was athletic, he wasn’t a boxer or a professional fighter. Even if he did know how to fight back, people would no doubt paint him as the bad guy when they found out. He was the big, mean high-schooler, and his mom and dad were just poor, elderly people who could do no wrong.

If nobody ever believed Kageyama before, then they certainly wouldn’t believe him now.

Nothing could prepare him for what she was going to say next, though.

“You don’t even answer your own mother, and you have the audacity to take the food she worked so hard to prepare? Even aside from that, you’re gaining way too much weight lately, you fucking pig… What will the relatives think if I show them this fat good-for-nothing who piggybacks off his parents’ money!?”

Trying to hide his shock, he took off sprinting towards his room and slammed the door shut behind him, double checking to make sure that the lock was fully in place.

At that moment, he heard the front door slam open, and the distinctive sound of his father’s drunk, staggering footsteps.

He could hear the real screaming match of the day break out in the kitchen, but Kageyama was well-trained in tuning it out. Besides, he had more pressing matters to think about.

“God, I know I shouldn’t be giving a rat’s ass about what that bitch has to say, but am I really gaining weight…?”

This thought, in turn, brought back a host of other memories with it.

One example had happened during a performance of the team’s regular ritual of eating meat buns together outside of the convenience store, when Kageyama had overheard the conversation of two girls from another high school passing by.

“Hey, look, it’s that volleyball team that everyone’s starting to talk about again. They’re from… Karasuno High School, I think it was?”

“Yeah, that’s the name. They used to be a household name throughout the prefecture, and then they fell off, but I’ve heard they’re making a comeback. It’s a classic underdog story, so hot!”

“I know, right? Everyone’s talking especially about that really talented setter who’s in their team, because he got rejected from another school.”

“How tragic! Although, I’ve heard he has one of the best looks of any high school sports dude in the city, as well as talent! Can you imagine? Which one of them do you think he is?”

This is when Kageyama’s ear started to take an extra degree of focus on the conversation; this would be one of the first bits of positive attention he had obtained in… forever, come to think of it.

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but he’s that guy in the black hair over there. I saw him at one of his games before. He has talent in the sport, that much is true, but his looks are kind of a letdown.”

“No way, that one? Eh, you’re right, I’ve seen volleyball boys in our city that are way hotter than that!”

Keep in mind, Kageyama wasn’t the type to care what others thought of his face or how attractive he was. It was the one particular feature the girls pointed out that had caused this seemingly random memory to resurface in the first place.

“He has some zits on his face, and his eye shape and hairstyle seem kind of off to me, but that’s just my personal taste, I’ll give him that. He does have potential…”

The girl completed the sentence with her friend, almost in unison.

“If only if he lost some weight!”

Then, they ran off giggling about how apparently, skinny boys were the new trend these days. Kageyama didn’t keep up with fashion trends either, but he knew about how society’s perceptions of a girl could drastically change depending on her weight, everyone knew that.

However, everyone also knew about how society keeps changing with every passing day. If this same standard had started to be applied to boys as well, then Kageyama was going to have some big problems. Aside from maybe a few others, he weighed the most out of anyone on the team.

Although he should have never been relating any of this to each other, soon his mind began to throw Hinata into the mix as well. The team appeared to care about him the most, and he received the most compliments. He also remembered Nishinoya, who was even smaller than Hinata, and how he was also lauded by the others.

“Is this because the two of them weigh the least…?” 

Common sense would have, should have told him that this couldn’t be farther from the truth, and the difference in their weights was directly related to the large gap in their heights.

What made his current state of mind even more unusual was that he normally would use common sense; if nothing else, he was at least known for being level-headed.

However, nothing about this was normal.

“I need to lose weight, that’s it, then maybe I can be noticed and appreciated and loved…”

This was his final decision, and nothing could dissuade him. His inner child that he had kept locked away for so long was beginning to emerge, desperate to use any means necessary to gain the love needed, so that he might figure out whether someone other than himself even needed him in this world.

While his parents’ fight continued to rage on into the night, he began to do some research on his phone. It was old, cracked, and painfully slow, but it still got the job done.

He opened the browser and shakily began to type the five words that would change his life forever, but not in the way he expected.

how to lose weight fast

A plethora of information about exercises, caloric deficits, at least one hundred different kinds of diets, and whatnot bombarded him. He ignored anything that popped up about the first item in this list; he played competitive sports, so adding more exercise to the mix probably wouldn’t do him much.

After sifting through the sea of advices for some time, he found that they all boiled down to one simple message that became the new predominant thing that was echoing through his mind.

“So… all I have to do is not eat?”

Of course, there were warnings embedded from time to time in his research that cautioned against skipping meals and starving, but his muddied rationale completely blew them over.

“I guess it can’t be that hard, after all, models and such go on crazy diets and fast all the time. Did I ever really care that much about food to begin with? I eat to keep myself alive… and sometimes I ate a little extra back when I was first getting into volleyball and needed to build some muscle. I already have some muscle now, so I don’t need that anymore. If I only eat a bare, bare minimum… what could go wrong?”

He was confident, so he forgot the jinxes that usually come with asking such a question.

Little did he know, this cliché would come true sooner than he thought.

Kageyama’s journey to starvation came gradually; he didn’t go from one hundred percent to zero percent like he had originally thought. His primitive habits still caused him to salivate whenever the time for one of the three meals of the day came round, and he gave in to the demands easily at first. Moreover, quitting his near-daily habit of buying milk from the vending machine would be quite the task as well.

He couldn’t do this alone, and soon, he began to turn to more and more dangerous sources for his weight loss tips. Sometimes, his rationality would poke through and intervene for a brief moment before quickly being silenced by a growing voice in his head.

“You’ve barely started, you can’t give up now. Think of how much they will notice you when you start to lose weight! Your teammates might even start to worry and fuss over you just like they do with Hinata! You want that, don’t you? If you use some of that willpower you use in volleyball for losing weight, then you will finally be beautiful enough…”

The gradual appearance of this voice scared him at first, but reluctantly, Kageyama began to heed its orders. It wasn’t as if he had much of a choice anyway.

Therefore, he learnt everything he could. He learnt about excuses he could use in case anyone inquired about his eating less, although he wasn’t sure if anyone would even show that much concern for him. He learnt about ways to subdue hunger. He learnt about calorie-counting techniques, dieting tricks he could use to make sure the weight stayed off, and so much more.

His cravings slowly disappeared, replaced by an obsessive desire to cut calories wherever he could. He began to run instead of walk home, even when he was exhausted after practice. He drank a disproportionate amount of water to deter him whenever he was supposed to eat.

Using methods such as these, slowly but surely, the numbers on his rusty bathroom scale were finally beginning to drop. The initial weight loss made him feel more lighter, more free, but most importantly, losing weight finally gave him control over something in his life.

He wasn’t quite at the point where people pointed his lack of weight out yet, but he did hear some hushed whispers of something changing about him. He also took note of his ability to jump higher than usual, which increased his performance to some degree.

During one practice, he made a dead-on set that resulted in a picture perfect score. After the whistle sounded, he heard his captain, Daichi shout from the back,

“Woah, Kageyama, that was a beautiful set! Nice job!”

Yes, his wishes were finally coming true. He was getting a compliment directed towards him, and not just the pity backhanded compliments he got when Hinata was in the spotlight.

He smiled, but he wasn’t satisfied yet.

“I need to go even further, I need more…”

Soon, innocent intermittent fasting and small diets took on a more sinister appearance as he began to go one, then two, then even several days at a time without eating any food at all.

The drops in the numbers became more and more pronounced, and the danger of someone finding out and putting an end to this so-called joy became imminent.

The first sign of such a threat came during a late-night practice. The Karasuno team was preparing to face up against one of their greatest rivals, the volleyball team at Nekoma, once again.

A drive to win motivated them for some time, but slowly, exhaustion in all the team members became apparent.

Even the powerful attack with Kageyama and Hinata became botched, and Kageyama’s sets were going further and further from the mark.

Of course, he knew what it was like to be tired during a practice, but this time felt… different.

He tried to brush it off, but after one particularly off attempt at setting, getting back up again became more difficult of a task than it had ever been before.

Daichi and his right-hand man, Sugawara, took notice as they both approached him. However, they stopped in their tracks as a retching sound came from the opposite direction.

Hinata threw up from nervousness… again.

Sugawara was the one to abandon his original path and run over to Hinata to clean his mess up and comfort him about whatever it was he was worrying about so much, most likely the upcoming math.

Kageyama was still struggling to get up, and Daichi continued to get closer to him, leaving Sugawara to Hinata.

“Hey, you don’t have to wait on Hinata, you can get up and set again with Tanaka.”

It was then that he heard how much he was panting.

“Is there something wrong-“

“Daichi! Can you please go get the cleaning materials from the closet?”

Knowing the urgency in Sugawara’s call for help, he bolted off, offering Kageyama only a pitiful glance.

Just as he thought he was alone, Kei Tsukishima’s footsteps reached the position relative to the net directly opposite to him.

