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yoyvmii · 22 days ago

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And, if it was you?

A/n: pure agnst.I luv this song oh me gah.

The rain had a habit of visiting on days Toji didn’t want to remember. It wasn’t a storm, not really. Just a soft, persistent drizzle that made the streets of the sleepy seaside town smell like rust and old regrets. He walked without an umbrella, water soaking into his coat, drops clinging to the strands of his dark hair like memories he couldn’t shake.

He didn’t flinch when thunder rolled far off in the distance. Just shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and kept walking.

The ocean waited at the end of the street. Waves whispered against the shore like a voice he hadn’t heard in years—yours.

You used to hum when you didn’t think anyone was listening. Low, soft, tuneless things that made him want to stay in the room just a little longer. He remembered that. He remembered too much for a man who told himself every day that forgetting was easier.

And yet here he was. Following the sound of something that wasn’t really there.

Toji stopped at the edge of the boardwalk, staring out at the misty water. It was the place you used to come in the early mornings, always barefoot, always carrying coffee for two even when he didn’t ask.

“It's quiet here,” you had once said, tucking hair behind your ear. “People don't say the things they mean out loud here. But sometimes, the silence says it for them.”

He had laughed at the time, said something about you being too poetic. You only smiled. Toji clenched his jaw, muscles ticking. The café on the corner was still open. Same dull lights. Same crooked window. He passed it, as he always did, but paused. Something in the air had shifted.

He saw the back of a figure seated by the window. It couldn’t be you.

But the shape of the shoulders, the way they tilted slightly like you always did when you were lost in thought—that detail made the blood leave his face. His heart thumped once, hard. He turned away before he could see more. Coward.

You weren’t there. You hadn’t been for a long time. But maybe, if he stood still enough, he could imagine what it would be like if you were.

He returned home, wet and cold, the apartment as silent as always. The walls were bare except for a single photo tucked in the corner of a bookshelf. The kind you didn’t frame, didn’t mean to keep.

In it, you were laughing.

He hadn't even realized he was in the frame too, slightly behind you, out of focus, looking at you like you'd hung the moon. That version of him didn’t exist anymore. Toji poured a drink he didn’t want, sat on the edge of the bed he never made, and stared at the photo until it blurred.

“What if it had been you?” he whispered to the dark. The rain answered, soft against the glass.

The knock came at noon, sharp and steady. Three times. Toji didn’t move right away. He stared at the door from the kitchen, a glass of water in one hand, the other braced on the countertop. No one ever visited. No one had reason to.

The knock came again. Louder.

He opened it.

“Long time,” said Shiu.

Toji’s shoulders tensed. He hadn’t seen the man in years—another ghost wearing skin. Shiu still dressed like he worked security for someone rich and paranoid. Bulletproof smile, black coat, hair slicked back like he’d never aged a day.

Toji didn’t reply. He stepped aside without a word.

Inside, Shiu glanced around the small, undecorated apartment. “Still living like you're halfway packed for somewhere.”

Toji grunted. “Say what you came to say.”

Shiu took something out of his coat pocket and set it on the table. A small object. A ribbon.

Toji stared. It was yours.

Still tied into a loop the way you used to wear it on your wrist when your hair was too short to pull back. Still the same faded burgundy, edges frayed from your fidgeting.

“Where did you—”

“She left it at my place once. Years ago,”

Shiu said casually. “Found it cleaning out a drawer.” He watched Toji’s reaction. “I figured maybe it still meant something.”

Toji didn’t answer.

“You were different when she was around,” Shiu added after a pause. “Didn’t smile more, but… you were alive.”

Toji walked to the table slowly. He didn’t touch the ribbon. Just stared at it like it was radioactive. Then—almost too quietly to hear—he said, “I don’t remember the first thing she said to me.”

FLASHBACK —

It had been raining that night too.

He was sitting on the steps outside a run-down training hall, shoulders burning from too many hours fighting off men who paid him to hurt them. A busted lip. A split knuckle. His cigarette was soaked before he could light it.

And then, you showed up. You were holding a broken umbrella and a bag of food. You didn’t look at him like he was a monster. Just dropped down beside him like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“I think your knuckles are going to scar,”

you said, passing him a rice ball.

He blinked. Took it.“You’ve been watching me?”

You shrugged. “Hard to miss the guy who never looks up.” He should’ve told you to leave. Instead, he stayed quiet. Ate. Let the silence fill with something new.

“I’m not scared of you,” you said after a while, eyes on the street.

He laughed, once, dry. “You should be.”

But you weren’t. You never had been.

PRESENT DAY —

Toji sat at the table long after Shiu left, the ribbon still untouched beside his drink.

He picked it up just once, held it between calloused fingers, then let it drop into the drawer where he kept everything he didn’t want to feel.

Outside, the rain had finally stopped.

