When he's sixteen, his life ends not with a bang or a whimper but with a hard shove. His heart in his throat, in his stomach; his face bathed in red and blue lights, his wrists raw and angry from the cuffs scraping against them. He rubs them, idly, when the judge pronounces his fate; when his parents sit him down and tell him they are sending him away. For your own good, they say. Akira says nothing. Adults decide and keep deciding. The cuffs feel like a phantom limb.
He sleeps and in his dreams they become manacles, weighing him down into oblivion.
(In that void, Arsene beckons, but he is falling, falling, falling, and can't hear anything past the shriek of air in his ears.)
.
His parents give him money for the train and then some. Akira pockets it and goes to the nearest convenience store and picks out the least offensive pair of glasses. It's all a part of the plan.
He wears them out the store and on the train to Tokyo. They're another strange, new weight, one that he is just learning how to bear.
.
When he meets Igor and the twins, his first thought that isn't just a loop of what the fuck is this even is: of course.
Keep your head down. Don't cause any trouble. Try to look normal, unassuming.
The shape of his heart would be a prison.
.
Timing is everything. If he was a hour late or a hour early, his life as he knows it would have continued without pause. He would do well in school; not exceptional but good enough to get by. His friends would still be his friends and he would be none the wiser to how shallow those bonds really are. He would swim with the current and not buck up against the tides.
But that isn't how the story goes.
.
Ryuji shouts at him to run, to save himself.
Arsene beckons.
Akira rips the mask off his face.
.
(For all that he's imagined different lives, there's never, ever one where he walks away.)