“Well, well, looks like our talented player is struggling to get up! This is quite-“

He didn’t know why, but out of all his other teammates, he hated embarrassing himself in front of Tsukishima the most.

As he stumbled back to a normal standing position, he shot the taller boy an empty look that was enough to startle even someone like him.

“I’m… sorry…”

With that, he ran away to find his water bottle. He needed something inside him, even though he knew that water would not provide him with any nutritional nourishment.

He didn’t run after him, but Tsukishima couldn’t keep his eyes off of Kageyama. Hearing someone like him apologise was so abnormal that he would have been more likely to believe someone that said that the sun rises from the west and sets in the east.

His gut began to clench, creating something that he had never felt for anyone before… concern.

“Something’s not right… I don’t know what, but something is wrong with the ki- Kageyama…”

“Something’s not right with what?” A voice came from behind.

“I wasn’t talking to you, Yamaguchi!”

Meanwhile at home in his room, Kageyama was absolutely spent. This not only came from the practice, but from having to deal with his parents again. Although his teammates were starting to notice him to a small degree, his parents still didn’t care in the slightest about him. They still treated him in the same shit way, as if all of Kageyama’s efforts were invisible.

It was at these precise moments that it liked to strike.

“See? You might have made some progress, but it still isn’t enough. Didn’t you see how easily Daichi and Sugawara ignored you at practice today? Your parents… they still don’t pity you at all. Just starving won’t be enough. You need to go a step further, even…”

There were no specifics provided about what that step was, but Kageyama already knew. He wasn’t jealous of Hinata this time, but remembering how everyone flocked towards him when he threw up at practice earlier was enough to create an all too enticing idea in his mind.

A few internet searches later, he found himself hunched over the toilet with fingers stuck in the back of his throat before he knew it.

Some finger shoves later, the water inside the toilet became tainted with all the contents of Kageyama’s stomach: acid, bile, and the few bits of food that he had allowed to enter himself.

After the sick feeling faded, he became even more lightheaded than what starving did to him.

Yes, maybe this would be the thing to do the trick.

Maybe now he could be worthy of being loved.

On the flip side, since purging posed an even more imminent risk to his health than starving, this was the first time that he realised that all this stuff he was doing could actually hurt him. Although this was his first time, he could feel it already. He was fatigued, still slightly nauseous, and his throat was burning him more than any spicy food he had ever eaten.

Of course, he still had enough common sense to at least try not to do it so often that it could endanger his life. With that out of the way, the only worst-case scenario, or at least so he thought, was that he would have to admit himself into the hospital for a few days.

“Even if it came to that… I don’t think anyone would make much of a fuss out of it. They could still easily continue on just like normal while I would be gone.”

The one thing he did realise was that people might start nagging him in the wrong way about his weight now. His silhouette was sharper than normal as his bones were in the beginning stages of protruding out, although when he looked in the mirror the only thing he saw was fat everywhere.

Starting from the next day, even though the scorching hot summer days were quickly approaching, he started to wear extra layers to mask his new shape at least a little. He figured that the extra heat wouldn’t be much of a bother to him; lately, there would be times when he would feel freezing cold while everyone else was perfectly warm.

However, even with all this, Kageyama’s cycle of purging (even when he hadn’t eaten much to begin with) brought things downhill quicker than he could have ever imagined.

His water breaks at practices became less frequent when swallowing anything at all hurt. He had abandoned the meat bun outings with the others completely, but he thought that he was doing everyone a favour by eliminating his meaningless presence. His hair was falling out as easily as snowflakes had fallen from the clouds when it was winter. Cold popsicles and ice creams were a good way of soothing his injured throat, but he couldn’t even eat them as often as he used to, as he noticed that his teeth were overly sensitive to them for no reason.

Yet, he was already so down deep in this hole he had somehow dug himself into that he couldn’t find a way out, even if he wanted to. Fasting, counting calories, and then throwing up had become so routine that they were all soothing to him, in an incredibly morbid way.

He thought that the extra layers, the countless stories of explaining why he wasn’t hungry, and saying that he forgot to take his vitamin supplements (he wasn’t taking any in the first place) when someone pointed out his hairfall was fooling everyone.

It did, to some extent. Little did he know, though, there was one person who wasn’t so easily fooled.

This entire time, ever since that practice a couple of weeks ago when his suspicions had first risen, he watched over him like a hawk. He just couldn’t put a finger on the issue with Kageyama he was trying to pinpoint, and he couldn’t approach him if he didn’t even know what he was going to confront him about.

That sinking gut feeling he had only got stronger day by day. He had a hunch that, if he didn’t find out what was going on with Kageyama soon, it would be too late.

“Should I tell the captain? No, he’s mine, I’m not going to let anyone interfere, at least until I get to the bottom of this. Wait, ‘he’s mine?’ What am I even saying? Kei Tsukishima, get a hold of yourself! Point is, I don’t need help from others. Even if I tried to seek help, no one would ever believe in a million years that something could be seriously wrong with the ‘king’s’ health. God, what am I going to do…?”

He felt his cheeks grow red, which only made him feel more embarrassed.

“Okay, class, I have a homework assignment for you all!”

All the colour vanished from his face as he heard the collective groans of everyone. He slapped his own face gently to reprimand himself for losing focus while in his Language and Composition class.

“What’s all this noise for? Don’t worry, I’ve decided to give you a more… interesting assignment this time.”

“Whenever a teacher says that, that’s when you know you really need to watch out!” Tsukishima heard the boy sitting next to him whisper to his friend.

“I want you all to write about an issue that’s been on your mind lately, that you haven’t found a solution to yet. You should ideally talk about where you think the problem came from, how it affects you now, and ways that you might deal with it in the future. It can be as long or short as you want, as long as it’s meaningful enough. Write in your notebooks and submit them on my desks tomorrow morning. Well then-“

The bell rang before she could finish, and everyone bolted out of the room, having only listened to her halfheartedly.

That was, everyone but Tsukishima.

By the time he sat down at his desk in his room to start the assignment, the sun had long since set. He had spent the afternoon hard at work at practice; tomorrow would finally be the match against Nekoma that they had been practicing for for so long.

Yet, there was one crucial person missing from practice Kageyama.

When Daichi had arrived, he announced to everyone that the setter had called in sick for the day. Everyone groaned and moaned for a couple minutes after that, but not to mourn the absence of his personality (everyone still hated him for that, even though he had abated from those behaviours recently).

They only missed him because they were worried about how his missing the final practice would affect the outcome of the match tomorrow. From a practical standpoint, Tsukishima could understand why they thought like that, but it enraged him that not a single one of them bothered to point out how wrong it was.

Kageyama had never, ever missed even a single practice before. Something must be terribly, terribly wrong.

On the bright side, thinking about this finally gave him an idea about what to write for his creative writing assignment. He took care not to be too specific so as not to make his teacher suspicious of anything, but soon enough, his pen was moving even faster than his mind.

“There is one thing, or rather one person, that has been bugging my mind for months now. Keeping up the reputation I have currently as the teasing, standoffish first year is difficult at times, but it has never been more difficult than when having someone like him around.”

“To examine the current situation, I think I should observe the past first. I joined this school at the same time as him, and at first, he annoyed me just as much as anyone else (if not even more so). We play in the same sports club together, and it was when I first witnessed his skill firsthand rather than from the rumours about him I had heard that my opinions began to change.”

“It was then that I realised that I finally had someone on my team who was equally matched with me. I don’t know if he ever noticed what I did, though. We both had the same demeanour that even our own teammates feared, we both had comparable experience, we played similar positions, and the list just goes on and on. Provided with this information, I couldn’t help but wonder whether there were any similarities between us beyond anything related to sports. However, this kind of question can only be answered when you get close to the person and ask them yourself.”

“Given the way I am, I knew that the probability of this happening was comparable to winning the lottery. I tried to hide my disappointment by being even meaner to him and others than I was before. Sometimes, I would even purposefully seek him out just to put him down.”

“I know that that was very wrong of me, but the thing was, he never seemed to be bothered by anything I said. I think it was when I realised that, that he caught my heart.”

Tsukishima took a deep breath, as he moved his narrative to describe the more present events.

“These days, though, he’s changing. I don’t why nobody else is taking note of it, but the formidable aura he used to give off just isn’t there anymore. It’s been replaced by a new aura, which is much weaker, from my perception. The signs are showing physically too. His skin gets injured easily, he always has this ill look on his face, and he asks to get excused to the bathroom way more often than usual despite me not seeing him eat or drink anything at all lately. He never was much of a talker even from the beginning, but when he does talk these days, he sounds so hoarse that it’s eerie. Everyone else has started to complain of the summer heat, while he still seems to be stuck in the winter.”

“I could go on for hours if I wanted to. The point is, he’s drifting away from me, and from everyone else for that matter, so fast that I’m afraid I won’t be able to reach him in time. As for what will happen next? That’s the future, and there’s no way to change it as of now, so nobody knows. Not me, not him, not our teammates, nor anyone.”