But the sky was still gray. And your voice still echoed in the places where silence lived. The city had started to bloom again, cherry trees heavy with petals that never seemed to fall. But Toji noticed none of it. He walked with his eyes lowered, hands in his pockets, steps careful—as if the sidewalk might split open if he moved too fast.

You were everywhere.Not in the way people are when they leave behind clothes or shared playlists. It was subtler. More dangerous. He saw you in the curve of a girl’s smile on the train. In the rhythm of a laugh from a passing stranger. A shadow cast across a window that lingered just a second too long. The color of someone’s coat in a crowd, the soft drag of a footstep behind him.

But when he turned, it was never you.

It couldn’t be. You were gone.And yet.

He kept hearing his name.

Once in a bookstore, low and breathless—“Toji…”

Once in a dream he woke from with his hands clenched and your name caught between his teeth. And once, standing outside the old riverside café, where his chest suddenly hurt like it remembered something before his brain did.

That day, he followed the pull.

FLASHBACK —

You were barefoot in the park, toes in the grass, spinning in place while he leaned against a tree, watching with narrowed eyes.

“You’re gonna fall,” he muttered.

You grinned. “You always say that when I’m happy.”

“That’s because your idea of happy looks like danger.”

You didn’t answer. Just walked over, chest rising and falling from the effort. You stopped in front of him, too close, the heat of summer and your skin brushing his arm.

He didn’t know what possessed him. Maybe the fact that you looked at him like he wasn’t broken. Like he could be gentle. Like he deserved someone saying his name the way you did.

So he kissed you. Rougher than he meant to. Brief. Uncertain. When he pulled back, you just touched your lips and smiled. “I was wondering when you’d get around to that.”

PRESENT DAY —

Toji opened the drawer. The ribbon was still there. But this time, it felt heavier in his hand. He stood up. Walked to the sink. Turned on the faucet—and stopped.

The bathroom mirror was fogged, though he hadn’t used the shower. And across the glass, written in the condensation he hadn’t made, were the words:

"Do you still think about me?"

His stomach dropped. He spun around.

Empty. No windows open. No heat. No logical answer. He reached for the mirror with a shaking hand and wiped it clean.

Gone.

Toji stood there a long time, heart thudding, ears ringing with silence that didn’t feel like his own. Maybe he was losing it. Maybe you were still here in the only way someone could be when they were loved and lost but never really let go.

Or maybe…

Maybe something else was happening.

Toji found himself back at the river.

He hadn’t meant to go there. He’d been walking without thinking again, letting the city guide him the way your voice used to—wordless but certain. The river had risen from the recent rains, the water running faster than he remembered.

He stared at the railing where you once leaned, elbows folded, face tipped toward the water like you were asking it a question. That was the last time he saw you. His fingers grazed the metal rail.

It was cold. So was the memory.

FLASHBACK —

It had been raining that night, too. It always seemed to rain with you. Maybe the sky knew something he didn’t. Maybe it mourned early.

You curled beside him on the couch, legs tangled in his, heartbeat pressed against his chest.

"Promise me something," you murmured.

He had hummed in response.

“If something happens… if I ever disappear or fall off the edge of the world… don’t forget I was here. That I loved you. That I meant it.”

He’d frowned. “Why would you say that?”

You didn’t answer. You just kissed him.

PRESENT DAY —

Toji lit a cigarette with trembling fingers, the taste bitter on his tongue. He hadn't smoked in months. The wind kicked up. Something moved across the water—a reflection? A shimmer?He turned quickly.

Nothing.

But then—his phone buzzed.

He pulled it out, expecting some junk message. But the screen showed “Unknown Number”.

And the text read:

"You said it wasn’t love. But what if it was?"

His breath caught. He deleted it without thinking—but the words burned in his chest. Back home, he dug through the closet, searching, pulling down old boxes like a man unburying a body. He found your journal—forgotten, bent, full of your handwriting.

And in the back, between torn pages and sketches, there was a folded piece of paper he’d never seen before. Dated the week after your last visit.

“I’m not gone yet, Toji. But if you keep pretending I was never here… I will be.”

What he didn’t know was that you had never meant to disappear. You were going to come back. You were going to try again.

But something—someone—got in the way.

And Toji was just beginning to realize: this wasn’t over. You weren’t done with him yet.

It started with the smell. At first, Toji thought he was imagining it. A trace of jasmine in the hallway outside his apartment door. Faint, like a memory. Like the perfume you used to wear when you wanted him to notice. He paused, fingers grazing the wood of the doorframe, heart slowing to a crawl.

Jasmine.

He hadn’t smelled it since you left.

He pushed into the apartment and froze.

There was a sound—soft, rhythmic. A hum. Coming from the bedroom.

