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At 25, they break up, and they do it over the phone. They think that not seeing each other’s faces will make the experience less unbearable, but it hurts just as much, if not more, to hear the other’s trembling voice so close when in reality they’re on opposite ends of the continent. Tooru cries so much, and Hajime cries so much.
They also scream at each other. Oikawa can’t stand Iwaizumi anymore and all his bullshit about “I have to do this, because for you to succeed you can’t be tied down by what slows you, and I’m the one holding you back.” And Iwaizumi can’t stand Oikawa anymore and all his bullshit about “I need you by my side, I hate the distance with every fiber of my being, but I hate losing you even more, and I can’t take it anymore.” They try to hate each other, because hate would save them pain, tears, and sleepless nights. But they simply can’t.
Because there’s nothing they hate about the other. Nothing.
And so, despite everything, at their lowest point, they still take care of each other, just as they always have since the cradle. They don’t do it directly, because they’re still searching for the pieces of their broken hearts, still trying to piece them back together with shaking hands and glue that doesn’t stick.
They do it through their circle, through their people.
Hanamaki and Matsukawa are always there. Hajime teaches them how to calm Tooru’s panic attacks from Miyagi the way he used to do from Irvine. Tooru helps them crack Hajime’s stubborn shell and draw his emotions out, the way only he can.
Hajime talks every day with Martín, Tooru’s closest friend, to know how Tooru is doing. He teaches him over FaceTime how to cook the meals he used to make when Tooru was struggling with food, because when he’s at his worst, he tends to forget to eat. He also asks Martín and Bruno to watch over Tooru on the court, to not let him stay training too late, not to be intimidated by his outbursts, that they have permission to kick his ass if that’s what it takes to drag him out. And at night, to make sure he really sleeps and doesn’t keep anything close that might worsen his insomnia.
Tooru writes every day to Jacob, Hajime’s roommate and close friend, to ask how Hajime is doing and to teach him the signs that mean he’s at his emotional worst. Also to David, who keeps him updated on how Hajime’s keeping up with his classes, because Tooru knows how important it is for Iwa-chan to continue maintaining his excellent grades.
And they both talk to each other’s mothers, because nothing escapes a good mother’s notice, and the comfort they offer is a warm blanket in the middle of winter. Iwaizumi tells kaa-chan how sorry he is for hurting Oikawa, and Oikawa tells oba-chan that his heart still hurts so much.
Takeru keeps Hajime informed when Tooru returns to Japan, just like Hanamaki and Matsukawa do. And Hajime's father sends daily updates to Tooru when it's Hajime who goes back, just as Makki and Mattsun do as well.
This way, little by little, Tooru and Hajime take care of each other while they gather the shards of their broken hearts, trying to hold them together with too much glue. They do it with their backs turned, leaning against each other, sharing the glue. And so it goes until, three months later, Tooru is the first to write in the group chat he shares with Hajime, Makki, and Mattsun.
It’s nothing more than a silly joke with barely any charm, but enough for Hanamaki to react with a LOOOL and a flood of laughing emojis, for Matsukawa to seriously question his sense of humor, and, only an hour later, for Iwaizumi to reply with a “the heck means that.”
And that’s when a sliver of sunlight slips between the dark storm clouds and slowly begins to spread, as Tooru and Hajime stumble forward along this new gravel path, like when they first learned how to ride bikes together.
The four of them keep the group alive almost daily. Long conversations, teasing, debates, gossip, audios, photos. Takahiro and Issei pretend they haven’t missed the hell out of reading iwa-chan and shittykawa, and Hanamaki definitely doesn’t shed a tear when Hajime suggests a FaceTime call four months later.
They do it on a Saturday, 8 p.m. in San Juan, 4 p.m. in California, 8 a.m. in Sendai. Oikawa and Iwaizumi don’t look at each other much yet, but the almost four hours of video call pass in a blink for all four of them.
Oikawa shows his three new plants and how beautiful his tiny balcony garden is becoming. Makki rants about how the labor system needs to be abolished because he’s sick of job interviews every three months. Mattsun recounts how he spent an entire morning entertained by a family dispute over coffin interior design because one son wanted it blue and the other wanted it white. Hajime complains about exams and how he’s also preparing to start his master’s.
The conversations ebb and flow. They pull out anecdotes, past and present. Makki and Mattsun finally meet Jacob and David live, who also warmly greet Tooru when they see him. They call kanpai from different corners of the planet: Oikawa with mate, Mattsun and Makki with matcha mugs, Iwaizumi with iced lemonade.
