Chapter Text
Akira wakes up feeling like he’s missing something. As he has for the past three years.
His eyes immediately dart to his right hand.
It’s blank.
He doesn’t know what he expected.
He gets ready for the day, following his typical routine. Eat, grab a bland outfit, avoid combing his rat’s nest hair and rush out the door to catch the train.
Akira stands flush against the window, watching the parallel train and—
That face...
—
Goro doesn’t wake up with the sun. Which is a peculiar thing considering the many precautions he has to ensure the opposite. He needs at least an hour to squeeze in some reading and exercise before he starts his day. But today, he doesn’t wake to the sound of his alarm, blaring loud enough to give someone who's hard of hearing a headache.
Instead, he falls out of bed.
His eyes shoot open the second his head hits the floor, and the first thing he sees are stars. Literal stars, or perhaps stickers. The ones any spaced obsessed child begs for at Christmas. Their pale tone contrasts with the dark wood.
Wood?
He must’ve hit his head harder than he originally thought.
Goro pushes back the heavy comforter that fell with him and sits up, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. His room smells strongly of dust and coffee today. He shouldn’t have dust in his room—at least not such a notable amount.
When he pulls his hands away from his face, ebony curls fall into his eyes. He doesn't have ebony hair. The back of his neck is bare. His hair is too short as well.
Goro frowns deeply. Then drags himself to his feet. A mirror, that’s what he needs.
His head hurts from the fall, and his vision is still partially obscured by streaks of black. How is he supposed to see? His normal hair is pampered with products and sprays—combed strategically enough to maintain public image. This hair is the direct opposite of that.
Finally, he takes a look at the room. A cluttered, disorganised mess of an attic. The frankly too-narrow bed he tumbled off of is merely a mattress on milk crates.
Something catches his eye. There’s a mirror in the corner. He trips over a misplaced stack of manga and a strange wooden block on his march over.
Then he sees himself in the mirror.
Not himself, but rather—someone else.
Another boy.
—
Akira leaves for school with crooked glasses and a cup of coffee filled with too much sugar. Sojiro called him insane, but Akira’s pretty sure they already established that. Exhibit A: he’s going to school with a wrinkled uniform and half-asleep brain. Insanity should be his middle name.
He must’ve fallen asleep in his uniform last night. That would make sense, considering he was tired enough to have a freakishly realistic dream about being a cute detective living in Tokyo. Weirdest dream he’s ever had, ignoring the one where Futaba turned into a waffle. He’s fever prone. That should explain the just of it.
He slept in as per usual, leaving him with no time to change out of anything.
Oh well. It’ll match his brand.
Ryuji greets him with an energised grin and eager brown eyes. Akira greets him with a yawn. Typical for them, although a little more tired on Akira’s part.
“Dude, you’re back to normal,” Ryuji says. He looks almost disappointed, for some reason.
“What’s normal?” Akira asks. His words aren’t said the right way. He’s still on the verge of falling back into sleep’s open and enticing arms.
“You were acting so weird yesterday,” Ann says, sliding next to him.
He blinks at her neon hoodie. It’s new. And bright.
He looks away after a moment. Too bright.
“I was normal yesterday though.”
“No, you weren’t,” Ann replies immediately. “You barely responded to your name; and when the teachers called on you” —her voice lowers to a mere whisper— “you gave them the right answer.”
Akira shares her look of horror for a moment. Then takes another sip of his coffee.
“Maybe I was possessed…”
Ryuji slings a casual arm around his shoulders. “Well, y’look fine now.”
Akira moves his coffee away from Ryuji, reminded of every single time the blond has been the cause of his coffee’s sad, dramatic death. Not today.
It takes him until maths to notice the writing on his hand—he’d been too tired and scatterbrained to notice it in the morning—but in smudged black marker, barely readable now, reads the word Hello.
Akira frowns. Turns his hand over again, as if there were more writing on the back. There isn’t. He’s greeted by his familiar pale skin, blank as a new whiteboard.
“Kurusu!”
Akira stands suddenly at the sound of his family name, chair falling to the floor behind him with a distinct thump. Ushimaru’s staring at him with a look of pure discontentment. Akira swallows. Fuck.
“Glad to see you remember your name today,” Ushimaru says, voice low and containing undertones of filtered anger. “Now sit down, and keep your eyes up here.”
Akira’s blood heats to a temperature beyond the sun as his classmates snicker around him. Why can’t he just be a turtle? Must be nice to have a shell to retreat into.
After picking up his chair and re-adjusting his glasses, he pulls out his red notebook in hopes of seeming like he’s paying attention. He flips through the usual previous pages of stupidly long math equations and notes.
Then freezes as he turns to the latest page. On it, reads a detailed account of the events of April seventh. Today. Or was it yesterday?
But either way, he never wrote this.
His eyes jump to the bottom of the page. Words, in bold, circled print read: Are you real?
