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“I really wanna kiss you.” He whispers. His eyes are huge and brown in the dark and there are glow stars on his ceiling that he can touch, flat-palmed, flat-footed ever since he grew so tall. His cheeks are flushed dark in the night and the blush creeps into his ears, hair messy and brown like raw umber. His lips look so, so soft. His eyelashes are long and the corner of his mouth twitches shyly, a nervous tic.
It’s only been a week since Iwaizumi first started thinking of the color purple. And also, he’s fallen in love.
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It starts out with a soft shade of lavender. More specifically, a field of gently waving lavender in which his best friend stands, a memory grainy around the edges and soft to the touch like well-worn paper. The swaying seaside breeze threads its fingers through Oikawa’s hair, chocolate-brown and so soft. The salt-scented wind, zephyrous and delicate, should irritate him; he should turn with his face all twisted up and say, Iwa-chan, the wind is ruining my hair. He should try in vain to hold those carefully articulated strands in place, a futile attempt at holding perfection in a world that is too far out of his control just like always, but he doesn’t. Instead, Oikawa Tooru, his best friend since they still cried over missing toy trucks, turns with his smile bittersweet and wistful and aching and says like an untouchable truth: “I’m in love with you, Hajime.”
He moves entirely too slow to let fingers brush against his friend in the lavender field, his friend who has turned around to face the sky and scene and anything but Iwaizumi, who all of a sudden doesn’t remember how to hold him in this meadow. Maybe there is a rough-hewn stone all lodged up in his throat, a chrysalis jamming his windpipe and swelling to fill all the space he so desperately needs. But he does not say I love you and Tooru wanders a little farther into the sea of periwinkle.
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It continues with a violet that is not quite crushed between rough tan fingers and pale, slender ones so carefully trained for setting. Oikawa picks it oh-so-carefully between pinched index and thumb, and offers it up to Iwaizumi’s grunted approval with an overbright smile.
“Do you know about Hanakotoba, Iwa-chan?” He asks. Big brown eyes shine a little brighter.
“Not a whole lot.” Hajime admits.
“The secret language of flowers,” Tooru says wistfully. “Each blossom has a different meaning.” He tucks it behind one ear carefully, so as not to disrupt the careful curation of his hair, of his everything. Oikawa is like that. He presents himself with meticulous attention to detail, to the length of his lashes, to every centimeter of his skin. It makes him self-critical. Nothing is good enough for him. Iwaizumi always tries to soothe the hurt anyway.
“What’s this one mean?”
“The violet?” His best friend flashes the same smile that is becoming uncanny in its frequency. It’s not quite right. It’s not quite real. Iwaizumi knows these things. “It represents honesty.”
“Honesty.” Hajime echoes.
“Yeah. Let’s go get something to eat.” Oikawa says, turning. He walks too fast, legs too stiff, gait too uncomfortable, like a confession gone unanswered.
The violet falls gently to the stones of the road, and Iwaizumi carries it tight in his fist like a promise, or maybe a secret.
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The next shade is a deep plum. More specifically, a fresh dark plum, round and sweet and left uneaten, sliced with the red interior all dripping in Oikawa’s unopened bento on Tuesday. His furoshiki is tied tight and patterned with little translucent purple flowers. Autumn crocuses. Delicate things.
He’s practicing another jump serve and it’s the flowers on his lunch, still untouched at 6pm, the Iwaizumi stares at uncomfortably while the setter spikes and sweats and strives for just a little more. He always knows what to do, so why do the words so suddenly vanish from his tongue where they usually sit? How can he get his best friend down from the mountain he always climbs so unreasonably? Oikawa works himself to death just like always, and Iwaizumi doesn’t remember how to stop him. So he just stares at the autumn crocuses on that unopened furoshiki until the setter tires himself out.
His form is beautiful. It decays as he wears himself thinner and thinner, sweat dripping and shining all over his skin. Muscles ripple under smooth flushed skin. But Iwaizumi knows him, knows he’s killing himself this way. There’s nothing to say. He grabs onto his arm.
“Ready to go?” Hajime asks.
His best friend is frozen in time as he stares, eyes wide and unblinking, dripping and sticky, stuck. And finally, after a moment:
“Okay.”
They walk home. Oikawa doesn’t eat, the crocus-cloth stays tied, and there’s nothing to say, not really.
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After this comes a brighter shade. A pink-tinged lilac like a prettier sunrise is the color of the envelope, clean-creased and bestickered with a little red heart. Ink neatly writes across the top, so different from Iwaizumi’s blocky scrawl, the name of the girl who carefully pressed the lilac thing into Oikawa’s palms during lunch on a Friday: Yamasaki Chiyo.
