Chapter Text
He was bored.
Boredom filled Akaashi’s days, lingered in his every move, entangled itself in the curls of his dark hair.
He was wrapped in boredom and did not know how to come out of it.
Akaashi would walk to his university every day, finding the path he took as unexciting as ever. He would watch his classes and take notes, but none of it sparked something in his heart, even though it was a course he had chosen himself. He would eat in the cafeteria, do his homework, read the assigned books, but nothing, none of it, would make him less bored.
He felt like he was a bystander of his own life. People, events, days - everything was like he was watching a TV program.
A very boring one.
It’s not like he had a wish, or something that he could do so he would start feeling better. Maybe that was the problem. Akaashi was just existing, day by day, without anything exciting happening in his life, without friends, without a life.
He wondered how long that would drag on, and if something would happen. It never had. And he knew it wouldn’t.
But he was wrong.
…
He was at a café. His half-drunk matcha, with the same boring taste as ever, was starting to get cold. His face rested in his hand, his elbow on the table, and he kept his eyes low, his long eyelashes nearly touching his cheekbones, his gunmetal blue irises following the lines of a boring book he had to read for his next boring class. It told the story of all sorts of wondrous events happening to a particularly plain main character, who had nothing special going for them. Akaashi didn’t like those kinds of stories. The author made it seem like the main character didn’t have any special qualities, but later on during the reading, one would find out they had many, many incredible assets. They would be brave, or loyal, or maybe even selfless enough to sacrifice themselves. That’s why they were chosen to be the main character, that’s why magical things happened to them.
As someone who lived an everyday boring life, Akaashi could never find beauty in that. He would never be that main character, because he knew he lacked any special abilities or traits. He would keep on living his boring life until gods knows when.
Or so he thought, before the two weird men entered the café.
Akaashi didn’t notice them right away, trying to finish reading page 154 so he would move on to page 155.
The first man was very tall, and he wore black from head to toes. His shoes were patent black; his trousers and his shirt were black as well, and he wore a long overcoat that reached his knees. His left eye’s eyelashes were long and very dark, and his spiky hair was blacker than his outfit. One wouldn’t be able to see his right eye’s eyelashes properly because a long fringe reached them and almost hid them completely.
The man who accompanied him was quite different though; he was a lot shorter and he didn’t wear all black. His pants and oversized sweatshirt were indeed black and he hid his hands in the large front pocket, but his sneakers were closer to a shade of dark blue. His hair though, half covered in the sweatshirt’s hoodie, was a brassy blonde – or at least part of it was. The roots were definitely black.
The first man ordered an espresso and the second, a strawberry frappuccino.
This all could have been very exciting and people could have been glancing curiously at the two very particular figures, but for some reason they weren’t. It was like, besides the shop assistant, who was paying very close attention, no one could see them.
If Akaashi had raised his eyes from page 158, he might have seen them before they made way to his table and sat silently in front of him. He might have noticed that, besides him and the shop assistant, who now seemed to have completely forgotten the duo she had just served, no one was really able to see the two of them.
But he didn’t, and it would still take a lot of time for him to notice that magical things had started happening to him.
“Is it good?”
With a little jump in surprise, Akaashi looked up from his book and met their stare. He blinked a few times.
“Is it good?” the first man repeated, and took a sip from his espresso.
“What is?” he asked, confused with the sudden approach of two strangers.
“The book,” he grinned, slightly raising his chin to indicate the hardcover book that Akaashi still had in his hands, page 159 mid-turned as he meant to flip it over to 160.
“It is not”, he deadpanned. The man with the long fringe shrieked in what could be a laugh, but the one next to him didn’t even bat an eye. “Who are you?” Akaashi decided to ask, ready to pack his things and leave.
They exchanged a look and after another sip of his drink, the man spoke again. Akaashi wondered if the pudding-head one could speak at all.
“You don’t need to know that. But,” he raised his index finger in the air, trying to keep Akaashi’s eyes focused on him, “you do need us. And we’re here to help!”
“I don’t recall having ever asked for help, much less from a freak hairstyle duo,” the words slipped out of his mouth before he could really censor them, but Akaashi didn’t regret them. The man didn’t laugh, but his smirk was still spread across his face. Akaashi was about to stand up and leave when the man spoke again.
“Aren’t you bored of your life? Don’t you wish to change? To find something exciting to fill your days?”
Akaashi sighed.
He was bored. He wanted to change. At least he thought he did. He wasn’t sure if he would rather wait for a miraculous event to happen to him, or if he would be willing to actively pursue that change. Maybe he regretted his stagnancy, and the lack of plan to do anything about it. Since he didn’t know for sure, he decided to sit for a while longer and listen to the weird words of the man.
“Are you trying to sell me life insurance?” he raised his eyebrows. The man snorted and Akaashi noticed a small grin forming on Pudding-Head’s lips.
“Not at all! I do have something to offer you, though,” he finished his drink and it only took one glance at his side for the man beside him to take his hands out of his hoodie’s front pocket, along with a mechanical device.
