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“Yn, you should’ve seen him. Honestly! I’ve never seen him so wasted,” Kiko complains loudly, though her volume blends perfectly with the busy atmosphere of the restaurant. With a stir to her drink and a quick sharp glare at the man in question, she resumes, “I keep telling him that I’ll leave him in the street one day, drunk and all, and he thinks I’m playing.”
You grimace at your friend since high school, sucking in air through your teeth, causing him to roll his eyes due to Makki’s and your reaction.
“Mattsun… it’s not looking too good for you, bro,” Makki chuckles, sipping his cloudy strawberry lemonade, which matched his hair much to your amusement.
Mattsun simply gives a knowing grin at you and Makki, and then his eyes slide over to his lover, who is hanging off his arm with an expression of annoyance that you know isn’t genuine at all. Especially with how she glances down at his lips repeatedly as he looks at her.
The quick, fleeting moment makes your stomach turn and your smile drops a bit.
Mattsun hums, slinging an arm tightly around her, then turning back to the two of you with the same grin and soft gaze he has only around your close group of friends. “Yeah, looks like we won’t last, she’s way too annoying for me,” he jokes, causing Kiko to quickly move out of his embrace with a ‘haaah?!’
You watch as your friends grow rowdy, Mattsun and Kiko bickering with Makki throwing fuel on their fire. It’s all so familiar, so… memorable. Whenever you’re with them, it’s so easy to forget the troubles of today and yesterday.
Yet, now, all they do is remind you of your current pain.
Makki, of course, notices how you grow more quiet as the night progresses, and more specifically, as Mattsun and Kiko laugh and bicker. And he comes to a conclusion, one he and your other friends were already suspecting but didn’t want to bring up.
Because as you watch your old group of friends laugh and joke, and as you watch Mattsun and Kiko bicker with a glint of fondness in their eyes, all you can think about is how he isn’t here with you. How it isn’t the same without him here, how you haven’t felt what your friends are experiencing right in front of you in months. The noise of the restaurant only drives you further into your thoughts, sipping your drink quietly while you try hard to remember what Iwaizumi’s laugh even sounded like anymore. His genuine laugh, the one that comes out of him when Oikawa has fucked up or something.
Makki clears his throat, glancing at Kiko and Mattsun, and the two give him back a prepared look, sitting forward and pushing their drinks aside.
“So… Yn, is Iwaizumi coming back anytime soon?” Makki asks, looking at your expression carefully.
Mattsun follows with his arms now crossed, “Yeah, we ask him every time we talk to him, but he just, like… always moves the date around. He's so annoying…” Kiko nods. “California has changed him, huh…”
You sit up straight, leaning back with a sigh that you hope didn't give too much away with how you truly felt. But by the softened and empathetic look in all their faces, they knew. And you were dumb to try and fool them.
This makes you smile a bit at least, knowing your friends know you so well. You reply with a downcast gaze and a subdued tone, “...he hasn't really told me anything for sure either, he's… he's really busy with school, and with training too, I guess he just doesn't have the time.”
You know your friends have long realized how rocky your relationship with their friend has become, and you hate that you've let it ruin the night. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you hear Kiko’s voice from when she told you that long distance relationships are extremely difficult. You hear Makki telling you that if anybody could make it work, it’d be you and Haji. But the mood has changed from jovial and loud, to silent and pensive, with Makki and Kiko nodding wordlessly and Mattsun fixing his eyes on his plate.
So you clap your hands together and announce, “but it's alright. You know, I want something sweet! Desserts on me, let's get a cake!” you exclaim with the fiery attitude you usually carry, letting your brows furrow with sudden intensity. You’ll be damned if you’re the one to ruin a hangout with your bullshit, when that’s usually Kiko or Oikawa’s job.
Makki widens his eyes, but quickly joins in with a hoot and a fist in the air. Your other two friends simply let out a sigh, beaming and following your lead with drum rolls to the table.
“Ahhh Yn… you must be trying to fatten us up. I can’t take much more!” Kiko gasps out, and you laugh with a squeeze to her hand. “Come on, we could use some sugar anyway.”
A sweet dessert would be enough for this night’s effort to ignore the growing hole in your heart and soul, and your friends are right there beside you… helping you hold yourself together by your ever-thinning threads.
Quickly, you jam your keys into your apartment door, still not used to going home alone at night without Iwaizumi’s presence to make you feel safe enough to take your time being outside in the darkness. The way he’d stand behind you protectively, with a hand on the small of your back, makes the loneliness of the hallway seem even lonelier.
With a small puff of air from your lips, you close the door behind you softly, sliding your shoes off swiftly and changing into comfortable slippers instead.
The apartment was quiet, save for the air conditioning whirring in the background, and the sounds of the city at night to steadily relax you. So you plop down on the couch, swinging your legs over to lay down on your side with your phone close to your face.
The bright light of the phone attacks your eyes, but you pay no mind, as this is what you've done for months now. Just come home after a night out, and check up on him. See if he’s waiting for you, if maybe even with the moon up high and the clock reading 1 AM, he's still there… waiting for your message.
But, tonight, it seems he isn't.
