Chapter Text
“There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps onward, an easier day, an unexpected laugh…A mirror that doesn’t matter anymore.” – Katherine West
7/6/2021
Kenma knew why everyone had left after high school.
Actually, most of his classmates still lived in Tokyo - save for a few exceptions, most of them had chosen colleges in the city. Several of them went to school with him at Temple, though they didn’t speak. Occasionally they would look his way and, should they accidentally catch his eyes, would wave back with starry eyes full of disdain.
It wasn’t just his Nekoma classmates that didn’t talk to him – he lived in a city of millions of people, yet none of them seemed to even know his name. There were students his own age, in his own department, that wouldn’t have been able to tell you a single thing about him, although he couldn’t guarantee that he would have told them anything had they even tried to ask. But he also didn’t blame them – he didn’t want to be around himself either. But it wasn’t like he had time for relations, nor the desire.
He was a psychology major – a 4th year who was working on his residency at a facility in which the boy’s own mother had once suggested he receive treatment himself. A constant question was always asked when other people on campus found out, should they attempt to strike conversation. A colleague had once asked while sitting outside and smoking cigarettes “why Kenma had chosen to do his residency there, as it was obvious as to his condition.” He had looked at her, stare empty and saddened. “I’m not as sick as them” is all he had said before walking away.
That was, of course a lie, as Kenma could easily tell you. As one may assume, he was no stranger to signs and symptoms of a wide array of disorders. And although he may prefer to discourage self-diagnosis, he felt no need to seek confirmation from a second source on a less than professional level. Everyone knew, too. Kenma could tell when passersby would direct their gaze towards him, their slander aimed to kill something inside him that he really wished would just die.
“Look at that poor boy.”
“How tragic.”
“You know he could drop dead any day now.”
It had been a professor that had carelessly whispered that last one while Kenma was leaving class one day, tossed about to another teacher from their department.
Years had passed since he had cared though – since he was a second year in high school and he watched his best friend walk across the stage at his graduation. It had become stomach churning, mind numbing anxiety that was quelled only by a menial combination of disassociation, apathy, and a healthy dose of persistence. The loneliness was so much less painful when you didn’t have to face it. When you had no friends you had no worries. There was no one to cancel plans with, no one to worry needlessly over, no one to lose…
But if it wasn’t Kuroo, Kenma didn’t care. If it wasn’t Kuroo, he would still be left with an empty feeling somewhere at the back on his throat and an ache in his chest where his heart might have been.
Truth be told, Kenma understood more of this affair than it might seem. He knew that Kuroo was the reason he kept his hair long, had continued to dye it blonde until giving up again several months prior when his hair had started to fall out.
He knew it wasn’t from the bleaching but he wouldn’t tell his doctor that.
Even subconsciously, Kenma had sought to be everything that Kuroo had ever wanted – somewhere in his heart, he knew that he wanted Kuroo to find him desirable.
But he also knew that sometimes love means saying goodbye to the person you need most, because eventually you realize that there is no need, only desire, and that they don’t want you. It overcame him quickly, along with the realization that he was no longer wanted and that – maybe – he never was.
So he allowed his body to destroy itself – eating its own flesh and muscles until one day, he finally did drop dead inside the very prison he had created for himself. Kenma would make himself empty, just like his felt in that pit in the bottom of his stomach. There was no one there to pretend for anymore – no motivation, no hunger, no pain. He blocked out everything – all of the emotional turmoil that had been stewing inside him for as long as he could remember – until all he could see was a narrow road in front of him and all he could feel was the biting cold of the winter wind. But see, the problem with becoming numb is that, while it means you don’t feel the pain of rejection – the sting of loneliness – you don’t get to experience the little joys in life either.
Perhaps, Kenma thought, he had already been dead for years.
--
Kenma sat a bottle of green tea down beside the register as he reached to pull money from his pocket. Shaking hands struggled to keep hold of the coins that they grasped at. The woman behind the counter was new – not the tired looking old man that usually worked this shift – and while Kenma had grown used to the passing eyes of strangers, it wasn’t often that he would have to avoid their gaze for quite so long. He had assumed that most people knew better than to stare in this day and age, but obviously this girl hadn’t received the message and her eyes were judging if anything. Prying at his sallow skin, wilted cheeks, and the tendons that jutted from his neck.
