Akira jerks harshly into consciousness as his head bumps noisily against the train window. Rubbing at the small bump, he can't help but feel miserable, but he supposes he's lucky that he wasn't worse off. That's what the people at the courthouse had told him, but even still, he isn't able to shake the distinct feeling that it was quite the opposite; that he was quite the opposite, even if he wasn't in jail.
The pain in his head feels worse now.
Probation... Drifts across his mind, dropping like a boulder into a puddle, as he steps onto the platform of Yongen-Jaya, escaping the nauseating train system. The concept has been explained to him countless times before he'd been approved for it. Even still, he still isn't sure what it truly means besides a year away from home; an entire year separated from everything he knows.
Akira had never been away before, not outside of the border of his town and never to Tokyo where a friend of his parents was going to be acting as his parole officer until his probation is over. He hadn't met Sakura before, nor does he recall his parents ever mentioning him before.
Even still, Akira wonders as he skims the dusty nameplates of the houses he passes what the man is like.
His thoughts are scattered, incomplete, and by the time he finds the right place: A gray stone tablet imprinted with Sakura in front of a house just smaller than his parents', he doesn't have any ideas or impressions.
Akira stands in front of the gate to Sakura's house, his new home, and finds himself starting to breathe hard once again. Anxiety wraps around each inhale he takes, and for a moment, it feels like he's drowning. He sinks the hand that was raised towards the buzzer into his hair instead, gripping himself firmly near the scalp, fingers twisting and twitching, Akira definitely pulls out a number of the messy black strands before he works up the courage to try again, all but slamming his fingers onto the gate buzzer.
There is a muffled ringing of the doorbell from within the housethat he can hear from where he is standing, but that's all Akira hears. No shuffling from beyond the gate or door, and when he manages a glance towards one of the windows, there doesn't seem to be any movement in the house at all.
Akira isn't sure what to do besides wait. He's never had to knock on someone's door before.
His hands are beyond clammy when he risks another press of the buzzer over a handful of minutes later.
"Ah right! Sakura-san will be at his café at this time of day…" Akira jumps in place after hearing anything but the distant sound of the muffled doorbell.
Heart hammering painfully, Akira chances a glance to the person who managed to sneak up on him. The intruder is a delivery man, tall and featureless under a bright white uniform, aside from the package tucked under his arm.
Sakura-san... Akira recalls quietly, giving the man a double-take as he recites what he's just over heard.
Akira considers, very briefly, approaching the stranger to ask for help or maybe even offer to take the package inside with him, but the featureless man doesn't spare him a single glance as he retreats back towards a delivery truck Akira hadn't heard approach.
Café? Akira remembers next. He doesn't remember anyone mentioning a café before but ends up surprised when he hears it twice more as he backtracks away from Sakura-san's house.
"Sakura-san's coffee is so good!" A young-looking woman says within earshot, bouncing on her heels in front of man of similar age.
"These walks always help with my digestion. Sakura-chan is so lucky to have that place where it is." Another couple, much older, totter down the street, passing him and almost stepping on his foot.
It doesn't take Akira very long to find Café LeBlanc. It's a nice-looking, if old building, that is wide and unassuming, with a bright white and green awning hanging over a glass-imbued door.
Akira finds himself needing to steel himself once more, brushing a hand through his messy hair before he's able to grab onto the door handle.
The person behind the bar stares at him as he steps into the building, tall and dark-haired. Akira stares back for all of three seconds before his gaze ends up dropping to the black-and-white tiles beneath his feet.
"You must be Kurusu." The employee declares after Akira spends another awkward moment of scanning the café's floor, waiting. "Your mom sent a picture with your record."
Glancing around the empty café, Akira nods jerkily at the man's words.
Sakura-san, presumably, grumbles quietly under his breath, words Akira can't catch, then taps the bar in front of him with his free hand, the other one preoccupied with a burnt down cigarette.
"Go ahead and take a seat," The man commands, slapping down a small notebook in front of one of the seats at the bar. Akira assumes it's for taking orders but is able to anxiously list off a few dozen reasons as to why Sakura-san would need such a tiny notebook as he climbs into one of the chairs across from the man.
Up close, Sakura-san seems even more intimidated, a bearded chin that's lost in smoke and ash, a scowl that Akira can only bring himself to look at from under his bangs, and a pair of glasses that obscures his eyes just as much as his are meant to.
"I don't know any sign language, and I'm not gonna bother learning for a delinquent like you, so," Sakura-san states bluntly, his voice gruff and mean. The man that's meant to be his parole officer tugs a pen free from the collar of his leaf green apron and slaps it down atop the tiny notebook. "So you better write legibly."
Sakura-san's mouth twists with a grin, but it holds a meanness that he'd seen before. The expression makes him question why Sakura-san had offered to take him in when it seemed the man already hated him.
Hands still clammy, and now shaking, Akira grabs at the pen, clicking it to life, and begins to write, feeling embarrassed, as he feels Sakura-san staring down at him, judging him already.
"Are you Sakura Sojiro?" Akira asks stupidly, twisting the pad around when he's done.
The man behind the bar huffs a laugh, "I guess you're not as dumb as you look. Yeah, I'm Sojiro Sakura, the fool who's taking care of a delinquent turned criminal for an entire year."
Akira tries not to get offended or hurt by the man's words.
"Anyways, you don't got problems hearing, do ya? My handwriting isn't the best and I don't really like yelling." Sakura-san continues, taking a single step away.
Despite himself, Akira's eyebrow twitches at question, but shakes his head quickly.
