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Emporio Alniño lived in a prison.
He was not, as a matter of fact, a prisoner, instead he had been born in that prison, and had remained there most of his life. Typically such a thing would result in the prison child being taken away by the relevant authorities, should the mother have too long a sentence, or like his own did, die, but he just wasn't.
Emporio grew up in a prison. When he was young, so so young, he found a room that only he could touch, a place only he could interact with. Emporio Alniño lived in a ghost room.
And in that room, there were books.
They weren't educational, or rather, they were not the type of educational books intended for children. Before this room had been destroyed, the music room with the large piano and a variety of other objects, it had also been used to store thing such as science texts, probably intended to be on a temporary basis, but all of that would have changed after the fire. Endless dronings on and on about hyper-specific topics only those in-the-know inside the scientific community would care about. He read them anyway, when he was finally able to, being taught by one of the inmates who kept him secret from people like the guards.
They were boring, and were absolutely packed with pretentious, scientific words he didn't get.
But there was one book Emporio liked, no, loved. A book that catered to all ages, both in the way it was written and the topics it held. The book had a fairly long, boring title; 'A fully comprehensible text of various famous myths and legends throughout history worldwide'. It was a massive book, and the text inside was absolutely tiny. All in all, it seemed to be exactly like all the other dull tomes about uber-specific history and biology. It wasn't.
Emporio Alniño grew up reading, over and over again from a thick book about almost half the size of his head, fairytales and legends, in all of their uncut glory. It fascinated him. Yes, childish, but he was only a child, despite how fast he had to grow up, so it was to be expected.
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It's when he's reading this book that Anasui first stumbles into the room, picking apart a watch that looked like it had been stolen from one of the guards, a quick "what the fuck" already leaving his lips.
Emporio freezes. From what he's seen, with Weather and the other inmates that have come and gone, only stand users can see his room on their own. He clutches the sides of his book tight, knuckles turning white.
The stranger leans against a wall, pieces of the half taken-apart watch held tightly in his hands. He glances around the room, and then right at Emporio. The boy shifts slightly, not knowing the intentions of this stranger who walked into his safe space that only he (and Weather, and a few other inmates that had long either left or died, so really quite a few people but semantics,) knew about.
"Why the fuck is a kid in a prison?" He asks, blunt and to the point, and then, looking at the old, worn, absolutely massive tome Emporio holds in his hands, "What the fuck are you reading?"
Emporio shifts again, but its less with nerves and more with self-consciousness. He didn't stay in this ghost room to be judged. "I was born here," he replies, "And it's a good book, honestly." He wants to ask the burning question, why are you here, but there's something intense in the man's gaze and he doesn't.
The man, who was wearing fishnets covered in footprints as a shirt, Emporio noticed incredulously, gave him a weird look, one Emporio couldn't quite decipher, and went back to picking apart the high-tech watch.
That was the extent to which anyone had ever asked about Emporio's little (giant) book of legends, and he never recieved another comment on it, ever again.
Not when he met Jolyne, or Hermes, or Foo Fighters.
Not when everything in the prison went absolutely insane.
Certainly not when he spies it, lying splayed on the floor at the back of the room, Pucci in front of him, choking, and Emporio is choking too, but it didn't matter because Pucci was still painting things as if Emporio was the bad guy, as if he hadn't murdered all of Emporio's friends to get here.
The whole wide Universe restarts for a second time.
(His book is missing when he finds himself in the middle of the street in the new-new universe.)
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Emporio wonders (to distract himself, mostly) with his head pressed up against the glass of a car window, surrounded by familiar strangers, if the legends in this universe would be the same as the ones from the original. Would they be completely different?
Identical?
He gazes at people he knows-but-doesn't, at faces that are so achingly familiar yet have incredibly slight differences, different names like Irene and Anakiss, slight changes in the way they act, the way they speak to each other, because most of them don't know each other and they're not meeting in prison, they meet at the side of a road, get to know each other on the inside of a car. They all show absolutely no indication that they can see the stand hanging over his shoulder despite the fact that it's owner is seated by the other window of the back row, the same row that he's in.
Emporio wonders how many slight differences he would notice in the legends that he grew up with, and his stomach flips.
He wants to know, wants to know so badly what's changed and what has stayed the same. How those he cared for have changed, how they've stayed the same.
He doesn't want to know, doesn't want to see exactly how much has been lost and re-created, with only himself and his own memories around to keep in mind the original.
He thinks to himself, how this entire adventure had seemed like something out of his book, a story, a fairytale, a legend, something too ridiculous to be true. But not quite, he knows, because all legends have someone to spread them, to speak about them, and as he looks at these near-identical people to those he knew, he's not sure he'll ever be able to.
But if not him, then who?
Even the greatest of legends fade into dust.