#kunimi

it’s wednesday morning, the hallway smells faintly like floor polish and anxiety, and kunimi is standing in front of his locker, staring at yet another pink envelope like it personally offended him in a past life.

he does not sigh because sighing would take energy and he is frugal with that kind of thing. but something in his face does the emotional equivalent.

the problem: people keep trying to confess to his girlfriend.

the bigger problem: his girlfriend is you.

it’s not your fault, obviously. you exist. you laugh. you fix your hair and the wind messes it up and somehow make astronomy club flyers look like couture accessories. you sit next to him at lunch and talk about wild things like how grapes are just tiny water balloons wearing jackets. and every single person with functioning eyes goes, ‘oh.’

kunimi learns early that saying “she has a boyfriend” only invites follow-up questions. the world is full of people who see a fence and immediately start measuring how tall it is.

he tried, once.

“she has a boyfriend,” he’d said flatly to some first-year clutching a gift bag like it was a life jacket.

“oh,” the first-year had said, eyes lighting up with the dangerous optimism of someone about to rent a ladder. “but does he treat her right? are they serious? how long have they been—”

kunimi had walked away mid-sentence.

𓏵

new strategy.

it’s not elegant. it’s not noble. it’s not even particularly sportsmanlike.

he just takes the gifts.

quietly. efficiently. like a very calm raccoon with morals.

someone tries to intercept you after practice with a box of chocolates? kunimi is suddenly there, a ghost with bed hair and unimpressed eyes, and somehow the chocolates migrate into his hands. letters tucked into your desk? gone. little plushies left in your shoe locker? vanished, like they were never born.

people don’t argue with kunimi because he doesn’t give them anything to push against. he simply appears, looks at them like they’re a pop-up ad, and extends an open hand. it’s not aggressive. it’s just… inevitable.

they hand things over because resisting feels awkward, like refusing a vending machine that already dropped the drink.

you, blissfully unaware, walk through school like a princess guarded by a very non-talkative dragon. and kunimi, who theoretically should be annoyed by the administrative labor of romance management, instead feels something warm and fizzy expand behind his ribs every time he thinks: ‘mine.’

(not the bad kind, not the sharp kind — just the soft, ridiculous kind, like hugging a giant warm milk bread.)

he doesn’t hide you out of shame. far from it. if anything, he has this strange, quiet pride about you that could light a small city. it’s just that he likes having you without commentary. without everyone poking and asking and speculating like you’re a limited edition sneaker drop.

you have no idea any of this is happening. why would you? your life is normal. you go to class. you text kunimi pictures of aggressively cute dogs you see on the street. you show up at practice sometimes, leaning against the wall with that look on your face that says ‘i like watching you,’ and he pretends he is not immediately ready to commit legally binding acts of affection.

and he knows—really knows—that you only look at him like that. you’ve made it absurdly clear. you’ve said his name like it’s fluently spoken in your bones. you’ve taken his hand in yours and looked at him like he hung the stars up just so they wouldn’t be lonely.

still.

other people looking at you makes his brain go slightly static.

so he hoards.

his locker becomes… a situation.

it starts as a corner. then a neat stack. then a less neat stack. then, at some point, when gods were busy and no adult supervision existed in the universe, it becomes a geological formation.

envelopes in every shade invented by stationery companies. keychains. a frankly alarming number of rabbit plushies. chocolates (he checks expiration dates with the grim seriousness of a pharmacist). a scarf knitted with the sort of fierce determination that suggests late-night youtube tutorials.

he doesn’t throw anything away (unless the chocolates expire.)

not because he cares about the gifts themselves—he doesn’t—but because they touched a story involving you, and his brain, despite its famously low energy mode, refuses to be careless with anything that brushes even remotely close to you. so he keeps them. quietly. like a museum of failed attempts.

no one knows.

or so he thinks.

