Archive of Our Own

“I want to meet you in every place I ever loved.

Listen to me—I am your echo.

I would rather break the world than lose you.”

Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“Thus with a kiss, I die.”

Tooru flings himself down on the bed, his right arm deliberately landing across Hajime’s chest. Romeo & Juliet is sprawled on his stomach, its stiff Penguin Classics spine sticking up, faintly catching the spilled moonbeam from beyond the bedroom window. “How was I as Romeo, Iwa-chan?” he asks, closing the book properly and turning on his stomach, “Do you think I can jump ship and become an actor, once the world of classical music stops working out for me?”

Beside him, Hajime sighs without bite. “Please don’t,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re already far too dramatic for my health right now.”

“But you love me anyway.” Tooru grins, ever-confident. "It is the east, and Oikawa Tooru is the sun. That’s how it is for you, isn’t it, Iwa-chan?”

“Gross.” Hajime groans. He brushes Tooru’s hand aside, roughness only on the surface. “You’ll make such a crappy sun, all the planets will literally run away from you.”

“How rude!”

Hajime just laughs softly while Tooru bristles, his pout a petulant curve that Hajime’s hands will always smooth away. “I’m rude, yes. But you love me anyway.”

Tooru gasps. “You stole my line!”

“Well, it has no copyright.”

“Only for now!” He scoffs, shifting his body upward, closer to the pillow. He lies on his side for a quiet while, fingers occasionally pinching Hajime’s cheek, earning him swat after annoyed swat. Outside, the sky is already a midnight shade, invisible clouds now obscuring the moon. The breeze is silent, moving among the flowers in their garden with mild footsteps. It is a temperate spring night, one that calls for cherry blossoms and soft touches, and yet Tooru knows that life with Hajime seldom gives him either of the two. Hajime prefers big and bold flowers—like the red spider lilies he insisted on planting last fall, right under their bedroom window—and when he embraces him, it is with a kind of certainty that borders on desperation, firm and unhesitating in his constant quest for more, more, more.

Iwaizumi Hajime is never afraid to give and take in equal amounts, and Tooru would never have it any other way.

“Hey, Iwa-chan.”

“What, Trashykawa?”

Tooru flicks Hajime on the forehead, and he quickly twists away before Hajime can pin him to the bed and retaliate. “What do you think about Romeo? Do you think he’s a lucky guy?”

Hajime narrows his eyes, a crease forming between his eyebrows like it always does whenever he thinks Tooru is being unreasonable. “Lucky? He falls in love with the daughter of his family’s mortal enemy, gets exiled, comes back only to find Juliet ‘dead’, and finally kills himself right before she wakes up? What part of that sounds lucky to you?”

“Well, at least he gets to die on his own terms, with the taste of his beloved on his lips. Isn’t that the most ideal and beautiful way to die?” Tooru muses, smiles, and turns to find Hajime giving him one of his trademarked death glares. “Yikes, you’re scary, Iwa-chan! What, that sounds just a tad too dramatic for your mediocre little brain?”

“Say that to me again, Assikawa, I dare you.”

Laughing, Tooru sits up on his elbows and kisses Hajime’s cheek, easy and daringly sweet. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. Don’t be such a grump, Iwa-chan,” he says, “Or you’ll be fighting off wrinkles before you’re even thirty.”

“Tooru, for God’s sake, I already have wrinkles, and that is entirely your fault. I’m almost afraid to see what I’m going to look like when we both turn eighty.”

At that, Tooru laughs again, delighted at the prospect of annoying Hajime until they are both old and insufferable. “You don’t need to worry about that, Iwa-chan. Rest assured, between the two of us, I’m sure there will at least be someone who still looks gorgeous then.”

“Duh, of course someone will.” Hajime scoffs. “And it’s definitely not gonna be you.”

“Ooooh, someone is being awfully confident today.” Tooru grins, his head falling back against the pillow. “Anyway, Iwa-chan, since we’re talking about us growing old together… Will you, perhaps, be willing to promise me a little something?”

“Depends.” Hajime turns on his side, facing Tooru with the entirety of his gaze. Tooru sees the universe align in there, bright familiar stars guiding him wherever he needs to go. “What do you want me to promise?"

"Will you let me kiss you, right before I die?"

Hajime stares at him, somehow somberly serious and not at all exasperated, for once. Something flickers across his face, some words he may be swallowing down before they have a chance to come alive, and Tooru's chest vibrates with a discordant tune, one that he immediately dispels the moment he sees Hajime smile.

“I will.” The answer comes after a while, slow and strangely contemplative. “I promise, on one condition.”

“What is it?”

“I want you to promise that you’ll do the same for me.”

“Done.” Tooru closes the distance between them, sealing their promise with a kiss. “But why the condition, Iwa-chan? Are you so sure you’re going to end up beating me to the Underworld, one day?”

Hajime shrugs, his smile hanging crooked and glum. “Maybe.”

Later, Tooru will realize, obviously all too late, that he should have asked Hajime why his face had looked so sure, so resigned, even as he told him an unsure word. He will beat himself up and cry until he gets blue in the face over the fact that he didn’t feel anything when Hajime asked him to promise the same thing, as though he already knew that he wouldn't be able to fulfill his. He will want to claw his eyes out for being so blind, to rip apart his own heart and pierce his own lungs for still being able to breathe and beat and flutter with happiness at being taken into Hajime’s arms a few minutes later instead of bursting at the seams and leaving him gasping—because he should have known, he should have felt it, he should have read the signs. 

He should have found it weird that Hajime smiled at his uselessly sentimental question instead of jabbing him in the arm or flicking his forehead. He should have noticed that the strange expression Hajime was wearing when he leaned in to kiss him—all softened eyes and lowered eyebrows—wasn’t so much tenderness as it was sadness, silent and glaringly wistful like an overlooked clue. He should have known, he should have known, he should have known, because maybe then he could have done something, anything, anything that would have made Hajime stay put and stay safe and just stay fucking alive for one more day, one more month, one more year, one more lifetime—

But, well, death is apparently a thieving guest. It does not wait, does not leave any kind of decipherable clues, and it definitely does not advertise its impending arrival, not even to Oikawa Tooru. 

Especially not to Oikawa Tooru.

"Hey, Iwa-chan, will you make me another promise tonight?

Make use of your free ticket and come to my concert tomorrow, please? I know you probably already heard me practice the solo part a thousand times over these past few months, but I’ll be playing with a full orchestra tomorrow, and let me assure you, it will be magical. It will be like nothing you’ve ever heard before, because this is our first time playing Gluck, and I really love our interpretation of this particular piece. I am so excited to share it with the world, and with you, of course."

(And if you’re there with me, I’m sure I’ll perform better, because I will play the violin for you. I will play for you until nothing could ever resist my beautiful melodies, Iwa-chan, neither enemies nor beasts. 

Neither life nor death, even.)

Iwa-chan, are you still coming?
Read 4:02PM

Yes, but I might be a little late. Work’s holding me up.
Read 4:27PM

Aw that sucks!!!!
Gate’s opening at 5.30, btw. Really hope you can make it ♡
Read 4:33PM

I’ll be there. Will try to leave work around 5.
Read 4:37PM

Yayyy!!!!!!!
Read 4:39PM

Get off your phone and pay attention to rehearsals.
Read 4:41PM

Yes, sir ;)
Read 4:43PM

Where are you, Iwa-chan?
Sent 5:18PM

You’re not done with work yet?
Sent 5:27PM

Ah, guess you’re probably driving now. See you soon!
Sent 5:34PM

Iwa-chan, why are you disappearing on me :(
Sent 5:49PM

It’s 5 mins to showtime. If I take one more peek and you’re not here yet………
Sent 5:55PM

OK IWAIZUMI HAJIME WHERE ARE YOU!!!!! WHY ARE YOU IGNORING ME!!!
Sent 5:59PM

I’m coming up to the stage in 2 mins. It’s ok if you’re late, just please tell me where you are or I SWEAR TO GOD I’ll eat the last milk pudding in the fridge!!!
Sent 6:18PM

...jk hehe anyway pls pls pls let me know where you are. This is getting a bit worrying, don’t you think?
Sent 6:18PM

Tooru enters the stage last, black tuxedo tails flapping behind him. He grips his violin loosely and bows to the audience, trying not to look at one particularly empty chair in the VIP section. When he turns around to signal the oboe to begin tuning, his phone jostles in his pocket; a silent, uneasy deadweight attached to the prelude of a vise around his heart.

Where are you, Iwa-chan?

Just then, about a hundred instruments start playing at the same time, the same monotonous note held in precise strokes. Tooru lets them all blare for five seconds, nods, and takes his seat amidst the dying beats. The conductor arrives next, all laid-back charm and heavyset shoulders, and he shakes Tooru’s hand patiently, steadily. Nobuteru Irihata usually has a real gift of putting people at ease with just a confident gesture or a well-placed word, but this time, through no fault of his own, he can do nothing to calm the brewing storm in Tooru’s body and soul.

This is out of the ordinary. Iwa-chan never leaves without a word, not if he can help it.

Not if he can help it.

Iwaizumi Hajime is the most reliable person Tooru has ever had the joy of knowing. Even when they were both children and Tooru was as fickle about playdates as a drop of water on laurel leaves, Hajime never went back on a promise. He never left Tooru waiting for longer than thirty minutes, and never without a plausible excuse. He was always there, in every single milestone of Tooru’s life, from volleyball matches to recitals, graduations to video interviews, auditions to concerts and every rehearsal in between. He was the pillar and the morale-booster, the violent-yet-sobering slap to the face, and the forever-guiding hand in every step of Tooru’s sometimes-tumultuous growth.

He has always been his constant, his stability, the only thing that makes sense in a growing sea of crescendos and capricciosos. He is the only one Tooru trusts more than the sun itself, and so there must be a reason why he still hasn’t arrived—without sending any word—when the orchestra has already started performing the first piece on the setlist.

There must be a reason, even though Tooru is not really sure whether he ever wants to find out what that reason is.

THE MIYAGI
PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

Nobuteru Irihata, Conductor

Oikawa Tooru, Concertmaster

Romeo and Juliet,Op. 64: Introduction………………………………..Prokofiev

Orfeo ed Euridice, Wq. 30 / Act 2: Dance of the Blessed Spirits
(Arr. For Violin and Orchestra)................................................Gluck

Tristan und Isolde, WWV90 / Act 3: Prelude………………………..Wagner

- INTERMISSION - 

Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74, TH.30……....……………...…........Tchaikovsky

Adagio - Allegro non troppo

Allegro con grazia

Allegro molto vivace

Finale: Adagio lamentoso - Andante

This one’s for you, Iwa-chan.

Even when you’re not here yet,

Knowing you are somewhere under the same sky as me is enough to make me feel invincible.

Tooru plays. First song, first violin, first chair. He sets his bow to the strings and becomes a storyteller. He pleads and prays for Romeo, for Juliet, for every premature death of legendary lovers, and for Iwaizumi Hajime. His Hajime, lover and sometimes-handler and forever the best of friends. His Hajime, the brightest, most powerful person ever created on earth.

The room prays with him, and every single person is transported. Heaven and earth stop turning to watch, and if anyone outside were paying attention, they’d notice that the sun has slid back up, content to be dim and mostly invisible as long as it gets to listen.  

High up in the sky, songbirds coo and Muses dance, but the door never opens, and Tooru’s phone never vibrates.

As he makes his way through stories of star-crossed lovers told in tragic melodies, Tooru can’t help but think that something is about to go very, very wrong. For him, for Hajime, and for all the skies and wonders that this world has ever known.

It’s the intermission now. I’m still waiting for you, Iwa-chan :)
Sent 7:14PM

When his phone finally rings, Tooru has just put his violin back inside its case. His hand smells of rosin and red camellias, courtesy of his parents’ congratulatory bouquet. The men’s changing room backstage is full of recovering musicians, groups of people just chatting and laughing and cooling off frayed nerves, so Tooru immediately gathers his things and takes a step outside, phone already pressed to his ear.

