a short piece in which oikawa tooru approaches you on a idyllic evening. it’s a little awkward though, since you’re trying to die.
tw: indirect and direct implications of suicide.
your warm hands stay gripped onto the metal rails in front of you, applying enough force to watch your knuckles turn white. you find yourself doing it over and over until your fingers numb from the continued pressure. alone, you’re mulling over mundane affairs. you’d rather not be thinking about them but find this loop all too easy to fall into.
the shadow of the railing casts over a large canal, its water sifting freely, far beneath you. it laps over itself, slithers of fish break the transparent surface as they swim. some of their scales rise to kiss the sunlight in opaque relfections.
thin layers of petals scatter the ground beneath your feet that have slipped from overhead trees and continue to flutter down freely. glowers of dying sunlight seep through the shapes of them as they fall.
in this moment, autumn is alive.
it’s really lovely right now.
you’re here, all caught up in chasing that feeling of peace. safety in an open space. you have to cope with that fact that tranquility never comes easily for you.
there’s nothing that should be leaving you as deeply unsettled as you are. you’ve learnt to largely ignore feeling so overwhelmed, though it stirs and resurfaces times you wish it wouldn’t.
what’s bugging you is that you can’t quite get a grasp on your own life.
for starters, everything lacks coherent meaning. to you, there’s something constantly missing every single day. nothing purchasable, nothing attainable through hard-work and any level of perseverance. truly, it affects you so much so that even just standing here, feet glued to the very spot that is undeniably ‘lovely’, brings you nothing but unimaginable sadness.
earlier, you brushed it away as an off day but you know that’s not true. you’ve been feeling like this all the time.
it is, therefore, not at all abnormal to wonder: can a person have such thing as an off life?
you really don’t like to think about things like this too much. once you begin to muse over deep naysay you find yourself snowballing.
solutions are painfully unobtainable and it’s generally as productive as chasing pavements.
do i really enjoy being alone? or am i obsessed with the sensation loneliness brings?
“you know, if you stare long enough, you might end up wanting to jump in.”
at once, your vision snaps up, taken aback by the additional voice. you hadn’t realised that during your mindless lamenting, another person had quietly joined you by the evening canal-side.
fair skinned, dark eyed, chocolate curls brushed neatly over his features and cowlicks that bob against the light gusts of wind.
a boy offers you a smile, before shifting his feet towards the empty space to your left. you can’t seem to process him, staring at the empty spot he’d been in seconds earlier.
you’re not supposed to be here right now.
“i was totally kidding by the way.” he adds. “that was really dark, sorry.”
you’re silent in return, eyes casting back onto the running stream. the water is shallow and the fall long, so jumping in would certainly prove fatal. you know all of this too well. it’d disturb the fish who are just here to live, though, it’ll only be for a moment. they won’t know any better.
you don’t really know what to say. it’s troubling that he’s here and hearing it out loud disturbs you, like a direct call out. at no point were you prepared for any kind of conversation prior.
the two of you stand there in complete silence. it’s not particularly awkward, you just don’t know why he’s approached you so easily, talking to you like he’s known you well enough to make outlandish jokes.
asking directly for his intentions seems rude, so you’ll put up with it until he leaves.
“do you always come here?” the stranger pipes up once more, though his focus doesn’t leave the water. you breathe in deeply.
his palms lay flat and he pushes gently off of the rails, only to fall back onto them with all his weight. he does it again, repeating the process over and over at a steady pace. you stay hunched over, keeping your distance. he doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest though, clearly absorbed in his surroundings.
“it’s like a set out of a movie, this place. seems like somewhere i’d ask my girlfriend to marry me.”
your tongue rolls around in your mouth.
yes. you think. his girlfriend would most likely be thrilled-over the top-squealing if he did. that’s entirely his business.
you really don’t care to hear of other people’s romantic endeavours.
is it out of jealousy? you don’t know. maybe.
this conversation is meaningless. you wish he’d go away sooner so you could have this time to yourself.
also, jealousy is an ugly word. you hate it.
he stops his movement with a exhale of air, tilting his head back to blink up at the warm sky. the last touches daylight mingle with the oncoming darkness, creating a deep tinge of orangey-yellow.
a petal lands on the bridge of your hand, sticking to your skin.
“do you want my social security number?” you deject.
“are you sure? really, i’ll give it to you.”