Toji approached like a man chasing a ghost in his own mind. The door creaked open with a groan, and the room lay empty. Still. Unchanged. Except for the mirror.

There were fingerprints on the glass. Small, too delicate to be his.

And across the surface, fogged just faintly, someone had traced a word:

"Stay."

He stepped back like it burned him.

And then the knock came.

Not from the door. But from the past.

One Hour Earlier – A Woman Outside

She had been standing in the rain when he passed her. At first, he didn’t stop. Then she called his name—not loudly. Not angrily. Just… knowingly.

“Toji.” He turned. She was older than you, but not by much. Hair pulled into a loose twist. Familiar eyes.

“You don’t know me,” she said before he could speak. “But I knew her.”

Toji didn’t move.

“She was my sister.”

PRESENT —

Her name was Emi. You never spoke about her much. Said she was the golden child. Said she wouldn’t understand.

She stood in Toji’s kitchen like she’d done it before, making tea like she was searching for something more than warmth.

“She tried to tell me about you once,” Emi said, pouring the water slowly. “Said you made her feel like the world wasn’t so loud.”

Toji didn’t speak.

“She stopped calling after a while. Said she needed to get away from everything—Tokyo, family, memories. Said it felt like no one heard her anymore.”

He tightened his grip around the mug she handed him. “She told me she loved you,” Emi continued, watching him carefully. “Said you were the only person who ever looked at her like she wasn’t broken.”

He flinched.

“She left something with me.”

From her bag, she pulled out a sealed envelope. Inside: a single polaroid—Toji with his arms around you, laughing. A second paper, folded carefully:

“If he ever comes looking… tell him I never stopped. Not even once.”

He stared at the words. His throat tightened. “Where is she?”

Emi didn’t answer right away.

Then: “She was in an accident. A car crash, about four months after she left you. I didn’t even know until the hospital called. They said she was found by the coast, unconscious. No ID. She’d written my number on a bracelet.

Toji looked up, breath gone.

“She’s… she’s alive?” Emi nodded slowly.

“In a coma.”

And just like that, the floor opened beneath him. You hadn’t left him.

You were still here. Somewhere between this world and the next. And now… Toji wasn’t sure if the haunting he felt was your ghost… Or your soul, fighting to be remembered.

The hospital room was colder than he expected. White walls. One chair. Machines that blinked and breathed for you. You were smaller in that bed, stiller than anything he’d ever seen. As if life had paused mid-sentence and forgotten how to finish the thought.

Toji didn’t speak at first.

He stood at the foot of your bed with his hands in his pockets, his shadow falling across your blanket like it still belonged beside yours.He looked at your face—soft, unchanged, eyes closed like you were just sleeping.

Like any second, you'd open them and say something sarcastic and warm and achingly familiar. He sat down. The ribbon was in his hand. He hadn’t meant to bring it. But here it was, looped between his fingers like it had waited years for this.

He placed it on your pillow. And then he said your name. Quietly. Like a prayer.

Like a goodbye.

FLASHBACK —

It was raining then too.

You stood in the doorway of his apartment, eyes red, lips parted like you were trying to speak but couldn’t find the words.

He was already shutting down, arms crossed, jaw locked tight like it always got when he couldn’t understand why things that made him feel also made him want to run.

“I’m not asking you to fix everything, Toji,”

you said softly. “Just let me in.”

He didn’t respond. Just stared at you.

And something inside you shattered.

“You never tell me anything,” you

whispered. “I tell you how I feel. I show up. I love you. But you don’t even give me scraps. What am I supposed to do with someone who won’t even try?”

“I didn’t ask you to love me,” he said

coldly. “That was your mistake.”

Your eyes widened like he’d slapped you. And in a way, he had. You nodded once. Just once. Then you turned. And you left.

He never chased after you.

PRESENT —

He stayed for an hour.Then two.

The machines beeped in rhythm. The rain whispered at the window. Before he left, Toji leaned down and pressed his forehead to yours.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t softer,” he said. “I’m sorry I made you think you were the only one who felt it.”

His voice cracked. “I do love you. I just didn’t know how to say it.”

Your hand didn’t move. Your breath didn’t change. And still, he waited. For a sign. For a twitch. For a miracle. But you didn’t wake up. You stayed exactly where you were—caught between what was and what would never be. Toji left that night without the ribbon. And when he stepped out into the hallway, he swore— Just for a second

He smelled jasmine.

The hospital bed is empty now.

You didn’t make it. They said you slipped away quietly. No pain. No suffering.

Just a breath that never came back.

They gave him your things. A journal. A sketch. That ribbon. He didn’t take them.

He asked them to bury it all with you.

He didn’t cry. Not where anyone could see.

But sometimes, when the rain falls just right…He hears your voice. Soft, like wind on glass: “What if it was love?”

And he answers in silence. Because it was. Always was. Just too late.

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