And the video calls turn into a monthly ritual they never miss. Oikawa and Iwaizumi exchange more jokes, look for ways to tease each other, laugh together through the screen. This time, they seem to pedal with more confidence, walking this new path without stumbling, and they’re okay.
Until, a year and three months after their breakup, at 26, they’re left alone when a summer storm sweeping through Sendai cuts their two friends’ wifi mid-call. They don’t say anything for several seconds, and Hajime feels, for the very first time, that the handlebars are slipping out of his hands.
Because they’d been fine with Makki and Mattsun around, like catalysts keeping everything in balance, but now, for the first time, they are facing each other alone. Panic begins to prickle under their skin, and both Tooru and Hajime try to keep it under control. They had come too far to throw away all the effort they had made.
“How…?” Iwaizumi starts, clearing his throat when his voice comes out a little clumsy. “How did Takeru do on the tryout for the Red Falcons?” he asks, even though Takeru had already sent him a dozen messages (all in capital letters) days ago, proudly announcing he’d made the team. I’s a small window, an attempt to ease the heavy air stretching between San Juan and Irvine.
“Oh.” Oikawa blinks, then shifts in his chair, his eyes unable to stay fix on a single point on the screen. “Really well. He called me right after the results came out and told me absolutely everything.” And then Hajime’s scarred heart skips a beat when he sees Tooru’s lips curve into a soft, little smile. “Although, he was more excited about finally meeting Ojiro Aran in person.”
“Seriously? Did he also get him to sign a towel, only for your sister to throw it in the wash without telling him?” Hajime dares to joke, his leg restless beneath the desk, unsure if he’d jumped too quickly or if he should’ve waited.
But when he sees Oikawa’s face shift into one of mock indignation, the tension in his shoulders eases, and breathing came easier.
“Hey, you know perfectly well nothing happened to that autograph!” Tooru protests, pointing at him from the other side of the continent.
They bicker a little more before their talk begins to drift, jumping from subject to subject. They speak about Hajime’s training under Utsui, about Tooru’s trip to Brazil where he’d run into Hinata, about the ridiculous selfie with Ushikawa, about how sushi tasted completely different outside Japan, about the cultural shocks they still hadn’t gotten used to. Teasing slips in between, they dig up embarrassing memories they think they had long forgotten, Tooru teaches him Spanish expressions and Hajime returns the favor with Californian slang.
They find their way back to familiar ground, a steady rhythm, even as they carefully skirt around the craters of a love story too raw to look at directly.
By the time they notice, the clock in San Juan is nearing 1 am. And even though Oikawa wants to keep going, just a little longer, Iwaizumi threatens to tattle him to kaa-chan if he doesn’t get to bed.
“I’m big enough to stay up late!” Tooru whines childishly, pouting the way Iwa misses the most.
“I’m dialing her now, Shittykawa,” he says flatly, raising his phone toward the camera and resisting the urge to smile when Tooru squawks indignantly.
“How mean, Iwa-chan!”
And Iwa-chan isn’t satisfied until Oikawa, pout still plastered on his face, gets up from his desk, laptop in hand, and sits down on his bed, showing him he really is going to sleep.
But after saying goodnight, neither of them hangs up.
They linger in silence. Hajime can see the way Tooru hunches slightly, eyes lowered, biting his lip as if he wants to say something but doesn’t know how. Hajime draws in a breath, about to speak, when Tooru beats him to it.
“I missed this,” Tooru whispers, finally lifting his gaze with a soft smile, though sadness tugs faintly at the corners of his lips. “So much. I… I missed you.” His voice cracks, and so does Hajime’s heart.
“Yeah,” Hajime finds himself answering, watching Tooru press his lips together, brows furrowed in the effort not to fall apart in front of him. Hajime doesn’t dwell on how, once upon a time, Tooru wouldn’t have hesitated to break in front of him, to show him everything. “I miss you just as much.”
After that, they begin speaking in private for the first time in a year and three months. They ask about family, about friends, about San Juan, about Irvine, about the weather, training plans, Argentine nationality, the offer from Japan’s national team.
They don’t talk every day, not even close. They speak from time to time, unhurried. They don’t dig too deep, careful not to open a wound that never heals. Hajime doesn’t think too much about what it means for Tooru to hold a new nationality. Tooru doesn’t think too much about what it means for Hajime to return to Japan.
They simply coexist. They slip back into each other’s lives, not filling the hollow in the other’s soul as they once did, but tucking themselves into a small corner instead, quiet, unseen, just in case.
