The Neon Tetras

The apartment was dark except for the fish tank glow in the corner. Blue shadows wavered across the walls. Atsumu sat on the edge of the bed, the bottle of painkillers heavy in his palm. Forty-seven minutes now, counting in his head, watching the neon tetras drift through their filtered water with that aimless grace he wished he could feel.

Three in the morning strips everything bare. City noises soften to a distant hum. No calls. No texts. No one to perform for.

He twisted off the childproof cap with a practiced motion. Felt almost absurd—like his body didn't get what his mind had already decided. Thirty pills. Counted them twice. Swallowed them three at a time with warm tap water because he couldn't be bothered to walk to the fridge.

Tasted bitter. Tasted like nothing. Like the last three months of waking up and pretending.

He lay back on the bed, still in his practice jersey from the evening. Didn't bother changing. Didn't bother setting an alarm. For the first time in weeks, the knot behind his ribs loosened. He closed his eyes and let the darkness take him. Expecting it to be permanent.

But the body's got its own stubborn survival logic.

At 7:23 AM, his phone buzzed. A text from Sakusa: Don't be late. Pre-game meal at 9.

Atsumu woke up.

He stared at the ceiling. Processing the fact that he was still alive with a flat, distant confusion. Stomach churning. A dull pressure behind his eyes, like someone filled his skull with wet sand. He sat up slowly—room tilted dangerously, then righted itself.

"Fuckin' hell," he muttered. His own voice, rough and exhausted, sounded like a betrayal.

The bottle sat on the nightstand. Empty. He'd done it. Taken them. And somehow, impossibly, he was still here. Breathing. Still Atsumu Miya, with a match to play and a face to wear.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed. The floor felt unsteady. He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes until he saw stars, then forced himself to stand.

The bathroom mirror showed him a stranger. Pale. Dark circles carved deep under his eyes. Hair flat and unwashed. A distant part of him—the part that still cared about appearances—cringed. He turned on the shower, let the water run hot, stepped under the spray.

It took him twenty minutes to construct his armor.

Eyeliner a little heavier today to cover the shadows. Hair product working overtime. He pulled on his MSBY warm-up jacket and found his smile in the hallway mirror. Tested different angles until one looked genuine enough. Teeth showing. Eyes crinkled. The Atsumu Miya Special—perfected over years of practice.

His phone buzzed again. Where are you? Osamu.

On my way, he typed back. Thumbs steady despite the tremor in his hands. Someone's eager to lose to me today.

The thumbs-up emoji was so perfectly Osamu—unbothered, unreadable—that for a moment, the pressure behind Atsumu's eyes felt like tears instead of fatigue. He blinked them away.

Not today. He had a match to lose himself in.

---

Pre-game meal was a blur of protein and carbs he forced down despite his stomach's protests. He sat between Hinata and Bokuto, laughing at their pre-match energy, nodding along to Meian's tactical reminders, joking with the libero about trick plays.

"Lookin' a little rough there, Miya." Barnes clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to make him sway. "Late night?"

"Somethin' like that," Atsumu said, grin fixed. "You know how it is."

Barnes laughed. He didn't know. No one knew. That was the point.

Sakusa sat across the table, mask on, eyes doing that thing where they tracked Atsumu's movements a little too carefully. Atsumu met his gaze and winked. Sakusa looked away first.

That was another thing they'd gotten good at—the near-misses. Sakusa had been distant lately, wrapped up in his own pre-season adjustments, and Atsumu had let him pull away. Easier that way. Easier to fade out when no one was holding on too tight.

The nausea hit him in the tunnel leading to the court. He stopped, one hand braced against the concrete wall, breathed through it. The pills were still in his system, working their slow, failed magic. His heart hammered irregularly—skipped beat here, flutter there. He pressed his palm to his chest, felt the unsteady rhythm.

"Yo, Atsumu, you good?"

Hinata's voice, bright and concerned. Atsumu straightened, smile already in place.

"Never better. Just hyping myself up. Gotta destroy the Addlers today."

Hinata grinned, buying it completely. "That's the spirit!"

The court was bright. Too bright. The lights felt like they were boring into his skull as he took his position, ball in hand, cheers washing over him in waves of white noise. He served. The ball sailed clean over the net, and for one beautiful second, he felt normal.

Then his vision blurred at the edges.

He blinked hard, shook his head, and the world snapped back into focus. First set. Second set. The match flowed around him in flashes of color and sound. He set for Bokuto—perfect, right to the sweet spot. He served an ace. He high-fived Thomas after a block.

And underneath it all, the poison he'd invited into his body kept doing its work.

By the third set, his hands were shaking. He could feel the sweat cooling on his skin, clammy and wrong. His mouth tasted metallic. The coach called a time-out, and Atsumu stumbled to the bench, catching himself on the railing.

