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Shinsuke,
By the time you are reading this, I hope, I pray, I beg that you are free of pain. I can’t see you suffering anymore. Not from your family, not from me, not from your life. I want—no. I need you to be happy. It is the only way that I can live in this world. To know that you know joy.
And for you to know that I am so, so, incredibly sorry for how it will end. It will not end with a reconciliation. That is no longer possible. We love each other no longer, dependent like parasites, with empty “good mornings”, “good afternoons”, “goodnights.” the spark we had...it died when our love for volleyball did. You drifted away to farming. And I? I drifted away to literature. Our paths diverged naturally, yet we fought to stay on the same one, ignoring the warning signs that came along the way.
I sincerely apologize for not reading those signs. I never should have ignored them. I was too in love with you to ever realize that. But that’s my mistake, isn’t it? Being too in love with you to realize your flaws or mine. You are devoted to your work. Devoted to the labor of the fields.
You look stunning in the morning light when you stretch. When you turn to me, whispering “Good morning, ‘Tsumu,” in my ears, knowing that I will not answer. When you leave the room, ambling as if you had no cares in the world, because you have none. Material, physical, nothing on this ‘real’ earth you care too much about. You told me it was because reality isn’t what we think it is. What we think reality is, that is what you consider fiction. Every day, you live as if it is some kind of fantasy, but in a twisted way, it is never a fantasy to you.
Your hugs, your touches to me, those are real. I know that they are. You hug me close when I stand in front of the mirror, insecure over my body, whispering gently that I am beautiful just as I am.
But am I? I feel glad seeing those scars on my chest, yet the stretch marks below, on my hips, I cannot bear to look at. But you? You covet those stretch marks, wishing to all the gods you were rounder, snugglier, like me. And yet...I wish I was you. Skinny, but not deathly skinny, with strong, understated muscles. The kind that make grandmothers say “What a handsome young man you are!” when we walk the streets of Amagasaki, or Kobe, or Ashiya. Even when we went to Taipei and Kowloon, it was the same. It's inescapable. And it hurts.
You know...I gained more weight when I was with you than when I was without you? Even as I struggled through my days of trying to lose it. You really were a fucking parasite, Shinsuke.
It hurts that you were. I still love you. I love you so much and I can’t just give up on us. I can’t give up on the years and years we spent together...without ever actually being together. I mean...we lasted, what? Three days, maybe four as a couple?
Our friends were so unsurprised when they got the news we were dating. You being aromantic, myself being biromantic. Seemed odd, didn't it? And that was because it was. We were never gonna fucking last like that. It went against both our natures.
You were jealous of me too, I know that you were. My identity as a polyaffectionate individual, Shinsuke. That was something you saw as a threat because you're poly too, and you believed the lies that I would leave you because I’m biromantic and you aren’t.
You told me, “I don’t think we’re compatible because we’re both poly,”
And I, like an idiot, believed you to be joking. Or perhaps you were the idiot. I don’t know and I don’t want to know about that. It just hurt. It made me feel even worse about myself for being bi, you know? That was probably the hardest thing for me to accept, my poly-ness. Polyaffection, you told me was its name. When I wanted to have more than one queerplatonic partner, which you wanted too, that was called being polyaffectionate.
You taught me so much with that. But in that teaching, there was an unspoken kind of pain, one that I ignored at first because I didn’t realize that such a thing I was feeling was pain. The pain of invalidation and not knowing that what I was feeling was okay to feel. That it is okay for me to be poly and to not consider one of my partners in particular more important than another. You told me that yourself, Shinsuke. That together, we would add another partner in. and we did, and we three youths: Shinsuke, Atsumu, Jirou, were happy together. But then you retreated from spending time with Jirou. Then from me.
And it was because you were...insecure? You were insecure about our joy and afraid that because neither of us was aromantic, that we would leave you and marry one another? For fun?! Shinsuke, how twisted your thoughts were. We would never leave you to marry each other. It would not have mattered, not when we both loved you so much. No. not loved. Love.
We still love you, Shinsuke.