It’s one of many confessional letters given to his best friend, but this one feels different. Tooru doesn’t thank her like he usually does for these, with a gentle arīgato that gives away no clear rejection but rings apologetic in every syllable. This time, he takes it with a much sharper smile that cracks across his face, the kind of smile Iwaizumi isn’t used to seeing him give girls, and he brushes aside a piece of his hair just for it to fall back in his brown eyes the same way it always does.
“Oikawa-san.” She says. Yamasaki Chiyo is pretty. Too pretty. It’s uncomfortable. Her hair is short and dark and looks so shiny, so smooth as it floats around her chin. It reminds Hajime immediately of Tooru’s hair, soft in his hands as he runs fingers through it, messing it up, and all of a sudden he remembers lavender fields and light breeze running through that same silken brown and feels a little sick. She takes a shaky breath. “Oikawa-san, I was wondering if you’d like to see a movie with me on Saturday.”
His best friend’s face is unreadable. And then: “Yamasaki Chiyo-chan, wasn’t it?” He flashes a white-toothed grin. “I’d love to.” Why is it that this feels so uncomfortable, so wrong? What about this confession makes Iwaizumi want to reach out and shake Yamasaki’s pretty shoulders until she never wants to approach either of them again, when the myriad of love letters have never bothered him before? It itches, painful, discomfort– and he can’t quite place it.
There’s another confession, one left unanswered, that hangs in the air heavy between them. It has sat there, thick and wild and terrifying, for quite some time. But all of a sudden, Hajime is unsure if it remains. All at once, the empty space of that once-weighty presence is the worst thing in the world.
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Oikawa is calling her Yami-chan by Tuesday, and she’s accompanied by the purple of a morning glory.
It’s tucked behind her ear and stands out indigo against the glossy black of her hair. Oikawa puts it there, fingers brushing against her cheek. She flushes beneath his touch. Hajime remembers the last time a purple flower was tucked behind someone’s ear, but it was Tooru’s ear, a soft purple violet that wouldn’t stay.
Do you know about Hanakotoba? The secret language of flowers. Each blossom has a different meaning.
What’s this one mean?
His mind needles at it all day. He doesn’t look it up. He doesn’t want to know.
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Hajime is six, and Tooru is still five. But the world is painted in lilac, and the purple blossoms grow all huge in the Oikawa family’s front porch plant pots.
Volleyball is still just a game and their biggest problems are still what flavor cake Oikawa wants for his birthday or whether they’ll make friends in first grade. Hajime is six, and Tooru is still five. July is so sticky and the 20th approaches so soon. They’re growing up, hand in hand.
It’s four days before his sixth birthday that they end up at a flower garden. The two boys are holding hands, too young to know it could be bad, too old to know it means nothing at all. Tooru’s hand feels so hot in Hajime’s— he’s so aware of it. Maybe it comes with being six years old. Maybe it comes with your hand being a little bigger and a little sweaty, tan against Oikawa’s pretty pale fingers. Whatever it is, he’s the only one who seems to notice. It’s four days before his sixth birthday at the flower garden when Oikawa finds out about Hanakotoba. They wander through as the patient lady explains to their respective mothers— and the two boys by proxy— the secret language of flowers. The symbolic meanings they have, the whispered truths they ache to communicate. The delicate pink sakura represents innocence and purity. The aster symbolizes change and sympathy. And the lilac is for a first love.
It’ll disappear into a faded memory, papery edges soft and near-forgotten for Hajime. And it’ll come back almost twelve years later. But Oikawa adores it. He points out flowers along the way home and yells out their Hanakotoba the same way that Hajime recognizes beetles. Honeysuckles are for misunderstandings and hatred; Iwaizumi just thinks they’re sweet on the tongue. Clovers are for good luck and promises; Iwaizumi just thinks they’re soft beneath feet running bare. Oikawa keeps rambling on about it. And even though it irritates him a little, and even though Hajime chalks it up to a silly superstition, he listens. Every time.
Tooru plucks a delicate lilac blossom between his index and his thumb and tucks it behind his best friend’s ear. It’s too delicate, too soft behind the messy spikes of Hajime’s coarse dark hair, the soft purple flower contrasting.
“What’s this for?” He asks.
“It’s a lilac flower!” Tooru replies. He’s bouncing up and down on his scuffed red sneakers. His eyes are like milk chocolate and sparkling and eager. His little hands clench into fists. Iwaizumi relents.
“What’s the Hanakotoba?”
“LOVE!” Tooru declares. “First love! Because you’re my first and bestest friend!”
“First love?” Hajime echoes.
“Yep.” Everything about that boy is sparkling. His eyes. His smile. He shines like every star in the sky.
“We’re gonna be best friends together forever, Iwa-chan!”
“Forever.” Hajime affirms.
And like all flowers eventually do, the lilac withers and dies.
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Yami-chan is, for a time, the bringer of those bright Oikawa smiles that Iwaizumi used to be the sole recipient of. Yami-chan is also gone thirteen days later.
