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The morning after he kills himself, Kenma Kozume wakes up to a silent house.
The sky outside of his bedroom is clear and blue, just like the way his sister used to point out to him on their walks back when they were younger and freer and talked more than just at dinner. There are no clouds on the horizon, the lack of their heavy and foreboding presence making his body perk up much more than he thought it would, and less cars outside than usual, the white noise they produce gone and instead replaced with the far-off cries of crows.
The house is still and quiet, and Kenma begins to think that it must be empty, yet his conclusion draws untrue as the faint sound of sobs leak through his poster-covered walls.
It’s startling, but his curiosity was never one to fail him while he was alive, so he opens his door handle with much more ease than he had expected (though the way that his pale, blue-ish tinged hand almost seems to seep into the metal will never leave his memory) and steps out into a shadowy hallway that seems so different from the one that he grew up in.
The pictures of him and his two siblings that his mother adorned each and every wall in the house with are still up, yet they are glazed over with grief and mourning, the finger marks left by his sister staining the glass above the images of him. The cries grow louder, and Kenma continues to walk onwards.
Beneath the dim lighting of the living room, sits his mother on the hardwood floor, surrounded by his beloved psp and games and his final words he left behind for her on a small piece of paper. The way that she clutches the blue device tightly, like it’s her final connection to her youngest son, makes Kenma’s heart ache and the small dip of natural light through the drawn curtains illuminates her greasy hair and pale skin, and suddenly Kenma feels a burning flame of guilt ignite itself within him.
He watches, apologising for causing so much pain, but the thought of telling her ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you’ makes his stomach curdle much more unpleasantly than he thought it would, so he settles down behind her, stroking her back lovingly, telling her that it will be ok, that the pain will eventually leave. Kenma kneels onto the floor like he’s praying to a deity for her forgiveness, and he knows that his words of comfort may never ring true, not with the way that his numb, cold knees dig into the ground underneath, or the invisible touch that he leaves as he pets her hair gently.
He wishes that he were wrong anyway.
The morning after he kills himself, Kenma Kozume finds himself back in the old, dusty hallways of his junior high. The walls are still the same beige he remembers, the only difference between the present and the past is the change of pictures that adorn them. He knows the building well, after studying there for years to then continue to collect his sister from there every Wednesday like clockwork. The floor stretches in front of him, pointing like signposts at all the possible directions he could go - a maze of wooden floorboards and classroom doors.
His feet guide Kenma onto a path he knows well, his mind drifting towards his sister, and the fact that he won’t be there to pick her up from school later on unsettles his stomach like sour milk.
(The feeling is comparable to the sheer exhaustion he faces after a particularly hard match, or the churning sensation that boils within him whenever Kuroo says anything at all - the only difference being that those were good feelings - this, however, is certainly not.)
His daze is broken by the sight of an old, well-worn door painted in a fading navy blue standing in front of his passage. Kenma reaches for the handle, a brass grip that has lost its shine to years and years of opening and closing and serving its purpose well, before he realises there’s no point. As if he were checking if his reality was still true, he waves his hand through the peeling wood and sees his wrist disappear through to the other side, and steps through it as through the door was merely open.
The sensation is weird, and he hopes to never experience it again.
The children within the classroom are silent as they write phrases in their workbooks, the chatter of students replaced by the scratching on pen-on-paper. Kenma finds it unnerving, and he almost leaves, if not for the sight of his little sister, placed right at the back of the class - as he once was - with her head in her hands and blank paper wet and salty with tears.
(Kenma has only seen his sister cry a handful of times - the Kozume family being constructed of genetics that make people keep themselves to themselves.
He remembers when she lost her favourite plushie after a trip to a foreign country, and she has cried all throughout the plane ride. He can’t recall most of it though - only the setting and the basic scene - as he had his headphones in and psp on - too engrossed in playing his new game than to be bothered about his sister and her ailments.)
He also remembers a situation that is comparably similar to now - perhaps scarily so.
Their grandfather had died a couple of days previously, and the funeral was currently being held. It was a busy day, yet still sunny outside. Kenma liked his grandfather, he was kind, and sometimes played games on his PlayStation with him if he were feeling well enough.
Most of the day is a blur to him, the only part in focus being his sister, hunched over the mahogany coffin that holds the deceased and grasping onto the bouquet of yellow roses and white lilies. Her body shakes with the force of sobs, reminding Kenma that she is barely six years old, and yet she continues to wail like a mother deprived of her child’s life - crying out because it hurt so, so much.