And you left us in the dirt. You dragged us through the mud, spewing hateful vitriol towards Jirou and I, and yet I tried to apologize, knowing and expecting no forgiveness, but needing to say it anyway. Perhaps I should have taken your approach when receiving the apologies from you however...you were right to say that I was too fucking much of a doormat. You stomped all over my heart. All over my boundaries, you barged like a bull in a china shop. How inelegant. How cruel.
And yet you were graceful in your gracelessness. Perhaps I should take notes...perhaps trying to be more like you will result in some kind of healing. Or perhaps it will not. I do not know. All I know is that this cold, calculated, indifference hurt. It made me want to die. And you know why I didn’t die that night? Because you had wanted to do just that and I had told you that even if we had broken up, I could have never allowed you to die. Your life is not worth that little, Shinsuke. You are worth a great deal.
Me though? I don’t think so. I honestly doubt it, especially after you. When my previous ex had broken up with me, Kageyama-kun back in middle school, I had felt this same way. I felt used and abused and I wanted to die of shame. Shame for what I had done to Tobio and shame for what Tobio had done to me. I genuinely wanted to die. But something inside me, probably my fear of pain in any and all capacities allowed me to not take any actions in those dark days to end my life. I just stayed in my room and wrote my heart out. I suppose I am doing the same now, though. Writing out one’s feelings is powerful. It is cathartic. It makes me feel less like killing myself, you know?
Of course you know.
Between shifts of working in the rice paddies, you write too. You write gorgeous poetry, the kind that can bring tears to the eyes of many, whether that is due to the beauty, confusion, or anger which your poetry incites. I do not know which of these your writing causes in me, perhaps because I am oblivious to the feelings I incite in myself. Shame is the most easy to identify. After all, shame is why I want to die most nights. It is soul-crushing, and you made it no better, Shinsuke. You made it worse…you made it so much worse.
I wanted to die after you told me we were through. The humiliation continues to burn in my veins still, choking and cloying as it is though, I cannot bear to remove the noose from my neck. I hurt, and I am glad for that. It reminds me that I am still alive. That I still have work to do, work that cannot be ignored, no matter how much I hurt, how much I ache.
That work is writing. It is a passion that I have for storytelling.
Fucking ironic then, when you explicitly tell me that I must change everything about Shigeo, make him someone unrecognizable to you. As if you have the right to ask me to do that. No, Shinsuke. You gave up that right when I gave up on writing Shigeo in any capacity. He went into the fire pit with all of my other scrapped stories. I am glad that you continue to think of me so highly when I have been nothing but base and vile and irredeemable at times.
But so were you. So. were. You.
I cannot stand it sometimes. You make me angry, and yet I cannot stay angry for long, because that means being like Tobio was to me, and that means that I am like the lies in your mind that say that you are better off dead, better off hurting me so that when you die, I do not mourn you.
Better.
Better.
Better.
No. not better, Shinsuke. Never better. I will never be better after that pathetic fucking excuse.
I will be bitter.
Bitter.
Bitter.
Bitter.
Angry. Sad. Offended. Hurt.
The list could go on. Oh? You want it to? You want me to grab that big thesaurus from my shelf and flip to the negative words and throw them out in some kind of description over this entire fucking shitshow? Fine. you know what, Shinsuke? I think I fucking will.
I feel lonely. I feel like without you, I have no one.
I feel rage. I feel like if I even think about you, I will explode.
I feel disappointed. We could have been so much better.
I feel horrified to learn that you feel jealous of me. I felt jealous of you.
It hurt so goddamn bad, Shinsuke. I wanted to just take my mom’s pills and swallow them all. But then that would be bad. Not because you would miss me, but because she would then soon die because those medicines keep her alive, and the medicines that keep her here on this earth just took away her first baby. Painful, isn’t it. Powerful, isn’t it?
That would have made such a fucking powerful statement. One of pain, one of rage, one of loneliness, shinsuke. One of being lost. And then being found, only I was never found. I never made it out of that dark cave Tobio left me in. you were just another lost little kid in that cave, and we went after whatever light we could, trying to survive and keep going towards the light. Towards safety.
And yet we failed. We held each other back. We dragged each other down. My mental health was never the best, but at first, with you, it felt better than it had in a long time. You validated me. You made me feel like it was okay to be me. That there was nothing wrong with me, Shinsuke. It felt nice to have that, honestly. It felt good to finally receive some kind of comfort. But comfort never lasts, does it…
No. it’s always got to be taken away by someone or something. By siblings. By friends. By your parents.