“Hello? Iwa-chan?”

The voice that answers him is a woman’s, soft and slightly nervous and perfectly unknown. She introduces herself as Yachi Hitoka, a nurse receptionist at the general hospital.

Oikawa-san, I’m very sorry to tell you this, but—

Her next words soon turn into cloudburst static in Tooru’s ears, the sounds and syllables running into each other like bled ink. He can only make out a few phrases here and there, things like emergency contact and Iwaizumi Hajime and car accident, a fairly quiet street and nobody found him until almost an hour later. She continues to drone in an apologetic tone, surgery and critical and his outlook is not good, and only when she says you should probably get here at your earliest convenience does he finally remember how to breathe and speak in a mostly coherent manner.

“Please, Hitoka-chan.”

“I’m sorry? Oikawa-san?”

“Please. Please help him. Please keep him alive. I’ll be there as soon as I can, but please.”

Please.

Please.

Please.

Please, God, not Iwa-chan.

Please.

"Iwa-chan, Iwa-chan! Look at this! Alexander The Great's birthday is the same as mine!"

"Oh. Cool, I guess?"

"It is cool! Oh, oh, and look at this one, too! Your birthday is on the same date as his death! Isn't that great?"

"What's so great about it, Oikawa? There are people dying and being born every single day. You're bound to share your birthday with other people's birth or death date, so it's not that special."

"That's not what I mean, stupid Iwa-chan! What I'm saying is, our birthdays match. They are the birthdate and the death date of one same person! Doesn't that make us—I don't know, share the same soul or something? Or that it makes us a never-ending cycle, with me as the beginning and you as the ending? Together, we are endless, Iwa-chan! Everytime we end, we can begin again… And I think that’s a sign that we’ll be together forever!"

"......My God, Oikawa, you're so sappy and disgusting, I really have no idea why I keep putting up with you!'

The door to the surgery room swings open the moment Tooru enters the corridor. He runs toward the blue-scrubbed doctor, the fastest he’s ever run in his life. He runs past plastic chairs and grimy windows, swerves around a bright vending machine, almost knocks over a potted chrysanthemum. The flowers are white, the walls are white, white as paper, white as grief, everything is white white white except the exploding colors and movement of the doctor’s shaking head.

“Are you Oikawa Tooru, sir?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I’m deeply, sincerely sorry,” he says, “We tried our very best.”

A pause. A clock ticks in the background, heavy seconds spelling out doom, doom, doom.

“What?” Tooru grapples for confirmation, giving the doctor a chance to revise his meaning. “I’m sorry, but what are you saying?”

“We tried our best, sir, but Iwaizumi-san… His injuries were too severe. I’m sorry, but we couldn’t save him. He’s… he’s gone.”

Tick, tock. Tick, tock. 

“He’s gone?” Tooru feels the strangest urge to laugh, sharp and tickling like he’s just swallowed a live cactus. “But you said you did your best to save him.”

“We did, sir. We took him straight into surgery, but it turns out—”

Tooru starts giggling, completely cutting the doctor’s speech mid-sentence. “That’s funny, don’t you think?” he says, “Funny how you called whatever you did ‘your best’, because it CLEARLY WASN’T EVEN GOOD ENOUGH!! It fucking sucks, okay, it doesn’t even scrape the bottom of any minimum passing grade, because you didn’t manage to SAVE HIM! IT CERTAINLY WASN’T YOUR BEST, DOCTOR, DO YOU NOT FUCKING SEE THAT?!”

He hears himself shouting as if from underwater, his hands moving of their own accord to grip the doctor’s collar. “Bring him back, you asshole!” he cries, his vision blurring into salt-tinged shapes. “Bring him back, you coward, you good-for-nothing cretin. Save him, help him, please, make him come back to me! Please! PLEASE!”

Between his clenching hands, the panicked doctor gives a shout as well, and soon Tooru feels multiple pairs of arms wrap around him, strong and binding and suffocating. “No! Don’t you dare take me away! Don’t you dare make me leave!” He struggles against his captors, kicking and screaming even as they drag him backward, inch after painful inch. “No! Let me see him! I want to see him! If none of you is good enough to bring him back, then I will! I WILL, DO YOU HEAR ME?! I will bring him back, and no one is going to stop me! NO ONE!”

He keeps fighting and struggling, even using his nails to claw at the arms holding him in place, but it all remains a losing battle. His captors are just too strong, and at this rate, they will probably throw him out of the hospital altogether, and he won’t be able to see Hajime until he’s become a waxy, made-up figure inside a decorated coffin. He won’t be able to see or touch him one last time, looking just as real as he did when he was alive, and he probably won’t get to tell him all the sappy shit he never had the chance to say before this whole nightmare happened either, unless he’s in a funeral home with a hundred other strangers who will only disguise their curiosity as false sadness.

Please, no. Please, anything but that. I just want to tell him I love him one last time, with no audience, no mask, no trying to act tough.

I just want to be alone with him, one last time.

The realization makes his body go slack all over, and soon he breaks down crying, limbs weak and grasping at straws. “No, no, no, guys, please, I’m sorry. Don’t take me away,” he sobs. “I want to see him. Please let me see him. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll be good, I promise.” He swipes at his cheek, tries not to think too much of the wetness coating his hand. “Please. I’ll be calm. Let me see him. One last time, please, if you have a heart, let me see him.”

Gradually, the arms around his chest loosen, and Tooru looks up to find two male nurses staring at him, one blonde and one gray-haired, their pinched expressions a strange mixture of doubt and pity. “Thank you,” he says, with real gratitude, once he can finally stand on his own two feet. “Please, can you now take me to him? I’m sorry for the way I behaved earlier, but I really need to see him. Please, I won’t make a scene. I promise.”

The nurses glance at the doctor, who must have given them a nod or something because then the gray-haired one beckons to Tooru to follow him. He leads him down another corridor before finally stopping in front of a regular room for in-patient care. Before he opens the door, he turns somberly toward Tooru, gray-brown eyes sad and apologetic. “He will be in this room until the funerary service picks him up. Exactly when that happens is up to you and the rest of his family,” he says, tone gentle and strangely soothing. “You can call me if you need help making the arrangements, but for now, maybe just get some rest, okay? And take as much time as you need in there. You can even stay the night, it’s fine.”

He pats Tooru on the arm and bows his head a little, as though he’s afraid to look grief in the face. “I know this probably won’t sound like much to you, but I’m really sorry,” he adds, fidgeting with one of his gloves. “For your loss, and for manhandling you back there. I apologize for my colleagues, as well. We didn't make it any easier for you—well, not that anything ever could—but still, I'm really sorry, and I’m here to help. If you need anything, that is.”

Tooru can’t do much but nod, his usual charming smiles and easy quips lost inside his whirlwind sadness. “Thank you. I’d appreciate that,” he mutters, and when the nurse starts walking back the way he came, he thinks about how relieving it must have been, to see suffering in all its ugly, unhinged realities and still be able to walk away in a true sense of security that at least this time, it isn’t yours yet.

(Even though someday, it might be.)

Tooru almost falls over himself in his hurry to get to Hajime, feet almost snagging on the slightly-raised threshold. He reaches the bed with a dull throb in his toes that he doesn’t even feel, but as soon as he looks upon the still, serene face of his worst nightmare brought to life, all his previous haste just utterly and completely leaves him.

For a long moment, Tooru just stares. At the bed, and at the stiff version of Hajime who’s currently lying on it. At the closed eyes, the horribly pale skin. At the red, angry lines of surgery scars criss-crossing some parts of his cheek and arms, which, to be honest, don’t really look all that bad. If Tooru just ignores his total absence of color, he can almost pretend that Hajime is only asleep, and that he’d only injured himself worse than usual in a training session or something. He’d probably wake up soon, and once he did, Tooru would tease and childishly fuss over him, but he’d eventually made him promise to take better care of himself because what if I’m too busy to babysit you in the hospital next time, Iwa-chan? You know I do have jobs and responsibilities, too.

“Iwa-chan?” Tooru calls, voice ridiculously tiny. “Iwa-chan, come on, this is not funny. You’ve been sleeping for far too long, don’t you think? Why won’t you wake up already?”

Silence. Tooru shifts his hand a little to the right, grazing Hajime’s arm in an almost mechanical movement, before he unconsciously jerks it away again.

Hajime’s cold. Cold like nothing Tooru’s ever felt before. Not like ice, not like snow, not like Hajime’s shoulder after a particularly bad fight. Hajime is cold like death, there’s no other way to explain it, and Tooru can almost feel his heart rending itself in two, in four, in six, finally collapsing into untraceable little pieces that are hopelessly tearing him apart from the inside out.

It’s painful.

Grief is painful.

It’s intensively, undividedly painful, and for all his years of dealing with joint dislocations and bleeding fingers, it still managed to catch him thoroughly unprepared, because nothing, nothing, comes even remotely close to this. 

Tooru would rather have his whole body broken, his whole world broken, than lose Hajime like this.

Not like this.

Not when we still have a lot of things we want to do. 

Not when we still have forever ahead of us.

One teardrop falls. Then another, and another. Tooru is usually an ugly crier, all running snots and loud, heaving sobs—and he’d have probably done all that and more already, if he hadn’t suddenly noticed someone moving from across the room toward Hajime’s bed, casting dark shadows upon them both.

Even though he really shouldn’t be able to see that.

“Who the fuck are you and what do you want with Iwa-chan?”

When the tall figure in front of him straightens and meets his eyes, Tooru can somehow feel his lifespan like a fragile thread curled around his finger, stretching tighter and tighter with every past and future birthdays until the day it eventually breaks into oblivion. It’s not a feeling easily explained, and all Tooru knows is that he’s never been so aware of the way his heart beats like a countdown clock, ticking away every single one of his breaths until the day they all stop altogether.

His days are nothing more than sands inside an hourglass, and somehow, Tooru can see that this guy, whoever he is, has the power to know exactly when the last grain will fall through.

“Oho, what is this? You can see me? Even though it is not your time yet?” 

The stranger lets out a disbelieving laugh, cat-like pupils narrowing into a sly glint. He wears a cutting smile on his face, the kind that angers and intimidates, and he moves in his personal bubble of night, dark and languid even in a fairly well-lit room. “You’re just a human, though, aren’t you? No, never mind, don’t bother answering that. I know you’re a human. I can sense it off you. Besides, it’s not like we haven’t heard about you before.”

His smile turns into a smirk, climbing higher and higher up the left side of his face. “Well, as impressive as that is for you, I’m afraid that will only benefit me more, because now that you’re here, I can finally be able to do my job. Right, Iwaizumi-kun? You ready to go now?” He inclines his head toward the center of the room, somewhere close to Tooru’s right and nowhere near Hajime’s bed. The stranger brushes a lock of messy black hair away from his right eye as he grins, clearly enjoying Tooru’s look of confusion-addled outrage. “Your boyfriend’s here, Iwaizumi-kun. I take it you’ll stop being difficult now, yeah? I have to get to my next appointment soon, you know, and I don’t like being here any more than you do. Hospitals give me the chills, and your boyfriend looks like he wants to eat me. Does he always look this unpleasant, or is this—”

“Okay, stop. Why are you doing this?” Tooru hisses, blunt and earnestly sharp, for once. “Are you from the funeral home? Not that I’ve called anyone, but maybe it’s a complimentary service? Or maybe you’re some kind of twisted salesperson looking for some new business? What do you even sell, huh? Ghost-hunting? Psychic annoyance?”

