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It had been on the edge of Yahaba's tongue to confess until the wind blew petals into his face.
Like this, Oikawa-senpai was beautiful, laughing and shining in front of Yahaba as a beacon of good fortune would towards a favoured god's arrival, letting the sakura pour over him easily in a pink drizzle.
The sight of it was all sorts of breathtaking, and with each passing second, Yahaba found himself more and more reluctant to interrupt the view before him.
The letter in his back pocket, however, sat heavier than ever.
He'd had it all planned out; the Seijou volleyball club would have its annual hanami picnic, sans alcohol (although the shared looks of mischief that crossed Hanamaki and Matsukawa-senpai's faces earlier were...foreboding), so the weather would be mild, food abundant, and everything would be pretty. In fact, everything would be perfect...for a springtime love to bud.
Yahaba's courage, unfortunately, had other plans, and he could feel it leave him in withering increments when his hands began to shake, sweat pooling under the collar of his sweater. All the climactic scenes in his favourite shoujo manga made every heartfelt admission seem so wonderful, but at this very moment Yahaba would have rather faced down an unruly Kyoutani again than to scream at his own cowardice.
He clenched his fist
Oikawa was laughing, and Yahaba wanted nothing more than to kiss him.
(Desperately, desperately so.)
He startled when Iwaizumi and Hanamaki broke into shouts behind them, likely engaged in yet another arm wrestling match that usually ended with Iwaizumi grinning and Hanamaki flat on his back, winded. Given a minute's break though, Hanamaki would jump right up, stubbornly demanding a rematch, only for the whole debacle to repeat itself. Cool as a cat lounging in the shade of the afternoon, Matsukawa would casually watch on, fanning them, and then, himself, with a textbook whenever necessary.
Funnily enough, it was a lesson of endless (and somewhat dumb?) persistence in its own way, something Yahaba helplessly wanted to take a leaf out of in lieu of his current situation.
As it was, he turned back to look at Oikawa and felt a familiar itch mingle behind his dry lips: the flowers were growing again, inside him. If he were to open his mouth now, nothing but hydrangeas would pour out, despite it not being the time for their season. Yahaba could almost smile at the incongruency of it all, if the plants weren't simultaneously hurting him so much.
He was about to raise his cup to his mouth so he could spit the clogged petals out when a different hand slid in and grabbed it; when he looked up, Oikawa's smiling face lit up his vision.
"Yahaba-chan," he said, fondness dripping in honey-like syllables, Yahaba's breath caught. "Let me refill that for you."
Perhaps, he'd nodded (too shocked to have any control over his body's own panicked actions) or perhaps he shook his head, for Oikawa turned away with the cup in tow, and then it was all just too much.
Yahaba couldn't take it anymore.
His hand shot out against his will, and gripped the top of Oikawa's shoulder, halting the taller boy in his movements. Oikawa glanced back, head tilted in question.
"Changed your mind?"
Yahaba nodded, anxiety growing.
Oikawa faced him fully at once. He studied Yahaba with the kind of intensity he usually reserved for obliterating teams on the opposite end of their court, and it made his heart tremble. Whatever Oikawa saw in him then must have bled through, for he smiled kindly and tapped a finger under Yahaba's chin. "Do you possibly have something to say to me, Yahaba-chan?"
Yahaba nodded again.
He couldn't trust himself to speak up (lest all the flowers within him would flood out) and yet— the moment was now; after the third years's graduation next week there would be no second chances: Oikawa would be gone just like that, without ever having known of the feelings Yahaba had tightly kept twined under.
And Yahaba couldn't have that happening at all.
Steeled for mortification, his lips parted painfully slow, already feeling the beginnings of a thorny bramble peeking through, until he noticed the expression on Oikawa's face.
It was...hesitant, almost tender with understanding, and when Oikawa reached up with his hands to cradle his face, Yahaba's whole body throbbed with uncertain pain.
Maybe Oikawa didn't want to listen to him. Or, maybe he did, but Yahaba was just too stupidly in love and too stupidly scared to tell the difference—
Except, everything changed as he felt Oikawa stroke his left cheekbone with a thumb, and in the softest voice he's ever heard borne from the kindness his upperclassman secretly liked to wave off and huff under, he said: "Do it. Let it all out."
Time seemed suspended. Yahaba didn't dare breathe.
"For me," Oikawa added, like the dimly echoing hum of a shrine bell, and that simple request was what finally broke Yahaba in, gently.
He slipped his eyes shut, tilted his face forward, and in the ensuing giddiness, he felt his mouth fall open; the branches and hydrangeas began to rain.
Oikawa caught them in his upturned palms, not a single stalk or flower allowed to teeter beyond the cliffs of his grasp.
When Yahaba's eyes reopened, he saw Oikawa laughing again, his delight caramel-soft and just always, always blinding— which was how Yahaba ended up ugly crying.
Never in his wildest dreams did he expect that confessing his first love would be this cathartic.
(And never did he expect the kiss on his lips right after, either.)