Chapter Text
Slicing through the clouds, a streak of blinding colour lights up the dark of twilight.
Bursts of purple and blue douse the already sparkling city in a soft light, and somewhere hundreds of miles below its flight, a gasp catches in a tightened throat, awe materializing through a bout of fogged breath.
There, in the heart of Tokyo, a sudden surge of wind runs through frizzed dark curls. The cold railings of a balcony is warmed by the careful grasp of lithe fingers.
Amidst it all, wide eyes follow the enchanting trail of braided colours, the brightness of a falling heavenly body reflecting against deep raven.
───────
Atsumu has been having weird dreams lately.
Dreams where, for a moment, he's sitting in a classroom that isn't his.
Where, when he turns his head to the left, it isn't the sight of Osamu asleep with a book on his head and a trail of drool down his chin, but the sight of buildings that seemingly scrape the clouds with their height. Where, when he looks down, he doesn't see the greenery that watched him grow up, but the bustling streets flowing with heavy traffic and a steady stream of people in businesswear, tiny pinpricks against the cold concrete of what is undoubtedly the city.
But in a snap, he's back into consciousness. He always wakes with a slight jolt, eyes wrenched open to be greeted by nothing but the wooden slats that support the upper bunk Osamu occupies.
So when— for the first time in weeks— Atsumu doesn't remember dreaming about the city at all, he joyfully leaps out of their bunkbed, purposely shaking the structure to startle Osamu awake and exhales a triumphant sigh.
From the top bunk, joggled out of sleep, Osamu hurls a pillow at Atsumu's head.
All things considered, it should be business as usual in the Miya household. It's part of their morning routine to bicker and fight and tear out each other's hair, and more often than not, they come out of their room dotted with bruises before the clock strikes 7.
They don't usually hold back, but, curiously, Osamu's throw was a little bit too light and the soft expression he holds on his face as he stares at Atsumu only builds dread in the pits of his stomach.
"The fuck are ya lookin' at me like that for?" Atsumu glares, bristling at the hint of fondness in Osamu's eyes that should instead be pure, unalloyed ire.
Osamu is strangely quiet when he drops down from bed and gives Atsumu a wary appraisal. He seems to falter just a bit when his gaze reaches Atsumu's face, as if he were expecting something unexpected.
Atsumu feels his neck heat up, suddenly embarrassed at the sudden scrutiny, and because he's a well-adjusted seventeen year old, he explodes in anger. "Quit it, fuckface!"
And as soon as it came, the wariness disappears, overcome with the oh-so familiar annoyance that scrunches up Osamu's face into something akin an anglerfish.
"And to think I started to miss your asshole-ness." Osamu glowers, his right eye twitching. "Why'd ya stop the act? Maybe I prefer the weird 'Tsumu that says 'I apologize' after all!"
"What in the hell are ya talkin' about? Did your final brain cell finally give up on your dumbass?"
Osamu blinks, and Atsumu can only watch with increasing puzzlement as the anger on his face fizzles into bone-deep confusion.
"'Tsumu," He starts slowly, as if Atsumu were a particular brand of stupid, "If ya need us to call a shrink, ya can tell us."
"A shrink—" Atsumu splutters, "You're the one soundin' insane here! Are ya prankin' me again 'cause if so, 'Samu, I swear to God I'm-"
"I knew it wasn't you in your body yesterday."
It's quiet after Osamu's whisper. The words leave his mouth so quietly that Atsumu almost misses it amidst the insults he planned to retort with bouncing around his head. But he hears it anyway.
He hears it, sure, but instead of giving him answers, it confused him even more.
Osamu looks back up at him, gaze heavy and unsettling, as he slumps down onto Atsumu's bottom bunk. He looks tired, despite just having woken up, and Atsumu can't fathom why.
"'Tsumu, I dunno what kind of witch cursed you— and I can't say I don't blame 'em— but you must've done somethin' real fucked up this time." Osamu frowns at his hands. Atsumu is stock-still, pinning his brother with a look that tells him to stop beating around the bush, and thankfully, Osamu gets the message loud and clear.
"Yesterday," Osamu says, tone unreadable, "What do you remember doing yesterday?"
Atsumu blinks. "Whadd'ya mean? We were studyin' for our English test. Then we gave up 'cause we were goin' to fail anyway 'n went to the arcade with Aran."
