She was six years old when she first started to remember things she shouldn't have.

It started out small. Bit by bit. The color of her thin hair, black—it should've been thick and brown, like it always had been—her eyes, an unnatural gold.

(She had never seen anything like it, much less in her own reflection.)

Her body was disproportionate. Didn't fit. Her legs too short, hands small and thin. It didn't move how she felt it should—always known it should. It didn't feel like her own, like what she was used to.

(It was always there, that feeling, in the back of her mind. It felt wrong.)

She had parents, loving—but there should've only been one, like how she remembered. It had always only ever been one.

That feeling that cracked and peeled away at her mind burned when her parents—why were there two—would say her name. When the kids at her school would call her over from the other side of the playground. When she read the heading engraved on all of her school papers, report cards, labels. It was hers—but it wasn't.

("Kenma, eat your food first." Her father always says, and she has to remind herself that he was talking to her and not to someone else.)

It was getting worse. More and more things didn't fit. Simple things. There had never been stairs, a second floor in her house; but there was. She had a backyard, porch—but it was unfamiliar, foreign. She sometimes forgot where she was in her own home, that nasty feeling persisting. She expects to come home to a large building complex, but ends up in a nice house in an unrecognizable neighborhood.

She gets sent home with notes from her teachers, suggesting her parents send her to speech therapy and extra writing lessons. They question her about it, as her speech and penmanship had never been a problem before.

(She stumbles over her broken words, tongue strangely tripping over vowels she somehow can't pronounce. Phrases she shouldn't know—a tongue she was so familiar, comfortable with—leaving her throat instead. Her teacher asks her who had taught her english. She doesn't know the answer.

And she has never been so embarrassed. That feeling, twisting and turning.

Characters written in black ink stare back at her with unfamiliarity, yet she knows what they mean. She stares at it until it clicks. 1-B. Her classroom. It's strange, she sees the lettering everyday.)

Her parents began to take notice of her behavior.

Red, puffy eyes, always seeming to be prominent in the quiet moments of the morning. Trouble sleeping, they theorized. Nightmares. They install a bright nightlight in her large bedroom the next evening.

It doesn't help, at least not physically. She finds comfort in it, knowing they care—she wasn't used to that feeling, after all. She eventually forms a habit of watching the swirling purple light dance across the ceiling of her room until she drifts unconscious, cheeks sticky with tears full of shame and thoughts that no six year old should have.

When her parents start hovering over her more, showering her with slightly more affection than usual, small enough that it's barely noticeable, she doesn't question it. It gets her mind off of things. A distraction.

("I'll help you with your kanji later, okay?" Her mother says from across the table, only the sound of metal clinking against dishes following her voice. A frown, "Kenma?"

The feeling; the ugly, nauseating feeling settles inside. It threatens to erupt from within, teeth clenching. That wasn't her name.

"Okay." She swallows, the word sounding foreign. It wasn't her voice.)

Everything eventually shifts into place when the days become hot and the cicadas sing a constant tune, the heat of the sun forever unforgiving. She never remembers it ever getting so hot, she thinks.

A red and green painted ball rolls up to her—too small—feet and she stares at it, the children in her grade following close behind it.

"Kozume! Pass it o'er here!" A nameless, faceless child squats into a mock position of receiving—she knows—holding his unsteady forearms in front of him excitedly. She continues her one-sided staring contest with the pleather form at her feet, short hairs sticking to the beads of sweat that begin to make shape on her forehead.

A tug. A pause. A stirring of memories.

The feeling explodes until it is no longer barely being contained. A volleyball. A story. A character. Her name. Kenma.

Kozume Kenma.

(Something wasn't right. It was different-)

Male.

She was Kozume Kenma, and she had been born a girl.

She cried. She cried until she couldn't cry any longer. (The last of her tears left her with an aching feeling of pure emptiness. An emptiness that she would always then on carry.)

Later, after she had been sent home due to a teacher finding her alone outside, inconsolable and exhausted, her parents pestering her all evening to know what was wrong; she lay silently in her bed, blankly watching the mesmerizing purple lights above.

The house was still and silent—it never used to be, it was never quiet—and she tried to remember. She tried to remember what she once was. Who she once was. A name, even. Anything of the fleeting life she left behind.

(She couldn't, so she turned her back and buried herself deep into the blankets in acceptance.)


She was seven when the neighbors next door began to move out.

Kenma had quite liked them, the Ogawas. An older couple who had let her pet their cats and brought over freshly baked foods every few weeks. Her mother had said that they had been a huge help to her when she was recovering from giving birth to Kenma, helping around when her father had been at work. She was really going to miss them, especially their amazing apple pies.

(It marked something that was coming, she knew. Something that wasn't going to be avoided. She was prepared for whatever it was.)

She was slowly getting better at speaking Japanese, though; her mother spending extra time with her in practicing her consonants and understanding. It was weird, learning the language all over again when she already knew it. She knew it—but yet she also didn't. Her mind, scrambled.

It was embarrassing, and Kenma hated it.

(Words jotted down in beautifully curved lines littered her paper, and she didn't know when she had written them. She scrubbed and scrubbed with her eraser until only faint remnants of lead remained underneath the new, the right characters, and she hoped her teacher wouldn't take notice.)

The days continued on like nothing had happened; her hair growing slowly along with her height. It was like she hadn't drastically changed. Like she was Kozume Kenma. She wasn't.

(At night, she often wondered how it would effect things. How her presence here would change what was supposed to be. The world that was laid out ahead, every step she took supposed to be written for her.

But it wasn't. Not anymore. Things were different. She was different.)

"Go on, say goodbye to the Ogawas." Kenma's father gently guided her forward, his eyes squinted behind his square framed glasses. She nodded, bowing to the older couple, offering faint words of farewell along with her parents. They smiled down at her, the older man's large hand coming to ruffle her dark, almost shoulder length hair.

She was handed a wrapped package filled with her supposed favorite—they weren't—sweets and then they were gone, an empty house left behind in their wake as if it had never been touched. Her parents eventually headed back but she stood still, staring up at the once occupied space. Empty.

The house stood loomingly in front of her and she felt it—that gutting feeling. She felt it when she went back inside. She felt it when she washed up, and she felt it when she tried to sleep.

(It was an unwelcome feeling that didn't go away. It lived with her while she ate, slept, went to school. She ignored it.)

She wouldn't understand what she was feeling until two months later as the moving truck parked into the driveway adjacent from her own.

(And it all came crashing down once again.)


(a/n)

this was written at 1 am with the help of a random surge of creativity.

some select few people might recognize this concept/story from a while back when i first tried writing fanfiction (it had the same title), before it suddenly disappeared 5 chapters in. i apologize if any of you were readers when that happened; but imma be honest, it had sucked. i still have been hooked on the concept ever since and just started re-reading haikyuu, so my mind wouldn't let me rest until i produced this chapter. i hope i did it some justice.

enjoy. and if you have any questions, comments, concerns, feel free to let me know. much appreciated!