Work Text:
Dear Kenma,
Eight years of studies have led me to conclude: love is not a singular emotion. I'd call it an amalgamation of feelings, sentiments cobbled together to take an intangible shape—but mostly, love is a chemical reaction that makes me feel sick. I know there's no poetry in that. Sorry to disappoint, but at least my love is a private oath, a secret I've never deigned to put to paper until now. Perhaps love can be vanquished by speaking it into existence, by scrawling it in words on a page.
Or maybe that just solidifies the feeling. Pft, that'd be hilarious.
Sometimes, I think love is the sun radiating from your flaxen hair like a halo. I thought that today on the court at our training camp. The light shone at the perfect angle while you set during training camp, aiming for me with such trained precision. I could have sworn you wanted to be there, that you were excited about volleyball and not dragging your feet. I imagined a flash of excitement behind your long lashes, a bright, content smile. That's the other thing about love. It makes you delusional.
Love is dopamine's cruelest trick, I tell myself, yet I'd carve my heart out for you if you asked. I'd lie down on cold, unflinching steel and bisect my torso with a scalpel, dig through sinew and viscera and rip the damn thing out. I don't need it, I think. Maybe you'd put it to better use? You wouldn't leave it cold and discarded on the operating table; you wouldn't be that cruel, not to me. You'd at least drown it in formaldehyde before it stinks of rot.
Or you could tuck my heart in a box and keep it on your person, sleep with it under your pillow at night to keep it safe. Whichever you prefer. It's yours and always has been, even as it thumps against my ribcage in my chest.
Kuro
June 2012
Dear Kenma,
My prior hypothesis was flawed. Months later, I find myself still wholly obsessed with you—and I'm not sure if writing the truth down contributed to that fact. I'm not sure there's any act that could excavate these emotions from my soul, dispel the notion within me that together we could be kings. Kings, Kenma! You make me feel like there's no obstacle we can't surmount.
Just two years ago, attending Nationals was nothing but a shared pipe dream; today, we lost against Nekoma's historical rivals by a sliver. I don't know what the opposite of a pyrrhic victory is. A narratively satisfying loss? That phrase doesn't have the same ring to it. I'll workshop it once I catch my breath, but it's all semantics next to how I felt after that match. The shock, the devastation, and then the sheer whiplash of your smile. You thanking me for teaching you to play volleyball, sweat streaking your hair and skin flushed from panting, and bam! I was once again caught falling like a failed serve.
The prospect of being in love terrifies me. I don't believe in soulmates—my mother seared that lesson into my skin. What does it mean, then, if you're the only person I'd build a kingdom with? For a second, it felt like we were heroes on that court, characters from a fairy tale or even one of your video games. You, setting for me, just like you did when we were kids, and the crowd's deafening roar blurring the rest of our teammates out. You, and me, fighting an enemy against which we were destined to lose—you, me, and the terrible secret nestled in my heart.
Here's a story: the battered strategist, smiling up at his defeated knight as they're surrounded by corpses. Their nation has fallen and their flag's singed to ash, but they stand stalwart and strong when they still have each other. Do you like it, Kenma? Even if I've been damned to death in this plot? I'd take the villain's sword for you; better that than living with the shame and guilt. Life's no fun if you're always cheering for the winners. Spare a thought for fictional me.
Kuro
January 2013
Dear Kenma,
Unfortunately, the main thing I've learned in college is that there's no un-loving someone. I've tried daydreaming, dating, and getting drunk, and none of these solutions have shaken the devastating truth of my emotions. You can't extricate love from a heart like a secret. Trust me, I did my best. I'm sure my father did, too, but he kisses my mother's photo every night before sleep.
Taking those facts into account, I've run every possible simulation in my head and concluded that it's implausible for us to be together. First, you don't feel the same way. Second, why shatter the closest friendship I have and invite the potential for disaster? What we have is too precious to lose. It would destroy me not to text you "Hello" every morning and wake up to your "good night."
This brings me to my next peer-reviewed finding: love defies all reason. Despite my best instincts, I'd give anything to hear you say you love me. Sometimes I think I hear it when we call—in "you're so annoying", "get back safe", or "when do you come back home"—but it's like throwing bones to a starved man. I'm greedy, Kenma. I want you as a lover and a friend and everything else.
Winter isn't real here in the south. Remember my first December with you back in Nerima? My grandparents' shitty heating broke and Dad sent me to your home for a sleepover. It got so cold I thought I had ice in my lungs, and you held me until heat pulsed through my veins again. There's no excuse for such comforts here, for two people not in mutual love. I think about that night a lot.
Kenma, I think about you a lot.
Kuro
December 2014
Dear Kenma—sorry, world-famous Kodzuken,
I interrupt your latest stream to present an irrefutable theory. According to my research, you've been a magnetic force since childhood. Once upon a time you were so shy and cute, hiding behind awkward glances and overgrown bangs, mumbling acerbic opinions into the fabric of your hooded sweatshirt. But you've always been great at making me laugh, even when I was a stammering child who could barely string words into a coherent sentence. Even when you were a quiet, subdued teen who didn't know the magnitude of his brilliance, who underestimated his intelligence and razor-sharp wit.