"That wasn't yesterday, 'Tsumu," Osamu sighs, "That was the day before yesterday. Try again. What do you remember doing yesterday?"
Surprisingly, Atsumu blanks.
He blanks so hard. No matter how much he tries to remember, his brain comes up short. Panic starts to fill his chest as he stalks towards Osamu. "What did you mean by it wasn't me yesterday?"
"Exactly what it sounds like." Osamu shrugs. "Ya had manners yesterday, y'know. I woke up from my alarm for the first time in years 'cause ya got up so quietly. I almost called the fuckin' police. And then when we were walkin' to school, Suna was eatin' tuna onigiri and ya didn't steal it out of his hands like ya always do. And then everyone on the damn team thought ya got abducted by aliens 'cause ya apologised for your multiple shitty sets— which, by the way, hasn't happened since that time ya came to practice with a broken wrist."
Atsumu is still. The air hangs in thick tension, the quiet stretching for long seconds with only their breathing to counter the discomfort.
And then, a laugh so violent rips out of Atsumu's throat with such aggression that he slams his forehead on the bunkbed frame.
When Atsumu recieves his English test back three hours later, he isn't quite laughing anymore.
He was wholly convinced that Osamu was just continuing their ongoing prank war with a joke so absurd it was laughable. He was operating under that assumption even when he notices that Suna put up less of a fight during Atsumu's daily quest to snatch his tuna onigiri, and when Kita comes up to him with a swoon-worthy smile and tells him he's glad Atsumu has recovered from his sickness.
But now, as the glaring red ninety-eight on his English paper stares right back at him, that familiar taste of dread crawls up his throat once again.
He checks the name on the paper, and then again... and then again. But no amout of looking away and looking back could change the fact that it is, indeed, his name written on that damn paper in handwriting that's neater than anything he's ever written in his entire life.
"You know that cheating on a test can get you kicked out of the club, right?" Suna says, ever so nonchalant, as he devours an entire portion of octopus in one bite. Beside Suna, Osamu frowns behind his own bento.
"I didn't cheat," Atsumu hisses. "I didn't even take this damn test! It was supposed to be today!"
Suna eyes him with a sideways glance. "Do you two have a hidden triplet we don't know about? Because it was definitely you that I saw take the test, but there is no fucking way that you'd ever get anything above a sixty in English, much less a ninety-eight."
"I know ya think yer funny, but yer not. And I dunno why the fuck you're gettin' involved, Sunarin, 'cause we ain't s'posed to involve no one else in these damn pranks!" Atsumu's tone gets scathing as he directs the last part of his spiel towards Osamu.
"First of all, no one ever said that was a rule," Osamu responds, matter-of-factly. "Second, I believe that it really wasn't Atsumu yesterday. He got bodyswapped. I mean, look at the handwritin'. It don't look like 'Tsumu's chicken scratch."
Suna's chopsticks clatter on Atsumu's desk, sending rice flying across the bold red numbers on maybe-not-Atsumu's paper. Before Atsumu could wear him down with his squawking, Suna places his bento next to his fallen chopsticks in favour of leaning towards Osamu and resting the back of his hand against his forehead.
"You're not running a fever," He says after a few beats, retracting his hand from Osamu's now flushed face. "So why did a load of the biggest bullshit I've heard just come out of your mouth?"
Osamu flusters. "Well- that's-"
"Ya said it yourself, Sunarin," Atsumu butts in, his disgusted glance sliding over to Osamu's flushing face before locking back in on his paper. "There's just no way I'd get this—" he gestures towards the mark, "—as myself."
"That doesn't prove anything," Suna sniffs as he picks his chopsticks back up. "Maybe you just got really lucky."
Atsumu stares at the paper for another beat before leaning back into his chair with a huff. "I don't even remember takin' the test. I don't remember livin' through yesterday at all."
Suna is quiet for a while. There's nothing but the chatter around them and Suna's less than silent chewing, and this silence stretches until the bell rings to signal the end of lunch.
Suna finally pipes up as he clicks his bento shut. "Well, if you really don't remember yesterday, then I guess you won't remember the teacher telling us about the pop quiz we're having for English."
Atsumu moves to jump over his desk, eager to make Suna eat dirt, but Osamu's hand fists the back of his shirt and pushes him back down in his seat. "Instead of beatin' him up, I suggest that ya should prolly start studyin'."
