Work Text:
“You bought me a horse.“
He watches as said horse pulls at the thin weeds between the copper stones leading the way out of the Akashi estate's stable. Inside it seemed nearly black to him, but in the light of the sun its hide lights up in what sort of resembles liquid chocolate, a white spot on its forehead like a sprinkle of icing. It's probably a beautiful, priceless horse, Mayuzumi thinks. Not that he would know.
He takes another step back, not trusting it to not suddenly kick at him.
Akashi is brushing out his horse's mane in the meantime, slender fingers winding through what has already been preened to perfection. The horse whose name Mayuzumi has forgotten already is impossibly, blindingly white, proof of several hours of upkeep a day by people other than Akashi. When he was younger they'd had a small white dog but it turned yellow with time. It's what normally happens in these cases. “I didn't buy you a horse, Mayuzumi-san. My father bought me a horse and I decided to regift it.“
“You're not supposed to regift things. I thought you of all people would know that sort of basic etiquette stuff.“
The other stops his fussing over his stupid horse, looking over the thing's back directly back at him now, red eyes a little hooded with the effort of looking towards the sun. “Mayuzumi-san, if you do not want my generous gift, you only have to say so.“
Mayuzumi ignores that. “Does it have a name?“
The horse in question neighs as if in response, making him jump a little. He's learned by now to recognize the face Akashi makes at that as him barely managing to hold back laughter. “Her pedigree name is Third Fortune Left, but I assumed you would want to rename her.“
“That's an awful fucking name.“
Now Akashi does laugh. It's more of a wheeze really, less the pleasant chime of bells to write poetry about one would expect out of him. Mayuzumi has gotten used to it. “I suppose it is.“ He pats his horse on the neck, and the thing actually nestles into his face. It's ridiculous. “Want to think of a name while we go for a ride?“
“I don't know how to ride a horse.“
He also doesn't know anything about horses in general. If he asked, Akashi would speak of Troy, of Chetak, of Bukephalos. Mayuzumi doesn't ask, and thinks of the horse they eat to survive in Cosmic Battle! Lovely Angel Chiruruchan! volume five.
Akashi scoffs, fastens the loops on his saddle. There's a single line of sweat running down his nape, and Mayuzumi follows it with his eyes till it disappears behind the collar of Akashi's white polo shirt. “I can teach you. I taught you how to play basketball after all.“
He frowns at that. “I knew how to play well enough before you.“ What he doesn't answer is: That wasn't you. That was him. “Also I don't want to learn how to ride a horse.“
“You're welcome to stay behind while I go for a ride with Yukimaru then. I will call someone to fetch you a drink and take care of the horse.“
They stare each other down for a moment and Mayuzumi is very aware that he has been setting a precedent for losing these preludes to arguments lately.
Standing in front of a saddled up Third Fortune Left looking at him inquisitively a little later, Mayuzumi suddenly realizes that horses are sort of big, actually. Before he can share his observation, Akashi has already gotten in position in front of him, knees slightly bent, fingers interlocking. It kind of pisses Mayuzumi off how gallant he looks.
“If you step on my hands I will able to help you get on the horse.“ Akashi explains helpfully.
“I'm not stupid.“ he replies, much to the other's amusement. He holds onto Akashi's shoulder with one hand, careful to accidentally graze his skin, steps into the makeshift ladder. Akashi propels him up with a surprising strength given their difference in weight. It makes Mayuzumi nearly miss his chance to swing his leg over the horse's back and scramble to grab onto its neck. The horse snorts, Akashi is laughing again, and Mayuzumi tries his best to get into a better position.
Akashi for his part, ever the show-off, manages to scale his in one smooth movement. “There's a path through the forest I'm marginally fond of.“ he says. “I will have Yukimaru walk for now, and Third Fortune Left should be able to follow well enough. Squeeze your thighs.“
Mayuzumi is too preoccupied with the intricacies of horse husbandry to make the joke they both would be expecting at that. When the horse does start moving he clings to the stirrups, back candlestick straight.