If the “read at 9:23 PM” is anything to go by, you’d say he's probably out with friends now, enjoying his time there with them. You knew it was the end of the semester for him yesterday, and that he'd be out celebrating with his buddies. Still, you don't see how that excuses him not responding to your message of 'mattsun, makki and kiko wanna kno when ur coming! lol’
So you send him a voice message instead, with your tone clearly a little irritated and tired. “Hi love… I just got home from going out with these people, haha.. give me a call when you can, alright? I'll probably be up for another hour,” you let go of the recording button and hit send, not even bothering to play it back a hundred times like you usually do.
You expected him to respond with a, ‘sorry. cant. won't be home for hours’ or a ‘can we call later? sorry, i'm just busy’ or even no response at all until much later, saying something like ‘hey sorry. i was not looking at my phone at all, u still up doll?’
But he responded quickly this time, keeping it short and simple. 'i'll call u in a bit.’ Iwaizumi’s straightforwardness and simplicity was once a quality you adored about him, yet now it punches you in the gut with… disinterest, and apathy.
So, as you waited around for him to call you, you decided to brush your teeth, wash your face, tie your hair up for the night and change into your nightwear. With your legs crossed on the sofa and the TV whispering in the background, you opened your Instagram app to just kill time, and maybe see what a certain Argentinian setter was up to, so you could comment under his pictures and cause more trouble for him.
But once you opened the app, you were instantly distracted by certain stories at the top of your screen. Now, you only followed about 3 of Iwaizumi’s California friends, but they hung out with him the most so you decided they were enough and you didn't need to know all of his friends.
So when you clicked the first story, and saw him grinning ear to ear, doing silly things at a getty with his friends over at his California school, the first thing you asked yourself was… who is she?
She, the girl he's talking to quite actively in the background of many of the pictures and stories. The girl he's standing next to more often than you'd like to really think about, and the girl he's laughing with as he willingly lets her wrap his arms around her front, posing for a video with the loud music blaring from somewhere in the house. His expression is calm, as if it's normal for them to do that, as if she's the reason for his relaxation and happiness.
This proved to be the final straw, as a painful feeling shoots through your chest, and you break in your solitude in the small space of your apartment.
You squeezed your eyes shut, the bright blue light of the phone finally giving you the headache of the century. At least, that's what you tell yourself. That it's the phone that's giving you the headache, and not the emotional stress that is finally, finally crushing you under its giant mass.
You leaned forward, touching your forehead to your crossed legs, inhaling deeply as the noises of the night helped your mind run through things. 2 years of a real, beautiful relationship showed brilliantly in your mind’s eye, forcing tears to emerge and slip down your cheeks quietly. You don't know exactly why you're crying, but you suppose it's because your heart knows.
It knows things are coming to an end, the feeling of impending doom coming so close that it almost makes you hyperventilate and squeeze the couch beneath your fingers.
Yet your mind doesn't. You thought that you could work things out with him, you thought that you could keep him happy as he went out and found himself, matured and grew into himself. But it just wasn't meant to be, and your phone reminded you of everything as it automatically went through the stories of his other friends, showing similar videos of shenanigans and sounds of laughter and music. And your heart easily picked out his laughter, using it to rub salt in your ever growing wound.
You kept your eyes shut. You squeezed them tighter to keep the tears at bay as best as possible, but the sound of you sniffling your snot back in was still not enough to drown out the sound of her calling his name in the last video. And your pathetic whimpers were not enough to blanket him responding in a tone that you only ever heard him use on you, 3 years back when he pined over you.
The clawing in your throat bested you, and you let the sobs fully rack your body now.
You know it's over. Maybe it's been over for quite some time now, and you just didn't want to let go. You wanted to keep asking him when he'd visit, wanted to keep reminding him that you and your friends miss him, wanted to keep him at your side, tied down to you.
But he simply wouldn't be satisfied, would he?
You only cover your face more with this realization. Knowing that he would never satisfied with you anymore, that you've become more of a burden for him than anything else. That he's found another flame in his life to pine over and love, to keep safe in his strong arms.
The pain doesn't ease up, the tears don't stop, and the snot begins to go from pitiful to gross. You know your face has swelled up, and you still haven't opened your eyes. This overwhelming misery, you come to understand, is not leaving you anytime soon. It's going to keep you in its dark, suffocating depths for as long as it can. It scares you, the way you can't stop sobbing, as if he's already told you he doesn't want you anymore.
But Iwaizumi’s always been more of an action than words kind of guy. He's so perceptive, so emotionally intelligent, so kind and genuine, you don't think you've ever met anyone like him. So it's no surprise, that as soon as you answer the phone, he knows.
You don't open your eyes.
You simply let him speak, an occasional sniffle here and there as you listen to his deep, gravelly voice over the same music from those instagram stories that sent you over the edge.
He has a somber look in his eye that you can't see as he speaks, “...we need to talk, Yn.”
Your world remains in the static that it's been in for the past 20 minutes. Some say their hearts stop when they hear these heavy words, but you're not sure if your heart was even beating in the first place for it to stop. And you're also not sure if you're even more upset that he's said them, or if you're glad he’s going to lift whatever curse he put on you 3 years ago.
You keep your eyes shut, as the sounds of the California evening filled your living room smoothly once he stepped out of the house he was in to speak to you privately.
With the moon up high and the TV lighting up your swollen face in the dark, you listen so graciously as you always have for the past 3 years. You let him tear your world up, let him stomp on it and destroy it with ease.
In that moment, with the pain not going anywhere but the rest of your body, and ears hot from how much you've only just begun to cry, with your eyes shut tight, you think you'd rather be blind.