At Tooru’s words, the stranger’s smile only gets wider, sharper, and Tooru takes one step closer, fists curling into tight balls at his sides. “You know what? Now that I think about it, I somehow highly doubt that. What kind of a salesperson or funeral worker makes fun of their potential client this bad? Are you that lousy at your job, or are you just a mindless fucking jerk who gets off on exploiting others’ pain? Because if it is the latter, I swear to God, I will end you. I will fuck up your life so bad you won’t even have time to—”

“Oooh, feisty,” the stranger interjects, laughing breezily. “You’re right, pretty boy, I am not a funeral worker. I specialize in deaths, not burials. Young Iwaizumi-kun here is supposed to be my nine o’clock appointment tonight, but it’s been fifteen minutes and he still refuses to go with me. I mean, sure, I can take him away by force, but that wouldn’t look good on my yearly performance report. I gotta make sure the realm’s brand name stays positive, you know?” He shrugs, picking a non-existent lint from his jacket lapels. “He said he will only come with me once he sees you for the last time and fulfills his promise. What is that all about, if you don’t mind telling me?”

“Will you let me kiss you, right before I die?”

“I will. I promise, on one condition.” 

“What is it?”

“I want you to promise that you’ll do the same for me.”

“Iwa-chan.” Tooru’s world turns into murky fog once more, and he falls into a nearby chair, tearful and alone. “Hajime, you foolish, stubborn brute. How do you want to go about fulfilling any promises now that you’re dead, huh?”

He breaks down into finger-clenching sobs, his face turning red and splotchy as reality crashes down on him all at once, hard and sharp and unforgiving. “You’re dead, Hajime,” he says between sniffles, “You’re dead. You left me all alone. Why are you dead? Why did you do that, why did you leave me? Why did you have to make me go through the rest of my life alone? You know I can’t do it. I don’t ever want to do it. I won’t do it, Hajime, not without you, do you hear me?! Do you fucking hear me?!”

Tooru stands up suddenly, violently, his chair noisily skittering backward. “If you want to fulfill your promise, then come back to me!” he shouts, addressing the space where the stranger previously indicated. “Come back to me and let us have a do-over. Please, please.” He pulls at his own hair until he feels it sticking up in odd places, and lets out a restrained whimper. “Come back to me, Iwa-chan,” he says, not above a whisper, “Come back to me and let me fulfill my promise to you. Please.”

As he wraps his arms around his middle and sinks to the floor, breathless and hopeless, he feels a warm breeze sweep across his face, soft as flower-petals. A light pressure settles against his lips, certain and familiar, steadily getting bolder. Tooru’s eyes flutter closed automatically as a tear falls down his cheek, and he lets time freeze for a moment, ever-trusting, because it’s him. It’s Hajime, his Hajime, his always-strong, always-reliable Iwa-chan. Their promise materializes in the air all around him, and Tooru knows that Hajime will never leave without a word, not even to the dreary land of the dead.

Thus with a kiss I die.

“No, Iwa-chan.” The pressure lifts, the breeze disperses, and the winds of time start picking back up again, right where it left off. “No. No. Don’t leave me! No! Iwa-chan!” 

Thus with a kiss I die.

“HAJIME!” Tooru shouts, cries, pieces of himself coming loose, never to be put together again. “COME BACK! I beg of you, please, COME BACK!”

Everything he sees whirls into nonsensical shapes. Tooru’s mind feels like it’s bursting, desperate brain matter turning into dust and debris because what else is there to think about, what is even the point of everything, nothing will ever make sense anymore now that he’s gone, what good is anything if Iwa-chan is not here with me—

“You won’t make him come back like that, you know.”

Surprised, Tooru lifts his head to find the stranger standing over him, reluctant pity marring his features. There is something glowing near his chest now, a golden sphere that hangs like a necklace, pulsing like a miniature sun. Tooru tries not to look at it and searches for his eyes instead, his senses leaping at the dull hope that the stranger’s words have given him. “If not that, then what will?” he asks, “What will make him come back?”

The stranger sighs, then clicks his tongue. “I’m really not supposed to tell you any of this, but…” He winces, shakes his head. “I’m always much too soft for my own good. Anyway, they say you’ve been blessed by the gods, so maybe you’ll be able to make your way out of there unscathed.”

Taking a seat on the edge of Hajime’s bed, the stranger crosses his long legs and continues, “If you want to get him back, you’ll have to be the one who bargains for him and picks him up from the Underworld. How do you get to the Underworld? Well, you certainly didn’t hear this from me, but…” He smiles in a mischievous way, eyes twinkling. “Next time you lie down for a nap or something, try wishing for death instead of sleep. Depending on his mood, my twin brother might then take you down to the land of the dead to give you just a little taste of what you wish for. You know, out of spite for me.”

“Your twin brother?” Tooru’s eyebrows knit, and he suddenly recalls a story, one that he and Hajime once read together a long, long time ago. “Who are you, really?”

The stranger stands up, straightening his perfectly-tailored suit. “Well, I have a lot of names, to be honest, but they all mean the same: Death. You can call me Kuroo, though, because I like you. It’s my alter ego.” He winks. “Don’t tell anyone.”

With barely half a step, Kuroo has already reached the door in the short time it took Tooru to blink, turning the knob open with an unusually pale hand. Outside, there are no hospital corridors, no passing doctors or nurses, no pristine white walls or potted chrysanthemums. There is only a vast beach covered with black sand, and a shadow of a boat in the far distance. Everything is dark, and still, and dead, and it all waits for Kuroo with a kind of somber devotion, like lined-up servants welcoming their master home.

Before he walks over the threshold, Kuroo turns toward Tooru, and this time, his smile stretches so wide it looks downright inhuman. “One more thing, Oikawa-kun,” he says, and Tooru has no choice but to listen, “When you decide to follow my earlier advice, make sure to bring your violin with you. At the very least, I feel like it might keep your story from ending as just another tragedy.”

“Hey, Iwa-chan, did you know that in Greek mythology, Death and Sleep are said to be twin brothers?

Makes you think how death is just a longer version of sleep, doesn't it? How you can probably just close your eyes and drift off, but then you don’t wake up in the same world anymore.

Well, at least the Greek Underworld sounds cool, I guess. Do you think we can still play volleyball there? Or do you think I can still compose songs on my violin and perform a little recital for the souls in residence? Maybe even for Hades and Persephone?”

(Do you think we’ll still recognize each other there, Iwa-chan?)

That night, Tooru sleeps in fits and starts, violin tucked in the crook of his arm like a comfort doll, safely stored inside its case. 

He doesn’t dream, and he wishes, desperately, for death or sleep or whatever to steal him away and never wake him up again, not if it means he has to live in a world without Hajime.

Not if it means he has to spend the rest of his life alone.

Come back to me, Iwa-chan.

Come back to me. 

Unfortunately, he does wake up, and it looks like Kuroo’s advice is decisively far from being unfounded.

Tooru walks. He walks across a gray desert where nothing else breathes and the sky is a churning mass of wet charcoal. There is no road or path under his feet, just washed-out sand and loose dirt that somehow finds a way inside his shoes and pricks him through the socks. It feels like rolling needles against his skin, but Tooru grits his teeth and marches on ahead despite the discomfort; ever-enduring, ever-ambitious, with his violin case slung across his back like a greatsword.

At one point, he crosses over a threshold, marked only by a crumbling monolith and a swirl of black dust that slowly parts when he walks through. There is no other creature in sight except a lone elm tree, branches heavy with what look like hanging balls of colorless mist. It twists and turns and spins around; gently, almost lazily, and Tooru hears a hundred different voices calling out to him in unison, breathless and tuneless.

Come and rest your weary head under our shade, wanderer,

For you are far from your own bed tonight.

We have dreams under every leaf, briefly sweet and mildly sad,

Pick whichever one you want, and your choice shall shine your journey clear.

Before Tooru can even start thinking something along the lines of this is most likely a fucking trap, the landscape around him changes. The ground in his left and right drops, and then the one behind him as well, leaving only a straight, sandy footpath big enough for only one person, connecting him and the elm tree. He can’t go around it or avoid it, can’t even run away crying and try to go home, unless he wants to be swallowed up by the newly-formed void that is the ghost of the bleak terrain. There is no other way but forward, and Tooru is pretty sure that the Underworld is now messing with him, and he has no other choice but to let it. It’s like this whole black world is an omnipresent individual, constantly predicting his thoughts and shaping his choices, and this time, it definitely, definitely wants Tooru to go to the tree, for better or for worse, no matter how Tooru himself feels about it. 

Alright, then. There is no other way but forward. What is the worst thing a tree of dreams can do to me, anyway?

As he walks up the drained path toward the elm, he can’t help but think that this start to his journey is very fitting. Dreams and their perceived limitations have always been an undercurrent in his and Hajime’s interactions ever since their childhood days. Despite what anyone else might think, Oikawa Tooru is not a genius nor a prodigy, and he perfectly knows that he will never be one. He got to where he is right now through endless hard work, defying his limits and breaking through every wave of self-doubt, and each step he’s taken toward his dreams has always been made sharper by one Iwaizumi Hajime. He is the necessary prods on Tooru’s back, the seemingly callous bets and off-hand remarks, the sometimes-violent wind that forces his wings to take flight. Hajime always inspired him to go as far as he possibly can, and a lot of Tooru’s dreams would have probably remained a dream had Hajime not been by his side, smacking curses and encouragement all the same.

They both started with young dreams, of aliens and dinosaurs and fire-breathing dragons. They came to rely on each other by way of nightmares and crushed dreams, of losses and rejections told in tears and anger. They walked into life together, loved each other through all the rise and fall of tide-like dreams, and right now, Tooru probably has to confront the worst of those dreams in order to bring Hajime back.

He doesn’t mind, though. How can he, when he knows full well that Hajime always seems to love him best when they are both bravely wading through dreams in order to make them real?

Hey, Iwa-chan,

I have a lot of dreams, probably as many as there are stars in the sky, or leaves in an ancient tree.

But do you know which one of them I most want to see up close, as an undeniable reality?

That’s right, it’s you. Anything that involves you being happy, peacefully spending life by my side.

Despite all my big ambitions about the future… At the end of the day, you and me together is all I’ll ever want.

Tooru chooses a dream. 

It is fog-white and whisper-soft, dangling on the edge of a serrated branch. Inside the swirl, he sees a grayscale version of Hajime and himself, age-lined but not weary. They are standing in a kitchen, bickering by the looks of it, surrounded by floating pots and pans because this is a dream and dreams have an annoying quality of not making sense, even though underneath it all, Tooru knows that not that much has veered off from reality. Neither of them seems to have magically become a good cook, Hajime is still a fan of flicking Tooru everywhere, and Tooru is still not very adept at avoiding them (he never really wants to, anyway).

Inside the dream-ball as well as in his very real, very breaking heart, Hajime is still the one and only thing he wants his future to absolutely have—anything else can drop dead and he’ll get over it in a month or two, tops—and that is precisely why Tooru eventually falls on his knees, crying in a world where even the river wails in lamentation. That is why he feels like his body is being torn apart, sucking all the breath from his lungs and all the hope in his veins, leaving him empty except for raw, bereaved screams. 

“Poor thing.”

“What a pitiable man, to have the love of his life taken so quickly, so cruelly.”

“His lover was only twenty-seven. How could his life end this early?”

“And he was so talented, too. Athletic trainer for Japan's national volleyball team? He had his whole life ahead of him. So many big moments to live in, so much love to give to our poor Tooru here. So many roles to play on the world stage.”

“Gods, why are you so cruel? Why did you forsake him so?”

“What did Hajime ever do to you?”

Suddenly, all around Tooru the air ripples and breaks, revealing a horde of black-clad mourners in capes and gowns. They wail and cry in a muted chorus, tearing out their hair and rending their clothes. Try as Tooru might, he can’t see their faces under the oversized hoods. Only their tears are visible, solid and glimmering and black as obsidian, running down their blank cheeks like cannonballs against misty sky. They sit around Tooru, backs bent and knees folded, and they all grieve with his own words on their tongues, words he’s been thinking about but hasn’t said yet. They mourn for him, with him, as him. It’s hauntingly surreal, and for a moment, Tooru’s attention is captured by the strange sight, eyes blearily collapsing on the communal crying.

