You were his manager. Professional, poised, and always in control. Atsumu Miya was your client, a star athlete with a magnetic charm that drew everyone inâincluding you.
It started innocently: late-night strategy meetings, shared laughter over coffee, and the occasional lingering glance. You knew he was married, that he had a family waiting for him at home. But the lines blurred, and before you knew it, you were entangled in a web of secrecy and desire.
He would come to you after games, his presence filling your apartment like a storm. In those moments, you felt alive, cherished, and wanted. But as dawn approached, reality would set in. He would leave, returning to the life he had built with someone else, leaving you alone with the weight of your choices.
You tried to end it, to reclaim your dignity and peace. But Atsumu had a way of pulling you back in, with sweet words and empty promises. He would say he needed you, that you were the only one who truly understood him. And you believed him, every time.
Or at least, you tried to.
You stood across from Atsumu in the privacy of his hotel room, your hands trembling as you said, âThis canât keep happening. You have a wife. A kid.â
He leaned back on the bed youâd shared too many times, arms crossed, lips curled into that same boyish smirk he used on the court.
âAnd? You knew that from the start.â
âI thought I could handle it,â you confessed. âBut itâs eating me alive. I canât sleep. I canât look at myself in the mirror.â
âSo what? Youâre just gonna walk away?ââ¨âJust like that?â
You nodded slowly, afraid, but firm.
And thatâs when his voice changed. Cold. Calculated.
âDonât forget whose contract you're under.ââ¨âDonât forget I can take you down with a single press statement.â
You stared at him. The air in the room turned thick. Suffocating.
âYou donât know what Iâd do. You really think theyâll believe the woman who slept her way into my inner circle? Theyâll eat you alive.â
âWhy are you doing this?â you whispered.
âBecause youâre mine,â he said. âYou donât get to walk away from this unless I say so.â
He stood, took your face in his hands.
âYou knew the rules, pretty girl,â he murmured. âYou knew I was never gonna come home to you. But you let me in anyway.â
And when he kissed you, you let him.
Not because you wanted to.
But because you felt owned.
After that night, you stopped trying to end it.
You smiled in press conferences, clapped during interviews, and handed him water during practice like nothing had happened.
But every time his hand brushed yours,â¨you remembered how dirty you felt.â¨How your love had been reduced to a secret.â¨A threat.
You watched his wife post photos on social mediaâlaughing, glowing, holding their child in matching outfitsâand you sat alone in your kitchen, eating nothing, drinking wine, replaying his voice saying,
âYou donât get to leave.â
You stopped wearing bright colors.
Stopped painting your nails. Stopped meeting your friends.â¨Because the other woman doesnât get to have a life.
She waits.â¨She hides.â¨She folds herself smaller and smaller until she fits inside the silence between someone elseâs happiness.
You werenât livingâyou were surviving. Moving through days like a ghost, haunted by a love that was never yours to begin with.
You read every comment under his familyâs posts.â¨âPerfect couple!ââ¨âPower duo!ââ¨âLucky wife, lucky man.â
And you would break down in the showerâbiting your hand to muffle the sobs because your neighbors were starting to notice.
You kept a folder in your phone. Screenshots of his texts.
âYouâre the only one who understands me.ââ¨âI canât breathe without you.ââ¨âIâll fix this. Just⌠not now.â
Youâd read them when the guilt threatened to tear your ribs open. As if those empty words could patch the holes.
One night, he called. You hesitated before answering. You were curled up in bed, mascara streaked, trying to convince yourself to block him.
âHey,â he said, like everything was normal.â¨âAre you still there?â
You swallowed the lump in your throat.
A pause. Then his voice softenedâjust enough to slice through you.
Because it didnât matter how broken you were.â¨As long as you were still his.
That night, you woke up from a dream where he kissed you in public.
And it hurt more than any nightmare.
Because you knew it would never happen.
Thereâs a unique kind of pain in waiting for someone who never chooses you.
And youâGodâyou waited.
You told yourself this was temporary. That he just needed time. That he loved you in ways he couldnât show. That it wasnât your fault.
âHe needs me.ââ¨âHe canât leave his family right now.ââ¨âItâs not just sex. I mean something to him.â
And slowly, the lies started to taste like blood in your mouth.
You saw him at a charity event with his wifeâher hand tucked into his elbow like she belonged there. She smiled up at him with the kind of trust you used to dream about. And he smiled back, like he hadnât kissed you in the hallway of his hotel room just hours before.
Your legs nearly gave out.
You went home that night and stared into the mirror for so long you forgot who you were looking at. You didnât see a woman anymore. You saw a ghost. A shell of someone who used to laugh, dream, and believe she was worthy of love.
You started keeping wine in your drawer at work.
You stopped responding to your motherâs messages.
You flinched when his name popped up on your screen.
You didnât answer. You just stared at the message for hours. He never followed up.
You were addicted. Not to himâbut to the feeling of being wanted, even if it was only behind closed doors.
You wanted to believe you mattered.
You were just a convenience. A placeholder. A hidden ache in his otherwise polished life.
And now, the ache was yours to carry.
You were gone long before they found your body.
The first thing that disappeared was your laugh. Then your appetite. Then your voice during meetings.
You stopped showing up to practice. On Monday, no one noticed. Tuesday, someone muttered a joke: âGuess she finally got sick of Atsumuâs attitude.â
By Wednesday, worry began to ripple through the team.
By Thursday, silence turned heavy.
And by Friday morning, the captain demanded someone check on you. Just in case.
