Rain tapped lightly against the window, though it felt distant, unreal. I was somewhere between awake and asleep, drifting through a haze of sound and color. Faces swam in and out of focus familiar, yet younger. Their voices were softer, lighter, but the intensity underneath… it was the same.
The air smelled like summer... warm grass, sweat, sunlight. Laughter echoed, stretched thin, as if heard through water. My chest felt light, unburdened, like I hadn't learned how to be afraid yet.
"Y/n! Pass it!" a familiar shout rang out, sharp and bright.
I blinked, and suddenly we were on the volleyball court. Green grass instead of gym floors. The sun harsh and golden, streaking across their faces. Shadows stretched long beneath their feet, moving every time they laughed or shouted. Atsumu's grin stretched wide, messy hair plastered to his forehead from sweat.
"I'm telling you! One day, I'm going to be the best setter in the world! And you'll be my number one fan, Y/n!" Atsumu said, elbowing Osamu playfully.
Osamu rolled his eyes but smiled, his hand ruffling my hair. "Better than dreaming, Atsumu. Work for it. And don't mess with Y/n while you're at it, idiot."
Atsumu scoffed. "I'm motivating her!"
"You're annoying her," Osamu shot back.
"I laughed softly, the sound foreign in my own ears. Bokuto bounced forward, clapping his hands. "Yeah! And we're all gonna protect her! Right, everyone?"
He threw his arms wide like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Like it didn't need to be questioned.
"Protect me?" I asked, tilting my head.
The word felt strange on my tongue. Heavy. Important.
"Yes!" Suna's voice came from behind me, low, mischievous. "Even if you don't notice, we're all keeping tabs. You'll never be in danger when we're around."
He leaned closer, eyes half-lidded, smile lazy but there was something sharp underneath it. Something watchful.
I frowned, a strange warmth swelling in my chest. "You don't have to…"
The breeze picked up, fluttering my shirt, carrying their voices together.
"But we will," Semi cut in, his tone quieter, serious, almost too solemn for a kid his age. "We're not letting anything happen to you."
His eyes didn't waver. Not even a little.
"Even… if it means fighting each other?" Tsukishima's golden eyes caught mine briefly, sharp as ever.
There was challenge in his voice. Calculation. Like he was already measuring distances, outcomes, losses.
"Especially then," Kuroo said, voice smooth, teasing, but deadly in its conviction. "If one of us falters, the others will make sure she's safe."
He smiled at me easy, familiar but his hand curled slowly into a fist at his side.
"And in another life," Terushima said suddenly, stepping closer, amber eyes glittering, "we'll be everything you dreamt of, Y/n. Every single thing. We'll make you happy… even if we have to burn the world to do it."
The words felt too big. Too heavy for the sunlight.
I blinked, trying to make sense of the words. The sunlight felt too bright, too much. Voices overlapped, laughter and threats tangled together. Their promises blurred, stacking on top of each other until I couldn't tell where one ended and another began.
Oikawa, standing beside them all, smirked, hands shoved into his pockets. "You think one of us can win her heart alone? Dream on. She belongs to all of us at least in spirit so everyone better work hard."
He glanced at me, eyes sharp, calculating and oddly fond.
Bokuto stomped the ground, shouting, "I'll marry her first! No one else can!"
He puffed out his chest like a declaration was enough to make it true.
"No way! I'm her first!" Atsumu yelled back, pointing a finger like a gun.
"Oi! That's not fair!"
"You snooze, you lose!"
Their voices rose, overlapping, laughter bleeding into argument, argument bleeding into something darker beneath the surface.
"Enough!" Tsukishima barked, voice sharp and unyielding. "You're all ridiculous. She'll pick whoever's left standing after we fight for her."
The laughter didn't stop..but it twisted.
And somewhere deep in my chest, something stirred.
A memory trying to surface.
The memory shifted again, blurry and cold now. We were walking across the street. Laughter echoed around me, but the sound was cut short… a screeching of tires, the flash of metal.
"Y/n!" Bokuto's voice shattered the moment.
Everything went slow. Time stretching and snapping. Hands reaching, voices screaming, hearts breaking.
No...
The world stuttered. Like a film reel burning, skipping frames. The sound warped, bending in on itself, the screech dragging into a long, hollow echo. The flash of metal froze inches away...too bright, too sharp before the image tore apart completely.
