[ i ]
akira didn't think that his life was a mistake.
it's just... boring. a whole lot of boring. like a slightly-blurred photo - clear enough to tell what's happening, what's going on, but just blurry enough that everything doesn't seem all that real. all that tangible.
akira tried his best to be a good kid. he kept his room as tidy as possible and he was a good student. he answered all the questions that he knew the answer to, stared out the window on occasion, and dodged chalk on those occasions. whenever he didn't know the answer, he would simply stare back at the teacher with dull half-closed eyes, waiting, waiting, waiting - because there's only so many seconds in a minute and only so many minutes in a period and only so many periods in a school day, and the teachers can't wait that long for him to answer.
(it doesn't mean that some teachers didn't try. there was one that was obstinate enough to do so, and it ended up being forty-two minutes of pure silence, silence so quiet it grew an invisible form and pressed in, silence of held breaths in anticipation. forty-two minutes that he did repay after school with the same forty-two minutes plus sixty-eight more in the library.
after that, no teacher tried it anymore.)
he had friends but he never had friends, there were people that he would ask for the current homework assignment from and people he would ask for what he needed to bring to class tomorrow and people who admired him for that time he stared at the teacher for forty-two minutes and watched quietly as she grew redder and redder in the face right up until the lesson ended.
he was in all senses of the word - alone, but he wasn't lonely. never lonely, not really. he was alright being alone. he was alright not being disturbed in class with idle chatter and he was alright with going straight home after school, no pit-stops, not caring to look around and discover new places to hang out eat out because he never does that. it was all very distant in his head, like his mind was far away from where he was.
he was alright with that.
[ ii ]
on that one fateful night, he had been held back by one of his teachers for maybe dodging one too many pieces of chalk and she blew her fuse - he didn't really remember the circumstance and he didn't really care. regardless, it was late at night and he was on his way home when he heard a commotion. commotion of shouting, of frantic yells of go away, please go away, leave me alone.
against the sensible side of him that simply told him to keep your head down and keep walking you stupid idiot, there was a small ugly part of his heart that said a single word - watch.
so he watched.
he watched as the bald man grabbed the frightened lady calling out for help's shoulders, watched as the lights of the houses surrounding the area went out one by one and he watched as the hope in the lady's eyes for someone, anyone, to save her went out just as the final light in the houses did. he watched as the man sneered in victory, said something like no one is coming to help you so you might as well follow me home.
and when he heard that, the small ugly part in his heart bloomed like a thorny flower that lodged itself in his throat as he raced down the sidewalk one-two-one-two thump-thump-thump is that your heart or your feet pounding the pavement or both and he nudged the bald man with just enough strength to push him away from the woman without outright shoving him over to the ground. gratefulness blossomed in her eyes and relief made her shoulders slacken, and he held her by them and gently asked if she was okay.
behind him, the bald man stumbles on his feet and lurches towards him, falling over as a result of the drastic motion. it was almost comical, and a smirk appeared on his face that was almost immediately wiped away by the bald man peering up at him over his sunglasses, gray eyes ablaze with rage, growling out a are you laughing at me, brat? i'll sue. i'll sue!
and it was a blur of memory after that, a blur of time, a blur of people. akira couldn't remember anything clearly and he couldn't tell faces apart - they all looked the same, they all sounded the same. like tv static. like tv channel-not-found. like tv channel-found-but-connection-is-poor-so-there's-only-warbly-audio-and-yeah-i-guess-you-can-make-out-the-separate-words-if-you-try.
the small ugly flower tickling his throat said watch, and suddenly he felt even more distant than usual. a policeman asked him if he knew why he was in the back of the car. a policeman asked him if he knew where he was. a policeman asked him if he was drugged up or something. a policeman asked him if he knew that what he did - force himself on a woman, what? - was wrong, like he was five years old and he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
radio noise.
akira didn't answer.
radio noise.
akira looked down at his hands as if he would find cookie crumbs.
radio noise.
they weren't shaking.
radio noise.