“then why are you asking for my personal information?”
he falls silent for a moment, before mumbling out a small: “just wondering.”
a tinge of guilt creeps over you at his apologetic tone. you admit, your answers thus far must make you seem like a completely unapproachable asswipe. you’re not at all. you just aren’t all that sure how to make small talk with strangers when you’re trying to part with the world by dinner time.
it feels like an unexpected guest at your very lonesome party.
“it’s (insert birth month).” you fold.
he purses his lips, face contorting a little.
he doesn’t continue down that path after your response. the both of you return to a mutual silence, staring into the portrait scenery ahead. the stream fills the soundscape pleasantly. fallen leaves have gathered at the base of your shoes, brushing over the tip gently with the turn of the wind. you observe them quietly.
“can i ask you another question?”
he seems a tad more timid now.
he definitely thinks you’re the type to blow up and give him an earful about minding his own business, doesn’t he?
you’d never raise your voice. in general, but also because it’d break the comfort of the scenery the world has so generously given you.
“do you believe in soulmates?”
the question is a little random but not impossible to answer by any means.
he exhales out, sounding a little disheartened by your curt response. perhaps to him, you were a tough nut to crack; an ambiguity for him to understand. were all people like that? you weren’t playing hard to get, in fact, you’d answered every single enquiry he has had to offer. his efforts are amusing, though.
“i’m sorry, was that the wrong answer?”
for a moment, he doesn’t reply, stuffing his hands into his pockets, gazing down at the head of his shoe. pivoting his ankle, he draws small circles with the tip of his foot into the ground, into the dead leaves.
“your expression says otherwise.”
“um, it was just a bit bleak, i guess.”
you let your arms droop way over the railing, fingers wading through the autumn air. you’d never really taken the concepts of soulmates to heart. it was romantic bullshit put out by somebody looking for a fantasy to indulge in. out of seven billion people, there could hardly be a singular person made for you. people aren’t born for other people. if that were the case, it wouldn’t be a rose-tinted fantasy. it would be suffocating. where’s the freedom in love?
“most people always answer like you these days anyway.”
he looks up at you, tilting his head.
back to a default mute, left with nothing but the faint chitter of overhead swallows and the odd rumble of cars passing by.
“tooru.” he states, after a while.
“tooru. my name is tooru.”
your fingertips have become flushed. maybe you’d pressed a little too hard on that cold surface earlier. now that all your blood has come rushing back, the tingling sensation feels foreign.
his name slips of the tongue rather easily, don’t you think?
“nice to meet you, oikawa tooru.”
for the first time, your gazes meet properly and you offer him a crooked smile.
off the side of the canal, almost right under the bridge, a small cluster of ducks have gathered. adult ducks tend to be considerably larger than its offspring —as is factual with any animal— so it’s easy for you to tell that there’s only one parent there, along with three of its ducklings.
people like to come to the canal to feed the ducks bread, though you’d heard somewhere that it’s actually quite bad for them.
you wonder. do ducks care particularly if one of its ducklings die? will it do something with the body, cry out, hurt?
or is grief exceptionally human?
“i don’t actually have a girlfriend, by the way.”
he sifts out his phone, tapping the screen and sliding it open. you watch him turn it to its side, before leaning over to take a picture of the depths below. you just watch.
he doesn’t elaborate, focused intently on his current task. your attention returns to the shape of the birds, bobbing up and down rhythmically.
there’s only so much you can say about the canal. yeah, it’s beautiful. you don’t have the right vocabulary to describe the way it makes you feel. honestly, it feels abysmal to even try. you’re convinced though, that you’re in love with the way the water moves. you’ve always appriciated it whenever you walk past, told yourself jokingly that you could die there if you had to.
beautiful things tend to hurt in an unbearably amplified manner.
“if i climbed over the railing right now, would you stop me?”
you’re both fixated on the paddling now. his phone is back in his pocket, elbows propped up. he hums, taking his time to think over your question.
your fingers meet one another and the tingling spreads to your palms.
“i’m thinking of jumping, actually.”
his fingers drum rhythmically on the slender poles under the rail top.
“then i’d jump right in with you.”
the corners of his mouth tug slightly at your perplexity, supressing a chortle. he’s not laughing at you, though. it’s more a gesture of understanding. this tooru doesn’t know you at all, yet he gets it. he gets it all too well.
tooru clears his throat. “bad day?”
“that’s an understatement.”
“well, you’re not a bad person for feeling the way you do.”
by now, the ducks have swam away, you can make out the general shape of them, melding into the distant, mute colours of the bankside. the sky look minutes away from being set alight. time has never been your friend, you see.