Sakura-san nods in return, seeming pleased enough that Akira wouldn't be even more of an inconvenience than he already is. "You'll be staying upstairs; your parents already sent your stuff here, so go ahead and check it out."
Sakura-san points towards a set of rather dusty stairs with his cigarette and Akira glances towards them.
I'm staying here? Akira questions silently, wondering if he had heard correctly.
Despite their appearance, the stairs barely even creak as he mounts them, but his shoes kick up plumes of dust as he climbs into the café's attic. Like Sakura-san had mentioned, there's a large box at the top of the stairs, blocking his path, with hisname and the café's address on it.
Akira can't see beyond far beyond the box of his belongings, the attic coated in light-swallowing shadow and drifting dust, drowning out the detail into grey figures.
Just behind him, the stairs creak suddenly and when he glances over, Sakura-san is right behind him, "Go ahead and push that out of the way. You can find a place to put it after I talk to you."
Dropping his hands onto the box of the labeled box, Akira shoves it across the floorboards until he's able to step fully onto the landing and Sakura-san quickly follow after him. The older man extends past him and Akira ducks out of the way, flatting himself against a dust-coated wall and watches as his guardian reaches out blindly until his fingers snag onto something.
The room floods in shallow, orange light, making Sakura-san's white shirt glow brightly underneath it, highlighting himself strangely in the still gloomy-looking room as he hands over yet another little book.
"I expect you to right down your daily doings in this. Don't even think about skipping a day." Akira blinks rapidly, processing, then nods quickly.
Record my daily doings? Akira repeats silently, taking the leatherbound book in hand along with the other one. Compared to the tiny notebook, it's quite a bit bigger and feels quite expensive with its thick, brown covering.
"Thank you." Akira says without thinking, twisting his fingers quickly.
Sakura-san scowls down at him, "That better mean, 'Thank you so much, Sakura-san, for letting me crowd your attic for an entire year'"
Akira bobs his head obediently.
Despite his reassurance, Sakura-san's scowl deepens, the lines around his face turning dark and harsh in the attic's glow. The man stares down at him like this for a long moment before stepping away, shuffling through the dust on the floor and back towards the stairs where they had come up.
"I gotta head back down there, customers are gonna start showin' up soon. Stay up here until I close up, got it?" Sakura-san instructs strictly, voice echoing up the stairwell.
Already a few steps away, he's blind to Akira's subsequent nod.
Only when his parole officer disappears back into the café does Akira allow himself to slide down the wall he's still leaning against and a quiver of emotion works its way up and down his throat, clogging his breathing for a long time. He stays like this for a long time, until his knees are cramping from where his arms are clenched around them, and his eyes burn so hotly that he can't keep them open.
Managing to pull himself together sometime later, Akira stands slowly and takes in the attic. It's crowded and dirty, but easily twice—maybe even three times—as large as his bedroom back home. In the corner of the vast space, tucked under a window, he finds a small, unstable bed set up. The mattress is elevated on colorful crates that are just as dusty as everything else in the attic and the covers are equally as dust-ridden, despite appearing quite new.
You're lucky for this. Akira tells himself, moving to swipe at the dust off the covers but only managing to create a small cloud that drifts into the air for a moment before settling back down onto the bed.
Watching this and feeling a frown building up, he steps away from the bed to continue the exploration of his new room.
Eventually, Akira wonders what his parents would think of this place and if they had they had been here before. He wonders, not for the first time, how they knew each other. Tokyo is a far trip for friends and as career focused as they are, it's doubtful that they'd come all this way for coffee and treats.
They'd call me a useless slob if this were my room… Akira imagines, not meaning any ill-intention towards Sakura-san, though they would, undoubtedly, be disgusted if his room at home looked like his current surroundings.
With that in mind, Akira sets about tidying up or doing his best to. Cleaning isn't something he's done much of. Yet, after finding a small broom perched in the corner, which is ironically covered in dust and dirt, he's able to figure the task out fairly quickly and swiftly maneuver the brunt of the dust and debris into a small metal dustpan. With the brunt of the mess removed, there's an undeniable tinge of satisfaction at the result of his handiwork and while he doesn't make an attempt at moving any of the fragile-looking furniture in the attic in fear of angering his host, Akira can say that he's managed to make the mess… less messy, enough to work off some of his nervous energy and make himself more comfortable.
Drawn out of his thoughts by a noise that couldn't have come from him, Akira turns around to find Sakura-san standing before him once again.
"You cleaned up." Sakura-san observes, flicking ashes from a freshly lit cigarette onto the recently exposed floor before huffing another gruff sounding laugh, "A cleandelinquent, who would've thought. Anyways, that's probably enough for tonight, you got school tomorrow. I'll drive you to introduce you and whatnot but after that you're on your own."
Akira nods quickly, swallowing down a handful of questions about his living situation and about going to school.
"We're leaving early, so get some sleep." Sakura-san finishes off before he trots back down the stairs and calling up to him. "Bathroom's down here if you gotta go!"
Akira makes use of this information before heading back upstairs and turning the light out. He slides under the covers on the bed in the corner and finds himself sliding quickly into sleep, even as thoughts of his probation plague him even after he falls unconscious.
Waking from a strange dream that he can't quite remember leaves him feeling even more strange than he does after waking in a bed that he doesn't recognize. Sakura-san is waiting for him downstairs when Akira makes for the bathroom, something that makes him jump as the lights in the café were still turned off.
"After today, you'll be responsible from getting yourself to and from school. If I hear that you're skipping class, I won't hesitate to call your parole officer." The man says, repeating what he had mentioned the night before.