[ iii ]
sojiro hates him, akira thinks.
akira hadn't been much help in getting sojiro to like him anyway, his answers all one-worded, mostly dull answers. generic answers. multiple-choice answers. answers that were written out like it was on a script titled the most boring and predictable script in the world. other than his answers, the car ride was completely silent, broken only by sojiro's humming of some song from the 80s. akira ignored the humming and looked out the window.
eventually, sojiro takes him to the school, introduces him to the teacher, lectures him, and tells him not to get into trouble. all things that akira has heard before and all things that akira had been doing almost perfectly in-routine for almost all of his life since he turned five. he had never deviated from it, only subbing some times for other times as he got older and other responsibilities grabbed him by the collar and wickedly grinned at him with a hey i'm here now did you think you could escape me?
he cleaned up his room in the attic. he got the room just as clean as his room back home was. he gets ready for bed and soon he's out of it at six sharp and he still nearly misses his train, running through the doors at the last second and his blazer almost catching into the train doors as they slammed shut behind him. he straightens up and watches the shibuya station go by until he reaches aoyama itchome and he gets off.
he takes approximately fifteen minutes of scouting a definite route he could take to the aboveground trying not to get lost - go straight until you hit this, then turn left... - and he takes about five minutes more for him to realize that it's raining and it's really only because it got progressively colder the more he walked that he does. he takes shelter as soon as he could and he distantly notes that there was a female standing next to him - strawberry blonde, big blue eyes, but the face doesn't fully register in his head.
she might have smiled.
he tries to smile back, but it feels wrong. it feels like he's an alien trying to mimic a human being. an alien with a terrible grasp on emotion. it felt too wide, like a smirk.
she leaves. another blond takes her place, a scowl on his face like it's permanent, his tone accusing. akira blinks at him, and the dull confusion but have conveyed itself somehow, formulated itself into a neon sign saying i'm new here and i have no idea what you're talking about.
the rest of the day goes back into a blur after that; this new person - ryuji, ryuji, ryuji, akira repeated his name mentally like a mantra, studying ryuji's face carefully to try and force the memory to ingrain itself - talked too quickly, walked too quickly, scowled at this kamoshida asshole can you believe him? he sees the school as his castle, he's so pretentious, he thinks he owns the place, i hate him all while akira struggled to get an application that somehow downloaded itself into his phone back out of his phone because his phone memory is limited and important, okay, he really didn't want this app thing to take up his precious storage space - not like it was taking up much in the first place, akira not having any contact numbers at all or anything. but music was important. yeah.
they must have taken a wrong turn somewhere because akira nearly walked into ryuji's back when the other teenager stopped short.
akira had a retort ready on his lips before he glanced up and the words stole themselves away into a very intelligent what.
2x speed. blurry memories. he remembered being thrown into a cell with ryuji - how common this seemed to happen to him -and ryuji was being beaten up by giant men in masks and armor, and through the blazing distress in his mind and the panic in his eyes and the pain wrestling itself out of ryuji's throat in shouts of anger and pain and argh kamoshitda stop -
it was very familiar.
the ugly flower tickled his throat.
he rips it out of his mouth and he calls it arsène.
[ iv ]
the days progressed quickly after that, and somehow, akira had managed to make two friends - ryuji and ann, and for the first time there were names in his contact list. a pet cat - morgana - was curled up on his bed, stealing his pillow away from him.
that was fine by him. it wasn't like he had the plans to use it anyway, having problems with his sleeping pattern. sometimes he crashed straight into bed as soon as he got back to leblanc, and sometimes he stayed up until 3am staring out the window while morgana took a spot near where he'd sleep in the hopes that akira would actually lie down and try.
this night was one of the latter nights.
akira does not lie down. akira stands up and paces around the large attic as quietly as he could trying to figure out when he had started to get attached to people. this wasn't in his planned regimen of the year. his regimen of the year was basically make no friends. trust no one. stick by yourself. ignore the rumors. the year will be up eventually and then you can go home no strings attached.
