i'll run far to forget, 𝐤𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧.

i'll run far to forget.

kenma and his toxicity (for this fic, i obviously don't think of him that way) is briefly mentioned in this story, so it's just kuroo being sad lol

here's very short angst in return for dying

safe.

that's what tetsurou used to feel.

used to.

it's... weird.

weird how every time that word (safe) whispers in his mind, something — he doesn't know what but it's there — adds on those two words.

he used to feel safe, his mind would always tell him.

was that true? he doesn't know.

he knows the feeling, the whole sentiment is weird, and he couldn't bring himself to throw up the words from his throat to tell the story, nor could he delineate them with all the faces, the gestures, everything within him that he could least describe it with.

but could he force out all those in one big drop, despite the struggle to actually do so? he doesn't know.

he thinks about that now.

now, at this very moment, as he's placed in his bedroom, crosslegged on the floor gripping a broken picture frame, glass shards stinging his fingers. but he doesn't feel a thing, dead silence with a dash of leisurely dissolving tension lingering in that single room.

tears fall down from his eyes, sliding down his face and landing on the frame with an oh so silent tap.

one, two, three.

four? they mixed. or they didn't, and the tears are just messing with his eyes.

he doesn't know.

tetsurou, absentmindedly, counts the tears dropping on the picture, staining the familiar faces on the now wet photograph.

he doesn't sob, not when he's heard a bang downstairs and the silence returns, but tetsurou's heard that bang not too long ago. it's all too familiar.

was it the same one? he doesn't know.

was there someone else who came in? he doesn't know.

was he hearing things? was his mind playing with him? was the whole thing repeating itself in his brain, the memory spinning round and round until it makes him dizzy?

he doesn't know.

did he come back?

... he doesn't know.

and he doesn't want to know.

does he?

he still doesn't know.

he doesn't know anything anymore.

it's pathetic.

pathetic for him.

pathetic for a 19 year old adult, an adult crying in his bedroom.

an adult who lost a part of himself.

but could you really blame him?

could you really blame a heartbroken man, tears slipping down his face as he tries to catch a breath? a man, who just lost a huge chunk of his own being?

not literal, but tetsurou feels as if it was just that.

his heart.

toyed with as if a toddler was to get their hands on it, and then thrown away as if it was nothing but irrelevant junk.

but it was neither of those things, but at the same time it was.

he's been left broken by an eighteen year old he loves too much to point a finger at, broken slowly, and the worst part of it is that he knows.

tetsurou was fully aware of what the man was doing, but he couldn't bring it upon himself to actually do something about it, despite millions of voices in his head pleading him to do something. anything.

he didn't do anything.

he watched as the man slowly rips his heart in half, like thin paper torn into nothing.

fragile.

would he call his heart that?

no, he would sound weak.

he doesn't know if he's making any sense anymore.

but what he knows,

what kuroo tetsurou knows is that

he'll run away from all the memories.

from all the times, every single bit of him and that man, every smile shared, every nudge, every kiss, every hug, everything.

because that's what he wanted.

that's what kenma kozume wanted him to do.

and kuroo tetsurou will do just that.

will it make him feel safe?

a little safer than now, at least?

... he doesn't know.

he doesn't think he'll ever know.

i've posted this already in my ao3 but i've forgotten to post it here hehe sorry