Chapter Text
Nothing can hurt you more than yourself.
Rintarou's father had no idea what he was starting when he said that. It was just a simple lesson he was trying to teach his son, just that "this hurts now, but this isn't the end of the world and there will be more painful things to come in life" and that was acceptable, that's how you're supposed to parent your children. Teach them things from a young age so they know how the world works and how to live in it in the future. This, unfortunately, didn't exactly go over exactly as Takashi Suna intended.
What he had MEANT was that pain was never permanent, physical or emotional, and if it felt unbearable (to a five-year-old) it was just his head being a little overdramatic. Hence the lesson "Nothing can hurt you more than yourself" and granted, it could have been worded better and explained more thoroughly but Takashi will be the first to admit that he has no idea what he's doing when it comes to parenting. Being a single parent was hard, especially with balancing a shit ton of new responsibilities that you used to share with a now-deceased wife and had to handle them alone while still being there for a child.
Rintarou Suna, five years old at the time, accepted that lesson his father was teaching him and stopped crying, which was Takashi's intention. Unfortunately, however, Rin absorbing that lesson doesn't mean he took it the way it was intended. Suna had, from that point on, believed that "if I am not the reason I am in pain, then I shouldn't be feeling it at all" and ended up accidentally seeing himself as the root of all problems in his life so his head could process what he felt. Things like "oh, you got that paper cut because you flipped the page wrong, that hurts because it's your fault" or "he doesn't want to play with you anymore because you're no fun to be around, that hurts because it's your fault"
Rin started blaming and hating himself from a very young age which has ruined his headspace. He always knew there was something different from how he carried his world to how the people around him did, he just didn't see the toxicity of his thought process nor did he think it needed to be changed.
That didn't mean he enjoyed it though.
That's why Suna was here, now seventeen years old, alone on a small people bridge and looking out at the water and just... hating himself. And that hurt. But that was his fault because his head couldn't fathom blaming anything or anyone else for anything. He didn't know how to think differently and he was ignoring other things in his head. Rintarou had other feelings but he wasn't even sure he could feel them properly anymore without just feeling..... guilty on top of it.
So now he was standing there, looking out at the water, and he was just, inexorably, tired.
And that was his fault because of course it was. Suna had had trouble sleeping most nights but if he just tried harder then this wouldn't be a problem. It wouldn't hurt. That was then, this is now, and all that was going through his head was how exhausted he was. Not just because of his grueling volleyball practices, tireless studying, or plain lack of sleep. It was just life itself.
I'm not explaining this properly, I have no idea how to capture just how Suna was thinking or feeling, just that it is destroying him slowly. This endless train of negative thinking wasn't just making him feel like shit, it made him feel like shit without realizing the reason he felt that way was because of the way his brain worked and how it, unintentionally, was working against him.
All of this, inadvertently, lead to a multitude of other issues though. Issues that Rintarou didn't even recognize as big problems because he was so good at hiding everything from every one, no one could point out all of the self-destructive things he did to himself like:
1. The anxiety.
He never called it anxiety, it was just another way his brain worked that he just didn't like but if you were to somehow, miraculously, get Suna to open up about his feelings and how he viewed things, you would be able to easily point it out.
One of the worst and best things about Rintarou is that he was a great actor. Not that he did it intentionally, he was just very good at lying and opted to just never show what he was feeling, effectively bottling it all up inside which is a whole other issue that just makes his already shitty mental health so much worse. He often appeared as unbothered and sometimes even cocky, but that was far from the truth. His brain was a nonstop onslaught of "oh, they're judging me, fix it" or "this person is obviously faking being nice to you" He just thought it was best to show nothing at all instead of faking being happy like he accused many other people of doing. Most would assume Suna had some confidence, but anything he did with that "confidence" is just him avoiding other situations or not knowing how to deal with a situation and unintentionally coming off as confident in his decisions because of it. Most would assume Suna simply didn't care about anything, aside from possibly volleyball, but that was also untrue. He just avoided things at all costs, not out of disinterest, but because it would just make his mind run even harder which he just couldn't handle.
But he would never call it anxiety, he wasn't anxious, he just overthought every little thing on the planet and found it in his best interest to avoid things.
Until high school that is where a certain volleyball club had snuck their way into Rintarou's heart. This didn't stop his issues, but their relationship made his head a little more bearable. He did have days where not even his friends could help him, though.
That's why he was here. Seventeen. Staring out at the water. Nothing can hurt you more than yourself.
2. The forgetfulness.
Rintarou didn't know where this one came from, nor did he call it forgetful, but this time he did recognize his forgetfulness as an issue.
It's one of the only things that other people around him noticed too, but they didn't really think it was tied to anything else. Suna, at least on the outside, looked rather disinterested in everything so they just assumed he wasn't paying attention the first time. Because of this, everyone has collected on the habit of telling Rin the same thing multiple times, whether he asked or not. Sometimes he didn't forget and got annoyed with people repeating themselves.
"It's jus' how people know how to talk to ya," Atsumu had said one day after Suna had gotten rather heated after Ginjima had told him their practice was starting later today compared to usual for the fifth time. "People wouldn't repeat themselves so much if ya paid attention and listened to information like that,"
Rintarou wanted to retort back 'I do pay attention, I don't know how not to' but he bit his tongue. He didn't have a good explanation or argument.
He supposes that's why he was here. Seventeen. Staring out at the water. Nothing can hurt you more than yourself.
3. Bulimia
Suna actually did know where this came from. That didn't stop him from still being in denial of it though.