(He realises now that it wasn’t just because of the way that thorns of the roses that bit cruelly into her palms - the understanding of the pain she felt of losing someone so close to her plagues his mind as an eventual epiphany that only occurs over half a decade later.
Looking back, this is the first time that he consciously contemplates death, while he sits in the car during the ride back from the funeral in his black mourning suit, and he wonders if anyone will ever cry like that for him.)
Maybe this is why it’s such a shock for Kenma to see. Part of his mind assumes that it’s just a bad grade or an argument with a friend, but he knows better than that, even if he is a little bit unnerved by the prospect of her grieving for him.
His legs take him where he wants to go though, and he blinks to find himself crouched down by her desk, gently petting her hair while she weeps for him to exist again, lying to herself with the idea of him waiting by the gates for her again at the end of the school day, belatedly arriving seven minutes and twenty nine seconds there as usual, the air full of her frustration at his frequent lateness, and his excuses about how Kuroo set him back by extending practice for an extra five minutes.
He cries with her, hoping that his tears that drop through the desk and towards the many floors below can let his sister know how sorry he is.
(Kenma doesn’t even know what he’s sorry for - perhaps it’s that he’s not sorry for leaving, he just wants to amend for all the pain he’s causing. It’s at times like this where he wishes he never even existed at all.)
Apology after apology, one slow tear after the next as the sobs continue and his sister gets sent to the nurses office. Kenma doesn’t follow; instead lingering in the corridor outside of the classroom, leaning on the peeling wall that was never redecorated even since before he attended, and he sinks within his own personal sorrow, and wishes for it all to get better.
The morning after he kills himself, Kenma Kozume visits the long, twisty roads, adventuring off of the beaten path as his brother had once taught him to, and reaches his end destination of the old cabin he visited often as child.
It still stands tall, even with years of age and tear added onto its shoulders - the wooden sides rotting away with moss clinging to the sides as a claim staked by nature. The building is older than Kenma, and he wonders to himself when everyone else will be too. Will they even still think about him then? A small possibility of lighting a candle for their brother - tragically torn from their lives too soon; another teenage suicide that would forever remain seventeen, a milestone that his little sister will eventually pass, despite the age gap. He doesn’t go any further, the looming fear of being left behind still taunting him after his own demise.
The barrier he’s put up between himself and his emotions is one that he refuses to lower, pushing the repressed feelings away and away and away, until he is numb and has swallowed all of the pain whole. It is a dam that refuses to hold, however, but Kenma is resilient, and therefore bandages the cracks with band aids and gauze, prayer for it to last, just for a little while longer.
This is his reasoning, he decides, for leaving the crisp nostalgia and untouched air full of childhood memories and innocence behind, not daring to enter the cabin that influenced so much of his life, and taint it with all the bad that he has become. It’s difficult, of course, and it feels as if he is leaving a piece of himself behind locked away behind within damp oak floors and high reaching beams that he and his brother spent so much of their time climbing, but he knows it’s for the best - it would be even worse having to go in there alone, the feeling of wrongness accompanying the broken stillness of youth and nostalgia.
With heavy feet, he turns away, and trudges back towards the sparse trees he dearly recognises, the dust resettling behind him on top of late spring leaves to sleep, until they are soon carried away by a warm breeze - one that just barely relays the sound of boyish laughter and days gone by back to a clearing that is empty once more.
(Sorrow doesn’t burn the same hole in Kenma’s heart as it should do, but he wishes it would, just so he can grieve what he lost for a little while longer).
The morning after he kills himself, Kenma Kozume goes back to the streets he used to walk to school on, the grey-ish concrete worn and dented after years of students like him treading its familiar route. Many of the flowers along here still bloom like they used to, the back-alley shortcuts that he and Kuroo often took still covered in the same ivy and moss as the day before. But it’s different now, Kenma supposes, without him.
The silence that echoes off of the stone walls that mark his way agrees.
Kenma looks up at the sky, still as fresh and vivid as it was that morning, yet later on in the day - told by the way the mid-afternoon sun scrapes the sky as it begins it’s descent. He still feels the guilt rotting away at him like a half-eaten apple from seeing his mother in that state. He still can’t get the picture out of his mind, even as he nears the entrance gates of Nekoma High School and can see the classroom he should be sitting in at that very moment.
