hap·py ; ˈhapē/ ; adjective
or showing pleasure or contentment.
Akihito spends a lot of his year on the roof.
He doesn't fail to see the irony in that it's the only place that he doesn't feel like he's drowning, the air pressing down and attacking his lungs every time he tries to take a breath. He knows it should be anywhere but here where he goes to escape, because this is the place where it all fell apart.
He's been doing that a lot. Escaping.
Mitsuki is the first to notice. It would have been Mirai, before.
"You're not okay." It's a statement, said like a fact, a sentence in a novel. Mitsuki has always been straight-to-the-point and a no-shit kind of girl. Akihito can usually appreciate it, but now it just feels like she's stabbing a knife into his gut.
He knows that he's not okay. But his sanity and his ability to function depends on his denial, his ability to push his needs and desires and feelings to the side so he can focus on everything that isn't.
Akihito doesn't say anything. Mitsuki looks like she wants to, but she doesn't.
He's not sure if he's relieved or upset.
Hiroomi tries to point it out both more subtly and more in-his-face than his sister.
Akihito notices the glances, the side looks, and the frowns first. Then Hiroomi starts to stare and eventually he's sticking his hands under Akihito's armpits and asking him outright.
"She can forget her destiny and live like a normal human being," Akihito explains, trying not to choke on his words. "So she can be happy."
"Is that really a good thing?" Hiroomi responds.
Akihito really doesn't know anymore. But she smiles whenever he looks at her, which is enough for him.
"Senpai!" He hears the call, and then he hears the crash.
Not much has changed in regards to Mirai's clumsiness.
In fact, not much has really changed, except all the important things have. But everything small is still the same - the way that Mirai laughs, how she fiddles with her fingers, her hair, everything, when she's nervous. How when she blushes her entire face heats up, and how when she smiles, the world gets a shade brighter.
But everything important has changed - she still calls him Senpai, but now it's with a careful edge, as if she truly did respect him in the way she never did before. She still says 'how unpleasant', but it's never with the bite her words used to have. Now she and Akihito are friends, but they're carefully calculated, 'I-used-to-know-you' friends. Now she picks herself up from the ground when she falls, rather than waiting for his hand to pull her up.
Everything between them has changed. Akihito can't stand it but he can't get away.
Mitsuki brings it up again, because that's the kind of person that she is.
"Are you really okay with this?" She stares, a hard, cold look that dares him to say yes, that dares him to say he's fine.
He clenches his fists and avoids her eyes and tries so desperately hard not to think about it.
Because no, he's really not okay with this. He's really not okay at all, and she knows it.
Akihito doesn't say anything.
Mitsuki doesn't bring it up after that.
They go out to eat, and Mirai pays.
That bothers Akihito more than he wants to admit.
Everyone treads around Akihito cautiously, like they know that if they say the wrong thing, he'll break - shatter into a million pieces, just like Mirai did - and no no no, he can't think about that because that makes it so much worse -
People stop calling him out on his fake smiles and his distant looks and the constant pain in his eyes.
He goes to the roof more often.
Mitsuki is getting worried. Mitsuki never gets worried, so this in turn worries Akihito at the same time that it starts to worry Hiroomi. He knows every mood of his sister's to an unsettling degree, but all that means now is that Hiroomi is very aware when her gazes become calculating and her glares soften into worried glances.
"You should tell her." Hiroomi calls across the wind of the roof one day, footsteps seeming louder than they should as he walks across the concrete.
"No." Akihito responds, like he has every time someone has brought this up.
"She can't really be happy like this, you know."
"She has to be!" Akihito finally grounds out, shooting up from where he had been lying on the ground. "She's finally a normal human - no youmu, no Spirit World Warriors, no death and sadness and pain -"
"And no you." Hiroomi finishes.
"She has me," Akihito says, but even he can't really convince himself.
Because she doesn't have him, not really, in the same way that he doesn't have her.
Mirai has started to notice odd things - Akihito can tell. It's clear to him from her shifty eyes and worried glances, from the way her teeth play with her lips and her fingers dance across every available surface. She might not know him, but he still knows her.
He doesn't want the inevitable conversation to come. He wants her to stay protected, in the perfect bubble of a world she lives in. The world she's wanted to live in. The world that has him in her life, but not really - the world that Akihito will learn to live with, if it means her happiness.
And that's all what it boils down to, isn't it? Mirai's happiness.
Because Akihito would destroy the world ten times over if it meant that this one girl wouldn't be sad. He can't stand seeing tears streak down her face or fear spark in her eyes. He had the chance to make those go away, and he took it.
It doesn't matter if he breaks in the process.
Akihito's been escaping a lot.
The roof used to be Hiroomi's more than his, but that's changed since everything happened. Most days he sits up there alone, the world in constantly changing hues of gray and white and blue, shifting through colors like clouds drifting across the sky.
It's a quiet place where he can try not to think - because, inevitably, that's all he does these days. Think and reflect and break, piece by piece.
Mirai was what brought him back together the first time. This time she's the one breaking him apart.
And Akihito wouldn't have it any other way.
What exactly was happiness again?
ouch why did i write this what was i trying to accomplish besides causing myself pain with this one
either way, i started writing this the second i saw the trailer for 'i'll be there' and i'm only now finishing it, but my total and complete utter destruction by this movie is still at hand. i literally cannot believe they are doing this i am going to send kyoani such a Strongly Worded Letter
but yeah! have some angst to go with ur angst :) let me know what you thought!