They also try dating other people. Tooru goes out with two girls and a boy, Hajime with a boy and a girl. It’s not something they ever bring up, not even their friends mention it. They simply know because of a poorly hidden hickey on the neck, or a photo of a blurred figure, seen only from behind, in some fleeting story. Still, none of those relationships last longer than two months.
It’s as if they’re trying to force themselves into a puzzle that was never made for them.
By the time they reach 27, they are friends. Just friends. Not best friends, not soulmates, not even particularly close. And with that, come the Olympic Games in Tokyo, where, for the first time in over three years, these two just friends see each other in person again. Tooru doesn’t throw himself at Hajime like he did the last time; Hajime doesn’t pull him in tight, doesn’t kiss his temple in return. They simply look at each other, absorbing all the changes that pictures and video calls can never capture.
Tooru takes in Hajime’s new height (though, to his relief, the difference still remains), his darker skin, broader shoulders, fuller arms, sharper features, hair slightly less unruly, thighs more solid, his presence stronger, firmer, more dominant. And Hajime takes in Tooru’s broader chest, straighter, steadier shoulders, the more defined biceps, longer legs, shorter hair, the aura more assured, more confident, powerful.
“It’s good to see you again, Iwa-chan. I can’t wait to make you all eat dust,” Oikawa grins wide, though his voice trembles slightly and his hands itch with the memory of warm skin he hasn’t managed to wash away, no matter how many times he’s scrubbed them raw.
“You’ll be waiting a long time, idiot. We’re gonna kick your blue ass,” Hajime shoots back, smiling in return, though not being able to touch him physically hurts, it claws at his muscles with a sharp ache.
“It’s not blue, stupid. It’s celeste,” Tooru sticks out his tongue like he did when they were nine and their biggest worry was reaching the beetles hiding high up in the trees.
“As if there’s any difference.”
“Of course there is! It’s just that your tiny mutant reptile brain can’t appreOW, IWA-CHAN!” Oikawa yelps dramatically, rubbing at his arm where Hajime only lightly smacks him.
“Oh, my bad,” Hajime smirks. “Guess it’s hard to control my mutant reptile strength.”
That fleeting contact leaves their skin warm for the rest of the day. It feels as if the last few years have never happened, as if their friendship has stretched seamlessly from high school to now, as if there has never been that I’m in love with you, so much, spilling out of the lips of a flushed Oikawa on a rainy July afternoon in Aoba Johsai’s gym.
After the Games, they have a week off, and together they return to Miyagi to visit their families. They eat at the Oikawa household, have dinner at the Iwaizumi household, hug a not-so-baby Takeru, who cries because it has been years since he’s seen them in person. They go out with their families, make a thousand plans with Makki and Mattsun, wander the neighborhood with a volleyball tucked under one arm, smiling awkwardly and embarrassed at the neighborhood grandmothers’ cheeky hints about their love lives.
On the seventh day, Oikawa is the first to fly back to San Juan. To his surprise, Hajime insists on driving him, the more than four hours to Narita Airport, giving him no chance to protest. In the hush of morning, they load the luggage into Iwaizumi’s father’s old black Toyota parked in front of the Oikawa house, and the trunk closes with a dull bam. Tooru has to breathe deep before turning to say his goodbyes. He hugs the Iwaizumis, nodding with a trembling smile when obaa-chan reminds him to call once he lands.
He hugs his parents even tighter, and the tears finally spill when his mother’s soft voice reaches his ear, wishing him a safe trip, reminding him to take care of himself and to keep playing. His father claps him firmly on the back, telling him not to forget to bring more of his own interview magazines next time, so he can pin them proudly on the wall. By then he’s already a messy bundle of tears and snot when his sister wraps him in a solid embrace, and Takeru isn’t doing much better, burying his crying face into his pajama shirt before clutching blindly at his uncle.
It doesn’t matter how many times he goes through this, it never gets easier. So when Iwaizumi starts the car and they drive away from the house, from their home, Tooru sinks into the passenger seat, still crying in silence, hiccupping when Hajime’s warm hand comes to rest on his thigh, giving it a soft squeeze. A quiet I know how you feel, and I’m here, that only makes him cry harder.
A little later, with eyes swollen and nose red, Tooru pretends nothing has happened, trying to lighten the ride with karaoke sessions Hajime pretends to hate, random conversations, and making up the lives of the drivers and passengers of every car they pass.
“Do you have everything with you?” Hajime asks for the tenth time as they finally stand before the security checkpoint at the airport.