Akaashi felt a little tempted to lean in closer to see properly, but held himself back. The device was pushed on the table by Bedhead’s big hands, and he could see what it was.
A wristwatch.
It was a very weird looking one, indeed, but there was nothing else Akaashi would call it. It had only one hand, and it had spaces for numbers that were adjusted by screws on the side. It had way too many numbers for a normal clock. Akaashi had no idea what kind of watch that was, and after inspecting it for a few seconds, he decided the two of them were very likely pranking him.
“What kind of scam is this?” he asked, leaning back on his chair, farther from them.
“It’s not a scam. You should be more careful and observant; if you paid better attention to your surroundings, you probably wouldn’t have ended up like this,” was the answer he got. His eyebrow flinched but he didn’t say anything else.
He didn’t even know why he was still sitting there listening to these two weirdos who were offering him some kind of help he never had asked for.
“Before you get up and leave, you should take a look around,” Bedhead added, turning the empty cup in his hands, seeming rather calm and playful.
Akaashi squinted, not sure if he wanted to follow the man’s suggestion, but he did anyway. Taking a look around, his frowned face slowly relaxed and turned into a surprised expression, until the reality of what was ahead of him struck him completely.
People were frozen in place, as if time had stopped. The waitress was returning to the counter, her ponytail frozen in the air, strands of it spiking in different directions following the twist of her body. Someone was pouting, about to close the distance between their lips and the cup. The hot liquid’s smoke was not twirling in the air, seeming like a faint sculpture. Everywhere Akaashi looked, people were so much like statues he knew it would be impossible for it to be a prank. They couldn’t possibly stop smoke in the air.
Akaashi fidgeted with his fingers under the table and felt like screaming.
He gulped and turned his eyes back to the duo in front of him, who calmly ignored the increasing panic his expression started showing. Pudding-Head had finally finished his Frappuccino, exchanging a glance with Bedhead.
Before Akaashi could fully ascertain what was going on, both of them stood up and Bedhead was smirking again.
“I suggest your first day of college. And this time, try not to walk away from the crowd, eh. Those people talking so loudly at the entrance might not be that bad,” he said, waving a hand in the air while Pudding-Head pushed the wristwatch a little closer to Akaashi. “Remember to pay attention to your surroundings too. It might be a good start.”
“Who the fuck are you people?” he finally managed. His voice was hoarse and he still felt a bit sick. He did not understand what was going on. Who were those two? Why did they talk to him? How did they stop time? And what the fuck was the wristwatch they were handing him, with all that suspicious and vague advice?
His head was a mess, even messier than the duo’s hairstyle.
He didn’t get his answer, though. Pudding-Head took his leave first, not even saying a single word throughout the whole meeting, and Bedhead grinned.
“If everything goes well, you won’t see us again, so you don’t need to know that. Good luck,” he said before following his partner.
As soon as the door clicked back on the frame, closing behind Bedhead’s large back, diverse sounds reached Akaashi’s ears and made him recoil from surprise, as the café became lively again. The waitress reached the counter, putting the empty cups on the sink, her ponytail nicely flowing along her movements. The person finally sipped on their hot drink, the vapor of it slightly humidifying their cheeks, only to have their tongue burnt.
Akaashi looked around astonished for a few more seconds, not sure if he’d fallen asleep while reading his boring book and dreamed all of that. He lowered his eyes to the opened pages in front of him, instead having them meet the wristwatch on the table.
Page 159 still waited to be turned, but Akaashi only closed the book and hid the wristwatch in his pocket, the cold metal in touch with his long fingers only confirming how real all of that had been.
…
It was a bad day.
Akaashi didn’t really have good days but today was a particularly bad one.
He opened his room’s door, soaking wet from the unexpected thunderstorm that greeted him at the end of his last lecture of the day, in which he had received one of his papers back with some very nasty feedback from his teacher. His clothes, hair, glasses, and backpack were all drenched and he bet the books inside it had been ruined as well.
He slowly walked inside his usually tidy room, except this time it was a mess. He couldn’t have been bothered to clean up so he just left the clothes on the floor, the books on the table, his paper drafts all over his rumpled sheets.
He didn’t know what else to do.
Akaashi kneeled on the floor, opened his backpack, and took out his books one by one, feeling the cold water drops fall from the edges of his hair strands onto his shirt, his hands, his books. It took him a moment to realize his vision was out of focus and he felt warm droplets mixing with the cold ones, and another moment to notice that it was because he was crying.
The room was quickly brightened by a flash of strong lightning, followed closely by thunder resonating loudly, and Akaashi’s tears streamed silently across his cheeks. His hand still held one of the wet books he was planning to take out of his backpack, his fingers trembling.
How had all come to this?
With a guttural cry ripping from his throat, he threw the book away from him, and it hit the bedside table that was full of trash and poorly stacked books. The strength of the toss made them fall off their stack, the repeated thuds echoing in his ears.
There weren’t only thuds, though.
