There were the good days—

Sticky summer nights spent sprawled on your bed, laughing over dumb horror movies. His buzzed head pressed to your stomach, hand on your thigh, talking about his dreams like they were promises. Tanaka was loud, wild, magnetic. But with you? He’d go soft. Play with your cat for hours. Talk your ear off about your siblings like they were his own.

The love was loud. Spinning-you-in-the-air-at-practice loud. “That’s my girl!” yelled across school courtyard loud. Everyone thought it was perfect. The crowd would cheer. Your friends would swoon.

“Bro’s in LOVE,” they’d whisper. And yeah, he was. Publicly. Loudly. Obsessively. Even Tsukki couldn’t roll his eyes fast enough before someone sighed, “Tanaka’s so in love with her.”

He met your siblings with gifts in both hands. Played with your tiny gray cat like it was the MVP of Karasuno. Left notes in your locker. Walked you home, rain or shine. Your name came up in every other sentence.

“You seen her today?” “She texted me this emoji last night, what do you think it means?” “Bro, I swear her laugh could, like, fix me.”

But behind the scenes? The bad moments overlapped the good days.

The silence between you started creeping in after the cheering stopped.

What began as daily check-ins became hourly. He always needed to know where you were. Who you were with. Why you didn’t text back in five minutes. He didn’t cheat—he’d never do that. But he did send messages threatening to “walk into the Sumida River and never come back” because you posted a story from karaoke without him.

TANAKA: i walked by the river lol kinda wanna jump in just for the drama TANAKA: ur phone broken or u just hate me now

You tried to explain. Tried to calm him down. Tried to remind him you loved him. Until one night, after school, when Tanaka and Nishinoya pulled up outside your cram school with a bat. Not for protection. For clarity. Because you hadn’t replied. And that? That was his breaking point.

So you left. Packed up your heart and your dignity and got the hell out.

You left after that. No yelling. No goodbye. Just… gone.

And Ryuu? He broke.

He hit volleyballs harder. Grunted more than spoke. Accidentally clocked Hinata in the face and nearly broke Hinata’s nose with a spike and muttered a half-hearted “my bad” like he wasn’t even there. Nishinoya tried to talk him down—called him “a dumbass in love”—but Tanaka just scrolled through your old texts at night and stared out the window like a ghost in gym shorts.

You didn’t think you’d see him again.

Two months later, your older brother Riku got married. Of course Tanaka was there, even tho Riku had been comforting you about the breakup for weeks and seemed to be weirded out when you explained Tanaka's actions in private. But they were tight, it seemed, and Riku had always called him “my other little bro.”

And there he was, dressed up, cracking jokes with your little brother, talking like the two of you hadn’t exploded into pieces just two months before.

Like he hadn’t once said he'd jump off a cliff if you didn’t pick up.