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“ Suddenly you’re ripped into being alive.
And life is pain,
and life is suffering,
and life is horror,
but my god you’re alive
and its spectacular. ”
— Joseph Campbell
Kuroo doesn’t particularly believe in God or any other higher entity that might feel what has been depicted as human emotions, but since moving back to Tokyo he keeps finding himself praying.
He’s not really sure what he is praying for either. It’s just that the hollowness inside his chest hasn’t really gone away for a couple years now, even when he feels like it should have because he has done possibly everything under his control to get it done.
A long time ago, when he was still a child, Kuroo used to perceive divine love as protection. His baba would tell him about God, and when his mother first got sick his father started talking about it an awful lot too. Back then, Kuroo thought it must be beautiful, to talk to something divine. To be met with tenderness in your pleas, to have someone to talk to every night. That out there in the universe was a being that you carry the burdens of your heart - although back then, the biggest burden Kuroo had known was having to eat all the okras baba had made for dinner or having to go to bed when he wasn’t feeling sleepy at all. He talked to God all the time back then, and even if God didn’t verbally answer, Kuroo liked to imagine a big cloud over him, nodding away, rustling the leaves around him to let Kuroo know that he was being listened to. He was not alone.
When his mother died, Kuroo stopped talking to God. He thinks his father did too. Baba still shared her thoughts and bearings with him every night, Kuroo knew - he had many nightmares back then and often ended up at his grandparents bed.
It was lonely, at the beginning. Sitting with his thoughts after getting used to sharing them, but it just did not feel right. There was nothing listening to him after all. If there was, then his mum would still be alive.
He meets Kenma no longer after, and after the initial barrier of shyness and awkwardness gets shattered, it feels a little like having God again. Kenma listens to Kuroo’s rambles and nods softly by his side to indicate he is listening even if his eyes are focused on the screen in front of him. He remembers details about Kuroo that Kuroo doesn’t. He is observant enough to know when Kuroo had a bad day even if he doesn’t say it. He mostly knows how to fix it, and tries to do so. Kenma lingers, and Kuroo feels like breathing becomes easier next to him.
When Kuroo moves to the United States, he calls Kenma at late hours into the night when his brain won’t shut up. If Kenma can’t pick up, then Kuroo overtexts him while listening to his old streams. Kenma’s voice comes crackling through the laptop speakers, and Kuroo feels a little closer to home, a little less alone in the universe.
It is on the floor of Kenma’s living room, years later after having an epiphany in Osaka’s airport and then a breakdown in the very same floor, that Kuroo starts talking to God again.
I.
To be filled with hope is to pursue survival - Kuroo knows.
It takes him a little while to take the jump and go for it. To allow himself to hope.
Here is the thing: Kuroo had been a hopeful person once. Annoyingly positive and with big dreams, ambitious for the future. Hungry.
And then everything went wrong. Well. Not really. Kuroo did manage to achieve the dreams he had planned, most of them at least. But they just did not feel like they thought they would. Adult life, he finds, is lonely. Lonelier than he had predicted. He finds himself in crowded room after crowded room, surrounded by others and feeling completely alone, speaking a language no one else does. He feels himself constantly frustrated with his own short-comings, his own presence haunting his mirrors. The person that looks back at him is not who he thought he would be.
When Kenma convinces him to leave the life he had made so far behind and move back to Tokyo, Kuroo can admit to himself that mostly he feels fear.
What if the problem was not the team he had been playing for? What if the problem wasn’t california? What if the problem was him? What if he kept failing? What if he came back home to find he still felt empty and homeless?
And then, as the last months of his contract approached, the new underlying feeling budding through it: hope.
What if things did work out? What if a new career was what he needed?
Kuroo refuses to mourn a life he has yet to live. He packs his bags, donates his furniture and gives back the keys of his apartment. Let’s his teammates take him out for one last round of drinks before he boards the plane.
Later, half drunk and laying on the couch of his packed up apartment, hours before his departure, Kuroo prays.
“God, are you there?” he asks, “Can you send me a sign that this is the right decision?”