Akashi in front of him is caressing Yukimaru again, looking like he was born to sit atop the horse's back. “The ride should be long enough that you will have come up with a name for your horse by the end of it.“
“Maybe I'll name it Jibril.“ he answers as they pass a field of sunflowers, a thousand heads reaching up. It's a beautiful day, mild, birds chirping. He can't remember having ever spent a day at Akashi's estate that wasn't blessed with perfect weather. “Or Haruhi, or Emilia.“
“Jibril is the Islamic version of the angel Gabriel's name, so I believe I can probably convince my father of that.“ Mayuzumi can hear the smile in Akashi's voice as he says it. “He will not mind a horse named after Amelia Earhart either. But truth be told I expected you to insist on Ringo.“
“Has anyone ever told you that you are weirdly sentimental?“
The person in front of him doesn't stop, but his voice is softer when he says: “It's what you were reading when I first approached you.“
It's a lie. It was what Mayuzumi had been reading when Akashi Seijuurou had approached him.
They quiet down while the field they ride alongside gives way to a forest. Mayuzumi keeps his eyes trained on the man in front of him, the sun blinking through the trees drawing the shadows of leaves on his small back. It's a familiar sight. Mayuzumi has spent a lot of time in his last year of high school staring at that back while following the person it belonged to into battle, memorizing its lines and crevices. Pinned his expectations onto those narrow shoulders until there was no space left.
It's worse in moments like this, when he has time to think.
In the back of his mind, Mayuzumi watches Akashi Seijuurou die, and be reborn on a basketball court, sweat running into his eyes.
---
He's on Rakuzan High's northern rooftop reading when a clear voice calls out to him.
“Are you Mayuzumi-san?“
Mayuzumi looks up, annoyed. He's finally gotten to a good part in A Clockwork Apple and Honey and Little Sister, Kaguya descending from the moon. He enjoys his cliches, and the chance rooftop meeting with the heroine is his favourite. Who is this guy bothering him?
When he looks up, the guy bothering him is none other than Akashi Seijuurou, first year captain of the Rakuzan High basketball club. Mayuzumi doesn't remember having ever talked to him before directly.
“How are you?“
He looks back at his book, hoping that the intruder would get the hint. Kaguya lands in front of the main character. “You're acting awfully familiar. Don't you mean 'nice to meet you'?“
He doesn't get the hint. “We were teammates until just the other day.“
This makes him look up, drop kenototo. Akashi Seijuurou is still standing in front of him, a halo of sunlight turning his hair light at the edges, his mismatched eyes trained on Mayuzumi. He wonders how he's never noticed them before, the deep crimson and the honey gold. He doesn't know it yet but this is his moment of no return. “How unusual. Most people have a hard time remembering me.“
When he was five, Mayuzumi got lost at a tanabata festival. It's his first coherent memory, standing next to a stall selling chocolate apples until his feet hurt, biting his lip because he didn't want to be crying when his parents found him. After an hours of this the stall owner sighed and took him by the hand, presumably to help him find either his parents or someone who could. When he was five, Mayuzumi let go of that hand, having learnt that he can turn invisible when he wants to.
He found his parents eventually; to their great surprise, their child had been missing. Mayuzumi got used to it after that, his shadow existence. There's no use getting upset over forgotten birthday invitations or being passed over at roll call when you can be reading light novels on rooftops undisturbed instead.
He's become used to being invisible, so of course Akashi Seijuurou with the weird eyes would be the one to see him.
Mayuzumi finds it surprisingly easy to talk to him after that, watching their back and forth about light novels as if he's a third person on the roof. It seems increasingly familiar to him. He realizes when Akashi mentions the Phantom Sixth Man, the set up for their trajectory together, the inciting incident. Here's the mysterious backstory, here's the clueless main character who feels like this has nothing to do with him.