My chest seized. I sucked in a breath that didn't belong to that world.
And then...
I woke up.
Too fast. Too sudden.
I gasped, my body jerking upright as if I'd fallen from a height. My heart slammed violently against my ribs, my breath coming out uneven, shaky. The rain was gone. The room was dim and quiet, the air heavy and still. My skin felt cold and clammy, my clothes sticking uncomfortably to me.
My fingers curled around the edge of the blanket on instinct, gripping it hard like it was the only thing anchoring me to the bed. My head throbbed, a dull ache pulsing behind my eyes.
I squeezed them shut.
Something was there. I knew it.
Voices.
Laughter.
Someone shouting my name.
I tried to hold onto it... to pull the memory back before it slipped away. I searched my mind desperately, grasping at the edges of something warm and painful and important.
But it was already dissolving.
The images bled into one another, losing shape, losing meaning. Faces blurred. Words turned into noise. Promises unraveled before I could understand them.
I frowned, swallowing hard. "I… I was dreaming," I whispered to the empty room.
But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember what about.
Only fragments remained... flickers of laughter with no faces attached, the echo of my name spoken with urgency, a feeling so heavy it pressed against my chest. Love. Fear. Something fierce and burning… then nothing at all.
I shivered, pulling the blanket closer around myself. Not from the cold—but from the strange sense of loss curling deep in my stomach. Like I'd forgotten something important. Like someone had reached for me… and I hadn't reached back in time.
I lay there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling, my heart slowly settling.
Whatever that dream was...
Whatever they had said, whatever they had promised...
It was gone.
And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember it.
The room felt impossibly quiet after that, the kind of silence that pressed into your ears and made them ache. I shifted under the blanket, hugging it closer as if it could hold the fragments of memory that were slipping through my fingers. My pulse was still racing, but slower now, settling into a dull, persistent thrum that reminded me I was alive.
I tried to piece it together, straining for even a single clear image. The sunlight on their faces. The laughter. The way they had looked at me... not like friends, not like teammates, but something deeper, something fierce. Something that wanted to protect me at all costs.
"Was it real?" I whispered to myself, the words trembling out of me, fragile and small. My voice felt alien in the empty room.
I closed my eyes again, trying to summon just one more glimpse, one more thread to pull the dream back into focus. But every attempt ended the same way... blurred faces, half-words, laughter cut off mid-sentence. They were there, all of them, just out of reach. And the warmth… the terrifying, overwhelming warmth… was gone.
A sigh escaped me, shaky, uncertain. I had no name for what I felt. Loss? Longing? Fear? All of it tangled together in a knot in my chest. My hands curled into fists beneath the blanket, pressing against the weight of it.
The quiet made me hyper-aware of everything around me... the faint creak of the floorboards, the soft hum of the radiator, the smell of rain lingering on the windowpane. Even though the dream had vanished, the echo of it lingered, like a pulse under my skin, a memory of a memory I couldn't fully touch.
I tried to speak again, to call back to the dream, to force it into existence. "I… I want to remember," I murmured. My words were desperate, pleading, but they dissolved into the stillness, unanswered.
Somewhere deep in my chest, a spark lingered. A tiny, insistent flicker that told me it hadn't been just a dream. That it was something real. Something I had lived or would live again.
I lay back against the pillow, staring at the ceiling, letting the quiet wrap around me like a shroud. My fingers slowly unclenched, releasing the blanket just enough to breathe, and I let my mind drift, not toward the fragments of what had been, but toward the feeling it left behind the fierce, burning devotion, the promises I could no longer grasp, the love that was bigger than time or life itself.
And somewhere, deep in the shadowed corners of memory, I knew.. without knowing... that they were waiting.
Waiting for me. Always.
The thought made me shiver again, but this time it was strange, bittersweet. I couldn't imagine them being that normal. The way they had been in my dream... so intense, so desperate, so… obsessed it was impossible to picture them as ordinary, everyday boys. Smiling politely in classrooms, joking about nothing in particular, teasing without the weight of promises that could burn the world.