Anxiety was a common enemy for Kenma, and he had spent most of his life learning how to avoid situations that heightened it. He wore headphones when he wanted to be alone, refused eye contact.
He moved to put the money on the counter just as the girl reached out her hand and the warmth from her steadily pumping heart permeated into Kenma’s own body.
Looking at his hands, they were like marble – carved delicately with tender care in the palest, smoothest stone. To him, they felt as in they were on fire, but they were so cold to the touch. Once again, he knew this – knew what it meant at least - but refuted the possibility of resolution.
Quickly dropping the money on the counter, Kenma retreated, drink in tow and an admonished looking girl in his periphery.
“Keep the change,” he muttered, voice weak and shaking as he quickly exited the store – door held open for the summer breeze.
He moved with practiced swiftness through the hordes of people that crowded the streets. They would stare at him over their shoulders, some of them frowning, but he wouldn’t return their gaze – he would keep his head down and his headphones on, except for when he was taking a drink. He would look up quickly, close his eyes for just a second, and then return them to the ground so he wouldn’t accidentally feel guilt creep through his spine when their eyes watched him walk the other direction.
It was 7pm on a Friday night and the traffic in Minato was to be expected. The train station wasn’t far though – maybe two blocks north – and then he would be on his way home.
No matter, it was less overwhelming than Shinjuku this time of day.
Kuroo lived in Shinjuku now.
“Kenma!”
His eyes shot up as someone reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder. Quickly, Kenma pulled his headphones from his ears and turned to face the other person.
There were two people, one with unmistakably golden eyes and another with the face of a monk.
“Bo, you’re worrying him,” the glassy eyed boy stated not so delicately.
Keiji smiled at his classmate’s confusion but frowned as he took in his sickly appearance. The boy in front of him looked very different from the boy he had said goodbye to two years ago – that had been the last time they had spoken and it had been over video chat. This was, for that matter, the first time he had stood close enough to touch Kenma since high school. The blonde had been thin as a rail four years prior, but there was an obvious atrophy to his muscles now that hadn’t been there before.
He couldn’t possibly be playing Volleyball anymore.
“I wouldn’t have recognized you if it weren’t for the hair.” Bokuto backed up closer to Keiji and Kenma found he didn’t need to ask what they were doing out together on a Friday night.
“Where are you going?”
It seemed that subtlety was still lost on Bokuto, no matter his age. Kenma reached up, playing at the soft hairs that covered the side of his jaw.
“I was just on my way home.” He looked from one perfectly knotted tie to another before continuing. “I’m sorry if I’m holding you up.”
He moved to put his headphones back in – escape and rethink the situation over and over again until he comes up with every reason he deserves to die. Nauseating anxiety. Over stimulation.
“No way!” Bokuto grabbed his hands, smiling gleefully at Kenma as he tried his best to put distance between them, a grimace plastered on his lips. The young man could feel
Keiji’s eyes on him and knew. Keiji knew and Kenma was all too startlingly aware of that at this point.
“You should come get drinks with us.”
He didn’t want to. Didn’t think he could physically manage to. There were impossible to predict variables in this situation – most of them being Bokuto himself – and Kenma hadn’t taken any of them in when planning his evening. It was too late now to go changing his schedule.
But Keiji knew and Bokuto undoubtedly did as well because God knew he was smarter than he would let people believe. The former rested a gentle had on Bokuto’s upper arm and pulled it away slowly and Kenma’s hands dropped from his grip. For a moment, their gazes – Keiji and Bokuto simultaneously – connected with his and it was there in their eyes.
They were scared.
“I can go, I guess.”
Kenma stumbled over the words in his head but was reassured when a smile returned to Bokuto’s face.
“Great! Tetsu will be so excited to see you!”
It was too late to say no.
--
“…Your hair looks awful.” The black haired boy mumbled.
