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Atsumu sleeps, he eats, he showers, he breathes – everything standard humans do.
Well, almost everything.
His mouth stays shut, glued with superglue and locked with a key. If your question or statement is unimportant, you do not get a word out of him, not even a peep.
He was once loud, a roaring voice that lingered inside of your mind with each ticking second. He spoke and spoke, unaware of how to shut up – the life of the party, you could say. Vociferous. Remark after remark he spurt, gaining eyes from everyone in the room.
But now, if you found yourself with Atsumu, he was silent. Looking into space and stuck in his own world; like an airhead, he once described someone similar.
Every time Atsumu hears his voice, he sees him. The face he denies to remember, even if it means forgetting himself – it was his fault the memories hurt, at least.
His fingers trace his lips, his nose, his hair; he refuses to look in the mirror.
That vile, taunting block of reflective glass hangs in his room and bathroom. Everywhere he looks, his heart torturously tears apart painfully, piece by piece.
Atsumu covers as many mirrors as he can with an old towel. He brushes his teeth and styles his hair blindly.
The closet in their his bedroom outlines in glass – was outlined in glass. He was sick of everything; the sound of his fucking voice, the way he looked. Every mirror, reflection, window, was a reminder of who he killed and what he did.
A month after the incident, he punched and punched the bedroom mirror until it broke; shattered all over the floor. His hand dripped crimson, the sight anguished him further and fueled his internal regret.
His blood was Osamu’s blood. The blood he didn’t deserve.
He didn’t deserve these eyes, eyebrows, hair – face. Hell, he barely even spoke anymore – he stole this voice.
Four years ago, Atsumu was the older twin by 6 minutes; now, he’s older by four years, 78 days and 12 minutes. Four hellish years he lived, each day passing by painfully slow as he was inarguably aware of what he did.
Osamu was dead, and what did Atsumu do?
He mooched off his twin’s pervious belongings and went pro, like the selfish devil he is.
+++
Some nights he wakes up after a bad dream. He won’t admit, but it’s comforting, it’s real. He can feel Osamu’s hair, feel his cheek as he gives him a backhand whack; because he’s home.
He regrets all the arguments he’s started, the bickering between them that ended in bruises and wet cheeks. But somehow, he’s happy to remember the little fun moments between them; but somehow, it hurts him even more.
Atsumu lies down on his king single bed – specifically in his half of the room (the only side he allows himself to step foot on) – setting to himself with a dusty volleyball he dug out from old boxes.
He glances over to the bed next to him, empty and cold – as usual. There was once light and warmth; however, Atsumu (and his room) stray further from it every day.
Yet for someone who doesn’t allow himself to recollect, Atsumu sure has a fuck ton of photos hanging in his home. They glare at him, say nasty comments to him, remind him of what he did.
There’s an imposter among us, he muses to himself with a saddened chuckle, hurling the volleyball straight into an old picture frame hanging meters away from his current position. The glass shatters all over Atsumu’s carpeted floor, picture following, falling in irregular patterns as it lays itself onto the mess below.
After a few coughs from the filth now circulating his room, he gets out of bed and shoots a sharp glance at a picture on the wall, directly above the frame he broke.
He lifts his arm and pulls a hand into a fist, slamming it down inches away from a picture of Osamu’s first day at high school. Satisfied with the feeling, he repeatedly bangs his hand onto the hollow walls and wails as loud as his voice lets him; he wants this nightmare to end.
There’s a pause.
He lets go of the tension as his fingers slide down the wall, body following, choking out stifled cries.
Osamu’s voice rings in his ears – despite how he was a quiet introvert at school. The little ‘wake the fuck up shithead,’ every morning before practice, or ‘quit yappin’ ya scrub,’ whenever Atsumu complained were all words that played on replay in his mind non-stop. As much as he wept and smashed his head on the wall continuously, begged the gods to make it stop, there wasn’t a pause button.
Atsumu tilts his head back and throws it against the wall, “SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!” he howls, wanting the voice to go away, to leave him alone and never come back.
But he wishes he never spoke – the voice he once shared with his brother, now only belongs to him. Osamu is gone, and Atsumu did nothing to help; he’s taking what he doesn’t deserve.
He picks up his hands and places them in his hair, pulling and ruffling around the blonde mess in an attempt to calm himself down. He pulls and pulls, eventually collapsing onto the carpeted floor and clutches himself into a ball.
Atsumu rocks back and forth for a moment, allowing the tears and shaky breaths to stop.
Sometimes – not often – in Highschool, Atsumu had small panic attacks before their matches. He felt trapped, lungs closing in on each other, and no one to turn to. But there was.
Breathe deep, in and out, Osamu’s words tingle through Atsumu’s ears, and he swears he can feel a soft touch circling his back. Maybe reliving memories were okay.