The period bell rings through his ears after being carried towards him by the wind, and the sorrowful feelings sink lower and become harder to reach the closer he comes to his old school. He wanders the halls aimlessly like a lost child who was separated from their parents, not quite knowing what to search for among the familiar corridors and stairwells. Kenma realises his footsteps don’t even echo anymore, even as the halls remain empty after the lesson crossover.
Its a scary thought, one that Kenma doesn’t pause to contemplate for fear of drowning within his own mind yet again.
He sees his favourite flavoured tea in one of the vending machines that he passes, and approaches towards cabinet to purchase it, only to realise that he can’t buy, touch or drink it, and walks away dejected with a sigh, continuing to roam around with an air of melancholic sadness surrounding him, until he finds the classroom where he knows he’ll meet a friend.
Peeking through the open doorway, Kenma can see him slouching upon his desk (he almost giggles at that because Kuroo was always the one telling him to fix his posture) in the corner, unfocused and glazed eyes unfocused on the lesson up in-front. His cheeks are red and puffy beneath his eyes, probably the result of the many tears he’d shed for his late best friend. That familiar crawling sensation begins to form something ugly inside of him again, and Kenma almost wants to run away, but he stays, because he knows that he’s already made Kuroo chase after him enough for a lifetime, and this time, it’s goodbye, not see you later.
(Kenma was never one for goodbyes, a shy but strong-willed boy who believed that partings were never final, until one family tragedy after the next, leading to nights of a quiet room filled with unsteady sobs and a reality that hit him harder and harder with passing day. He knows by now - a bitter truth that has never left him, the feeling of permanence gone but never forgotten within each fleeting hour, and a string tied around his neck, choking him slowly as he grew but others didn’t and soon the tears that always came stopped; the once vague feeling of numbness carving its way in-between Kenma’s ribs and making a home there that soon overcame everything and nothing all at once.)
Unsteady steps made with unsteady legs carry Kenma’s ghostly figure towards Kuroo, his figure in the corner so unlike him in every way that Kenma was unsure whether he was approaching the right person.
A silly thought, Kenma reminds himself, Kuroo was like a star to him, shining like a beacon in the right direction for him to go. He could find him anywhere.
The more he moves closer, the louder Kuroo’s sniffles get - little hiccups arriving alongside the tears staining the desk that the rest of the class seemingly ignore in favour of awkwardly looking towards the teacher. Part of Kenma is glad that they aren’t looking, the selfish part that wants to fix what he caused, and dry those tears with the gentle swipe of his own calloused thumbs, a sight reserved for him and him only - no matter the heartbreak or damage at his feet.
He doesn’t do much in the end, just sits by Kuroo’s desk - a translucent figure seeking comfort from his own actions - and basks in the sunlight filtering in from the windows. It feels like he’s watching the earth from eyes that do not belong to him, a third-person perspective that allows him to truly take in what he left behind and see what he could have become, knowledge arriving in the form of a breeze through the open window streaming through a messy, black bedhead and the feeling of isolation that Kenma failed to ever escape, despite his best efforts.
Time passes by like a martyr, and soon it feels as if Kenma never existed at all, even though the evidence of his life and death and beyond are still infront of him, demanding comfort that he is forever unable to give; it is then that regret begins to seep in alongside the heavy tears of guilt, building and building until he falls through the floor and down into the depths of hell - his payment for his sins, committed dead or alive.
The minutes fly past, Kenma discovers, and the bell wakes him from his dazed trance, ringing out clearly to signal the end of the day. He knows exactly where Kuroo goes after this, but he cannot bear to step foot in there, the overwhelming reality of never being able to share a victory with his teammates against Shouyou hitting him like a brick - one that is gift wrapped with the unsaid words of blame or malice that his ex-teammates may hold towards him for his downright selfishness.
Kenma is aware that practice won’t be cancelled, and that if he goes, it may cause himself more harm than good, but his body resists and soon he’s trudging along behind Kuroo and Yaku as if he’s still living and breathing and on his way to set for Kuroo once more. They don’t talk at all, Yaku just rubs Kuroo’s back like a sympathetic mother, offering solace in a sorry exchange for Kenma’s presence, and Kuroo cries even more than Kenma thought was possible, a wreck in the face of a missing future that slipped through his fingers much too soon.