and he's wondering when he started to think that there was nothing for him waiting for him back home. that it was empty and it was solitude and it was a suffocating kind of silence like the kind where you get used to a droning noise in the background and suddenly it shuts off and it feels so empty and so so quiet, and it was never like that whenever he's with ryuji and ann and morgana and he swallows the lump in his throat that suddenly formed without his knowledge.
he can't do this anymore.
he can't keep making friends with people.
no one ever stays.
he decides to go sleep on it and fails; he spends his night instead lying in bed, morgana shoved to the side lightly for him to be able to lie down, staring at the ceiling for about two hours contemplating the meaning of life, or something akin to that. maybe not something so conceptual. something more like what's the point of living.
he accepts his friends' invitations to hang out, but he never really - hangs out. he stays on the fringes and he watches as things happen, all with the same awkward almost-smile on his face as if it smooths things over and it means that nothing wrong happens.
it works, he thinks, because no one seems to notice and no one ever seems to question it.
in the back of his head, arsène says watch. arsène says look at what you're doing to yourself. arsène says how long do you think you can fool these people.
and akira thinks of shiho. he thinks of how long it took ann to do something. he thinks of how it took shiho jumping off the roof for everything to spur into action. he thinks of how something like that wouldn't happen to him if he just succeeded. and he will succeed. he doesn't have any other option.
and he says just long enough, watch me.
[ v ]
when makoto joined, akira had only felt relief.
she had took on the role of vice leader just as easily as he took to the role of joker, assuming a new mask that exuded nothing but confidence, immediately managing to figure out weaknesses and the best method to strike and she tells them off - especially ryuji - for being way too loud and way too obvious about their phantom thievery.
"do you not care?" makoto had asked one night to akira in frustration, and akira had merely looked at her blankly. thinking that maybe he didn't understand, she had clarified - "do you not care about getting caught?"
"no," akira had said.
"why not?" makoto heatedly responded. "it means that you're going into juvenile hall, it means that you're going to have that mark on your criminal record for forever, it means that we're all going to join you in juvenile hall too. how can you not care?"
my life is already ruined. "i don't know." my life ended on that sidewalk when i tried to help someone. "i just don't care about these things." it's never going to be the same. "worrying about things means you suffer twice. so."
arsène laughs and says it's because you're not a doer, you're a watcher, boy. you watch the disaster happen. you watch yourself make mistakes. you watch your friends get into danger over and over and it's almost like it means nothing. it's like you feel nothing. like a void right here. in his mind's eye, he sees arsène place a hand over his chest.
i do things, akira protested, distantly hearing makoto trying to talk to him. he doesn't hear. it's like he's underwater. some garbled nonsense that means nothing in the end.
the end does not justify the means. the end justifies the means. the end means nothing.
that is not so, arsène says. it's more like how it'd be if you decided to program something into a robot for it to do and the robot does it. a decision once-removed. you're doing it, but you're not doing it. it's your fault, you did it by your own hand, but you didn't do it. a scripted event. a play written by someone watching from above. understand me, boy? this joker of yours is you, this akira of yours is you, and i...
"thou art i. i get it," akira mumbled to himself.
makoto shot him a look for the ages and told him to get some sleep. morgana had snitched on his non-existent sleeping habits and - as leader, he really should get more rest instead of wearing himself thin.
as if to prove a point, makoto jabs a finger into his ribcage.
[ vi ]
a text conversation between akira and ryuji, on the 8th of july
[ akira ] this is a bit of a strange question
[ ryuji ] ?
[ akira ] but like
[ akira ] dude don't text back so fast
[ akira ] i have a question and
[ akira ] it's kinda dumb nevermind
[ ryuji ] "dont text back so fast" he says as he types like 3 sentences in 4 secs
[ ryuji ] just say it dude
[ akira ] yusuke types faster
[ akira ] have you seen those hands
[ akira ] lightning speed
[ ryuji ] akira
[ akira ] ok fine
[ akira ] don't laugh
[ ryuji ] ? y would i laugh? were friends?
[ akira ] we were friends?