𓏵

it’s after practice when the universe decides to flip him onto his emotional back like a helpless turtle.

the team is loud. oikawa is dramatic. iwaizumi is yelling at oikawa to stop being dramatic. matsukawa and hanamaki are narrating events like a chaotic nature documentary. it’s normal seijoh chaos.

kunimi, in the middle of it, exists like a calm punctuation mark.

he goes to his locker with the intention of: open, grab bag, leave, find you, continue breathing.

he turns the lock.

the door does not open.

it detonates.

not literally—but the hinge gives up with the heartbreak of a 90-year-old soap opera character, and suddenly the hallway is an explosion of pastel.

letters cascade like paper snow. plushies tumble out in a fluffy avalanche. something wrapped in metallic gift paper bounces off matsukawa’s shoe with a festive twang.

there is a silence so loud it rings.

oikawa, frozen mid-hair-flip, blinks at the mountain of gifts at kunimi’s feet.

then, very slowly, like his understanding is being delivered by snail, he says, “what. is. that.”

hanamaki wheezes, “is kunimi… running an underground convenience store?”

iwaizumi squints at the pile, then at kunimi, then back at the pile. “that’s… that’s a lot of stuff.”

someone lifts an envelope with tiny hearts on it. “to… y/n?” matsukawa reads, voice rising like a kettle.

you are very much a real person in this school. you are known. you are admired. you are the walking equivalent of that warm spot of sunlight cats find and refuse to leave.

everything happens at once.

“hold on hold on hold on,” oikawa flaps his hands like an untrained bird. “why do all of these say y/n? why are they in your locker? kunimi what is happening, are you being blackmailed to keep these—”

kunimi stands in the middle of the disaster, expression unchanged, like he is internally choosing between options on a vending machine menu.

“they’re for her,” he says finally.

“why do you have them?” iwaizumi asks.

a pause.

“because she doesn’t need them,” kunimi answers simply.

the team stares like they have collectively discovered a new species.

“why,” matsukawa says slowly, “does y/n not need… confessions?”

another pause. kunimi looks at them. then at the paper heart stuck on his shoelace. then back at them.

he says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world:

“she’s my girlfriend.”

if the school roof had blown off, it would have been less dramatic.

oikawa makes a noise that sounds illegal in three countries. “EXCUSE ME?”

hanamaki points at kunimi like he’s accusing him in court. “you—you—you have a girlfriend? not hypothetical, not fanfiction, not a rumor from the bathroom third stall—an actual girlfriend?”

iwaizumi’s eyebrows hit the stratosphere. “and it’s y/n?”

matsukawa sits down on the floor without breaking eye contact. “i need a minute.”

“how long?” oikawa demands. “how long have you been secretly living a romantic shoujo manga life behind our backs?”

kunimi shrugs, which is his preferred form of poetry. “a while.”

oikawa clutches his chest. “he didn’t tell us. i thought we were friends. teammates. family.”

“you don’t tell family everything,” hanamaki points out. “i don’t tell you when i buy weird jam.”

“that’s different,” oikawa cries.

iwaizumi recalibrates. “so you’ve been… intercepting these. to keep people from confessing to her.”

kunimi nods.

“and your locker… exploded,” matsukawa observes helpfully.

kunimi considers the pile of letters like it personally betrayed him. “yes.”

there’s another silence, but this time it’s not shocked. it’s… impressed. confused. slightly fond in the way you feel toward a cat caught red-pawed in the bread box.

oikawa blinks. “wait. so she knows we exist? you didn’t just… stash her on some secret island away from all of us, right?”

the look kunimi gives him answers that question with such flat clarity that hanamaki actually snorts.

“she comes to practice sometimes,” iwaizumi says slowly, like he’s connecting murder board strings. “the girl with the smile and the sweater with the tiny bees.”

“yes,” kunimi says.

matsukawa points at him. “you were holding her umbrella last week.”

“yes.”

“you looked like a husband in a grocery store,” hanamaki adds.

“yes.”

oikawa dissolves into the floor with dramatic despair noises.

the teasing comes, inevitably, like rain arrives to a picnic.

