𝓘 𝓚𝓷𝓸𝔀 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓢𝓽𝓪𝓻𝓼 𝓪𝓻𝓮 𝓛𝓲𝓰𝓱𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓨𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓟𝓪𝓽𝓱

Chapter 10

When Tsukishima arrives back at home, he goes straight back upstairs to hide the evidence.

When he opens his bag, he takes out the other thing he took from Yamaguchi's room — Yamaguchi's hoodie.

The tablets don't make any sense. Tsukishima can't wrap his head around it. Sure, he took Yamaguchi taking painkillers every now and then, but not like this. Not like he claimed. He doesn't get it.

He has to Google what it means. It takes some time to find the right thing, but the terms are 'self-harm' and 'self-poisoning'. How strange. Tsukishima doesn't think he's heard of those terms before. Maybe it's no surprise he didn't notice anything, after all.

He browses what could be hundreds of websites about these topics, and each of them give him their own tell-tale signs and reasons why people self-harm. But still, Tsukishima doesn't get it.

Sometimes people are in such insurmountable pain that they harm themselves to feel better.

That seemed terribly ironic and it didn't make any sense.

Tsukishima closes his laptop and puts it on the desk. He wants Yamaguchi here, to gently explain things as he usually did with literature answers when Tsukishima didn't understand. The Yamaguchi in the picture frame, that's who he wanted back. Not this sad version of him that he left behind that Tsukishima has to try and figure out. The puzzle of Yamaguchi that Tsukishima's trying to complete keeps getting bigger by the day, but he still doesn't have any of the pieces.

But for the remainder of today, he will rest. He hides Yamaguchi's secret in the same drawer as his old phone to deal with another day. Tsukishima hates to admit it, but he feels distance between him and Yamaguchi widening when he does so. To hide his suffering and an empty promise to think about it another day is betraying. He knows this, but he closes the drawer anyway.

He puts on Yamaguchi's hoodie. The sleeves were always a bit too long for Yamaguchi, so the excess fabric bunched up at his wrists when it wasn't pulled over his hands. With Tsukishima being taller, it fits him quite well as if it was his own. It's meant to bring him comfort, and it does for a while, until he catches the scent of Yamaguchi and his heart shatters all over again.

[To: Yamaguchi Tadashi]

I miss you.

It's been one month without Yamaguchi, and Tsukishima's life has never been emptier.

—

Tsukishima forces himself to endure the full 24 hours of 9th October. He's not sure why exactly, but it seems the right thing to do at the time. So even though he's exhausted from not sleeping the night before, an aching heart and all the tears he's watched stream down Mai's face and cried himself, Tsukishima sits on his bed with his back against the headboard, knees pulled up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them and he sees the day out the same way he saw it in by watching the minutes tick by.

The vagueness of Yamaguchi dying on 9th September is hurtful. There is no exact time for him slipping away from Earth, it is simply '9th September'. There is no before minute, and no after minute. Maybe this is why Tsukishima makes himself stay awake for the full 24 hours, even though he died within the first 6 hours of the day. Mai's fake smile in the morning, the gentle voice breaking, her sobs, sitting numbly in Yamaguchi's room, thinking it was all a joke – it all plays itself back like a reel of film in Tsukishima's head.

23:59

A month since Tsukishima has found himself lonely, suddenly. A month without volleyball. A month without Yamaguchi. What a horrid thing to realise.