"Miya, you're white as a sheet." Meian's voice, sharp with concern.

"Just dehydrated," Atsumu lied. "Gimme a second."

He drank water. It came back up almost immediately, but he swallowed the bile and wiped his mouth, nodding at the trainer who approached. "Fine. I'm fine."

The coach looked at him, doubt flickering. "You sure you can finish the set?"

"I'm sure."

He was not sure.

The game resumed. Atsumu took his position, and the world fractured into pieces. The lights. The noise. The weight of his own body, suddenly too heavy to carry. He set the ball—he thought he set it—and then the floor rose up to meet him, and he couldn't remember how to stop it.

The last thing he heard before everything went dark was someone screaming his name.

---

The hospital fluorescent lights were the first thing he registered when he surfaced. Worse than the court lights. Much worse. He tried to move, but something was wrong. His arms felt heavy. His chest ached. There was a tube in his throat.

He gagged.

"Easy, easy. You're okay. We've got you."

Hands on his shoulders, pressing him down. Voices he didn't recognize. He tried to ask what happened, but the tube wouldn't let him speak, and panic clawed at his chest.

This wasn't supposed to work was the first coherent thought. Why is this still happening?

The second thought came harder: Now everyone's going to know.

He wanted to cry. He wanted to disappear. Instead, he let the sedatives pull him back under, let the darkness swallow him again, because at least in the void, he didn't have to see the looks on their faces.

---

Suna hadn't moved from the waiting room chair in three hours.

He'd texted Osamu the moment Atsumu collapsed, and Osamu had driven from Hyogo like something possessed, arriving at the hospital with his hands still shaking and his apron still tied. Suna had pulled him into the corner, away from the rest of the team, and told him what the paramedics had found. The empty bottle in his bag. The overdose markers in his blood.

Osamu had sat down very slowly, like his legs had forgotten how to work, and hadn't said a word since.

Sakusa was in the opposite corner, arms crossed, mask in place, but Suna could see the cracks. The way his fingers dug into his own biceps. The way his jaw worked behind the fabric. He'd asked the doctors three times if Atsumu was going to make it. He'd been told three times that the surgery to remove the remaining pills had been successful. He'd nodded each time like he hadn't heard.

The team had been sent home—reluctantly, under orders from the coach—but Meian had stayed in the hallway, talking quietly with the hospital administrator about media protocols. Some things couldn't be hidden. A player collapsing mid-play was news. The details… those could stay private.

A nurse appeared in the doorway, clipboard in hand, expression professional and carefully neutral. "Family of Atsumu Miya?"

Osamu stood up like a puppet on strings. "Here."

Suna rose too, drifting to Osamu's side. Sakusa moved to join them, a silent shadow.

The nurse's eyes flickered between them, assessing. "The surgery went well. He's stable. He's been moved to the ICU for monitoring."

"And the…" Osamu's voice cracked. He cleared his throat, tried again. "The overdose. Is he—"

"He'll need a psychiatric evaluation." The nurse's voice was gentle but firm. "And a three-day hold for observation. After that, we'll discuss ongoing care. But I need to be honest with you. Given what he took and the… circumstances… this was not an accident."

The words hung in the air like a verdict.

Suna felt Osamu sway beside him. He put a hand on his shoulder, steadying him.

"We know," Suna said quietly. "We found the bottle."

The nurse nodded. "You'll be able to see him in about an hour, but only one or two at a time. He's still sedated. I'd recommend preparing yourself for the conversation you'll need to have when he wakes up."

She left, and the silence she left behind was worse than anything she'd said.

Osamu's breath came in short, ragged bursts. "I didn't know." His voice was small, nothing like his usual flat deadpan. "Suna, I didn't—how did I not know?"

"None of us knew," Suna said, and the guilt in his own voice tasted like ash.

"He called me last week." Osamu's hand came up to cover his mouth. "He called and asked if I thought he was a good player. I told him to stop bein' dramatic and hung up. I hung up on him, Suna."

Suna had no comfort to offer. He'd missed signs too. Atsumu had been quieter at team dinners, quicker to deflect. He'd laughed at Suna's jokes but his eyes had stayed empty, and Suna had written it off as pre-season fatigue because that was easier than asking.

They'd all taken the mask at face value.

Sakusa had moved away from the wall. He was standing very still, very straight, his face unreadable except for the tightness around his eyes. "Someone should go to his apartment. Get his things. Clothes, toiletries. Whatever he'll need for the hold."

The suggestion was practical, clinical, and utterly hollow. But it was something to do.

"I'll go," Suna said. "Osamu, you stay. In case he wakes up."

Osamu nodded, numb.

Suna grabbed his keys and walked out into the evening air, and the sunset looked obscenely beautiful for a day that had turned so wrong.

