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The bell chimes above him as the door opens, the familiar aroma drifting through the shop and coming to rest on his shoulders. Oikawa stills for a second at the threshold, his gaze taking in the red walls, still slightly discolored, the wallpaper a little more torn at the edges. The giant old clock ticks loudly, the sound bouncing off the walls and resonating in the silence of the room. The Sunday lunch hours have just ended and the heat from the imprints of the people who once sat on the tables an hour ago remain in the empty ramen shop.
His eyes land on the long table stuck to the window looking out towards the street. Outside the snow glisten underneath the winter sun, the glares reflecting on the glass window every now and then. He smiles softly to himself as he watches the memory unravel like a rolling tape silently.
There was him drenched in sweat and muttering curses as he stuffed ramen inside his mouth. They had just lost to Karasuno and with that their hopes of nationals had been drowned out by the resounding cheer that echoed in the auditorium. The younger Oikawa with his trampled dream tucked away underneath the hot soup and suppressed tears yelled loudly at the slightest comment from his teammates and glared with unabated anger outside.
Oikawa chuckles as he feels the old flame of wanting to attend nationals at least once flares up for a second with the memory. He looks around and feels the collective regret that settled like a stone in his team that day. Closing his eyes for a second, he remembers sneakily turning around quietly and checking on someone particularly. Head down with his eyes barely visible, he sat on the corner table, eating his food. Every now and then he looked up and looked around, chiding the second years with a playful tone. And when their eyes met, Iwaizumi looked away before Oikawa could mouth his words. And even with the distance between them and the unspoken words, he watched the crumbling resolve underneath Iwaizumi’s playful tone. His lips quivered as he smacked Matsukawa on the head while scolding him and when they all looked at Oikawa as he called for ramen, Iwaizumi gave him a quiet look.
In the brief moment that fell between them, he had searched his eyes and had been frightened and overwhelmed by the implications of everything that loss held to them. There was the end of a road and the next one was fast approaching on the horizon.
Except for this time, Oikawa knew when the beginning would dawn on him, they wouldn’t be together and there would be an ocean and strange cities between them.
He had wanted to curl up on Iwaizumi’s lap and break down then, wanted to hug him and be hugged back, wanted to love and be loved back to push back the uncertainties that threatened to drown him. He had wanted to remain buried in his embrace for the rest of the day, feel a little safer and a little less of a loser. Iwaizumi in all his being, Oikawa wanted that so badly that day.
“Oh, how can I help you?” a voice breaks his thoughts startling him.
Raising his eyebrows, Oikawa turns around with his usual grin as he catches the old man by surprise.
“Sensei, It’s been a while.” He laughs as he walks towards him, “Do you remember me?”
The old man points his finger at him, leaning on the counter as he laughs heartily.
“Oikawa? Yes, it is you, It is indeed Oikawa.” Patting his head as Oikawa bows slightly, he pulls him up to look at his face properly, “Look at you, you are all grown up now. You are no more that brat who drank all my soup after your practices. I can’t even reach your height now”
Laughter reverberates in his chest as Oikawa looks at the old man fondly, the nostalgia clouding his mind.
“Yes, it is me, sensei. I’m still that brat though”
Pride beams across lidded-brown eyes as the old man tilts his head slightly back to take in his form.
“No no, you look very mature in that uniform. I watch all your matches with my grandson, do you know?” He winks as Oikawa looks at him with a surprised face, “ Dare you give me that surprised look. Japan or not, you are our pride, Tooru.”
The warmth blossoms in his chest and spreads to his extremities as the words come and lodge themselves in the crevices of his heart.
Oikawa quietly holds the old man’s hands, feeling the rough lines in his palm before touching his forehead to them. For a moment, the once lost high school kid who was confused and overwhelmed at his first sighting of the Argentinian sun steals a little piece from time. He steals this love, this homecoming, this familiarity of this sole Miyagi ramen shop with stories etched on the walls holding touches of laughter and tears of everyone who has come and gone and the people from his old life who fed him love. It is an exhilarating feeling, the grand feeling of being infinite, greater than the gold that hung around his neck and it makes up for the nights he spent on convenience store ramen cups in a strange city.
The old man smiles softly as he quietly looks at the young man who has come back home.
“Do you still want your favourite order? The broth is still warm and I can give you an extra serving,” he pats Oikawa’s arms before clicking his tongue, “You look like you haven’t eaten for a while. Look at your muscles getting smaller than what I see on TV.”
Oikawa lets out a pure, unadulterated laugh as he nods, his hazel eyes a little blurred with the memory.
“Of course, I’ll take more than one extra serving. I have had ramen in all Korean restaurants abroad but none matches yours.”
