crying constellations

Riddle’s heart was in his throat. The Unbirthday Party was to be a farewell party as well. That held notes of sweet bitterness that just didn’t taste good at all. He had grown somewhat fond of the people of Earth — was it because he could sense a bit of Yuu in them? Hard to tell, but nothing he wanted to think about.

Unfortunately, it was just a small sort of Unbirthday Party, at best. He could not convince the librarians to procure flamingoes, or a dormouse, though one of them painted an edible dormouse with a bit of jam on its nose, just for him. He appreciated the effort. Had he been younger, he might have taken their head for the sheer audacity of thinking anything less than perfectly following the rules was allowed — but Yuu had changed that.

Yuu had changed him, but he was going back home, not having ever found them.

“What makes you look so troubled? Did Ike do something, again? I can have him hung up to dry, if that would please you,” the head librarian said, shaking Riddle out of his blue funk.

“No. He’s on his absolute best behavior,” Riddle said politely, bowing to the other due to their clear seniority in age (and status, perhaps. After all, they were the head of this establishment and had a place on Earth. Riddle might have been someone special in Twisted Wonderland, but he was truly nobody here). “After you allowed me to demonstrate what a beheading would have been like, where I’m from, he has been quite docile and eager to please.”

The head librarian laughed. “Ike’s a bit of a brat. Took him in ‘cause he has nothing better to do, and I needed someone with personality.”

Riddle was aghast. “Do you mean to tell me that you enjoy him disobeying you?”

“Not at all. He has moments of brighter personality — that’s what I mean.” The old librarian smirked. “He has done some good for some of my patrons before.”

The red haired man considered this. “He has... a pleasant personality when he wants to be pleasant.”

The old librarian did not mention aloud how Ike had gotten Riddle out of several blue mental states by simply noticing the little man was feeling under the weather. Instead, they nodded with a faint smirk. “You have a pleasant personality when things are perfect or at least done in a manner that reminds you of how you do things.”

Riddle’s eyes widened. “Am I that obvious?”

“Have you been going for subtlety this whole time? Tsk tsk, this won’t do, if that’s the case.”

Riddle colored considerably. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re lucky everyone finds you adorable, otherwise they just might have offed your head, you know.”

“You’re all librarians though. You don’t strike me as the offing head type sort of people.”

The head librarian grinned knowingly. “Oh, I daresay we could surprise you in many ways.”

Riddle wanted to ask what he meant by that, throat swelled in alarm, but he was stopped by his eyes catching sight of a commotion happening outside.

This wouldn’t do. He wanted this Unbirthday Party to be perfect. It had to be. He couldn’t expend all this effort only to get zero results or have it be utterly ruined by some fiasco or another. Not unlike his old Overblot incident... he couldn’t... wouldn’t possibly...

Yes, he would have to solve this straightaway. He bowed his head to the old librarian and hurried out the door to go and find out the cause for the ruckus.

A person was emphatically speaking, “I have to be here, I just know he’s there. Just have to make sure he’s here, is all —”

“— boss said absolutely no one who has a birthday today can attend an Unbirthday Party! It defeats the purpose!”

“It’s not my fault it’s my birthday today!”

Riddle was a little too short to see who was speaking, but he had the faintest sense of familiarity. “Excuse me,” he tried, but he could not get past the crowd to see who it was.

“No ands, ifs, or buts! You gotta leave.”

Was that Ike speaking? It sounded like it.

“I’m sure any of the Heartslabyul boys would make an exception for me — well, he might not — but come on! Can I just see who orchestrated this?”

Heartslabyul? He hadn’t heard that wrong. Someone had said his former dorm name. Wait. No. Don’t get excited. Don’t get your hopes up. Anything I try to do for myself never seems to work out — it’s no good to assume the best when the reality of this world is as cruel as my own.

“Can I please get through,” Riddle wheezed, trying to get past the crowd that was quite possibly going to trample him to death. Why was everyone six feet or taller?