"Sit. Eat." Sakura-san commands next, tapping a knuckle onto the bar before dropping a plate down onto the bar and staring at him until he complies.
Akira closes the distance and does as he's told, taking up the seat in front of the plate.
Staring down at his meal, a steaming plate of curry and rice that looks ready to topple over the edge of the plate. Akira notices first how pleasant it smells. Especially in comparison to the dusty attic he'd spent the night in. It tastes just as nice too, even if it burns his tongue a bit.
Really good… Akira amends quickly.It's probably one of the best things he's ever eaten.
Something in his face, perhaps a twitch or his ill-suppressed glee, must have given his thoughts away to Sakura-san, who smiles down at him for the first time without his previous contempt, something Akira only catches with a quick glance up at his parole officer. From this, Akira gets the impression that Sakura-san is quite pleased,and Akira does his best to continue, soaking up the moment of tranquility between them. It doesn't take much to fill him up, however, and under Sakura-san's gaze, it doesn't take very long for him to find the end of what he can manage to shove down his throat. Even still, Akira continues to scoop at rice and curry, pushing it into his mouth until his plate his clear.
As soon as he's finished, Sakura-san grabs at his plate, and drops it into a sink behind the counter and sets about washing them.
Akira watches, feeling guilty at making the man do things for him and for eating his food without being able to offer him anything in return.
"Was it good?" Sakura-san queries, turning to face Akira from his place at the sink, and smirking once again when Akira nods in return, watching the older man pile up the cleaned dishes into a stack to one side of the sink. "Thought so."
Sakura-san's face turns cold, developing a deep scowl once again as he tugs off his apron to hang it on the wall before heading, silently, towards the door. The man waves over at him and Akira drops off the seat to hurry after him.
"Men aren't usually allowed in my passenger seat." Sakura-san murmurs quietly, as they were walking away from Cafe LeBlanc, he wasn't sure if was supposed to hear this commentary. Even still, Akira found himself in the passenger seat, unsure and uncomfortable.
Traffic is beyond what Akira had been expecting. Loud noises and rumbles assault them from every angle, and while Sakura-san didn't seem bothered at all by this, Akira can't help the nervous tension building up under his skin from the unusual environment, only amplified by the knowledge of their eventual destination.
Akira's first impression of Shujin Academy is that it didn't look much like a school, standing taller than any building back home, the bright monolith of steel and stone, guarded by gates that stood much taller than either he or Sakura-san, leaves Akira feeling very much out of place.
Sakura-san's steps through the oversized gates and Akira follows closely after him, keeping himself quiet behind the man until they arrive at the principal's office. A faculty member slides open the door as soon as they arrive, telling them to wait a moment, and Sakura-san nods in return but sighs quite loudly when the door clicks shut in his face.
They don't end up waiting for very long, barely enough time for Akira to count any of the trophies embedded in one of the many cases lining the school's silent hallways, before the door slides open and a woman's head peaks out from the crack.
"Sorry about that." She says quietly, "Please come in."
Once again, Akira follows after the man as he steps inside and tries his best to be as unobstrusive as possible, to appear as anything other than a criminal or a delinquent, but as he takes a seat beside Sakura-san, he's instantly leveled with a stare from across a large, wooden desk and he knows instantly that the principal of Shujin Academy sees right through him and has already gone over his record.
"You must be Sakura-san." The large-framed man across from them says from behind his equally large desk. The principal glances down at a stack of papers in front of him quickly, "and Kurusu-kun."
The man introduces himself next, running his hands over his front to smooth down his striped suit. "I am Principal Kobayakawa."
Sakura-san nods in reply, staying quiet, which makes Kobayakawa's gaze slide onto him instead.
"I've looked over your file, Kurusu-kun." The man continues, Akira drops his gaze to the floor near his shoes and tries not to fidget. "You seemed to be quite the student at your old high school, but you'll find quickly that Shujin Academy isn't anything like your old high school, which I'm sure you'll learn to grow grateful for soon enough. Even with your disability, I'm sure we at Shujin will be able to make a fine student out of you."
Akira isn't sure what to say to that, if he should be offended on behalf of his old school or not, but wisely keeps his hands to himself.
"You will be placed in class 2-D, Kurusu-kun, which makes Kawakami-sensei your homeroom teacher. You will be reporting to her class each morning and she'll be keeping tabs on your behavior. As will the other instructors, naturally." Kobayakawa raises a hand and gestures to the woman who had led them inside.
Glancing in her direction, Akira finds a brown-haired woman staring at him like Kobayakawa and Sakura-san had, with distrust and contempt. Her fingers twist at the edge of her bright orange sweater and she looks like she might say something, but her mouth doesn't open at all.
"Sakura-san, as Kurusu-kun's legal guardian, you will be responsible for filling out his enrollment forms." Kobayakawa says suddenly after a moment of silence before sliding a small stack of papers across the desk.
Sakura-san shoots him a look that he can't decipher before the man leans forward to start on the forms and, while waiting for him to finish, Akira worries about the situation he's found himself in.
Before Akira can get too lost in regrets or memories, Sakura-san finishes signing the last of the packet with a loud flourish and a sigh.
"Welcome to Shujin Academy." Kawakami-sensei says without emotion, stepping around Kobayakawa's desk to stand in front of Akira.
"This is your school ID," She continues, handing over a slip of plastic with Akira's face on it, making him wonder where they got the picture.
"Thanks." He signs quickly, ducking into a small bow as well as a formality.