You were Nekoma's heart, lungs and brain. That was by my design. The only way we were getting to Nationals was if I built a team on your shoulders—you've got some indescribable quality that rallies people around you. I say it's your charming good looks and that intense, catlike stare, but I fume the moment I consider anyone else finding you attractive.
Rich, coming from me. Seems I still can't string the right words together.
Now I watch, smiling bittersweet, as your subscribers swarm around world-famous Kodzuken. All two million of them! My head says congratulations, but possessiveness grips my bitter, bitter heart. Sometimes I want to hop in your stream and yell that these assholes don't even know you. It's strange to think how there are people who adore you that you've never met, and I can't help it. Everyone loves you, Kenma. None of them love you the way I do.
I was the first one to laugh at all your jokes. You'd call it "cawing and cackling", but I never forgot your little smile. Don't forget that. Don't forget me.
Kuro
February 2017
Kenma,
I'm not drunk enough to tell you the turth. But I'm drunk enugh to WRITE IT
I dream about you chanting my name like a mANTRa. I want to hear you say KURO with breathless worship and awe. I want you to be mine and mine only, even if for a moment, and if that involves you pinned undernth me and trmbling and your hands slowly lifting off my sh
kroooo
marCH 2017
Dear Kenma,
According to my calculations, I've been terrified for the last eight years. More if you count when I was too cowardly to admit the truth. Though who can fault a fourteen, fifteen year old for being oblivious to the gravity of his emotions? No, I'm pointing the finger at older me, who preps his meals and pays his rent and squeezes in a sea of commuters on his way to work. You'd think a twenty-four year old man could muster the courage.
I've almost confessed countless times: when you delightfully slurp down your milk tea, when our knees knock together on the train. When sake leaves you flushed pink and rosy, your small smile content. In the quiet of my bed late at night, your legs wrapped around a pillow and arms wrapped around my waist. I lie unblinking at the ceiling, heart threatening to tear open my ribcage and burst out my chest, and wonder if it would be worthwhile to shatter this decades-long silence. Fear tightens around me like a noose, choking the words from my throat.
Yet I see you everywhere. Not just in the literal sense—you look incredible in that Aquarius billboard from my commute, hair pulled up and glistening with sweat—but in the smaller things. I find you in the McDonald's apple pie I order at the airport. I find you in the corners of bookstores and coffee shops. I find you in the touch of men I meet in dingy nightclubs, in the way they press up against me, the way they tug me down and untangle my tie and pepper kisses down my neck.
I'm exhausted, Kenma. Running takes effort and I'm just about spent. Someday, I'll be brave enough to offer you my still-beating heart, and you can either take it or leave it on that platter. Whatever you wish.
Kuro
July 2020
Dear Kenma,
I'll never forget how you said yes, flushing pink, as the sun cast warm rays on your pale skin.
I'll always remember how you smelled like soju and sunscreen as you leaned in close, even as we grow old together and our bones ache. I'll pull you close and recount how you blinked up at me, admitting that you only realized you were in love in the last two years—but you might have loved me since the day we met. The crying seagulls, the sand on our feet, the ocean's waves lapping against the Rio beach: I'll burn it all into my heart forever.
Your lips were so plush and soft when we kissed, and your hands and mine locked into each other's perfectly. You sleep so soundly curled up beside me tonight. I could spend the rest of my life waxing poetic, basking in the light of your affection, but now I know I've had it the whole time.
You've spent a lifetime cauterizing the wounds on my body and sewing them shut. I promise you the same.
Kuro
June 2022
Dear Kenma,
When I'm idle, I find myself revisiting the concept of love. It's been nearly nine years since I first pondered its meaning, and I now confidently concur that my initial hypothesis was wrong. Love is not merely a hormonal reaction. It isn't a cluster of mixed feelings or the daydreams I entertained late at night. It most certainly isn't self-destruction, nor is it blind sacrifice.
Love is the way you dragged your feet to volleyball practice each morning, even if you moaned and groaned that the sun wasn't up. Love is how we'd breathe mist clouds into the winter air. Love is how we'd text each and every day when I was away for university, even as your subscriber count grew and you'd get spotted on the street. Ultimately, love is what gave me the courage after all this time to confess, and then to ask you to marry me—love's what brought us to this altar.
Someday, I'll show you all the letters I never sent. This is the first you're hearing of them, but I've felt intense pressure to make this the most poignant and romantic one of all. Just know it took me years to come to this conclusion, but I'm confident of its truth: love has underscored my every action when it comes to you.
Perhaps it was destiny that we found each other: two lonely platelets in a constellation of cells, locked together till necrosis. Or maybe we're up here because we put in the work. I'd cross a galaxy and paint the Milky Way for you.
I do, Kenma. I'll take you as mine forever and ever.
I do.
Love,
Kuro
March 2023