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It is a monday, and he sees you leaning onto the doorframe. Again.
It's too soon to feel too queasy, he tells himself.
Your eyelids are tinted a shade of purple. Last night was a sleepless one. You start to open your mouth, and he prays the alarm for 8:45 am will go off, louder than ever.
Immediately, he counts how many exits there are in this room as well as the exits to the current conversation.
The hugs that were supposed to be five 'mississippi's long shortened to two. Anxiety ties him to his bed, to the edge of his seat, to the train ride back home.
He tries to find assurance as if it was a scavenger hunt, but all he carries when he returns is a heavy chest crushed beneath a thousand tons of agitation; Love was a liar.
He starts believing in those conspiracy theories- the secret societies, the assasinations, the mind controlling associations- they were much, much more believable; love was a fraud. The most important moments in a person's life will flash before their eyes when they die, he heard, and the same thing happens to him.
But he wasn't dying. He doesn't die.
He only blinks for the- for the fifteenth time.
The table you share in the school cafeteria becomes an ocean, and lunch doesn't feel too appetizing anymore. The thought of his ankles being stuck in the five-inch snow was somehow more ideal- the sky stopped being warm.
"What do you plan to do after graduation?" you ask, and he feels like a lie when your eyes connect.
"I'm not sure," was his answer. "Is being your boyfriend even in college considered a plan?"
You laugh, it's been a while since he saw you smile. Yet he notices something- it's also the first time your voice trembles.
It doesn't help when he learns he's not the regular setter anymore. And when Shiratorizawa lost in the prefectural match, he decides not to call. A cowardly move, really, but he knows. He knows it's going to end, because fate had said so.
The volleyball sitting in the corner looks at him funny, and so did the keychains you gave him, hanging in the sports bags, deciding not to do anything but judge him all night.
He tells you he didn't eat anything when you dialed him; you tell him the same while speaking in an endearing voice to take care of himself more.
"I wish you've won."
He replies, with a soft tone barely above a whisper, "I wish you'll stay,"
It felt like triggering a time bomb.
He noticed how your hands stopped lingering on his jacket for more than a few seconds necessary, witnessed how you lessened the small talks on walks outside the campus. Your eyes hinted at him sometimes, but he doesn't know what to make of it.
He halted on his tracks on a thursday afternoon and it took a solid minute before you turned your head.
Ah, he tells himself, she didn't feel my absence right away.
"You okay?"
He doesn't know. He doesn't answer verbally, just a faint nod.
"You can drop me off here,"
He blinks twice; both of you are already at the station.
"You're going? We can still grab food, y'know, if you want to." Like every other day.
"I can just eat a lot for dinner. Thanks, anyway,"
But you always hated travelling on an empty stomach. And upon your insistence, he sees how you hesitate to reach up for his hair.
You okay?
The question repeated itself.
He isn't.
It doesn't quite sink in when judgement day came. The soles in his shoes won't budge. The hands stay inside his pockets.
The walls- they stop closing in. The ground stops lifting itself up, the sky's not inches away from his face anymore.
He pushes his faith onto these conspiracies more: the bermuda triangle, agartha and its lost people; He starts seeing electric guitars as some kind of savior- just laughs it off whenever Tendou comments about how he wears that shirt you bought him thirty months ago. He's now fascinated about those noisy drums too and likes it when he throws the sticks across the air, and the number three hurts less now that it's just a mere jersey number.
He unclasps the keychains, turns off all the alarms. The bedroom door is left unlocked.
Sendai city became much, much kinder.
He doesn't look at his ashen hair the same way as he did before: he always disagrees when you say it looks like Mount Fuji, anyway.
So why was it so unfortunate to have him look at the academy the same way he remembers how he bumps into you at the hallway?
Why was it, back from the days when university seemed distressful enough, he still passes by the train station and comes home with a bag full of rice balls?
Suddenly he stopped walking at the gymnasium filled with thirteen trees and faded cobbled bricks just like how he stopped in his tracks when he was eighteen- he expected to see wrinkles, aged eyes, but he silently snorts when he remembers he's only twenty-four-
- and it's the first time Semi Eita did not search for an exit.
He chooses his words carefully, you have those purple eyelids once more and he's sure it wasn't because of cosmetics.
You were the first to initiate (like always), "How long has it been?"
"Six. Six years." He tries his best to not clutch the cross pendant dangling from his neck- and, oh- how he wishes he should have worn a more presentable set of clothes rather than this leather jacket.
"So...rockstar?"
"A-and civil servant. Musician and civil servant- in any order,"
"A fellow government employee, huh?" He sees you smile again and lets you bombard him with questions, "Have someone new?"
Did he?
He shakes his head.
"Do you still like teka makki?"
He lets out a shaky "Yeah." Then interjects, "I suppose you have a boyfriend,"
"Not at all. We're the same, you see,"
Here, he fumbles for the necklace.
"Nothing's changed, then?"
He seemed out of breath, and it came out like a mutter too, and worst case scenarios sprang, his hands feel quaky, and, and- you replied, "Nothing's changed."
"Do you like to - you know, sushi restaurant?" The words stumble upon one another, but he feels like the ten thousandth truthful fact in an encyclopedia when he meets your gaze.
You only beam in return; he stops shaking mentally.
I wrote songs about you.
During these six years.
About thirty of them.
And the world's only heard around one-third for now.
The visions of the future come rushing in: he can sense more tears, more hesitations and running aways-
-and more 1 am calls, more midnight craves of tekka maki (lots of them), more binge-watching of documentaries of how the world came about.
His heart does not falter: the exit sign is nowhere to be found (he never planned to leave in the first place).
Welcome back.