Kenma sat down next to Kuroo on a loveseat in the center of the bar. Slouching against the back, he spread his knees comfortably in front of him, shifting slightly closer to the leather armrest. Before long, Kenma had fetched his phone from his pocket.
“So does yours.” The tapping began.
“Orthostatic hypotension?” Kuroo takes a sip from some drink he is holding in his right hand. With his other hand, he reaches over and takes another glass from the table in front of them. Kenma takes it without looking up but can feel his gaze on his heaving chest and fluttering eyes.
“Such big words for such common things. Why do you care again?”
Kenma’s fingers narrowly avoid Kuroo’s during the exchange. The older boy lets out an airy laugh.
“Maybe you should get more iron in your diet.”
“Maybe you need to mind your own business.”
“Nutrition IS my business, in case you forgot.”
Bokuto cleared his throat.
“So, Kenma. Why didn’t you stay with volleyball in college?” He asked, taking a sip from the drink in his hands, sitting cross legged on the loveseat. Kenma continues to tap at his phone, diligently avoiding conversation. His fingers are so cold. He is so tired. Beside him, he could feel Kuroo staring, head cocked to the side – the same way he watched Kenma when they were younger, thinking that he didn’t notice.
“…I didn’t make the team…” From beneath his lashes, he could see Keiji’s head shoot up from where he had been looking between his knees at the floor, eyes startled.
Kuroo laughed through his nose, crossing his legs and arms. He leaned back into the couch in some sort of grim defeat.
“That’s funny. I heard you didn’t pass your physical.”
“So what if I was sick?” Kenma bit back, angered by the provocative tone that Kuroo was using with him – one that he had never aimed towards Kenma before. “I still didn’t make the team cause of it.”
“Bruh, you are still sick – just look at yourself.”
“I’m not sick.” Kenma continued to stare at his phone.
“No, you’re just sick in the head. You’ve gotta be what – 95, 100 lbs.”
His words stung like a thousand cuts to Kenma’s ego. It was fragile to begin with – numbers only hurt it even more, especially when they were so very, very wrong.
“84.” He whispered, taking a drink from whatever was in his hand – something sweet and tender just like he would have wanted, had he ordered for himself.
Kuroo had ordered for everyone.
“What?!”
Kuroo’s words were loud in the small bar, loud in Kenma’s ears that hadn’t heard his voice in years. Hearing him angry, like the rage his mother held when he had confessed to her the truth about his health – it made him quiver inside. Kenma knew he wasn’t asking a question. He knew Kuroo was in shock.
He repeated it anyway.
“8-”
“No, I heard you.” He started, staring distantly behind Keiji and Bokuto before looking into his lap, fiddling with his drink. “I just wish I hadn’t…”
Kenma continued to scroll though his phone, keeping his eyes trained as silence overwhelmed the group. It was in his voice – the sound of disappointment and regret. What for,
Kenma didn’t understand. He was at no fault in this, but it shone in his glistening eyes when Kenma chanced a glance at him from beneath the hair that shielded his vision of the world – made it so narrow in comparison to everyone else’s. He blamed himself.
Putting his phone on the table, he looked to his old friends. They all stared into their laps, somber and sullen. “Look,” Kenma tried to make his voice strong. He tried to help them understand that he really did take the situation – if you could call it that – seriously. “I am already aware that my condition had become rather obvious to most everyone.” Kuroo looked over at him, tears shimmering in the wells of his eyes. They were Kenma’s fault, there was no denying it. In this brief evening, he had already proved to be a burden to him.
“But I’m fine. So please don’t worry.”
Kuroo closed his eyes, gritting his teeth behind pursed lips. Gathering himself, he stood, arms stiff by his sides, fists clenched. He turned to Bokuto and Keiji, bowing slightly. “I’m sorry for ruining your evening.” He mumbled before grabbing his bag to leave and as he walked away, Kenma returned to his phone – he wouldn’t watch him leave again.
--
A few minutes of silence passed, each of them looking into their laps, fiddling with things that weren’t really important – just distractions. Someone had to be the first to talk – it wouldn’t be Kenma.