In and out, he repeated to himself. His chest heaves and his pace slows, bringing him close to a peaceful sleep. However, he doesn’t deserve peace, and his mind shakes him awake, fills him with thoughts, gets an idea and shouts it at him.
+ + +
Undeniably there’s something here – a bat or two under his desk, or a hammer in the toolkit Bokuto gave him for his 23rd birthday (he still wasn’t quite sure why) – there had to be.
He scatters around the house, whether that be ripping bedsheets from the mattresses, throwing open cupboards, or tossing the clothes out of his drawer; he had no luck. He flops down on the bare bed in wretchedness and stares at the blinding light; hope slipping through his fingertips and down the cracks in the floor. Until his mind, yet again, prompts him with a spectacular idea.
You have a fist, why don’t you use it?
As lightbulb goes off inside his head, Atsumu stumbles out the bed and trips over a few stray blankets as he exits the room.
He hustles down the hallway and spots his first victim near the bathroom door.
On the wall hangs a picture of Osamu cooking Onigiri in his parents’ kitchen, a smile plastered along his face as he holds the finished product and happily peers into the camera.
It was taken in their second year, a couple of days before the Spring Interhigh. Osamu insisted on making snacks for the bus, and Atsumu remembers himself begging to help. As much as he requested to be in the kitchen, Osamu denied him over and over. It wasn’t until finally – Atsumu whined, complained, and wouldn’t shut the fuck up – Osamu caved in and agreed.
Bad idea, the fire alarm went off with no hopes of stopping, and Atsumu had somehow fucked everything up. To be specific, they didn’t end up taking snacks for the trip; they rode on the bus with grumbly tummies and empty guts.
Atsumu faintly smiles at the memory – as much as he wants to grasp on, it’s torture. His head boils, and he swings his left fist sideways, straight into the glass of the frame. It shatters upon contact, blood from his knuckles painting every odd shard and the wooden mount crashes to the floor, picture following.
He laughs at the feeling, it’s intoxicating, and he’d gladly do it again.
Atsumu trudges through the rest of the hallway and makes his way to the loungeroom – the terror room, he preferred to call it.
Picture frame after picture frame stands on the display cabinet, pointing and laughing at what a disappointment Atsumu is. Osamu’s stupid smiling face insults him and tells him it’s all his fault, that he’s the reason he’s dead. That maybe Atsumu should die too.
Atsumu bites the inside of his lips and scrunches his face up in agony, giving a sideways punch in the direction of the display.
“ARRRGGGGG!!!” he yells furiously, voice cracking.
The frames tumble over each other, some spinning, some completely knocked off the cabinet; glass flies and flicks in all sorts of directions, the wooden mounts cracking upon contact with the table. Atsumu falls into shock after coming back to reality, and as much as he wants to cry, all that spills from his lips is a bitter laugh.
He squeezes his eyes shut, and the feeling of someone watching him eats him up inside, forcing him to peak down below in curiousness.
A stray picture of Osamu, lying oh so innocently on the display cabinet – fucking bastard.
The photo consists of Atsumu and Osamu sharing a brotherly hug after their match against Karasuno. Despite losing, the team shared smiles and had a good time watching the rest of the games. Atsumu grips the wood next to the photo as his knuckles glow white, his eyes burn up, and he swallows his spit in attempt to choke back tears.
His last photo with Osamu. The day before it all went wrong, the day before Atsumu killed him.
He flicks his pupils around the room to look at the mess he made. Pictures and glass scattered, frames cracked in half, and ultimately – Atsumu fucked up the last memory he had of Osamu left. His fingers began to shake, and his breath speeds, Atsumu dares to look around at the rest of the room as he’s met with silence and a skipped heartbeat. He knows what he’s done and deems himself not to get any ideas, but Atsumu is selfish.
Don’t use your voice, he begs.
Atsumu opens his mouth reluctantly, “I fucked up… Osamu, I’m sorry, I fucked up.”
He winces at the disturbingly familiar sound spilling out his mouth, releasing his knuckles and picking up the photo in front of him.
He presses it close to his chest and lets the river stream out of his eyes. “I’m a failure, Osamu! A fucking failure!” Atsumu clutches the photo tighter and spews words he can’t comprehend.
“Look what I’ve done!” he flips the picture around and motions it around the room, “LOOK! First, I kill you, and now- and now- “
Atsumu falls to his knees, uncaring of the shards of glass placed on the floor; he sputters, letting out silent yet screaming sobs and shaky breaths. Atsumu wipes his eyes and pulls a splinter out of his finger, attempting to crawl around the room and picking up each photo thrown.
“And now I’m using your fucking voice! I’m a thief Osamu, a monster!”
He gives up, becoming quiet.
He pauses to catch his breath, blinks out a few tears and closes his eyes.