At some point, he looks back toward the elm, boughs no longer heavy with false dreams. There is a woman there now, standing under the fading tree and blindly weeping amidst the mourners. Her black dress is adorned with bloody ribbons, and her chest is pierced with a dagger. There’s no wound there, and yet she looks to be caught in the worst pain imaginable. Her face is covered with tear tracks, occasionally contorting in agony, and she is constantly wringing her clothes—a glove first, a collar next. She walks back and forth, feet not really touching the ground, and when he sees Tooru start moving toward her, she begins to cry even harder.

Tooru finds himself crossing the landscape as though he’s truly in a dream, weightlessly cutting through all the weeping heads, the woman’s towering figure a lighthouse in an ocean of tears. Her grief almost looks like something tangible, like something that can be touched and torn in two, and it strangely beckons him forward even though he’s not really sure whether he wants to help her, or to crumble into pieces right along with her. "Excuse me, ma’am," he says, when he finally gets close enough to be heard, "Are you okay? Can I do anything for you, anything at all?"

The woman lifts her head sadly, and her features waver between one face to the next, never settling on a specific picture of anguish. Sometimes she’s a boy with blue-black hair, other times she’s a middle-aged woman with Tooru’s own brown eyes. She sniffles once, twice, before taking a lacy handkerchief out and dabs at Tooru’s cheek, her touch dull and impersonal. “You have a good heart, wanderer,” she says. “Obviously, I am not okay—and I’m quite sure that you can see that—but I appreciate your attempt at pointless 'chit-chats', even though it was a little boring. Anyway, would you care to know what you can do to probably make me feel a little bit better?”

Tooru registers the blandly-delivered insult, but the woman’s jumps in crying faces and conversation topics make it somewhat hard to respond. In the end, he can only do what she wants, which is to ask her a follow-up question, shaped like a confused weariness on his tongue: “What?”

The woman gives him an almost-smile, faint and blurry like a sigh in the wind. “Say, Oikawa-kun, will you sing something for me?”

“Sing?” Tooru asks, genuinely surprised. “Well… I guess that sounds delightful, alright, but I’m afraid I am much better at playing the violin than I am at singing.”

“That is hardly a problem. Violin sounds lovely.” She shrugs. “Will you play me something, then?”

“What do you want me to play? Do you have any requests?”

The moment Tooru finishes asking the question, she stops crying altogether. She looks him dead in the eyes, and her face finally settles into something resembling Tooru’s own grief.

“Just play me something you like, Tooru,” she says, voice familiar but brittle as glass. “Play me a song about grief and make me give you a real smile. That is your first condition, by the way.”

Tooru stares at her. At her dark, spiky brown hair, her olive-green eyes. “Condition? What condition?”

“Oh, you know. It is what you must do to bring him back.”

To bring him back.

That’s right. Tooru is here to find Hajime and bring him back to the land of the living, so that what he saw inside the dream-ball can become a reality. Tooru is prepared to do anything to make that happen, anything at all, and if that means he has to play this woman something and make her feel another thing that’s completely different, as different as winter to summer, then he will do it.

A song about grief, but one that will make her smile.

“That’s a good song, Tooru.”

“Yeah? You really think so?”

“I do. It sounds sad, but it strangely makes me want to smile.”

“That’s good, then! That is the general emotion that I want to portray in this rendition, and that is exactly what I intended the listeners to feel. I want them to see that even in the deepest of sadness, hope still persists. Especially if you have someone reliable who will always be there to support you.”

“Mmm. You’re talking about me, aren’t you?”

“Umm, no?? Silly Iwa-chan, why don’t you go play with your athletes now and stop bothering me already—Ow, ow, ow! Okay, okay, yes, you’re right! I was lying! I’m sorry!”

“You can do it, can’t you?” the woman asks him again, breaking his reverie. “You can do anything you set your mind to, if you want it badly enough. Well, at least that is what he believes.”

I believe in you, Shittykawa.

Just play her that song I like. You got this.

Tooru closes his eyes, opens them again. “Yes, sure, okay,” he answers, already lifting his violin to his left shoulder. “Yes, of course I can do it.”

I don't actually know if I can do it, but again, this one’s for you, Iwa-chan.

“Play me something, Tooru.”

“Oh? This is a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence! What do you want me to play? Do you have any requests?”

“Not really. Just… I don’t know, play me something you like. Something that reminds you of us, maybe.”

“Awww, Iwa-chan….!”

“Urgh, stop looking at me like that, Trashykawa! I take it back, I don’t want to hear you play!”

“Ahaha, don’t be like that, Iwa-chan! Here, listen, I think you might just fall in love with this song…”

Tooru sets his bow to the strings, and weeps. The notes fly from the points where horsehair meets synthetic core, flowing unseen like tears given to the rain. He moves back and forth between keys, between worlds, between one memory to the next. He sees Hajime as a child, a butterfly net on his hand and a spot of dirt on his face. There’s a swish of something soft in the air, and he watches a blue-and-white jacket flapping in the wind. Kitagawa Daiichi Junior High School Volleyball Club, it says, hanging from the growing shoulders of a spiky-haired boy, its edges bravely catching opaline sunbeams.

The next time he blinks, the blue is suddenly replaced by soft turquoise. Tooru sees a ball spinning in midair, closer and closer until it touches his hands—long, adept fingers bumping it into motion. It flies to his left, finding home under the strong palm of the ace, and falls with almost a dent on the other side of the court. The spiker turns to him with a victorious shout, bumps his fist to his and slaps his back with a fond hand. That was a great set, I know you can do it. You’re the best partner I’ve ever had and it won’t ever change, whether you take your call in a court or on a stage. The number 4 on his chest glints when he moves; a wordless, forever-linked companion to Tooru’s 1. When it counts, the ball will always go to the ace. When it counts, Oikawa Tooru will always go to Iwaizumi Hajime. Always, always, always. The sky is blue, the sun rises in the east, and Oikawa Tooru loves Iwaizumi Hajime with all of his annoying, flippant heart. That’s all there is to it.

Under the memories, Tooru plays on, his violin crunching out melodies that dive and crash in a variety of moods, even though the primary one is still a hopeful sadness. It’s a food-for-thought he remembers indulging, one night; a nocturnal reverie that seized him when Hajime was away for a game: how the two of them were always there for each other, two stars aligning on an eternal tangent. How they always took turns to support each other’s dreams, stepping in when one stumbled or ran too fast in a self-destructive torrent. How they could sometimes communicate their thoughts with just one look, and how a touch of the hand could relay so much more than words ever could.

Hajime and Tooru had never needed too many words, anyway. They knew each other as well as they knew themselves, and that fact alone had always been the greatest consolation every time one of them found themselves in a slump, because they knew they were never alone.

“Quit it with the ‘me’ this and the ‘I’ that, you moron!”

(It’s never about you. It’s always about us.)

Tooru smiles as he plays, reliving what Hajime violently planted inside his mind the day he almost punched his junior in middle school. His headbutt had hurt like hell, but what Hajime made him feel with his words next was like heaven-forged power, making him feel like he can do anything. Run a thousand miles, go to Nationals, sight-read a whole concerto. Make Grief smile, and bring back the love of his life from a dark, lifeless land.

You’re right, Iwa-chan. Even when I’m sad, I can always smile, because I’m never alone.

So now, will you take my hand and sing this song with me?

(Everything I do well, I do it with you. 

You bring out the best in me, and together, we’ll conquer worlds.)

When Tooru puts down his bow, the woman smiles. 

“That was a lovely song. Thank you,” she says. Not faint, not dull, even though she still doesn’t look happy. “If he were here, he would have been proud of you. You’ve come so far.”

There is a softness in her face now that looks almost tranquil, like when grief has settled down into something open-ended. “Go on now, Oikawa-kun,” she tells him, her head inclined in a vague direction, somewhere to her right. “I hope the rest of your story will not be a tragedy.”

“You want me to go that way?” Tooru asks, indicating the path that has suddenly turned up under his feet. “What will I find if I go there?”

The woman is already moving away, humming a few bars of the song Tooru has just played for her, but she turns around when he poses the question.

“You will find the one you seek, wanderer,” she replies, “And when it is time for you to journey back to the surface, he will follow you there, a loyal but invisible shade behind you. You won’t be able to touch him or speak to him, and remember: You must not, under any circumstances, turn around to look back at him. Not even once, not until you both arrive at the land of the living, or he will never be able to join you there in the light. If that happens, you will have to go home alone, and you will lose him for the second and final time."

Tooru nods, the remains of his confidence still stifling. “That’s it? I only have to look ahead?”

“Oh, but Tooru, that is much, much harder than it sounds.”

The woman glides across the clearing, leaving mist and more mourners in her wake, and then disappears in a cloud of gloom.

Tooru takes a step on the path, his first out of many, and starts walking. He walks across darkness so dense he can’t even see his own fingers, and when he can finally see his surroundings again, he’s already traipsing through a field of knee-high gray grass. There are people here—or, at least, what used to be people, sitting and floating with aimless grace. They stay in their own little patch of perennials, separated from one another, although none of them seem to mind it very much.

“For you, sir.”

A shade of a girl, her features colorless but shimmering blue at the edges, walks up to Tooru and hands him a white, six-petaled flower. “You look sad. Wear this, and maybe you’ll be happy.”

Tooru can’t help but smile. He crouches down on one knee, making himself level with the girl. “Thank you,” he says, “Do you want to help me put this behind my ear?”

“Yes!” The girl beams, a dazzling glimmer of blue-white teeth, the first real color Tooru has seen in this lifeless world. She reaches for the flower, holds it in her little ghost-hand, and slips it in the delicate crook of Tooru’s left ear. “There. You look pretty.”

“I know.” Tooru winks, and the girl giggles. “The flower is also pretty, don’t you think? Can you tell me its name?”

“It’s white asphodel. They grow everywhere here, even though it never rains.”

“I see. It’s a beautiful name, but I’m sure yours is even more so. Do you want to tell me what it is?”

The girl blinks, then hesitates. “I… I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t tell you anything about myself, least of all my name. It’s been so long, and… and I’m afraid I don’t remember it anymore.”

“You don’t remember?”

“No.” She shakes her head, looking a little sad. “And I bet he doesn’t remember his, either.”

“‘He’?” Tooru’s heart stutters in his chest. “Do you mean Hajime?”

“I don’t know his name, sir. No one does, not even himself. But…” She pauses, smiles, and taps Tooru’s cheek twice. “...But maybe you can make him remember. After all, I’m pretty sure he remembers you. He always will, and I think that’s why he’ll look nothing like me.”

“What? How can he remember me if he doesn’t even remember himself?”

The girl smiles even wider, sweet and genuinely innocent in the way that only children can be. 

“That’s easy, sir. I think he just can’t help it.”

“I think the Underworld will just be a series of empty halls where we can play and sing as much as we want without ever getting tired. Well, that’s if the judges deemed us good enough not to receive much punishment, anyway.”

“Mmm. Do you think we’ll play as good there as we do right now?”

“Sure. You’ll probably receive some ‘best setter’ or ‘best performer’ award again, if they have one. You’ll play your violin everyday for the other souls, create a little concert of your own, and generally be as annoying as you’ve always been.”

“And you’ll be just as grouchy as you’ve always been, Iwa-chan!”

“Only because of you, you idiot!”

“So you think we’ll still know each other when we’re both down there? You don’t think we’ll forget each other or something? The River Lethe is there for a reason, you know.”

“Of course I won’t forget, you idiot. What kind of question is that? I’ve known you for far too long, it’s going to take more than death and some pathetic river to wash you off my memories.”

“Aw, Iwa-chan, since when have you become such a romantic?”

“Quit that! Stop looking at me like that, you idiot!”

“Iwa-chan, is ‘idiot’ the only curse word you know? You really should expand your vocabulary a little bit more, you know—Ow, that hurts! Stop hitting me, Iwa-chan, you mean brute!”