Essays weren’t really Tsukishima’s strong point in academics, so when he set down his pencil, he himself was shocked to see how long this expression of his feelings was. Moreover, after he closed his notebook and began getting ready for bed, a sudden epiphany came to his mind that sent him running back towards his desk. His teacher had been right after all; even when you can’t express yourself to any person, doing it on paper makes you see the situation from perspectives that would have never been possible beforehand.

He opened his laptop, clicked on the browser, and typed in,

symptoms of an eating disorder

Tsukishima was no doctor, of course, but now he had all the answers he needed.

The next day, the Language and Composition class was the last period of the day, so the last thing that Tsukishima had to do before meeting the others to board the bus to Nekoma High was turn in his work that he had already completed.

He was skimming over it on his way to the teacher’s desk, cringing on the inside on just how open he was in a random assignment.

“Shit! If she reads this, she might figure out that I have a guy in my heart! Liking one guy doesn’t make me gay, does it? No, Tsukishima, don’t be delusional here. You ARE gay, and it took you Kageyama out of all people to realise this. Now’s not the time to be thinking these kinds of thoughts, Tsukishima. Wait, now that I know I’m gay, who should I tell? How should I tell everyone, if at all? Argh, Tsukishima just calm down-“

“Um, you can just leave your notebook on my desk now, Tsukishima…”

He put down the notebook, preparing to run like mad out of the classroom, but he froze in place as he saw the teacher’s eyes skim eagerly over his text.

Lowering her voice to be quiet as a mouse, she whispered.

“Psst, Tsukishima Kei, I don’t know what motivated you to write something like this, but just know that I support you no matter what. Besides, considering the past work you’ve submitted, this is amazing!”

She then took out a stamp and placed it on that page in Tsukishima’s notebook, which was a special stamp that she only used for work that had achieved full marks, a benchmark that he seldom was ever able to reach in this subject.

“I don’t know what’s going on here, but good luck!”

With a smile on his face for the first time in quite a while, he made his way downstairs towards the bus.

Usually, he would sit next to Yamaguchi, the shorter boy who was rather clingy towards him, in their usual seat at the back of the bus. This time, though, he sat next to Kageyama. When Yamaguchi offered Tsukishima the seat next to him, he refused for the first time.

Now, this was unusual enough that all eyes on the bus were on him for a moment.

“Are you sure you want to sit there, Tsukishima? You know that it usually doesn’t end well when you two are within a five meter radius of each other…” Sugawara inquired curiously.

Pushing his glasses up on his nose and displaying his signature smug look, he replied,

“I’m sure I can handle this. Besides, it would have been worse if we had let the shrimp sit next to him, wouldn’t it? You and Daichi are the ones who talk about looking past each other’s differences to become better teammates, right?”

This elicited an angry squeak from the orange-haired ‘shrimp’ in question as he stood up, but was gently pushed back down by Yamaguchi. He had opted to sit next to him, so at least he wouldn’t be sitting alone.

Everyone reluctantly looked away. Tsukishima hadn’t exactly said anything wrong, and none of them wanted to irk him by questioning any further into his motives.

The bus’s engine roared to life with a hiss, as the wheels began to move, carrying the Karasuno volleyball team to their destination at Nekoma.

When everyone else was pulled into distraction by small talk and conversation, Tsukishima looked over at his seat mate. He hadn’t objected to anything said earlier, because he looked so… out of it. The taller couldn’t find any other way to describe it.

Something, or someone, took the life out of his royal blue eyes, which shut quickly as his head thunked against the window.

This disturbed Tsukishima; Kageyama wasn’t the type to fall asleep in vehicles either.

There were many speed breakers on the roads, and as the bus jumped up and down on each one, Kageyama’s head thumped violently with the rhythm.

He already looked hurt enough as is, so after looking either way to make sure no one was looking, he gently took his head and laid it on his shoulder.

The boy was already caught in a deep sleep, so he wouldn’t hear anything anyone said. Nonetheless, Tsukishima still took it as an opportunity to gently whisper into his ear,

“If what I researched yesterday was true, that explains why your body is deteriorating so much; I still have no idea what brought you to this, but please… hang on for me, er, for all of us…”

Remaining pressed up against him like this for the duration of the ride gave an unfamiliar feeling of peace to Tsukishima. As long as he remained close to him, he could watch over him and guard him, making sure that no more harm came to him.

Yet, mixed with the peace also came a sort of guilt. A bystander from afar couldn’t notice, but when looking at him from up close, Kageyama looked so painfully sick. It appalled him that the captains just allowed him to come to the match today without batting an eye, since the boy himself appeared to be unaware of just how serious his condition was.

“Why couldn’t I notice before he came to this? If only I had approached him earlier, if only I had stopped him earlier…”

The bus hissed once more as it came to a stop, the sound waking Kageyama. As he woke up, Tsukishima nudged him off his shoulder ever so gently.

The taller shook his head.

“Oh well, as much as I hate the fact, it’s too late to think about what could have been… I must focus on the present.”

This wasn’t about Tsukishima’s affections, really, it was about saving Kageyama.

Despite being rivals, Nekoma and Karasuno maintained a somewhat cordial relationship. ‘Frenemies,’ as one might call it.

Therefore, the captains and coaches saw no problem at first with the arrangement of having both teams do their pre-match warm-ups and practices in the same gymnasium.

However, chaos soon broke out in the gym nonetheless.

One of the volleyball players on the Nekoma Team, Kenma Kozume, was taking a break from his practice to play his video game on the sidelines.

Then, a ball coming from a vague direction smashed right into his console. It wasn’t completely broken from the impact, but a few considerable cracks resulted. A friend of Kenma, Tetsuro Kuroo, saw this and marched over to the Karasuno team and accused some of their players of injuring him (though Kenma himself was not injured).

The Karasuno players who he confronted denied all accusations, but Kuroo persisted, and the argument became more and more heated, like a pot with boiling water. More people from both sides joined, despite having no idea what was going on, and a few light blows were dealt as well.

Even those who didn’t participate in the catfight had their own agitations. Specifically, some of the upperclassmen were pressuring Kageyama upon seeing him barely even being able to hit a ball, and then teasing him more when he didn’t respond.

Tsukishima ran over and yelled at them,

“Can’t you guys cut him some slack for one second!? It’s not like you guys are much better than him!”

Eventually, Daichi had to call in the coaches of both sides to come in and break up the fighting. After quite the stern lectures and being ordered not to display this kind of behaviour during the actual match, an agreement was reached; Nekoma would remain in the gym, and Karasuno would have to practice outside.

There were some moans and groans from the players at first, but this solution seemed to work out nicely after some time, and peace was restored.

Kageyama, on the other hand, was an entirely different story. Tsukishima wasn’t available to protect him at this time, as he was dragged into multiple practice drills, since he was one of the only players who seemed to be competent today.

He had spent almost the entirety of last night throwing up, his fears of being worthless and his focus on his weight being worse than ever. Saying that his throat was on fire would be a bad understatement. He hid it from others, but it was hard to keep himself upright. Vertigo was also prominent, and his mind was blank, swaying this way and that.

Purging wasn’t the only thing he had done, though. His time on forums and websites that encouraged these habits and attempted to pass them off as normal had led him to pursue… other ways of coping as well.

Hiding his body shape wasn’t the only reason he was wearing the long-sleeved volleyball uniform that was meant for the colder seasons. He had excused himself  to the few people who bothered to ask by saying that his summer uniform hadn’t been washed properly in time.

To make matters worse, all of this had also caused Kageyama’s vision to start blurring in and out.

“I… still can’t have food, I don’t deserve it… I just… need my water bottle…”

He had forgotten to take his water bottle with him on the way out from the gymnasium.

No one would notice if he left for a bit to go grab it, and even if they did, Kageyama didn’t care. All that mattered to him was keeping himself stable and conscious; although he did want love from others, he was more deathly afraid of the negative attention and burdens that he would cause others in case worse got to worst.

Staggering over inside to the gym, his water bottle immediately caught his eye, as if he were a man stuck in the desert who had just spotted an oasis of relief.

On his way over to grab it, though, he was stopped by Kenma.

“Um, sorry to disturb, but Hinata told me that you also play this video game that I play. I need to add more friends to get some rewards, so can you please tell me your username?”

Kageyma could barely hear his question through the ringing in his ears.

“Um, yeah, it’s…” His voice was becoming increasingly weak, and all he managed to force out were incoherent mumbles.

“Come again?”

“Sorry, it’s… uh… urgh…”

This time, when his vision blurred, it didn’t clear back up again. Kenma’s voice, as well as all the other background noises around him, turned into an incomprehensible high-pitched ringing in his ears.

He suddenly felt his body become heavier than steel, as well as heating up to what he perceived as the extremely high melting point of such a metal.

His weakened body could no longer support him.

Everything went black as he closed his eyes, and he collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

Kenma got down to his knees, and poked Kageyama’s body. The pace of his chest rising and falling to breathe was still normal.

“Oh, well that’s something.” He remarked.

Kuroo began to approach his friend, in order to drag him back to practice.