“He seemed worried.” Surprised to hear Keiji’s voice, the other two looked up; Kenma rolling his eyes delicately into the back of his head and around it.
“Pfft.”
Another bout of silence passed quickly, this one shorter than the last.
“What does he mean you are sick, Kenma?” It was Bokuto who spoke first this time and while his friend’s voice had been stone cold and straight forward, the other could hear the lilting tone he used with him, so delicate and filled to the brim with concern.
“Don’t feel sad.” Kenma muttered, putting his phone back into his pocket but still not looking up from the floor. “I’m doing it to myself.”
Bokuto stood slowly, his fists bunched at his side before releasing them and walking around the table towards his old friend. He crouched by his leg, placing one of those large, tender hands on his knee. “That’s why I’m sad…”
Despite his better judgement, Kenma looked over towards him, twisting his head to the side, glancing through his lashes. Bokuto looked even more defeated than Kenma felt.
And then he looked to Keiji and Kenma felt his stomach lurch.
Their eyes – so similar in disposition – bore into each other for a long time. Kenma knew he was scared – Keiji was at a loss for words when it came to helping him. He knew
Kenma was scared too, but that he was powerless after so many years – Keiji had been there in the beginning, when it was all just anxiety fueled starvation. When Kenma felt too sick to his stomach to even consider eating – before it became fear. Fear that if he started eating he wouldn’t be able to stop – that his body would reject whatever he put in it. Fear of being alone that Keiji had understood in such vivid detail.
Keiji’s eyes looked like the kind of fear you feel when you are walking through the doors of triage to find your sick and dying friend on sterile white sheets and an IV in their arm. They were the eyes that Hinata had worn when Kenma had passed out on their train ride home a few weeks prior. His mother’s eyes when he said he was going to live on his own.
These eyes seemed to follow him.
Eventually Kenma began to feel his lip quiver only the slightest bit and bile rising towards his throat. Bokuto stood as he took notice, looking towards the door – he knew Kuroo
was probably still standing just outside it, smoking a cigarette or looking at the brilliant sunset that was undoubtedly shrouded in the summer smog.
“I’m gonna go talk to him.”
--
“I knew someone like you once…” Keiji said, stopping to drink his beer before holding the bottle between his knees, hands clasped around it. “He worked his body too hard – started to lose control of himself and the things around him.”
“You mean Oikawa?”
“He wasn’t as great as people thought.…”
“But he’s on Team Japan now, isn’t he?” Keiji nodded. “Then it isn’t the same…I am weak. I’ve always been weaker than everyone but I had friends. Where are they now?”
Kenma’s nails dug into his upper arm with a bitter sting as a swell of anxiety started in his stomach. The tender skin that broke under brittle nails made way to stinging tears that welled in his eyes.
In a supple manner, Keiji leaned in, softening his voice. “Maybe you pushed us all away when you became afraid of us trying to take away the only thing that you feel makes you special.”
“You say “us” like it matters.”
Silence – the bar kept moving but the world stopped around Kenma. He was aware of his breathing, the gradual in and out pull of his stomach as he tensed his abdominal muscles in shame.
“…I was afraid…”
Keiji leaned forward further, hands clasped and wrists resting on his spread knees. “Of what?”
Tears creeped from the corners of Kenma’s eyes. The truth hurts sometimes – he knew that. For years, he had avoided facing this part of himself – the horrors of loneliness that he had been overcome with since the start of his memories – since childhood.
“Of being alone…for the first time in my life, he wouldn’t be there…I always say that I want to disappear…”
Kenma wouldn’t embarrass himself here.
“Is that really true though?”
“I think so…but with him it is different…maybe you are right. Maybe I do want people to think I’m special – not people…just him.”
He cried. Not for the first time, he was humiliating himself over someone that wasn’t worth his tears. He was sick to his stomach with guilt for feeling this way about someone who he should only see as a friend – someone who had been so quick to throw him away when he found something new.
“You mean Kuroo, right?”
“Do you think he ever missed me?” Kenma whispered through gentle tears.
“I think he still does. I think we all do.”
“But I’m right here.”
