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Oikawa Tooru was a simple man, at least according to himself. He wanted to be the best, because he deserved to be the best. He worked hard to get where he is, he worked harder than everyone else. He had his friends, his team, his family and hundreds of other people next to him. He must be happy. He should be happy.
Happiness will come to him eventually, right? The empty feeling inside him is simply because he hasn’t come to terms with the fact that he did it, right?
It wasn’t because he built his entire life based on the one thing he was good at. Right?
Did he even like volleyball in the first place? Or was his obsession with it only because of the feeling of validation he got from it? On the court he was useful, everything was his, he was a God, better than all. It filled the restless, hungry void resting inside of him. Every win was like a brick on his wall, building it taller and stronger. Every loss hit him in the face, like the aftermath of a slap burning red on his cheek, calling him out on his lies, knocking him down from his throne, because just like with every victory, every defeat weighed him down further into this cycle of deception.
He hates himself, he hates how he has to put up the façade of the annoying asshole just to get noticed. He hates how he cries himself to sleep, asking any higher deity what is wrong with him and why nobody loves him. He deserves to be loved, right? It cant be his fault.
His friends. Were they even friends? Friends wouldn’t be mean to one another, right? He didn’t know. No matter how pathetic it sounded, he didn’t know what real friends were like. He always pretended he was unfazed by their harsh words, but every new insult broke his already cracked heart even more. Or was this how friends truly were? He was just faking stuff for attention like always, wasn’t he?
Any thoughts of the pages he ripped out of the journal that he wrote how much he hates them in were always immediately pushed out of his mind.
His family was a story of its own. Tooru couldn’t remember the last time he actually talked to them, his sister and nephew being an exception. It wasn’t like he missed his parents, on the contrary he was happier away from them. His father was never truly there, always working long hours into the day, and his mother’s high expectations of him ruined the little relationship they had. His sister and their grandma practically raised him, the latter having passed away a few years prior, and his sister being busy with raising Takeru as a single mother.
His fans. They never knew the real him. Adults loved him for his body. Children idolized him for his skills. Yet to himself, he was never good enough. His looks were ‘unique’ to say the least, but he was very insecure due to all the teasing he got when he was young. His skills were good, but never perfect. And he had to change that. He had to become the best.
Because Oikawa Tooru wasn’t born special. He was never truly good at anything, and he was never going to be. He was just… mediocre. Though he would never admit it out loud, deep down inside he knew that no matter how much he tried he’d amount to anything.
He tells himself that there are so many people in the world in worse conditions, that he was raised privileged, he has no reason to complain about his life. He is just an attention whore. And even though he knows how bad of a person he is, he can’t change it.
Vibrating from his nightstand caught his attention, and inside the darkness of his room Tooru reached out to check his phone.
The light from the screen blinded him, making him almost drop his phone on his face. He cursed himself for falling asleep with his brightness on full, and through squinted eyes he managed to lower it.
The notification feed was nearly empty, except for the one Instagram notification, the reason why he opened his phone.
Hajime4456 posted on their story for the first time in a while!
With shakey hands he tapped on it, the app opening immediately. Would he seem like a creep for viewing it this early? Would he seem desperate for attention if he was one of the first people to see it? The orange-pinkish circle around Hajime’s profile picture looked like it was staring back into Tooru’s eyes, mockingly challenging him to open it.
Deciding it was now or never, Tooru tapped onto Hajime’s story.
A sob almost escaped his lips but he swallowed it down. Who would have known that something this innocent would be someone else’s bigger fear? That a simple picture like this would hurt Tooru’s heart so much?
Hajime was looking into the camera, a small smile decorating his lips and his hand in a peace sign, with Takahiro and Issei talking in the background.
In an unfair fit of rage Tooru threw his phone across the room, not even caring if it broke. He wanted to scream. Not even his own friends wanted him, just how pathetic is he? Hoping that they will magically know his feelings, without him even showing them his true self. His true ugly, jealous self.
He let out a sound, it didn’t sound like crying, and it wasn’t exactly anger either. It was hatred. It was Tooru’s own hatred towards himself reminding him that nobody wanted him, that he was like an abnormally shaped puzzle piece that would never fit anywhere, especially not in his so called friends’ lives.
Tooru didn’t feel it when tears started rolling down his cheeks, nor when he brought his hand up to wipe them. He only realized he had started crying when he felt the cold dampness of the tears that had made home on his shirt collar on his hot skin.
He didn’t know what to do anymore. Maybe if he was better he wouldn’t be treated like this, right? What had even gone wrong in his life? What had he done that was so messed up, so bad, that had everyone treating him like this? It must have been something he did, there’s no other plausible explanation.
Was it his over confidence and self assurance? Or was it his over affectionate way of showing he enjoyed their company? Or could it be the fact that in his how many years of life, Oikawa Tooru never really learned how to express his emotions, and being so invested in his own façade that he never really saw the impact it had on other people? Was he truly so selfish?
He was. He had to be. His mother was right, he wasn’t good enough. Issei and Takahiro were right, he was annoying and needed to shut up. Hajime was right to not want him around, going out with the other two without telling him.
Yet the worst thing is he thought he was doing so well up until now. He was just having a down moment, simply not feeling exactly like himself, he hadn’t considered it serious enough to pay attention to. He had just brushed it off as a slight inconvenience to his day, just nothing important.
For once in his life Tooru had felt truly confident in himself only for that confidence to be broken down by a single picture. Tooru felt pathetic, he felt upset at himself for overreacting.
It’s not surprising they want to be without him since he’s acting like this. They’re just looking out for themselves. Tooru was the one at fault, he was forcing himself in on their friend group when they were clearly not comfortable with him.
He hates them. He hates how they make him feel. He hates his friends, his family, his team. He hates them so much he feels physically sick even at the thought of them. He hates how none of them care about him. He hates their pity and their fakeness.
To himself, Oikawa Tooru is nothing but a coward. A coward who can’t help but love and depend on people that no matter what happens won’t ever return his feelings.