What happened? Iwaizumi asks.
It doesn’t matter, Oikawa replies. Same thing that always does.
What happened? He repeats.
His best friend does not respond. Balloon flowers bloom in the front yard.
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It’s been two weeks since a confession was shared and left unanswered in lavender fields, and Hajime finds his purple again in a little street corner with hyacinths planted neatly in rows. Someone’s secret garden.
I’m in love with you, Hajime. And then silence. The words hang between them like a guillotine that has yet to make the final cut. The most selfish part of Iwaizumi wants to take the memory and crumple it. Forget it happened. And more importantly, forget that moment where he didn’t say, I love you, too.
The hyacinths glow purple and too bright, distractingly so. His head hurts. The color purple has been everywhere since that day. Maybe he’s scared of it. Every time he sees it, the memory flashes across his mind; lavender fields. Maybe he’s scared of it. There’s an urge to forget that aching hungry space. Yank out those pretty purple flowers from the root and tear them into pieces, shredded petals indicative of an indigo shade well forgotten, long leaves all crushed on the ground. A distinct little part of his brain wonders what the Hanakotoba is. The thought tastes bitter, and he rolls it around on his tongue.
He’s still staring at those hyacinths, neat little rows of purple blossoms, when the drizzle begins. It soaks through his white button-down and drenches his hair. Nobody is watching. Nobody is here. He reaches out and rips through the plants, a bouquet in the making as the sweet green stems snap and split under his hungry hands, ruined petals falling loose and soft to the ground.
He clenches the flowers in a fistful as he walks, first slow and then fast and then a sprint, a thousand purple stars bowing under the increasingly heavy rain. Is there still time? To fix things that are so, so wrong? To fix a moment, left behind two weeks ago in a field full of lavender, with a different purple bouquet? With a fistful of a darker, fuller shade. With anything. With something. With an I love you that’s been burning on his tongue. That he finally knows how to say.
Google Search 9:29pm - hanakotoba hyacinth meaning
Hanakotoba is the Japanese form of the secret language of flowers. Each flower has a different meaning. The hyacinth flower (purple) most commonly means: I am sorry, sorrow; please forgive me
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Oikawa opens the door in the pouring rain and his eyes are wide. Hajime stands in the storm. The purple hyacinths are bending under the weight of the water. He wants to say everything. He doesn’t have to. Tooru already knows.
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“I really wanna kiss you.” He whispers.
The purple blossoms sit forgotten and sopping wet on Oikawa’s desk. The walk to his room has been wordless and the I love you in Iwaizumi’s throat burns so hot and hard and horrible. The room is dark. The rain is loud. Everything is right and wrong and too much and not enough, and Hajime’s best friend’s eyes are pleading, resigned, big and brown and empty and full and everything. There are glow stars on the ceiling. Tooru is beautiful. The corner of his mouth twitches shyly, a nervous tic. He’s about to say sorry. He’s about to take it back. His lips are pink and look so soft and he’s about to say just forget I said that. The leftover bits of rain run down to meet Iwaizumi’s jaw. His neck. His chest. His heart.
Tooru is beautiful. Hajime takes his best friend’s face, cupped carefully between two rough hands, and kisses him.
“I love you.” He says, and this time he is sure.
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It ends with a soft shade of lavender. More specifically, a field of gently waving lavender in which his boyfriend stands, a moment fresh and crisp around the edges; clean and true. The swaying seaside breeze threads its fingers through Oikawa’s hair, chocolate-brown and so soft. The salt-scented wind, zephyrous and delicate, irritates him; he turns with his face all twisted up and says, “Iwa-chan. The wind is ruining my hair.” He tries in vain to hold those carefully articulated strands in place, a futile attempt at holding perfection in a world that is too far out of his control just like always.
“I know.” Hajime says. “I’m in love with you, you know.”
“Are you?” Tooru says. Teasing. “And here we are in a lavender field.” He waits a second. A few beats pass. Hajime relents with a groan.
“What’s the Hanakotoba?”
“I am SO glad you asked, Iwa-chan.” His boy is sparkling. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t believe in this secret language of flowers shit. His beautiful star is shining. “Lavender tends to mean faithfulness. And everlasting devotion.” Brown hair whips in the wind. Tooru winks.
“Everlasting devotion, huh.” Iwaizumi muses. Picks a blossom and tucks it behind his lovers’ ear.
“Yeah. Eternity, even. Forever.” His boyfriend smirks.
“Forever.” Hajime affirms.
They walk out of the lavender fields slowly. The sky is big and blue and huge and the breeze carries their laughter. Tan fingers wrap around pale ones, so slim and cool. Hands tangled. Hearts tangled. The blossom falls from behind his ear and onto the ground, and there are seeds in it; seeds that will grow into new flowers by spring.
It’s been awhile since Iwaizumi first started thinking of the color purple. And, he’s in love.
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