It kills a part of him to say that Osamu is right, so, he doesn't. Instead, he does the mature thing and only flips them off with both middle fingers when their backs are turned, and when he sufficiently appeases himself, he pulls out his English book and begins to— albeit aggressively— study the material.
After three pages of knowledge that slips out of his mind right after they enter, his eyes are glazed over and his soul has successfully vacated his body. He's done for, he knows, and any effort he puts in will go to waste, and he'll probably be on the receiving end of another one of his mother's signature 'I'm disappointed in you' frowns—
Atsumu's brain comes to a complete halt. In his hopeless daze, he'd been flipping through his notebook on autopilot. He'd gone far past the point where his notes ended, and by then, all the pages that follow should be completely blank.
To the universe's credit, they are blank.
All of them, except for one page.
One page, marred by the same elegant handwriting that wrote the characters of his name with the kind of confidence that made his heart skip a beat.
There, a simple question greets him.
Atsumu runs his fingertip over the letters.
...Who are you?
───────
This time, Atsumu wakes up at the sound of an alarm.
He wrenches his eyes open, directing a scathing glare towards the white ceiling, before swinging his arm in the direction of the ear-piercing sound. He manages to hit the cold glass of a phone screen after a few seconds of useless flailing and immediately moves to slam a frustrated finger on the snooze button.
With a satisfied sigh, he covers himself up with a blanket once more, content to let sleep monopolize the next five to twenty minutes.
That was until he realised.
A ceiling.
He woke up to a ceiling.
He sits upright so fast he nearly gives himself a headache. And then he nearly gives himself a heart attack too, once he notices that there is indeed no Osamu or his top bunk in sight, but instead a white ceiling reminiscent of ones in a hospital ward.
Countless scenarios start rushing through his head. What if he'd gotten kidnapped and is now at risk of being experimented on by evil villain scientists? What if Osamu had finally made good on his promise to sell Atsumu to the yakuza for two strawberry milkshakes? What if—
"Ki-yo-omi!~"
Atsumu falls off the bed all together.
He's scrambling to lift the blankets he'd dragged down with him over his face when the door swings open, revealing someone who is pointedly not an evil scientist or a lackey of a notorious gang.
Instead, a boy around his age with odd eyebrows stands, wearing a too-bright smile that wears off when he sees Atsumu curled up on the floor.
The boy's eyes are so wide Atsumu is almost afraid they'd fall right out and roll towards him. "What happened to you?"
Atsumu notes the distinct lack of accent that permeates the boy's words, a telltale sign that whoever had taken him in his sleep took him right out of Hyogo. For the first time in his life (excluding the 54 times in elementary school, the 12 times in middle school, and the 2 other times in high school), Atsumu begins to splutter in pure, abject fear.
The boy starts to step forward, but Atsumu screams with all his might that he's forced to take 3 more steps backward.
"Don'tcha come near me, ya hear? Or else," Atsumu screeches. His voice is a little different than he remembers, but he's got bigger things to worry about, such as how to stage the greatest escape from this laboratory-slash-lair-slash-hideout mankind has ever seen. "I'll— I know karate!"
The boy's shocked face freezes in place. There's silence as eyes scrutinize Atsumu's place on the floor, as if Atsumu had done something so grave like kicking a puppy.
"You've never done karate in your life, Kiyo." The boy says, face puzzlingly pitiful. "Did you have a bad dream or something? Now I feel kind of bad for eating your breakfast."
And then the boy disappears down the hall as fast as he'd come, leaving Atsumu to sit and reflect on the kind of fuckery he'd landed himself in.
He lets his head fall back, turning to rest his cheek on the bed, only to be met with dark eyes that are pointedly not his.
He chokes on his scream in favour of jumping onto his feet to barrel towards the mirror, and as he grasps it closer towards him, he watches as not-his-face's jaw drops in horror.
Maybe Osamu's witch-curse theory was not so far from the truth after all.
He's having a rough day, what, with him not being in his body and all.
The person in the mirror isn't the one he'd spent seventeen years staring at.
What he encounters instead is a lithe but sturdy frame and facial features carved to perfection. Curls fall tastefully along clear skin. And above one eyebrow lay two graceful moles, perfectly aligned.
Atsumu would be stunned to great lengths if he weren't so pissed off at everything.
