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It’s Valentine’s Day and Yamaguchi is alone. His phone has no emails, no calls, no texts. The house is quiet and his volleyball uniform hangs loosely against his frame, a lonely boy staring back at a lonely boy in the reflection of his mirror. He has to leave for practice, soon. And he’ll walk by all the couples, hand in hand and sharing secret laughs and words that are theirs, and only theirs.
He wants that kind of love. The kind of love that’s fresh and innocent, held together by the pureness of teenage affection and the thrill of teenage independence. He wants someone to walk hand-in-hand with to classes, to listen to music with, to talk about stupid things and important things and everything and nothing at all.
Yamaguchi wants a kind of love that lasts.
He doesn’t want a love like his parents. Held together by the strings of signed contracts and two young children. Fraying until it snapped, taking his father all the way to Okinawa and leaving him and his little sister behind with their mother. Taking his love and his time and the presence of a father in their lives, and leaving behind envelopes of money every second Monday of every month. And the image of their beloved father held up for three years after his departure, behind a curtain of business trips and conferences, and fell with their mother’s desperate explanations of incompatability and words under her breath of infidelity.
He pulls on his jacket and looks outside, at the snow falling like an angel’s breaths onto the street outside, leaving silvery trails on his window and little mounds on the roof tiles. It’s cold, but his hands emit a warmth that has saved him (and Tsukishima) too many times to count when they’re both standing outside after volleyball, waiting for their parents to pick them up.
But still, it’s cold, and Yamaguchi presses his hands to his cheeks and steps outside into the snow.
Immediately, it hits him like a brick. Or a truck. Or maybe more so a piano, falling onto his head and knocking him unconscious into feathery soft snow.
But the sight of his neighbour walking, fingers intertwined with his other neighbour’s, makes his heart sink. His face falls; he can feel it, as frozen as it is. He trudges through the snow, a soldier in a war zone of love and freezing cold weather. Yamaguchi must make it to his Sergeant’s hideout, rescue the other and drag him to the Karasuno safe house, hidden behind a large forest and with the threat of dangerously affectionate and infatuated couples everywhere around them. They must avoid them, protect their ears from their whispers of compliments and sappiness. Well, Sergeant Tsukishima must. Soldier A, Yamaguchi Tadashi, is immune. His ears protected and his hands emitting enough warmth to melt even the coldest snow. His Sergeant has those trusty headphones, and more layers of jackets and undershirts than Soldier A would ever need. But, there is no need to worry, to fret. For they are the best soldiers in the city, escaping the disease of love for years on end. Soldier A is immune, the diseased seeming to miss him completely, their affection and love-poisoned arrows piercing the hearts of everyone around him. And, as for Sergeant Tsukishima? Why, the arrows seem to follow him instead - magnets with a strange attraction, infatuated beings. But Sergeant Tsukishima, ever the wise one, has dodged their path and remained uninfected with Soldier A loyally by his side.
The last drags through the snow, and Soldier A reaches the hideout of Sergeant Tsukishima. His light is off - yet another good sign! From the streetlights flickering strongly along the street, and the fortunate lack of infected, this day might just be good. Soldier A stands against the gate, puffs of air leaving his lungs in crystally white smoke, permeating and dissipating. He waits.
And he waits.
And he waits.
And he’ll be late for practice if he waits any longer, and he’s about to storm into the hideout when Sergeant Tsukishima’s trusted ally and older brother, Tsukishima Akiteru, opens the door. He looks like he’s just woken up.
“Tadashi!” He waves, lids heavy but admirably alert. “Kei already left a little while ago - I thought he’d told you?”
But Soldier A is unaware of this fact, and his immunity to the cold is weakening by the second. This piece of news has confirmed the worst - Sergeant Tsukishima has fallen ill to the dreaded disease.
Love.
Years of escaping this day together, the day where the infected seem to rise and emerge from all sorts of places. And now, has Sergeant Tsukishima left his loyal soldier behind, and found a beautiful girl to whisper with and laugh with and hold hands with?
He hopes not, but he can’t help but think, but know that it’s true.
He thanks the trusted ally, and sets off to the Karasuno safe house. Maybe, his Sergeant already made it there. Maybe, he just decided to leave extra early, and escape the infected altogether.
It takes a little longer to reach the safe house than Soldier A expected, but nevertheless, he arrives early, before the already half-infected members of their platoon. And yet, Sergeant Tsukishima is not there.
Yamaguchi reaches his locker, and his hand rests on the lock but his head leans on his locker, too, and his heart seems to weigh his whole body down.
He wants a boy. A tall, blonde-haired boy with black frames around beautiful eyes and a perpetually sarcastic tone of voice.
Sergeant Tsukishima.
Tsukishima Kei.
His best friend, the one he’s known since he was just a boy. They had always stuck together, despite Tsukishima’s growing unhappiness and annoyance. Yamaguchi's persistence and dedication, and Tsukishima’s hidden gentleness, had kept their friendship strong and alive and theirs.
But now, Tsukishima will have a girlfriend. He’ll see him in the hallway, and they’ll lock eyes but never have a conversation more than a few exchanged words, and he’ll quit volleyball and leave everything they ever shared behind.
Yamaguchi was always the second choice. Every year, there had been chocolates and letters in Tsukishima’s locker, while his was empty and bare, save for his everyday textbooks. They had eaten Tsukishima’s chocolates together, laughed over the sappy letters together, but he knew it was only a matter of time. Only a matter of time before their boyhood was over, before Tsukishima decided to grow up and get a girlfriend.
He lifts his head. He hopes he’ll see him in practice, at least one last time. Before they drift, and the threads of their friendship wither and fade away.
A twist of his locker, and the door swings open, but what awaits him is not his everyday schoolbooks and textbooks.
There is a chocolate.
There is a chocolate and a letter, and it’s Yamaguchi’s name written in a black pen he knows all too well, in handwriting he’s seen a dozen times on his best friend’s worksheets.
It’s Tsukishima.
His hands are shaking but he knows it’s not from the cold, because this room is warm and so is his heart, beating wildly with excitement and anticipation. He fears the words inside, but he unfolds the paper.
And he reads.
He reads and he reads and he reads, his eyes scanning the lines over and over again. Maybe he’s missing a word, maybe he’s completely forgotten his best friend’s handwriting, maybe he doesn’t even know how to read at all.
But he knows he does. Yamaguchi knows he’s reading it right and he knows this is Tsukishima’s handwriting and he knows what this means. He folds the paper closed. His lips lift at the corners and his heart is still pounding, but his cheeks ache from smiling and not the cold, and his heart is so light and he’s fluttery and joyful and every good thing has happened all at once, today.
Soldier A is infected.
Yamaguchi Tadashi has a Valentine.