Kawakami stares at him blankly when he glances up at her from under his bangs, his gaze quickly flitting over to the man beside her as he speaks up.
"Ah yes, about that…" Principal Kobayakawa starts up before pausing to clear his throat. The man goes quiet after that and dabs at his forehead with a tissue. "As none of the faculty are trained in sign language, we here at Shujin Academy, felt it would be inappropriate for you to use it on the campus." Kobayakawa pauses, "Around the other students and faculty. It would undoubtedly make them uncomfortable, and we'd like to avoid any unnecessary complications, considering the nature of your parole."
Akira stares at his new principal for a moment before he's able to collect himself, nodding feebly desite himself.
I can't sign? Akira questions. He has about a thousand more but none of them make it down to his fingers.
"After speaking with the schoolboard, we found that this would be the most appropriate alternative and one of our donors graciously volunteered to provide it for you." Kobayakawa continues. The man pulls out a thin sheet of wood from his desk and flips it over to reveal a blank, white surface. "This whiteboard will be used in place of sign language as long as you attend Shujin Academy. You'll be expected to have it with you at all of your lessons and to return it at the end of the school year." The principal leans forward and slides the board across his desk.
Still too shocked to do anything other than stare blankly, Akira offers a silent prayer to Sakura-san when the man reaches over and pulls the board into his own lap.
Another moment of silence, twice as awkward as the first, or at least Akira thinks so, drifts over the office before Kobayakawa clears his throat and speaks again, "To reiterate, just so there's no chance of misconstruing, you will be immediately expelled if you cause any problems at this institution. To be honest, I hesitated to accept someone like you into our school, but there were circumstances on our side…"
Rather than continue, Kobayakawa trails off slowly and picks up somewhere else instead, tone firm once again, "You may have gotten away with quite a lot at your old school, hiding behind your disability, but you will behave yourself here. If you are kicked out of our school, there will be no place for you to go. Keep that in mind."
Once more, Akira teeters on being offended, but keeps his hands in his lap and nods meekly, even when his face burns bright red in shame. He already knows that he has nowhere else to go if he manages to get caught up in something that shouldn't be his problem, being exiled to Tokyo had taken weeks of negotiations with his appointed lawyer while living on detention center lunches.
"Anything to add, Kawakami-sensei?" The principal asks, finally turning away from Akira to speak kindly at his new homeroom teacher.
Kawakami-sensei steps forward once again and presses a small book into his hands, "For your own sake, please read over the school rules, any infractions will land you straight in the guidance office. And if, by chance you cause any problems, I won't be able to protect you at all."
Moving back, the woman retreats, only to return with a plastic-covered bundle of clothes. "And this is your uniform, you're to wear it every day, though I'm sure you're already familiar with that. Make sure that it's clean and presentable when you show up for class. If you lose it or destroy it, you'll have to purchase another one from the school store on the first floor."
With that, he and Sakura-san are excused from the principal's office and all but escorted from the premises by Kawakami-sensei. Sakura-san doesn't stop walking, nor does he take a look back until they reached his parked car, and only just before climbing inside of it does he check back to see if Akira is still following him.
"You'll be taking the train to school from now on." Sakura-san reminds him as the older man makes his way behind the counter of Leblanc. Digging into his pockets, he drops something onto the counter between them along with the whiteboard from Kobayakowa.
Sakura-san shoots him a firm look and Akira nods silently.
"Station pass." Sakura-san explains before Akira can step forward to identify it. "Don't lose it."
Nodding once more, Akira tucks the station pass into his own pocket and reluctantly takes the whiteboard up into the bundle in his arms.
"Head upstairs." His guardian orders, "Gotta try and make up for some of the money I lost by wasting time with you."
Akira climbs into the attic, retreating into his new space.
What little time he's spent awake somehow take a sudden toll as soon as he steps on the landing and after dropping his uniform and the whiteboard onto an empty table near the railing, Akira climbs under the covers on the unstable bed in the corner and doesn't have much trouble escaping into a different nightmare.
Waking up, the attic completely dark and what had been shadowy visages during the daytime are transformed into figures and outlines of pure black, the layout of the room invisible beyond what Akira can feel. The duvet is soft in his hands and he can feel dust clumping up against his clammy hands. In the distance, though still loud enough to hear clearly, is the sound of a ringing telephone. Harsh, loud, and terrifying in the way it seemed to vibrate through the entire café. Its suddenness made his heart pound hard in chest, pounding heavily in the dark.
Checking his own pockets, Akira finds his own phone, low on battery but not the source of the ringing. The noise continues. Akira pushes himself to his feet and wipes the blurriness from his eyes before navigating through the dark attic until he finds the stairs. Across the bar, near an old-looking cash register lies the source of the disturbance, a yellow landline telephone that looks just as old as the cash register.
Akira approaches it but is hesitant to answer it. If it isn't an important call, Sakura-san would probably get upset with him for answering the phone and if it is, then he'd probably be in even more trouble for doing the same thing. The phone, oblivious to his struggle, continues to ring noisily, all but shaking off of its brightly colored stand as Akira stares at it helplessly.
It rings twice more before he works up the nerve to lift the receiver to his ear and Akira glances around the empty café, paranoia easily injecting itself into his thoughts as he stands in the dark room. If this is some kind of test set up by Sakura-san, he's obviously failing.
"Hello?" The person on the other line barks, sounding annoyed, then it hesitates before continuing in a gentler tone. "Oh right, uh…"
Akira blinks rapidly, the person's voice sounds familiar, but he can't identify it straight away.