All around them, thousands of travelers scurry like ants. Flight announcements echo intermittently through the speakers, the clatter of luggage, some rushing, some calm, mingles with dozens of conversations; most of them, farewells.
“Yes, mom,” Tooru teases, his voice still a little nasal, eyes slightly swollen as he stares at some spotless patch of the airport floor.
Hajime doesn’t even bother to snap back, not when Oikawa sniffles and rubs his eye with the back of his hand, lips trembling. This idiot is going to cry again, and Hajime with him.
“Come here, you damn crybaby,” his voice is low as he opens his arms.
And Tooru doesn’t think twice. He drops his suitcases, slips off his backpack, and throws himself into Hajime’s arms for the first time in years, clinging tightly, feeling Hajime’s arm around his back, his hand at his nape. It’s like breathing again, the first lungful of air after minutes underwater, lungs twisting painfully with the need. He buries himself in Hajime’s scent, that ridiculous cologne and cream deodorant, in the solidity of the body that has always held him up, in the warmth of the hands that touch him. In the breath against his neck, in the brush of his hair against his temple.
“I’m not a damn crybaby,” Tooru mutters seconds later, voice thick with tears.
“Of course you are,” Hajime answers, voice just as wet. “You’ve done this dozens of times already. You should be used to it by now.” He adds it even though he himself knows how brutal it is, this new reality of living between two worlds, of going from seeing your family every day to once a year if you’re lucky, of saying goodbye without knowing if you’ll get to see them again the next.
“I know.” Tooru sniffles, burrowing in closer. “But it’s never easier, and it never hurts less.”
He’s so right, and Hajime pulls him tighter against himself.
“Take care of yourself, okay?” he whispers after a while, trying for once in his life to sound like a mother and not like a man saying goodbye to the closest thing to true love he has ever known. “Text me when you land and for God’s sake, stay out of trouble at immigration.”
“It’s not my fault I always get the stupidest police.” Tooru huffs before finally lifting his head, calmer now, no longer crying, to meet Hajime’s gaze. His eyes still shine, more beautiful than gold, and his lips curve into a small, genuine smile, one of those Hajime has been collecting since they were kids. “Thank you. For bringing me.”
Hajime smiles too, nodding.
There are no long fingers cradling a face, no tan hands gripping a waist. No lips meeting one last time to carry the memory until the next visit. They are just two friends, saying goodbye. And friends can love each other too, but the I love you sticks in both their throats, because it isn’t that kind.
Tooru slips out of the embrace, Hajime’s arms protesting silently before he crosses them over his chest, just to stop himself from doing something stupid.
“See you, Iwa-chan,” Tooru says, swinging his backpack over his shoulder again.
“See you, Sillykawa.”
The nearly five-hour drive back to Miyagi stretches endlessly. Hajime cries a little, haunted by the memory of Tooru’s broad back disappearing past security without looking back even once. And only a day later, while waiting for his own flight to California, Hajime gets a message from Tooru saying he’s slept, eaten, and narrowly avoided any immigration trouble (by the skin of his teeth).
Since then, they call each other every once in a while, stay behind a little longer after group video calls with Makki and Mattsun, reach for each other first when they need favors. Tooru spams Hajime with forty TikToks a day, and Hajime complains but watches every single one.
They are fine. There are still remnants of pain, yes, but it isn’t like the first time. They are fine.
The years pass, slower now, softer, less anguished. It seems like they’ve gotten over it, that somehow they’ve found a perfect balance. Oikawa even rubs it in Martín’s face that yes, you can be friends with your ex, thank you very much.
Until 31 comes, and with it, the interview, and for the first time in a long while, Oikawa cries when he reads everything Hajime says.
We don’t talk that much outside of the line group, but we discuss training sometimes.
He’s my rival.
The signed knee supporter was so funny, in fact kaa-chan…
Aun no kokyuu.
Iwaizumi Hajime, the man who knew Oikawa best.
And Tooru, like Hajime, realizes they haven’t gotten over a fucking thing. That they’ve only been pretending and pretending, walking their path with eyes down, never daring to look further. That the red string has wound itself around their necks instead, tightening and tightening. They’re not going to heal well from this breakup, not when they haven’t just lost the love of their lives, but also their best friend, their pillar, the one person with whom they share a mental and physical bond they will never be able to replicate with anyone else.
Hajime will always be a part of him, just as Tooru will always be a part of Hajime.
They aren’t just someone in each other’s lives. They are each other’s life.