a masterless heart

Oikawa Tooru, you realize, has never been one to stay. Never has he ever sacrificed his urge to run and decided to stay with the ones he loves and those who love him in return. You should’ve known better. His friends had told you stories of before on silent winter nights, cicadas chirping as you sipped a glass-bottled soda in the sweltering Argentine heat. They’d told you of his life back in Japan, his urges to run as far as his legs could take him, his hatred for being held down, and the way he’d fled Miyagi without looking back—leaving behind friends and family that only wanted to lift him in their arms and care for him. 

You were a fool when you met him, thinking he could change. You were still a fool for making yourself think he would stay. 

It’s four in the morning—too early for either of you to be up, but there you stand. Chestnut locks of hair sweep across his forehead, framing his face in that charming way you’d always loved. He looks like an angel in the sparse light that illuminates the stove, impeccable even in the hours when he should be sleeping in your shared bed. There’s a perfection to him you only see when he dons his facade and something in your body aches as you recognize it. 

You wish he would come back to bed, shed his coat, and slip back under the covers with you. He won’t, he can’t, but you just wish he would. 

He’s ready to leave. 

A shaky breath rattles in your chest and you harshly blink away the tears that had began to form behind your eyelashes. You face him head on: “Why are you lying to me?” It’s an unfair question, one that you’d known would catch him off-guard. So many times before, he’d been able to leave without question, without someone explicitly telling him to stay. 

He pulls back as if he’s been shot, staggering backward with a hand pressed gently to his heart. “Please,” You continue, “Stay.” 

Oikawa looks at you sadly, opening his mouth to speak before closing it tightly once again. 

“If you won’t stay, then… just hurry up and go. Don’t tell me if you love me or if you don’t, I can’t take it. If you’re going to leave just go and let me pretend I never knew you.” You cross your arms tightly over your chest, guarding the space where your heart sits. It’s a futile attempt, you’d already given it to him so long ago. Empty space rests in your chest, sternum guarding an open cavity. 

“Y/n, I-” He starts, stopping only as you push yourself away from him, out of arm’s reach. You back yourself into the cold white tile of your too-small kitchen, scampering as if you could escape the sound of his voice. 

The tile is stiff and cold when it hits the small of your back and you lean further into it, basking in the familiarity of that space you shared. Your mind goes back to mornings like this from before, when he’d give into bouts of nostalgia and cook meals his mother used to make, pressing kisses to your shoulder as you watched the rice cooker count down the minutes. You used to bask in his presence, satisfied with the way the early morning sun would catch his hair and eyes, turning chestnut to amber in your steady hands. The nights were even better—propped up against the sink as he rummaged for ice cream in the freezer, joking about already breaking his diet. The shared sodas in the afternoon, the way his hands would brush yours as you washed dishes together, the stolen kisses away from the prying eyes of your friends—the love shared between two people filling a space, vacant and void now. 

“Don’t tell me you love me, please. Tooru, I can’t take it.” You plead with him, pressing your arms further into yourself, guarding that cavernous chest of yours. 

Oikawa falls into a broken silence then, mouth left half-open. He wants to comfort you—you can see it in his body language, but his eyes are as dry as the most scorching desert. You wish he would cry for you, to show you that he at least cared. Instead, he swallows thickly and purses his sandpaper lips. “Fine.” He says, shrugging his shoulders casually as if you’d just asked him about his day. 

“Fine.” He repeats, pretending you hadn’t just asked him to forfeit every memory he had of you, every mouthed confession against the nape of your neck, every second spent together. 

Years and years and years of love shared and exchanged, given up and abandoned in a single moment—a single word. 

With a sense of finality, he turns away. He picks up his suitcase by the handle—already packed for his flight back to Japan. You can’t help but wonder how long he’d been planning this, planning to leave you in the dead of night without a word of explanation. His treacherous hands drop his keys on the counter in front of you and he leaves you there, alone once more. 

It’s only when the door slams shut behind him that you sink down, back sliding against the cabinets as your body crumples into a ball on the floor. Harrowing sobs wreck the quiet stillness of the morning, your sorrowful cries reverberating around the apartment—forever yours, never again his.

Suna isn’t the type to forget any pens or pencils, but he always forgets to bring extra paper. You couldn’t count the number of times he’d leaned over the aisle separating the two of you to ask for a sheet of paper, to which you’d happily obliged every time—always willing to lend a helping hand. Those reluctant smiles he sent you out of gratitude always seemed to brighten your day.

Honestly, it’s no surprise that you developed Hanahaki. 

He makes small jokes under his breath about classwork, little quips he doesn’t think anyone can hear. He offers you a pen whenever you forget one, accompanied with a small note stating ‘Give it back when you’re done’ wrapped around it. You end up keeping those notes, stuffing them between spare pages of your textbooks and notebooks. 

Suna is a boy of few words, but when he speaks you find yourself hooked on every one of them. Your friends call it puppy love. They call it a little kid’s crush. They tell you that in a month you’ll forget all about it and move on to some other guy. 

