#broken pot

Plant Pot - Aarne Jämsä , 2005.

Finnish , b. 1956 -

Watercolour, marker pen and guache

But the silence you left behind wasn't a tantrum—it was a void.

He sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the empty space in the closet where your clothes used to hang. He had encouraged you to leave them there, a selfish move to ensure you were always within reach, never considering that it would make the eventual departure feel like an amputation.

"Damn it," he hissed, his voice cracking in the quiet room. He grabbed his phone for the hundredth time, his thumb hovering over your contact, only to be met with the cold, unyielding reality of a blocked status. He couldn't even see your profile picture anymore.

His ego, usually his strongest armor, was beginning to chafe. He had tried to find you, but his own negligence stood in his way like a locked door. He tried to recall the name of your company—he had tuned out every time you talked about your career, dismissing it as "boring work stuff." He didn't know your office address, didn't know the names of your closest friends, and hadn't once thought to pay attention to the details of your life that didn't involve his own comfort.

He was the star setter, the golden boy of the league, and yet he was completely powerless.

He began to spiral. He started showing up at the gym earlier than usual, hoping to catch a glimpse of you, but the city was too large, and your life was a map he had never bothered to read. The teammates who had laughed with him a week ago were now looking at him with thinly veiled contempt. Osamu had stopped picking up his calls after the third day, simply texting: *“Ya reaped what ya sowed, Tsumu. Don't call me until you’ve actually grown up.”*

Every time he heard a car pull into the driveway, his heart would leap into his throat, his pride instantly shattering into a pathetic, desperate hope. He would rush to the door, hands trembling, only to find the delivery guy or a neighbor.

The realization was a slow, agonizing poison: you hadn't left because you were angry. You had left because you were *finished*.

You weren't waiting for an apology; you had moved past the need for one. Your silence wasn't a tactic—it was an erasure. You had treated him with the same calm, rational consideration that he had weaponized against you, and in doing so, you had rendered him completely irrelevant.

He stood up, walking into the kitchen. The floor was finally clean, the tiles polished until they shone, but the sight of the spot where the tomato plant had shattered made his stomach turn. He knelt down, tracing the crack in the tile with a shaking finger. He had thought he was testing your temper, but he had actually tested your resolve.

He had wanted to see you crack, to see you lose that infuriatingly perfect composure. Now, he would give anything—his career, his fame, his pride—just to hear you raise your voice at him. To hear you call him an idiot, to hear you explain why he was wrong, to hear you care enough to be angry.

The morning air was thick with the scent of pine cleaner and the lingering, sharp sting of a cold kitchen. Atsumu Miya, the golden boy of the MSBY Black Jackals, stood in the center of the living room, a phone surreptitiously recording from its perch atop a bookshelf. He was riding the high of a "social experiment" suggested by Bokuto and Hinata—the "Don't Hit Women" challenge, a twisted iteration of testing a partner’s patience until they snapped.

He had started at 4:00 AM, demanding a full-course breakfast despite the dark circles under your eyes—the physical proof of your 2:30 AM finish on a business proposal that represented six months of sleepless labor. You had complied with a serene, tired smile, your movements efficient and graceful. When he returned from training, he acted the part of a chaotic force of nature: dumping sweat-slicked gym gear onto the hardwood, abandoning wet towels on the upholstery, and loudly critiquing the seasoning of your lunch until you bowed your head and hurried to prepare his favorite meal from scratch.

By mid-afternoon, the house was a minefield of his making. You were the tireless caretaker, moving behind him like a ghost, tidying his debris with a mechanical, eerie silence. Atsumu felt a twinge of irritation—not because you were doing the work, but because you refused to break. His ego, always hungry for a reaction, felt slighted by your unwavering composure.

The breaking point arrived in the kitchen. As you mopped the floor for the third time, he cornered you, demanding affection. When you politely asked for a moment to finish your chores, he felt the familiar, toxic itch of his own pride. He persisted, looming over you, and when you gave him a soft, gentle push to create space, he saw his opening. He began to escalate, knocking over a container of milk that splashed across the freshly scrubbed tiles, scattering seasoning packets, and tossing the clean dishes back into the sink with a deafening clatter.

He moved toward your workspace, his voice booming with performative outrage. "You’re always so obsessed with these stupid chores, with this damn neat-freak attitude! Maybe you've got some kind of mental issue, always cleaning while I’m trying to talk to you!"

He reached for your laptop, intending to shut it closed with a dramatic flourish to force your attention. His finger slipped, hitting the wrong sequence of keys, and with a soft, final *click*, the screen transitioned to a blank document. The unsaved proposal—the heart of your professional future—vanished into the digital void.

The room went deathly silent.

Atsumu stood there, chest heaving, waiting for the explosion, the screaming, the tantrum he had anticipated. Instead, he saw your face. Your eyes weren't filled with rage; they were hollow, perfectly still. You weren't looking at the milk on the floor or the broken glass in the sink. You were staring at the blank screen of your laptop.

"I..." Atsumu started, his bravado wavering as he realized the weight of the silence. "I didn't mean to—it’s just a file, babe. We can redo it. Stop acting so weird."

You didn't answer. You didn't even blink. You simply turned, walked past him without brushing his shoulder, and retreated to the bedroom. The door clicked shut, not with a slam, but with a finality that made the hair on his arms stand up.

Hours passed. Atsumu paced, his pride warring with a creeping, cold dread. When you didn't emerge, he convinced himself you were just "cooling off." He texted his teammates, met up with them, and laughed as they slapped him on the back, calling him a fool for trying to provoke a girl as patient as you. "You're lucky she’s a saint," Osamu had grumbled, though his eyes were uncharacteristically sharp. "But even a saint has a limit, Tsumu. Don't be a prick."

The laughter followed him home, but as he unlocked the front door, the silence of the house hit him like a physical blow. It wasn't the quiet of you sleeping; it was the hollow, echoing silence of an empty apartment.

His heart hammered against his ribs. He hurried to the bedroom. The closet was barren. The drawers hung open, emptied of your clothes. The desk, where your laptop sat, was wiped clean of your personality—no pens, no files, no photos.

Then, he saw it. On the windowsill sat the small terracotta pot he had given you—the cherry tomato plant he claimed was "useful" because it bore fruit, unlike the "useless" flowers other men bought. He had scoffed at your love for aesthetics, demanding utility. Now, the pot was shattered on the floor, the soil spilled like dark, drying blood across the tiles, the green stalk snapped cleanly in two.

He scrambled for his phone, his thumb shaking as he dialed your number. *Straight to voicemail.* He tried again, then again, his ego finally collapsing into a desperate, frantic need for your presence. He realized with a jolt of panic that he didn't know your friends' numbers. He hadn't asked. He hadn't cared. He had kept you in a box of his own making, and now that the box was empty, he had no map to find you.