OIKAWA TOORU, FOR INEXPLICABLE REASONS, wakes up feeling irritated. The feeling festers inside him, twisting his innards and prickling his skin. He wants to punch something; stomp his feet and shout in frustration.

It's a feeling similar to when he's lost something valuable, such as Nationals.

He huffs and shakes his head. That's probably why he's so upset—he'd been dreaming about the final match of his senior year, when Aoba Johsai lost against them—Karasuno.

When he lost against Tobio.

With all the grace in the world, he shoves off his blankets and pads across his bedroom towards the door. But despite having concluded that Karasuno was to blame for his frustration, somehow, Tooru knows that that isn't the reason.

It's something bigger, and possibly worse.

THE REST OF TOORU'S MORNING PROCEEDS PEACEFULLY. He spends about an hour preparing for school, then joins his family for breakfast. By the time he's out the door, the irritation from earlier becomes a nagging sensation at the back of his mind, but he ignores it. Standing outside the gates of his house is his childhood friend (and second mother, but don't tell him that) Iwaizumi Hajime, who is wearing a fierce expression that already has Tooru reeling in fright.

"What's with the look?! As soon as I'm out the door, too!"

"Well, maybe if you took less time grooming yourself like a peacock and actually be ready to go on time, I wouldn't be two seconds away from beating your incompetent ass!"

Tooru pouts and joins his friend. "It's not like we have club activities in the morning anymore, anyway—"

The look on Hajime's is downright terrifying.

"Wh-wh-what?! What is it this time?! What I said is true, isn't it?!"

"Shittykawa, you better be fucking joking."

"About what?! Why would I be joking?!"

WHACK!

"Oooow! Iwa-chan!"

"Don't tell me you just conveniently forgot that we have a match against Shiratorizawa in a week," replies Hajime, his voice picking up a low, warning tone that has Tooru quaking in his loafers again.

"Oh my god…" the brunet begins, despite knowing the consequences that would come from jabbing his friend one more time, "You're in denial. You're so upset about losing against Karasuno, you've lost it."

WHACK!

"OUCH, IWA-CHAN!"

"We're done talking about this. Fuck around all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that we're going to need to practice harder than ever."

As amused as Tooru was prior, the irritation from before starts to flare. "Iwa-chan, if this is some kind of prank you and the others are trying to pull on me, it's not fucking funny—"

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Hajime spins on his heels, the glare on his face just as fierce as Tooru's own. "Why are you so convinced that we lost? Don't tell me you fell and hit your head on your way back home yesterday."

"WE LOST AGAINST KARASUNO, DAMMIT!" exclaims the latter, the irritation from before now boiling at full-heat, "We were one fucking point away from winning when Tobio and the shrimp did their stupid quick attack! Maybe you're the one who fell and hit your damn head!"

"First of all, Tobio? Who the hell is that?" Hajime starts with a grimace, "When have you ever known anyone on Karasuno?"

"Wha… What the hell… of course you know who Tobio-chan is, we went to Kitagawa Daichi with him," the brunet urges, feeling the irritation begin to hollow him out and fill him with dread, "Kageyama Tobio. Your junior—"

"I don't know what shit you're trying to pull, Shittykawa, but's it's seriously pissing me off. Just stop fucking around already—" he stops mid-sentence when he realizes that Tooru's increasing distress is all but an act. Immediately, the empathetic part of him begins to surface, and he instead tries to make sense of the brunet's confusion. "Look, Tooru, I'm sure you're just confused—I don't know what happened, but you—"

"I'm not confused! I-I—" Tooru becomes increasingly flustered, and he can feel on the words on his tongue fumble on top of each other as he starts to panic. There was no fucking way Tobio just stopped existing—just yesterday, they were playing against each other, they were rivals, they shook hands—for goodness' sake, Tobio was at the height of all Tooru's insecurities, he was Tooru's insecurity.

It wasn't a matter of his sanity, either, it was his entire fucking life—what had Tooru been doing up to now? Most importantly, what the hell was going on?

There was no way Tobio would just disappear like that.

No.

Fucking.

Way.

There had to be proof, something to show that Tobio is not and never was a figment of Tooru's imagination—

"I HAVE A PICTURE!" he screams as he drops his bag and rummages through it for his phone. Hajime, flabbergasted by Tooru's inexplicable behavior, is only able to stand in place and watch as he friend desperately searches for his phone.

"I-I met him a while ago, at Takeru's volleyball meeting," he explains in a shaky tone, "He, ah, asked me to teach him—I can't remember, I don't know, something to do with setting I think—then I told him I wouldn't but he was just so fucking insistent, so I—ah, here it is," Tooru pulls out his phone and immediately searches through the gallery for the blurry image of his kouhai bowing. "Haha, it was funny, actually, he… he…"

Tooru finds the picture.

But, at the same time, it's not the one.

"What the fuck…" he mumbles, the phone dropping from his hand. "What the fuck. What the fuck. What. The. Actual. Fuck."

Hajime, admittedly terrified for his friend's wellbeing now, approaches him and grabs the fallen device. Taking up the screen is a blurry photo of Tooru posing backwards, though his torso is contorted as he grins mischievously into the camera with a peace sign.

"I don't get it, Oikawa, what the hell is going on with you? There's no one else—it's just you in this picture."

Tooru is quiet for a minute or two, then finally looks up with an expression mixed between horror and despair.

How the hell is he going to explain that his uselessly adorable kouhai—his greatest rival—Kageyama Tobio—has just ceased to exist?