“i feel crazy for trying.” you’re rather blunt about it.
“well, do you want me to tell you that you’re not crazy?”
with that, you shift to angle yourself so that he’s in your immediate peripheral, the thought of gawking at him seems ridiculous but you want to look at him. you find it hard to do it up front for some reason.
“i’m no suicide expert, but it’d probably be lonely doing something like that by yourself. wouldn’t it be comforting to know someone’s falling with you?”
your fingers run absently across the jagged surface of the rails, the old paint has been chipped away at, after all its years of protecting. in all it’s history, had anyone else hitched themselves over this very rail?
were they asking for the same answers as you?
god. that’s awful. you don’t want to think about that.
you catch each others’ eyes for a second but you resign quickly, focusing as hard as you can on the flecks of black on your thumb.
“that would be selfish of me.”
you scramble to look anywhere else, abruptly turning. you’re facing away from the canal, stomach fluttering a little as you fall onto the rail’s length.
in all your time by yourself, you’d never been given an irrefutable reason to ‘be’. it’d always been a live-for-the-day type of experience. if a day is good, you’re utterly blissed out by it, totally in love with life. if it’s bad, you have little reason to go on. nothing particularly interests you enough to dedicate your days persuing it. fame seems tedious, looks are temporary, a six figure career sounds like emotional jail-time, or a slow, schedule-filled trek to death. whichever description sounds more sufferable.
you see, in essence, we all get off at the same bus stop. some journeys are simply shorter than others.
“you’re guilt-tripping me out of it.”
you’ve never stopped to ask yourself what it is you want.
death interests you, you suppose. though, you don’t see the reason to wait around and pretend to ignore it until one day it drags you kicking and screaming.
“oikawa tooru, don’t you have better things to be doing than offering to jump off bridges with strangers?”
that coy smile tugs at his lips once more. nothing you say seems to phase him. it’s like he knows you. he’s thinking: yeah, this isn’t anything out of the ordinary for them.
“should i? you look at that water like it’s someone you hate. or love. maybe both. i got curious.”
“yes. and quite frankly, you’ve left me curious. practically starving. you haven’t even told me your name.”
“my name doesn’t matter.”
“boo. that’s not true at all.”
his tongue pokes out, tugging at the corner of his eye. you shake your head, genuinely unable to hide your amusement, turning to him properly this time.
and really, it’s like the canal side and oikawa tooru were made from the same stardust. he blends right into the picture, as effortlessly pretty as the rest of it.
the strands of hair out of place, a little disheveled from the breeze. the scarf buried into his nose, glasses a little misty from the heat of his own breath but when they clear, you see his eyes all too well.
you’d like to tuck those strands into place, they’re bothering you just a little.
your brows furrow a little.
really, this could all very well be some sort of fantastical dream. as nice as it all is, it feels painfully unreal. boys don’t look like that on autumn evenings or offer to die with you.
tooru must be a figment of your imagination.
this is a corner of your mind you haven’t ventured into yet, psychologically, some kind of safety net. a sliced off piece of reality you’ve come to hide in because you’ve utterly lost your mind. he is nothing but a part of you that makes you feel at ease as you come to terms with your self-destruction.
god, that bothers you more. you are crazy.
your hand extends, reaches out all on its own.
you just want to know if he’s real.
oikawa tooru glances down for a moment, he’s probably wondering about you, what’s left you in such a state. though, he’s happy to slide his palm against yours, latching onto it. he shakes once, twice. a little more. tightens his hold a bit.
the weight of his fingers as they brush lightly against your palm is fantastical. he’s so warm. you can feel it spread through you from the pads of your fingers.
tooru has rather pretty hands.
the contact makes you feel kind of delirious, a produce of being utterly touch-starved. just a simple touch. you’re embarrassed to say it but it takes everything inside of you not to start weeping or hold on frantically in case he does disappear, do something bizzare that’ll scare him away forever.
hey, tooru. are you made of honey?
“well, (y/n), i’m offering you my life right now.”
the sun has set foot on the horizon, plunging in ever so slightly. as a child, the thought of night scared you, feeling largely betrayed by the sun’s farewell. now, it’s a unique kind of comfort to see the moon. it’s as lonely as those who lay their eyes upon it.
his fingers slip downwards against the dips of your palm.