Silence fell over the two once again. Keiji cast a pointed gaze at Kenma, one that was far too sad to ease his stomach.
“You two have been friends for years. He’s scared too. Please talk to him, Kenma.”
--
The air outside was warm and sticky but Kuroo didn’t think any number of cigarettes would warm the feeling that had settled inside him. He flicked ash into the pavement and watched as a passerby stepped on the once lit butt of his previous cigarette. Kuroo took another drag off his current one.
Bokuto watched his longtime friend and confidant as he stewed in his own head. The crease between his brows and the nearly empty pack of Camel’s was clue enough to his distress.
“Are you going to talk to him about it at least?”
“What is there to talk about?” Kuroo mumbled, taking another long drag. A flare of smoke blew from his nostrils as he continued. “I’m not a therapist and that’s what he needs.”
“But you’re his friend.”
“He hasn’t talked to me in years, Bo.”
“He’s been sick, Kuroo!” Bokuto’s voice raised for just a moment till he bit at his own lip, thinking better. “We all just assumed you knew…”
Kuroo’s gaze fell to the ground as a familiar head of blonde hair peeked out of the door. It was familiar, yet foreign – straw like now, with frayed ends and a little too close in color to Kenma’s sickly yellowed skin. He looked like a wax figure, with taught cheekbones and soft, fine hairs lining his jaw and neck. Kenma – it seemed Bokuto had been correct – had been sick for quite a long time.
“Hey.” The youngest of the men mumbled. Kenma stepped out further onto the sidewalk, coming into full view. Kenma’s hand wrapped easily around his arm as he squeezed it, his skin turning even paler beneath his grip.
Bokuto took quick note of his presence before disappearing back into the bar, quietly easing his way into the crowd to find Keiji.
“Can we talk?”
Kuroo stared momentarily, wondering what it was that had Kenma’s face twisted into such a gruesome look. It raised a stake into his heart, ripping and pulling at the walls that he had built around it years before.
And then he started walking. Kenma followed close behind, watching Kuroo flick the dead butt of his last cigarette into the street. When he stopped, it was in the alleyway beside the bar, hidden in the dark recesses of the dumpster.
It smelled like vomit.
“You left me…”
Kenma’s voice rang like church bells, mourning a funeral. The voice of someone who hadn’t been heard in all their life.
“You stopped answering my phone calls.
It was true, he had stopped answering the phone after a while. Kuroo had only been able to talk for short period of time and it always seemed rushed.
Kenma had no longer been a priority.
“Why?”
Clipped, short. There was no friendly familiarity to their conversation, only bitter, resentful words exchanged to pass through the night. They wrung everything in Kenma’s heart dry and if he looked hard enough he could see them doing the same thing to Kuroo.
But he couldn’t see. Because Kuroo was perfect just being Kuroo – there was no way.
“Because of this…”
Back turned, Kenma motioned to his body, head to toe, looking at the ground. Kuroo didn’t say anything, just smiled gloomily like he was replaying something beautiful in his head.
“What do I look like to you, Kuroo?’
“Like Kenma.”
A blonde flurry of hair whipped through the air as Kenma turned around, stalking towards the taller, raven haired man. He stood still at arm’s length, never close enough to touch
“NO! What kind of disgusting person have I turned into? What have I become without you!?”
And Kuroo had the audacity to laugh.
“You always were funny. Where is any of this coming from? This isn’t like you.”
“It’s stupid…but when I see all my failures, all of my flaws sitting in front of me in the mirror, in the photos of me from high school, with you – the whole team...” Tears welled in
the banks of Kenma’s eyes as he fought them off. He clenched and unclenched his fists as he stared intently at the ground, watching droplets fall to the cement.
“I see them around and they just stare…I just stare now…not just in mirrors anymore. In windows and puddles.”
Kenma shook his head, not wanting to keep talking. He wanted the thoughts to stop coming, the words to end so that he wouldn’t embarrass himself more. But they didn’t.
