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It’s a slow blossoming inside Sakusa’s chest, like winter fading to make room for the colorful and lively spring – a stark contrast to the darkness that has been brooding inside of him his whole life.
The first time he sees her stumbling inside the classroom looking like a mess, late on their first day of high school with a dazzlingly bright grin and a ditzy apology, he scoffs unimpressed – what a slob.
The first time she sits next to him during their biology class, he notes with a weird jump of his stomach that she smells like the flowers his mother planted in their garden. His face mask did nothing to hide the scent of freshly watered daisies, his nose itching at the familiarity of it.
It’s the way the sunlight clings to her hair when they end up taking the same route home one day, her laughter airy light like the butterflies dancing around them. Her rosy cheeks match the pink hues of dawn, the twin colors magnified by the dimples nestling across her lively cheeks and he wonders if he ever saw color before meeting her.
He feels a tightness in his chest whenever she’s around, her voice as soft as his favorite sheets made of silk. He wants to curl inside it, have it echo in his ribcage until it’s all he can hear. Before he knows it, they’ve already become friends and spend every day together.
She’s weaseled herself into his heart, becoming a constant in his daily life filled with school work and volleyball. The only two things he’d ever cared about until she rolled around. She’s his number one fan, cheering for him in every single one of his games, celebrating his wins and mourning his losses.
She’s always there.
They become one and the same person; it’s unclear where Sakusa ends and she begins.
He calls it best friends.
She calls it soulmates.
She’s the first girl he doesn’t mind touching with his bare hands, the first friend he doesn’t mind embracing when he feels like the world around him starts to crumble.
And she’s kind, so kind he’s sure she could rebuild the world from dust on her own.
It takes his entire three years in high school to realize it. He’s confused when he hears his teammates talk about her behind her back, crooning “Wouldn’t mind tappin’ that, am I right?” and pretends not to notice her filling out wantonly as they matured. He doesn’t understand why his heartbeat speeds up whenever she messages or calls him first – he never felt like this with his other friends.
Maybe this was because she was his first female friend? The only other girls in his life were his older sister and his mother, but they were family.
However (Name)?
She was all sunshine and sparkles, galaxies yet to be discovered in her big wondering eyes; all pink and brains and warm.
Sakusa is one of the most popular students in his year, but she’s right behind, and when a second year pulls her aside to confess his feelings to her in a secluded corner in the hallways, well- Sakusa doesn’t know why he’s jealous.
At their graduation ceremony, they stand side by side with their certificates in their hands, their faces split in ecstatic grins. Even Sakusa is laughing; they’ve conquered their high school years and were about to enter the new, mysterious and unexplored world of college students, together.
As he’s talking to his father, he notices how close her hand is. It’d be so easy to just reach out and grab it, to pull her flush against his chest and kiss her breathless like it was the one thing he had been born to do. But he hesitates and pulls back, ignoring the longing in her eyes with a pang to his heart as he turns to face his father again.
She’s the light.
She’s the flame.
She burns so bright, igniting everything around her in a beautiful crimson. He finds himself thinking he wouldn’t mind burning alive if it meant he could hold the warmth at least once. But when he sees her walk into the dorm hand in hand with a guy that wasn’t him, should’ve been him, he retreats further inside, swallowing the heavy lump and ripping it to shreds to rid the evidence.
He keeps quiet even when she comes barging into his bedroom in the middle of the night, salty tears staining her beautiful face, hiccups breaking her small body; even as he embraces her in his protective arms made of years of unspoken words and hidden feelings; even as she chuckles humorlessly and whispers “I wish I could have just dated you instead…”
It’s years later that he finds it within himself to face his heart and confess his feelings.
“You know,” he starts as he takes a sip from his can of cheap beer, “I got scouted today. MSBY Black Jackals want me on their team as an Outside Hitter. They’re in the top tier of the first Division.”
He stills as he trains his eyes on the ground, a small smile creeping on his features, “I can still remember the first time you came to watch one of my games. You got hit in the face with a spike.” He barks out a raspy laugh, his moles above his eyebrows twitching from the movement.
“They wanted to know what number I want for my jersey,” he peeks through his lashes meekly, “Wanna guess which one I picked?”
He recalls all the memories they shared with the number fifteen, the two digits oddly accompanying them throughout the years, catching their eyes no matter what they’d be doing. It was only a matter of time until they deemed it their number.
“There’s this really annoying guy, who thinks the world of himself on the team. He keeps wanting to befriend me, but frankly, he’s just incredibly annoying.” Sakusa lifts his palms defensively, grinning brightly as he says in a cheery tone, “Before you start nagging me again, I know I know. ‘Kiyo, don’t be like that. I’m not always going to be around, so can’t you at least try and be nice with the people around you?’”
He chuckles humorlessly before he sobers, lifting his head agonizingly slow, his smile faltering when it’s not her facing him, but a picture of her attached to the cold gravestone littered with daisies and letters. His throat clogs when he feels the familiar burning sting in his coffee-colored eyes, hollowness resting where his heart used to be. A heavy weight settles as he struggles to push it down.
“You… I didn’t think you meant that literally.” He said bitterly.
Despair claws at him from his stomach, its cold nails ripping into him mercilessly and clinging onto him for dear life. Sakusa swallowed the lump inside of him many times, for her; for him; for them; but this time, he lets loose the dam that threatens to break.
He crumbles the can in his shaking hand as he doubles over, heart-wrenching sobs wrecking through his body when he sees a picture of the two of them in their school uniforms; with Sakusa’s arm around her shoulder, a content smile on his face, her eyes two dazzling half-moons as she grins like the sun.
Breathing becomes heavy when he remembers how brightly she shined, how stupid he was to take it for granted. Who was going to cheer him on his matches now? Who was going to celebrate with him when he won? Comfort him when he lost?
No one was as pure as her.
No one was as beautiful as her.
No one was as kind as her.
No one could ever be the daisies he had carefully planted in the garden of his heart.
“There’s one thing I regret.” He mutters through broken gasps, recalling the last philosophical conversation they had during the late hours of the night at his place before she drove back home.
The last time he’d see her. The last time he’d get to hear her melodic laughter, feel her soft arms around his torso, feel her melding in perfectly with him as if there was no other place for her but beside him. The last time before a drunken stranger ripped her from his life forever.
Sakusa lifted his tear-stricken face, a pain-filled smile tearing him apart as he all but choked out,
“I wish I had told you I loved you.”