Your parents, shinsuke...something about them never sat right with me, about either of them. Especially when you said I started to act like your father. Well. I’m sorry. I’m so goddamn sorry. I know how badly he treated you, and knowing I was like that...it makes me feel unforgivable. Which honestly, I feel like I should feel. Your father is your primary abuser, no? Well. the ironic thing, yet again [are you noticing a theme, Shinsuke? I really hope you are, you like themes and patterns, you say they are intellectually stimulating and it is fun for you to try and solve them.]
The ironic thing yet again. You hurt me too. You reminded me of my own abuser. My ex. Kageyama Tobio. Shinsuke, you remind me of Kageyama and all of the shit he did to me in your cold fucking indifference. In how you were able to ignore my pain whenever I worried over my identity and how Kageyama would use that as a tool against me, where he would manipulate me with a snap of his fingers and suddenly I would do whatever he wanted. Stop talking about volleyball? Sure. but when Hikari wanted to continue conversations with me, I’d excuse myself so as not to disturb Tobio. But he still got angry. He was thinking that I was shit talking to him or something. Shinsuke, you fucking thought the same whenever i tried to talk to anyone else! Even my own goddamn brother! Even my fucking twin. You didn’t give him the same grace that he gave you.
And as he held me day in and day out after you hurt me, I was the reason you never had poisoned food served to you when we visited him. It was always me doing the protecting, Shinsuke. Protecting you from the wrath of my [rightfully] angry relatives. Protecting you from the wrath of my friends. I wanted you to be safe around me. But I never felt safe around you. You were too emotionally unstable and in too unhealthy of a situation for me to ever feel like it was safe for me to let my guard down all the way. If I didn’t act the right way, I would trigger your intrusive thoughts and panic attacks and it hurts more than anything to have one of those. I should know. You made me have three of them the night we broke up. I couldn’t even talk to anyone about them, I just had Osamu there to hold me and beg me not to approach any sort of drugs or sharp objects.
You should thank or blame Osamu for this letter, actually. It was all his idea for me to write out my feelings. I like it, you know? Makes me feel better even if this shit is all one sided. Even if you hate me, I can't hate you, not entirely. It’s more complicated than that. I love you but you hurt me. You were worse than even Tobio. I told you what Tobio did to me and you did it anyway. But that was also probably my savior complex biting me square in the ass. I tried too damn hard to protect you and only ended up hurting myself worse in the process. That’s not surprising, that’s just sad and unfair and frankly, fucking depressing.
I tried so hard to protect you that I left myself completely open and vulnerable to attack and you pounced on that, Shinsuke. It fucking hurt.
But thank you for at least showing me more grace than Tobio did. You put up with my shit for two years. Tobio barely stayed two semesters.
Goodbye, Shinsuke.
Atsumu
He closed the letter with trembling hands, enraged. He had spent far too many sleepless nights worrying over Shinsuke for this to be fucking acceptable. An uncomfortable feeling landed in Atsumu’s stomach. Everything he knew about himself is because of Shinsuke. Shinsuke’s guiding light towards everything queer- it made Atsumu feel seen and heard in a way he had never been seen or heard before. He felt more secure in his identities because Shinsuke shared them… (Or most of them at least.)
Both of them were asexual.
Both of them were non-binary.
Both of them were poly affectionate.
But they diverged beyond there, and instead of letting Atsumu try to bridge that gap and mend their relationship, Shinsuke pushed him away. Shinsuke told him that they would have never worked because Atsumu was alloromantic and Shinsuke was not.
Atsumu had been hurt by that.
He spoke quietly on the phone with Osamu after that, sobbing his heart out. It hurt so fucking badly to have Shinsuke spew things like that in his face. Saying Atsumu would never change or be better or try his absolute hardest to keep Shinsuke satisfied and involved in their lives. It made Atsumu sob and Osamu seethe. How could Shinsuke say that to Atsumu?! What fucking right did Shinsuke have to Atsumu?! None! Atsumu was his own person and he was free to do as he wished and that fucker Shinsuke needed to know his goddamn place.
