Okay so i'm really really obsessed with this show. Like, it's a problem. and akirai is basically my reason for living and the whole thing is just really really important.
So of course i decided to bring in angst like haha why not. as for warnings, you should know before reading this that it is sad and there's stuff about suicide so please don't read this if it might trigger anything.
and heeyyy by the way reviews are super cool and you should consider leaving one
anyway, enjoy!
At first it's a dream and they're in the sunflowers. Kuriyama-san almost kisses him but she doesn't. He can practically taste the tears on her lips because there are tears on his too. Seconds later, she breaks apart into stars and the world itself follows suit. Akihito feels like its a long time before he comes to and when he wakes up the world looks like a blurry photograph. Almost nothing is in focus and the only thing that is clear to him are Kuriyama-san's glasses next to him and no Kuriyama-san to wear them.
Everything outside is in shades of oranges and yellows and maybe he should be happy because he loves this time of year. But he can't because she's not there to love it with him. He's distancing himself from the glasses, lost in his mind as he stares at them from halfway across the room. She should be here to call him Senpai and tell him he's unpleasant for watching the glasses for so long. But she isn't and he feels empty. When the glasses slip out of his fingers, so does the world.
It's cold. That's the first and really the only thing that he registers. He feels like he's wading through honey and when he tries to think he feels almost delirious. What happened? He tries to glance around his surroundings but his face is staring down and his eyes are glued to the book he's reading. He gets the feeling that he's been reading it for a long time. Akihito wants to move, to investigate. Where is he? What happened to Kuriyama-san? But no matter how hard he calls his muscles to move, they stay locked in the same position.
"Good morning, Senpai! Isn't it cold out today?" Kuriyama-san greets him with a draft from the open door, and Akihito tries desperately to do something in response but he can't. He needs to hug her and make sure that this is real, she's not dead. She shuffles over to him and he keeps rereading that same line but in his mind he's screaming, battling against the restrains that won't let him control his own body. He wants to look up and respond, to ask her what's happening, to even just see her. Anything after the horror of watching her disappear right before him.
Kuriyama-san grabs his arm and Akihito curses the world because he can't do anything. When she places his fingers on her hair he can feel the softness and the melting snow but everything is muted, including him. The world feels strange and cold and he's starting to feel that way too.
She helps him up and together they trudge outside into the biting cold. He feels like a robot, stomping one step at a time, and when she falls he continues going. Stop! He's yelling in his head, but he's not in control and he keeps going like he doesn't care at all. The snow is falling around him in bursts of white against this bleak world, and he's in the middle of it all. She scrambles to rush up to him, voice strained and tears in her eyes. Akihito is fairly certain that sound he just heard is his heart breaking.
"Senpai, stop!" She pushes against him, and of course now his body has more energy, enough to fight against the girl he loves, and he's still unable to control his actions no matter how much he wants to or needs to. She's crying and he's still forcing against her and Akihito doesn't think that he can survive much more of this hell before he breaks.
The girl is on the edge of the building, one step away from falling off. The harsh wind is rushing around her and Akihito feels a sense of panic as she inspects the edge. Her hair is whipping around her face like and her sweater looks like it wants to fly off in the wind. She looks completely blank and serious. This is something that she intends to do, but Akihito intends to stop her. Normally he wouldn't even do something like this, but he knows other people don't have the luxury of jumping off buildings and surviving.
Lucky them, he thinks bitterly about his immortality, but squashes the thought as soon as he sees her lean over, like she's preparing herself to fall. Shit! He didn't even know the girl's name, but what he said here was critical. It was the difference between her living or dying, and that was a huge burden for a simple half-youmu to carry.
He says something about glasses and how people who look good in them shouldn't die, and as he yells it occurs to him that this might not be helping. But right now it doesn't really matter because anything that will get her to step away from the ledge is good enough for him. Finishing with an all-out, "Because people who look good in glasses simply shouldn't die!", he almost prays that she'll take this as a sign to step away. He doesn't think that it'll do much good, though, so instead focuses on trying to get her to stop. She glances back at him, and he's stunned just how beautiful she is, even with that expression of almost nonchalance as she stands on the edge.
"You're unpleasant," the girl murmurs, and launches herself off the ledge. A yell escapes Akihito's throat, and time stops. He thinks that he's screaming 'No!' but he isn't sure because everything is frozen. It's all he can do to sink down to the ground and stare in front of himself, mind blank. A girl just jumped off a building right in front of him, and he couldn't do anything to stop it. It didn't matter who it was; someone just killed themselves in front of him. Akihito can't bring himself to look over the edge for her- no one but him could have survived that and it was clear she intended to die.
He could only assume she fulfilled her goal.
It was with shaking fingers an hour later that he managed to dial the police. He very well wasn't going to leave her down there alone. He knows what guilt feels like and it's come back for him. He should have done something more to save her. What was he thinking, yelling about glasses? Why would that stop anyone from jumping?
When the police are talking, Akihito thinks they mention something about shock. Yes, shock, he thinks. That's an apt way to describe the predicament I'm in. He's not aware how long he sits there on the concrete ground, but this world fades away much slower than he thinks it should.
Akihito Kanbara lives a completely ordinary life. He goes to school every day and ends up in the literary club room for most of it. Mitsuki makes fun of him and Hiroomi tries to get his fingers on his waist. His mother is a somewhat eccentric Spirit World Warrior and his father was some one-night stand. He's not incredibly good at anything, but he's not incredibly bad either.
A completely ordinary human.
He lives in an apartment by himself and he doesn't really get visitors very often. Akihito will admit that his life is pretty dull but he has a feeling in his gut that if it wasn't this way things would be much, much worse.
