to greater things beyond the unknown||RK96000||

Chapter 14: Interlude: Spring Afternoon

ao3 - RK96000

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The silence of their house is unnerving.

Usually, Natsu's excited chatter reverberates through the entire household, their parents' laughs easy and sweet as they murmur question after question in voices too low for Shouyou to hear.

Sometimes, he sits besides them.

He tries to laugh at all the right times, cut in at just the right moments to ask Natsu questions. But each time, his laugh is a little too loud and forced and he cuts off his parents a few too many times for them to believe him when he tries to tell them it was an accident.

He doesn't sit beside them anymore.

"I'm heading out," Shouyou says to the emptiness, and when his mother glances up from the table with a small, if not distant smile, something in his chest soars, even as his stomach twists into knots when he thinks about how, if he was Natsu, his mother would care far more.

"Take care, Shouyou," his mother tells him, and even though it doesn't sound like she entirely means it, he still brightens and beams, despite knowing what he was about to do.

At the very least, Shouyou would have this, right?

(It was just that this wasn't enough.)

"Of course!" Shouyou blurts out, a little too nervous to pass off as his normal jittery nerves. His mother pauses, eyes sharp before she turns away.

He steps out of the house into the slight breeze.

Then, he spots his friends and grins.

"Izumin! Kouji!" Shouyou waves wildly. His friends look slightly exasperated but they're grinning back nonetheless, soothing the anxiety twisting his stomach into knots.

The sun warm on his face, it almost feels like nothing could ever go wrong.

"I have the tickets," Izumi says, and Shouyou smiles as Izumi hands them to him- he can count on his friends for anything!

(The three tickets are so papery thin and fragile in his hand.)

Just as he takes a step forward, the door opens with a quiet thud.

"Shouyou."

The smiles on his friends' faces fall away, and as he stands there, fingertips numb, he can't help but feel a bitterness, growing sharper and sharper as each moment passes.

Then, worse, "I know you didn't forget."

There is disappointment, clear in her voice, but worse, is how it almost sounds like she had expected this all along.

He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to.

She already knows.

Shouyou glances at his friends.

(Three tickets lay on the ground, forgotten.)

Kouji and Izumi both look apologetic as Shouyou's mother's hand clenches around his wrist and she drags him away, but they don't do or say anything- as frustration twists in his stomach and tears him into pieces, it takes every bit of his energy to not glare or scream at the people he would've called friends just minutes earlier.

Maybe the worst part is they don't even know what they've done.

"Mom?" he asks into the silence of the car.

She doesn't answer, which only makes his stomach twist even further- she's been mad at him before, sure, but it's never felt quite so chilly or cold as it did this afternoon. She had always loved Natsu more but, uncomfortable as the fact was, he had learned to live with it and accept the crumbs of his mother's affection whenever she would spare the leftovers of her love.

"I can't believe you would do this," Shouyou's mother says instead and the coldness in her voice is even more noticeable than it usually was. "To your own sister."

(And that was when he first learned the bitter truth that no one would understand and that it was better to not say anything at all. Izumin and Kouji had told him of course, your parents love you, what kind of question is that? and all parents love their children, Shouyou- and they were wrong.)

When her gaze locks onto his in the rearview mirror, he looks away.

"It's just one game." And then, before he can stop the words from bubbling out, "You've never come to any of mine. No one ever has."

At that, his mother laughs for a moment and he stares. Shouyou has never seen his mother laugh from any of his words- for Natsu, she would beam and laugh as if it came to her as easily as breathing around her. For her son, though, she had never even smiled.

His mother laughs and it's pure and free- and tainted with the edge of something mocking and bitter, as if she believed the idea of anyone bothering to come to his games for him to be utterly ridiculous.

Then, somehow, it gets worse.

Her smile drops.

"I don't see how that's relevant," she says, too clinical and detached for him to ever feel as if he could bridge the aching distance between them. "You're you, are you not?"

"I'm me," he echoes and blinks through the tears as he stares at his trembling hands in his lap and wishes he was anyone else.

Izumi and Kouji had said he could sneak out to one volleyball game and skip just one of his sister's games and that his parents might get mad but ultimately, they loved him so it would be fine!

And Shouyou, despite the realization beginning to ache in his bones, swallowed down the fear of disappointing his parents and thought this could decide it once and for all.

If they did, then everything would gain a new tinge of hope to it.

And if they didn't-

Shouyou doesn't really know what he'll do.

When Shouyou's mother leaves the car and heads towards the bleachers, she doesn't look back to see if he follows. She brightens as she sees something far off in the corner, and begins to call out a name, ringing with hope so pure and loving that it left something in him bitter and aching.

From that day on, Shouyou doesn't do anything other than practice for volleyball. Where he once hung out with Izumi and Kouji, he turns away instead (it's easier to blame them because if he doesn't, he'll know who the only one left to blame is) and stares at the wall as he tosses the volleyball at it, over and over and over. He doesn't let himself think about anything about volleyball because the moment he does, regret drowns him under its weight and what-ifs and so, volleyball becomes the answer to everything.

His mother doesn't look at him anymore. Maybe she doesn't think there's anything worth seeing- maybe she's right.

Shouyou has ruined the little love she'd had for him in one fell swoop- the one time he had chosen to be selfish and it had backfired in the worst way possible. Now, he knew he could never be selfish again or have everything he'd grown to love crumble and fall apart once again.

From that day on, Shouyou doesn't wonder if they've forgiven him for daring to exist, doesn't even bother to.

He already knows the answer, after all.

(They didn't.)