Atsumu begged his twin not to do anything irrational, but Osamu would not be easily swayed. Atsumu had three panic attacks the night he and Shinsuke broke up, then another few in the morning when he had seen the late night texts from Shinsuke. Osamu had to take Atsumu’s phone and hide it in their drawers in an attempt to calm Atsumu down. Atsumu, for his part, was no better without the phone. He simply sat there, rocking back and forth and hyperventilating.
His throat felt sticky and full and he wanted to sob but the tears would not even spring to his eyes. And to think, just days before this, Atsumu had actually shed tears when Shinsuke presented him with gifts for their two year anniversary. Seeing those now, and seeing those messages where Shinsuke asked him to unfollow, Atsumu was all too gleeful and grateful to do precisely that.
Fucking served Shinsuke right.
Atsumu knew he was being irrational. He knew that he was too angry. But after all of this torture he’d had, he didn’t fucking care anymore. He was done.
Atsumu dropped off the letter in the mailbox and went home. He cried himself to sleep that night, but he finally, finally felt safe.
The next morning though, Atsumu felt a pang of pain in his soul. A tiny flash of black hair flew through his mind’s eye and he flinched. Tobio? What’s up with him?
He wasn’t sure. But something in his gut told him that it would probably be a good idea to check on the older setter. He flicked to Tweeter and Spinner, checking all of Tobio’s old media. Nothing wrong there. Except...huh. Tobio-kun apparently has ADHD. Doesn’t fucking excuse him making me want to kill myself or him calling Papi abusive…
Atsumu still bristled at the thought of his first ex. Tobio had made him nearly kill himself. Multiple times. Atsumu only hadn’t gone through it for two...maybe three reasons, and he really didn’t know how to feel about Tobio’s new diagnosis. On one hand, it was none of his business now that Tobio wasn’t in his life anymore, but on the other hand, Tobio had used his horrible mental health as an excuse for his deplorable actions towards Atsumu. Atsumu had been fifteen when they were friends. Tobio was twenty-three, turning twenty-four halfway through. Twenty-six year old Tobio had ADHD and it made seventeen-year-old Atsumu want to crawl into a hole and die all over again.
His best friend, Koutarou, had ADHD too, and not once had Atsumu thought Kou to be a bad person. But you think Tobio is , supplied the tiny voice in Atsumu’s brain. You think Tobio is a bad person for hurting someone so much younger and innocent than him, who didn’t know better.
Atsumu flinched, making Osamu look up from his desk.
“Yo,”
“I-I’m okay.”
“You better be, scrub.”
“Yeah…”
Atsumu tried to get his racing heart back under control. It was true, it was so fucking true that Tobio had hurt him. But Atsumu didn’t know how to feel about it anymore. He called Koutarou with shaking fingers.
“Moshi moshi, Bokuto Koutarou speaking!” cheered the chipper voice through the speaker.
“Moshi moshi,” echoed Atsumu softly, “B-Bokkun, can I get some advice?”
“Yeah, sure! What’s up?”
“I-uh.” Atsumu’s breath caught in his throat and he exited his bedroom, making his way into the hall. He let out a muffled sob, “T-Tobio has ADHD a-and it ex-explains so much of what happened t-to us an-and I don’t know how to feel c-cuz he’d just b-blame his shitty m-mental health o-on why h-he was so bad to me, b-but you’ve got it too an-and you’re the b-best friend I could as-ask for an-and I dunno what to do.”
Atsumu felt floaty. Ever since he’d seen Tobio’s tweeter [since when did Kageyama motherfucking Tobio even have tweeter?!] Atsumu had felt unstable. He was finally starting to heal from the abuse Tobio put him through when he had found out this. It made Atsumu feel sick to his stomach.
“Tobio was...he was the first guy, wasn’t he?” asked Koutarou after a beat, seeking for confirmation.
‘Y-Yeah,” stammered Atsumu. “Th-that was him, a-and I dunno how to feel about this…”
“Well, how did ya feel about Tobio before ya knew about this stuff?”
“I...I don’t really know...I-I hated his guts for abusing me like that, yeah...b-but it was m--”
“Atsumu. You were fifteen. You’re seventeen right now. There’s no reason you should blame yourself for what a twenty-four year old did to you, even if it was ‘cause they didn’t know they had something. ‘Sides,” said Koutarou, “Didn’t you say that Tobio didn’t like talking about his mental health or taking it seriously?”