“Hey! Riddle! This way!” It was one of the librarians, a kind man with a face as young as his own, but a voice that oddly reminded him of Leona, a bit. Different, but just as deep. Draconia, perhaps? “You have to see this, it’s urgent!”

“What is it? Who is that over there —” Riddle tried to ask, but he was interrupted.

“There are seven different rosebushes that are still white!”

Wha — Who — Oh. Unacceptable. That could not be allowed. The party hadn’t started yet, and it was a good thing it hadn’t because otherwise Riddle would have collared the ones responsible without remorse — oh, wait. He wasn’t in Twisted Wonderland anymore. Still! He would get those resin molds and collar them anyway — it was probably Ike’s fault.

“Take me to the roses, I’ll paint them myself!” Riddle seethed, anger burning hotly within him because he had gone over this thrice, at the very least! How could a group of adults be so forgetful?! Who would do such a thing and jeopardize his Unbirthday Party?! They would pay! ... as soon as he had finished doing their job for them, painting the white roses red in a nice and thick coat of fresh red paint. Yes. Aha.

He rushed away, escorted by the librarian, ahoge standing straight up despite the fact that it made no sense on Earth for that to be able to happen. The laws of Earth’s physics did not apply to Riddle Rosehearts, apparently. Or, it was the universe accepting that he was going to leave and was granting him the power he once held back in his world?

That didn’t make sense, but maybe that’s why it did. The truth was a little twisted, after all.

“How did you manage to do such a sloppy job?” Riddle demanded with haughty vehemence, glaring down at the two librarians assigned to painting the roses — of course, Ike was one of them.

“Don’t look at me! Look at Pond! She was daydreamin’ about some furry or whatever — OW!”

“I am not a furry!” Pond screeched, slapping Ike with her paintbrush. “And I fell asleep because you made me paint all the roses myself to goof off as you saw fit!”

“You said you could handle it?”

“I never said that!”

Riddle was up to his eyeballs in red anger. He was sure that his grey eyes were going to switch to a reddish hue as his whole face felt blood rush to the surface. “Off With Your Head,” he muttered under his breath.

Ike’s blood must have run cold — he had good hearing. “What was that?”

“I said,” Riddle started, reaching for his pen despite the fact that there was no logical reason it should work in this world — one hundred percent ready to try to collar the poor librarian — but he was stopped. Why was he stopped? Who would dare to —

“Riddle! We have a situation! Let the Head handle this!”

“I am the head!” Riddle shouted, only realizing after the words were spoken that they weren’t true. This was not Heartslabyul. This was not Twisted Wonderland. He was truly nothing here — shouldn’t he had have been grateful that they were letting him do such ridiculous things to uphold the rules of the great Queen of Hearts?

They didn’t need to put up with him. They didn’t need to be fond of his stickler nature and like him — he still wasn’t sure why they were fond of him at all. He felt a twinge of pain when he turned back to Ike and muttered, “Sorry,” before he allowed the other librarian to drag him to the ‘situation,’ whatever that meant.

Pond smacked Ike in the head with her paintbrush again, causing a flurry of red dots of paint to litter the floor — not to mention the white roses lacking fresh coats of paint.

“I would never have dragged you away from beheading Ike under normal circumstances, but the circumstances are far from normal.”

“That bad?”

“It is of the utmost importance that you get here right away. You see, we have multiple issues — the rosebushes being the least of our worries.”

He was fully prepared to go on a rant about why the rosebushes could not possibly be the least of their worries until he was led straight to —

“Yuu?”

Osamu Miya has a problem. His problem, is that he has no idea what he's doing with his life, really. That's a stretch. That's a lie. He knows what he's doing, or he feels like he does — except, he doesn't. His restaurant is doing just fine. He finally opened up a branch in Tokyo. Business is booming. By all accounts, he is successful and happy.