After his disastrous awakening, he had to throw on the ugliest uniform the world had ever seen, and then navigate through what was essentially a mansion. The hallways seemed to move everytime he took a turn, like those fucking trick staircases in Harry Potter, because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find an exit.
He was one second away from making an Atsumu-shaped hole in the wall in a last-ditch attempt to escape the labyrinth, before a maid— an honest to god maid — emerged from the corner. When he asked her where the exit was with teary eyes, she'd given him the strangest look before leading him towards a spiral staircase .
If that wasn't enough, the boy that so rudely barged into 'his' room was waiting for him on the porch with the brightest smile, and when he ignored him in favour of starting the walk back to— well, Hyogo— a sleek black car pulls up in front of him. He should've run when he had the chance, but when he saw a driver—a driver— step out and open the car door for him, his jaw almost came unhinged.
The boy whistles as he walks past Atsumu and makes himself comfortable inside the vehicle, and in a baffled daze, Atsumu's feet had followed suit, leading him into the seat next to the boy against his will.
Now that he's at school, things got a little easier. Not to say that he didn't freak out internally a little when the classroom that he'd only ever seen in glimpses within his dreams greet him. But the quickly growing hope that maybe this was all a dream too was quickly dashed by a boy that accidentally elbowed him instead of his friend, and as the perpetrator dipped into a 90 degree bow, Atsumu registers the very real pain blooming at his side before sighing gravely.
He, of course, takes heed of the shaky and swift way the kid who elbowed him scrambled away.
He briefly wonders if maybe whoever's body he's in was a gangster; but what typical high school thug would have a personal driver and maids and spiral staircases?
Luckily for him, it seems that whoever's body he's in wasn't the most sociable, so when the lunch bell finally rang, no one but the boy he'd gone to school with had come to eat with him. It's not a far cry from his admittedly small group of friends in his own life, but he still feels a pang of loneliness on behalf of his body's owner.
Komori (the boy's name that he'd come to learn from his multiple friends calling out to him as they walked into the school) was more than happy to fill Atsumu's uncharacteristic silence with his own chatter. He'd be jumping to contribute to the conversation, maybe if he were actually Atsumu, but the shock still hadn't worn off and he can't stop staring at the name written on the books in the same scrawl that plagued his english test.
Who are you?
"—and Kiyo, seriously, I'm going to fail this math test and my mother's going to cut my allowance and you know I've been saving up for that nendroid—"
Atsumu sobers up as he finally redirects his gaze at Komori's math book. An abundance of equations litter another book beside it, ones whose answers are definitely wrong, and Atsumu can't help but uncap a pen and pull the book towards him.
"This is pretty easy, y'know," Atsumu hums, tapping the end of his pen on a question. "You're differentiating when you're supposed to be integrating."
Komori's quiet, now. He's staring not at the book but at Atsumu with a strange look, something he's been making himself well acquainted with today. Atsumu soldiers on anyway, unaffected. He manages to get through ten questions, manages to get Komori to exhale enlightened 'ooh's for most of them, before they hear a clatter beside them.
When him and Komori turn their heads, they see a girl cowering in her seat as a boy from what seems to be the year above leans in towards her.
"Come on. You can give me your number, can't you?" He smiles, a sickly one that shows how garbage of a man he really is, and leans in closer than before.
The girl's hands are shaking in her lap.
That's all Atsumu needs to see.
"The only number scrubs like ya deserve is a hospital number," He says, loud. His voice echoes throughout the suddenly silent room. "I can make arrangements for that, y'know. If ya play nice now, maybe I won't hafta set you up on a date with my fuckin' fist."
The boy doesn't even bother to look at him. "Stay out of this."
Atsumu scoffs, utterly appalled at not only the boy's bullshit, but at the blatant disrespect he was enduring on this fine Tuesday morning. "Did your pa teach ya how to be a dickhead?"
The boy turns, a sneer ready on his face and his fists already clenched. Atsumu kicks his chair backwards, preparing for a thrown punch before it even comes (something he's an expert in from a lifetime of tussles with Osamu), but the boy's tough demeanor immediately wanes when his eyes land on the owner of Atsumu's body.
The boy, like a cat seeing a cucumber, jumps away from the girl's desk, hands in the air like a coward. "Sorry, Sakusa. I didn't recognize your voice with the..."
The boy's mouth is open for a while, but it's wordless.