Tooru continues walking. He pushes through brambles and thickets, shoves away sharp branches of skeletal trees. He crosses one empty hall after another; cold ballrooms, domed auditoriums, hospital lobbies. He steps on pearls and black marble, rough stone floors, dusty white tiles. He walks and walks and walks, never tiring, never stopping, until his shoes skids familiarly on a shiny wooden surface.

This hall is contrastingly colorful, and after the monochromatic landscape of the Underworld so far, Tooru’s eyes need a few moments to adjust. Slowly, carefully, he starts to take in the varnished floorboards, the brown just a few shades darker than the tiled walls. He sees the metal railing of the balcony above, the high ceiling, and the cream, long-handled doors; spaced along two opposing walls. The blue-gray curtains still flap softly the way he remembers them, and the net still stretches from one side to the other, separating the court into two playing fields for different teams to defend.

Nothing has changed. In this world’s version of Aoba Johsai High School’s Gymnasium 3, not a single thing has changed.

Not even the captain and the ace.

“Hey, Tooru. You’re Tooru, right? Oikawa Tooru?”

Tooru’s whole body freezes, pulled toward a single point, a single voice. “Iwa-chan?”

There’s a man walking over toward the net, wheeling a metal cart full of balls. Even from a distance, Tooru already knows who he is. He will always know him, anywhere, anywhere— even in this land of black tears and wiped-out memories.

“Iwa-chan,” he whispers. Then, louder: “Iwa-chan!”

“Hm? Are you calling me? Is that my name?” Hajime makes a face, looking seriously annoyed. “Ugh. Can’t say I like it, but if you’re the one calling me that, I guess I’ll allow it.” He shrugs, snorting a little. “I don’t remember anything about myself except you, so technically, you could tell me that my name is Shit, for example, and I wouldn’t be able to contradict you.”

Iwa-chan is here. He’s here. He’s not dead. “Uh… Uh-huh. Yes.”

Hajime turns toward him, eyebrows quirking. “What’s the matter, Trashykawa? Cat got your tongue?”

“Pro—Probably, yes.”

“Right, you’re even weirder than I remember. Are you sure you’re Oikawa Tooru?” Hajime takes one step closer, peering up at him with that sharp gaze Tooru knows so well, and he has to stop himself from tearfully kissing him right then and there. “The Trashykawa I know would never lose his ability to speak pretty words even in the wrong situations.”

Oh, but I've lost it a few times already, Iwa-chan, don’t you remember?

Off the top of my head, there was this one time when Shiratorizawa defeated us 2 to 1 and we lost our ticket to Nationals. And then one more time when I failed the Berlin Philharmonic audition. Another time when your mother got sick and had to go into surgery, and another time in fourth grade when your dog died and we had to bury him under the wisteria tree.

And, last but definitely not least: when you first told me you were in love with me.

“Well, there is a surefire way to prove you’re really Oikawa Tooru, I think.” Hajime smiles in a challenging way, then picks up a ball from the cart, twirling it around a few times. “Say, do you want to practice some spikes with me for a little bit? I remember that you seem to like playing volleyball. That, and your beloved violin, of course. It’s still the same one for the last five years, huh? What did you name it again? Yui-chan or something?”

Tooru is unable to speak for a second, his whirling thoughts skidding to a decided stop. Hajime looks alive and well, as solid and as beautiful as he has always been, hopelessly chirpier than ever. He’s nothing like the small glimpses of the pale, stiff body Tooru saw lying on the hospital bed just a few hours ago, and he’s not flat or drab or muted like all the other souls Tooru has seen on his way here. He doesn’t look dead, period. He—Iwaizumi Hajime, Tooru’s Hajime—is standing here in all his glory, present and earnest and rock-steady, asking his setter—his partner— to toss him some balls, and everybody knows that there is really no world in this universe, made-up or otherwise, where Oikawa Tooru will not answer him with a run—the fastest he’s ever run in his life; truly the fastest, faster than speeding bullets, faster than light—and give him just the kind of toss that he will spike the hardest, overpowering all nets and blockers and receivers alike. 

(And maybe, just maybe, overpowering death itself altogether.)

At Tooru’s nod, Hajime throws him the ball with a standard serve, and Tooru receives it, setting it perfectly. It’s a quick set, the one they’ve practiced so many times before, the winning hand in so many previous matches, and Hajime knows it even before the ball leaves Tooru’s hand. He runs up toward it—perfect rhythm, perfect tempo—and when he jumps, the ball is within his strongest reach, waiting to be driven home.

Bam.

In-bounds. Powerful. Perfect.

“Again.”

He keeps calling for another, and Tooru obliges. He stops thinking where the limitless balls even came from, and just does what he and Hajime does best. With every call, every set, every slide of their eyes and feet and hands, they communicate. They speak, and they listen.

“One more time!” I know you. You’re the best partner I’ve ever had, the best I’ll ever have.

“Iwa-chan!” You’re Iwaizumi Hajime. You’re the one who keeps me on my toes, anchors my feet to the ground when my mind gets lost in the clouds. You’re my favorite person in the whole entire universe, and I’ll help you remember every piece you’ve forgotten about yourself.

“Give me the best you’ve got, Tooru!” Sure, do that, but I guess I don’t really care. Even when I don’t remember myself, I remember you—and I think that’s enough.

You will always be enough for me.

No. No, Hajime, I won’t. I won’t ever be enough without you.

I don’t want to be enough without you.

“Iwa-chan.” When Hajime stops calling for the ball, Tooru walks toward him, hands empty except for a folded heart on his sleeve. “Iwa-chan, will you come back with me?”

Hajime stares at him, looking a little confused. “Come back where?”

“Home. With me.”

“You mean go back up there? Are you serious? Can I really do that?”

“You can now.” Tooru nods, firmly. He touches Hajime’s wrist, resists the urge to drag him out of this hellhole right then and there, and looks him in the eyes. “You don’t even have to do anything fancy, either,” he adds, “Just follow me out of here, and don’t stop walking until we’re safely home. Will you do that, Iwa-chan? Do you want to do that?”

“Okay.” Hajime comes snapping into the decision, a thunderbolt that never needs to wait. “Okay, sure, let’s do that.”

“Um... Iwa-chan?” Tooru blinks, surprised. “Are you sure? In case you haven’t noticed, coming back to life is kind of a big decision. I thought you were going to put up a bit more resistance, considering how stubborn you usually are. I was even prepared to beg you for it, you know.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, you can still beg now.” Hajime laughs, then shrugs his shoulders in a proud kind of defeat. “I have nothing to resist, Tooru, okay? Going back up there with you just sounds so right, as right as having you here makes me feel. My memory is very fuzzy right now, so I’m basically operating on instincts, and my instincts are telling me that wherever you are… that is where I want to be. Dead or alive, it doesn’t matter. Earth or Mars or Underworld, it doesn’t matter. None of that matters, as long as I get to be with you. So yes, let’s go back home, wherever that is. Let’s do it. Let’s come back to life.”

Tooru watches the way doubt never settles between Hajime’s brows, the way his jaw is set in a choiceless, determined confession, and Tooru lets it engulf him in a whirlwind of hope. He’s coming back. We’ll get to be together again. “Thank you,” he says, letting his head fall against Hajime’s right shoulder, and takes the first deep breath he’s had all night. “Thank you, Iwa-chan. Thank you for remembering me, for agreeing to come back home with me.” Thank you for never leaving me alone.

“I always will,” Hajime answers, and his hand comes up to touch Tooru’s hair, tangling in the waves like he never wants to let go. “Thank you, as well, for coming here to get me.”

“Always.” Tooru laughs. He wraps his arms around Hajime’s waist and lets himself be welcomed home by the one person he can’t imagine living his life without, the one and only person he will always challenge heaven and hell for. He presses a kiss on Hajime’s cheek next, smiles to himself when he sees him almost blush, and puts his lips close to his ear when he whispers, “I love you, Hajime. Do try to remember that, won’t you? Because once we start our journey home, I won’t be able to look at you. I won’t be able to touch you or speak to you either, so, please—please remember that I love you, no matter what this place will throw at us. Okay?”

“Alright, alright, I got it.” Hajime’s answer sounds brusque and dismissive, but Tooru feels himself being squeezed tighter, warmer. “Don’t worry, Shittykawa. I’m going to be there behind you, no matter what.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise,” Hajime replies. “Oh, and Tooru?”

“Yes?”

“When I said I didn’t remember anything about myself, I think I might have lied. Because I just realized that I have never forgotten at least one thing: that I love you, too.”

The moment they start their journey out of the Underworld, the landscape changes again, and definitely not for the better.

Everything is shrouded in dense, murky gray fog. Tooru can’t see or hear anything around him; not the ground, not the trees, nor the rivers. The asphodel fields and their dwellers are nowhere to be seen, and there is no path indicating which direction he needs to go. They can only go forward with faith alone, and Tooru has never been good at making a move blindly, without first observing the weak holes he can avoid or exploit and thinking two to three steps ahead of his every choice. He can eventually have faith in practically everything, if he has sufficient base for it, but there is nothing here that he can use to do that, and so he’s not even surprised when with every step he takes inside the fog, the doubt inside his heart only grows.

Slow down, Tooru. Can you hear his steps behind you?

He can. In fact, it is the only sound he can hear, steady and unhurried, strong and unbending. “Iwa-chan?” He tries calling him, although he knows it will be futile and that he’ll receive no answer. “Iwa-chan, are you there?”

Silence, except for the sound of footsteps. When Tooru stops walking, the sound stops, as well.

“Iwa-chan?”

It won’t work. He’ll never be able to answer you.

That’s fine. Hajime will still be there, Tooru tells himself. He promised he’ll follow me, no matter what happens.

When Hajime promises something, he will never break it. Especially not to Tooru.

That, he will always have faith in. 

Always.

With that in mind, Tooru continues to walk for quite some time, his violin a reassuring weight against his back. He follows a road he can never see, trusting some kind of higher power not to fling him inside a fiery river or something. Occasionally, when the oppressive silence becomes too much, he’ll shout some words of encouragement to Hajime, trying not to feel disheartened by the way they bounce off the fog unanswered. Still, he calls to him over and over again, believing that Hajime somehow will be able to listen to him, the way he himself can magically hear his footsteps in this voiceless, sightless world.

“Keep up, Iwa-chan, don’t you dare fall behind!”

“This fog is overwhelmingly troublesome, don’t you think?”

“I hope I’m not leading us straight into the river Acheron! That would certainly be bad, wouldn’t it? Although I’m sure you would save me, if that happened. You were always the better swimmer.”

“You know what, Iwa-chan?” Tooru says at some point, as he tries to shake off a handful of churling fog and fails, “We’ve been at this for quite some time, and I’m sure you’re already getting a little antsy by now. Why don’t we play a game, then? For every twenty steps I take, I’m going to tell you a memory. About you, about me, and about us. You know, to refresh your brain for when we actually arrive at the surface. How does that sound, hmm?”

Tap, tap, tap, tap. “Four steps! I’m going to take that as a yes,” Tooru says cheerfully, clapping his hands lightly. “Okay, I’ll start now! The first memory is… Mmmm… Ah yes, my favorite one! Do you remember the first, the very first time we met, Iwa-chan?

“I think we were about five or six, and I had just moved into your street. My mom took me to say hello to the neighbors, and after a while, it made me cranky because I just wanted to go home already and watch Tika-chu on TV. But then we got to your house, and you were the one who opened the door. You were already so confident then, so earnest and solid, that I forgot my bad mood and immediately asked if you wanted to play with me. We ended up going to that small river behind your house, and that was my first time seeing real-life frogs and cicadas. I was so happy. You were the first friend I made in Miyagi, and it turned out we were starting elementary school in the same place, as well.”

Tap, tap, tap. “I remember thinking that I wanted to stay with you forever. Crazy, right?” Tooru laughs, soft with recollections. “You told me you were the one who fell in love with me first, back when we were in high school, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think I already loved you from the very first moment we met, and I think some part of me just immediately knew that you’re going to become incredibly important to me.”