The silence rings loudly through the apartment, and it stays that way as Kuroo falls into restless sleep for a couple of hours. When he wakes up, he finds a message from Kenma letting him know he will be picking him up from the airport the next day when Kuroo arrives.
The day moves on in the same still silence as the night before, no divine answer in sight. Kuroo can only trust his own call for the future.
II.
Finding a job, it turns out, is not easy.
Kuroo has qualifications but they are all mismatched. He has the degree to teach in schools but absolutely no experience. He has the background of an athlete but nothing that mixes that with other areas that he can transfer his skills to.
One of his interviewers tells him to get back on the court. Another asks him why he even came back. Another one asks why did he ever leave in the first place.
Kuroo’s head swims, floats in a sea of anxiety. He does not know how to answer any of that.
In the end, it’s Akaashi who saves him - sort of.
“You should get a masters.” He says. Kuroo blinks at him, three beers into his plans of secretly wallowing in self pity as he catches up with his friends.
“What?”
“A master’s degree. On like, education. Or sports theory. They have a good department for that in Tokyo Tech. Nekomata probably could get you a contact.”
“Why?”
Akaashi sighs as if he is stupid, and to be fair he probably is - three beers in and 5 years living in America and all that.
“A masters degree will force you to do internships as those are mandatory, so you will gain experience for schools. You’ll also become more qualified to coach an actual team in a league for example. Also, if you ever plan on going to teach at a university or something, you can start with the masters and later get a PhD in the same subject.”
“But wouldn’t that require me to do something like…An actual research project?”
“Yes, Kuroo-san. It would.” Akaashi stares back at him, devoid of emotion or patience, despite the advice clearly coming from a caring place.
“Why are you confused about this? You love research.” Kenma points out, sipping on his drink. “You nerd.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Am not.”
“Are too. The biggest nerd ever.”
“The biggest nerd I”ve ever met at least.” Bokuto points out, cheery from his vodka shots.
“How am I being called a nerd when Akaashi is literally at the same table as me?”
“Stop coming for me when I am literally giving you helpful advice, it’s not very polite Kuroo-san.”
“I know, I”m sorry.” Kuroo slumps down. He plays with his fingers for a minute or two before looking up.
“You really think I can do it?”
“Yes.” Akaashi says without a second thought, which is a little surprising. “You are very smart, ambitious and dedicated, which shows when you speak about things you are passionate about and your long history of academic work in school and college. Any potential advisor would be able to see that when evaluating you for a program.”
Kuroo nods, slowly, registering. Possibilities colour the path in front of him and he shakes his head before they become too solid.
“Thank you, Akaashi-kun. I”ll think about it.”
Akaashi only hums and takes another sip of his drink. Then Bokuto is dragging all of them to the karaoke room, and there are more drinks and singing and the night goes on.
It’s three days later as Kuroo is downing a bowl of ramen with Kenma that he whispers.
“Do you really believe I can do it?’
“What?” Kenma asks, confused. There’s soy sauce broth on his upper lip and Kuroo’s fingers twitch to clean it up, but knows that Kenma would be embarrassed so he doesn’t.
“Get a master’s degree.” he whispers again and Kenma blinks at him.
For a terrifying second, Kuroo is sure that Kenma is going to laugh. That he is going to tell him that it was a joke, that he thought Kuroo knew that no one really thought he could ever do something like that.
“I’ve told you this before, Kuro.” Kenma frowns at him, and Kuroo half prepares himself for the hit. “I think you can do whatever you want. You’re smart and capable and hard-working enough to get it. You just have to stop being afraid of it.”
Kuroo feels like all the airs in his lungs have been knocked out. He laughs, breathless, and goes for a joke, trying to hide how vulnerable he feels. It’s unbecoming, to be this seen.
“How the tables have changed, huh?”
“What do you mean?”
“I used to tell you things like this all the time, when we were younger. I was the one trying to protect you and help you get out of your shell. Now look at us. World-wide-famous Kodzuken and…” he aims for a self-deprecating tone but Kenma cuts him.