Glancing at the time, he looks at the old man with a familiar glint in his eyes.
“But sensei, not right now. I’ll come back with someone after a while and then I’ll have it.”
“Ah, yes,” the old man nods, looking at the door before patting the young brunette on his shoulder, “ We can wait and the world can wait. You should go. He has been waiting for you.”
Oikawa follows his gaze quietly, traveling much beyond the glass door with the bell chime hanging above to another place.
His homestead underneath the winter sunset, of tangerines and lilac skies, waiting for him.
“And I, to return to him.”
*
Oikawa kicks a small pebble as he walks down the familiar path, his footsteps echoing through the length of the now cobbled street. Above him, the winter sakura trees shed pink flowers covering the vast expanse of the road. The gate is opened and he smiles at the new guard before signing his name in the register and entering.
Immediately he inhales the never-changing scent of the place, the grey walls beckoning to him as he smiles widely. He turns around in a circle, hands in his pocket, as he takes in the sight. The familiar banner, the faded Seijoh written in the front, the winding path on the side of the main building leading to the courts, the staircase leading to the classrooms where he spent the days of yesteryears running around and sleeping in.
Retracing his steps like he did 10 years ago, Oikawa walks down the same path and stops in front of the vending machine. His outstretched arm finds the exact spot on its own, his finger hovering over the number. He chuckles to himself as he looks at the milk packet, still the same, still the old design.
Shaking his head in amusement, Oikawa turns around and feels the wind of his past creeping up underneath his coat.
In his mind, he watched as the younger version of him came sprinting from around the corner and hurriedly pressed the button, where his finger was hovering just a minute ago.
His school shirt neatly tucked in, Oikawa laughed loudly as he grabbed the milk packet from the vending machine. But before he could open it, a muscular arm grabbed him and pried the packet from his hand.
“Iwa-chan! I got here first!.”
“You stole mine, shittykawa! I am taking this and we are running out of break time. ” Iwaizumi gulped down the milk, pausing to look at Oikawa who stood there sulking at him.
For a moment, his features softened as he flicked Oikawa’s forehead.
“Tch Tch, are you gonna be like this again?”
Oikawa dramatically rubbed his forehead before glaring at Iwaizumi. He suddenly lunged forward to grab the milk but before his fingers could wrap around it, Iwaizumi shifted back leaving an empty space, perfect for him to fall face flat into the ground.
Flailing his arms, he yelled as he stumbled. Somewhere a teacher from above shouted in the corridor telling the source of noise to shut up.
The fall never came.
Oikawa watches in amusement and with an expression so full of love as the eighteen-year-old Iwaizumi grabbed Oikawa and pulled him up in time, their bodies colliding against each other. The milk laid forgotten and spilled on the ground.
Somewhere the bell rang for the next class.
Iwaizumi attempted to break off before Oikawa tightened his embrace as he buried his face in Iwaizumi’s neck. His fingers held Iwa’s shirt in a bunched-up grip as he stepped back to rest against the wall next to the vending machine, away from the sight of those walking in the corridors above them.
“Tooru-,” Iwaizumi whispered before planting a soft kiss on his shoulder, “It’s class now. We should go.”
“Just a little longer, a little bit.”
Oikawa settled in as Iwaizumi, caving in, pulled him even more closer, crushing the distance between them. This distance he could crush.
They were stealing from time again.
Oikawa pursed his lips as he watched his younger self desperately clung to the remaining time he had with Iwaizumi.
It was two months before he left for Argentina and even though they always skirted around his departure and his eventual journey, they subconsciously did everything to make everything last a little longer. Took the wrong way home for the first time in eighteen years, stayed till the ramen shop owner had to forcibly push them both out, sat on the road that diverged between their houses talking about everything underneath the stars, the touches lingered and they left bits of each other in small details. An old shirt, a stone that one thought reminded him of the other, a used movie ticket, a cheap Godzilla keychain that he picked from a random vendor and it went on. Till the bits piled up but the person’s absence grew with it.
Oikawa looks up as he feels a tiny snowflake land on his wrist.
He awaits and time also waits for the first time for his return.
He leaves the memory of their embrace in the snow and walks ahead, his footsteps soon disappearing underneath the snow. In the faded walls of the building,underneath the sakura blossoms, this too remains like a hidden memory like every other memory of them..
*
The door is opened and a narrow slit of sun rays fall on the steps, lighting up the dark gym. Inside, he makes out the faint outline of skid marks and lines drawn on the floor. Oikawa comes to a stop in front watching the balls piled on top of each other in the cart, one stray resting against the wall.