Important enough to save from the clutches of death, huh?

“That’s right.” Tooru laughs again, at the Hajime of his imagination. “Are you going to scold me, then, for attempting the impossible?”

No. I’m actually glad that you’re just conceited enough to come down here and get me.

Tooru smiles as he walks, counting his steps inside his head. Ten, eleven, fifteen, seventeen. Twenty. “Another twenty steps have passed, Iwa-chan! This time, let me tell you about my happiest high school day: third year, beginning of spring. That was when we first kissed, do you remember? It wasn’t my first kiss, not by a long shot, but it was the first and only one that mattered. I remember thinking it felt too good to be true, especially when you confessed right after that you were in love with me—well, after I practically forced you to, that is.” He laughs to himself, lost in the smell of cherry blossom petals on white blazers, the feeling of lightly-gelled hair between his fingers. “And to think that you’d been really angry with me not even five minutes before! That headbutt was even more painful than the one you gave me back in middle school, but, well—I kinda needed that, alright.

“I guess it’s true, huh, what people say? That love makes you stupid and all that?” Tap, tap, tap. “I almost rejected MDW’s offer just to be able to go to the same university as you. Good thing you hit me and knocked me back to my senses, huh? Oh, but you know what? I think if I hadn’t told you I’d been thinking of turning them down, you probably wouldn’t have shown me your real feelings out of frustration. Do you think my bouts of stupidity were actually shaped by fate, then?” 

“Oikawa, for God’s sake, don’t be an idiot! What kind of a stupid, mad, idiotic moron turns down MDW for whatever conservatory in Tokyo you’ve been accepted to, huh? Are you even listening to yourself, you dumbass?!”

“Oh, but Vienna is so far, Iwa-chan, don’t you think? I don’t know if I’ll survive there. There’s like, a very worrying shortage of rice there—”

“Your favorite food is literally bread, dumbass, and there’s plenty of that there!”

“But what if I get homesick there? What if I get lonely?”

“Then you’ll just have to deal with it like everybody else!”

“Oh, is that what you’re going to do, Iwa-chan? When you get lonely in your new place, when you badly need someone to talk to and I’m probably off sleeping half a world away, is that what you’re going to do? ‘Deal with it’? Won’t you miss me even a little bit?”

“OF COURSE I FUCKING WILL, OIKAWA! But that doesn’t matter, okay? I’ll miss you, I’ll miss you so freaking hard it will probably hurt, and we’ll see each other only once or twice for the next four years if I’m lucky, but THAT DOESN’T MATTER! None of that matters, because you’re GOING there regardless of how I feel about it, alright? Please don’t let your—or anyone’s—sentimentality get in the way of your dreams! The idea of you leaving will never make me happy—hell, it’ll probably torture me for a good long while—but I’ll be fine. You’ll also be fine there, because I’ll help you adjust, okay? We’ll call each other every week, every day even, if that’s what you want, and if you get homesick, we’ll get on a video call with your whole family. And I can also apply for a part-time job, so I’ll get to save up some money to visit you in the summer or something. Vienna is not that far from Japan, alright? Just one or two plane rides away. It’s not like you’re going to the North Pole, so stop being an overdramatic little shit and start using your head to actually THINK about your future, do you hear me?! I’m not going to watch you throw this chance away, not in a million years!”

“...Iwa-chan.”

“WHAT?!”

“Iwa-chan, you’re seriously going to miss me ‘so freaking hard it will probably hurt’?”

“......”

“Iwa-chan?”

“No. No, Oikawa, stop right there.”

“Iwa-chan, I’m sorry, I—what—”

“No, stop that, Oikawa. Stop trying to make it any easier. Just—just out with it, if you have anything to say. Just say your piece and go.”

“Go where? Say what piece? Iwa-chan, I—”

“Go back to your practice, back to your lessons, back to your girlfriends. Anything. I don’t know, I don’t need to know.”

“But, Iwa-chan, I—”

“Oikawa. I don’t need your pity, and you don’t need to touch me, either.”

Tooru closes his eyes for a second, shutting out the fog and the endless road. Somewhere inside his mind, he’s eighteen again, eighteen and at the cusp of something magnificent. Something fragile and newly-born, teetering at the edge of an almost, but one that will instantly take flight and seize whatever Tooru has left inside his heart and soul, knocking down every wall and ruining every carefully-constructed facade. 

That something is a starting spark of an inferno, a tiny flare of a revolution that will turn his whole being into a fire-ravaged warrior, and Tooru has never wanted to burn so bad in his life.

“...Okay. You touch me, then.”

“...What?”

“Kiss me, Iwa-chan.”

“Don’t, Oikawa. Don’t joke with me on this, or I swear to God, I will—”

“I am the most serious I have ever been in my entire life. Kiss me, Hajime. Kiss me like you mean it and watch me fall apart in your hands.”

When we crashed, Tooru thinks, remembers, It was with the crash of a stellar collision. Together, we created one bigger, hotter star than we could have ever been on our own.

And it has been that way ever since.

Tooru is transported back to that day, where the scent of cherry blossoms hung in the air. He recalls the way their dusty-rose petals feel, caught between his hands and Hajime’s warm skin. The way Hajime looks under the setting sun, rough and blessedly golden at the edges. The softness of their school blazers, a barrier to what he wanted to feel the most. How their voices mingled together like the grandest symphony of all time: a sigh here, a groan there. A throaty, disbelieving laugh next. A luminous first movement, played consistently con amore in the lovesick C Minor, evolving and ascending into higher and higher grounds.

That day, the two of them came together like the opposite of a surprise. They folded into each other like a strengthening word, like an affirmation, an obvious of course tacked at the edge of their parallel-running lives, and that is what Tooru now holds onto amidst the ever-thickening fog, like the promise of a lighthouse in the distance.

We make our own light, Iwa-chan.

We’re getting out of here, I promise.

And so, Tooru keeps walking. He keeps trading twenty steps for a memory, each one taken from a cherished vault inside his mind. His tenth birthday, when Hajime gave him a mini UFO made from mismatched LEGO pieces and Tooru felt like he could fly to the moon. His first international violin competition, where he stood on the stage with steady legs and a smile on his face, flawlessly playing Paganini’s Concerto No. 1 in D Major to a wide-eyed boy in the back row. This one’s for you, Iwa-chan. And this one, and this next one. It became his mantra after a while, and it has never let him down. He always keeps it close like a little star inside his palm, watches it extend from his fingers with every swing of his bow, and rejoices as it merges with his violin strings, guiding him to create the most beautiful music imaginable.

And now, he whispers it to the crippling blurriness of the Underworld as well, hoping it will be enough of a red thread to seamlessly pave their way out:

This one’s for you, Iwa-chan.

After some time, the fog lifts all at once, like a dream snatched up by a mere blink. A circular doorway stands at attention just a few steps ahead, unguarded and flooded with light, abundantly full of all things fair and radiant.

“Iwa-chan, we’ve arrived!” 

Tooru laughs as he runs forward, stepping through the threshold as nimble as a cat, and turns around eagerly with a wide, backlit smile. “Look, Iwa-chan! We made it—”

Goodbye, Tooru. Don’t cry too much, okay?

In an instant, Hajime drops back, just a few steps away from the light, and Tooru’s hand catches nothing but empty air. Before him, the fog comes back, thick and oily-black this time, lifting Hajime off his feet and carrying him back the way he came. Back to the dead, back to the land of lost memories, and back to where Tooru can’t ever follow a second time, not when he’s still alive.

“Hajime! HAJIME, NO!”

When the night starts fading, Tooru starts running. 

He races through the hospital lobby, leaving behind Hajime’s room and its non-breathing occupant, a starkly dead reminder of his worst failure to date. He can’t bear to stay inside that room and be the only one who’s crying, the only one who’s moving, the only one with a beating heart, because he doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve it, because he’s doomed Hajime to die two times already, now. He played a hand in both of his deaths, in the forms of a careless request for a promise and a stupid, knee-jerk reaction that led to him breaking a divine condition. He doesn’t deserve to live. He doesn’t deserve to live while Hajime stays dead because of him, and he doesn’t deserve to ever be forgiven either, because he’s failed.

He’s failed. 

On the one most important thing in his life. For the most important person in his life.

Tooru feels a whimper coming, and he grits his teeth against the quaking pain, forcing himself to breathe as he runs faster, wilder. I don’t even deserve to cry, he thinks, Because it was all my fault.

“Iwa-chan, will you come back with me?”

See? I was already at fault from the very beginning, he thinks, swerving dangerously close to a speeding Camaro. I was so arrogant, so stupid, and so blindly conceited that I actually dared to ask you to come back home with me, Iwa-chan, when in the end, I couldn’t even do my part and keep you safe until we both got out of there. 

I couldn’t be of any help to you. I put you through hell and back, and for what?

All I did was hurt you, make you go through an endless and uncertain road, only for you to get thoroughly swallowed up again in the dark.

All I managed to do was ruin you a second time, Iwa-chan. I lured you out with empty words and I ruined you. I ruined any chance of you ever coming back to life.

I ruined any chance of you ever coming back to me.

“Please remember that I love you, no matter what this place will throw at us.”

See? Empty words. And—God, this one is even more ridiculous. Tooru laughs as he runs, hitched breaths gradually turning into ragged sobs that he eventually can’t keep hidden any longer. What was he even thinking, telling Hajime he loved him no matter what? He didn’t even know what they were going to face on the journey out, and he had the audacity to think that nothing would make him turn around and send Hajime flying back to that sunless place? Sure, turning around doesn’t make him love him any less, but it still doesn’t take away the fact that he’s failed him. You don’t fail the one you love. You don’t give them hope for a second chance at life only to turn it into a lie at the end. You don’t abandon the one you love, especially not in the land of the dead, not when you have a real chance of getting them out of there.

I failed you, Iwa-chan. Over something as laughably simple as not looking back.

You must really hate me, don’t you?

Well, why did he look back, anyway?

To be honest, Tooru doesn’t really know. It was just something that he never needed to think about, never needed to question, because every time something happens—something that makes him feel happy—his first instinct is to look for Hajime.

It’s as simple as that, and it’s been like that for as long as he can remember. It’s something that comes as naturally to him as the sound of a perfect fourth, and he never really knows how to not do it.

I don’t know how to be happy without you, Iwa-chan, not when I know that you’re there with me.

And it’s stupid, I know. It’s so, so stupid, and I hate the fact that I made that mistake. I hate it because it made me lose you, yes, but… You want to know the real reason why I hate it?

I hate it because I know, without a doubt, that I would do it again. That even if I could turn back time, I would still probably look for you the moment I stepped over the threshold. That I would still try to see you, and that I would probably not be able to stop myself from doing so, because...

Because what is the point, Iwa-chan? What is the point of any success, any happiness, if I can’t immediately share it with you?

God, I am so stupid, aren’t I?

Even with his vision all blurry, Tooru continues running. His feet slap the sidewalk with a dreaded kind of urgency, and his violin bumps erratically against his back like a broken metronome. He runs past a still-slumbering city with its patched-up blanket of awkward dawn-walkers, ignoring the calls of drunk businessmen and soft-fingered girls. He ignores all the red lights as well, darting straight through quiet-looking roads like he has nine lives to burn away, never slowing or stopping until he finally lands himself right in front of the gate of his concert hall earlier tonight. 

The sleepy outside guard recognizes him almost instantly, and when Tooru pitifully tells him how he thinks he’s left his wallet inside the changing room—complete with panicked tears that somehow look genuine—he agrees to let him enter the hall alone. There are not many guards here tonight, he tells an impatient Tooru, because it’s already nearing dawn and the night shift is ending in less than thirty minutes, so a lot of the other guards have already gone home ahead of schedule. In fact, he’s not really sure that there’s still anyone patrolling the corridors inside, so Tooru can freely search to his heart’s content.