“How am I supposed to move on and forget, if I can’t even love myself?” He snivels.
Atsumu cradles all the pictures he managed to catch and stands up, heading straight for the door.
“There’s so many I could’ves, and what-ifs, ‘Samu.”
He exits the loungeroom and quietly strolls through the hallway.
“What if I wasn’t so egotistical? What if I put your feelings first? I could’ve been a supportive brother, friend, and maybe you’d be alive.”
Somehow, he manages to reach his bedroom door, hugging the pictures in his arms as tight as possible.
“If I didn’t freak out and get angry at you for quitting after second year, it wouldn’t have happened, right?”
Atsumu inhales.
“If I didn’t run out onto the streets like a selfish prick, you wouldn’t have followed me.”
Exhales,
“I wouldn’t have turned my head and yelled back at you, unaware of the car driving towards me.”
Bites his tongue,
“You shouldn’t have pushed me out of the way, idiot.”
Swallows a tang of blood,
“Because now you’re dead, and it’s all my fucking fault!”
Atsumu doesn’t know where he’s walking.
“Mom and Dad couldn’t even look me in the eye for the rest of the year because I killed you!”
And as much as he wants to let out bottled feelings, he can’t.
“By now, if you were alive, you’d be running your own little Onigiri restaurant.”
Atsumu feels a slight smile tugging at his lips.
“Okay, maybe not little. You’d probably be rich and famous and- that’s beside the point, sorry.” His smile slowly downturns as he’s back to facing reality. “I stole your dream away from you.”
He feels dissociated and can’t comprehend nor remember how he ended up in Osamu’s abandoned bed.
“I know you don’t forgive me. I know you’re mad I never visited your grave; I can’t bring myself to do it, ‘Samu.” Atsumu releases all the photos from his grip and tries to relive all his memories.
It doesn’t work. Who even was Atsumu, anyway? These hands aren’t his, these memories aren’t him, and he swears on his mother’s life, that he’s forgotten himself.
He did.
“IT’S YOUR FAULT I WANT TO KILL MYSELF EVERY DAY, OSAMU!” He screams, ripping up each photo to shreds. “IT’S MY FAULT- YOUR FAULT- MY-“
He lets it all out.
“ALL NIGHT I THINK AND FANTASIZE ABOUT HOW THINGS WOULD BE BETTER IF I DIED!”
He drowns himself in Osamu’s blankets, sniffing them in hopes his scent is still there after all these years. But the smell was blank, gone.
“I can’t live with what I’ve done.” Atsumu doesn’t know how, or why a blade ended up in his possession. “I’ll be able to see you again, right? Will I be able to apologize?”
He’s lost, and undeniably not himself. “I can end it here for you, ‘Samu.”
Why is he watching everything unfold from far away? This isn’t a movie; this is real life.
“Promise you’ll give me a big, warm hug when I come to you.” He holds the blade up to a vein on his wrist and pushes down ever so slightly.
But no, he doesn’t want to die. He’s selfish and wants to live. Atsumu fights back for control.
The blade breaks through the first layer of skin. Beads of blood bubble up, and Atsumu begs for his body back. He pulls, he pushes, he runs, does everything in human existence. He killed Osamu, is it seriously okay for him to kill himself too?
With sudden shock filling his form, he lets in a sharp inhale and throws the blade towards the door. His skin is barely cut, yet the few drops of blood shake him to the core. He grips Osamu’s pillow as tightly as his body allows him and cries.
“I’ll keep fighting, for you; I’ll live the life you never got to live,” he squeezes his eyes shut. “I’ll try to move on, I promise.”
Atsumu tries to wipe snot on the back of his hand. “Please believe in me.” He shakes out a few breaths.
And for the first time in what feels like an eternity, sleep takes him peacefully and doesn’t dare disrupt him.
+++
“Atsumu-san,” a voice whispers into his ear, shaking him awake. “Atsumu, you’re scaring me, please wake up!”
The voice begs, shakes Atsumu’s frame a little harder and brushes his bangs away from his eyes. “Wake u-“
Atsumu stirs and bats his eyes a few times before looking up at the glowing ball of sun in his face. He bites his tongue and flicks his eyes away, not daring to look at anyone other than himself.
Shouyou.
He flinches in surprise and widens his eyes, before bringing Atsumu into a hug. “Oh, thank god. Holy shit- Atsumu-san I-“ He squeezes tighter.
Still half asleep, Atsumu chooses to be silent – he refuses to speak, even the thought of using words makes his heart clench.
Shouyou pushes him away by the shoulders and holds him there, forcing Atsumu to meet his eyes.
“I’ve been worried about you Atsumu-san, the whole team has,” he starts. “You skipped a week worth of practice, keep declining our invitations to go out, you ignored Omi-san, even after you used to beg him to talk to you! This isn’t the Atsumu I kno-“
Atsumu shoves Shouyou away and glares at him abruptly, a hinge of guilt filling his head.