Taking in the comforting smell of rubber balls and sprays, a soft smile plays on his lips as he sees the gym of another time, another winter, one that was ten years ago. He sees himself laugh as he patted Matsukawa’s back while Hanamaki and Iwaizumi lay sprawled on the floor,towels covering their face. He sees his scribbled, messy handwriting on the board where he had drawn up the strategy and he sees the first years and second years run around, laughing as they cooled off after practice.
In the memory that plays in front of his mind, he watches them huddle together as he and Iwaizumi pointed out the mistakes made during the day. Like the salt of the sea, he sees the memories unravel like he has been carrying them all along in his bones, too afraid he will lose them in the strangeness of his life that he walked out for ten years ago.
If a stranger sees Oikawa now, they will know like they know when spring arrives, how he has come home.
Closing his eyes slowly, he raises his head up towards the sky when he feels the familiar ache in his heart, the way nostalgia rips through the spaces in his body and binds him down. There is a warmth approaching him and he feels him before he sees him. The sanctity that his arms bring when they wrap around Oikawa’s waist, the trembling touch of his lips on his neck, the skin beneath the fabric and the warmth seeping in through the clothes and the love that touches me like nothing else does.
“Hajime.”
He whispers as the snowflakes in their sublime beauty shower on them. He whispers with his adrift love finding its shore after years, he whispers with the quietness that rings loud enough for the world to hear and the sky to carry.
“Did you wait for long?” Iwaizumi mumbles rushedly into his skin as he tightens his grip, afraid that if he loosens a little bit, he might disappear.
“Not at long as you did. I just arrived here,” he lifts his hands and places them on his love’s, intertwining their fingers. The overwhelming of him being in flesh and bones outcrash the giddying rush of love that flows through him and Oikawa feels like a seventeen-year-old again. Like how he felt standing on that bridge above the creek after shouting out a messy, rushed confession to his best friend. It was the summer ten years ago.
“You came back, Tooru. You are finally here, you are-,”Iwaizumi chokes up on his words as Oikawa turns around and cups his face,his thumb wiping off the powder snow resting on the bridge of his nose.
“I took too long, didn’t I? We have grown so much, Iwa-chan,” he laughs as their foreheads rest against each other, relishing the minimal distance between them, “I’m sorry for coming back so late.”
Meeting across the oceans in strange cities and sidewalks, underneath towering cityscapes and eating ramen that never tastes quite right can never compare to this small patch of land, outside an old gym where a well-trodden cobbled path lay carrying the memories of them.
“Don’t apologize, idiot,” Iwaizumi softly places a kiss on the curve of his lips, “I told you I would wait, a thousand times over. I will always wait for you.”
He leans into the warmth of Oikawa’s palm holding his cheek as the sun disappears and the snowflakes fall harder.
“I have missed you so much, Tooru,” he smiles through his eyes as Oikawa’s eyes of ichor with the flecks of brown smile back at him with the love he has been holding for him.
“Welcome back home.”
There is a song that plays in the silence of their hearts as their lips meet, the melody welcoming the train that has reached its destination. The first snow of the winter watches as the promise made in the spring ten years ago blossoms.
The ghosts of their past sit on the steps of the gym, a young brunette resting his head on the raven hair boy’s shoulder. Oikawa ran his fingers above the lines of Iwaizumi’s palm. He stopped at the part where two lines diverge, furrowing his eyebrows while tracing them, and only when he saw that they meet again before beginning the climb up his ring finger, he smiled.
“Iwa-chan.”
“Hmm,” Hajime patted his forehead gently, pushing his hair back.
“See these two lines? Here,look-,” he showed them diligently, lifting the palm up higher, “Look where they meet.”
Iwaizumi raised his eyebrows, a smile playing on his lips as he nodded.
“What about them?”
There was silence as Oikawa ran the words silently in his head, pursing his lips. Shifting closer and nudging his head into Iwaizumi’s nape, he mumbled the words barely. But it stayed there, in the space between them. Like a song of spring, he left the words he was too afraid to promise.
“One day, when winter comes again, let’s meet here again.”
“Will you come back, Tooru?”
Hajime teased, flicking his forehead gently. But the hope that he laced into the question didn’t pass by easily.
“If you will be waiting here, I will. I will always come back,” Oikawa closed his eyes, letting himself be held for a while as he tried to remember this feeling in his head before he left for Argentina.
“Then I’ll be right here. I promise.”
*
There is a house in Miyagi, the door slightly ajar and the fire burning in the hearth, throwing its warmth around the room. There is a story etched on the walls yet to be completed and a man has waited on the porch for his love to return. There is a handmade space, crafted for only a certain someone in his heart and the empty side of his bed lay cold for long waiting for the arrival.
And finally on the day of the first snow, under the lantern-shine of the winter sunset, his love comes home.