Tatsumi was strolling through the hallways of Night Raid when all of a sudden, a hand grabbed him and pulled him in a dark room. Taken aback by the cramped surroundings, he didn't realize what was going on until a familiar voice called out to him.
"Tatsumi!"
"A-Akame?! What are you doing here?" He was also taken aback by her voice - it was trembling with anxiety, completely unlike the monotonous tone he was used to.
"Ta-Tatsumi... what exactly do you feel for me?"
"Huh?" The question couldn't help but make the boy blush.
"Answer the question!" Though the girl's agitation (and circulation-cutting grip on his shoulders) pushed the blush away in favor of sweat drops flooding through his face.
"Umm... uh... what I feel for you is about the same as everyone else? That you're a precious comrade and a good friend to hang around with?"
"... Is there anything else?"
"Uh... no? Can you please let go of me?" The boy was already squirming from the nails digging into his skin.
Realizing that Tatsumi appeared to be the sane needle in the haystack of insanity, Akame sighed in relief and released her grip. With freedom, Tatsumi brought himself to ask a very obvious question. "What's up with you, Akame? You usually don't act like this."
An appropriate response would be, "What's up with me? More like what's up with everyone else?!", but Akame was too tongue-tied to respond as she thought back to the folks who acted bizarrely affectionate towards her. Leone, Mine, Sheele, Chelsea - hell, even Bulat, of all people. Not to mention freakin' Esdeath for crying out loud! The last one made Akame fully realize that she had a hypnotic beauty that would turn normal people into lovesick pursuers.
Even Tatsumi - the pinnacle of dull normalcy - could be struck by her curse. But if venting to him was the lesser evil compared to dealing with nearly everyone in Night Raid (or that general from the Jaegers), she had nothing to lose.
"Everyone has been acting strange towards me lately. I don't know how to explain it, but... they've been paying more attention to me than usual. Like they're going out of their way to show me how much I matter to them... and it's all too much. Too much. I'm not used to this kind of attention. I don't even understand why I deserve to be showered with so much love. Do you understand what I mean?"
Tatsumi slowly nodded. He remembered the vivid details of the night when Night Raid announced it was going to rescue Akame from General Esdeath.
Bulat immediately announced that he was going to save Akame, proclaiming himself to be her manly knight in shining armor. Mine got infuriated by this, and stated that Akame had no need to be saved by someone with an arrogant attitude and a piss-poor pompadour - only for Bulat to retort that a midget with a heavy-ass gun would stand no chance in close range combat. As the two argued, Chelsea butted in, stating that her Gaea Foundation was far more effective than Bulat's Incursio due to hiding its aura without the need to turn invisible - and proceeded to call his Imperial Arms "gay." Leone charged in next, stating that since she already marked Akame as her "territory", she should be the one to save her and the other three should back off her "prey" or else. Sheele meekly offered but ended up crying when the other folks shot her down due to her habitual klutziness.
In the midst of the inflammatory wall of text, Tatsumi, Lubbock, Susanoo, and Najenda were the only ones to have stayed out of the conflict. Perhaps it was because of that silence that Najenda ended up ordering the first three to save Akame. (Unbeknownst to Tatsumi, Akame couldn't trust Lubbock or Susanoo as well; there was Lubbock's perverted tendencies and Susanoo's... well, if Bulat could be attracted to a girl, then who said that an Imperial Arms couldn't do the same thing?)
"They're paying attention to you because they care about you, Akame. Well, in their own weird way... but that's not the point. The point is that you're an amazing person. You're very strong, very capable of doing anything, and you often look cool while doing so. And behind all that power, you have a kind heart that cares about all of us at Night Raid. It's those skills that many people would find admirable, and it's no surprise that you're the most popular among us. Heck, there are even times when I think that you're better than me in a lot of ways."
Tatsumi's response stunned Akame to her core. While she did know that she was better than him in a lot of ways, she always did sense that Tatsumi had far more value than her (somehow...). She could've sworn that the ones who were overly affectionate towards her were the very ones who once acted the same way towards him. Maybe they simply grew tired of him? That the "real" protagonist was a generic, stale character all along? And that the poster girl was far more interesting to go after?
"How does this explain me being held hostage by Esdeath for over two weeks?"
"Beats me," Tatsumi said. "That woman used to be crazy for me, but now she's acting like I don't even exist."
The red-eyed girl decided not to question this abrupt twist of fate.
"Oh, that reminds me: Bro's been looking all over for you."
Akame froze.
"Apparently, you were supposed to go out to dinner with him, but you bailed out in the last minute. Did something happen between you two?" While Tatsumi said it, he thought, Come to think of it, Bro's been ignoring me for weeks!
Akame opened her mouth, only to shut it. She didn't know how Tatsumi would react to Bulat's unpredictable behavior.
"You'll understand one day, Tatsumi."
You guys were expecting a lovey-dovey, heartwarming Tatsumi/Akame chapter, but it was I, FRIENDSHIP! Besides, Akame's already had enough of the lovey-dovey crap, so I decided to spare her a migraine in favor of pure platonic love. Because friendship is the remedy that she needs. :)