"Flip the sign on the door, would ya? I forgot to do it when I locked up." Sakura-san's modulated voice requests in his ear, "I'm already home and I ain't going back out."
Sign? Akira squints towards the glass door of the café and identifies the sign on the other side of it, at least the shape of it. Carefully, he sets the phone down onto the counter and creeps towards the door. His heart is still racing as he tries to tug open the door, the heavy wood catching when he tries to pull it open, locked tight, and only after he twists the bolt does it release, allowing him to twist the sign around.
"Did you do it?" Sakura-san's voice comes out loudly through the old phone, reaching his ears from the door and making him jump before he races back to the receiver.
"Just tap the phone twice when you've done it." Akira waits a few seconds before he brings up his free hand and taps his palm against the microphone.
"Right, anyway," Sakura-san continues, "From now on, double-check the sign for me before you head to bed. Got it?"
The line goes quiet for a moment until Akira taps his hand against the receiver again, he readjusts the telephone against his ear to listen closely to his guardian sniff and cough into it.
"Good. Don't forget you have school tomorrow." Sakura-san reminds him needlessly.
Tapping twice more, Akira listens intently for another moment, waiting for any other instructions before Sakura-san hangs up without preamble, the line going dead suddenly and left ringing loudly in his ear. He stands there for a moment, listening to the monotonous ringing for a long moment before coming to his senses and returning the receiver to its stand on the counter.
Akira doesn't go back to bed, at least not right away, he still treks up the stairs, but instead of heading towards the barely visible covers in the corner, he drops low in front of the box of his belongings, the only thing that are his in the vast darkness and rips open the tape binding it shut, the noise quite loud in the otherwise silent café. Blindly, he weaves his hands through his meager collection shirts and socks until his fingers curl around his toothbrush. Ripping it from the darkness, Akira slides down the café's stairs and into the little bathroom. Flicking on the light and ignoring his own reflection while he brushes his teeth and relieves himself.
Wiping down the counter of any moisture and shutting the light back off, he finds his way back in front of his box until his phone charger replaces the toothbrush in his hands.
It takes him a few minutes to find a socket in the room, but when he does, the cord reaches well onto his bed in the corner, and with his plugged-in cell phone, Akira crawls back into bed and closes his eyes.
Instead of falling asleep like the last time, however, his mind dances across the past few weeks of his life. Akira tries his best to ignore the sinking in his gut that occurs each time he relives the more distressing parts and fails miserably when every thump in the night sounds like a resolute gavel and every whisper of wind becomes a verdict in his ears.
The man from that night flashes under his eyelids as he clenches them shut, begging for sleep to come, but like many sleepless nights before, Akira is forced to stare into the hate filled look in his eyes. Even when it was happening, it had been too much, Akira barely remembers anything besides running forward to help and then being scared for his life.
He's still scared for his life.
Sometime in the memories, Akira falls asleep and the memories drift away.
A ringing phone wakes him up for the second time in a row, only now the attic is bathed in pale, morning light, exposing drifting dust falling into the air as he silences the disturbance, which is his own phone this time.
He pauses, however, when he catches a glimpse of his screen. A glowing, red icon stares back him. He's certain he had deleted the same icon when he noticed it during the train ride into Tokyo but dismisses the oddity as a result of nerves or his inaccurate fingers and drops the icon into the trash once again before dropping his phone back onto the bed beside him and rolls onto his fee, cringing minutely when they come into contact with chilly floorboards. Maneuvering across the cluttered space, Akira finds the supplies he'd gotten from the school yesterday, including his still packaged uniform, and starts about getting dressed.
Cleaning up in the bathroom once more, Akira tugs on new shoes and shoulders a schoolbag that has the Shujin Academy logo on it that had been sealed along with everything else. Its size is more cumbersome than its weight with only the whiteboard and school rules tucked inside, along with a few notebooks that also have Shujin's logo embossed on them.
Sakura-san is waiting behind the counter of Leblanc when he finally walks into view and has another plate of rice and curry set on the bar as he does, still steaming and smelling just as it had the day before, delicious and enticing, but still full from the day before, his stomach lurches at the idea of actually eating it.
His guardian pins him into his seat with a firm look though and Akira does his best to shovel food into an already full stomach. More than nauseous by the time he manages to clear a fraction of his plate, Akira bravely pushes it away, not intending to offend but knowing that it'd be seen that way regardless.
Sakura-san grunts something from behind a cigarette and doesn't look at him again as he makes his way from the café, shame sinking into his stomach in a way that food couldn't.
Akira doesn't dally too much as he finds his way back to the station, nor does he waste much time squeezing himself between the thickest crowd he's ever seen; he is pretty sure more people crammed in this train car than students at his old school, but even packed to capacity, the train moves quickly, rushing past Yongen-Jaya at a nauseous pace. A quiet murmur breaks out across the train, sweeping into his ears past the tinny sound of morning noise, about the increasing number of train incidents recently, making Akira all the more nervous about his daily commute to school and back.
Swallowing an anxious lump in his throat, he can nothing more than tighten his grip on one of the overhead handles and try to tune them out, and eventually they pull into Shibuya Station much slower than he wishes they would. Unignorable chatter about accidents, death tolls, and unfortunate circumstances, Akira's certain of the fact that he'd end up being one of those people.
Worse than that, it's his first day at a school where nobody knows who he is. Which should be a good thing, given his circumstances, but the contradictory thoughts stick around in his head and make him sweat excessively in his turtleneck and blazer while he looks for a way onto Shibuya Square. Eventually, he manages to find a trail of people wearing uniforms identical to his and he trails after them, praying silently that he wouldn't overhear anything about a cult that wears school uniforms or anything similar.