—
“You alright?” The thick headed blond—Ryuji, he remembers—joins Goro at the gate, and stares at him as though he came to school with dyed hair and a costume. Goro has neither. Merely the ugly uniform and slightly combed hair. He had to do something to fix it—it was ridiculously knotted before. Complete opposite of his usual smooth, thick hair.
“Fine, thank you.” Goro tries to smile at the boy. It feels odd.
His response was somehow wrong, apparently, given the way Ryuji looks at him.
Goro sighs, and hikes the bag further up his shoulder. It’s his second time having the same dream. And this time, he’d ‘woken up’ with who are you? scrawled beneath his own fading handwriting. He’d written “hello” last time on a whim. At least this dream seems to follow a plot. And it’s a heck of a lot better than the reality he returns to when he wakes.
He’ll answer the writing later. When there isn’t an orange-haired gremlin-like girl scrambling into the attic and screaming God knows what. Futaba, his apparent younger sister, seems to have zero sense of personal space or privacy. He wonders what that says about himself, if this is his dream.
“Akira!” A bright voice calls from next to him. Something bright pink is tossed his way and he barely manages to catch it. He turns over his hand. It’s candy. He looks up to find another friend—the lively one, Ann. She’s smiling wide, and bouncing as though she were on clouds. At least she’s happy.
The hours at school are strange. Classes are filled with material Goro’s already studied, so he doesn’t shy away from raising his hand—but it receives so many confused stares.
Maybe this boy in his dreams—Akira—isn’t supposed to be this participative.
At night, he fills the boy's notebook with an account of everything that happened in the day, so detailed as though he might forget if he doesn't. Usually, he’d much rather use a phone. Dreams are always hazy and hard to remember when he wakes up.
Usually, he'd much rather keep journal entries on his phone. It’s what he does when he’s awake. But there’s something so surreal about writing in his dreams. And according to neuroscience, you’re more likely to remember something if you write it down.
And finally, he scrawls a response to the question on his arm.
—
Akira stares in horror at the contents of Akechi’s fridge.
Or rather, the lack of contents. The fridge is empty. What kind of person has an empty fridge? Certainly not a sane person. He wonders if it’s just his brain malfunctioning. Or maybe it’s meant to be an accurate portrayal. Heck, he doesn’t even know enough about him to say if it’s accurate.
Akira’s stomach growls, and he’s reminded of his hunger. The entire reason he opened the fridge in the first place.
He stalks over to the cupboards. All he finds within are a few apples, some ramen, and an unopened box of protein bars.
…What the hell?
He makes it a priority to buy groceries later. Once he can figure out the pin to the credit card. No one should be living like this.
But in the meantime, he grabs a protein bar. He barely gets to savour the chocolate and chalkiness before an alarm for school goes off.
Sighing, he stares at Akechi's wine eyes in the hallway mirror. Alluring. But also reminiscent of blood. The alarm is still going off. Akira finishes adjusting the tie and leaves for school.
He’s starting to get the hang of the school grounds. Or at least, a small part of them. The high school of this dream—Kosei High—is prestigious. But also confusing as heck. At least they’ve remained unchanged from last time.
Yusuke (a name he’ll never forget) is waiting by the fancy large gates, sketching furiously—as though an important image is escaping his mind. Akira greets him with a somewhat awkward smile. But Yusuke doesn’t look up.
Akira occupies himself instead with pretending like he isn’t missing the feeling of holding a cup of coffee. Like he does in reality. In this dream, coffee isn’t readily available—something that would make this a nightmare if there weren’t stronger positives. Like Yusuke. Or Akechi’s lovely appearance.
Yusuke finally looks up, pocketing the sketchbook. “You are…unusually happy today. Did something unfortunate happen to Shido?”
Shido? Never heard of him. Must be some high school bully.
Akira shakes his head. “No.”
And Yusuke studies him closely for a long moment. Then jerks his head up, as though he came to some kind of realisation.
“Fascinating,” he mutters; then louder, “I must take a picture!”
Akira furrows his brows, but nods willingly nonetheless.
Yusuke takes the picture, looking beyond pleased when it’s over.
The bell rings. Akira drags his ass to class. Why his brain suddenly decided he’s as smart as an honours student is beyond him. Classes are impossibly arduous tasks. Yeah, he could barely grasp the concept of trigonometry. Now what’s this? Even more complex equations to shove down his brain? No, thanks. He’s quite fine with his science and English marks. At his level. Math can kindly fuck off.
So he spends his class time spinning pencils and taking notes. Notes unrelated to the subject at hand.
Work isn’t really any better.
No, there will not be an elaboration.
The dream toes a thin line, and seems to be leaning more on the nightmare side.
When the sun’s set, Akira types out a journal entry. He found the app last time—there was an entry almost everyday for the past two years. (Talk about having your life together.)
He ends the entry with a message—much like the ones he found etched to his skin and in his notebook.
Maybe it’ll make something interesting happen, next time.
—
Notebook is scribbled underneath Akira’s last question. They should probably choose a less messy form of communication. Maybe he should propose sticky notes. Futaba has a drawer full of them.
His notebook lies on the desk. Akira notes, on his way over, that his room is cleaner. