Chapter Text
|4 Years Later|
“Hey, um, well… it’s been a while, I guess,” Tetsurou mumbled, running his hand up and down the back of his head. A gravestone stood on the ground just a few feet from him. The bright, yellow color of the tulips contrasted stood out against the gray stone.
“You must be really disappointed in me. I haven’t been here since it happened, after all. God, I’m such… I mean I’m…” Tetsurou stammered before finally giving in and sighing. He really should have done this a long time ago, visiting the cemetery. Maybe if he had visited a few times to just say a few things, he wouldn’t feel so conflicted over what to say right now. But then again, Tetsurou should have said and done a lot of things while they were alive. Now everything was just built up inside him, like a dam waiting to burst.
Tetsurou looked down at the gravestone and felt a small smile tugging at a corner of his lips. “If you were here, you’d probably say something right now. Like some snarky comment about how stupid I am.” He could imagine them saying something like ‘Why would I need to say some snarky comment if you know it already? And by the way, good work for realizing it,’ accompanied with an eye roll and a smirk. But only silence greeted him. ‘I really have to do this,’ Tetsurou swallowed and shoved his hands into his pockets. Say everything that was on his chest, he owed them that much at least.
“It’s been so long, hasn’t it? Since I last saw you I mean. You wanted my last memory of you to be a good one and, it definitely was a good one. But you can’t hold a memory, can you? I just really wish that you could have stayed. I worked so hard so that I could get you to a better hospital because I didn’t want to lose you but I should have just listened. I should have listened…”
Tetsurou swallowed hard as tears pricked the corners of his eyes. He could still remember that day very well. The smell of antiseptic, the color of the tiled floor, the lights overhead that were much too bright; the white blanket dragged over the body on the bed. The last words he heard them say echoed through his head, and Tetsurou knew just how big the mistake he made was.
“I really wish I listened to you…”
|Now|
Kei hates this place.
He hates waking up and seeing the peeling, yellowish-white paint of his bedroom ceiling. He hates hearing the sound of his bed creak when he sits up. He hates walking through the hallway and seeing the magazines stacked against the wall. He hates the smell of stale beer that still comes from god-knows-where no matter how many times he and his mom cleaned the house. He hates the sound of his father snoring behind his closed bedroom door. He hates the taste of the plain cereal he has to eat for breakfast every single day.
He hates the yard in front of his house, all dirt with nothing but a few scraggly patches of yellowed grass here and there. He hates the looks that people passing by throw at him when he leaves the house. He hates feeling every pebble on the sidewalk under the thin soles of his worn-out sneakers. He hates the sound of mothers talking to each other in front of their pristine houses, discussing what dish to bring to the next block party.
Kei hates this place. He hates coming home after school and seeing his father sprawled on top of the couch with either a bottle or a can in his hand. He hates the looks people give him, as if they expected him to break down at any moment or lash out or hurt himself. He hates being strong enough to take on everything he sees and hears. He hates not being strong enough to actually be able to do anything. He hates having to stay in this place and not be able to leave.
And with the music in his headphones, he tries to drown everything out.
…
Tetsurou flips the sign by the window from ‘Sorry, We’re Closed,’ to ‘Come In, We’re Open’ before unlocking the door. Behind him, Keiji was reorganizing the shelves under the ‘Rock’ section while Koutarou picked out an album to play on the speakers in their shop. Soon enough, a Led Zeppelin song began playing in the shop.
“Geez Kou, isn’t it a little too early for that?” Tetsurou sighed, turning around to look at his spiky-haired friend who was bobbing his head along to the music.
“It’s never too early for Led Zep,” he protested.
“I agree with Kuroo-san,” Keiji said, not looking up from his work.
“But Akaashi,” Koutarou moaned.
“At least change it to something like Matchbox-Twenty,” Tetsurou said.
“I second the motion,” Keiji raised his hand.
“Fine,” Koutarou gave in. The Led Zeppelin song stopped playing and soon enough, ‘Bed of Lies’ came on.
“That’s more like it,” Tetsurou grinned, nodding his head along to the music before sticking a new poster to the glass window.
“Hey, is that the sign?” Koutarou asked.
“Yeah, it is,” Tetsurou nodded, smoothing out the paper of the ‘Help Wanted’ poster.
“So you’re really going through with it?” Keiji said.
“You think it’s a bad idea, don’t you?” Tetsurou sighed, detecting the tone in his voice.
“One, the store is pretty small so we don’t need that many people to manage it,” Keiji said. Tetsurou stopped what he was doing and crossed his arm to listen. After all, Keiji did give a lot of good advice. “Two, not a lot of people come here anyway, not even on weekends. And three, do we even have the funds to pay for another employee?”
“I just need someone to help me take care of the afternoon shifts on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and on Saturdays,” Tetsurou reasoned. “I mean you and Kou have classes and I have my jobs and everything. I’m sure someone would want to take the job as a part-time worker.”
“I think it’s a great idea!” Koutarou piped up, raising a thumbs-up sign.
“You always think Kuroo-san’s ideas are great,” Keiji sighed. “But in the end, it’s your shop after all, Kuroo-san.” To Tetsurou, Keiji’s statement sounded more like ‘It’s your funeral after all,’ instead of ‘It’s your shop after all.’
“But it is a great idea,” Koutarou protested. “We get to have a new buddy with us taking care of the shop.”
“Right?”
“But, does this mean you got a new job again, Tetsu?” Koutarou asked in a quieter voice. Other than managing the record shop that his uncle left him, he also had a job working the late-night shifts at the convenience store and another job as a waiter in Bento Box, one of the restaurants in town. Balancing all of them usually left him ragged and sleep-deprived, especially his job at the convenience store. Tetsurou could tell that his friends worried a lot about him but they gave all of their support along the way. Keiji sometimes took over his shifts when Tetsurou was too tired and Koutarou brought him coffee every morning. It usually had way too much sugar but who was he to complain.
“Nah man, I just got extra shifts at Bento.” Tetsurou flashed him a reassuring smile. “And they’re in the afternoon too so it’s not really that busy.”
“As long as you don’t overwork yourself, Kuroo-san,” Keiji said.
“I won’t, I won’t,” Tetsurou waved his hand. “It’s almost nine-thirty by the way. Shouldn’t you guys be heading off already?”
“You’re right!” Koutarou exclaimed, glancing down at his watch. Keiji finished sorting the last of the records before lifting his bag over his shoulder. Koutarou grabbed his backpack and headed for the door.
“See you Tetsu! Tell me if we get someone!” he grinned.
“Will do man,” Tetsurou nodded, fist-bumping his friend before he left.
“See you later, Kuroo-san,” Keiji bowed his head a little before following Koutarou out the door.
“See you…” Tetsurou waved as he watched the two of them leave. The two of them attended college at a university near town. Koutarou was in his second year while Keiji was still in his first. Tetsurou always felt a pang of jealousy whenever he saw the two of them hunched over their books, studying or doing homework, or listening to them talk about their teachers and schoolmates and what they learned. Even seeing Keiji and Koutarou walking to the bus stop now was enough to send him those jealousy pangs. Sometimes during his jobs, while he was either waiting in front of a cash register or clearing up a table, he would imagine himself walking to the bus stop with the two of them, groaning about the load of homework that they had to do. That was them two years ago while they were still in high school. Before everything went down the drain.
Tetsurou pressed his forehead against the glass window. Up close he could see his reflection against the dirt and grime on the other side of the glass.
“Time to clean the windows again.”
…
School was the only thing that Kei really happened to like. Basically, any place that wasn’t ‘home’ was a place that Kei liked. But he also happened to like sitting in class, hearing the teachers talk and talk about this time period or that formula and him just having to take down notes about it. He liked not having to smell the stench of beer anywhere. And he especially liked the fact that the only yelling he could hear came from his classmate, Hinata Shouyo.
“Tsukishima! Oi Tsukishima!” Once he heard the familiar voice calling out to him, Kei didn’t bother to stop walking, knowing that Hinata would quickly catch up to him anyway.
“What is it?” Kei asked once Hinata popped into his line of sight.
“So you read the list of ideas I gave you, right?”
“Nope. I just gave it back to Yamaguchi.”
“Mean! I made the effort to list it down in my writing so you could see them!”
“All I saw were a bunch of scribbles on a piece of paper. Would you really call that writing?” Kei scoffed as he dropped a coin in the vending machine in the hallway to buy a can of black coffee.
“Kageyama said he could read it!” Hinata flushed. “And Yamaguchi said he could too!”
“The only reason why Kageyama could hear it is because he practically writes the same as you do,” Kei explained, taking his can of coffee and making his way back to their classroom. “And the only reason why Yamaguchi said he could read it is because he’s too nice to you. If you showed it to Yachi she would have said she wouldn’t be able to read it.”
“Fine, I guess I’ll have to say them out loud!” Hinata said determinedly.
“Wait, what’s this list about anyway? I couldn’t even read your title,” Kei said as the two of them entered their classroom.
“It’s a list of ideas for our senior prank!” Hinata waved his hands in the air as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Oh, are you guys talking about the senior prank?” Yamaguchi piped up. He, Kageyama, and Yachi had put a few desks together to form a larger table. The five of them always did this during lunch at school. It was also one of the things that Kei liked about school, even though he had to listen to Kageyama and Hinata argue most of the time.
“Tsukishima said he didn’t read the list,” Hinata pouted as he sat down in between Kageyama and Yachi. Kei sat down next Yamaguchi by the window.
“Read the list,” Kageyama stated bluntly.
“List?” Yachi asked, turning to Yamaguchi for an answer.
“Hinata made a list of ideas for our senior prank,” he explained.
“Do we really even need to do one?” Kei sighed, opening his can of coffee.
“Of course we do! It’s how we’ll leave our mark behind in school as seniors!” Hinata exclaimed.
“The school has a copy of our yearbook, doesn’t it?”
“That’s so boring though, Stingyshima…”
“Are you guys with him on this?” Kei asked, looking at Yamaguchi and Yachi.
“M-me! Well it’s a pretty fun idea and I’ve never really done it before either,” she stammered. “If it doesn’t take too much work and if it doesn’t get us in too much trouble, I guess I’m in.”
“It sounds fun, Tsukki!” Yamaguchi grinned. “I’m in too.”
“Really?”
“And the seniors before us did it too,” Kageyama pointed out. “So that means we have to do one too, and it has to be better than what they did.”
“I can’t believe you’re even competitive about this too,” Kei deadpanned.
“Well so far I think the idea of filling the hallway with cups full of water is the best one,” Yamaguchi said.
“Hah! I knew Yamaguchi could read my handwriting.”
“Just barely, Hinata…”
“That’s going to take a long time to clean up though. We don’t want to create that much trouble,” Yachi said.
“We could trigger the fire alarm again.”
“Dumbass! That’s what the seniors did last year.”
“That wasn’t a very good prank either…”
“We could set off firecrackers in the hallway.”
“That would get us caught quickly.”
“Why don’t we hack into the school speakers?” Kei finally suggested, sounding exasperated by everyone’s arguing. The table fell silent for a minute as they all stared at him until Hinata finally broke it.
“That’s it!” he exclaimed, pointing at him.
“Tsukishima’s right, we could play some really loud rock song over the speakers in the audio visual room and then get out before anyone catches us,” Kageyama mused.
“And it just causes a disturbance too, nobody gets hurt or anything,” Yachi added.
“Nice, Tsukki!” Yamaguchi grinned at him. “Who knew you had it in you to think of such a prank?”
“Shut up, I just wanted something to make Hinata pipe down,” Kei grumbled.
“Well it seems to have taken the opposite effect,” Yamaguchi observed.
“We need to make a list of things to play before we decide on something,” Yachi said.
“I’ll make it!” Hinata volunteered.
“NO!” everyone else said at the same time.
“I can make it instead… if you like,” Yachi offered, pulling out a notebook and pencil.
“Okay…” Hinata said sullenly, slumping in his seat.
“Hey Tsukki, you’re coming over later, right?” Yamaguchi asked. Among all his friends in school, Yamaguchi was the only one who knew about Kei’s father at home. The two of them had been friends since grade school, back when everything was still alright. His father still had his job. His mother still smiled. And Akiteru was still there. Kei’s mother was friends with Yamaguchi’s mother so when things started to turn bad, she would send him over to their house. Now, his mother wasn’t around the house very often due to her shifts as a nurse in the nearby hospital so Kei tried to spend as much time as he could out of the house. And usually, that meant heading over to Yamaguchi’s place.
“Yeah,” Kei nodded. “But I might stop by at Vinyl for a while.” Vinyl was also one of the few things that Kei liked in this town. It was a music shop that sold a very good collection of records and CDs. He only used his allowance for two things, lunch and music. The rest he saved. But once every two weeks, Kei would go over to Vinyl to pick up something new.
“Oh right, it’s a Friday,” Yamaguchi nodded. “Sure. I’ll go with you.”
“Is that all?” Yachi asked, looking at Hinata and Kageyama over her notebook.
“Yup! We’ll add more when we get a new idea,” Hinata said. “But this is a genius idea! Way to using your brains for something useful, Tsukishima.”
“You mean on something other than schoolwork?” Kei raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, shouldn’t you guys be focusing more on your schoolwork?” Yamaguchi suggested.
“Um… Well…” Hinata stammered.
“You’re just trying to forget about that test you failed yesterday, aren’t you?” Kei said.
“I’m not the only one! Bakageyama failed too!” Hinata pointed.
“Shut up dumbass Hinata!” Kageyama yelled.
“Why am I not surprised?” Kei rolled his eyes and downed the rest of his coffee.
|One Year Later|
Kei set the box down on his bed and a cloud of dust from inside erupted in his face. “Shit,” he cursed, inhaling the dust before sneezing once, twice, and thrice. He sniffed and rubbed his nose as his eyes began to water. This is what he hated about moving. Old stuff meant dust and dust meant sneezing and sneezing meant that Kei was going to be irritable for the rest of the day.
He took off his glasses to rub away the fine layer of dust that layered it before putting it on and peering into the box. It was full of CDs that he hadn’t touched since he moved in. In his old house, it had been kept under his bed, hence the dust. Kei knelt down by the bed and began to sort through them, leaving the ones he won’t take with him in the box and taking out the ones that he will. He took out a few Stevie Wonder albums and left behind a couple of Broadway musical collections. Suddenly, he came upon an album that was all too familiar.
He could still hear his voice in his head. ‘Take a guess, Tsukishima. What music genre does this album cover belong to?’ Kei turned the plastic album case over and over in his hand, running his fingers over the front. A starry blue sky in the background. A tree with the sun shining through in the foreground. The name of the band written on the upper left hand corner. When Tetsu first showed it to him, he had covered the name with his fingers so that Kei wouldn’t see. But Kei had guessed it right, to Tetsu’s mild frustration. He told him it was a game he used to play, back when his uncle owned the shop.
On that same day, Kei decided to buy the album as well.
|Now|
Keiji was right though, not a lot of people actually visited Vinyl. After all, it was a music shop that sold CDs and records that are already downloadable online. You wouldn’t find any CD or record players anymore since they all practically died out once the iPod came in. Sometimes, Tetsurou wondered why he accepted his uncle’s offer to take over the shop in the first place.
But the thing is, Tetsurou loved that shop. He used to come over a lot ever since he was a kid when his mother needed someone to look after him. Uncle Makoto let him run loose in the shop. He would let Tetsurou help him carry boxes from place to place, reshelf records, restack CDs, even allowing him to choose what music to play in the shop. Tetsurou loved the smell of dust and boxes coming from the storeroom, he loved running his fingers lightly over a shiny, new record before placing it in the record player, he loved running his fingers down the spines of the plastic album cases.
But what Tetsurou loved the most were the designs on the record sleeves and album covers.
He loved how different they were from each other, as unique as fingerprints and tiger stripe patterns and faces in a crowd. Some covers were as simple as having the artist or band’s face on it along with a title of some sort. Some covers had a photomontage or a collage of random bits and pieces. Some covers were basically just abstract paintings that made Tetsurou’s head whirl the longer he looked at them. But he loved them all.
He and his uncle made a game out of it sometimes. Uncle Makoto would show him a cover from some band or artist that Tetsurou didn’t know and he would have to guess which genre their music was. Even after his uncle left for retirement, Tetsurou would still try to play that game with his friends. But Keiji was too smart and knew too much for him to be able to guess and Koutarou never found it to be entertaining. So that game was packed away in a box in his head labelled ‘Things that Tetsu Misses but Will Never Be Able to Do Again.’ He had a lot of things in that box.