“Teikou's... So it's not just a rumour?“ he adds, reading off the script.
“No, that's what I wanted to discuss.“ Akashi says quietly. Then, with the dramatic wind on his side: “Mayuzumi Chihiro, I want you to become the new Phantom Sixth Man.“
Mayuzumi snatches his copy of kenototo back, feeling like he is losing control of the situation. “I refuse.“ He'll agree of course. “I love myself. Specializing in passes sounds boring. I'm not that desperate to play. There's no point in playing if I don't feel good about it.“
Akashi's eyes widen even further for a moment, inhumanely, slit pupils narrow. Mayuzumi wonders if he will turn out to be half cat while the other drops his gaze with a cold chuckle.
Who is this guy? He suddenly changed. He can see the lines written on the page but they still ring true. He thinks that if he reaches out in this moment he will be able to cut Akashi out of it, keep a two dimensional reminder of him safe between the pages of his copy of A Clockwork Apple and Honey and Little Sister.
Mayuzumi is not very surprised at the fact that his heroine turns out to be a guy. He doesn't like real women, has never liked them. They are nothing like the girls in the novels he reads, their shrill voices and complicated mikado style conversation annoying him like little else.
Akashi Seijuurou has a very nice voice and there is no spiderweb of connotations attached to his words when he says: “Interesting. I like you even more now.“ He widens his eyes further. “You could become a greater phantom player than Tetsuya.“ The quiet breeze has started back up, winding through the strands of his hair as if to emphasize the words.
Mayuzumi has handed in his resignation to the basketball club yesterday, ending his very short attempt at delusions of grandeur, the dream of a high school existence filled with pathos. He was content to return to the shadowed existence of the mob character because it's easier than working against his tendency to blend into the crowd. Of course it would be at this moment, in this exact spot, that Akashi Seijuurou falls from the sky and into his life, like a weightless crab ready to sink his claws into him and never let go.
In his third year of high school, Mayuzumi makes aquaintance with an alien.
---
“Chihiro.“ Akashi says during practice, voice cold. He's fixing him in place with his stare, mismatched eyes trained on his face with an intensity he can feel crawling all over. The harsh lights of the gym draw dark shadows on his face, his arms crossed in front of his chest, jacket slung across his shoulders. Mayuzumi sometimes wonders if he's aware of his effect on others, his perfect kouichibyou demeanour, and if pressed he would tend to say yes.
“You can do better.“
Mayuzumi frowns, crosses his arm in turn. Answers: “I'm already doing great.“
He says this, but in the end he knows Akashi is right, and next time he does better.
---
If Mayuzumi cared to listen in class and someone asked him for his opinion, he would say Akashi suffers of a Napoleon Complex which isn't true but it's easy. But he doesn't, so what the boy most reminds him of is Rikka Takanashi. Neither are adequate explanations to draw up the entire oil painting of What Is Wrong With Akashi Seijuurou, but Mayuzumi lives in the fixtures of two dimensional characters, so it's fine, for now.
And if someone outright asked him if he liked Akashi, Mayuzumi thinks he would say no. It is probably impossible to like Akashi Seijuurou, because there is very little likable to him, said him being less of a person and more of an amalgamation of character traits that fail to make the jump from two to three dimensional. Here's the perfect prince type, student council president and captain of their team, dream of every girl's waking day. Here's the rich young master with the absent father and the dead mother. Here's the megalomaniac who takes to attacking people with scissors and offering his eyes. Here's the girl jumpstarting the plot around the hapless protagonist.
He does think he is probably in love with him though, as annoying as that is to admit. Mayuzumi loves himself, but he also knows that profound rooftop encounters like theirs are a genre staple, and that at the end of the story the girl who upended his ordinary life in the first volume is the one he ends up with.