---

Atsumu's apartment smelled like him. That was the first thing Suna noticed when he unlocked the door—the familiar scent of expensive shampoo and the faint undertone of chlorine from the team's pool. It was clean. Tidy. The bed was made, the dishes done, a single succulent on the windowsill looking healthy and cared for.

It looked like the apartment of someone who had their life together.

Suna didn't believe it anymore.

He started in the bedroom, pulling clothes from the dresser—sweatpants, hoodies, the soft t-shirts Atsumu wore beneath his jerseys. He packed a toiletry bag, grabbed a phone charger, a book Atsumu had been meaning to read.

And then his eyes caught on the bathroom door, slightly ajar.

He told himself not to look. He opened it anyway.

The razors were in the back of the medicine cabinet, tucked behind a bottle of mouthwash. Three of them. Disposable. The blades had been removed from two. Suna stared at them, his breath caught somewhere in his chest, and tried to reconcile the image with the Atsumu who had laughed at breakfast yesterday.

He closed the cabinet. Washed his hands. Walked back to the bedroom on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else.

The goodbye letters were on the bed, arranged like an offering.

Three envelopes. Osamu's name in Atsumu's careful handwriting. Suna's name. Sakusa's name.

Suna picked up his own envelope. The paper was thick, quality. Atsumu had always been particular about stationery. He weighed it in his hand, then set it back down. He couldn't read it. Not here. Not now.

He gathered all three and put them in his bag.

---

The hospital room was quiet except for the steady beep of the heart monitor.

Atsumu looked smaller than Osamu had ever seen him. His face was pale, his hair limp, his hands lying still on the blanket like they belonged to a stranger. The tube was gone, replaced by an IV line and oxygen prongs. He looked fragile in a way Osamu had never allowed himself to see.

Because Atsumu had always been the strong one. The loud one. The one who bounced back from everything. He'd been a setter who carried teams on his back, a twin who never stayed down. And Osamu had believed the performance because believing it was easier.

"You stupid bastard," Osamu whispered, and his voice broke on the last word.

He sat in the visitor's chair, pulled it close, and took Atsumu's cold hand in his.

"I'm sorry I hung up on you. I'm sorry I never asked. I'm sorry I thought your smile was real just because that's what it's always been."

The heart monitor beeped. Atsumu's fingers didn't move.

"But you're not gettin' off that easy." Osamu squeezed his hand, hard. "We've got a whole lifetime left to play, and you don't get to forfeit. You don't get to quit on me. So you wake up, and you look me in the eye, and you tell me what I need to do to help. You hear me?"

The door opened. Suna slipped in, bag in hand. He set it on the chair by the window and stood beside Osamu, looking down at the unconscious figure in the bed.

"I found something," Suna said quietly. "At the apartment."

He pulled out the three envelopes.

Osamu's breath caught. He reached for the one with his name, turned it over in his hands. The flap wasn't sealed—Atsumu must have licked it but not pressed it down, or maybe he'd changed his mind at the last second. Osamu pulled out the letter, refolded it without reading a single word, and put it back in the envelope.

"I can't," he said. "Not yet."

Suna nodded. "Sakusa's in the hall. He hasn't moved. I don't think he's let himself process it."

"He loved him." Osamu's voice was flat. "And he didn't see it either."

"None of us did."

The heart monitor continued its steady rhythm. Osamu sat back in the chair, still holding his brother's hand, and stared at the pale face on the pillow.

"I'm not lettin' go," he said, more to himself than to anyone. "I'm not lettin' go."

---

Atsumu woke again at 11:47 PM.

This time, the tube was gone, and his head was clearer. Hurt, but clear. He blinked at the ceiling, oriented himself by the sounds—the beeping, the distant chatter of the nurses' station, the quiet breathing of someone next to him.

He turned his head.

Osamu was asleep in the chair, neck bent at an awful angle, arms crossed. Suna had pulled a second chair close and was scrolling through his phone, but he looked up the moment Atsumu moved.

"Hey," Suna said softly.

Atsumu tried to speak. His throat was raw. "Hey," he croaked.

Suna reached out, touched his shoulder. "You scared the hell out of us."

"I know." Atsumu's eyes burned. He looked away. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. Not for this." Suna's grip tightened. "Just… stay. Okay?"

Atsumu didn't know how to answer that. Staying felt like the hardest thing he'd ever done. Harder than serving against Shiratorizawa. Harder than the night he'd swallowed those pills and waited for the dark.

But Osamu was here. Suna was here. And somewhere in the hallway, waiting for his turn, Sakusa was probably pacing a groove into the linoleum.

"I'll try," Atsumu whispered.

Suna nodded, accepting it.

The heart monitor kept beeping. The night kept moving. And in a small hospital room in Osaka, five people began the long, uncertain work of learning how to hold on.