Akashi didn't know what he was expecting when he woke up the morning of January 21, but it certainly wasn't to the sight of a letter taped to his ceiling.

If anyone came in, they would certainly ask him what he was doing standing on tiptoes on his bed with his fingertips scraping the ceiling. It was quite unbecoming for the Akashi heir, and he could feel a tight displeasure winding its way on his face when his fingers barely clipped the envelope.

He was simply.

Too short.

"Aka-chin, you ran out of—Aka-chin, what are you doing?"

Akashi quickly brought his arms down and turned to stare at Murasakibara Atsushi, his previous teammate who had come to visit for the weekend and had yet to leave, with a flat, threatening glare. He would not breathe a single word of this. To anyone. Murasakibara shrugged like it wasn't any of his business, and Akashi was glad that this giant friend of his was so nonchalant and thought teasing was too much of a bother.

"Will you get it for me?"

Akashi indicated the envelope taped to the ceiling. Murasakibara snatched it from its place like it was nothing, and Akashi suppressed the desire to pluck all the purple hair from Murasakibara's head.

"Thank you," he said, and not a little frigidly. Murasakibara didn't seem to notice and just handed off the letter carelessly. With a clatter, it fell to the ground—which wasn't right. Paper didn't fall that heavily.

As Murasakibara ransacked Akashi's personal store of snacks, Akashi slit open the envelope. Out fell a key and a small note—Taiyou Station. Locker 398. Curiously, Akashi turned the paper over in his hands, but there was nothing more to see.

"What's wrong?" Murasakibara said as he struggled to open a jar of pickles. Never mind why Akashi kept a jar of pickles in his room; food was food.

"Atsushi," Akashi said. "Would you like to go on a trip with me?"

"Not particularly. But if I say no, you'll make things troublesome for me, so I guess I would."

Akashi smiled perfunctorily.

The ride to the train station was quiet. His chauffer didn't ask why he was skipping school—he would give that man a bonus—just dropped him off at the muted station and waited patiently. Taiyou Station wasn't a big or busy place; hardly anyone boarded these trains ever since the new system opened up. It was old-fashioned and outdated—something Akashi could appreciate.

Murasakibara trotted after him faithfully as Akashi searched out locker 398—and there it was. High above his head, out of reach.

It would be a lie to say that Akashi was not feeling a little spiteful as, for the second time that day, Murasakibara achieved something that was out of Akashi's control.

"Fanmail? Love confessions?" Murasakibara asked as he languidly dumped a pile of letters onto Akashi's head. "Oops, sorry Aka-chin. Wasn't watching."

"…it is not an issue," Akashi said. He tore into the letters with a little more venom than he might have had the world not woken him today just to poke fun at his height.

But his spite was washed away by waves of vague confusion letter after letter. They weren't directed to him—no, there were some addressed to Kise, Murasakibara, Midorima and the others. Just a motley of letters not meant for him and speaking of time-traveling rubbish—

Ah, no—there was one letter for Akashi himself. With increasingly incredulity, he scanned it.

Akashi Seijuuro,

Skeptical though you may be, I assure you this is no prank. Of course, it is up to you to determine the validity of this statement; I have no power over what the me of five years ago will believe.

Yes, I am you, five years into the future. Never had I believed that I would ever write something so ludicrous as this, but here I am—here you are, here we are, standing on a precipice between life and death.

I ask of you a favor.

Likely, in a few days, or a few hours, or even in a few years, there will come a time when you become familiar with mortality, just as I have. I do not wish this upon you or anyone else, but it is an immutable future for me and you until the loop is broken.

What is this loop, you may ask? In return, I request that you open your mind and accept all that I say as truth. Knowing my own personality, this may be difficult for you—but it is necessary. I have grown to know, over the years, over my many losses, that easily dismissing inconceivable ideas will lead to the unbelievable pain that accompanies bereavement.

"What an excessively talkative being this person who claims to be me is," Akashi said. He turned the letter over and, to his displeasure, saw that it continued all the way to the very edge of the back page.

Most likely, today is January 21, the day it all began. The day your friends started being murdered one by one. It was Tetsuya first. Then Ryota, Daiki, Atsushi, and finally Shintarou. And myself, I suppose. But it wasn't only once. Or, it would be more accurate to say, it wasn't in only one world.

What do I mean by this?

It sums up to this: Kuroko has a strange ability. With every death, he is transferred between parallel worlds. He would be thrust into January 21 again and again with the memories of the previous world, but nobody else would remember. Each time, a new letter would come, sometimes only to him, sometimes to others, but every time foretelling a death.

And every January 21, someone would inevitably die. And so the dominoes would begin their fall.

I would not have believed it if I were not the last one alive now myself. Yes, Kuroko and the rest are gone now, and here I sit alone, writing.

At first, he thought it was a simple time-travel. We all did, but I have realized that it isn't so. What Kuroko does is travel between universes—between parallel worlds. Once something is done in one world, it cannot be undone. So in my case, even if something changes in your time, on your January 21, nothing will change for me. Tetsuya will go on being dead; I will most likely die; and such will be the case in all worlds where this has happened.