A few more silent seconds pass before he shakes his head, taking a step back. "Just— she's all yours, man. I didn't know. I'm not trying to start anything. My dad's a good guy. He— he works hard, okay? None of this is his fault. I'm not his fault.
And then the boy scurries out of the classroom before the fight Atsumu had been gearing up to win even begun.
Admittedly, Atsumu was just a tad bit disappointed that the boy had scrambled away so quickly.
The classroom is still quiet as he blinks back the disappointment and sinks back down into his seat, all eyes on him. The heaviest stare, however, comes from Komori, who looks like he'd just witnessed an alien abduction right before his eyes.
But this shock quickly dissolves into pride as Komori beams teasingly at him. "And here I thought you said that you'd never use your dad's position for your benefit."
Atsumu has no idea what he's talking about.
But still, he shrugs it off as if he does, and picks up his pen again. "The girl needed help. And that tough guy act was really pissin' me off."
Komori's laughter bounces throughout the class, and as the room exhales their collectively held breath, the chatter resumes with a little more vigor that it had before.
───────
Kiyoomi stares at the pink envelope, and then back at the girl that shakily holds it out before him.
He feels the breeze brush against his cheek, sobering him up from what he thinks might've been whiplash induced by the sheer impossibility of a girl asking him out not for his looks but for his kindness, and quickly clears his throat.
He opens his mouth to let her down easy. He endeavours to relay just how much he admires her courage—
"What the fuck is happening?" He blurts out instead, all semblance of propriety and manners leaving his body.
The girl only flushes further. Her hands continue to tremble, her gaze does not waver, and she repeats what she had said before Kiyoomi's mind clocked out and short-circuited. "I like you, Sakusa-san. I'm asking you to give me a chance."
The second repetition of the confession does not make Kiyoomi any less bewildered. In fact, it would probably be more believable if a unicorn popped out of the ground underneath him and started tap dancing to the beat of Mozart.
"After yesterday, I saw that maybe everyone's assumptions about you were wrong," the girl continues. Kiyoomi stiffens up further, if that were even possible. "I think you're brave and kind. You care about people, even if you're quiet about it at first. I want to be next to you when people start to realise all of these things."
When Kiyoomi speaks again, he makes an immense effort to keep his voice soft but still full of conviction. He takes a breath before bowing at the girl.
"I'm sorry." He says.
"I did tell you that you were acting weird yesterday," Motoya shrugs as he tucks his chin into his jacket and steps out onto the sidewalk. "It's your fault that you didn't believe me."
"I remember yesterday, Motoya," Kiyoomi scoffs, following suit. With a cursory glance at the deserted pick-up site of Itachiyama, he concludes that Sato, their driver, is late. "...and I know I didn't talk to that girl."
From beside him, Motoya gives him a strange look. It's quiet for a while as a searching gaze bores into his soul, and Kiyoomi has half a mind to shove a palm into his face.
"I suppose not," Motoya shrugs, a beat too late. His eyes don't leave the side of Kiyoomi's face. "But what you did would've meant a lot to her, especially because everyone knows you don't do things like that."
"Like what?"
"Like wh—" Motoya gapes exasperatedly, "What do you mean, 'like what'? You threatened a guy's family, Kiyo! You don't just forget that!"
Kiyoomi doesn't need to dig deep into his memories of this so-called 'yesterday' to know that "There is no way that happened."
"Yes way!"
"You've lost your mind—"
"You did, I swear—"
"Motoya, give it up. I'm not believing—"
"Kiyoomi-kun!"
They both freeze in place.
Akin to a horror movie protagonist, Kiyoomi turns around in slow motion, because no one except an alien new to earth would willingly call him 'Kiyoomi-kun' without shaking in their boots and bursting into tears.
His frozen expression is greeted by a warm smile from a boy he has never seen before, and it takes everything in him not to recoil like he'd been shot when the boy forces him into a fist-bump.
"Thanks for the help yesterday," the boy cheers. "I would've never solved that equation without you. Who would've know that you were good at math too?"
And the boy skips away, as if he hadn't just tilted Kiyoomi's world on its pitiful axis.
A beat passes in silence.
Motoya breaks it with a casual hum. "Oh yeah. You helped me with my math homework, too."
Kiyoomi blinks.
Motoya blinks back.
"Fuck," Kiyoomi whispers. "I've been cursed."