Chapter Text

Akashi couldn't help but overthink.

He had just turned left on a familiar street, one that led to his home. If it weren't for his memory, he probably would have ended up elsewhere, for all he thought of as he drove were those topaz orbs that he hadn't seen in 5 years.

Those topaz orbs, which seemed to be void of expression, but actually spoke more than the one who held them.

The same eyes that saw Akashi at his happiest-

but were also the ones turned away from him without a trace for someone else.


Two months after Kuroko's reappearance, in which he and Akashi went on dates while going apartment-and-job hunting at the same time, Mayuzumi asked the redhead a question that he was trying not to hear.

"Sei, for how long are you going to keep this up?"

The male seated at the opposite side of the table looked up from his laptop, in the middle of swallowing the last bits of his breakfast. "I'm going to need you to clarify your question, Chihiro."

"You know what I'm talking about, come on. I talk to you about this all the time - or, actually, I try to, but you never listen. How long will you be pulling off this thing with Kuroko?"

"I also try to actually answer your question, but you're never content with it. In due time, Chihiro, I will release Tetsuya from my grasp and you will see him hurt, too. Just wait, please?"

"How can you tell me to wait for someone to hurt when I am also in pain, Seijuuro?" His partner once again directed his gaze towards him, almost challenging him to continue. "You look at me as if I'm in the wrong, as if I'm self-pitying myself, but when will you ever think about me instead of him? Not once have I heard you tell me that you actually love me, yet when he just suddenly decides to fucking reappear again, you can so easily'pretend' to profess your love to him! What is this, Seijuuro? What should I be thinking about all of this?"

"Nothing," Akashi almost snaps back. "We'll talk about this later. I need to go to work, anyway."


An hour later, Mayuzumi was on his way out of the coffee shop with two trays of coffees to-go when he noticed a familiar face about to head to the Akashi Corp. building across the street.

He called out to the young male with brown locks, who responded by waving and walking back the opposite way to greet Mayuzumi.

"Good morning! I see that you have our coffee again," he noted interestedly, plucking a cup out of the tray. "Thanks."

The silver-haired male nodded in acknowledgement. "I only bought seven today because Mibuchi won't be here today."

"Oh, okay. You should have bought 8 anyway. Don't you know that Kuroko-san will be here today?"

"Will he, now?" Mayuzumi asked, feigning little interest. "Why?"

"I invited him to spend time with me for lunch. I always worry about him, you know." He paused to take a sip from his drink, the silence making the other male itch for more information. "He's a very nice person, but I'm sure that you already know that since you guys are friends." Friends,Mayuzumi thought with a slight scowl, anything but. "I often fear that he'll get hallucinations again or get tracked down or something. But he just keeps telling me that he's fine. I'm telling you, though, he isn't. I know those people."

"What people?" What happened these past five years? "Did Kuroko join the yakuza or something?"

They had reached the front of the glass doors and headed to the front desk where Mayuzumi would be working. "Wait, you don't know?"

"No, I don't know. Tell me, what are you talking about?"

The 'new' employee raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. He ought to tell Kuroko's friend about it now though, just so that he could make sure that his blue-haired friend was safe. "Well, like, you know how I was raised in America, right? I happened to see Kuroko-san there five years ago."

"He was in America? Why-"

"Wait, there's more, okay? Kuroko-san was there because he got abducted. Man, I thought that his friends would notice, but is he really that ghost-like?" He shook his head in disappointment. "Anyway, there's this group in America that was really well known for their human trafficking, but the police could never find them. But it just happened that they found him here and took him back to America. I only got to meet him after a year that he stayed with them, but he was really messed up by then. I-"

It seemed that in the pair's deep interest towards the subject that was Tetsuya, they had not realized that there was a third party listening in to the conversation."Are you associated with that group, Nakamura?"

"Shouldn't you be working, Seijuuro?" Mayuzumi snapped, trying to make Akashi leave. If he even dared to go to Kuroko...

"You shouldn't be telling me that, Chihiro. Anyway, continue. Were you a part of it?"

The employee shook his head. "I wasn't, but one day, I suddenly received an offer from this person to be a teacher for their business. They said that they were really well known, so I was like 'why not?'. Well it turns out that they were actually one of the people who worked directly under the person managing the trafficking group. And, uh.. yeah. I went to this apartment thing and the same man told me that there was a Japanese person my age there who needed to be taught to be fluent in English in one year, so-"

"...that was Tetsuya?"

"Yeah," he continued rambling,"And if only you saw how he looked when the guy opened the door to his room... oh my goodness, he was just sobeat up and neglected. One day, he even asked me where he was and I just couldn't answer because the guys told me not to. And sometimes, when they left, I would just let him sleep instead of learn English because they never let him get any rest. They were too busy beating him up. And if it doesn't sound serious enough, I'm pretty sure that I saw a new cut on him every day or something."

Akashi shook his head in doubt. That couldn't have happened. He wouldn't accuse Tetsuya of cheating or anything if he knew. If only he knew. "How come he didn't tell me?"

"I don't know, actually. He always said your name in his sleep, so I figured I would come and see who you were. Plus, I have been wanting to tell you something."

"What is it?"

"Kuroko-san is still in danger. Only a small fraction of that trafficking group was arrested." If that hadn't surprised Mayuzumi, who was pretending not to listen anymore, and Akashi, the brown-haired male leaned in closer to them and cautiously said, "If you're wondering, I know this because those people refuse to terminate my contract with them. So really, I'm here to 'look' for Kuroko-san because they haven't found him back in America yet."


Hi all! Thank you for your patience and I apologize for taking so long to update. I know that this chapter is rather dialogue-heavy, so please wait until the next chapter(which I am also working on right now)! As always, if there is anything that you'd like to see happen later on in the fic, do feel free to tell me and I will consider adding it into the story! Thank you so much!