---
“So how are you enjoying yourself?“ Akashi gets Yukimaru to stop with a nearly unnoticeable flick of his wrist and turns to look at him. They've passed a small stone bridge that lead them over a tiny river. There's flowers growing all over the edge of the path, a rainbow assortment of colours. A soft breeze makes shadows dance across the ground. In front of him, fairy tale prince Akashi on his white horse. It kind of makes him sick.
“My ass hurts.“ It's not really true, but it's an easy answer. Sitting on a horse is significantly more comfortable than sitting on a bicycle at least, which he is more familiar with.
Akashi hums at that because of course he's aware when Mayuzumi is lying. “And did you find a name for her yet?“
“Yes, I'm going to name it Kirino.“
That makes little wrinkles of amusement appear at the corner of Akashi's eyes. Mayuzumi has taken to mapping them out, those eyes, and the way Akashi has stopped keeping them wide open at all times. He looks more comfortable now. “What an awful suggestion, Mayuzumi-san. Even I could not extenuate that for my father.“
“I'm sure if I asked you would try your best.“
---
They start dating a few months after his graduation, inevitably, him and the person calling himself Akashi Seijuurou. It's a funny story really, includes a late night text message from none other than Kuroko Tetsuya himself, and a meetup between all the former Miracles he is invited to even though he cares for none of them. There's a funny anecdote about Midorima Shintarou ending up covered in bean soup and one about the two meatheads, and one about the pretty one. By the end of the night the person who was and is now again Akashi Seijuurou is sitting cross legged on his unmade bed in his crappy dorm room, eyes bright, Mayuzumi's shirt hanging off one shoulder.
It's a funny story really, except it's not because Mayuzumi never tells it, so it never becomes one.
This new and old Akashi is kind, pliant – attentive, the sort of person who won't offer to gauge his eyes out for you but will offer them on a silver platter if you ask for them. He lets Mayuzumi do whatever he wants to him, calls out pet names and suffixes in increasingly higher registers when they're alone. In public he plays the prince, pays for Mayuzumi's indulgences with the sharp edge of his Centurion Card. They have long discussions about thematic inconsistencies in the light novels they consume which Akashi sometimes ruins by reminding Mayuzumi he reads actual literature as well. It's easy, pleasant. It kind of scares the shit out of Mayuzumi.
“Could you pass me the pancakes?“ Akashi asks some mornings, sporting a bedhead he would never let anyone else be privy to. Maybe he's wearing silken pajamas, or nothing but Mayuzumi's shirt. The radio's playing in the background, except in cases Mayuzumi wakes up with a headache.
Mayuzumi hums and does as asked. He probably just showered, or spent the early morning reading. They eat in comfortable silence. They talk about something trivial. Sometimes a foot will sneak up his leg, less sexual than familiar. Sometimes it's not pancakes but eggs on rice.
---
When everything is over, Mayuzumi finds himself back where it all started, on the northern rooftop of Rakuzan High, reading. It is incredible how fast life returns to mundanity once a supernova has finished burning out.
“Mayuzumi-san.“
It's a familiar voice, only it's not. Mayuzumi hoped he could escape having to ever hear it again but that was naive of course. “It's you, Akashi.“ The Akashi he doesn't know that is. “And honorifics? I thought we were equals.“
“Only when I'm your captain during practice. Now we are just a first year and a third year.“ There it is again, that cinematic wind. Mayuzumi is sick of it by now. “Thanks for your hard work.“
“Sure.“
The person everyone except for him knows as Akashi Seijuurou inclines his head slightly. “Are you sure you didn't want to attend the retirement ceremony?“
He sounds guarded, and Mayuzumi realizes there's an entire ocean underneath his feet of Akashi's humanity that he would have to get used to now that the other has fallen off his throne and the planets have reverted back to circling around the sun instead. Akashi crying after losing. Akashi smiling genuinely at Kuroko Fucking Tetsuya. Akashi trying to make jokes and failing because he is probably awful at them. Akashi getting frustrated there's no tofu left at the supermarket, mouth pursing in a pout. Akashi getting paint on his new shirt and later staying up with him to watch reruns of Toradora, the tv lights drawing shapes on his face.