“Yo, Kenma, can we please get back to- WHAT- Wait, why is he just… sleeping on the floor like that? Isn’t that the king from Karasuno? What the hell is going on?”

“You see, he isn’t sleeping. He’s fainted.”

“OH MY GOD- Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, call for help or something? How can you be so chill when there’s an unconscious body right in front of us, Kenma!?”

“I am panicking.” Kenma’s stoic expression didn’t show this, though.

“Quick, drag him into the bathrooms or something! We don’t want to cause another incident!”

It probably would have been wiser to call for help. Kuroo didn’t do this, because he feared that, if his teammates got distracted by the sight of the “King of the Court” passed out, they wouldn’t be able to practice properly. Moreover, although Kuroo could be a bit full of himself at times, even he had the common sense to not humiliate Kageyama more than he must have already experienced.

Kenma complied with Kuroo’s order, and proceeded to pick him up by the feet while his accomplice went for his shoulders.

“Something doesn’t feel right…” Kuroo mumbled.

“I imagined that Kageyama would be much more difficult to carry than this.” Kenma agreed.

“Maybe it’s the training we’ve been doing?”

When they reached the bathrooms adjacent to the gym with everyone else miraculously unbothered, they laid the still deeply unconscious Kageyama on the tiled floor.

“We should find a way to wake him up before he deteriorates more.” Kenma stated plainly.

Kuroo bent down and shook Kageyama violently.

“HEY! Mr. King, are you okay? Can you hear me? Wake up you idiot, you got a match to play!”

His friend snatched him away.

“Unconscious people can’t hear. Also, shaking him might cause head injuries, which will injure him even more severely. I’m sure you don’t want to be charged with murder.”

Now, Kenma kneeled in order to examine Kageyama up close. Noticing his reddened face, he placed a hand on his forehead. He retracted his hand almost immediately, having come to a clear conclusion.

“He appears to be overheated. We don’t have an ice pack, so we should put a cold towel on his forehead.”

Kuroo did indeed have a towel in his pocket, which he took out as he began to run the tap.

“Wait, that’s-“

He squealed of pain and instinctively retracted his hand as soon as it came into contact with the running water.

“That side gives out the hot water, dumbass.”

Taken aback by Kenma’s uncharacteristic swearing, he stepped back as he took the towel from him and soaked it, this time with the correct temperature of water.

He then placed the towel on Kageyama’s forehead, as both of them towered over him.

“Now what do we do?”

“We wait. If the cold towel fails to bring down his temperature enough to wake him up, we will have no choice but to call for help. We’re not doctors, Kuroo.”

After a few minutes of patient waiting, Kenma sighed and turned towards the door to alert the others, before Kuroo grabbed his shoulder and spun him back around.

“Wait! Isn’t there anything more we can do?”

“The right thing to do now is to get help, so please let me go.”

“It’s just, I don’t want the match to get cancelled, in case we have to call an ambulance…”

“Our peer’s health is far more important than a match, but if you insist, we can take off his shirt to release extra heat.”

Kuroo released him, but his face went flustered at the suggestion.

“Kuroo, you see us shirtless all the time. Please don’t be childish.”

Kenma sat down on his knees again and began to lift Kageyama’s winter volleyball uniform, but his eyes went wide with surprise, and he pulled the shirt back down.

Kneeling down next to him, Kuroo looked towards him and teased,

“Who was telling me not to be childish just now? Here, let me do it.”

He slowly began to lift Kageyama’s shirt, but his face twisted in confusion as he saw the second shirt that lay beneath.

“For fuck’s sake, it’s like thirty-five degrees outside! The long-sleeved jersey is already weird enough, but the ‘king’ must have a death wish if he’s wearing a second layer in this heat! No shit, of course he’s going to be overheated!”

“Kuroo, I don’t think he’s wearing just a second layer…”

He lifted up the second shirt slightly, and like Kenma had said, there was a third shirt beneath.

“Okay, what the actual fuck!?”

He looked over to his companion, who was deep in thought.

“Snap out of it! I need some help here!”

Not flinching at Kuroo’s words, Kenma’s eyes widened as a lightbulb seemed to click on in his head.

“Hey, remember how we were saying earlier that Kageyama’s weight was much less than we expected?”

“Yeah, but it was probably just our imagination. A player who’s said to be as strong as him has to weigh just as much as his reputation, so no way that was real.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Come to think of it, when I saw him getting off the bus earlier, his figure seemed slightly smaller than it usually was. The difference wasn’t that noticeable, so I dismissed it at first. He’s using all these layers to hide something… Namely, he could be much thinner than we originally assumed.”

To investigate Kenma’s hypothesis, Kuroo lifted up the third layer, and this time he could see skin. Placing his hand underneath all the shirts, he felt around.

After a few seconds, he had to let go, his expression marred with sheer disbelief.

“Shit, that’s a lot of bones…”

“Mhm, there’s clearly an underlying issue, so now it’s more imperative than before to get urgent help.”

Just as he was about to stand up, Kenma looked over too late to grab Kuroo as he slapped the freezing cold towel down on Kageyama out of frustration.

“Kuroo, whatever it is you’re doing, you need to-“

Before he could finish scolding him, they both froze as the body in front of them rustled and began to move around. Kageyama’s blue eyes were finally opening again.

By some miracle, the cold slap had somehow shocked Kageyama back into consciousness.

Kenma, taking inspiration from what Kuroo had done earlier, shook him more gently in order to wake him up fully.

“Hello, are you feeling alright? Can you hear us properly?”

The only response that he received in return was Kageyama’s sudden bolting upright, as he gained awareness of the unfamiliar surroundings. When his eyes fixed on the two boys who had been arguing over him, he jolted to a stand.

“Get away from me! Neither of you saw anything, okay?” His misunderstanding of the situation, namely that he thought the two of them had bad intentions towards him, forced a surprisingly powerful yell out of him.

Kenma stood up to try and calm him down, but he got no chance to say anything. Conversely, Kageyama was so fed up with everything that, before either of them knew it, he had stormed out of the other bathroom door that led to the main hallway, marching towards the exit.

“What happened just now, Kenma?”

The opposite bathroom door, the one coming from the gymnasium, swung open.

Tsukishima Kei stood in the doorway.

Kuroo stood up as well, to face him.

He glared at him, still unrelenting when he saw how pissed he looked.

Kenma, on the other hand, took the diplomatic route.

“Oh, what a surprise. How did you know we were here?”

“I came in here to search for Kageyama’s water bottle to give to him, and I noticed it fallen down in front of this door.”

Arms crossed, his expression intensified as he approached closer.

“Now, I will only ask this once. Where. Is. Kageyama?”

The shorter boy was about to answer, but Kuroo stopped him, yelling back with an equal amount of frustration.

“Look, we don’t know either! He got up and left the moment he woke up! Anyways, what right do you have to be pissed? Haven’t you seen the state of him? Maybe if you guys actually fed your boys right, this shit wouldn’t have happened!”

Tsukishima rolled his eyes at this.

“It has nothing to do with how much we feed him. The actual problem here is that he’s not feeding himself.”

With that, he too ran out in the direction of the area where the rest of the Karasuno team was.

“What the hell is that even supposed to mean? Get back here!”

Kenma grabbed onto Kuroo before he could run after him.

“You’re only escalating the situation further, let him handle it. I have a feeling that he knows something that none of us do.”

When Tsukishima made it back outside, he scanned the area for Kageyama.

No sign of him anywhere, but he managed to put two and two together in his mind to figure it out.

“Kageyama, please, where are you? Wait… don’t tell me he’s gone home on his own?”

He then turned to the last resort he could think of for information- his volleyball club advisor, Ittetsu Takeda.

“Ah, there you are, Tsukishima! The match is about to start. Do you know where Kageyama is? I haven’t seen him anywhere.”

Ignoring everything he just said, Tsukishima pressed his own urgent needs.

“Mr. Takeda, you have the list of addresses of everyone in the volleyball club, don’t you?”

“Yes, but that’s confidential information, so I can’t-“

His questioning expression turned into a glare.

“I don’t think you fully understood me. There is a reason why I need those addresses.”

Leaning in close and whispering so that no one would hear, he admitted,

“Kageyama’s gone missing, and I was told that he was last seen exiting the school.”

Hearing this, Takeda started waving his hands about, going into full on panic mode.

“W-Why would he just leave like that? How am I going to explain this to Coach Ukai? Where is Kageyama going? What is he planning to do?”

Tsukishima frantically motioned for him to be quiet.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out! Lower your voice, or else everyone here will be panicking like you.”

Taking a deep breath and reverting back to his practical teacher stance, he suggested,

“I don’t think you have Kageyama’s number, though. I do, so maybe I can try calling him before we jump to any hasty conclusions.”

As much as he wanted to go directly to his house first, he gave into this idea.

“Alright, but we should make it quick. Time is of the essence here, as I’m sure you very well know.”

Takeda nodded, located Kageyama’s number that he had saved in his phone, and put the device to his ear.