In unison though, the group ahead of him tug out matching Shujin umbrellas and continue walking as the sky turns suddenly grey, something Akira misses due to the innumerable sky piercing buildings lined up on the streets until raindrops suddenly splash down into his hair and smear down his glasses.
Looking up and spotting grey clouds blotting out the top ends of some particularly tall buildings, Akira tries not to gawk at them as he navigates through the foot traffic but finds his gaze drifting upwards quite a few times. Even if when the city was meant to be a replacement for a prison cell, he can't quite deny that it's anything but impressive.
Rain worsening still, Akira finds himself unable to look up at the risk of getting splashed in the eye and even then, water still manages to spill down over his head, into his eyes and over his glasses, obscuring his vision to the point that he loses the students he had been following.
Too bad to continue, Akira tucks himself under the closest cover and looks past the rain as best he can, hoping to catch another uniform like his that might lead him where he needs to go, but a mass of grey suddenly blocks his view, taking up space beside him under the awning to, presumably, escape the rain as well.
Akira steps away and tries to look around them but the blob next to him moves further into his field of vision until he's forced to look at them instead. The blob lowers the hood obscuring their face revealing a lotof wavy blonde hair and blue eyes.
A foreigner. Akira thinks without hesitation and as if hearing his thoughts, the woman cranes her neck to stare at him.
She smiles at him, exposing straight white teeth, and Akira can't fathom why.
There isn't much time to question this behavior before before a car slides in front of them, raising up a splash of water from the quickly flooding street. A window rolls down with a squeak and a middle-aged man pokes his head out of the opening.
"Takamaki-chan! Want a ride to school? You're gonna be late."
"Um, sure." The girl, presumably Takamaki-chan, standing next to him answers.
The man in the car turns to him and smiles too, "Do you need a lift too?"
Unfamiliar and uncomfortable, Akira shakes his head and his hands at the same time. The gesture probably makes him look like a loon of some sort but he's still paranoid from the whispers on the train and his own less than useful thoughts to really care. He doesn't have much time to regret his decision before the silver car speeds down the road and another person comes running up in front of him, replacing the blue-eyed stranger and nearly knocking him over.
"Damn that pervy teacher!" A guy about Akira's age screams, standing in the place that girl—Takamaki-chan—had been just a moment ago and stomping down his foot, making a puddle bounce up.
Pervy teacher? Was that man really… Akira blinks rapidly, feeling very much as if he's just been thrown back into the past.
That Takamaki girl didn't seem like she needed help and the man in the car didn't seem like a threat, but even still, the thought alone sent coils of evocative terror slithering down into his stomach and just for a moment, Akira wishes he could reverse time. To do something different, to possibly help someone who needed it.
Remembering what he'd lost already, though, Akira crumbles these thoughts and hopes that they will drift down the street along with the rain and rubbish.
"What do you want?" The guy next to him barks with a vicious tone, closing the already minute distance between them. "You plannin' to rat me out to Kamoshida?"
Kamoshida? Akira questions while dropping his gaze to the floor and backstepping a little, doing his best to shrink away from the stranger without falling out from under the awning. He debates running into the rain to follow after the car after all.
His confusion must show up on him like a stain or the guy realizes that he isn't making much sense, because when he speaks up again, his tone is less harsh and volatile.
"In that car just then. That was Kamoshida."
Ah.Akira thinks, feeling dumb.
"He does whatever the hell he wants." The guy rants, scrubbing a hand through his blond hair and sprinkling water onto him, "Who does he think he is? The king of a castle? Don't you agree?"
Akira stares back at the road, where that man had just disappeared, and shrugs in response, not really knowing one way or the other, and hopes that his lack of response wouldn't set the guy off again.
"Damn—you must not know Kamoshida at all then… Lucky." The blond mutters benignly.
Akira tries not to flinch at that word.
"But you go to Shujin, right?" Another question escapes from the boys mouth, accompanied by an accusatory finger towards the Shujin Academy logo embedded into Akira's blazer.
Akira nods along in answer and notices an identical blazer draped around the other boy's shoulders, exposing a brightly colored shirt that isn't part of the uniform.
"I've never seen you around…" The blond observes aloud, taking a hand to his chin. "Are you a transfer student?"
Bobbing his head slowly, Akira finds himself rather confused by the animated man before him.
"You're kinda quiet, aren't ya?"
Akira shrugs again and catches the blond is rolling his eyes when he chances a glance in his direction.
"The rain ain't too bad now, we better hurry before we're late." The guy says, sticking a hand out from under their shared cover before following suit with his entire body.
Akira doesn't even manage to take a step forward before everything fails him. A splitting, piercing, ringingpain wraps around his entire head and squeezes his skull, leaving him gasping and light-headed in an instant.
"Ahh!" The blond ahead of him groans, as if sharing his pain and vocalizing it. "Damn. My head hurts."
The rain continues pattering softly around them and the other boy sighs, but continues marching forward, sloshing through the drowned-out sidewalk. "Dammit, I just wanna go home."
Akira silently agrees and moves to follow after the odd boy, stepping into the lightened drizzle himself, but they don't get far out before the boy stops again, gasping, and Akira nearly walks into him.
"Wha-?"
Akira chances a glance around the taller boy's frame, half-frightened about what he might find.
A large, menacing looking castle stands before them, appearing impossibly tall. Following its impossibly tall lines into the sky, the previously grey storm clouds are blotted out completely by rigid stone pillars and archways that must stand twice as tall as he does.