They didn't know the real reason you stopped coming in.
They didnât see the messages. The threats.
âYou think I won't say you came onto me first?ââ¨âIâll ruin you. Youâre nothing without this job.ââ¨âDonât be stupid. You knew what this was.â
He was scared. You were a liability now. And that made him dangerous.
You lit a candle that nightâyour favorite scent, the one that reminded you of soft rain and second chances. But the room still felt like a cage.
The rope had been hidden in your closet for a week.
You chose the scarf instead.
The blue one. The one Atsumu said looked âpretty, but desperate.â You laughed it off back then. But now it seemed fitting.
You moved the chair quietly.
You didnât cry this time.
Not when you tied the knot. Not when you stood on the chair. Not even when your fingers trembled so badly you had to redo the loop twice.
There was only stillness. And the letter on the floor.
You looked around one last timeânot because you wanted to stay, but to remember.
The framed photo of you and the team.â¨The leftover instant noodles.â¨The dent in the wall from when you threw your phone at it after he said âyouâre just a phase.â
Then you stepped off the chair.
Your body twisted. Your toes grazed the floorâbut not enough.
And finally, finally, everything went dark.
They found you the next morning.â¨She was cold. Gone.
There was no blood. No noise. Just a body and a letter, folded in two.
Another dropped to their knees.
He was in the gym. Laughing at something on his phone. Until someone came in, pale-faced, clutching the crumpled letter.
They didnât need to say it.
I donât know how to say it in a way that can ever make it okay,
I never meant for any of this to happen.
I never meant to hurt anyoneâ
You didnât deserve this.
Neither did your children.
I let myself believe he loved me.
Maybe he did, in some quiet, hidden wayâ
but he always went home to you.
That shouldâve told me everything.
I stayed because I wanted to be loved.
Even if it wasnât mine to have.
And now I canât look in the mirror.
I canât sleep at night.
I see your smile in my dreams,
and your kidsâ laughter,
and I feel like a monster.
He said Iâd ruin him if I told the truth.
he ruined me by making me live a lie.
I donât expect you to forgive me.
But please know I never hated you.
You had the life I prayed for in the dark.
Donât teach your children to hate me.
Just tell them I was someone who made a terrible mistakeâ
and couldnât find a way out.
Please donât hate yourself.
That day, practice was canceled.
Your name was never announced publicly.
Atsumu didnât show up for a week.
When he returned, no one looked him in the eye.
Not because they knew the truthâbut because they could feel it.
There was blood on his hands.
And he couldnât wash it off.
Atsumu had never heard silence like this before.
Not in the locker room. Not on the court. Not even in his own mind.
It was the kind of silence that follows a scream no one heard.
Fans noticed your absence first.
âWhereâs the manager?ââ¨âShe used to be in every game day post.ââ¨âHope sheâs okay, she hasnât posted anything in weeksâŚâ
But when your name vanished from the staff credits, and the teamâs social media suddenly went dark, the speculations began.
Reddit threads. TikToks. Anonymous tips.
People guessed you were sick. That maybe you were fired. That maybeâjust maybeâsomething worse happened.
And then the whispers turned to roars.
By the second week, #WhereIsShe was trending on Twitter.
Thatâs when the teamâs PR team knew they couldnât keep it quiet anymore.
A short, sterile statement was released.
âIt is with great sadness that we confirm the passing of one of our staff members.â¨We ask for privacy during this time. We are mourning alongside her loved ones.â
They didnât mention your name.
They didnât say how you died.
They didnât say what they knew.
They never said it was suicide.â¨And they sure as hell didnât say it was because of him.
But the fans⌠some of them knew.
Screenshots surfacedâAtsumu liking your old photos. A blurry image of the two of you too close behind a gym door. Cryptic tweets that you had posted and deleted weeks before it happened:
âSecrets rot everything.ââ¨âBeing someoneâs second choice is worse than being no one at all.ââ¨âI hope I was more than just a mistake.â
And still, he said nothing.
Because what could he say?
That he used you?â¨That he gaslit you?â¨That he made you beg for affection in private only to treat you like a stranger in public?
There was no press conference for that kind of grief.
He tried to return to the court.
But every time he stood on it, he saw you.
Standing at the sidelines with your clipboard. Grinning when he made a clean serve. Holding back a smile when he winked at you behind his water bottle.
Now he just sees empty space.
And in the locker room, someone had taped a photo of you on the inside of your old locker.
No one knew who put it there.
But no one dared take it down.
He started drinking more. Staying later. Talking less.
But no one said your name.
Even when he had nightmares where you appearedâyour feet dangling, that scarf tightening around your throat, your eyes wide with a question that could never be answeredâhe still couldnât say your name.
Because saying it meant facing what he did.
Atsumu stood on the balcony of his expensive condo one night, phone in hand, staring at an old photo of you heâd saved secretly. The one where you were laughing at something he said. Candid. Pure.
Because where would he send it?â¨What inbox would receive an apology from a man like him?
You were gone.â¨And he was still here.
Living.â¨Winning.â¨Rotting.
And stillââ¨your name was never mentioned.
But every time someone asked him,â¨âDo you ever think about her?â
Because the truth was unbearable.
The truth was:â¨He thought about you every single day.
And it never stopped hurting.
hey my loves! i was out of the city for a bit, i stayed with my friend and her aunt, met some new people, partied (with dogs, yes), drank a little, lived a lot. it was amazing. so hereâs an atsumu angst i wrote on the ride home, because of course i did. HEHDHAHDHASH