“wow, kunimi, hiding a whole romance from us,” matsukawa grins. “what else are you hiding? a mortgage? three children? a savings account?”

“i’m genuinely happy for you,” iwaizumi says, punching his shoulder lightly. “just… next time, maybe tell us? we could’ve given you advice.”

kunimi looks at him, unimpressed. “i didn’t need advice.”

hanamaki wiggles his eyebrows. “because you’re so in lo—”

he stops, wisely, because there is a particular softness in kunimi’s expression that feels private. like sunlight in a jar.

oikawa leans forward, eyes glittering with scandalous curiosity. “does y/n know you’re a gift-stealing raccoon?”

kunimi hesitates.

you do not, in fact, know.

the team howls.

“tell her,” iwaizumi says, half-laughing, half-genuinely concerned about the ethics of dessert confiscation. “before she finds out because your locker turned into a piñata in front of the entire school.”

𓏵

you hear about it before he finds you.

of course you do.

people whisper like wind. hallways carry gossip the way rivers carry leaves. you’re putting your shoes on when someone walks by saying, “i heard kunimi’s locker exploded,” like this is normal weather conversation.

you blink.

another voice: “full of love letters to y/n.”

you stop blinking.

your heart does something extremely acrobatic inside your chest, like it suddenly enrolled in gymnastics without informing you.

you find him outside, near the gym, sitting on a bench with the air of someone whose day did not go according to any known plan.

there’s a tiny paper heart stuck in his hair.

you go to him.

“hey,” you say softly, and the way his shoulders lower when he hears your voice makes the entire sky feel too small for how much your chest tries to hold.

he looks up at you, and for a second, everything in him is naked and earnest, like a book with all the covers peeled away. then it’s just kunimi again, calm, a little tired, with that look he only ever has when it’s about you: like he would put the whole world in a drawer if it ever made you frown.

“locker incident?” you say, lips twitching.

he exhales through his nose. “…yes.”

you sit beside him, your knees bumping his, casual and enormous at the same time. “i heard there were a lot of letters with my name.”

he doesn’t look away. “yes.”

a breeze nudges your hair. a leaf skitters by. somewhere, volleyballs thump, whistles blow, life continues with rude indifference to the very important moment of your heart deciding to glow like a toaster.

“you took them?” you ask gently.

“yes.”

there’s no shame in his voice. no insecurity. just simple truth, like the sky is blue and he likes your hand in his.

“why?” you ask, not accusing, just curious, like you’re peeking into the drawer of his mind with clean hands.

he thinks, and then he answers in that straightforward way that makes everything feel more serious and more funny at the same time.

“because they don’t matter to you,” he says. “and i don’t want people bothering you. you already chose me.”

it’s not pompous. it’s not triumphant. it’s quiet certainty, the kind built from a thousand tiny moments—your head on his shoulder on the train, your hand wrapped in his jacket sleeve when your fingers were cold, the way you say his name like it’s a light switch that turns your whole face warm.

your throat goes soft.

there are a thousand things you could say—poetic, dramatic, witty—but what comes out is simple, a little wobbly, absolutely real:

“come here.”

you tug him by his sleeve, and he leans in, obedient in the way someone is when they are choosing it, not being pulled. your forehead presses against his. your noses bump. his breath mixes with yours, and the world, rude as it is, blurs like a camera refusing to focus on anything but him.

“you know i pick you,” you murmur. “every time. with both hands. like grabbing the biggest melon at the supermarket because it looks like it would be sweet.”

a laugh escapes him—soft, startled, unguarded.

you smile, triumphant in the way a scientist smiles when an experiment explodes into confetti instead of smoke. “you don’t have to protect me from every letter. i don’t even see anyone else that way. it’s like my heart is a phone with only one contact and i forgot the passcode for adding new ones.”

his fingers curl into the fabric of your sleeve, holding, like he’s anchoring himself to something that’s moving very fast in a beautiful direction. his eyes, usually so sleepy, shine with something so warm it could bake bread.