[ ryuji ] akira pls
[ akira ] ok sorry
[ akira ] i just
[ akira ] i was wondering if we would have been friends if it wasn't for the phantom thieves?
[ akira ] haha dumb question right
[ akira ] ryuji
[ akira ] ryuJI?
[ ryuji ] sry im w/ ann and she tells me to write this
[ ryuji ] "ur a idiot & were coming to leblanc rn bc clearly u have probs"
[ akira ] being concerned is not a problem!
[ ryuji ] akira
[ ryuji ] youre questioning our friendship
[ ryuji ] im disappointed :(
[ ryuji ] that was ann btw
[ ryuji ] my phone has been stained w/ emojis
[ ryuji ] ann owes me a new phone
[ ryuji ] but w/e anyway
[ ryuji ] ann's gon smack some sense in2 u
[ akira ] i don't think that's how it works
[ akira ] how are you already here
[ akira ] i'm not coming down
[ akira ] RYUJI STOP ANN
[ akira ] RYUJI
[ ryuji ] top 10 anime betrayals
[ vii ]
the first time that he entered futaba's room, he didn't know what to say.
he looked around it first - at the trash, at the empty instant ramen cups and the chip bags and the canned soda flung around like there was a hurricane. he looked at the corner of the room where several computers were piled up on top of each other and wires were everywhere that he couldn't even make heads or tails of. he looked at the featherman figures neatly positioned right next to the computer screens.
and he thought back to his own room - empty. like a room from a furniture sales magazine, almost - furnished, but empty. no personal touches. nothing that says hey, this room actually belongs to someone with likes and dislikes! this room belongs to someone that actually has interests! he thought of the dustless floor and shelves, not a single speck to be found anywhere. he thought of how his bed was always made and nothing was ever out of place.
he looks back at futaba's room and thought this isn't the room of someone who wants to die.
and he was right.
futaba, deep inside her heart, didn't want to die.
and that fact was made obvious by the fact that she had asked for help. that she had her shadow ask for help. a walking contradiction that akira couldn't help but recognize but okay maybe she would have died if the phantom thieves didn't step in but fact remains that - she didn't want to die.
akira hated her. hated her - for what? for the fact that she had the strength to ask for help? the fact that she kept asking for help, threatened for help? the fact that she was so intent on recovering from her social anxiety after the phantom thieves helped her rescue her from herself? that she found the strength to immediately trust him and his ragtag group of outcasts?
he didn't know.
do you hate futaba, arsène asks, or do you hate yourself?
"you know the answer," akira says.
but do you?
[ viii ]
akira focuses on the fact that morgana ran away.
he didn't really feel much about it, but there's a constant emptiness gnawing at his heart that he was sure hadn't been there before. for the first time in sixteen years, akira wanted to cry over the loss of another person, even if he was a dumb cat that did nothing but lecture him to go to sleep, go to sleep, joker go to sleep you're not supposed to watch that movie now i don't care if you have to return it tomorrow.
akira was not joker and joker was not akira.
joker was a confident person that had no problems. that thought nothing of openly flirting, of flustering his teammates, who had the signature smirk on his face, eyes hidden behind a mask. joker protected his teammates with his life, bared teeth like a wolf, knife glinting, drastic times call for drastic measures, a show-off.
akira... was not. akira felt nothing. akira was nothing.
he thinks he's starting to understand what arsène had said months ago - that he was a watcher, not a doer. that it always felt like he was once-removed.
he's not once-removed anymore. he's here and the pain is real and it's hot flashes through his heart that made him desperate, made him curl up into a ball, made him so god damned angry and arsène chuckles and says yes, face yourself once more, face that all your life your existent meant nothing to you. face that you're relearning how to live. face that you've found your reason to live.
and akira had hotly responded - i don't want a reason to live if it hurts like this.
don't be stupid, boy! arsène retorts. if you've never felt pain for someone else, why would you die for them?
the answer was on his lips before he could stop it - a confession that he would have never confessed to himself, a confession that he would never admit to anyone else.