“I claim that I love you, Kuroo, but I don’t. I don’t feel anything anymore other than this guilt and self-loathing. But it hurt so much…”
A fist clenched around Kuroo’s heart and he thought for a minute that he was in shock. Maybe he was. But this melancholy feeling was not the one he thought he would be wearing when he had dreamed that Kenma would tell him he loved him as if it weren’t his highest hope.
“What did?” He stammered out. Kenma held tightly to his upper arm, rubbing at his chilled skin. His breath was so weary and tired, but he wouldn’t let the moment overwhelm him. He looked to Kuroo’s eyes, searching them.
“Watching you leave – watching you walk away without looking back at me. I had loved you for so long. I had convinced myself that you would stay forever…”
“So you stopped talking to me for almost five years?”
The last piece of Kuroo’s heart dropped when Kenma’s eyes hit the ground again. Such shame was held in that gaze. He could always read Kenma like a book, and he had betrayed something deep inside him.
“It hurts.” Kuroo stopped, grabbing onto Kenma’s frost bitten hand and taking a step closer. “When you see the person you love so sick.”
Finally releasing the tears, Kenma let them fall silently to the ground; the most desperate cry Kuroo had ever seen in a man.
“I’ve tried to be better, I swear.”
Kuroo could hear the exhaustion in Kenma’s voice – he had clearly been trying. It was the struggle of loneliness that he was hearing in his words, something which he was frighteningly familiar with himself.
“But what?”
“I can’t let all this hard work go to waste…”
The knot in Kuroo’s stomach grew longer at his friend’s words of surrender. This wasn’t hard work that he was looking at – it was a disease that had taken over the body and soul of a beautiful, loving man who had been left far too alone for far too long.
“It won’t be long now, Kuroo.”
His heart stopped beating.
“We can part ways here and lose nothing. And maybe we both wish this was all being said 4 or 5 years ago, but it isn’t. And I am going to die and you are going to move on to some nice girl with long hair and a pretty face that can give you everything you deserve.”
The smell of vomit was soon accompanied by Kuroo’s own acidic bile, dry heaving and bent over at his waist, hands on his knees.
“Don’t say that!”
His voice was sweltering, hot like the summer sun of just hours before. It was filled with his own guilt, a pile of unsent text messages that he could rummage through – find the one where he had typed “I hope you are okay”.
Kuroo stood swiftly, sweeping Kenma into his arms with desperation, pressing his face into the breast of his jacket.
“Please don’t say that.”
Tears slipped through obsidian lashes onto Kenma’s hair. Like rain, they washed him clean, choking him and drowning him in all of his sins as they fled his body. Love, it seemed, could be quite painful.
“I’ve been so worried about you, you idiot. For a while, I thought you WERE dead! I have…so much I need to say…”
It felt like something was clawing inside Kenma, trying to run, trying to override his senses. It was a familiar feeling, but this time, Kuroo was there too. And when Kuroo was there, the anxiety was a little less powerful and a little more bearable and Kenma didn’t scream because Kuroo’s tears made it okay to cry.
Just this once.
--
They walked together to the train station. No one was talking, but that was okay because Kenma had promised that they would get lunch together the next day.
It was a beautiful night, it seemed. Outside of the alley, the sky was lit by the city streets, the business men trudging out of late night bars.
Kuroo held tightly to Kenma’s hand.
Something inside both of them danced because this was wrong – what they were doing was not okay but it was so right that neither one seemed to be bothered. Their hearts were racing and Kenma thought he might be sick with the way it was pounding in his chest.
The two men parted ways at the station, one heading north East, the other another direction with the promise of another day. Kuroo continued to smile, Kenma’s hands continued
to shake. Their hearts beat harder, faster, for a whole new moment in their future.
Tomorrow would come, tomorrow would be better because this time they were waking up together. Not in the same way – in something totally new and with such a big promise with it.
I will live.
He will live.
We will live together.
--
Name: Kozume Kenma
Date: 7/7/2021
Time: 9:23 a.m.
COD: Sudden cardiac death
>> Electrolyte imbalance
Name: Tetsurou Kuroo
Date: 7/23/2021
Time: 1:24 a.m.
COD: Referred by coroner
--
In the end, they did.