Each ring that ensued without receiving any answer heightened the anxiety in both of them, but the nervousness was more apparent in Tsukishima, as he knew the real grave qualities of the situation.

He perked up suddenly as he heard the ringing from Takeda’s phone come to an end, only for what little hope he had left to be crushed upon hearing,

“The number you have dialled is currently unavailable. Please try again later…”

“Shit, not the automated error message… That’s it, I’m going to need Kageyama’s address, now.”

“If it’s that much of an emergency, I can give it to you. Still, I should be the one to go over and check, because since Kageyama’s already gone we need you even-“

Tsukishima suddenly spotted the address sheet poking out of the mess of papers on the clipboard Takeda always kept with him. He most certainly didn’t have time for another lecture, so he simply snatched the sheet and took off running.

“Hey! Don’t you go missing too!”

Since Karasuno’s players appeared to be going here and there without any explanation, Takeda had no choice but to perform his signature apology show to the coaches of both teams, who were sitting together in a distant corner making small talk.

When Takeda reached them, he immediately began to bow over and over again, with an almost inhuman speed. 

This immediately signalled to Coach Ukai that something had gone wrong.

“Quit that, will you? Speak with your words, and be quick, because we need to start going inside for the match.”

“Umm, I’m afraid there might be a small problem with that… You see, I haven’t been able to locate Kageyama, and he’s not picking up the phone. Plus, Tsukishima just took off running too… With this many players going God-knows-where, I think-“

A loud sigh laced with frustration from Coach Ukai stopped Takeda from speaking.

Coach Nekomata, the coach of the Nekoma team, had the opposite reaction. He grinned and chuckled,

“Haha, that’s to be expected from boys these days! Even with these sports clubs to let out their energy, you just can’t keep ‘em contained! Don’t worry, Ukai, we’re also available in about two weeks from now. That is, if you’re not too cowardly to go up against us!”

Coach Ukai, too exasperated to process anything, offered only a determined nod as an answer. He began calling out to Daichi to get everyone lined back up.

“Wait till the vice principal hears about this…” Takeda remarked in a mousy, nervous tone.

Coach Nekomata offered a half-genuine smile to him and replied,

“Yeah, kid, just be careful when you go over to apologise to him. Who knows, you might end up breaking your neck!”

“With how much I’ll have to bow, I think that might actually be the case…”

In spite of Takeda’s confusion, there was one simple reason why Kageyama had run away.

All he wanted was to be alone.

It was a bit hypocritical to him, since part of the reason for the major decline in his eating habits was that he thought it would make him worthy of receiving the genuine love and attention from others that had always been denied to him.

However, as his disordered habits intensified more and more, his mind began to tell itself that he wasn’t deserving enough anyway. The teasing and nagging remarks that he had received from others lately seemed to be a validation of that.

Therefore, when he woke up to see two people who he wasn’t even that well acquainted with taking care of him (albeit in a chaotic way), he had neglected their care on purpose in accordance with these established presumptions he developed.

“You’re only bothering and burdening them. Someone as messed up as you doesn’t deserve to be helped. They should have left you on the floor to die.”

This was the broken record running in his mind as he ran back home, aided by his phone GPS. He took the precaution of setting his phone to silent from the beginning, because he didn’t want to hear the angry texts and calls from others trying to drag him back to the match. Sure, his home was the opposite of an ideal place to be in this moment, but his only objective was to get to a place that was anywhere but there.

Being at Nekoma High, at the site of the match, would only force him to confront and accept that he was hurting himself severely, rather than running away by denying that anything was wrong.

All he could do was hope that his parents were out doing… whatever it was that they did. It wasn’t like they ever told him anything.

By the time he arrived in front of his door, his heartbeat and breathing patterns could be described as anything but regular. In fact, his ‘run’ was more like a wobbly speed-walk, as he fought against his own body’s urge to pass out again from the overexertion and lack of nourishment.

However irregular it was, though, his heartbeat slowed and dropped to his stomach when he opened the door and heard his dad’s drunk slurring. At least his mom wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

His dad wasn’t just any normal level of drunk, though. His words were so slurred that not a single comprehensible word or phrase came out of him.

Unfortunately, before Kageyama could run or hide, he had already caught his attention.

He dragged him inside by the collar of his shirt, and raised the empty glass bottle of beer he was holding. With the remaining strength he had left, Kageyama managed to release himself from his grip and dodge out of the way just before the bottle shattered as his dad brought it down.

However, during the process, he had fallen to the floor. No matter how much he tried, he was just too weak to get up.

Taking advantage of this weakness, his dad raised his foot and began stepping on him like a cockroach. Kageyama used his arms to shield his upper body, and his dad was too drunk to deal calculated blows anyway, so most of the steps were bluffs.

One of the blows, though, landed directly on his ankle. There was no sound, so it wasn’t a break at least, but he was suddenly plunged into excruciating pain. It took all of his strength not to yell or scream; if he did, then his dad would only hit harder.

Just as he was about to step on him again, a ring came from his pocket. Mumbling some more slurred and incoherent curse words to whoever the caller was, he made his way out the front door.

Nonetheless, Kageyama didn’t have the luxury of feeling relieved; his ankle injury sent huge waves of pain with even the slightest touch.

Now, with his father out of sight, he could give into what his body truly wanted to do; that was, curl up into a ball and burst into tears.

“Someone like me shouldn’t be in such a helpless situation like this… It’s also similar to when I passed out earlier… Now, I’m even crying like a pathetic ass… I need to deal with this pain, somehow, some way… I can’t make myself look more weak than I already have…”

At that moment, he remembered hearing from somewhere that having a different centre of pain to focus on can help distract you from the real pain.

Yes, although it made him feel weaker than he already perceived himself, he needed to do that again.

And so, on his knees, he crawled towards the knife.

“Yes, indeed, nobody would care…”

At a similar time when this disaster was going down, Tsukishima Kei was standing in a street corner near Nekoma High. He was unfamiliar with the street name in Kageyama’s address that he had found in the sheet he snagged from Takeda. As a result, he was currently fumbling with his phone as he looked to and from the paper, putting the address into the GPS app on his phone.

“Good, the address finally came through. It says that Kageyama’s house is about twenty minutes by foot from here. I suppose that makes sense that his house is closer to Nekoma, since I overheard him once saying that he takes a long train ride followed by a walk to get to Karasuno… Twenty minutes isn’t that bad, but I still don’t trust him, given how he supposedly passed out…”

His thoughts stopped when he saw the minute change on the screen of his phone. In fact, every passed minute was a failure to him, putting Kageyama into more and more danger.

Urgency returned to him. He needed to get moving, now.

He took off briskly on his feet, letting them carry him faster than he had ever gone before, even while running at practices.

“Twenty minutes? Fuck that, I’ll make it ten.”

To some degree, this did turn out to be the case. Ten minutes was sort of impossible given the distance, but his feet still never stopped thundering as his heart hammered in his chest. He heard its noise as he moved, and to him, it was screaming out Kageyama’s name.

Even he himself didn’t know why he was on such a red alert. Something that he couldn’t identify kept on instructing him to go faster and faster, because something terrible would happen if he didn’t get there on time.

By the time the GPS beeped to signal that he had arrived, around fourteen minutes had passed. Not too shabby, but for Tsukishima, it still wasn’t enough.

Well, whatever happened had already happened. There was no turning back time now.

Not taking a second to even wonder why the exterior of this house was in such a deplorable condition, as if the local construction company was planning to demolish it anyway (they weren’t), he bolted towards the door.

It was locked. For once, Kageyama’s dad had remembered to lock the door on his way out.

Tsukishima knocked calmly at first, for fear of startling the boy so much that he would not give any response.

“Kageyama, I’ve come to check in on you. Please, open the door.”

No reply came.

He knocked again, louder this time.

“Are you okay in there? Can you hear me?”

No words again, but a faint, pained wince did reach his ears. This let him know that Kageyama was definitely inside, even if he was trying to hide from him.

“Look, I know you’re in there. I know you don’t want someone you hate like me here, I just need to make sure you’re okay, and then I’ll leave. I promise.”

Even this did not inspire Kageyama to speak.

“I believe you’re injured, and don’t try to deny it. If you don’t come get the door yourself, I’ll have to call the emergency services.” He hadn’t wanted to resort to threats, but now, it was the only way.

Meanwhile, Kageyama was still laying on the floor inside, his injury still crippling him.

He had zero idea why Tsukishima was here. Wasn’t he supposed to hate him, and vice versa? In any case, he wanted to be alone, or rather, he believed that he deserved to be alone.

Yet, despite their shared past, Tsukishima was still frantically knocking and trying to get him out. He wanted to yell at him to leave him alone like he usually would, but he was utterly and truly defeated to muster the energy that that would require.

Therefore, all that escaped his lips was a weak shout,

“For fuck’s sake, Tsukishima, I can’t get up…”

That was all the taller of the two needed to hear. He took some steps back, and then rushed forward with full speed, his body weight slamming against the door.

That front door was never very resilient, the darned thing. It gave right into his ramming.

