THE BRAVADO BOY

Excerpts from incomplete fanfiction based on characters from Haikyuu. December 2022.

As Sakusa watches him, alone on the rooftop as they often find themselves these days, he can’t help but think of the first day he saw him in the Promenade. 

Back then he saw a boy with only bravado, shouting out to the world and clamoring “Look at me!” as he swayed back and forth along the stone fence. Back then, Sakusa had scoffed, had turned up his nose, and had thought the boy was nothing better than the dust under his shoes. Back then he had wondered why he even had his friends to entertain him, laugh at his antics, and cheer him on. 

But now, Sakusa can’t help but marvel at the boy before him, how he shifts the room and makes everyone gravitate towards him. Sakusa watches as he teeters across the edge of the roof and wonders why the boy (who has everyone’s hearts in his palms) acts like there’s no repercussion if he were to lose his footing. Sakusa envies him. He wants to be as fearless as the boy who could alter the very fabric of the reality he’s in if he really wants to. 

Sakusa’s hands itch, wanting to pull back the boy, scold him, and tell him about how unsafe he is, but he knows he would laugh it off. He’d laugh in Kiyoomi’s face and tell him, “Omi-kun, you’ve got to let loose”, like Sakusa is the one that’s insane. Kiyoomi envies him because he is the one who’s afraid of the height, afraid of falling, knowing that no one will miss him if he drops. 

He watches with his breath stalled in his chest as Atsumu swings his legs to the side. 

Left. 

Right. 

Left.

Right.

He even does a little spin, just to taunt Sakusa, as if to rub it all in his face. Look at me, he cries again as he did on that first day. I’m the boy who could make an entire town weep at my disappearance and I am not afraid to fall. Why are you so afraid? What do you have to lose?

Sakusa stays seated, safely on the ground, a fair distance from the edge, and waits for Atsumu to join him. He always does. He usually does. 

…

He knew before he heard the news. When he woke up, something was amiss, like the calm in the eye of a storm or the way the world stands still before a lightning strike. Something had changed in a cosmic sense. 

“How did it happen?” was his first and only question. 

He didn’t stop to talk to Osamu, didn’t falter at the wails of Miya’s mother. He didn’t offer condolences or stop to take a look at his room for one last time. He kept walking. With his head down and his hands in his pockets, he walked.