As he walks up the grand staircase leading to the concert hall, thanking the heavens for the guard’s less-than-admirable judgment, he notices flocks of birds taking to the air from all different directions, black tiny things beating their wings against the impending dawn. Somewhere across the street, a dog begins barking, ripples of growls cutting through the still bud of a day. When Tooru looks toward the sound, he thinks he can smell something burning, but he chalks it off as a product of his already-fraying mind.

I might be going crazy, he thinks, But right now, whatever happens, I really need to play.

It’s always been this way, ever since he could remember. Every time he gets emotional, he always searches for two things: Hajime, and then his violin. They help him breathe again when his chest becomes too full of feelings that he starts choking, and they turn whatever turmoil his mind can come up with into something beautiful; something strong and bright and willingly hopeful. Tooru may never be able to get used to the fact that Hajime is nowhere under the same sky as him anymore, but maybe if he can pour out all his grief and agony to the world with his music, one day he can probably start trying.

And so, when he reaches the world-renowned stage—still swimming with the images of his friends and colleagues from earlier—he already has his violin out and curving toward his shoulder. The moment his bow touches the strings, the world falls away once more, leaving only him and this last requiem for the one he loves the most.

As always, this one’s for you, Iwa-chan.

Tooru takes a deep breath, the first out of his remaining ones, and starts playing.

This time, it feels like the whole universe weeps along with him.

Tooru plays like a man possessed. His first key is a wobbling D Minor, from Mozart’s celebrated Requiem, which slowly expands both in intensity and uncertainty. It is his profound sadness in an almost lyrical form, bleak and defenseless in its entirety, continuously sighing out his unmooring at the face of Hajime’s death. It tells the world of the deep loss he was forced to live with, because he is now a ship that has lost its anchor, a bird that must learn to fly without its wings, a tree with half of its roots gone. How can he ever rest easy, with this kind of unsteady reality staring him in the face? How can he be anything other than dark and haunting, mournful and low? 

How can he remember to be human, when all he is right now is a dissonant mass for the dead?

And so, Tooru keeps playing. He plays mainly from memory, improvising melodies and parts of various instruments to fit the four strings of his violin. He goes as low as he can, as high as he can, as expressive as he can. There is no choir to sing the lyrics for him now, so he speaks the words inside his mind, weeping and chanting the Latin words like he’s about to make an offering to a god or gods he doesn’t even believe in.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine

(Grant them eternal rest, Lord)

The words themselves are even harder to believe in, sometimes, because whose eternal rest is he really asking? Is it Hajime’s? Because he doesn’t want that, not exactly. Tooru is all emotions right now, and those emotions are telling him that he doesn’t want Hajime to rest in eternal peace or perpetual light or whatever. Iwaizumi Hajime is that perpetual light for him, and Tooru doesn’t want to let him go, at least not when he himself is still alive. He never wants to let him go, never in a million years, and if that means Hajime will have to wander the earth for as long as forever can give until Tooru can finally join him, then so be it. He can be a ghost, a phantom, a vengeful spirit— take your pick, Iwa-chan— and Tooru will certainly be overjoyed because then he’ll get to be haunted by him, shadowed by his constant presence, wordlessly watched and looked after just like he’d always been. That way, they’ll probably be together all the time, and it will be just like having his best friend back, because they will go out into the sun and conquer skies and seasons—just like when they were children—never separating, never letting go of each other’s hand. They’ll prove to the gods and the stars and everything else who is watching that nothing can tear them apart, not anymore, not even death and its unbreakable rules.

There is nothing, nothing that Tooru wants more than to have Hajime back with him here right now, no matter his state of being, but he knows that the Underworld does not give second chances. Hajime will never be given another gap to go back to the land of the living, even as a shade. Even as a ghost, even as half of himself, even as nothing but a perceived presence.

He’s not coming back. He’s never coming back.

He’s never coming back, and it’s all my fault.

My fault.

I’m sorry, Hajime.

I’m so sorry.

Exaudi orationem meam, ad te omnis caro veniet

(Hear my prayer, to You all flesh will come)

All flesh will come, yes, and this time, Tooru knows whose flesh he wants to come—to death, to the Maker, to the end of all things—because Hajime will never return to him fully-fledged in his real body anymore. That’s just not possible, because Tooru has burned through the only chance he’s been given on making that a reality, and so, he realizes—his flesh will have to be the one who comes, if he hopes to one day see Hajime again.

All things end. 

All things die.

Even endings. Even deaths.

All things die, including me. Someday.

Someday, it will be my turn to come back to you, Iwa-chan. 

And I hope that day comes very, very soon, because I don’t think a world without you is somewhere I want to be in for very long.

That day is still part of a big mystery, one that he completely has no way of knowing. He doesn’t know when he will finally see Death again, striding toward him with his sharp grins and pristine suit. He doesn’t know when he will grow weak and frail and start wishing for the darkness to take him, and he doesn’t know when he will finally embrace the end with a willing heart, but at least he knows that if he had any say in it, he would want it to be now.

If my music could somehow call for death, I would certainly die a happy man.

From that point on, Tooru plays as though he’s inviting death itself to put a stop to him and his melodies. The notes from his violin strings soon scatter more and more frantically, all dynamics and time signatures flying out the window, but they still sound so beautiful it would have brought even angels to their knees. It’s as if Tooru has become one with his music, and if anyone were to see him right now, they probably could never decide whether it’s Tooru who’s controlling his violin or the other way around. The two of them seem to be made from the same substance, woven together by madness so ragged it looks painfully brilliant from a distance. 

Tooru is shining, burning, swelling with all the feelings inside him as fuel, glowing impossibly brighter than he’s ever been. He’s expanding into the highest heights of his musical talent, and, ironically enough, he can feel his music sustaining him and keeping him as alive as he’s always been. He feels like he’s transcending into another realm, another version of being, like he can suddenly understand all languages and discover all secrets of the universe with just his two hands and a shoulder.

But there is one thing that he doesn’t know yet: that all bright things have an expiration date, and that the death of a star always starts with an expansion.

Kyrie, eleison

(Lord, have mercy on us)

Christe, eleison

(Christ, have mercy on us)

Kyrie, eleison!

(Lord, have mercy on us!)

When the chandelier begins swinging, lightly at first, then more consistently, Tooru doesn’t notice.

When the stage starts moving like waves rolling off the ocean, Tooru still doesn’t notice.

When the end comes upon him in the forms of two broken pillars, one after the other, he finally notices, because it breaks off his arm and his legs and his song at an interrupted cadence.

It destroys almost everything inside him, as well.

“Ah.” Lying shattered on the crumbling floor, Tooru gives a little sigh, dimly watching his life flash before his eyes. “Look, Iwa-chan. It seems I have succeeded.”

I’m coming back to you. Aren’t you proud of me?

I didn’t make a mistake this time, right?

The ceilings and windows have been broken open, and spring-scented breeze finds its way in. It caresses his cheek, blows his hair around his forehead, and whips the collar of his coat against his lips like a kiss, even as the earth rumbles and shakes and breaks apart under him.

How fitting.

Thus with a kiss I die.

An earthquake? You just had to die in such theatrics, didn’t you, Tooru?

Tooru smiles, warm and genuine in a cooling body.

“I’ve told you this many times before, Iwa-chan: Jealousy is totally uncool.”

It was Japan's worst earthquake in the last five years, and as if that title wasn’t enough, Mother Nature also saw it fit to send a fierce, relentless storm practically right after. Buildings were wrecked and then drenched, streets flooded with rising rivers and three days’ worth of rain. Trees fell, roads cracked, and the sun didn’t come up until the fourth day, dim and gloomy like a mourning widow.

“Mama, the rainwater tastes like tears.”

All things end. 

All things die.

Even disasters. Even storms. Even the gods’ tears.

But, Tooru, did you know that you are, and always will be, my beginning?

Wherever you are, wherever I am… As long as we’re together, we will never end.

And so, with that in mind… Welcome home, my dawn.

“Hey, Iwa-chan?”

Hajime turns around to look at him, one hand still absent-mindedly curling around a lavender bud. “Yeah?”

“Do you think they wrote about me in the papers?” Tooru asks, face violet-deep in musings. He stretches one hand toward the false sky, five pale fingers expanding against a blue-gray backdrop. “Something like ‘Women all over the world are left inconsolable by the death of famous violinist Oikawa Tooru, aged 27, who perished under the wreckage of Suntory Hall in last week’s horrifying earthquake—Ow, ow! Ouch! Stop that, Iwa-chan! I’m sorry!” He squirms on the ground, twisting his body sideways to avoid Hajime and the volleyball missiles he keeps launching at his thighs. It doesn’t hurt, not really—nothing seems to be able to physically hurt him anymore—but Tooru still feels like whining regardless. “A ball is not made to hit people, you know!”

“Oh, don’t worry, I know,” Hajime says sternly, lips folding into something between a smirk and a scowl. “That’s why I only ever use it to hit you.”

“I am people!” Tooru sits up with a pout, brushing his staff papers aside and sending handfuls of lavender dust flying. “At least, I think I am? Oh, wait, I’m actually not so sure. What are we now, Iwa-chan? Shades? Ghosts? Souls? Zombies?”

Hajime sighs. “Hell if I know, and I don’t really care anyway.”

“Aw, you’re no fun.” Tooru smacks Hajime’s arm, earning himself another light punch to the thigh in payback. “Don’t be too lazy to think, Iwa-chan! Pondering the secrets of the universe can be good for us, sometimes.”

“Secrets of the universe, my ass. That’s just a fancy way of calling your head’s random notions, and you know it.” Hajime rolls his eyes, gruff but fond. “And we didn’t come to this place to have fun, anyway. Didn’t you say you have a composition to finish?”

Tooru laughs. “...Sorry. I did say that, didn’t I?” he says, even as he remains flighty as ever, fingers softly playing with the pocketful of lavenders he managed to gather from the field’s previous rows. He brings them close to his nose, inhaling, remembering. Except on one occasion, there were always lavender bouquets adorning his arms after every concert, a silver-lined notecard tucked between the buds. Congratulations, I’m proud of you. Regards, Iwaizumi Hajime. “I was all prepared to work on it before coming here, Iwa-chan, really, but then I remember that I still have a month to finish it before the recital, and I already have it on seventy five-percent done. I’ve even had a title in mind, as well, so it’s not like I’m pressed for time, wouldn’t you say?”

Hajime narrows his eyes. “You’d better be telling the truth about that,” he threatens, “Because if I catch you slacking off, or just slightly in danger of missing your deadline, I’ll beat the notes out of you and write them myself.”

“That’s mean!” Tooru gasps, putting on a mock fearful expression. “I promise you I’m not lying, Iwa-chan. Here, why don’t you ask me about the piece I’m working on? If you see how knowledgeable I am about it, you’ll see that I was telling you the truth about my progress.”

Hajime stares at him for a few seconds, seemingly searching for some hidden motive, but Tooru only stares back with a smile, whimsical and genuinely happy. “You’re just looking for an excuse to talk and flaunt about it, aren’t you?” he finally says, sighing. “Fine, I’ll bite. First question: Which key are you using?”

“Oh, that’s too easy. C-Sharp Minor.” Tooru smiles, firm and proud. “Next question, please.”

“Why C-Sharp Minor?”

The question takes him a little by surprise, and so he just tunelessly hums, his nose wrinkling in the way that he knows makes him look prettily innocent. “You know what, Iwa-chan? I really love it when you act all intense and interested like this,” he says, laughing softly. “It really takes me back to our high school days, you see, like when we used to brainstorm about starting rotations—”

“Cut the crap, Shittykawa,” Hajime interjects, turning his body around so now they fully sit face-to-face, their knees and feet touching. “You're trying to change the subject. Why is that?" he asks, eyes narrowing. "Why are you acting like you don’t want to answer the question?”

“I’m not! I do want to answer the question, it’s just that you look so cute when you’re—”

“Tooru.” Hajime sighs. “Just answer the damn question.”

