He often wonders why he never ran after him.
In the street there was a coffee shop, and there, little people milled and met and moved on. He'd been drinking alone, his fingers bitten by the cold so hard that it was starting to sting. Over the top of his cup he could see the entire street, and watched the people walking past, their scarves pulled up or huddled together, silly teenagers in multi-coloured tights and skinny jeans. The street itself was noncommital in the best of ways, forgettable but distinctive. He, unlike the people around him, was here without purpose. His apartment had started to press in on him, as it so often did, so he walked straight out onto the street, determined to teach it a lesson.
And then as he finished the dregs of his tea, the little flakes that had so skillfully escaped the bag drifting through the liquid towards him, he stopped. The dregs drifted backwards, unless they stopped too - he didn't check. All he knew was that suddenly he couldn't breathe and a little blonde boy was staring at him straight through the crowd - a boy who liked ice-cream and the sunset, read Poe when he was happy and Murakami when he was depressed. A boy who was more 100 perfect than the aforementioned writer could ever describe, and a boy who was being shoved by his friends to walk onwards.
Axel was frozen to his seat both literally and however else you liked, unable to move though adrenalin was pouring through him. The boy made no effort to move closer, preferring instead to stand and stare, clutching the strap of his bag tightly in one both hands as he wrung it. A tall blonde boy was poking at him, waving hands in front of his face - his other two companions moved from laughing to worry, until they all turned in Axel's direction.
He could only look away.
And then look back, because the temptation was too great, the boy's eyes burning into him - eyes and amongst everything else he knew, what was the name? Maybe more than one name, maybe a thousand names, but Axel couldn't remember a single one.
He'd gone.
Tears started to well in Axel's eyes, spilling down his cheeks all too rapidly - when time stopped it seemed to all come back even faster, spinning past him until the crowd's legs blurred, their noise too fast to comprehend. He saw a flash of blonde, maybe, a shining key, the sun blindingly hot. He stumbled from his chair and drowned himself in the crowd, so slow next to this mass of moving people, spinning from the blows they caused him. In the crowd he cried maybe more, maybe less - because that name only came to mind once Roxas was gone.