#so. i think iwa is really excited about going to UCI and he doesn't regret accepting. but he's a little scared too. and sad

[monstrsball]

The night before Iwaizumi leaves for California, his mother gives him a gift. It's wrapped delicately in yellow wrapping paper.

Iwaizumi has a feeling he knows what it is.

"I know it's last minute," She says, sitting next to him on his bed in his childhood bedroom. "Your bags are all packed, I don't expect you to make room to take it with you or anything, of course." She watches him, hands folded in her lap. "Ah, and you'll probably think it's embarrassing any-"

"Mama," Iwaizumi interrupts, fighting back a little smile at her fretting. "Let me at least open it before you try minimizing it."

"Right, right." She laughs, waving her hand. "Of course. Go on then. Open it."

Iwaizumi doesn't take his time tearing it open.

It's a book. A scrapbook, Iwaizumi guesses. It has his name handwritten in both kanji and hiragana on the front. It's a little smaller than the other scrapbooks his mom has on her shelf. The binding is a dark forest green.

The only sound in the room is the flipping of pages. Iwaizumi takes his time to study each page, his chest feeling a little tighter the more he flips through the book.

Iwaizumi knows his mothers have always taken lots of pictures, ranging from polaroids to digital. His aunties too but he still finds himself surprised by the amount Sachiko has collected in the book. Including pictures she must have received from other people because neither of his moms were present at said event.

The pages are simple. Each one has about two to five (depending on the sizes of them) pictures on it. They're decorated with stickers and little notes written in his mom's graceful handwriting neatly squeezed where they can fit and still be legible.

Notes like "you gave your poor mother a fright the first time you came into the house with one of these" under a photo of Iwaizumi proudly showing off a jar with a beetle in it and "i'm surprised you convinced tooru to go, lol" by a photo from a fishing trip Iwaizumi took with the other third years.

"This is one of my favorite pictures," His mom says, watching as Iwaizumi flips pages over his shoulder. She points to a picture of the two of them when they first moved into the house. He was only three. They're sitting on the front steps together, neither of them are looking at the camera. He has his arms wrapped around hers and is looking up at her as she laughs.

And he breaks.

"Oh, Hajime." She says softly, pulling him into a tight hug. He tucks his face into the crook of her neck and she strokes his hair as he cries. He feels like he's five again, crying because he accidentally squashed a bug when he was trying to catch it. Ten, crying because he was sick with the flu and thought he was on the brink of death. Thirteen, crying because he and Oikawa had a fight and he thought he would never talk to him again.

Eighteen, crying because he's leaving the country tomorrow and it suddenly hit him that he doesn't know what he's going to do without his mom.

He doesn't say that though.

He doesn't tell her that he's scared, scared that he's going to crash and burn in California, scared that his friendship with Oikawa won't survive the distance, scared that everything is going to go wrong because he left.

Or that he's really going to miss her.

(Maybe he should have told her that.)

-

That night before Iwaizumi spends his last night in his childhood room, he wraps the scrapbook up in the hoodie that Oikawa gave him and tucks them both into one of his bags.

He thinks about where he's going to put it in his dorm room when he gets to California.