There's nothing light novel heroine about it, because the Akashi Seijuurou he knew is dead.
He gets up. “Yeah. That's not really my thing, and I'm not that attached to the team.“ It's the truth: He couldn't care less about the others. Mibuchi, Hayama, Nebuya – they are background characters in this narrative. His last year in the basketball club had been their story, his and Akashi's. Their tale of great expectations and crushing defeat. If they had gotten a second volume, this would be their moment to regroup so they turn out triumphant the next year; only Mayuzumi isn't going to be at Rakuzan High next year and the alien heroine who changed his life did not survive the climax of volume one.
He turns around, gripping the banister. “It's not like I've got great memories from being on it.“ When he looks at the redhead again it's with a slight smile. It's probably only proper, ending it on a good note. “The last year wasn't bad, though. Thanks to you.“ Thanks to him, but he doesn't say that.
The person in front of him smiles in turn. It looks nothing like Akashi. “Yes.“
When he looks back away, he focuses on the skyline in front of him. It's a beautiful day and there's millions of people in Kyoto who have nothing to do with them. “Anyway, just leave me be until graduation.“ he finally says as he opens his light novel again. He's just gotten to the part where the main character kisses the heroine for the first time but it turns out it's her twin sister instead. “It'd be lame if we kept talking after today.“
He supposes this is how and where it would have to end, the rooftop. This is where Akashi Seijuurou first appeared in front of him to disrupt his life, turn his ordinary existence on its head by stringing him along with promises of greatness. Here's where the story starts and ends: Two rooftop meetings and two Akashis.
Mayuzumi has always been weirdly fond of parallelisms, the knowledge that stories bend back around into themselves. If the rooftop is where their story starts and ends then it can be perfectly contained within the parameters of this space. Mayuzumi shrinks the entirety of his aquaintance with Akashi Seijuurou down until it fits into his hands, small enough to be covered in two hundred pages, small enough for the northern rooftop of Rakuzan High.
There's nothing to wonder about now but the stranger between them. He wants to ask: “Who are you?“
(Where did he go?)
but he knows he will just get the same vague smile and frustrating answer.
“I'm Akashi Seijuurou of course.“
---
(What Mayuzumi doesn't know is that their duology of rooftop meetings is a trilogy, a quadrilogy, a pentalogy and then some – sometimes Mayuzumi falls asleep and Akashi keeps his promises, but he doesn't think these moments technically count.)
---
In the end it's not about horses, or rooftops for that matter – it's about the absence, the hole in the picture, the person standing between him and the man who calls himself Akashi Seijuurou.
Take an endless line of Akashis staring back at each other. Make them jump for you, make them march up and down like toy soldiers, make them say three words you are used to hearing like 'I am absolute' instead of three words you want to stop hearing like 'I love you'. Mayuzumi cuts a garland in the other's shape but when he unfolds it the light hits his eyes through the gap where one figure is missing. There's three more words written in the space:
(Who are you?)
They don't talk about it. The person calling himself Akashi Seijuurou will reach any octave for him but when he asks for a certain inflection there's no reaction. They don't talk about it. Akashi stops hanging up memorial trinkets of his achievements and takes up drawing instead. They don't talk about it. Mayuzumi drops the last remnants of the misdirection he used to practice about a year in. They don't talk about it. Sometimes he gets ill at the smell of the corpse between them in their bed, but they don't talk about it.
He doesn't search up pictures, even though it would be easy, even though there's probably hundreds of them, half of them on Mibuchi's phone. There's a generation of lovers out there with walls disappearing behind polaroids of their lost ones but Mayuzumi isn't one of them. When sentimentality was given out at the gates of heaven he was instead busy reading Double Core Memories: We will always win!! and rolling his eyes.