Clink.
Akaashi raised his eyes, confused by the unexpected metal sound that resounded from the floor. His face was hot, his hands still trembled. Even though the room was quite dark, a perfectly timed lightning strike illuminated it enough so he could see the weird wristwatch those strangers had given him at the café some days ago. He had forgotten that he had even left it there, under the pile of boring books he hadn’t read.
We’re here to help!
Akaashi didn’t have any reason to believe him.
Aren’t you bored of your life?
Terribly. He wasn’t sure if he could take one more single day of that.
Don’t you wish to change?
Akaashi moved unconsciously closer to the wristwatch, slowly, barely recognizing the fact that his hands were on the floor, guiding him as he dragged himself across the room, until his fingers closed on the wristwatch.
To find something exciting to fill your days?
He must have gone insane. He didn’t know Bedhead and Pudding-Head. He had no reason to trust or believe them.
But he couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t take not doing anything at all. He had to change. He had to find something, anything. It could be crazy, he could be called an idiot and reckless, but even if it was the smallest thing, he would like to grasp the chance and get out of this boring life.
He wiped his face with the back of his right hand and after taking a deep breath, put the wristwatch around his left wrist. His hands were still shaking so it took him a few tries to do it.
I suggest your first day of college.
It was quite intuitive to make the screws turn to show the accurate date on screen. He didn’t take as long as he had expected to figure it out, despite having little to no explanation on how it worked from the duo. After the date was settled, he didn’t know what to do.
He waited long minutes. He tried to keep his breathing stable, hearing the thunderstorm rage outside. Every now and then some lightning would clear his vision, fixed on the wristwatch around his wrist, hoping that this time, when the room became dark again, something would have changed.
But nothing did.
Letting out a feeble breathless laugh escape through his lips, he buried his face in his hands.
So that was it.
…
Akaashi blinked at the sudden clarity. He hadn’t noticed the night before, but he had fallen asleep curled up on the floor, without even taking off his wet clothes and that stupid wristwatch. His eyes hurt, his throat was dry and he could very possibly be sick.
He had forgotten to close his window shutter the night before and the room was lightened by a perfectly sunny day. He faced his ceiling for long minutes, considering his options. He could just stay lying there all day. No one would notice, no one would care. He didn’t sleep very well so he could use the time to just take a proper shower and go back to bed, hoping to sleep away some days of his disastrous life.
However, that felt wrong. He wasn’t sure why, but after the night before, when he had finally decided to make a move to change his life, it seemed a waste to go back on that resolution. So what if that stupid watch didn’t work? He might try to do something different that day.
Gathering strength from gods knows where, Akaashi slowly rose to his feet and, wobbling a bit, reached the bathroom. He decided he wouldn’t look at his face in the mirror until he had had a proper shower. It would do some good to eat something decent for breakfast, so he thought about stopping by a convenience store and buying something nutritious.
He not so regretfully took off the wristwatch and threw it in the trash can before stripping and stepping into the shower.
Looking better than he felt inside after a warm shower and a change of clean clothes – possibly his last ones, considering how many T-shirts and pants laid across his floor – he finally took a look outside the window.
The days were always beautiful after a storm like the previous night’s one, but something felt wrong. Akaashi got closer to the window, opened it and leaned into the slightly cold sunny day. It wasn’t supposed to be this chilly in summer.
Nor should his view from the window look that pink.
Awestruck, Akaashi stared at the cherry blossoms that filled the path from his dorm to the city. Thousands of petals fluttered in the wind, one of them flying straight into his opened mouth, making him gasp and spit it out.
His heart was racing and he tried to process what he was seeing. Why were there cherry blossoms so suddenly during the summer? Did the thunderstorm create a mess in the weather?
The cherry blossoms made him remember his first week of classes at college, how the path was always filled with pink wherever he went in the new city he had just moved into.
Eh?
His first week of classes?
Akaashi turned back to the room in a hurry, stumbling on his clothes and books scattered on the floor. His room seemed as messy as it had been yesterday, so he didn’t notice at first how different it actually was. Lots of boxes were next to the door, waiting to be taken to the burnable trash. His clothes and books were piled up on the floor, but in a definitely more organized way, like they had just been unpacked, his bed was neatly cleaned up and his sheets weren’t a mess. Despite having slept on the floor for some reason, no resemblance to the messy room he was in just yesterday could be found.
His heart was racing as he made way to the calendar hanging on his wall, his eyes widening slowly as he noticed a big number 4 on it. And on the smaller numbers, a red circle marked the day which his classes had started.
Which, upon finding his phone amidst all that mess, with trembling hands, he realized was exactly today.
“What the actual…” he couldn’t even complete the sentence. Because he knew what happened. He’d kind of asked for it.
He just didn’t expect it would actually work. After considering yesterday a fiasco, Akaashi did not think for one second that when he woke up the next morning, he would have gone back in time.
But he had just done so.
And fate had a funny way of playing tricks on him, because he was already late for his first day of classes.