Too many things.
|1 Month Later|
“Take a guess, Tsukishima. What music genre does this album belong to?” Kuroo asked. Kei raised his head from the stack of CDs he was sorting. Kuroo was holding one of the CDs with his fingers covering the top part to prevent Kei from seeing the name. The design on the front showed a blue sea in the background and a red swimming pool in the foreground.
“It’s a Red Hot Chili Peppers album,” Kei deadpanned and went back to his sorting.
“No fair, how could you guess it that fast?” Kuroo pouted before putting the CD away.
“How could you think that I wouldn’t know that band?”
“Okay, okay. Let me get a harder one.”
“Aren’t we supposed to be working?” Kei asked.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun with it,” Kuroo grinned at him before searching through the box of CDs in front of them. Kei shook his head and placed a stack of CDs on top of a shelf under the label ‘Blues.’
“Okay, how about this one?” Kuroo asked, holding up another CD. The background was a starry night sky while the foreground had a tall tree with the sun shining behind it.
“We won’t get any work done if you keep making me guess a CD every few seconds,” Kei deadpanned.
“Come on. We only have three boxes to sort through,” Kuroo begged. “Keiji and Koutarou are no fun to play with so it has to be you.”
“Fine,” Kei rolled his eyes and looked at the CD again. “It’s an indie.”
“Indie what?”
“Indie acoustic. Almost everything indie is acoustic.”
“Damn, I should have chosen a harder one,” Kuroo cursed and turned the CD over in his hands.
“What’s the band called?”
“The Perishers. Wait, how did you know it was a band too?”
“Because single artists usually put their own faces on the covers. Have you listened to them?”
“Yeah actually,” Kuroo nodded. “But mainly to listen to one song. Pills.”
“Pills?” Kei took the CD from Kuroo.
“Not about drugs, I promise you,” he said, placing a hand on his chest. “It’s a pretty sad song though. Completely relatable and everything.”
“Hmmm… I see,” Kei nodded and gave it back to Kuroo. ‘Completely relatable. Maybe I’ll listen to it later,’ he thought.
“My uncle taught me this game,” Kuroo said softly, running a hand over one of the CDs he picked up. Kei noticed that he seemed to do that a lot. Sometimes he would just roam through the shelves in the store, pick up a random record or CD, and run his fingers over the cover. Then he’ll put it down and pick up another one.
“Guess the music genre based on the cover?” Kei asked.
“Yeah,” Kuroo nodded. “We called it Guess the Genre and we’d play it for hours while sorting. I guess that’s why we never got the job done,” he chuckled. “But he isn’t here now and Kou and Keiji aren’t that fun to play with.” Kei looked up at Kuroo who was still running his fingers over the CD cover with a sad smile on his face. Again, Kei realized just how much of a puzzle Kuroo Tetsurou was. One minute he was bugging him to guess the genre and the next he was talking about his uncle. ‘How troublesome,’ Kei thought, picking up a random CD.
“Hey, Kuroo.”
“What?”
Kei held up the CD, covering the title and band name with his fingers. “Guess the Genre,” he mumbled. Kuroo’s face lit up, first his eyes then his smile. He looked just like a kid and Kei wondered if that was exactly how he looked like ten years ago.
“Umm… Electronic?” Kuroo guessed.
“Wrong.”
“Wait, what? How can it not be electro?”
“Look at the damn cover and take a guess.”
|Now|
Vinyl did not attract a lot of new customers, but it did have a few regular ones. Tetsu never really liked most of his regular customers though since ninety-percent of them were hipsters looking for records of ‘This-Band-that-You-Probably-Never-Heard-Of.’ Right now, a teenage girl wearing a lime green poncho and jeans with feathers braided in her hair stood in front of the counter.
“Do you have any records by The Parachutes?” she asked.
‘Let me guess, they’re an Icelandic, all-women’s group from the seventies who play wind instruments,’ Tetsu thought as he searched through the computer by the counter. “The Parachutes…” he muttered.