So what is the point?

There is a pivotal moment, it can be said, where the balance shifts enough such that a new parallel world is born, a new branch, so to say.

On one branch is a world where event A has happened; on the other branch is a world where event A has not happened. In our case, we can say that event A is the death of someone belonging to the Generation of Miracles. In our case, we can say that there is yet no branch where event A has not happened.

This is the point of this letter. To create a divide in the worlds and finally force into existence a branch where event A does not occur.

Regrettably, I have no information to give you about our aggressors, what they look or sound like, what their motive is. I only have information about the one death that stays constant no matter into which world Tetsuya ventures: January 21, 8:30 p.m., a certain bookstore Tetsuya often frequented.

Now comes my request. By the time you receive this letter, it will already have been too late for you to change anything, I believe. So instead, prepare to sacrifice this world. Throw it away from your mind, have no hopes or expectations. Gather all the letters that have been collected in this world and send them on the day of the eclipse, which will come in five years, to yourself of five years ago. Do this, and we may have a chance—no, we may give a chance to the you of a different world.

My deepest condolences,
Akashi Seijuuro

Akashi was left speechless. He turned the letter over and over in his hands, which was apparently so concerning that Murasakibara had to shake him a little to break him from his trance. He looked up, a little disoriented, barely seeing what was in front of him, questioning everything in his mind.

Just what on earth had he read?

An elaborate ruse?

A desperate plea?

A hopeless command?

"What," Murasakibara said, "is wrong with you, Aka-chin?"

Akashi answered, plain as day, "I don't know."

Murasakibara even forgot he was holding a bag of chips.

Akashi checked the time. It was almost noon. He had eight hours to get to the rest of them on the other side of Japan.

"Atsushi, would you like to make a trip with me?"

Murasakibara shrugged.

"Not really. But saying no will make you make life difficult for me, so, yeah. I guess I would."

Akashi smiled ruefully and hailed down his chauffer. He stuffed all the letters into the back seat and prepared himself for the long drive.


By the time Akashi arrived, it seemed that the rest of them had already been briefed on the situation. Though their faces were all nonchalance and chilly serenity, he could tell they were nervous. Of course they would be. Akashi smiled dryly.

They were standing on the precipice between life and death.

"It's this bookstore, is it not?" he said. The bell on the door rang as they piled inside, taking watch beside the window looking out onto the street. Lit only by a single lamp, it was hard to see.

"I've told everyone to stay away from this area," Kuroko said quietly. "I don't want anyone else to get caught up in this accidentally. But you said you had something to tell us, Akashi?"

"Indeed."

He turned to the circle, poised to speak. They had thirty minutes before the promised time.

"I believe most of you understand the situation from Tetsuya. I'll presume he told you of the memories he harbors of many deaths that came to him like dreams."

When they all nodded, he continued.

"Dreams that were not dreams, but memories from parallel worlds."

He explained to them the letter he'd gotten from himself of the 'future'—two parallel worlds away. Kise stopped him, thoroughly confounded.

"I'm not understanding," he said. "What do you mean 'two parallel worlds away'? Isn't this just a letter from you—five years in the future?"

"No," Akashi said patiently. "It's not. Say there are three worlds: A, B, and C. Akashi of world A sent this letter to Akashi of world B, who then gathered all these letters and sent them to me, Akashi of world C. Notably missing is a letter addressed to the me of this world specifically, as if it were my sole duty to scour each of these letters for some hint."

"And?" Kagami said impatiently. "Stop using so many words and get to the point."

Akashi raised his chin, but obliged. Ten minutes had passed already.

"Atsushi and I went through all these letters, and there was one thing that stood out from the rest: a single person. This person was not present in all the letters, but she was mentioned in about half the letters Tetsuya sent back to himself. She wears a red bag and is always helping him when he is the first to die, right outside this bookstore."

"I remember her," Kuroko confirmed quietly. "Especially from the last world, I remember her."

"Hold on," Aomine said. "If Tetsu has all the memories from every parallel world, how come he only remembers a handful? These letters—there are enough letters to be from a hundred worlds."

"Perhaps this Tetsuya is one who's only traveled through a few," Akashi speculated. "For instance, he may have begun at world F and traveled on to world J, whereas other versions of himself began from world A and ended up all the way at world Z. I believe these are just semantics and not worth hashing."

He punctuated this with a poignant look at the clock. 8:20 p.m.

"We have but one purpose here," he said. "To make sure nobody dies."

"But it's sad to think about," Kise said. "About what you said about the parallel worlds. Maybe nobody will die here, in our world, but the people who've already died in other worlds will just continue on being—well, dead. The me of some other timeline might be alone. The Kurokocchi of somewhere else might be dying right now. And we can't do anything about that. Isn't that kind of… unfair?"

"What we do will birth a line where nobody will die. Yes," Akashi said, and it was not without a little bitterness, as if he'd thought long and hard about this himself, "there will be an entire other branch where we will continue experiencing death, but at least we can be the ones who break off from that fate. And that will be worth it, won't it, Ryota?"