"because i hate myself more than i hate them."
the room descended into silence.
when they find morgana, the reasons seem to pierce akira like lances. "i didn't think i was important anymore," morgana said. "you have futaba, and you have makoto, and what am i...? a burden, an amnesiac. i don't remember who i am, i can't guide you guys anymore, what importance am i? i didn't... i didn't want to admit that i've started to see all of you as... family."
"don't be stupid," akira had said, almost the only words he said ever since morgana disappeared, his voice hoarse from misuse. "you're more important than... than..."
he fell silent.
he left it at that.
he let his teammates cover up the silence with their own chatter.
[ ix ]
haru okamura is a sweet lady who forgets her lines from her script and doesn't succeed in being all that threatening despite trying to.
akira decides he likes her.
she's like a warm up of tea in the winter, she's like the warmth of the sun, she's like a breath of fresh air. she's like the unfamiliar sense dancing around the edges of his lips. ann points it out almost immediately, as soon as she notices. "akira," she says, "you're smiling."
"i mean, yeah," makoto said, smiling herself, eyeing everyone. "who wouldn't smile around haru? she just has that... sort of charm about her. a happy-charm. i think it's because she's so gentle, maybe."
"is that uncommon?" akira asks, quirking up an eyebrow. he places his hands around his cup of coffee, looking around to make sure that everyone has a drink.
"makoto doesn't get it," ann sighs. "the smiles he always has is the joker-smiles. the smirks. it's like he's always hiding something? like he doesn't really trust us."
"that's right!" ryuji intercepts. "we've known akira for months, and he never really smiled?" he turns to akira, who wants nothing more than to shrink down into his chair so that no one can point their gaze at him any more, his gaze searching. "it's always like a weird half-smile thing."
"ryuji, don't be rude."
"call ann out!"
"no, it's alright, i understand," akira mumbles from his place sinking down into the leblanc seats.
"well, i think your smile is nice," haru says gently. "if it really is as your friends say, then i think that you should do it more. it's nice."
"it's just, hard to," akira says lamely. haru smiles at him sweetly, and akira struggles to do it back. a smile that didn't really fit. an alien smile.
"he's doing it again!" ryuji called out. "the smirk thing!"
haru studied him. "i think it's nice, too," she says eventually. "in a rather strange way. it kind of fits him."
[ x ]
"do you ever think that you're doing things nowadays just so you're too busy to..."
goro akechi trails off. akira feels like he knows what he's going to say and takes a seat next to him, placing a hand over akechi's gloved one. "yeah," he says, and something almost like understanding flickers between them before akechi yanks his hand away from akira and sweeps up his briefcase with the other and is out the door within seconds, so fast that akira couldn't even shout out a wait.
"nice kid," sojiro nods at the door as it swings shut with the sound of the familiar chime akira had heard every day. routine, but not quite. not always the same.
he sulks back into his seat and stares at the coffee cup akechi left behind. he takes it in his hand, still warm, before he picks it up by the handle and gets up, walking to the sink. "yeah," akira says again, quieter this time, dumping the remaining coffee into the sink, watching the murk rush down the sink. he thought of akechi, and the look of panic and the look of almost-wanting in his gaze, a haunting gaze that was squashed almost immediately as if it had never been there to begin with.
a gaze of almost.
akira had caught that gaze, because he remembered having it. he remembered his parents never really being around and he remembered the first time that someone had touched his hand - electricity, numbing electricity and he wanted more, he wanted something more concrete than just this soft brush of a hand. something that said i'll always be here.
with a jolt, he realizes that he's had the i'll always be here for months.
he squashes his thought down. "want me to clean up?" he asks sojiro, and sojiro shook his head.
"i'm not closing this early," sojiro says, an affectionate huff to his voice. "you're not getting rid of this old man that easily. i gotta make sure you stay out of trouble."
akira nodded, going back to cleaning the cup, rubbing and rubbing and rubbing, even though there was nothing left inside and he was beginning to waste water, trying to justify it to himself by trying to get out a stain so deep-set into the mug that it was never going to come out.
he wonders if akechi felt like that, too.