The building looks like a temple of sorts, though he doesn't remember seeing any on the way to school with Sakura-san, and he doubts that the boy in front of him would have stopped walking if that was the case.
"We didn't come the wrong way, though." The blond points out, gesturing behind them to the alleyway Akira had followed him through.
Turning back to look at the strange building, the other boy merely stands there, staring at it and Akira finds himself doing much of the same, leaning around the other's frame to gape at the oversized building.
The small, carved-up wall in front of the castle draws Akira's eventual attention and he squints to read it.
Shujin Academy.
Akira reads the words, then rereads it, and once more, wondering how often he's going to find himself locked in a nightmare that has no escape.
The blond in front of him, still dripping wet from a now absent rain, takes a cautious step forward, moving towards the and against his better judgement, Akira follows after him, not wanting to be left alone under the blackened sky.
"That's… weird. Where's the school?" Akira hears the blond question once they've made it to a set of massive wooden doors at the front of the building, which seem even taller now that they're right in front of them. His schoolmate doesn't stop to stare though, and pushes against the base of the door, the metal door handles way out of reach even if they climbed onto one another. Even still, the colossal slats of wood and steel sweep open as quickly and smoothly as a regular door might and exposes a massive foyer unlike anything like the Shujin Academy that Akira had seen the day before.
Black and white tiles spread across the room's floor, acting as a dizzying base for opulent, sculptures that lines the walls, forming human and animal shapes in terrifying detail. Imprinted stone murals wind high up to the darkened ceilings, acting almost like a second sky for all that Akira can see the end of it, the golden chandeliers hang high above them but do nothing to expose anything but the ground below, their chains disappearing into the void-like ceiling. Red carpets line twin sets of stairs, its striking color drawing his gaze in their direction despite every other detail in the room.
It was really unlike anything he'd ever seen or read about in any book.
"It said Shujin on that gate, didn't it?" The other boy asks, turning to Akira suddenly and nodding when Akira bobs his head absentmindedly in response.
The blond pulls out a phone from one of his pockets and sighs loudly before shoving it back where it had come from before announcing, "No service."
Before his companion could do much else, a hunched-over figurehobbles into the room, coated in a full set of metal armor. It notices them almost immediately and staggers over to them, moving with slow, inhuman steps. Attached to its side, a large sword scrapes along the lavish tiled floors, kicking up sparks and carving its path towards them like a snail might.
"Geez, you freaked me out!" The blond yelps as the figure stops in front of them. "Who're you? A student?"
The figure doesn't respond, but the blond continues talking to it as if this didn't bother him. "That costume is impressive… Is that armor real?"
Once again, the figure before them says nothing and Akira might have mistaken it for a statue if it weren't for the strange sinking and lifting of the figure's frame as it breathes, making its armor squeal quietly as it does so.
"Don't just stand there! Say somethin!" The other boy growls.
The figure takes a step forward, mimicking the other boy's earlier movement, and drops a steel-coated hand to drop onto the sword still scratching at the tiles near its feet.
"Calm down, man!" The blond stammers, backtracking instantly just before the figure sweeps the massive blade upwards, narrowly missing the blond's extended hands.
"W-we gotta run!" He howls, twisting on his heel to do just that.
"Quit standin' around!" The other boy barks at him and Akira moves to run as well, bolting towards the entrance only for more hunched-over, armored figures to block their path.
Akira swallows back the terror building up in his mouth, but it does little to alleviate the dread that's narrowing his vision and making his breath come out in short, sharp pants. He doesn't manage another step towards the door before they're completely surrounded by the armored figures.
Akira watches, frozen, as the blond rams into one of the figures, trying to fight his way through the crowd, only to get knocked to the ground with a large, shiny shield.
They're going to die.
"Ow! What the hell! You're gonna break my damn bones." The screams from the ground, his voice pitched in apparent desperation.
"Take 'em away!" Someone shouts and he turns to see where the voice is coming from. All at once, the figures close in around them, marching forward in unison and closing them in further.
Akira only sees the shadow of the figure looming over him before something hits him hard and he passes out.
Waking with a gasp, Akira grabs at his head and looks around frantically, expecting to be back home or maybe in Sakura-san's café, but the throbbing pain and the large bump on his head convince him otherwise, even if it didn't, they're still in the castle from what he can tell, trapped in a room that's even more of a mess than LeBlanc's attic. Broken, wooden barrels turn the floor into a jagged landscape and rusted chains swing against the stony walls despite the lack of air flowing through the room.
There was a castle… and those things… Akira tries to remember, his thoughts a mess of jumbled remembrances to the point Akira's not even sure what he's trying to remember.
They're going to die.
"Door's locked." The blond boy from before says from across the room, making himself known and kicking at steel bars that acted as a door to their cell.
He sighs, resting his messy head of hair against the bars. "What the shit is going on here…"
"Anyways, are you okay?" He asks Akira, sounding gentler than he's heard him yet.
Akira swallows down the urge to cry, scream, or punch something, but knows that doing any of those things wouldn't help them escape. He nods quietly in response to the other boy's question and rubs at the painful bump hidden away in his hair.
Lucky… The word dances across his mind, bitter and sour, and Akira squashes it down a hundred times while he watches the blond starts searching around the room for a way out, pushing aside splintery edges of the broken barrels and feeling alone the bricks lining the walls. At one point, the blond crawls under the makeshift bed Akira is suspended upon and continues his search under there for a while before his blond hair pokes out from underneath.