Kise looked relatively unconvinced, but he nodded nonetheless.

"So—so we just stay here, right?" Kagami said uneasily, tapping his fingers against his knees. "We'll just stay here until 8:30 passes, and then we can go home because we've made this—this branch—I don't really understand it still, but we'll have changed the future in simpler terms, right?"

"Hypothetically speaking, yes," said Midorima. He looked dubious, and justly so.

There were only a few pedestrians, and none with a red bag—not that they knew entirely what they were looking for. From what Kuroko had explained, the lady in the red bag had always arrived after he had been stabbed, always there to help and calm whoever else present down.

Time tip-toed by excruciatingly slowly.

Second after second, too slow to bear, until—

"Wait—where's Kuroko? Where's Kuroko?"

Kagami leaped to his feet, followed by Aomine, and chairs clattered to the ground as panic began to settle around their ears. Kuroko was nowhere to be found, and it was already 8:29 p.m.—

When Akashi had shown up with all those letters in his hand, when he had told them what he knew about these presumed parallel worlds and how it was necessary for them to create a timeline in which nobody died, a new idea had hatched in Kuroko's mind, based on the whisper of the worlds he'd come from.

He knew this was the only way to truly create a timeline where nobody would have to die.

So what if they prevented their 'event A' from happening? That was just making sure nobody would die on this day—January 21. There was nothing being said about the future, nothing being said about preventing anybody dying a day or a year or a decade from now. Whoever was targeting them had a grudge; that much was clear from the letters Akashi carried. It was only ever the Generation of Miracles that was hunted, never anybody from Seirin, with the exception of Kagami's one recorded death, or Touou, Rakuzan or Yousen. They wouldn't stop just because they couldn't kill anybody January 21. The only way to impede their goal was to do this—

He slipped out, invisible, out of the bookshop and into the street. He stood ten feet from the window, but he was confident that they would not see him until it was too late. He knew what he had to do, and he was going to do it.

This was the only way.

The lady with the red bag passed him by, and not long after was a man in a grey sweat suit.

The only way to truly create a timeline where nobody would have to die would be to sacrifice himself—and potentially this entire world—in order to identify the culprit.

He pinned his eyes on the red bag, feeling his heart battering itself against his ribcage, shouting at him to please don't do this. He had to ignore it. He wanted to end this for good. With this one last death, it would be over.

There was a flash of silver, and, as if time had slowed for him, he saw the knife careen towards him.

He didn't try to avoid it.

After all, he had to die.

This was all very vaguely familiar…

Staring down at the blade protruding from his side…

Seeing the blood spill out from between his fingers…

Falling to his knees, a little shell-shocked though he had been expecting this excruciating pain.

People were yelling at him, yelling his name, yelling why, yelling no, yelling please!

He was sorry, but it had to be done.

The lady with the red bag was pushing her way through them, telling them to please stay calm and to avoid touching him. Through a haze, her eyes reached him, a dark hazel set with determination as she shed her coat and wrapped it around the knife in his stomach.

"Stay awake," she told him fiercely. "Don't close your eyes."

Something warm was travelling up his esophagus, and it burst out through his mouth, a bubble of blood that dribbled down his chin. It would be so easy to… close his eyes…

The woman with the red bag grabbed his face.

"Look at me," she ordered.

Kuroko almost felt like chuckling, the pain was making him delirious. He was waiting for her to say it, waiting for her to say those words—

His phone was tucked just underneath his scarf, and he did very much hope that it hadn't turned off somehow in the pandemonium.

The woman leaned forward so that her breath brushed Kuroko's ears as she breathed:

"Look at me. Let me watch you die."

At this rate, help would arrive before Kuroko's life slipped from his lips. He struggled to sit up and motioned to Akashi, who swooped down, face paler than the snow that was beginning to dust the ground.

It was hard, so hard to fight back the darkness crawling into the edges of his vision, but he begged it to spare him for just one minute more…

In a death grip, he grabbed Akashi's arm and shoved it against his scarf, underneath which was his phone. He saw Akashi's eyes widen, and when the hand drew back, Kuroko could see the phone locked securely within his fingers.

"D-Don't," he gasped out, blood spraying from his lips. He could hear Kise crying, dimly, like he was a million miles away. "Don't think too—badly of… me."

Before anybody could react, Kuroko used the rest of his strength to clutch with shaking fingers the hilt of the blade in his body—

—and pull—

As the blade exited his body, blood trailed after it like lovers being separated…

And with a finality, darkness swooped into him.


A little shoddily put together, but I really want to finish this and not have it hanging over my head. Next chapter will be the last!

Hopefully, things weren't too confusing. I provided a picture (which is probably not very much help) on my tumblr, which can be found on my profile, or at atunnelofdreams. The last scene is confusing, but it will all be revealed next chapter what Kuroko was doing with his phone tucked in his scarf, more details on why he pretty much killed himself, and what will become of the world he just left.

I apologize if I never responded to your review; it's been so long that I've forgotten whether I made the usual rounds and replied or not.

Thanks for reading!