“i know,” he says. it’s almost a whisper. “i just… didn’t want them near you.”

you lean back, just enough to see him entirely, as if the universe framed him. “you’re—”

you stop.

there are words you could use, but none of the sharp ones, none of the tired ones. instead, you say, with a grin that feels too big for your face:

“you’re my favorite silly dragon.”

his ears turn the color of strawberries that know they’re being watched.

“dragon,” he repeats, deadpan, but his mouth betrays him with the tiniest upward curve.

“yes,” you say firmly. “hoarding shiny things, glaring at intruders, guarding treasure. very on brand.”

“you’re the treasure,” he says, so casually and so sincerely that the air itself trips over its shoelaces.

your heart becomes a firework disguised as an organ.

“say that again,” you whisper, because you are greedy with sweetness now, shameless, like someone at a free hotel buffet.

he doesn’t repeat—he just looks at you like he already wrote it a hundred times in invisible ink across his life.

you bump his shoulder with yours. “also, a paper heart is in your hair.”

he blinks.

you reach up, pluck it free, and tuck it into your pocket like a joke you plan to giggle about later.

“the team found out?” you ask.

“yes.”

“are they alive?”

“unfortunately.”

you snort, and he watches the sound leave your mouth like it is an actual visible thing he wants to catch in his hands.

you lace your fingers with his, and it fits, like this was the only correct solution to an unsolvable math problem. he squeezes back, not hard, just sure.

“walk me home?” you ask.

he stands. “yes.”

it’s simple with him. no theatrics. no speeches. but his quiet is not empty; it’s dense with feeling, like cake that forgot how to be modest. (dense w a filling! haha sorry.)

on the way, he takes your bag from you without asking, like gravity, like of course. you argue for half a second, then let him, because it makes his shoulders straighten with that tiny, proud stiffness you secretly love.

people look. people whisper. you ignore them like background music in a bakery—present, but irrelevant to the main event, which is sugar and warmth and the boy beside you whose hand keeps brushing yours like it’s shy and brave at the same time.

he stops at your gate.

evening wraps everything in honey.

you turn to him. “akira.”

“mm?”

“thank you for… all of it.” you gesture vaguely at the universe, at the gift avalanche, at his very specific style of quiet chaos. “i’m not mad. just—tell me next time, okay? i want to laugh with you when your locker becomes a greeting card volcano again.”

he nods. then, after a second, he says, “i like you laughing.”

you feel something fizzy in your chest again. “i like you liking that.”

he is very still, and then he leans in and kisses you. it’s the kind of kiss that feels like a secret handshake between souls that already know each other embarrassingly well.

the world does not explode.

it doesn’t need to.

you pull back, smiling so hard your cheeks complain. “see you tomorrow.”

he nods, but he doesn’t let go of your hand right away, like he’s testing how long two hearts can stay stitched together without thread.

you finally slip inside, and he stands there for a moment, looking at the space you left like it’s still full of you.

on the way home, he puts his hands in his pockets and feels the crinkle of paper letters, tucked there earlier, forgotten in the commotion. he doesn’t read them. he doesn’t need to. he just thinks of your laugh, your forehead against his, the way you called him a silly dragon with absolute seriousness.

he smiles—small, secret, enough to tilt the earth a fraction of a degree toward spring.

somewhere in school tomorrow, someone will try again with a ribboned box and trembling hands.

kunimi will be there.

quiet.

inevitable.

and later, when you take his sleeve, when you look at him like he is both the question and the answer, he will think, without drama, without doubt:

‘she already chose me.’

and that, honestly, is more than enough to turn every fence in the world into scenery.

n: oh my heart </3 my followers on ig are watching me lose my shit abt grape soda in a chiikawa can and gojo appearing on jjk s3 like i didn’t see him on the movie.

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© showhay — don’t copy nor translate without my permission. i do not own any of the photos that i have used. credits to all the rightful owners !