The interior was pitch-black, and it didn’t seem that there were many functioning light switches around anyway. As an alternative, Tsukishima resorted to using his phone’s flashlight.

A satisfactory radius around him was illuminated, and since the house was tiny anyway, he could immediately spot a lock of black hair peeking around an opened door.

It didn’t take him a second thought for him to walk over to that room. Yet, what he saw shocked him to the point that he could no longer grip to his phone, and it came tumbling to the ground.

Kageyama was lying there, knobby and stick-like legs trembling. His arm was exposed, revealing the rows of bleeding cuts that he had been making with the knife in his opposite hand.

His fist clenched with a strength that made all his knuckles turned white. Trembling, he shouted at the top of his lungs,

“Kageyama, what the fuck are you doing? Drop that thing right this fucking instant!”

He knelt over him to snatch the knife from Kageyama forcibly, to which he put up as much fight as he could before giving in and letting Tsukishima take it from him.

A flurry of negative emotions overcame him, causing him to throw the knife all the way to a vague location on the other side of the house. 

Now this was something he hadn’t been expecting.

However, from this angle with Kageyama lying awkwardly on the ground, Tsukishima couldn’t examine him clearly.

“Hey… let me help you sit up.” His tone softened, having an almost motherly aura to it.

Even still, Kageyama pushed him off and curtly rejected this offer.

“Kei Tsukishima, just go away… What difference does it make to you if I hurt myself like this? Can’t you see that I deserve it? Every day, the others make it very clear that they don’t want me in their life… so it doesn’t make any sense that you of all people are any different. Why… why can’t you just let me die…?” Kageyama wasn’t yelling anymore; his energy was running out quickly.

Ignoring his rejection, Tsukishima wrapped an arm around his back and slowly brought him to a sitting position, leaning him against the doorway so that he could be comfortable.

His words had shaken something in Tsukishima’s very core that had never been agitated before. He pushed it down, though, he had to be strong for him. Similar to how he was before, he didn’t want to show that he was capable of feeling emotions so suddenly that it would startle Kageyama away again.

He changed the subject to Kageyama’s odd-looking foot.

“Let me examine that.”

Not waiting for another retort, he changed the flashlight’s focus to the injured foot.

He couldn’t tell whether it was a sprain or a break just with his eyes. Touch would be needed as well.

“I’m so sorry, but I’m going to need to touch your ankle to fully assess your injury…”

Kageyama recoiled at this announcement, but not far back enough to stop Tsukishima from feeling around his ankle. In response, there were pained winces, whines, and groans through clenched teeth, as if he was holding back full on screams.

Figuring that it was pointless to make him suffer through this touch any further, he let the ankle go.

“Do you feel any numbness when I touch it?”

“No, argh, it just hurts…”

“Did the pain get worse, better, or stay the same since it happened?”

“These questions are annoying me… But I guess it’s just been the same shit.”

“Then it’s probably just a sprain, but it’s a pretty nasty stain… What the heck happened to make you fall so bad?”

Kageyama suddenly averted his gaze.

“I didn’t… fall…”

“You bumped into something hard?”

He trembled and bit his lip.

“Not something, someone did this…”

“Was it someone from school?” Tsukishima looked prepared to beat someone up.

“No…” Kageyama wiped a single tear that rolled down his face at the memory.

“It was… dad…”

Tsukishima looked even more pissed when he heard this.

“Why didn’t you tell us that your parents were such assholes!? With a situation like this, we should have called-“

His eyes turned to notice Kageyama’s three shirt layers jumbled over each other. Tsukishima’s heart dropped, as he already knew the reason for this.

“It’s hot outside, you know… Please, take off your shirts, otherwise you can get overheated and pass out again…” 

Kageyama started trembling and shaking his head hysterically.

“I won’t judge you, I won’t say anything, and I won’t touch your body in any way without your permission, I promise… Please, I need to check for any more underlying injuries…”

Now, the black-haired boy’s mental energy had been exhausted. He didn’t have any will left in him to protest whatever Tsukishima was doing, whether he liked it or not. The warmth of his shirts was getting suffocating anyway, so he nodded weakly.

With this confirmation, he got to work removing the layers one by one.

Try as he may, he couldn’t hide the gasp that escaped, or the way his hand shook, or his horrified expression as he was exposed to the true state of Kageyama’s body.

The bruises and welts.

The far from healed self-harm scars on his shoulder (He used to be more careful to cut in places more out of sight, but the stress of the situation just now had caused him to abandon this, which was why he cut his wrist.)

Most of all, the collarbones, ribs, shoulder bones, hipbones, that protruded through his skin.

Even aside from his body, there were also other signs, such as his brittle hair and his yellowed teeth.

Tsukishima should have yelled and screamed at Kageyama for not seeking help before he got to… this.

Still, that was the last thing he thought of doing. This wasn’t the Kageyama he knew. He had degraded and fallen, and Tsukishima thought it was all his fault.

Tears came to his eyes at the sight, and as unbelievable as it was, Kei Tsukishima began to cry in front of Tobio Kageyama.

“Idiot, you, you… Don’t deserve to rot like this…”

Life came to Kageyama’s dead eyes for the first time, as they widened at him saying this. The entire time, it had never actually dawned on him that he was doing something wrong.

However, if there was anything that could ever break the invincible Tsukishima and make him cry like this, then it must be something horribly, horribly wrong.

It was also then the Kageyama came to realise that he never disliked Tsukishima trying to look after him, not just today, but the little times he had subtly saved him in these past days too.

Tsukishima was the only one noticing Kageyama in the way he actually needed all along, and seeing tears come out of him made his heart sink lower than ever before.

He had made the only person who made an effort to save his lost self cry.

As much as he wanted to wallow in this guilt, he couldn’t, because a new wave of exhaustion hit him. This caused him to say something he never would have let himself admit before.

“Hey… Can you just… hold me? I suddenly feel all dizzy again…”

Kageyama didn’t even need to ask. Tsukishima gently pulled him into an embrace that was warm and firm, but not in the way that made him feel uncomfortable and more sick like those extra clothes had made him.

Most of all, he felt love in that embrace. Kageyama couldn’t be sure, but it was as if Tsukishima was using the way his arms squeezed to say, ‘I love you, and I’m here for you.’

That embrace was Kageyama’s missing piece that he never knew before was lost.

He embraced him back, and the feeling of their heartbeats syncing together motivated the tears that Kageyama had been holding back to come out.

Through their shared tears, he mumbled,

“I want to go somewhere… Please… Anywhere but here…”

Sniffing and wiping away the last of his emotional mess, Tsukishima grabbed his phone.

“Say no more.”

He knew that Kageyama wasn’t going to let him call emergency services, so the only other person he could think of was his mom.

She had forced him a long time ago to put her number on speed dial on his phone, and he always grumbled at how she could be a tad bit overprotective sometimes.

She wasn’t the perfect parent, but even Tsukishima had to admit, she was the most supportive and non-judgmental mom that he could have wished for.

Both he and Kageyama could definitely use that right now.

With one tap, he was ringing her number, shakily putting it to his ear while praying that she hadn’t put it too silent for the sake of him being at the match.

However, he knew that this was his mom he was talking about. Sure enough, she picked up by the second ring.

“Tsukishima, you should be playing that match of yours. What’s wrong, dear?”

“Mom, please… I need to be picked up quickly, I mean right now…”

He couldn’t hide the fact that he had been crying earlier from his mom. Hearing his shaky tone, she immediately bolted upright and made a mad dash for her car.

“Turn your location on, I’ll be there as soon as I possibly can.”

She hung up, and Tsukishima did just as she said.

He turned back to Kageyama, who he was still holding tightly with one arm. In return, the boy was clinging onto him for dear life.

Tsukishima took this as an opportunity to check his pulse, bringing two of his fingers to the side of his neck and counting each beat of his heart.

“Your heartbeat is a bit slow… But you’re feeling tired, so that’s normal.”

Kageyama was zoned out, not processing his words fully. All that he could take in was the surprising comfort of being nestled in Tsukishima’s arms, a comfort that he never wanted to end.

He picked up his arm to get a closer at the cuts that were still bleeding. He didn’t have any towels or napkins, and he couldn’t see anything like that in the area, so he had to resort to clenching onto Kageyama’s wrist directly in an attempt to stop the bleeding. This move made the both of them turn red with embarrassment.

In spite of the embarrassment, Kageyama offered Tsukishima the ghost of a smile, because he was genuinely grateful that he was trying his best to save someone who didn’t know how to save himself.

Tsukishima couldn’t help but smile back at the gesture, as he brushed away some hair that was wandering into Kageyama’s eyes.

When he removed his hand to check on the cuts, this silent happiness faded as he found his hand soaked with blood.

“Oh God… I-It’s not stopping…”

Kageyama panicked as he saw Tsukishima’s level-headedness fade. This panic intensified as the tiredness from the blood loss became more pronounced.

“Tsukishima… I’m… sleepy… I want to close my eyes…”

The blonde bit back tears again as he grabbed onto Kageyama’s cheeks, staring at him dead in the eye.

