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it’s been almost two months, and the communication between them is coming to a stand-still. he knows the older doesn’t mean it, but then again, maybe he does.it’s not like kenma doesn’t reach out either - he’ll update the dark-haired boy about the pain of waking up for classes, and how their friends still ask him about his games, and he always mentions about how crazy volleyball training has been.the problem isn’t kenma. it’s kuroo.yet kenma will sit at the front gates of the school on days when he has nowhere to be, waiting for the tall boy with spiky black hair to walk up and ruffle his fading blond locks with a laugh before they go on their way. he still waits after volleyball practice too, hoping the boy will run onto the train in the last few seconds before it pulls away from the station, giving a sheepish smile and rubbing the back of his neck as kenma shakes his head at him.but every day, every single day, kenma goes home alone, and it’s harder than he ever thought possible.so when the clock reads 9:33PM, and the rain pours down just as much as it did one, ten, thirty minutes beforehand, kenma’s phone remains silent. it’s so difficult to process the fact that promises were broken so quickly.the first three weeks had been fine - they’d talked every day, multiple times for multiple reasons, and they’d been happy. kuroo gave updates about everything going on, from his classes to his room to his volleyball training sessions. he said they were harder than high school, and that he’s not quite sure how he managed to get through the very first session that defined him as a permanent player. but he did, and kenma had smiled with him and told kuroo that he was proud, albeit with a quiet voice like always.kuroo’s thanks at that moment made the distance feel like nothing at all.but that was the first three weeks, and then kuroo began to fade away from not just him, but everyone.kenma had sent many messages, asking about his wellbeing and schedules, always trying to keep up a front that it wasn’t a huge bother to him. but the days kept going and the texts kept getting shorter, the phone calls being denied, and the selfies only of the dorm or gym ceiling. it was still something, but he never explained himself, and that’s what hurt kenma the most.so for the past two, almost another three weeks, kenma stopped always messaging first and strung them out along with his calls, stopped sending photos of whatever his environment seemed to be, and he stopped getting the same thing in return. kuroo stopped making an effort, and it felt like kenma had lost the one person who promised to never leave despite whatever distance they had.kuroo’s other friends received the same treatment, and went about with similar actions to see if the same silence would greet them, and it did. but everybody on their team, old and new, quiet and loud, knew that it was kenma who was hurting the most.so as he picks up his phone, the clock reading 9:48PM, he sees his last text - the first one he sent in a week - is still unread. so he puts the phone down and tucks himself into his bed, staring up at the ceiling in hopes his eyes would shut and send him off to a sleep that he desperately hoped would be peaceful. a sleep full of happy memories and good thoughts, and he does for a while.but then he’s rolling over, still listening to the rain and wondering if it’s flooding yet, and the clock reads 3:00AM, right on the dot, and kenma decides he can’t do this anymore.so he gets up and walks into the bathroom, eyes blurry from the lack of sleep, sudden light, and the liquid pooling in his eyes, and he stares at the person he’s become in these unpleasant two months.the bags under his eyes have become bigger and darker. his lips are cracked from constantly chewing the skin off. his hair is oily and the colour is fading more than he remembered and it’s all over the place.these little things are because of kuroo. because his best friend, who promised to only remove his physical presence, chose to take his entire being with himself when he left. he completely removed himself from kenma’s life.maybe he removed kenma from his own life instead…so kenma decides to break his own promise as well, and he digs through the cupboard until he finds the scissors his mother keeps for cutting his hair when the ends begin to snap. he knows it’s going to hurt him deep inside, but he doesn’t care, because he knows kuroo wouldn’t care either.his hair has been snapping and fading and growing for much too long now. he’d tried to keep it at a reasonable length, but the past two months have made it seem longer than ever, and it’s ugly how it sits on his too pale face.his hand takes hold of it easily, pulling it away from his protruding cheekbone, and all he can manage is a deep, shaky breath, before he brings the scissors up and cuts right through it.he lets it fall from his fingertips and into the small basin, staring down at the dirty blond strands before doing it again, and again, and again.he cuts the hair until there’s barely any blond left, and it sits halfway over his ears and it touches just below his eyes when he combs it forward, and there’s nothing touching his neck. he picks up as much hair as he can and dispenses it into the bin, running his head under the tap to get out any clippings that he might have missed, as well as giving it a much-needed rinse.when he stands and pushes the fringe over and to the right, forehead showing slightly, he finds it looks more like the dark-haired boy he cut it for, so he trims more off, and makes it sit flat enough that it looks like he has an undercut and barely grazes his ears, and it sits out of his eyes even with his head down. he stares at it for much too long, but he doesn’t bother to think of the time as he cleans up and walks back to his room in darkness.it’s much too early to try and stay awake, and he needs the sleep if he wants to get through the next day of school and volleyball practice in one peace.he doesn’t bother to check his phone for the time before he drifts off, missing the text from a certain dark-haired boy he’s missing so badly, that came through in the very last seconds of 3:00AM.