“They’re a Polish, all-women’s group from the seventies. And they play wind instruments and everything,” the girl said. “But you probably don’t have them since they are pretty rare.
‘Called it, except for the Polish part,’ Tetsu thought as the corner of his lip curled up in a smirk. “Actually we have two or three of them there in the ‘Instrumentals’ section,” he said, pointing the location. The girl seemed to be unable to decide whether to look disappointed or happy. She decided on the latter.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling before going to the ‘Instrumentals’ section just when the shop bell rang again. Tetsu looked up and saw another one of his regulars come in. Judging by his uniform, he was still a high school student but he was pretty tall for his age. Taller than Tetsu even. He had blonde, slightly curly hair and glasses as well. Tetsu decided to place him in the other ten percent of customers that came into the shop, the ones he dubbed as ‘True Music Fans.’ The guy, whom he and Koutarou nicknamed ‘Megane-kun,’ came in at least once every two weeks to buy either a record or a CD. Tetsu couldn’t decide what his taste was though since he practically jumped from genre to genre. ‘Must be a music explorer then,’ he decided.
Usually, the guy came into the shop with one of his friends with him. He was also pretty tall, though not as tall as Tetsu, and lanky as well with tanned skin, and freckles. He didn’t buy anything when he came into the shop but he seemed to like looking through the ‘Electronic’ section. Tetsu called him ‘Freckles Guy.’
The girl came up to the counter again carrying two records of ‘The Parachutes.’ Tetsu’s eyes skimmed over the designs on the covers. Both of them looked like classic seventies record sleeves. All bold, and bright colors splashed abstractly on the front. Once the girl left, Tetsu rested his chin on top of his hand as he wached ‘Megane-kun’ browse through the shelves of CDs. ‘So it’s Country this time, huh?’ he thought. It wasn’t long before he picked out a CD, his trips to Vinyl usually never did take long, and carried it to the counter.
‘Tim McGraw,’ Tetsu read. He listened to the artist before but his songs never interested him that much. ‘Megane-kun’ took out his wallet and paid for the CD before accepting the paper bag with the CD in it that Tetsu gave him.
“All done?” Freckles Guy asked, appearing beside him.
“Yeah, let’s go,” Megane-kun nodded. His eyes met Tetsu’s for half a second before he turned away to leave. The shop bell rang as the door opened and closed behind them. Megane-kun had actually been coming to Vinyl for a pretty long time, maybe three years in fact. But Tetsu never really thought about talking to him and Megane-kun hardly said anything either.
‘I wonder if he’ll like the CD,’ he wondered.
|One Month Later|
Kei sat on the floor with his back against his bed and opened the CD case. Then, he took the disc out and placed it in his CD player before putting on his headphones. The song ‘Pills’ was the ninth track in the album and Kei pressed the fast forward button on his CD player until he reached the song. The sound of guitar strumming soon came through his headphones. ‘Acoustic,’ he remembered. ‘I knew it.’ Then came the sound of a male voice singing, slowly and sadly.
I hope my smile can distract you
I hope my fists can fight for two
So it never has to show
And you’ll never know
Kei closed his eyes as he listened but once he heard the first line of the song, his thoughts immediately went to Kuroo. After working in Vinyl for about a month, Kei easily familiarized himself with his co-workers. Akaashi was calm, stoic, and polite. He understood Kei’s personal space and at the same time, tried to engage him in some interesting conversation as well. Bokuto was practically his polar opposite. Loud, noisy, and annoying, Kei wouldn’t be surprised if he happened to be Hinata’s father. But eventually, Bokuto’s presence grew on Kei and he didn’t find him as annoying as he first did.
Kuroo, now he was different. Kei was used to being able to figure out people easily and his inability to decide on what kind of person Kuroo was bothered him. He had smiles that lit up his entire face and smiles that didn’t seem to reach his eyes. He was the kind of person who sang along sometimes to ‘Lady Marmalade’ when he thought no one was looking. He was also the kind of person who sometimes stared ahead at a specific point somewhere, as if he was searching for something he lost.
One may think we’re alright
But we need pills to sleep at night
We need lies to make it through the day
We’re not okay
Kei wondered just how much Kuroo could relate to this song.