“And a widely renomed former professional volleyball player who was brave enough to quit when he decided it wasn’t for him and start over instead of doing the easy thing and staying even when he was unhappy.” Kenma scoffs. Kuroo smiles sadly at him and nods.
I’m still unhappy now, so what’s the difference, he wants to ask.
I just feel like a failure, he wants to say.
He doesn’t, knows that it will do no good.
“Things haven’t changed, we’re just at different stages. I still struggle a lot with anxiety and public speaking like I used to, even with the streams. You have to give me a pep talk every time I have to appear somewhere in person instead of using a screen in between me and other people. I just got lucky enough to blow up in a career that is also my hobby, but I also have to consider that my career is unstable. I might have no career at all a year from now, if I don’t play my cards right. It’s just different situations. But I’m not winning, and you are definitely not losing just because you are not where you thought you were going to be.” Kenma licks his upper lip and Kuroo stretches out his hand, cleans the sauce out of his upper lip for him before he can think about it. Kenma stares at him before nodding and continuing. “My point is: I know you. I’ve known you for longer than I haven’t. So I, out of all the people, can say this and because of it, I believe in you. You can do whatever you want, Kuro. Just go for it, like you’ve always done before.”
“And if I fuck everything up?”
“You won’t.”
“But what if I do?”
“Then I'll be here to help you get back up. And so will be Akaashi and Bokuto and everyone else.”
“Just like that, huh?’ Kuroo chuckles, but Kenma only nods, seriously.
“Just like that.”
“Okay.” He says.
“Okay.” Kenma answers.
Kuroo finishes his broth, and it tastes sweeter than it had a minute before.
He thinks sends a prayer at some point throughout that conversation but he can’t be too sure, too filled with dreams as he sinks down the mattress later that night.
Right before he falls asleep, he sends another one, just in case.
“God, please, let me get what I want.”
Kuroo does not know if there is any answer, as he falls asleep right after, face burrowed on his official merch kodzuken hoodie.
III.
Insomnia is not new to him. In fact, it's kind of an old friend. It's almost ironic to anyone that has seen him scold Kenma for the lacklustre that is his sleep schedule when, nowadays, his own is not much better. At least Kenma sleeps during the day, while Kuroo studies and works-half time.
Well, studied. He was done with the selection process for the master’s program. Now, all that was left was waiting for the results. Hence, the insomnia.
The problem was, of course, that after LA and the disaster that had been coming back to Japan, Kuroo was terrified of getting his hopes up again just for them to get shattered in front of him. Letting himself hope for the best felt too risky, putting too much of himself on the line.
Still, ever since he submitted the damn papers, he can’t relax. He can’t stop thinking that if he gets an email with a negative response, then it’s the same as starting from ground 0.
Kuroo does not know if he can stand to start his entire life from scratch all over again. He doesn’t know what he would do, where he would go. He hasn’t felt this uncertain ever since he was 8 years old and his father came back home from the hospital without his mother and told him that they were moving.
Kuroo exhales slowly, as if to try to not startle his body, to remind it that it should be sleeping.
“God. Me again.” He whispers in his head. He considers asking for what he wants, but everything feels overwhelming these days. God never answers and Kuroo is starting to think that it’s because he keeps asking for too much. Keeps wanting things that he doesn’t deserve. He settles for what he needs right at this moment. “Please let me sleep. I am so, so tired.”
The room remains unchanging and Kuroo remains awake, blinking at the ceiling and pondering every single choice he has made so far.
God, Kuroo finds, is dead and gone and non existing. He huffs and turns around in bed,kicks his blankets away just pull them back up and throw one of his legs over it, half hugging it. He closes his eyes. Counts to ten and then a hundred and then all the way backwards to 0.
It doesn’t work.
The notification pops on his phone only 30 minutes later. Kuroo waits for another five minutes before giving up, rolling back and seeing what it is.
[Kodzuken is live! Come take care of my farm on Stardew Valley with me~]
Kuroo smiles to himself, feeling terribly warm inside before clicking the notification. He let’s Kenma’s voice, amused and occasionally cursing, lull him to sleep.