You don’t tell them that you probably won’t make it another month. 

The coughing fits become more and more frequent, each one right after the other. They get worse during school, during those hours when you’re near him. Purple petals litter your desk and pile into your hands, but you just discard them into your school bag with reckless abandon. 

Your friends approach you to ask if you’re okay. An easy, practiced smile stretches across your face and you wave them off like nothing is wrong. You tell them as much, you just have bad allergies! Nobody mentions that it’s not allergy season. You think it’s either out of mercy or pity that they leave you alone after that. 

Sometimes you think you can see Suna looking at you during class when you’re trying to discretely spit petals in cupped hands, but you always brush it off as a trick of the light. You think you can feel his eyes on you when you’re talking to your friends, watching as you carefully place your hands over the stray petals you forgot to brush off the desk. You smile and wave off your friends’ concerns like you always do. 

He never speaks up, never says anything about how your smile doesn’t reach your eyes.

Suna goes on with his life like nothing is wrong, pretending he doesn’t see you cough up purple petals into your hands out of the corner of his eye during third-period math. He pretends that he doesn’t see you each day in his peripherals, too preoccupied with your own impending demise to worry about the functions written out on the whiteboard. 

Even though things have changed so drastically for you, Suna stays the same.

You learn that he mumbles out the words when he’s reading something. You learns that he bounces his leg underneath the desk when you’re taking a test. You learns that he’s quiet, but that doesn’t mean he’s shy. When his friend—Miya Osamu, from the volleyball team—is around, he’s much more talkative than usual. You learn that he drops his bag on his desk loudly every day to wake himself up in the morning, the slamming of the books in the bag waking you up in turn.

It’s cruel, you think to yourself in those selfish moments you allow yourself to consider him between the last toll of the school bell and the beginning of club activities, watching as Suna packs his schoolbag and slings it carelessly over his shoulder. He spares you one single glance, his lips a flat line as he makes a beeline past his peers lingering at their desks and heads out the classroom door. You watch Suna walk away like he always does, sparing you a single merciful glance as you dump the last of the school day’s purple hydrangeas into the trash. It’s cruel that he doesn’t know the effect he has on you.

It’s getting worse. 

Your parents beg you to tell them who it is, and how they can stop it from happening. They offer to switch your school, to pull you from club activities, to move prefectures if it helps. Your mom begs you to consider surgery; she pleads that you’re too young to die like this. You don’t care—you would rather die in love than live without it. 

Each day you live with the disease is a day your body grows weaker and weaker. Your body runs cold and your head feels heavy every moment you has to hold it up. Your teachers, luckily, are merciful. They don’t say anything when you rest your head in class—they know your situation all too well. You can feel the pitying glances they send you during breaks and passing periods, their stares burning into the back of your head. 

It comes upon you suddenly, like a summer storm, during history class. Bile and flowers rest in your throat and, without a word, you excuse youself to the bathroom—just barely making it there in time.

Flowers bloom in your lungs, growing more and more until the petals fill your throat and spill out of your mouth. It hurts, you want to scream out, It hurts so much, but when you opens your mouth to speak, petals fall out in red, bloody clumps in lieu of words. You clutch at your throat and squeeze, hard, in a futile attempt to force the flowers out. 

It doesn’t work.

They find you in the second-floor school bathroom three minutes later. Petals surround you like a halo and, if it weren’t for the blood on your lips and the odd placement, one might think it’s some sort of art project. 

You remember what happened in flashes. You’re rushed to the hospital. The doctors call your parents. You’re rushed into the operating room. You fall asleep, Suna’s name on his lips. 

The flowers inside of your lungs are gone when you wakes, but a dull throbbing sits in their place. There are no flowers in the hospital room, no bouquets—something you find yourself grateful for. It’s funny somehow, the caution in which the people around you treat those silly little blossoms. It’s almost laughable, the way your family acts like you’ll break at the mere sight of a petal. Like you’re fragile.

It’s not long before you’re cleared to return to school, cleared to return to your fifth-row seat. People crowd you before class, each one asking if you’re okay, how the surgery was, and what it was like to have the disease. You wave them off with an easy smile, only saying that you’re glad to be back. 

There’s a boy who sits to your left. He holds his pencil tightly in his hand, plump pink lips wrapped around the end as he chews lightly on the eraser. His leg bounces with deep-rooted anxiety whenever you glance over at him. 

In the transition between second and third period, he passes a note with the words ‘Welcome Back’ written on it in hurried chicken scratch. You think it’s meant to be a joke. 

When you look up at the boy, you finally notice that his gray-brown eyes are watching you. You raise your eyebrows, watching as the corners of his lips turn upwards—an offering of the smallest of smiles. This classmate is familiar somehow, a creeping presence in the back of your mind. A gap in memory that should be filled, a cavity in your heart. You know that you’ve met before—it’s obvious in the way he’s looking at you. 

For some reason, you can’t remember his name.