“no, i mean… i don’t want death. not right now..”
you don’t even want to think about it anymore. funny, how things like that work. you were so sure of it. today was the day. your dark rendezvous. weren’t you itching for it?
this man you’ve never met. he clasps onto your hand once and suddenly he stops your nauseating rollercoaster of thoughts and leaves you wondering if, actually, you’d like to see the canal-side again tomorrow, or in fifty years.
who are you really, oikawa tooru?
“then what do you want to do?”
“stay right here, i think.”
your fingers curl, maintaining your hold on him. you should be shy or awkward about this whole ordeal but so you’re desperate for that warmth to continue.
you both stand there, facing one another, hands extended. it’s a little robotic looking. you’re pretty stiff but very sure this is what feels right.
to you, existence is based solely on feeling your way through stages of life. that sickeningly sweet innocence of youth. childhood memories that to you, are dwindled husks of gold, valuable in some aspects but almost meaningless in others. to laugh or to cry allows an individual to create a deep-set connection to the environment around them. it is no longer passing scenery but a moment in your life you once lived through.
that’s beautiful, isn’t it?
unfortunately, emotion provides both a living fantasy and the potential for agony. life is not sweet, nor innocent. it is what you make of it.
it is what your mind is forced to make of it.
and as much as one wishes they were as coddled and loved as they were children, life beyond those years is lonely, difficult and more than you were ever capable of.
but maybe people aren’t built for life. we’re all weak.
and realistically, if you are unable to clamber over one obstacle after another -established by those before you- you’re doomed to fall behind.
that will hurt. you will hurt unforgivably because self-worth is no longer a beautiful gift of internal discovery and love but another way to be measured and downsized externally. a practice that leads to hatred. a desire to die.
that’s really where it all began for you. a romantic, a poet at heart, living inside your own, kinder world. that is until reality knocked on your door, invited itself in, just to set the entire thing on fire and leave you as vulnerable as the day you were born.
you aren’t allowed to hide. it comes looking for you eventually.
your stance on life hasn’t changed, afterall, you’ve spent nights mourning over how much it can hurt to live. to fall asleep exhausted with yourself, only to wake up and do it all over again. what you do know, however, is that droning, lonely feeling isn’t there right now. that ongoing, battering ruckus inside your head has ceased. tooru, the strange magician, has left you thoughtless and a little dumb.
you like being this stupid. for once, there’s nothing intrusive prodding the inside of your head.
it’s frightfully quiet, actually. you don’t know what you’re feeling right now. how much time has passed since he’d made that awful joke?
his gaze is on your lingering contact, before lightly pulling you closer, twisting his wrist down so you’re holding hands. your gaze moves to the bankside. you feel comforted. maybe it isn’t death, maybe all you want is a hand to hold.
probably not. that is a stupid, sappy thought. you’re still fanatic about ending your life.
you were so close to doing it, without even really understanding what you were doing. the canal scenery is overpowering, numbing, if you will. without oikawa tooru, you may well have kissed those fishs’ fluorescent scales with your own two lips, as cold as ice with some unfortunate early-morning runner discovering you by twilight.
“we can do that.” he hesitates. “if i’m honest, i would have been pretty scared to jump.”
tooru hums merrily in confirmation.
you can’t believe your own ears.
“yeah. originally, i wanted your number but things took a small turn.”
you burst out in gutteral laughter, free hand back onto the railing for support. for a moment, you look at him, shaking your head in utter amazement.
“you’re a piece of work, tooru, you know?”
he smiles back at you. the shadows cast by the setting sun only make him all the more enigmatic.
now that you think about it, you can’t figure this guy out at all. it’s like staring at a wordless piece of paper and trying to find something legible.
“how do you know i won’t come back and repeat all of this tomorrow?”
tooru tilts his head ever so slightly, observing you. his eyes flutter down to your lips, speaking like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“because you told me your name.”
“what does that have to do with anything?”
“well, now that i know that, you’re no longer just a beautiful stranger.”
you understood now. he hadn’t just offered you his life, he’d offered you him. by living on, you’d accepted graciously. he knows that if you visit the canal side again, you’ll only remember this moment.
a bad moment that he, in all his glory, turned into a good one. the day you two first met.
oh, clever boy. he saved you.
though you must say, oikawa tooru, you’re very much mistaken.
you are the beautiful stranger.
a tear runs down your cheek, a little warmer than you could’ve expected.
one turns into two, slipping more and more. eventually, you’re standing over the canal, hand in hand with oikawa tooru, sobbing quietly as the water runs peacefully below the both of you.