“No, no, you can’t close your eyes! Stay with me, please… Don’t fall asleep just yet…”

“I’m trying, but… It’s hard… I promise you, I’ll wake up again…”

In a last-ditch attempt at reducing the bleeding, Tsukishima grabbed Kageyama’s clothes that he had taken off and put them to use as makeshift bandages that he wrapped around all his injuries, tightening the bundle almost to tourniquet strength.

As Kageyama’s eyes flickered in and out, it became evident that the hospital was the only option.

Luckily, a familiar car honking came from outside the house.

With on swift motion, Tsukishima swooped Kageyama up into his arms and ran outside. Throwing open the car door, he and the semi-conscious Kageyama fell into the backseat.

His mom turned around to look at them, and was just as horrified as Tsukishima had been when he laid eyes on the bloody, clothing-wrapped, and skeleton-like boy that was laying in her son’s lap.

“What in the Lord’s name could have happened to this poor baby…?”

Ignoring her question and staring into her eyes with a determination that was stronger than ever, he yelled,

“Mom! Hospital, NOW!”

She didn’t argue, and thumped on her gas pedal as hard as she could. She swerved around cars, honked her horn at others while yelling at the top of her lungs to get out of the way, and even ran a few red lights.

The entire time, Tsukishima was begging the now fully unconscious Kageyama under his breath to please stay strong for just a little bit longer. His two fingers remained attached to that same spot on his neck, as if he could somehow will the pulse to not go away.

After what felt like an eternity to both of them, his mom finally made a less than elegant parking in the emergency department of the hospital parking lot.

“Do you want me to help carry the boy out?”

“No… I know they’re going to take him away soon… And… If he, you know… This could be the last time I ever get to hold him… I want to hold onto him as long as I can…”

As they ran inside the building, she reassured,

“Don’t give up just yet. As long as his heart is still beating, that means he’s still fighting tooth and nail for life… He’ll make it through this, I’m sure…”

When they were inside, Tsukishima was prepared to scream like a mad man until he got the attention of a doctor, but this hospital worked quickly. All eyes were on them when they walked in, all wondering why this random boy was so injured.

One of the triage nurses at the front desk caught wind, she quickly called for the doctors of the emergency ward, and within minutes a stretcher rushed in. A blur of questions were asked and readings were taken with machines and devices that Tsukishima didn’t recognise.

A doctor came by, and without so much as an apology, Kageyama was taken into the depths of the emergency room. Tsukishima and his mother were instructed to wait, and were not allowed to follow.

Some time later, an entirely new face came to ask more questions. She was a doctor in her uniform.

“How’s Kageyama doing?” Tsukishima cut to the chase.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have any updates yet. I know this must be a very stressful situation for you all. We couldn’t find any identification on him, so we need some basic details.”

“Fine…” Questions were something that Tsukishima now knew he needed to get used to in the hospital, but that didn’t stop them from irritating him.

“What’s the patient’s name?”

“Tobio Kageyama.”

“Do you know his height?”

“182 centimetres.”

“His age?”

“Sixteen, I think.”

“His date of birth?”

“I… I don’t know…”

Tsukishima had been defeated. Now, he already knew that she was going to ask a bunch of questions about his relations with him.

“If you don’t know his date of birth… How are you two related with him?”

“I’m a friend. I went to visit his house and found him like that.” This was mostly truthful, at least.

“If you went to his house, then I assume you know his parents too. If either of you have their contact information, please tell me, I need to make a call. Kageyama is legally a minor, and he needs to have his parents here.”

Now, both Tsukishima and his mother were backed into a corner. On one hand, Tsukishima would be forced to admit that he didn’t know Kageyama’s parents because he technically broke into his house. On the other hand, if they did somehow get his parents’ contact information anyway, they would either be a no-show, or abuse him even more dangerously than ever before.

Tsukishima made eye contact with his mother, with which she immediately knew that letting them get a hold of his parents wasn’t an option. Luckily, she came up with a somewhat believable excuse.

“Oh, I’m friends with his parents, and his mom was telling me yesterday about how she and her husband were going to some remote end of the country for a nature retreat that they expected to last at least for a month. She was also telling me that they were going to leave behind all devices and means of communication, so any attempt at getting into contact with them will be futile.”

The doctor raised an eyebrow, but shrugged it off as she realised that there was no way of disproving the claim.

“Okay… I’ll come back soon, hopefully with more updates regarding Kageyama.”

‘Soon’ wasn’t nearly soon enough for Tsukishima. His mother kept advising him not to think too deeply into it, and to reassure himself that everything will be fine, but he couldn’t just believe something like that without seeing it with his own eyes.

Eventually, she gave up and decided to leave him alone while she got something to eat. When she was out of his line of sight, even ignoring the fact that there were crowds of other people with him in that terribly dreary waiting room, he curled up with his head in his knees and burst into tears.

More than anything, he felt that the blood on his hands from when he had rescued Kageyama was still dirtying his palms.

“It really is my fault… I let him suffer to the point where he made himself bleed like that… But he promised me, he promised me he would wake up… You can’t break a promise, right? If he breaks that promise, I will be the one guilty, just like a murderer…”  

His mind had reached such a low that Tsukishima himself wasn’t sure that it was possible to go any lower. Therefore, a vague recollection of a certain piece of advice his mother had offered him came to mind.

She had told him to try and think of the positive outcomes that can happen rather than just the negative ones, such as what he can say to him when he wakes up.

“That’s right, Kageyama is as stubborn as he is strong, he wouldn’t just give up on life like that, especially if meant annoying people like me… If- When he wakes up, this time I’ll tell him over and over how much I love him… I’m not letting him go this time, and that’s a promise…”

Confident in this promise, he decided to have a go at finding a distraction for himself, another thing that his mother had told him. With a heavy, apprehensive sigh, he pulled out to check the notifications on his phone.

Just as he had expected, it was absolutely blown up with them.

Within seconds, he had already lost count of how many angry ‘where in the actual fuck are you man’ messages he had received.

The most amount of messages and missed calls, however, came from Daichi.

Apparently, chaos was breaking throughout the entire team on account of a confession Hinata just made; just before Tsukishima turned his location sharing off, he had seen that he was at some sort of hospital. He hadn’t remembered the name, thankfully, otherwise the entire team would have been storming the building already.

The last thing he wanted to do was to expose the depths of Kageyama’s situation to their greedy ears, so he just texted back Daichi an exasperated,

i’m just here for a checkup, for god’s sake.

He clicked off his phone, knowing that this was only a temporary solution. His excuse didn’t account for the other burning question in everyone’s minds.

What happened to Tobio Kageyama?

Whatever the case, he decided to just let them believe whatever they wanted to believe.

“I don’t have the energy for this…”

In tandem with this thought, he let out a loud yawn. All of the adrenaline in his body was finally starting to wear off.

Looking both ways, he realised that he had spent a lot more time on his phone than he thought, because the amount of waiting patients and their anxious loved ones had suddenly waned.

Another series of texts popped up from his mom, all over the place and repeatedly apologising. Tsukishima didn’t read the whole thing, but it was something about a work emergency.

Shutting off his phone for good this time, he laid his head on the cold steel of the waiting room chairs. Normally, he would be complaining, but he hadn’t gotten a chance to rest his head all day.

That armrest felt like pure heaven.

Taking advantage of the now empty chairs beside him, he propped his legs up too, and let the sleep realm welcome him.

He didn’t resist or fight unconsciousness; after all, it was the same place where Kageyama was right now. In a way, they were meeting together again already.

However, just as quickly as the dreamlike state started, it also came to an end.

An unfamiliar voice calling his name unexpectedly roused him from his sleep. Upon opening his eyes, he struggled to adjust to the sudden influx of light; he even had to rub his eyes a great deal before putting on his glasses.

He had only heard one voice, but there stood two people in front of him. One, he slowly came to recognise as the lady doctor from earlier. The other was a young nurse, wearing one of those less-than-genuine smiles that one put on when they wanted to appear welcoming despite an extremely awkward situation.

“Sorry to wake you, but I have some updates regarding Kageyama that I’d like to discuss with you.” The doctor began, after clearing her throat in a futile attempt to dissolve the tension in the atmosphere.

“Where is he? Is he alive?” Tsukishima was quick to recognise the gravity of the conversation.

Dodging the question, the doctor returned to recounting her formal report.

“He was losing too much blood way too quickly, and in the end we had to perform a surgery to reconstruct some of his blood vessels. It was quite the complicated task, so that was also part of the reason why you received no updates for so long. He began to crash during the surgery, and our blood transfusions couldn’t-“

“He’s… gone?”

“I have more to say. We managed to prevent him from flatlining, and everything else went relatively smoothly after that. After the surgery, we conducted some tests and realised that the reason he almost didn’t make it was his severely malnourished state. This came off as strange when we read through his previous medical history, because just a few months before, he had a perfect bill of health, being a young athlete. Yet, his BMI readings were dangerously low, so we can’t-“

“Oh my God, something bad happened to him…”

“Will you please let me finish?” She cut him off in a less than professional tone, to the point where even the nurse with her looked at her as if she had two heads.