"Wait… you hear that?" The blond says, shushing him despite being the only one talking. After a few seconds of straining his ears, Akira does hear something. By the time he does, though, it's already too late and the figures from before are lined outside of the cell they were locked into, keys in hand.
"Your punishment has been decided upon." One of the figures informs ominously, Akira's still not sure which one of them says this as none of their armor seems to be moving as they speak. "You charge is unlawful entry. Thus, you will be sentenced to death."
They're going to die.
"Say what!?" The blond yelps, only to be interrupted.
"No one is allowed to do as they please in my castle." A man's voice says as another figure steps in front of the cell door.
That man… Akira realizes almost instantly, his thoughts drifting back to the girl from earlier, her name escapes him, but he prays that she's okay, even if he's not.
"Is that you Kamoshida?" The boy underneath him asks, crawling out from under the bed to walk up to the metal bars.
The man purrs lowly, a manic smile spreading across the man's face that obscures his unnaturally yellow eyes, a feature that he didn't have when they had first met. "Sakamoto."
This has to be a dream… Akira rationalizes.
The boy in the cell with him kicks at the cell bars, lifting up his foot to kick at where one of the guards was shoving the key into the lock. "Fuck you, you pervert! I knew you'd be behind something like this."
"It's time for an execution!" Kamoshida responds gleefully, waving his arms widely, exposing his bare chest and legs.
The door unlocks quickly and the guards file in quickly like they bad before, the man—Kamoshida—follows closely behind them.
The boy trapped with him turns to Akira suddenly and offers him a quick apology as they're both restrained once more. Akira feels cold, unwavering metal digging into his throat, pinning him into place against the rocky wall of the cell.
He's sorry? Akira questions, knowing that if either of them was at fault in would be him.
"This is truly an unjust game." A female voice rings out through the cell, sounding clear despite the metallic shuffling and the menacing rumblings of whatever Kamoshida is whispering to the blond pinned across from him. Akira's skin prickles, but the voice continues, uncaring.
"Your chances of winning are almost none…"
The voice, he realizes, is being funneled directly into his head, his ears not even picking up the sound. It's shocking, but even more so is the glimmering butterfly that swims across his field of vision, glowing in the dimly lit prison they were going to die in.
"But if my voice is reaching you, there may be yet a possibility open to you…" The voice makes his brain vibrate and suddenly a new voice joins in along with it.
It's his own voice, Akira knows, though he had never heard it before, he just knows it somehow, knows it belongs to him.
"What's the matter…? Are you simply going to watch?" It croons from deep inside of Akira, making his head swim even more than the first.
Thinking about it, Akira isn't sure how to answer. He can't do anything.
Before, he couldn't have helped that girl and now he can't save the boy across from him, much less himself.
"Are you forsaking him to save yourself?" The voice accuses, deep and unearthly as one of the swords swings up high, ready to swing for the blond's tilted throat.
When his vision starting to fade, Akira doubts he could even save himself at this point.
"Death awaits him if you do nothing." The voice whispers, sinister, making Akira's ears tingle. "Was your previous decision a mistake then?"
Against his will, Akira is thrust back into that moment, reliving it in a millisecond, the screaming woman and the drunken man with his hateful gaze.
It hadn't been a mistake. Akira knows what he saw, knows that she needed help, knows that despite what she had said to the judge that he'd done the right thing.
"Very well. I have heeded your resolve." The voice responds to his admission cryptically. "Now vow to me!"
Vow? Akira's skin burns. Everything burns, all over and all at once, he's never felt so much pain in his life.
"I am thou, thou art I…Thou who art willing to perform all sacrilegious acts for thine own justice. Call upon my name and release thy rage!"
The burning continues, amplifying in each moment, threatening to swallow him whole but refuses to kill him.
"Show thy strength of thy own will to ascertain all on thine own, though thou be chained to Hell itself!" The voice screams out from inside of him, clawing and scratching at his insides with fire-hot claws, cutting down to his very soul it feels like. Akira tries to scream, to gasp for air, but nothing comes out despite the torment he experiences.
One of the guards' sword rises into the air by Akira's head and swings down with a violent, silver streak.
The horrendous, painful inferno building up inside of him and the voice Akira knows is his own finally erupts and Akira feels his body go limp as the painful vice finally releases him, leaving him to suffer for only an instant more.
Blue flames lash out from his every pore, filling the silent air with flickers of motion. A blast of wind follows shortly after, a cyclone that sculpts itself painfully around Akira's form as it explodes around him.
Chains materialize from the burning blue pyre combusting around him, latching onto him, or at least trying to before Akira thinks to grab at them, throwing them aside despite their incinerating touch.
Lifting singed fingers to his face, Akira grabs at the pressure that's there, sticking into his skin with fiery little barbs. The edges of the mask give a little as he tugs even harder and a splash of blood curtains down his face, filling his nose with the smell of iron. Adrenaline rushes through him, letting him rip away the rest of the mask and quieting down the voice in his head.
The fire from before grows even brighter as he manages to rip the mask fully off and a massive pillar of flame combusts from within him. The sapphire blue blaze flashes fully to life and engulfs him completely, shaping against his body and cauterizing him.
It feels like he's fighting for his life against the flames surrounding him, fighting tooth and nail against the bursts of energy pumping into every cell in body, threatening to kill him if Akira can't hold onto it.
Throwing his hands out, excess energy and purifying flames send the guards flying, silver swords and chest pieces falling to the ground as he scatters them with his will alone.
Then the voice returns, screaming from inside of him.
Coming from him, sounding more familiar than anything he's ever known.
"Arsene!" The impossible voice screams.