"I wish I knew how to make a feeling stop."
Both he and Murasakibara loved Akashi's mother, Shiori. She was sweet and kind, a stark contrast to his strict and cold father. How the two ever saw eye-to-eye was beyond him. Akashi got most of his looks from her; from his red hair to his red eyes. The only thing he got from his father were the shape of his eyes (but still, they were large and round compared to Masaomi's sharp gaze) and, though Midorima found this strange as well as slightly disturbing, the gold eye color when he would switch with Bokushi (none of them knew, even to this day, where on earth Akashi had gotten the cat-like eyes from).
Whenever they couldn't comfort Akashi when he had his little panic attacks, or just feeling depressed in general, Shiori was always there to help. She just held Akashi and whispered sweet nothings in his ear, calming the boy down tremendously as he stopped shaking or staring into blank space.
However, an about two months before elementary ended, she had fallen sick with a mysterious illness. She had been to every doctor in the area, but no one had found the cause. Even Midorima's own father, who had many Ph.D.'s in medical science, couldn't figure out the cause of her illness. As a result of his mother's sickness, Akashi had begun to fall into a depression and every time Midorima or Murasakibara saw him, he was always pale as a ghost and his eyes were dead and rimmed with red from endless nights of crying into his pillow.
And then the worse came.
Just a month shy of going into Teiko, Shiori had passed away from the illness claiming her life. Both he and Murasakibara were devastated, Akashi more so. Midorima remembered the day clearly; Akashi, Masaomi, himself, his family, plus Murasakibara and his family had attended the funeral. Akashi looked dead, his skin was a sickly pale color and his eyes were lifeless. Masaomi kept a neutral expression throughout the whole thing and Midorima wondered how a man could keep a straight face when his wife just died. He had gone up to the podium, said a few words about how wonderful his wife was and that she didn't deserve death, but wished her a peaceful journey, before sitting back down next to his son in the first row. Both he and Murasakibara could tell that the man didn't feel anything towards his wife's death; his voice was cold and emotionless throughout his whole little speech.
They had watched as Shiori's body was laid peacefully in the ground, never to see the light of day again.
It had gotten worse after the funeral. Akashi had started crying and shaking and had collapsed next to a tree. His father was nowhere to be found, as were the rest of the adults. It was only him, Murasakibara, and the devastated Akashi.
It was one of the worst attacks Midorima had ever seen Akashi have. Usually, all he would do was shake and stare blankly into space, but he might as well have had a seizure right before their eyes. He screamed as he curled up on the ground, tears streaming down his face as his breathing became labored. Murasakibara had scooped him up in his arms and just held him, stroking his hair and whispering that it was alright and that they were still there for him, but they all knew it was a lie. Nothing was alright, and it would never be again.