Taken aback, Shouyou looks down at the torn pictures on Osamu’s bed and exhales.
“I saw a blade at your door, with a bloodstain. I thought you were d-dead!” Tears well up in Shouyou’s eyes. “Speak to me, please, speak to me!”
He pushes a hand up to his mouth to contain his sobs. “Are you okay, Atsumu-san?”
Atsumu freezes at the statement. Was he okay? He wants to practice, he wants to hang out, hell, he does want Kiyoomi to speak to him – but he can’t. He can’t practice, he can’t hang out, he can’t speak, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t.
He can’t let anyone see the monster he truly is. A monster that doesn’t even use his voice because he’s too fucking broken, destroyed over the fact he killed his own brother.
Shouyou rubs a finger over Atsumu’s puffy eyelids. “You were crying,” he whispers, voice cracking on each syllable.
His fingers trail down Atsumu’s cheek and Shouyou opts to run his thumb in soothing circles around his jawline.
“You can talk to me, Atsumu-san, whether that be as your teammate or best friend. I’ll listen.”
He wants to tell Shouyou, to let it all out; but he won’t speak.
And as Shouyou paces a leg off the bed and just about gives up, Atsumu puts his left hand up in a wait sign, dipping the other into his pocket. He fumbles around for a few seconds, until his finger slithers over cold glass and he pulls out a phone.
Shouyou pauses in confusion and watches Atsumu, unsure of what the latter has in mind. He unlocks his phone and opens the messenger app, beginning a new message.
He waits and waits, eyeing Atsumu as his fingers tap away at the screen. He sighs, looks down and fumbles his thumbs in small circular motions, waiting with disturbingly silent patience for Atsumu to look up and speak.
Shouyou jumps from surprise when his phone buzzes and dings in his pocket; his eyes travelling up to Atsumu who locks his phone and looks down in worry.
Shouyou’s head fogs with curiosity, his mind clicking with troubling thoughts about the other’s abnormality. He picks up his phone and stares at the lock screen – 1 new message from Atsumu.
Confused, he unlocks his phone and replies to the message.
Atsumu <3
8:14am
It’s a long story, I’m not sure where to start.
?
Why a message?
Anyway, it’s okay, Atsumu.
Start from the beginning.
We have all day.
Shouyou shoots him a sympathetic glance, listening to his phone ding four times from the messages. Atsumu bites his tongue and inhales for a moment while he reads, tapping another message and ventures not to make eye-contact with Shouyou.
Atsumu <3
8:15am
Start from the beginning.
We have all day.
I’m not sure…
I’m scared, Sho, I’m an asshole.
God, I’m the fucking devil!
Atsumu <3 is typing…
Shouyou peeks up at Atsumu with an agitated expression.
Atsumu <3
8:15am
God, I’m a fucking devil!
You’ll leave me if I tell the truth.
Shouyou stares at his phone and rubs his jawline in melancholy. As much as he wants to look Atsumu in the eyes and have a face to face conversation, he can’t.
Atsumu <3
8:16am
You’ll leave me if I tell the truth.
No matter how stupid, embarrassing, or scary, I will never leave you.
I love you, Atsumu.
Tell me when you’re ready, I’ll listen to you.
Trust me.
-
Shouyou exhales, contemplating how he should write his last message.
-
You mean the world to me.
There’s a pause, and Shouyou swears Atsumu is about to cry; hence why it takes him a moment to rub his eyes and type a new message.
Atsumu <3
8:17am
You mean the world to me.
I-
I’m the reason my brother’s dead, Sho.
Shouyou bites his tongue.
Atsumu <3
8:20am
Atsumu.
I can’t bear the sight of myself.
God, I’m a fucking mess, I can’t even look in the damn mirror anymore.
All I see is that fucking bastard!
He haunts me Shouyou, HAUNTS ME!
He comes into my dreams.
I want to die Shouyou, every day.
Sometimes I think it would be for the best, and holy! I fucking blame it on him!
I’m a devil.
Shouyou looks from his phone screen and up at Atsumu. His eyebrows furrow and scrunch, bending in an undiscovered emotion, falling into a sorrowful expression as he pulls Atsumu for a hug.
He doesn’t expect him to return it, but as Atsumu tangles his hands around Shouyou’s waist, pulling him closer, he feels warm and fuzzy.
I’ll keep fighting, for you; I’ll live the life you never got to live.
Atsumu opens his mouth in contemplation.
I’ll try to move on, I promise.
“And as much as it eats me up inside,” Atsumu begins, startling Shouyou from the sudden use of his words.
Please believe in me.
And alas, he finally reaches that shooting star with a glimmer of hope.
“I hate the sound of my own voice.”