“N-No…” said Atsumu, “h-he didn’t want therapy or shit for his other problems c-cuz he said he didn’t n-need it c-cuz he shouldn’t have even gotten sick like that…”
Atsumu winced, thinking of Tobio’s PTSD especially, which he’d refused help for. Atsumu really hoped Tobio got the help though...he didn’t deserve to go through pain like that.
“Well you didn’t deserve that pain either, Atsumu,” harrumphed Koutarou. “You were a kid, Tobio was a grown-ass adult. Ya still are a kid, Tobio’s still a grown-ass adult. And a piece of shit. Using your mental health as a shield against taking accountability is so shitty! And he never apologized, did he?”
“I--uh. Kind of. Kind of not,” mumbled Atsumu, “l-like you know those videos when celebrities get canceled and they’re crying and spewing a bunch of lies?”
“Yeah,” said Koutarou softly, “don't tell me it was like that, Atsu...please, ya don’t deserve that,”
“I-I know I deserve better, but fifteen-year-old me didn’t. Fifteen-year-old me wanted to die of shame for ever hurting so-someone so b-bad that th-they said they’d stop d-doing what they love…”
“But he didn’t stop,” said Koutarou, “why?”
“I-I told him t-to keep going, ev-even if it wasn’t cu-cuz he wanted to show me anymore...s-seeing him happy h-helps me,”
“Until today,”
“Until today.”
Koutarou sighed, “turn around, little guy,”
Atsumu huffed, obeying but still speaking through the receiver, not realizing he had walked into a massive wall of flesh. It wrapped him close in a hug, and Atsumu slowly realized, “Kou?”
“Yeah, s’me...c’mere. C’mere, why did ya even find that out?”
“I-I’m writin’ letters to ‘em...an-and I needed to remember when it was, like th-the month...an-and that’s how I found his Tweeter a-and it’s all gone to hell, Kou! I-t’s all gone to hell!”Atsumu burst into tears. “I-I just want to stop feeling so bad!”
“Then maybe try writing your feelings again?”
“I-I guess...I guess I could try,”
“Trying is enough, it’s more than enough.”
Atsumu nodded. “I-I still hate what Tobio did...b-but I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore…’sides, if I changed meetin’ him and breaking up with him an-and being abused like that, I wouldn’t have met ya…”
“Oh,” said Koutarou softly. He hugged Atsumu again. “Th-that’s really brave of ya.”
“Mm,” Atsumu mumbled, unsure. He just knew that here in Kou’s arms, he was never going to be hurt by Tobio again. “I want to see Ji ‘n Samu…”
“All right, c’mon then!” smiled Koutarou. He picked up Atsumu with ease and piggybacked the smaller teen back to bed. “Ya gonna write ‘im a letter too?”
“Yeah...t-then I’m gonna burn ‘em...I’m gonna burn ‘em like they burned me.”
“That’s the spirit!”
“Yeah!”
Safely tucked in his bed once more, Atsumu pulled out his notebook. His best friends lay on the floor nearby, Osamu was on his own half of their shared bedroom. The perfect time to write how he felt. Atsumu took shaky fingers to the pen, and put it down on paper.
The words tore out of his mind faster than he could write them.
Tobio. You bitch. You fucking bitch. No, tobio’s not a bitch. He’s worse. Don’t flatter him Atsumu. He doesn’t deserve flattery for hurting you and you know that.
Tobio,
Have you ever felt so overwhelmed by shame and humiliation that you wanted to die? Of course you have. So don’t you dare think I couldn’t understand you. Don’t you dare think I was abused as a child when my Papi loves me more than your own parents did. I mean, your mother dropped out of Waseda to have you, then abused you and made you hate yourself, and then had the nerve to be sad over your problems while enabling the abuse that created them in the first place? How fucking two-faced of her.
No wonder you were exactly the same to me. You acted kind and sweet and genuine, and I, being only fifteen, fell for your act. You’d probably call me stupid, and I’d call myself that too, but lest I give myself too little credit according to my friends, your ex-friends, I’ve clearly not been stupid. I was a child. I still fucking am, Tobio. I was fifteen years old when you hurt me. When you said there was no way I could be asexual if I liked making filthy jokes or I liked saying that Watanabe Ken can crush me like a bug on the street. I still stand by that, for the record. Watanabe-san is exceptionally attractive.