After clearing her throat, she finally decided to answer Tsukishima’s concerns directly.

“He’s alive, and he’s doing exceedingly well. That is, considering the circumstances he arrived in. What I meant to say is that we can’t let him go yet. He still requires a great deal of physical and mental recuperation; we came to the conclusion that he has the eating disorders anorexia and bulimia nervosa. These are conditions in which the patient experiences-“

Tsukishima visibly cringed as he mentally prepared himself for another rant that he would not understand a single word of, and noticing this, the nurse nudged the doctor’s shoulder to stop her.

“The boy is young, so if you’ll allow me, I believe that I should explain the rest to him in more… layman terms.”

Although she said this, the nurse had a look on her face that defined ‘layman’ as ‘any sane person who hasn’t studied eight years for the degree you have.’ Embarrassed at her mistake, the doctor mumbled something about being busy, and promptly left.

Tsukishima mouthed a quick ‘thank you,’ and the nurse nodded in acknowledgement.

“Please excuse her behaviour, she can be a bit… eccentric sometimes. What I’m sure she was just about to say was that Kageyama is currently awake.”

Tsukishima could not hold in his joy, or his sighs of relief.

“We tried to explain to him that he would have to stay here for quite a while in order for his mental and physical health to regenerate properly, but he seemed greatly distressed at this. Whenever we tried to tell him something, he interrupted us with babbled remarks about wanting to see this one person. It got to the point where we had to sedate him, but now his vitals indicate that he’ll be waking up any minute now.”

He wondered deeply about who this person could be, and came to the conclusion that it couldn’t be him.

“Yup, that’s probably my cue to leave. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I’ve done much for him… He’s probably talking about Hinata or-“

The nurse shook her head.

“Nope, it definitely wasn’t a Hinata. Wait… what was your name again, young man?”

“Tsukishima. Why?”

Her face lit up with what was now an actually genuine smile.

“Yes, I remember now, ‘Tsukishima’ was the name he mentioned! You should come with me right away to see him, he’s been wanting to see you for so long.”

Tsukishima was in utter disbelief at this, and the nurse noticed his reluctance.

“It’s not uncommon for patient visitors to doubt themselves. However, I know what I heard, and you are the one the patient needs. Now, if you’ll please follow me.”

Her words motivated him enough to get out of the seat, although he grew wary at the endless maze of hallways, doors, signs in medical jargon he failed to comprehend, and runs up and down staircases.

He didn’t want to disrespect the nurse’s efforts to lead him this far, but a ‘Just how long will it take us to get there?’ wasn’t too far from escaping his lips.

The moment his mouth opened for this, though, the nurse ushered him into a room at last.

“I’m right outside if you need me, m’kay?”

With that, the door slammed shut.

Part of him wanted to avoid the sight of the person that he knew was on the bed in front of him, but it was everything around the bed that made Kageyama unavoidable.

Machines. Wires. Beeping sounds here and there. Endless zig-zag lines and numbers on the screens.

Tracing the path of the wires, his eyes landed on Kageyama.

He froze in shock, so much so that he had to sit on the wooden chair at the bedside to avoid toppling over. The proximity of the chair to Kageyama’s body, though, only intensified the shock.

His arms covered in bandages. Countless IVs dripping God-knows-what into his veins.

What really brought him to tears though were his eyes. They were closed, and not just in the way that someone closes their eyes when they sleep normally.

Obviously, he could tell that he was still very much alive, but at the same time he seemed so… lifeless.

The sounds of his tears escaping weren’t very loud, so it was a great surprise when he noticed them twitching as they began to open.

He quickly turned himself back to a neutral expression, waiting patiently for Kageyama to come to full awareness.

When he turned his head and made eye contact with him, his first reaction wasn’t the mean and bitter onslaught of words that Tsukishima was expecting.

Rather, it was an action. He squinted his eyes, as if trying to remember something. When this was done, he raised a bandaged arm and began caressing a very specific spot on his neck.

Tsukishima couldn’t help but blush when he too remembered the significance of this spot- it was the same spot where his fingers had rested when he was keeping a check on Kageyama’s pulse earlier, while begging him to stay alive.

“Y-You’re still here…” The words were faint and strained.

“You shouldn’t be talking. I can tell that you’re in pain, and don’t try to pretend you’re not.”

Kageyama couldn’t help but melt into a smile at the familiarity of Tsukishima’s bluntness.

“Yeah, you’re right. Everything hurts like fucking hell…”

His smile quickly faded.

“When I get back there, I’m going to be more worthless to the others than ever before… I hate you for saving me.”

Tsukishima was taken aback.

“Pardon?”

“I could have easily escaped from everything, even though that’s not what I meant to do… People like to pretend that they know another’s whole life, and how much pain they’re going through, but they don’t know at fucking all… You, most of all, swooping in like some kind of a self-righteous superhero and having me poked and prodded at just to keep me alive…”

He began to get up from his chair, trying to hide how crushed he felt, although these exact words were what he had already anticipated from him.

“Okay, in that case, I’ll take my-“

“Stay.”

He fell back down to his chair. The command had been incredibly compelling for someone hooked up to a hospital bed.

“What I really want to know is, why? It would have been easier for you too, just to leave me alone and let me die. Why on earth would you put yourself through so much trouble, just for someone like me?”

Tsukishima averted his gaze, frantically searching his mind.

The question of ‘why’ he had saved him was one of the most difficult to answer without either pushing him even further away or making him sound like a complete doofus. Most probably both.

Just when it seemed that Kageyama’s expectant gaze was about to reach its breaking point, Tsukishima remembered his own vow from earlier.

His mouth opened, as if with a mind of its own.

“I love you, Tobio Kageyama.”

An unreadable expression reached Kageyama’s face.

“Yes, I know. I’m probably the biggest dumbass in the world for saying this sappy shit when you’re on fucking… life support or something. But as much as I hate it, it’s true. I love you, yes, in that way. It’s pathetic of me, but I only came to terms of it after it was too late…”

An audible scoff came from Kageyama’s direction. It made Tsukishima both in equal parts surprised on how Kageyama suddenly came alive with emotions, as well as making him sure that he was about to experience a humiliating rejection.

Although, he didn’t really care. The only reason he was supposed to be here was for Kageyama’s recovery, and nothing mattered to him in this moment more than that.

“Pfft, four-eyes. Who said it was too late?”

“What do you mean?”

As soon as he said that, solemnity quickly returned, stealing the brief vigour from Kageyama.

“I wish I knew how, but I don’t know how to answer that yet… I mean, look at me. It’s not like I’m going to convince myself I’m even worthy of receiving any love in the first place overnight. If there’s one thing those goofy sounding doctors were right about, it’s that the journey ahead is going to be long, hard, and a freaking pain in the ass.”

Tsukishima again began to ponder any possible responses to this, but Kageyama already completed his sentence that didn’t even exist yet for him. That was, by turning over his hand (this was not without a great deal of effort), as if reaching out towards Tsukishima.

“What I do know, is I don’t want to be alone anymore… By not alone, I’m not talking about a whole damn crowd of people surrounding me. I think one person would be enough for me… And if that warm and fuzzy feeling from when you carried me is any indication, I think you will be the one to be by my side, as much as I hate to admit it…”

Tsukishima took a little while to process what he meant by the gesture, but gladly and gently placed his hand in Kageyama’s when he finally realised.

As if confirming his words from earlier, Kageyama felt a portion of the ‘warm and fuzzy’ feelings return.

“You didn’t need to give me a whole speech to ask me that. I would’ve said yes in a heartbeat, anyway.”

A telepathic understanding flowed between the two of them through their physical contact with each other, causing them both to smile and chuckle simultaneously. For a moment, the painful atmosphere of that depressingly plain hospital room faded.

“That’s great, because I’m fucking tired. I just want to go back to sleep.”

Seeing the panic that these words brought to Tsukishima’s face made his smile turn into full on laughter.

“Seriously, stop worrying so much about me! Okay, I promise that this time I’ll wake up again… with less blood and chaos involved. But I don’t make any promises.”

Tsukishima rolled his eyes at this in a comic way, and the adage of laughter being contagious held true for him as well.

“But still… I’d appreciate having you here when I wake up anyway, please?”

Squeezing his hand just the slightest bit harder, Tsukishima nodded.

Sticking his tongue out as best he could as a final way of lightening Tsukishima’s mood, Kageyama finally turned his head back to his pillow and closed his eyes once more.

When he was sure he would have fallen asleep by then, Tsukishima reached forward and gently stroked his hair, whispering,

“Sweet dreams, Kageyama, I love you.”

Little did he know, Kageyama was conscious and eavesdropping on him once again.

He couldn’t say these words aloud yet, so his response was stuck in his head as he drifted off to actual unconsciousness.

“One day in the future, I’ll be healed enough to say…”

“‘…I love you too, Kei Tsukishima.’”