Opaque

Author's Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of The Crystal Boy.

Pairing: Akira x Keita.

Summary:

When a crystal lover and a train lover get together.


Concentrate all your attention on a crystal ball, you won't derive arcana inherent to the crystal. What you see is perhaps what you want to see. Or maybe a warning. Whatever it is, it is a projection. An illusion, if not a delusion. A subjective fact, taken for what it is. In glass, a reflection of the beholder. A con artist's falsehood otherwise.

A rock is just a rock.

A stone is just a stone.

Crystal, while pretty to look at, is still just crystal.

Inert. Frozen in time. Paperweight on a windowsill, appearing from translucent curtains grazed by a sparkling breeze.

Twelve-year-old Hoshina Keita had a good eye. Those eyes saved the lives of many today.

He predicted the train was in jeopardy, and his informed observation regarding the water from the underground pipes weakening the earth beneath the track in the train's path yielded Akira the advance notice necessary to stave off disaster (not that Keita being trapped on the train wasn't ample motivation to leap onto the moving train's roof).

Amachi Akira-kun: He had cold eyes where you couldn't tell what he was thinking, and hadn't talked to a soul since he and Keita became classmates. There was a lot Keita didn't know about him. The classmate of mystery.

Appearances can be deceiving. Keita remarked Akira was shockingly sociable when they got to talking; Akira, about his love of gems, and Keita about his hobby photographing trains (blatantly advertised by the train on his hoodie). He didn't expect Akira have such a normal laugh. Akira seemed too cool for that.

But normalcy itself was deceiving. There were layers and layers to Akira, more brilliant and arresting the more Akira exhibited of himself to him. Chiselling the rock loose to lay eyes on the shining guardian within.

"Quartz sleeping in stone, become crystal and carry me!"

The crystal amulet around Akira's neck had the power to let him draw on its substance or the solid material packed below ground and control it freely, fashioning a crystal bridge to substitute the area of track that'd crumbled.

"The Miracle Stone," Akira called it. He could also make a wand, sword, and darts out of it; in the case of the latter, accelerating the nucleation process of the throwing crystals to form blockades and spikes. Or he could do as he'd currently done, creating a geode spire high as the sunset with an open sphere at its summit for them to kick back and chat things through in.

After nearly dying by derailment, suspension from a glass ball in the city's skyline didn't frighten Keita. Not with the boy who daringly launched himself off the sharp point of a quartz stalagmite onto a speeding train present.

Keita considered his checkered shoes. He had queries, naturally, but they were pushed aside by the recency of his adrenaline rush. He felt wired, like he was in a state of constantly jumping out of his skin, similar to the upward and outward expansion of crystal growths Akira conjured like alchemy.

The power wasn't his, Akira explained. It was all the stone, and he had mixed emotions possessing it. Children shouldn't tap into this power. He'd even contemplated throwing the Miracle Stone away. Honestly, he'd tried, only for it to find its way back to him.

Even so, he demonstrated no reluctance playing vigilante or outright saving the day with it when trouble was afoot. Helping a cat down from a tall place, diverting a truck poised to run over a mother and baby, interrupting a robbery in progress…

Akira's conflict – whether to use the Miracle Stone for good or not at all – stemmed from a dark event in his past, no doubt. He didn't deny it and commented on it vaguely to Keita…openly. But it was a sore spot for him. A bleeding wound, fiery in his remembrance.

He continued using the power in the presence of eyewitnesses when it should have been a secret.

Keita defaulted to what he knew. Trains.

Keita could get carried away with his trains. The moment he got going, it was difficult for him to stop regurgitating every detail on the subject. Their makes and models. Their speeds and schedules. Nonetheless, Akira seemed he wanted to listen. He reiterated Keita shouldn't apologize for loving something. His attitude was pleasant.

Yes, pleasantly cool. Akira had a natural affinity for cool entrances, be it the withdrawn polish of slowly turning around and stepping out behind the classroom's curtain, or the dramatic pizazz of a crystal-assisted superhero landing!

This was the crystal ball conundrum again. Was Keita seeing what he wanted to see? The class enigma, here with him at the edge of twilight, sheltered in a crystal cave of Akira's making?

No, this wasn't a dream. He was too awake. It wasn't projection, illusion, or delusion.

The crystal around Akira's neck wasn't opaque. It was see-through. Yet it could change shape while retaining its original qualities.

Akira had secrets, but they weren't so precious he'd lock them up in a jewelry box. Keita need only mine another layer to dig them out of Akira's memories, and Akira wouldn't hate him for it.

Who desires hate? Taniguchi-san, probably. Hate is cloudy, scathing, and scalding.

Love is light. You see yourself in it, beyond the superficial. The true you. Glinting. Glimmering. Gleaming. Of grander import compared to a promise with a ghost.

If you have the power to address people in need, and you don't address them for the sake of a "normal" life, aren't you cruel?

Akira couldn't ignore the itch to do justice any more than he could ignore the itch to smile at the ruby infusion over Keita's freckles. At Keita's reaction to his newfound popularity as a result of his involvement in the train accident.

Akira sees through Keita.

Keita sees through Akira.

Don't apologize for love. If there is no path, you make one.