When Kuroo wakes up, there is an email notification on his phone. The preview shows: Dear Kuroo Tetsurou, we are delighted to inform you that…
IV.
Around the end of the first year of his masters, Kuroo goes to a congress. His first one. It’s mandatory for those in post-grad and his advisor had strongly suggested it would be a good opportunity for him to bond with other peers and get his research out there. It’s in a different city, 7 hours away, and the trains are annoying so he decides it would probably be better to drive his car and just face the long drive and the dark icy roads. Akaashi tells him it could be a good opportunity for him to get contacts in his area. Kenma reminds him that he is good at socialising, that he has done it well his whole life. Bokuto tells him it can be fun, to see it as a road trip with an adventure in the end.
It isn’t. It’s a disaster. All of his friends seem to forget to take into account how fucking obnoxious and pretentious is the academic world, and that Kuroo had stopped honing many of those skills when he graduated college years ago.
For the entire thing, Kuroo feels awfully out of place. Most people there have been working with education for so much longer than he had. When he explains he is later in the game because he used to be a pro-player, he gets disinterested looks and sneers. He had been praised for his athletic career his entire life and now he feels like a joke, late to a party he had dreamed of joining but only now found out he was never invited in the first place.
After the last keynote speaker, Kuroo goes back to his hotel and checks out early. He was supposed to make the drive back the next morning, but just gives up altogether and decides to drive back as soon as possible. He feels like crawling out of his skin, his body pricking with shame and disappointment in himself. He just needs to get away from that place and those people as soon as possible.
In his anxiety, he forgets to buy snacks or even water for his way back. He gets two hours into the road, dark as hell outside, when his anxiety attack starts to go down and his energy levels begin to crash.
Kuroo keeps looking out for the road in the hopes that he will find a dinner or a vending machine so he can get a drink.
“Please, God, I just want a black coffee!” He half yells, tired and frustrated and angry. So fucking angry.
And then, because God seems to think that he hasn’t had enough yet, the car breaks down. Smoke stems from the motor and Kuroo quickly dives onto the side of the road to stop the car. It’s almost midnight. Outside, it’s pitch black and freezing. Kuroo steps out of the car and looks around. Much like his life, there is nothing much to see.
He feels terribly cold, and so, so fucking lost.
“Please, God, I just want a black coffee.” he repeats, voice weak.
The sky is dark and riddled with birds when he looks up, but it remains silent.
Kuroo ends up dragging himself through the cold night until he finds an emergency phone to call the JAF and ask for a mechanic. When he manages to get back into Tokyo, the sunlight is just breaking through the clouds. It’s beautiful. It makes him want to cry.
Instead of going home, Kuroo drives straight to Kenma’s house, drags himself through the door and drops his body on his kontatsu. He wakes up hours later, with Kenma quietly sitting by his side, a warm cup of coffee waiting for him at the table.
V.
He takes hit after hit. It doesn’t get any better.
He gets his masters, but the title sounds hollow to his ears. Kuroo doesn’t feel like he mastered anything at all. If anything, he has just been brought awareness of how much he absolutely does not know. About most things. Life is so vast, he knows so little. How could he possibly make a change? What is the point of this title, what is all his work good for if he doesn’t know what to do with it? Where to go? Why did he even begin this whole thing at all?
He gets a job - a smaller university, with a solid team. He coaches them, young kids, bold and strong and with a hunger in their eyes that Kuroo faintly recognizes. He was one of them once. How the mighty have fallen, he chuckles to himself. It had been a long time ago, but also, it was no time at all. Sometimes, Kuroo feels like his life was made up of a dozen hours that he could never forget.
In his free time, he keeps researching, writes a couple of articles, gets published here and there. Start chewing on the idea of getting a PhD, maybe. Who knows. It would be scary but then again, Kuroo feels scared most of the time anyways. Still, he keeps being brave. Getting out of bed, getting dressed, talking to students, helping them out. Sending emails he knows will get rejected.