He passes her by on the street and not one of them really notices the other.
Akihito has a passing thought about how that girl is cute in glasses and that girl is a little embarrassed because that boy keeps staring at her frames but that's the only extent of their first interaction.
To be honest, there aren't really many more. Akihito sees her in the club room once, and they exchange a total of seven sentences.
"Ah, hello!" He greets. Akihito doesn't usually see anybody other than Mitsuki and sometimes Hiroomi in the room so this is an unusual change. The girl whips around and looks embarrassed.
"Oh-h, hello!" She responds quickly, reddening in the face like she was somewhere she wasn't supposed to be. Maybe that's the case,Akihito thinks idly.
"Are you here for literary club?" He wonders, and the mystery girl's face reddens even more, if that was possible. Definitely somewhere she's not supposed to be, Akihito observes. Not here for the literary club, then.
"Um, no?" Is her meek response. "I, uh, saw this book," she waves the gardening book she had been immersed in around. "And I was curious so I came to read it… I'll leave!" She seems eager to go and before Akihito can say anything else the book is back on the shelf and the bespectacled beauty is at the door. As she leaves the room, Akihito manages to shout one last parting sentence to the closing door.
"We can't lend out books to non-members, but feel free to join the club anytime!" The mysterious girl doesn't respond and she doesn't come back.
There's a sense of regret in his chest but he's not sure why.
Hiroomi died and there was blood on his hands. The same dream Akihito has every night and he always wakes up with a scream on his lips and sweat in his hair. He wishes it were a nightmare and not his reality.
Every day he sees the faces of his regrets and every day he sees Hiroomi's still body on the ground, his hands dripping with red. It's not often that he doesn't feel the need to throw up or be sick. Akihito almost wishes that Hiroomi had killed him that day. Better that a half-youmu die than an innocent if slightly perverted Spirit World Warrior.
He doesn't meet her, and that is his undoing.
Akihito has no friends. He sits alone on benches after school and marvels at how the world is beautiful. There's no place for someone like him, but here he is, like the stain you can't remove from your favorite shirt.
The Calm comes.
Akihito dies at the hand of Mitsuki Nase, avenging her brother.
And no one is there for him as he falls into blackness and doesn't wake up.
There's a new transfer student in the year below him and she's cute. Her glasses fit her face perfectly and her hair frames her face and enhances the general experience of watching her fiddle with her bright red lenses. She carries herself in a way that's both shy and exciting, and Akihito thinks that she would be absolutely amazing to know. Cute and wearing glasses. That's all he needs to be hooked.
Glasses girl is usually with someone else. Akihito assumes they are best friends; they have all the traits of being that close. Always together, always smiling, looking positively ecstatic to be in each other's presences.
It's not without realizing that he may be a stalker that he finds out Best Friend's name. It's Yui. She's cute and funny, but Akihito is still interested in the girl with glasses. Some people may call his level of interest obsession, but he just feels like it's more than that. Maybe it was just because he spent so long reading cliché stories in the Literary Club, but it really did seem to him like he should know her.
Yet all he knows of this girl was that she looked incredible in her red glasses.
He eventually finds out that she's a Spirit World Warrior. Because she stabs him.
Needless to say, he stops chasing her. She starts chasing him, and no matter how cute her glasses are, he will certainly run away at top speed. He's already had to wash blood off of most of his favorite shirts, and he's not in the mood to do it again.
It's a strange progression, their friendship. And Akihito's not really sure how it happens, but that girl he saw in red glasses somehow becomes the most important person in his life. He likes to imagine it's the same way with her, but he knows that's not the case. Kuriyama-san has Yui.
Which is why he's confused to hear a frantic knocking at his door on a random Thursday night. The door opens to reveal a red nose, and tear-streaked eyes.
"Senpai," Kuriyama-san croaks out, and he gathers her into his arms. Akihito has no idea what happened; but if she is crying, he'll hold her until she stops. He guides them both to his couch, where she curls up against him and sobs. He strokes her hair. Maybe they aren't close enough to do that, but Akihito's here and it's obvious that she needs comforting.
It's between sobs that she tells her story. It's hard to hear between the hiccups, but Akihito's heart drops like a rock. Yui's dead. It was a car crash that only Kuriyama-san survived. He may not have been exceptionally close to Yui, but he liked her plenty. And to Kuriyama-san, Yui was practically her whole world. Akihito grips her tighter and feels a sense of guilt when he realizes that he's glad that out of the two of them, Kuriyama-san survived.
She falls asleep with tear stains on her cheek and dripping off her chin. His shirt is wet from the crying, but he doesn't move. They stay like that all night, Akihito staring at the ceiling with his heart heavy and Mirai shaking in her sleep.
When he wakes up, the hospital room is empty and he's not sure what's real. Akihito feels like he's been asleep for a long time. His dreams come back to him in a rush of realization. Every one is as clear as day, but he knows that's not possible. He feels like he lived each life, but Akihito knows he didn't. The red glasses next to him are his proof and his pain.
Akihito's staring at the wall and not moving. I must look so broken,he thinks. But why was he left broken while Kuriyama-san was smashed into a million pieces? All the pieces of her that he met in his dreams. All these different chances, each one destroyed somehow. Either they met and everything went to hell, or they didn't and lived life never really knowing. Akihito isn't sure which is worse.
Tears steadily drip onto the glasses. Somewhere in his brain he's appalled at letting liquid reach these perfect frames, but that part of him is completely overridden by his sadness. There's no point without Kuriyama-san.
It's weird, he thinks, that this is the reality. For some reason, Kuriyama-san's sacrifice to save him is more real than any of those other timelines.
But it's because this world is the real one that what's left is so painful.