See, Rintarou had had a boyfriend in his last year of middle school. It was something his mind let himself have as a little treat for dealing with so much bullshit for so long. This, however, backfired as Suna unintentionally started dating the absolute worst person he could have chosen as a break from his own mental bullying. This boy just verbally ripped him apart but coated it with sugar so Rin would be too blindsided by its sweetness, he couldn't see his heavily bleeding wounds. That's when the image of his body became too hard to look at for himself. His Ex had convinced him that no one else would love him since he was so different and didn't have the right body. All his body was good for was volleyball, and he wasn't even great at that yet.
That's when he started trying to become "perfect". Probably not something healthy to be obsessed with at fifteen years old, but his brain wasn't programmed to tell him that.
Thankfully, when high school started and Suna moved so he could attend Inarizaki, the two of them broke up because he claimed he couldn't do a long-distance relationship. In all honesty, he didn't think being in a long-distance relationship would be very hard on him at all, he just needed an excuse out. Rintarou will never tell anyone this but the night they broke up was when he had gotten the best night's sleep he could ever remember.
Their break-up didn't really fix anything though.
Suna still hated the way he looked. Hated how he wasn't better at volleyball. Hated that he truly believed no one would love him the way he was right now. His new friends eased him slightly, but not enough to kick his destructive habits.
He never really ate properly.
Well, technically he did, he just never kept them down. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, all those big hearty meals, he did EAT them but were all thrown up afterward. The only thing he ate without throwing up afterward were the little snacks he was offered and ate throughout the day. The snacks usually came up anyway the next time he threw up his lunch or dinner, so it's not like that mattered.
Suna always felt guilty for it. People spent time, effort, and money on making food that he didn't even keep in his stomach long enough to digest and was always too worked up to really savor the food in the first place. Rin felt especially bad whenever it was Osamu or Kita who made the food since they were his friends and he knew how much food/rice meant to them. The least he could do was at least savor their food more before him inevitably vomiting it back up later.
Suna was able to do this without being caught for about two and a half years before he was caught throwing up in a garbage can somewhere on school grounds since he couldn't make it to a bathroom before he felt the bile coming up. Kita found him there and promptly took him to the nurse. Rintarou doesn't know why his senpai doesn't believe him when he claims that he just had a bad breakfast and it wasn't anything, but Kita kept a painfully close eye on him for nearly two months.
Suna gained 10 pounds in that time.
He guesses that's why he was here. Seventeen. Staring out at the water. Nothing can hurt you more than yourself.
4. Suicidal ideation
........
Maybe that's why he was here. Seventeen. Staring out at the water.
Nothing can hurt me more than myself.
Suna sat there on the rail of the bridge, his schoolbag sitting next to him and he vaguely enjoyed the view. He wondered if he should take a picture. If that even mattered. Was anyone going to go through his phone after he was gone? Was anyone going to appreciate his countless videos of the Miya twins going at each other? Photos of Ojiro not so subtly pining over their captain? That one photo of Kita genuinely smiling, laughing, at a joke their coach made? The various photos and videos of Gin and Akagi doing dumb things and that one where they were shoving their middle fingers into each other's noses that Rin always joked about putting on a T-shirt and wear it on national television. He wondered anyone would do that even when he's dead. If anyone is going to find his camera and look through the photos on there. The one with Osamu in a pink, frilly apron covered in cartoon foxes. The one where Gin and Akagi drew all over a napping Atsumu's face. The one where he caught Aran mid-sneeze. The one where Kita had made a perfect serve and Suna managed to get the perfect photo of it at the same time. The one where his dad shot ramen out his nose. When a bird pooped on their coach when he was giving a speech and thought it would be more effective when outside instead of in the gym.
Rintarou wonders if his choice to never get an Instagram was a poor one. No one would appreciate those photos the same way he did, and now, no one was even going to even get the chance to.
He also wondered if it was actually disrespectful to wear shoes in the afterlife. If it was worth taking them off. He thought about this a lot but it didn't make it any easier. He did it anyway.
The sun was setting and Suna decides to wait it out, reasoning that it will be harder to notice someone drowning while it's dark. He wasn't clinging to life, he didn't really need to anymore. He just felt selfish now. Offing himself when they still had volleyball to play. When his dad had, for the first time in forever, managed to clear time in his schedule for time to spend with him. When his friends and teammates were planning a nice new years get together. He knew people CARED about him, he knew this would probably hurt them, but they were strong. They would be able to live without him. The hardest part of this is that Rin was the one currently living with himself and knew how much suffering it was, he wanted to spare the people he cared about from finding out what kind of hell it was.
The sun was nearly fully set now and Rintarou smiled to himself slightly. He wondered how cold the water would be this late.
That's where it went wrong.
"Hey!" Suna jumped and nearly toppled over but stabled himself enough as he turned around. It was Osamu. Not that he could see him properly in the near darkness and the distance, but he knew who it was. He seemed to be jogging but was gradually slowing down. Another jogger was coming up behind him that Rin assumed was Atsumu and he froze for just a second.
Osamu must have recognized him which made him call out, he was slowing down so he could talk with him. Osamu was never one to ask prying questions, but Atsumu sure was, if his brother was stopping to talk, he would too. Neither of them had reached Rintarou yet, but they would soon enough, he wasn't prepared for that. With the distance between them quickly growing smaller, Suna could now see multiple questions on Osamu's face, questions he knew weren't going to be asked, not by Osamu anyway. He panicked, Rin's overthinking didn't even have time to kick in as he quickly pushed himself off the bridge's rails and saw Osamu's horrified face for a split second before rushing air flew past him and he hit the water.