“Fine, fine, I’m sorry. Gosh, Iwa-chan, you’re so impatient.” Tooru looks away, still with a slight chuckle. None of his attempts at changing the subject will ever work on Hajime, he knows, but that doesn’t mean he won’t still try. “I chose that key because it gives me the right feeling, okay? It’s the key of despair, of penance and self-punishment—”

“Self-punishment?” Hajime cuts him off again, face dark with suspicious incredulity. “And why do you feel the need to punish your own self, you moron?”

Tooru’s answering laugh this time is a little stilted, unsure and breathless. “Wow, Iwa-chan, nobody said this was about me,” he mumbles, eyes skittering away to fix blearily at the swaying lavenders around them. “It’s just a song, and the emotions there are only interpretations. They’re not real.”

“Yeah, right.” Hajime scoffs, not backing down in the slightest. “You’ve been telling me every variation of ‘I’m sorry’ ever since you got here, you dumbass. Were they also not real, then?” He glowers at him, the very picture of knowing disapproval. “Or did you actually think I wouldn’t notice?”

Tooru’s hollow chest gives a strange, squeezing sensation; a memory of a heart skipping one of its beats. “Really? I didn’t realize,” he replies softly, looking down at his hands. “I’m sorry.”

He hears what he said a second too late, and that’s why the smack to his arm that comes next isn’t too unexpected. “I know, I know, I’m doing it again.” He laughs, but it rings false even to his own ears. “I’m sorry,” he says again, low and mournful, the words almost catching him in a chokehold on their way out. “I’m sorry, Iwa-chan. I’m so sorry. I'm deeply, sincerely sorry.”

“Tooru, what the hell? What is this? What are you doing?” Hajime sounds genuinely confused, all his syllables laced in frustration. “Look, something’s clearly been eating away at you, and I can see that, but I don’t know what it is. Talk to me, damn you, and I mean really talk to me. No more going around in circles.” He places his hand on Tooru’s chin, gently turning his face so he can’t keep avoiding his eyes forever. “What are you sorry for? Why do you keep apologizing to me? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Oh, but I did, Iwa-chan, don’t you remember?” When he finally decides that enough is enough, Tooru slips softly into confrontation like he was born to wield it, cutting his hands on the edges between charm and self-loathing. “I made a huge mistake the last time I came here to get you, when I was still alive. I made you go through a difficult road only to throw you back down here, because I turned around to look at you, right at the final moment. I didn’t realize that you were still behind me, that you hadn’t gotten out yet. I was—” He lets out a bitter laugh, short and trembling. “I was so stupid. I could have saved you, I could have helped you come back to life, but I didn’t. Because I made that mistake. Because I couldn’t even do something as easy as not looking back.”

If Tooru still had any tears left in his body, he would have cried a river already, begging on his knees for Hajime’s forgiveness. “I’m sorry, Iwa-chan. We could have reunited sooner if I hadn’t made that mistake, and—and you probably wouldn’t have died in the first place either if—if I hadn’t asked you to come to my concert, if I hadn’t made you promise. I’m sorry.” He sniffles, more out of habit than necessity. “I failed you, Iwa-chan. I came here expecting you to scold me, or be angry with me, but you never did, and so I just—I’m just so sorry, okay?” He looks down at his hands again, not daring to meet Hajime’s eyes for very long. “You must hate me, don’t you, Iwa-chan? Go on, you can tell me. Or you can also scold me, hit me—I don’t care whatever it is. Do whatever you want to me, because I deserve it.”

For a moment, Hajime just watches him be miserable, hand still clasping Tooru’s chin. His touch is cooling and gentle, like a mild winter’s day, and when he speaks, his voice is a collection of exasperated sighs without anger. “Tooru, you idiot, listen to me,” he begins, eyes boring into Tooru’s, steadying and demanding. “Listen. If you hadn’t made me promise to come to your concert, I would still have died, okay, because I would have come there regardless. I would never miss seeing you on stage, not if I can help it, and you know that. And as for your turning around at the last moment—” Hajime pauses, chewing his words for a while before he spits them out—“You only turned around because you wanted to share your joy with me, didn’t you?”

Tooru blinks uncertainly, lips parting only to let out no sound. Sometimes he forgets just how well Hajime knows him. “Um—Yes, I guess?”

Hajime scoffs. “See? Do you think I wouldn’t know that?” He shakes his head, letting his hand fall onto his own lap before slowly reaching out for Tooru’s, tangling their fingers together. “You only turned around because you were happy, dumbass, and when you’re happy, you usually want to make me happy, too. I know that. You always want to make me happy, period, so how on earth could you ever think that I would hate you for that? How could you ever think that I’m angry at you for turning around, for looking for me, and that I would want to scold you about that, as if I have anything to complain to you about? God, Tooru, you’re even stupider now than when we were alive.”

“Iwa-chan, now that’s just mean—”

“I haven’t finished talking, stupid. Shut up.” Tooru feels his hand being squeezed tighter, Hajime’s thumb running softly across his knuckles. “Listen,” he hears him say, bold but defensive, the way he always does whenever he’s about to say something heartfelt, “You only turned around because you love me, Tooru, okay? That’s why you didn’t do anything wrong. You have nothing to be sorry about, nothing to apologize to me about. I have nothing to complain about, okay? Nothing at all.

“You only looked back because you love me,” Hajime insists, his eyes bright and hard like colored glass, like the glare of a thousand stars. “So ask yourself this, Tooru. How can I ever complain about that? What reason do I even have to be angry at you, except that I’d been loved, and that I’d loved you in return, enough to follow you through hell and back again?”

If Tooru still had a heart, he knows it would already be hammering in his ears right about now, loud and frantic like a rogue timpani establishing its own rhythm.

If he still had a heart, he knows it would have started expanding the moment he heard Hajime’s last sentence, getting bigger and stronger and realer until his body couldn’t possibly contain it anymore.

If he still had a heart, he knows it would have chosen this moment to start dedicating every single one of its beats into making Hajime happy, as happy as he could possibly be, as serious and unchanging in its love as the merciless promise of death.

And, ultimately, if he still had a heart, he knows it would have chosen this moment to fall in love with Hajime all over again—although he doesn’t really need a heart to do that.

Because he already did.

“Iwa-chan,” Tooru whines, scooting closer to rest his forehead on Hajime’s shoulder, “I'm sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Hajime rolls his eyes, but he immediately opens his arms, letting Tooru snuggle into his chest instead. “Now what? Why are you saying sorry all over again, you dumbass?”

“I’m sorry I doubted you,” Tooru replies, nestling closer. “I thought so little of your love for me, and that’s got to be insulting to you.” He chuckles softly, wrapping his arms around Hajime’s waist. “I’m sorry that I thought you would hate me. I should have put more faith in your love, but I didn’t.” He sighs, letting out all his pent-up guilt inside Hajime's strong arms, the only place where he can always find solace. "I'm sorry. I let my insecurities blind me again, and I didn't think you'd love me enough despite my failures, even though you have shown me otherwise for more times than I can count. I guess I just—forgot how much, and how purely, you love me. Isn't that just so silly?" He sighs again, taking comfort in the act even as no breath comes rolling out. "I'm sorry, Iwa-chan. I'm so sorry."

Grunting a little, Hajime gradually pulls him closer, his cheek slowly coming to rest on Tooru’s head. “Yeah, well—maybe that’s partly my fault, too,” he murmurs, low and cautious, “God knows I didn’t say it often enough, back when I was alive.”

“Say what often enough, Iwa-chan?”

Hajime clears his throat, his head wobbling a little. "God, must I spell everything out for you?" he grumbles, embarrassment disguised as something sullen, "You know—that I loved you. I didn't—I don't think I said it that frequently, before. Maybe if I had told you that more, it would have gotten through your thick skull and stuck around there more strongly, and you wouldn't have been this eaten away by unnecessary regret." He huffs, burying his face inside Tooru's hair. "I'm sorry too, okay?"

"Okay." Tooru melts deeper into the hug as a response, letting Hajime's familiar waves crash over him like a welcome home. "You can easily make it up to me, though, Iwa-chan. We have an eternity ahead of us, and I really don't mind if you want to fill it with daily love confessions or something."

"Alright, let's not get ahead of ourselves,” Hajime grunts. “I’m not gonna go all soft and lovey-dovey on you just because we’ll be here forever, you know.”

“Ew, I really can’t imagine you doing that.” Tooru lifts his head slightly and laughs, sneaking a quick kiss to Hajime’s jawline. “Anyway, I was only kidding, Iwa-chan. Sure, hearing you say you love me is nice and all, but even when you’re not saying it, you’re still showing it in other ways," he says, shrugging. “So, I guess what I’m saying is—I’m okay with you not saying that very much. Don’t force it if you’re uncomfortable, okay? Because I can say it often enough for the both of us, and I can even start now.”

He beams up at Hajime next, disentangling his arms only to put his hands on Hajime’s cheeks. “I love you, Iwa-chan,” he tells him, somewhere between a whisper and a triumphant shout, “I love you anywhere and anytime. I love you in darkness and in light, in death as in life, in endings as in beginnings. I love you when everything is ending, and I also love you when nothing is ending. I even love you when you make me think like we are ending, and I especially love you when you make me feel like we are endless. Iwaizumi Hajime, I love you today, I’ll love you forever, and I will also love you on every single dreary day in between.”

At the end of his monologue, Hajime looks like he’s ready to die a third time, and Tooru is on the verge of bursting into a laugh at the sight of his face when he notices a twitch at the corner of Hajime’s lips, a tiny seed of something rare and timeless. 

“That is the sappiest shit I’ve ever heard from you, Tooru,” he says, face slowly blossoming into that dashing smile Tooru loves so much. It makes his eyes look like little sunshines, warm and radiant and fearlessly unrestricted, filling Tooru’s whole being with a longing that spans across hundreds of dividing centuries. “That is the most disgusting thing you’ve ever said to me with a straight face, and yet the first thing that came into my mind was just as sappy, just as poetic, and just as disgusting.”

“Oh, really?” Tooru raises an eyebrow and grins, his hands absent-mindedly tracing a path along Hajime’s cheek and jaw and back again. “Care to let me in on it?”

Hajime frowns a little at first, but then he finally nods, knocking their foreheads together as he does so. “Promise you’re not gonna laugh at me?”

Tooru giggles. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Iwa-chan.” 

“I know you’re lying, but fine.” Hajime closes his eyes, chews on his bottom lip once, and eventually rises to the challenge like he always does. “I love you too, Tooru. Even on the day you stop loving me, I will still love you then.” He makes an inhaling gesture, chest rising and falling with phantom breaths, and then sharply opens his eyes. “And I will still love you even when forever ends.”

“Oh, Iwa-chan, how little you truly know.” Tooru laughs giddily, happiness settling in behind his chest like a baby bird with fluttery wings. He presses a quick, chaste kiss on the beginning of Hajime’s scowl, grinning wider than ever. “Even when forever ends, we will still be around, dummy. As long as we’ve got each other, we are never ending.”

Do you know why I said that, Iwa-chan?  Tooru thinks, as the two of them come together in a faithful-scented kiss, I used to think that all things end, and that all things die, including me and you. 

But I don’t think that’s the case anymore.  

You see, I have a distant uncle who used to be a widower. His first wife died after just five years of marriage, and even though he later went on to marry another woman and have a family with her, he still continues to plant his dead wife’s favorite flowers—the morning glory—in their garden. My parents used to say that they bloom wonderfully every autumn, year after year after year, and that’s how I started thinking of love as something deathless.

And, you know what? I think we can be, too. As long as I love you. As long as you love me.

Dead or alive, it doesn’t matter. In this world or the next, it doesn’t matter.

Because as long as love is deathless and forever means endless, 

then I think we will be infinite, too.

(Because I will love you forever.)

“Let me die still loving, and so, never die.”

Mary Zimmerman, Metamorphoses