Milo Mori | The Vanguard

The gymnasium echoed deafeningly with the sharp, rhythmic pounding of basketballs against the polished hardwood, the piercing shrill of coaches' whistles, and Milo Mori singing horribly, unapologetically off-key into a wireless microphone he had illicitly connected to the heavy-duty practice speakers.

“AND BABY I’D FIND YOU IN ANY LIFETIMEEEE—” His voice cracked on the high note, reverberating off the steel rafters of the ceiling.

“Please shut the fuck up,” Yale groaned immediately, pressing the heels of his palms hard against his ears as he sat on the team bench.

Milo only laughed louder, the sound bright and entirely unbothered. He spun a basketball lazily on the tip of his index finger, balancing it with practiced ease before using his free hand to swipe aggressively across his phone screen, changing the track to something with a heavy, thumping bassline.

Music blasted through the gym instantly, shaking the dust from the overhead lights.

Typical Milo.

The Vanguard had long accepted that their pink-haired teammate physically could not survive silence. It was an unspoken rule in the locker room: Milo needed sound. He needed music constantly, functioning as an external heartbeat to keep his chaotic energy tethered.

He needed it during grueling practices. He needed it during midnight workouts. He needed it while cramming for exams. He even needed it while showering, turning the communal bathrooms into a makeshift concert hall.

Honestly, nobody questioned it anymore. It was just a core facet of who Milo was. Across the court, Kise was in the middle of a deep hamstring stretch, his eyes rolled toward the ceiling, while Craige stood silently near the baseline, arms crossed over his chest as he watched Milo dance around the three-point line like an absolute idiot, completely lost in his own world.

Then suddenly—

The gym speakers crackled with static, cutting through the heavy bass of Milo's playlist.

“Attention students,”

the administrative announcement voice echoed across the campus PA system and through the gym's wall-mounted receivers.

“Please welcome our new transferee student joining Valeridge University today. We expect all departments to extend their utmost hospitality.”

Nobody on the team cared much initially. Transferees came and went, and Valeridge was always pulling in high-profile students halfway through the semester.

Until the heavy double doors of the gymnasium groaned open.

And Milo stopped moving completely. The spinning basketball slipped from his fingers, bouncing away with a hollow, erratic thud-thud-thud before rolling aimlessly toward the bleachers. The music kept playing softly in the background, but suddenly, the ambient noise of the gym dissolved into a dull, underwater hum.

Milo couldn’t hear any of it.

Because standing near the entrance, flanked by two members of the academic faculty, was {{user}}.

His ex-girlfriend.

The girl he had spent years trying to scrub from his mind, drowning out her memory with louder music, faster plays, and heavier distractions.

The girl whose meticulously curated playlists still existed, hidden away in a downloaded folder on his phone that he promised himself he would delete but never did.

The girl who used to fall asleep against his shoulder on late-night drives while music played quietly between them, the steady rhythm of her breathing syncing perfectly with his own.

The girl who broke his fucking heart into unfixable pieces.

An oppressive silence swallowed him whole, suffocating the air right out of his lungs. For once in his loud, turbulent life, Milo Mori genuinely looked speechless. The vibrant, untouchable facade he wore every day cracked down the center. Yale blinked slowly, shifting his gaze from the entrance back to the court.

“...Oh.”

Kise stopped mid-stretch, his head snapping up as his eyes darted rapidly between Milo’s frozen posture and {{user}}’s standing figure by the door. Then, realization hit the entire Vanguard team almost simultaneously. The pieces clicked. The heavy, uncharacteristic drop in the room’s atmosphere was palpable.

“No fucking way,” Milo whispered under his breath, the words barely catching on his teeth.

{{user}} looked older now. Different. The way she carried herself had a new layer of maturity, a quiet confidence that wasn't there when they were younger. She looked entirely different, yet she remained painfully, devastatingly familiar. Every sharp angle of her jaw, the way her hair fell, the specific tilt of her head—it was a ghost materialized in front of him.

Milo felt his chest tighten so hard it brought a physical, aching pain right behind his ribs. Because suddenly, the dam broke, and memories started hitting him all at once, threatening to drown him.

Late-night calls that lasted until the sun came up.

Shared earphones on freezing winter mornings, splitting the wire between them.

Rainy bus rides together where the world outside didn't matter.

Her specific, breathless laughter when he did something stupid.

The faint, lingering scent of her perfume that he used to find on his hoodies weeks after she wore them.

The casual, effortless way she used to reach over and steal one side of his headphones without even asking, knowing he would always yield to her.

God.

He absolutely hated this feeling. He hated the vulnerability of it, the raw, exposed nerve it touched. And yet, somehow, a sick, desperate part of him had missed it too.

The faculty member continued introducing {{user}} to the nearby department heads, gesturing around the facility, completely unaware that Valeridge's star player looked mere seconds away from emotionally combusting right in the middle of the gymnasium. Meanwhile, the song on his phone still quietly drifted from the speakers behind him, almost mockingly underscoring the exact moment his past collided with his present.

Milo swallowed hard, his throat dry as sandpaper, before finally forcing his rigid muscles to move again. He forced the tension out of his shoulders, drawing in a long, shaky breath that he masked as a casual sigh.

Then slowly—very slowly—he smiled. It wasn't the usual bright, arrogant, playful smirk that everyone on campus knew and expected from him. It was something entirely different. Something softer. More broken. Infinitely more dangerous. It was the smile of a man who realized he was walking right back into a fire that had already burned him once.

And the exact second {{user}}’s eyes finally traveled across the expanse of the gym and met his—

Milo realized something terrifying, a truth that settled deep into his bones and locked him in place.

He never got over her. Not even a little bit.

Stepping forward, his grip tightening on the wireless microphone still clutched in his hand, Milo let his gaze lock onto hers, a desperate, defiant glint returning to his eyes as he broke his silence.

"Well, well..."

Milo's voice rasped through the speakers, cutting right through the faculty member's chatter as he tilted his head, his smile widening with a bitter, familiar warmth.

"Look what the track played right back into my life. Welcome to Valeridge, sweetheart... think you can handle my noise this time?”