The image of them being "normal" felt wrong, almost hollow. Atsumu grinning lazily while throwing a volleyball without a care, Osamu quietly studying and fixing his hair absentmindedly, Bokuto laughing at a silly joke without the fierce protective streak none of it fit. Suna lounging in the corner, cool and detached but not stalking, not guarding. Tsukishima calculating without that edge of frantic devotion. Kuroo smirking, sure, but harmless. Terushima patient without that fire in his eyes. Semi calm, steady, but not carrying the weight of a vow that spanned lifetimes. Oikawa charming, yes, but not a schemer plotting for my happiness across worlds.
I swallowed hard. The thought made the memory of my dream feel even more unreal. How could they have been like that? All the love, the desperation, the dark, burning promises... they couldn't possibly be real… yet the way it had felt in the dream, the way it had pressed into my chest, told me otherwise.
I hugged the blanket tighter, pressing it to my face. Even if they were just boys, just people who could laugh and argue and breathe normally, the memory the feeling was theirs. It didn't matter if reality painted them one way and dreams another. Somewhere, beyond the reach of time and memory, they had carried me in their hearts with a devotion I could barely comprehend.
And even now, with the fragments slipping like sand through my fingers, I could feel it. The echo of all of them, the pull of their presence, the unspoken promise that no matter the world, no matter the life… they would find me.
I shivered again, this time less from the chill and more from the weight of it, and let the blanket fall loosely over me. I didn't need to see them as normal to know the truth: I was theirs, in every impossible, obsessive, lovesick, beautiful way.
Even if I couldn't remember them.
Even if I never could.
The door creaked softly.
I barely had time to turn my head before a familiar presence filled the room quiet, controlled, unmistakable. Kuroo stepped inside, closing the door behind him with careful precision, as if he didn't want the sound to startle me. Or alert anyone else.
"Hey," he said gently, voice low. Too gentle. His sharp eyes swept over me in one smooth motion... my face, my hands, the way I was curled into the bed. "You're awake."
I pushed myself up slightly, my head still light. "Kuroo…?"
He was already beside the bed. I hadn't noticed him move. His hand hovered near my wrist, not touching, but close enough that I could feel the warmth. Like he was resisting the urge.
"You fainted earlier," he said, brows knitting just a little. "Scared the hell out of us."
Us.
"I-... I'm fine," I murmured, though my voice wavered. "I think I just-..."
"No."
The word was soft, but absolute. His smile followed immediately after, easy and familiar, like it was meant to soften the blow. It didn't.
"You're not fine," Kuroo continued calmly. "And the doctor isn't here right now. He had to go into town." His thumb finally brushed my wrist, checking my pulse with practiced ease. "So until he gets back, you're staying put."
I frowned. "Staying… put?"
His eyes flicked up to mine, dark and intent. "You shouldn't go out like that again."
Something tightened in my chest. "Like what?"
"Running."
The word dropped heavier than it should have.
"Do you have any idea what you did to us?" he asked quietly. His grip tightened... not painful, just firm enough to remind me he was there. "You disappeared. No warning. No note."
I opened my mouth, but he kept going, voice still controlled, still calm. That was what scared me.
"We looked everywhere," he said. "The grounds. The paths. The forest outside the villa." His jaw clenched, just for a second. "Do you know how dark it gets out there?"
The image flashed in my mind... trees swallowing light, branches closing in. I shivered.
"We were worried sick," Kuroo continued, leaning closer now. His smile was gone. "Atsumu nearly tore the place apart. Bokuto was calling your name like you'd answer him from the trees. Even Tsukishima wouldn't shut up about how reckless it was."
His eyes softened when they met mine again. Too soft.
"And me?" he asked quietly. "I found your footprints near the edge."
My breath hitched.
"I thought you were hurt," he said. "Or worse."
Silence stretched between us. His hand slid from my wrist to rest over my fingers, lacing them together before I could react.
"So listen to me," Kuroo said, voice gentle again, coaxing. "You don't do that. Not again."
"I wasn't trying to escape," I whispered. I wasn't even sure if that was true.
His thumb stroked over my knuckles, slow and reassuring. Possessive.
"I know," he said. "But it looked like it."
He leaned down slightly, close enough that I could smell his cologne, feel the warmth of his breath.
"And we can't have that," Kuroo murmured. "Not when we're just trying to keep you safe."
He squeezed my hand once, firm and grounding.
"So for now," he said, straightening, smile returning like nothing was wrong, "you rest. You stay inside. And if you need anything... anything at all... you call for me. Or any of us."
His eyes lingered on me a second longer than necessary.
"We'll be right here."