But, he's not. He's not happy at all. Which, again, is a lie. He has happy moments. In fact, he has many happy moments. So many times where he feels happy, but it is as fleeting and temporary as the pleasure one gets from eating a perfect rice ball, fresh and warm. It is felt fully, and then it passes.

Of course, he won't stop eating onigiri because the happiness doesn't last. No, really, it only makes him want to eat it more. However, beyond food, beyond the lost land of volleyball, there is something else that makes him feel a little bit unsettled.

Love. He's almost thirty now. He feels the loneliness settle in, more and more, little by little. The fact that he is no longer around Atsumu twenty-four seven has sunk in a long time ago, but the absence never ceases to get louder as time passes by. He can smell it in the way his apartment doesn't smell like him at all. It smells like new furniture despite the fact he's been living in that apartment for six years. There's dust collecting in his cabinets because he doesn't have time to clean them himself — he lives alone. There is only an empty sense of a forlorn lost thought in his own living space, and that's just the tip of the iceberg on reasons why he feels loveless.

Honestly, he knows that this is all a pile of shit. He has Atsumu, for crying out loud. He knows his twin has his back and would probably go to jail for him (well, vice versa if that's the case but double vice versa if he doesn't have his back: Atsumu can go to jail for all he cares... yeah). Back to the matter at hand, he knows that this is all a pile of shit, because it's just plain stupid. He has no reason to feel this lonely and this empty — but, he does. That's all there is too it.

“Moonshine.”

A vision of darkness and guidance. Tsukishima glanced at Kuroo. Alien. Foreign. Someone like Kuroo was obviously an anomaly. Clad in a black suit, trenchcoat, and a vibrant red tie… the usual. Messy hair, ill suited to the rest of the general look.

“I thought I told you not to call me that.”

That was safer. People could be self-sufficient. Relying on others was to show weakness. It wasn’t smart to trust that others would be trustworthy. Kuroo certainly wasn’t.

“How hurtful, after all the help I’ve given you,” the dark man chided, stalking towards Tsukishima with a roguish smile that did not depict his true colors at all — and he had so many, colors that is. “You even came out all this way just for me, no?”

Yeah, why had Tsukishima decided to do that? It wasn’t like coming out here was worth it. There was no reason. Kuroo was annoying. He didn’t like Kuroo at all. There were no positive qualities to be found in him.

Sharp grey eyes watched his every move, analyzing what he’d do next. That was ok, because Tsukishima did the same.

“You helped me, which is why I have acknowledged your summons,” Tsukishima stated dryly, trying his best not to recall the strange episode that had started this whole meeting. “I mean, you’re not going to kill me.”

“I don’t kill people,” Kuroo stated, tone matter-of-fact, but also quite sincere — a complete change from just moments before. “Death isn’t something to make light of.”

“Good thing we’re meeting up at night.”

“If you think that’s remotely clever, you’d be wrong.”

Tsukishima rolled his eyes, “I don’t see you coming up with something better.”

Kuroo ignored his quip and smoothly continued on. “Anyway, you humans do anything fun these days? I wouldn’t have a clue.”

“You know, for being one of the Dark Ones, I don’t feel like you’re very…”

“What, godly?” Kuroo laughs at him, and it’s this horrible screeching sound. It doesn’t match his general suave look at all. “What can I say? I’m just an old soul.”

Tsukishima balked at this reply. “What were you saying about me thinking I was remotely clever, again?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Make me.”

Kuroo laughed again. “That’s the spirit! This is far more entertaining than I thought it’d be. Come.”

Tsukishima took a step back instinctually. “Uh. No? Where are you taking me?”

“We could go wherever you want, but you’re not telling me where to go, so I’ll have to make all the decisions myself,” Kuroo sighed dramatically, long limbs taking him towards the blond haired man in an instant. “Come along!” And, without giving him time to protest, he dragged him by the arm, holding his wrist tightly to guide him to a place unknown.