Haikyuu imagines

Unsent Letters- Daichi

I didn't expect the letters to ever see daylight again.

Hell, I barely remembered where I put them. But they were mine - the little pieces of me I never had the courage to send. Stupid, messy, embarrassing pages folded and hidden in an old shoebox I shoved in the back of my closet the night before graduation. I'd told myself I'd throw them away.

I never did.

And now Daichi was standing in my apartment, holding all of them in his hands.

I didn't even hear him come in at first. I was in the kitchen grabbing glasses of water when I heard his voice - quiet, soft, so uncharacteristically shaken that I froze.

"...These are for me?"

My heart stopped.

I stepped into the living room, and there he was: older now, broader shoulders, a little more defined than the boy I grew up with. Same warm eyes. Same stupidly gentle smile. Except right now, he wasn't smiling at all.

He was sitting on my couch with the shoebox open beside him, thick letters in his hands, unfolded enough for him to see the handwriting.

My handwriting.

"Oh my god-Daichi," I whisper, throat closing. "You weren't supposed to-just-shit, I forgot they were even there."

He looked up. And I swear, I've never seen Daichi look so utterly undone. Not angry. Not confused. Just... hurting. A hurt that mirrored the years of silence I wrote into those pages.

"Why didn't you send them?" he asked quietly, like he was afraid to breathe too loud.

I took a step forward, then another, until I was rooted in place a few feet from him. "Because they weren't meant to be sent. They were... I don't know, Daichi. I was young. Stupid. Emotional."

"Honest," he corrected softly. "You were honest."

The room felt too small. Too warm. Too full of everything I never expected to say out loud.

I cleared my throat. "How many did you read?"

He looked down at the pages. "Two. And that was enough."

Shit.

My heartbeat was like a drumline inside my chest. "Okay," I managed, voice cracking. "Then... you know."

He swallowed. Hard. "That you wrote about missing me? About how college felt like being on another planet without me? That you couldn't watch Karasuno matches without crying because I wasn't there to nudge your shoulder anymore?" His voice got softer. "That you... you loved me?"

My knees nearly gave out.

He said it like a question. Like a prayer. Like a bruise he wanted to press to see if it still hurt.

"Those were old feelings, Daichi," I whispered, staring at the floor because looking at him felt impossible. "I was nineteen. Everything feels dramatic at nineteen."

He didn't let me get away with it.

"Look at me."

It wasn't a request. It wasn't a command either. It was Daichi - steady, gentle, unshakable - and my body listened before my brain did.

His eyes were glassy.

"Did you love me?" he asked, not blinking. "Even if it was years ago. Even if it's gone now. I just... I need to know if it was real."

The lump in my throat burst like glass.

"It was real," I whispered. "Of course it was real."

He closed his eyes for a long moment. Exhaling. Absorbing that truth like he wasn't sure he deserved it.