Kenma wonders why he cries so much, why the air is so solemn, why Yaku has a glazed look in his eyes, accompanied by a quivering lip and shaking hands, still trying their best to offer Kuroo the support he needs, but not necessarily the kind he would like. It’s a mystery to him as much as what the next boss in his video game would be, or whether he would pass the upcoming science test he would have had next week, the unsaid question always in the air, forever asking as to why they would ever mourn him of all people.
The door of the changing room enters view, the sensation of approaching it without the rest of his teammates foreign and wrong, but the issue remains undisputed - Kenma can’t even say anything anyway. Inside, everybody is already there, either getting changed or looking through volleyball magazines as they usually would, but the surrounding air is dim and sad and lacking the presence of Yamamoto’s comments on a fellow players guts, or Fukunaga’s strange jokes. Nobody yells at Lev, not even Yaku as he walks through the door after Kuroo. Everybody tenses after their entry, and the door is left open a little while longer, as if they were waiting for another member of the club to come in behind the two third years. Nobody arrives, and the silence that follows is suffocating and it makes Kenma feel sick.
Nobody dares to speak, or move, and Kenma wishes he could just take everything back now, as an apology to his mother, his sister, to his team and everyone else whom he left behind in his act of selfishness; praying with hope that hasn’t appeared since he was a child and had slowly flickered out as he grew older that his actions and mistakes could be redone.
In the stillness of the Nekoma boys changing rooms, Kenma’s mind travels back into his past, his present, and what could have been his future. He reminisces about the days gone by spent with Kuroo teaching him all about ‘a new game that he just had to play!’, about the summer evenings spent looking at the stars, surrounded by cicada cries and a whole universe just waiting for them to explore it. He thinks back to recent events, about his fights with Yamamoto and how they had finally gotten to a point where they could just about understand each others ways of thinking, and his place on the team finally becoming somewhere comfortable and that with a sense of belonging. Kenma imagines all of these things, replaying them in his mind like a movie he just can’t seem to piece the scenes together for, and burning them into his memory so there’s no possibility of him ever forgetting.
It hits him then - harder than it had already - about what he lost when he decided to pick up the bottle of pills prescribed for his insomnia, reminding him of all the things he discarded as he sat down at his childhood desk and wrote the note to all his friends and family, asking them not to grieve him too much.
He sits and cries, in the summer-heated changing room, alongside the team and friends that he left behind in the wake of his self-destruction. The sun doesn’t shine through the windows like it used to do so when he was alive, despite the mid-year temperatures, and Kenma begins to question when he started noticing such little things.
The answer doesn’t come easily, he knows, but nothing else did either. Kenma decides it doesn’t matter now anyway.
The morning after he kills himself, Kenma Kozume watches the sun set through his older brother’s dorm room window.
The room is filled with hues of ochre and amber, reflecting off of the walls like tiny crystal beads of light. The trees by the window are evergreen and gently caress the window with every huff of gentle wind sent his way, the rhythmic tapping against the glass calming and matching the beat of Kenma’s pulse in his ears.
His brother lies curled up in a ball on the bed next to him, shrouded in blankets like a small child longing for his mother’s arms and comfort. Kenma can’t imagine what he’s thinking about right now, and he isn’t totally sure he wants to know, but the pain radiating off of him makes Kenma feel small and powerless. In his hands, he clutches a single sheet of writing paper (the kind that is red and decorated with cats that he gifted him for his fifteenth birthday), stained with tears and ink expressing sorrow and an explanation for rash actions. Kenma recognises it, but promptly ignores it in favour of lending his brother some consolation.
He’s not sure how to handle this - not even sure if it would do anything anyway - so he just settles for his cold palm meeting the other’s warm shoulder (the recurring reminder of his present state) and repeatedly petting it like his brother used to do for him when they were younger. Kenma is unsure if this offers any relief - if he can even feel it at all - but the knowledge that he’s at least trying to give back to the man who was the role model that shaped Kenma’s entire life sends the steady pounding in his ears returning into the background.
At some point, his roommate comes in, carrying a tray full of different snacks and drinks that Kenma never knew his brother even liked. It punches something raw into his gut, the idea that he didn’t really know his brother well at all, but at this point, it’s just rubbing salt into his heavily bleeding wounds caused by all of his self-reflections, and Kenma is too tired to even try to forgive himself, so he just settles for observing the scene in front of him.