[ xi ]
"all clear with the plan?" makoto asks.
a chorus of yeses erupted from around the table from the other phantom thieves. makoto smiled.
"akira," ann says seriously, holding him by the shoulders, "be safe, okay? you had better come back!"
"yeah dude," ryuji says, holding his fist up for a fist bump. "i trust ya! you'll come back. you're akira."
"this is dangerous," haru says seriously. "if you don't want to do this, we can find another way! you don't have to do this all alone."
"i can't lose you!" futaba says. "i can't lose my key item. so you'd - you'd better return, alright?"
"i can't wait to paint your success," yusuke says, a slight smile on his face.
"no time for dilly-dallying," morgana says. "we need to get ready for akechi. we might need to run over the plan again."
akira doesn't know when he starts to cry. ryuji reaches out to him and he holds ryuji's hand tightly, and they sit in silence for a few minutes. waiting for akira to stop crying and dry his tears. waiting for akira to pull himself together. waiting for akira to get used to the feeling that his heart is so full that it feels like it's going to burst. waiting for him to become their strong confident leader once more.
he doesn't say that he's scared. he doesn't say why me. he doesn't talk about the fact that if this plan had come up even five months ago he would have done it, no hesitation, because in some fucked up way he wanted to die, he wanted to stop living so badly just to get out of the lonely emptiness that he was trapped in and the feeling that every positive emotion from everyone else was just mocking him.
like everyone in his life was taking part in some game to show him all the good things that he can't do, that he can't feel, just a neverending emptiness that stretched on and on and on for forever.
he didn't feel like that anymore.
somehow, his friends had helped him, even slightly. the emptiness wasn't so strong but it was still there, buried by the love from his friends, buried by him hanging out with them and his other confidants, buried by how they joked and included him and trusted him. he thinks that if he had the time after the plan succeeds, he might get help so the emptiness would leave. he hated it. he wanted it to go away.
in the tunnel, he's finally found some people. he's finally found some light at the end of this emptiness, right at the very end. he's tasted hope, and god he wanted more.
he wipes away his tears, a new resolve strengthening in his mind.
...when all is said and done, akira fails.
[ xii ]
the drugs were too strong and he was too out of it to remember the plan.
now, akira stares down the gun barrel, before his gaze shifted to meet his assailant's - a cool collected red-tinged one, so unlike how red should be. cool like water. cool like drowning. cool like gunmetal pressed against his forehead.
in this time, he doesn't think of his friends. he doesn't think of sojiro. he doesn't think of his parents and he doesn't think of his school.
he thinks of the room-in-the-attic, with things like ann's chocolate fountain and the dinky plant and the ramen bowl ryuji had given him. he thinks of how much work he had spent cleaning it up to give less work to sojiro later, later, later, and he thinks of the phantom thief poster hung up behind the couch. he thinks of the heater sojiro handed him in the colder season. he thinks of the table where he made lockpicks. he thinks of his room, now his, finally his, finally something that doesn't look like it had come out of a furniture sales magazine. he thinks of his room-in-the-attic. he thinks of his room.
the haunting voice of makoto replayed in his head - "do you not care about getting caught?"
and he realizes -
i care. i care. i don't want to die.
[ xiii ]
the gun fires.
[ redacted ]
akira thinks that if he had the chance, he'd say something to akechi five-years-ago, or akechi more-willing-to-listen, or maybe even akechi glaring-down-at-him-from-over-the-gun-barrel.
he'd say something like i'm sorry, or he'd say we're more similar than you think and that's not just the wild card ability talking, or maybe he'd say you and i are the same, looking through foggy lens at the world, so distant, so faraway. did you know that there's a condition where a human can do things, but it never really feels like them, it feels more like they're watching a movie where the main actor is them from way up above, doing things once-removed, and it's something like a coping mechanism. it's something like your mind is trying to protect you from pain, but you can only start living when you come down and feel the pain. it's painful, and it's hard, but it feels so much better than just having anger and hate and emptiness. i know. i've felt it. the world won't hurt you anymore.
he'd say you can come down, now.