01. sit right here with you
(if you’ll let me)
✧
For Koki, the world is black, and white, and gray.
It needs color, it needs life; and it is so full of it everyday. The trees are green and brown and sometimes even red, orange and yellow — like a dripping sunset. Then fall comes and they wilt and die, but they’re a sign that there was once life blooming and singing underneath its leaves.
Koki thinks that’s beautiful. And so, his hair is green this month.
His mother said his hair will get damaged and he’ll wake up one day bald, but what’s life without a little thrill knowing your hair will someday disappear?
(Koki says that, but he’s internally panicking that his beautiful, majestic hair will be gone overnight.)
Koki was young. He wasn’t even past his twenties. He’s almost there — but the main point is: he’s not yet there. His hair is his signature, people say, and it makes him look younger. But Koki dyes his hair regularly because it makes him remember that he’s alive. That he’s free and as long as he is, as long as he can see a change occurring in him to not make him forget, he knows there’s still life inside of him.
Perhaps it’s naive thinking, perhaps not. It’s not something Koki thinks about. It’s only what he believes in.
"Koki, your hair looks like moss today!"
Koki turns to the side to see his best friend and ex, as of recent events, Kuroo Tetsurou. He has ridiculous hair that Koki always insults every chance he gets, because who has hair like that? Hideous. Totally hideous and not endearing, and not cute and not so fucking adorable—
"And your hair looks like it had sex with your pillow last night!" Koki enthusiastically replied.
The first year eating in the cafeteria nearby probably choked a little, but that wasn’t Koki’s fault.
"Ha, lame," said Kuroo. "Come on, Koki. Classes are over! We’re having practice."
"And what? I’ll be your unofficial waterboy?"
"You wound me," Kuroo replied, putting a hand over his chest in mock hurt. "Didn’t you know? You’re my caretaker!"
Koki smacked him and huffed, "I’m only going to see Kenma and Lev. And show off my hair."
Kuroo made a face, "Your moss hair? What’s so great about it?"
"It’s beautiful. It’s art. So you shut up."
Kuroo ruffled Koki’s hair, beaming as he grinned at Koki, "Yeah. You’re always pretty, Koki."
And that was unfair. Because Koki felt his heart skip a beat and—
"Don’t say things like that, rooster head. I’m handsome and not pretty."
— he shouldn’t, shouldn’t say things like that or Koki will be forced to think there’s a chance when Kuroo just said to him a week ago that they can’t work that he’s not into boys not into him—
and Koki’s already accepted that, saying nothing will change between them.
Nothing did.
Not between them, that is. Only with Koki.
━━━━━━━━
"Kori!"
Koki returned the hug that Lev greeted him with after he entered Nekoma’s gymnasium. The rest of the team were already there practicing when he and Kuroo arrived.
