letters for my love, 𝐭𝐬𝐤𝐲𝐦.

⁰² thoughts circle the sculpture of his head

chapter two !

; if only you knew what goes on
in my mind

slight tw // description of drowning
(not literal tho)

the unfortunate cost of sleeping early had been laying on his bed for hours, anticipating a streak of sun to crawl onto kei's small room. the man laid there, trying to let sleep take over again, but luck did not sprinkle their dust on him that moment, so kei just laid there, squirming and ruffling the sheets.

after what felt like hours of messing up his bed, kei decided to stay still as he stares at the ceiling, his vision fuzzy without his spectacles resting on the bridge of his nose. he closes his eyes from time to time, until he decided to close them permanently, in an attempt to fall asleep once again.

and there lay tsukishima kei, eyes closed, diving from the cliff of his reality to an ocean of his mind, pushed to and fro by the current of all the thoughts his head had formulated. his body doesn't move a single inch, but his mind configures himself plunging down the depths of his thoughts, swimming through without a designated pattern, often avoiding words that wrapped his head like seaweed.

but suddenly, the current becomes stronger, and kei doesn't need to swim up to the surface to know that a storm has brewed in the sky, emitting an uproar in the clouds of his thoughts. and suddenly he feels helpless, incapacitated. water starts to flow through his brain with a sort of poison, and he feels like he's getting pulled down by hands of unmade decisions and pride to the abyss just below his feet.

it drags him down, down, until his vision flickers in black, and —

all of a sudden a blinding light on kei's face causes him to jolt awake from his reverie, rays of sunlight creeping onto his face as promised. he doesn't know how long he had that vision — the man would personally call it a nightmare — but kei rubs his eyes despite that, and reaches out a hand to his nightstand, fumbling for a sign of his glasses.

kei then sits up as he puts them on, his eyesight thankfully clearing. he runs slender fingers through his hair, sighing; he couldn't get that vision — nightmare — out of his head.

kei was contemplating to not go to work and to stay home to think about the stuff he came home with the day before and that stupid nightmare, but he knew he couldn't skip this shift. there were foreigners coming and his stupid boss decided to assign him, out of all people, to tour them.

great. more shit to worry about.

(⌐■-■)ﾉ💌

it was quite hard to ignore the box of envelopes sitting on the foot of his bed, kei thought, as his fingers do their pattern on his necktie.

he doesn't want to think about anything at the moment, eyes focused on the fabric wrapped on his neck. the tour didn't wait until an hour, and kei had atleast thirty minutes to board the train and get ready, and another thirty to wait in the museum. but then again, he doesn't want to wait half an hour for nothing, so when the moment the shell of his tie tightens around the tips of his fingers, he sits down on his bed with a jounce, heaving a sigh.

kei's mind drifts back to that nightmare — daydream, rather, since it was morning already (he mentally face palms for claiming it was a nightmare) — earlier, and the memory sends shivers down his spine. the man stays silent, despite the raging storm in his head, and the breeze of the nearby trees and birds chirping their annoying songs pass through his ears like white noise.

the box from the day before catches his eye, and in his head the tempest calms down a little bit. kei stands up and walks to the footboard of his bed, grabbing the light box before he sits down on the thankfully clean floor that he had cleaned before he went yesterday, leaning against said footboard. it'd have to serve as a headboard for now.

now that he thinks about the trip yesterday, he's thankful that his brother akiteru hadn't been there the moment he visited. he was on a business trip, his mother informed him, and kei had never been more grateful. if his brother had been there, he would have seen the box, and he would bombard him with questions of whatever, and kei would not be pleased.

especially if they were cringey letters he had written in his middle school phase. bless his brother's boss for saving his life and his ears.

kei crosses his legs, placing the box on his lap. he has already read all of the letters, but each and every word flew through his head, passed by swiftly and suddenly vanished on their trip, even though he was the one who had written them. the man admits that he had spaced out when reading them once or twice, but in his defense, his mind had been clouded by the mere existence of the envelopes grasped in his hands.

he takes a glance at the watch locked on his wrist. ten minutes had passed. kei wouldn't consider the pass of time fast, but it wasn't slow either — he stops himself before another wave of confusion washes over the shore.

the man eyes the envelopes in the box, still in the same order he had put them in last night. his eyes capture a particular one, though it doesn't stand out as much as others, though all of them looked the same, really.

it reminds kei of... that man.

the man, the boy he saved before.

kei slowly opens the paper, one after another, and he starts to read the familiar tangled handwriting his past had marked on it with a deafening silence. the words were detailed but perplex, like aleatory words sewn together, but the thread doesn't fit with the fabric, so the words don't stitch themselves to perfection.

despite all that, kei could register what the words were delivering (he had been the one to write it, after all), and although most of the words in this letter had been reused in the other ones, he felt utter pity for his thirteen? fourteen year old self.

not for falling in love nor for writing these letters, but for his choice of words.

middle schoolers. ugh.

however as he scans the letter, taking in most of the sentences poured in, his eyes stop at the last one.

it's separated from the rest; just a singular sentence standing on the near bottom of the page. kei hadn't noticed nor had he bothered to read it first, but as he does, he feels as if something big drops down the drain and comes crashing down.

i love you, tadashi.

nothing more was written. the letter was left unsigned, like all the others. kei finds the confession awkward, despite all the words of jumbled love carved above it, and he feels as if the words were sudden — too sudden. he thinks the words were too extreme that it overflowed, too much emotions poured into those four words.

love is a strong word, kei thinks, especially for the time he had written these. the word was simply... plethoric, for kei.

kei admires the man, yes, he likes having his company around, he likes talking to him, and he admits that the feelings he had for him before were strong, but not too strong to lead to that feeling. he doesn't even know if tadashi had shared those feelings towards him, if those feelings ever faded away, or if he had even developed those feelings at all. kei doubts it.

he glances down at his watch. nearly twenty minutes had passed, which meant he had another twenty to board the train to the museum, and ten to wait for the foreigners.

time hasn't been fair to him today.

kei curses under his breath, then places the paper back in it's envelope and onto it's place in the box. he rushes to place some final touches on his outfit and then jogs to the train station, thankful that his apartment was near to the station.

as he sits down on a random seat, kei is left thinking about the sitch he had put himself in not an hour ago. he thinks but to no avail, he can't indicate that specific thing he's trapped in.

love is an inexplicable feeling, tsukishima kei finally concludes.

aaaa i think my endings are a bit rushed ?? i don't like it huhu