What he does is this: He watches that last game once more, projects it on his wall in the dark of his room. Pretends he is nothing but one of the hundreds of faceless spectators in the stands, a shadow so to speak. Turns it off at the first flash of honeyed yellow, satisfied. It's all he needs to know that he isn't mistaken, and that Akashi Seijuurou had indeed jumped off a spaceship onto the northern rooftop of Rakuzan High and into his life.
He believes in his alien encounter just as much as others believe in horoscopes, or that the shoe will land when you drop it.
---
“Have you found a name for her yet, Mayuzumi-san?“
He decides to answer the question with one of his own. “How old is it?“
They're sitting next to a pond now, watching the horses graze. Akashi has taken off his boots and is soaking his feet in the water. Mayuzumi thinks that's kind of gross, having read up on standing water in fifth grade, so he doesn't follow suit. “...She.“ he adds lamely when the other just gives him a look, eyebrow raised, instead of answering.
“Four years old if the papers are to be believed.“ The voice sounds distant now, face turned towards the sun.
Mayuzumi doesn't ask the second question, or the one after that for that matter. How old can horses get?
(How long will this last?)
---
In the grand scheme of things, the person Mayuzumi knew as Akashi Seijuurou only lived for a few months, barely enough for an infant to start walking. He spent nearly half of his life at Mayuzumi's side and then he died. It happens every day.
He tells himself this, repeats it like a prayer in front of the mirror, while crossing the street and during late night konbini runs. A thousand Amens a day but it doesn't help all that much. At the back of Mayuzumi's head stands a little man sagely nodding that death is a part of life, and behind him stands a slightly taller man screaming that it's unfair, that it wasn't supposed to end like this. Asuna doesn't die of cancer at the end of Sword Art Online, and Shana doesn't suddenly get hit by a car. Akashi Seijuurou dies and it's because of three words he uttered without thinking.
(Who are you?)
Those are not the three words he would've chosen if he'd known. Mayuzumi isn't shy, didn't feel ashamed of it, but he had assumed they were at volume one of at least ten. There was a song and dance to go through yet before the inevitable happy ending, UFO and all. He thought they'd have time. He thought this wasn't a standalone story.
(He wishes he had said something.)
Horse skeletons snake through the burials of ancient kings and warriors, an endless line of equine sacrifices queuing all along the hourglass of time. In Tibet they carry corpses up mountains to let them rest beneath the sky. Mayuzumi doesn't know this. Akashi would be thinking of Hephaistion now, of Patroklos before him, of the games accompanying their bones picked out of ashes. Fire and smoke, the appropriately insistent imagery.
But Mayuzumi is not Akashi, much like Akashi is not Akashi now, and his thoughts are occupied with the festivities surrounding the death of the protagonist's secret clone in Would you like a taste of your little loli cousin's cooking?! volume four who kills himself because he can't get the protagonist to do it for him. The protagonist cries, the little loli cousin cries, the funny animal companion who looks up women's skirts cries. There's a flashforward to when they shoot his body from the spaceship, and everyone's eating apple pie.
It's pretty much the same concept really.
---
When the person calling himself Akashi Seijuurou is preoccupied with a sudden phone call Mayuzumi can't bring himself to act interested in, he picks a flower. It's an ordinary daisy.
If this were a light novel, it would be one that fits the theme instead, something the fans will stealthily keep in a small vase on their windowsill and sigh over once in a while. Maybe chrysanthemums, red like Akashi's hair in the sun during that first rooftop meeting. A full bouquet of yellow marigolds, one for every time he's met that gaze. An arrangement of spider lilies.
But Mayuzumi has given up on thinking of his life in the framework of those somewhere between burning his tongue on coffee during their third date and moving boxes into their first apartment together a few months ago. He grinds the flower into dust between his fingers, supposing this is all the funeral rites the person he knew as Akashi Seijuurou will ever get.
“Akashi.“ he says when the other is done talking on the phone. “Thank you for the horse.“