His brother peeks his head up from under the covers at the sound of the door opening, eyes rimmed pink and bloodshot, an unforgiving glaze towards himself present in his teary-eyed stare. He exchanges few words with his roommate - each one coming out choked and raspy, like a dying man grasping for the last strands of oxygen in a bleak and underwater world. Kenma doesn’t pay attention to the interaction, instead gazing upon the small form of his once tall and dependable brother, his mind reeling back to many worlds away - to one where he would be still alive, and they would continue to play for ever and ever with childlike wonder within the old wood cabin that was their secret base.
The roommate leaves, and his brother returns back to crying, his shoulders noticeably shaking underneath the red sheets Kenma had bought him when he’d moved out, and the tray of food left untouched on the table beside the bed. He falls asleep, eventually, to the distant sound of crows and beneath the rising crescent moon; Kenma’s wearing eyes watching his tired body rest, heaving chest evening out into soft inhales over the course of the setting sun’s pale red departure.
Kenma isn’t sure where to go from here, the quietness of the evening allowing him to think about what to do next. Part of him wants to go to the morgue where his cold body lies in those drawers that you see on TV, and berate him, ask him what the hell he was thinking, how could he even think this would end in a solitary funeral with no mourners. He wants to slap the icy cheek, curse him out for his actions the night before, and talk some sense into him. He wants to ask for a second chance, one where he can still go out on slow walks with Akaashi after school, one where he can tell Kuroo face-to-face how much he really means to him, and how thankful he is for introducing him into volleyball, one where he is able to play that ultimate match against Hinata that they always talked about during training camps, and see himself win against his teams’ fated opponents, one in which he will never get.
Kenma is out of tears, but still, he mourns the result of his rash decision and inability to hold on just a little while longer.
It’s a lonely night, but it’s even lonelier for Kenma, knowing he is unable to go back to last night, and reverse all of his actions, and he sits there at the edge of his brother’s twin-sized bed with his head in his hands and a heavy heart, one that he wishes desperately was still beating.
———-———
It is late, the air coming in from his open window musky and polluted from the Tokyo traffic. Kenma sits on the side of his perfectly made bed, looking towards his room that he had tidied in preparation for this. The curtains are drawn, despite the air coming in, so that he can spare Kuroo the trauma of seeing his cold, cold body when he wakes up tomorrow.
He has sent his nightly text to Hinata, wishing upon him a pleasant rest, even though he knows that when he wakes up, he won’t be there to greet him with ‘good morning’ like he usually does. The thought sends his mind somewhere he doesn’t want to approach, so he pushes it down and focuses on the folded paper in one hand and the melatonin pills in the other. The bottle is warm and slippery from the sweat off of his hand, clutching it tightly as though it were the only thing grounding him to earth.
His letters are ready, and he stands up to place them so they are easily found on his desk, next to his monitors and psp which he has laid out neatly. They are addressed to everyone he knows: his brother, his sister, his parents, his friends, Kuroo…
Kenma blocks his mind from any stray thoughts of second-guessing right now - too busy focusing on finding a way to arrange the red-coloured papers in an appealing fashion - and one that would be easy to navigate without his directions - the names in the centre and perfectly within view so nobody got mixed up when they came to find him.
The light coming from the overhead lamp is jarring and too bright for his withered senses, so he turns it out completely, opting to use the fairy lights his sister bought him recently hanging on his wall and the glow-in-the-dark stars that both him and Kuroo have pasted to their respective ceilings as the guiding lights towards his bed. He lies atop the duvet as not to disturb his preparation work, phone shut off on the table beside him and his medication bottle open and ready for him to deliver himself his final dose.
He pours them out one by one, letting them spill into his palm slowly, counting them until he deems it enough for his final dosage; lifting the hand toward his mouth and cupping it to be able take in all it holds. Kenma digests all of them and waits for the nauseous feeling from the amount that he took in to leave, instead in it’s place is a tickle of drowsiness, creeping it’s way up and into his consciousness and eating him whole from the inside-out until his eyes begin to droop and his previously erratic breathing begins to slow, and all he can see is the dim glow of the far-away stars still tacked on with crappy, old tape above his bed.
Mind wandering, Kenma feels the peace come over him quickly, falling into the permanent rest that he had so desperately longed for, eventually fazing out completely as his world goes out from under him and the darkness takes over fully.
———-———
The morning after he kills himself, Kenma Kozume tried to until himself, but couldn’t finish what he’d started.