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The sheets are white, smelling faintly of yesterday’s IV. The walls are white too, but they have the musty scent of old plaster. His fingertips idly play with the frayed edges of a paperback—one wrong move, and the page could slice his skin. It wouldn’t hurt.
Akaashi Keiji isn’t afraid of pain anymore. It’s distant now, a past so far gone that it feels like nothing at all.
Ten convex pills for breakfast: three white, four red, one green, and two glossy pink.
What happened yesterday? Something did. Something new.
His eyes scan the room, landing on a pair of warm brown ones across the way.
“We haven’t met yet, pretty boy,” the other says in a low voice, rough around the edges. His eyes are far too full of life—he's new here.
Akaashi looks through him, blankly. Like looking through glass. All the color has drained from the world.
“Why would we?” he asks, genuinely confused.
The stranger huffs a laugh and drifts over to the window, hands in his pockets, gaze faraway.
The sunrise outside is ordinary. Yesterday’s was the same. Tomorrow’s will be too. Maybe the day after will be a little more red. Maybe not. Who cares?
“I’m Kuroo. Tetsurou,” he says, finally turning. He waves like an idiot—loud kind of guy.
Akaashi doesn’t answer. Talking’s for the living. For people whose hearts still beat and fling themselves forward. For people who still have something left. His lips move, and what comes out is crooked and soft, not quite his voice. Not a name—just a sound, a scrap from before.
“Akaashi Keiji.”
Kuroo grins, holding out a hand. His skin is warm, dry, a little rough on the fingertips.
“You still can’t remember me, huh?”
He shakes his head, lets go of the hand too slowly.
“But you were kissing me on the roof all night yesterday.”
Panic. Static. Storm.
Akaashi looks up. “Did I?”
He grips his book tighter, fingers pressed between pages. Kuroo’s eyes look suddenly sad. Akaashi Keiji doesn’t like sad. He prefers when it’s nothing at all.
Soothing other people’s emotions is hard. Soothing your own is worse.
“You said there’s something in your head that scrubs your memories,” Kuroo says casually, tossing words like they mean nothing. Thank god he doesn’t pity him. That helps. “I’m used to it.”
No ugly medical terms. No Latin jargon, even though Kuroo probably knows them. Those words only lead to hospital beds and IV drips. Nothing good in them—every letter a dead end.
Akaashi turns pages, desperate to kill the moment. He glances at Kuroo again—softer this time. There’s a thin line between real and forgotten.
“So how often do we go to the roof?” he asks, voice dull, low, unimportant. He doesn’t expect an answer.
Kuroo smiles, like someone flipping past a dog-eared chapter and forgetting to come back.
“Often enough that it’s always the first time,” he says, ruffling Akaashi’s hair like he’s done it a thousand times. A casual, exact gesture. Goosebumps scatter down the back of his neck. Interesting.
Then Kuroo’s already stepped away, back to his half of the room, like something invisible between them might break.
A girl in a white gown brings papers. Asks him to sign. Whispers, checks things. Akaashi doesn’t want to say "doctor." Doesn’t want to say "surgery." He hates those words. He wants everything around him to stay unnamed. Then it won’t be real. Just a mistake. A game. A made-up story.
The day drags like a sticky rope, choking slowly. Pages rustle under his fingers. His glasses keep sliding down his nose—he has to push them up again and again. Annoying.
Sometimes Kuroo strolls by and casually taps the bridge of his glasses to set them straight. Habitual. Funny.
Some passages in the book feel familiar. Akaashi isn’t sure how many times he’s read it. Not everything fades. Tiny shreds of memory flicker at the edges of his mind, never quite forming. Unsorted. Uncaught. And he wants to do something—tie them up in a knot, hang them nearby. So he could reach them, if he ever wanted.
The sky dulls into a worn-out color palette. Kuroo jingles keys in the doorway.
“Wanna see the sunset? It’s a good one,” he grins.
He’s always grinning. “You usually like it.”
Akaashi nods. Follows him down the empty hallways. Quietly, so they don’t wake anyone. The floor is smooth underfoot. Kuroo’s back broad ahead of him.
Three flights of stairs. Exactly 27 concrete steps.
The sky above is wide and washed-out. Cotton candy smeared with coal dust, melting into gray.
“Beautiful,” Kuroo mutters. He’s not looking at the sky.
Akaashi tilts his head back, watching clouds. Wind musses his hair, brushes his collarbones, slices across his cheeks and jaw.
“Sunset is reflecting in your eyes,” Kuroo says, casually. Like it’s nothing. Like he always says things.
Akaashi looks at him.
“And I am reflecting in yours,” he says back, and smiles—small, uneven, for the first time all day.
Because something about being near Kuroo makes him want to live. And it’s a strange feeling.
One of those new feelings that’s always been there, but you can’t find it anymore. Because memories are hard.
They talk a lot. And stay silent even more. Leaned against the rooftop wall, sprawled on the tiles.
The air is fresh. It doesn’t smell like meds.
And then the sky goes full dark, and if this weren’t a city, you might even see stars.
“That one’s Arcturus,” Kuroo points. Traces the sky with his finger. “You can kinda see it. Really bright. Pretty.”
He tries not to move his shoulder too much, as Akaashi’s head has fallen against it. His hair soft at Kuroo’s ear.
Kuroo doesn’t want it to end.
He looks down, gives in, and kisses him. Akaashi kisses back like it’s the first and last time. Always.
Kuroo carries him back when it’s deep night. When words are done. As usual, he lays him in bed, slips off his glasses, folds them neatly.
Tonight, he ties a black bracelet around Akaashi’s wrist. He finally traded for it and scratched a single kanji into the leather: 黒.
Just enough to mean something.
Not enough to remember.
“Don’t forget me, Akaashi Keiji.”
The sheets smell like yesterday’s IV. The walls smell like plaster. His fingers fidget with a paperback. One wrong move, and the page might cut skin. It wouldn’t hurt.
Ten pills for breakfast. Three white, four red, one green, two pink. What was yesterday? Something, surely.
The room is empty. It always was. Nothing new.
The girls in gowns whisper to each other, saying something about how, yes, it’s a shame, but the chances of the surgery succeeding were so tiny.
And they look at Akaashi strangely.
Sadly.
Like they know something he doesn’t.
Disgusting look.
He turns away, reaches for his book. A black bracelet slips around his wrist. Akaashi doesn’t remember what’s his and what’s not.
“Kuro,” he reads aloud.
What kind of idiot writes “black” on a black bracelet?
He sighs. And goes back to reading.