You made me feel like I could never be truly asexual if I liked that stuff—like I was lying to everyone, but especially myself. Your gaslighting makes me feel sick to my stomach, Tobio. I hate that Ijust let you do that to me without consequence. I know that I didn’t deserve any of that treatment. But you were still so cruel to me, and I still just let you. I hope it made you happy, even for a moment though. You deserve to be happy, Tobio.
Honestly, now that we’ve stopped talking, you seem happier. I’m glad for that, especially since I asked that of you before we stopped speaking. There’s no way in hell that I want to go back to what we were. You just used me as a “little sibling” stand in, since you had never had a little brother before. But it was that precious lack of experience for both of us that destroyed us.
I respected your boundaries. I made separate spaces for our friends, like Shouyou, to talk about stuff that made you uncomfortable. I totally understand that you hated, still hate, musicals. Those kids would humiliate you on the daily at school, wouldn’t they? But I wasn’t them. I was me. I am me, Tobio. But still, I’d never force you into something uncomfortable if I could avoid doing so. You took that as an insult, an affront though, if I just wanted to step away from you, to talk to Shouyou about this in private. That way, you would not be triggered, but I could keep being friends with Shouyou.
Knowing what was going on behind the scenes now though, I do understand why you might think I was rejecting you. But I honestly was never trying to do that, Tobio. I was trying to keep you safe.
I was fifteen and doing the job of a twenty-five year old. No wonder I seem so mature, but at the same time, I am pathetically inexperienced when it comes to matters like that. You forced me to grow up too quickly.
Calling my parents abusive for not letting me get one (1) account like bo4 was the worst thing you could have done. Saying that I would go crazy in college like every other kid you knew who was a nerd like me- that was humiliating to hear. And as someone in college right this second, Tobio, dearest. I’d much rather not take the advice of someone who dropped out of college because of their own mental health. I know myself better than you ever could, so don’t you dare say I’d go crazy here. Because you keep me up at night thinking of that when you don’t deserve my thoughts and consideration you bastard.
I wish you the best because you have gotten the worst.
Making you worse, having blood like that on my hands isn’t shit i’m willing to accept. I was a child. It was never my responsibility to be a therapist to an adult. I WAS A CHILD. You ought to be grateful. If I was as terrible as you thought I was...well. News flash asshole. I’d be even worse. Besides, at least one of us isn’t thinking suicidal thoughts anytime they humiliate themselves.
God...i don’t even know what else i can say. I just know that i feel sick thinking about how much you meant to me, Tobio. I couldn’t even look at volleyball the same way for two years after we stopped. So yeah, tobio. Not until this fucking year could i enjoy it with the same vigor as before...and that was your fault. At least i had the solace of writing my feelings out...it kept me sane, you know.
It has kept me alive. Thanks for that. Or nothing.
I don’t really know anymore.
Atsumu.
Atsumu closed the letter with shaking fingers. Overcome with emotion, the seventeen-year-old stumbled to the kitchen, rummaging through the cabinets for the lighter. Tonight was a good night for the bonfires. Tonight was a good night as any to burn those letters.
To burn those memories.
He sacrificed himself for them. This was the thanks he got? Fucking pathetic.
Atsumu slammed the cabinet shut.
Fucking pathetic.
He deserved better. He deserved so much better, but sneaking glances at Jirou and Osamu outside made Atsumu’s stomach twist. If he had changed meeting Shinsuke or Tobio, he would have lost the little family he had. Atsumu could never do that to them, or else he would never live with himself.
Atsumu’s stomach twisted again. Go outside. Go outside and burn the letters. Burn the memories. Your damn school motto is we don’t need the memories. Follow it!
His fingers shook on the doorknob, but he pressed on. One foot in front of the other. One foot. One step.
One.
And it was done.
Atsumu watched the letters crackle and the paper twist as it burned. His soul felt similarly.
Osamu and Jirou and Koutarou hugged Atsumu. “Let’s start again.”
“Yeah.”
fin.