Work is hard. Adapting back to Japan’s work style is difficult after being introduced into the workforce in a whole different country. Making friends is even harder. His childhood friends are all busy, with their own successful lives. His father doesn’t talk to him, and Kuroo doesn’t try. His grandma passes away, old and soft and happy to see him more often. Kuroo cries for three days straight, before getting up on Monday, washing his face, putting on his clothes and going out to work. He has to be brave. It’s what his grandmother would have wanted.
When the weekend comes, Kuroo drinks and drinks and drinks. It’s not what his grandmother would have wanted but she is not there to see it anyways.
The brave thing to do is to stop drinking, so Kuroo does. The brave thing to do is to tell Kenma how he feels - about everything, so he does. The brave thing to do is to start therapy, so he does. The brave thing to do is to admit that maybe he and Kenma are more than friends, so he does. He watches as the grey lines turn blue, to signal that his message has been read. Time tickles, and Kenma does not answer. Kuroo spirals. Goes back on his words. Apologises. Does the brave thing and moves on.
The brave thing is to accept it. To make his amends and grief the friendship he had just ruined because he wanted too much. Wanted something he couldn’t have, that he didn’t deserve, again and again and again.
The brave thing, the brave thing, the brave thing. Every single day, the desire to cease existing, and then doing the brave thing instead and keeping on living. Keeping on being kind and attentive and genuine and hard working when all he wanted was to give up.
Dear god, Kuroo thinks, I am so tired of being brave.
A beat, and then another.
God doesn't answer. It never does. The world moves on.
The doorbell rings.
+1
Kuroo takes a sip of his tea. It’s cold enough that the mulled wine offered earlier feels tempting, but alcohol and his panic attacks seem to walk hand in hand these days, so it feels safer to stick to something lighter. Besides, like this he can watch all of his friends get drunk and funny and make sure to film them so they too can experience this.
It’s late enough into February that he can stand outside the house without his fingers feeling like they are going to freeze and fall off his hands. Instead, Kuroo leans back on the metal railing of the balcony and looks up towards the sky.
The world is loud, the city rustling mingling with the music and his friends serving as background noise for his life. It feels almost idyllic, oddly philosophical as Kuroo is once again reminded that life does not stop happening around us, even when we wish it would. Even when we need it to. Even when we desperately ask for it to wait. It’s terrifying, a weight on his chest and shoulders, this massive thing called life, how uncontrollable it is. How impossible it is to master, to get stability in it. How hard it is to accept that sometimes there is no choice but to let go of your expectations as the universe laughs in the face of your feeble plans for the flimsy concept that is the future.
He thinks of a childhood book he read, the author overly decorated language explicating how stark it is to see the world once you have been touched by a deep grief in yourself, a grief for the person you were supposed to be and never did, the life you believed you would have and were forced to mourn. The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down. The author had explained and Kuroo hadn’t forgotten ever since.
Ever since he moved back to Japan, and maybe years before that too, time and time again, Kuroo finds himself asking the same question:
What is the point?
What is the point of anything? Of life? Of getting out of bed when life seems so dire and painful. Why keep trying after all and each failure? When he has been burned so many times, why even try to approach the fire of life? Wouldn’t it be so much easier to haul himself up in his room until the world forgot about him? Until he forgot it himself and ceased to exist?
Kuroo thinks that might be why he started praying again. The nagging question, the need for an answer.
Kuroo tilts his head back, and lets himself exist for a second. He can still taste the delicious food on the back of his mouth. He feels the warmth of Kenma’s hand on his, still lingering after he had dragged Kuroo out of his apartment, into his car and then into the party. His lips feel tingly from when he had stolen a kiss earlier, too. He hears the laughter of his friends in the background, surrounded by good music. He knows if he waits a little more, he will hear them calling him back in.
A second, then another.
“Kuro” Kenma’s voice picks up, coloured with uncontrolled joy “Come here, you’re missing Fukunaga and Yaku-san doing the worm.”
“Ah,” Kuroo thinks. “There it is.”
The answer.
I’m not suggesting the world is good, that life is easy, or that any of us are entitled to better.
But please, isn’t this the kind of thing you talk about in somber tones, in the afternoon, with some degree of hope and maybe even a handful of strategies?
— Richard Siken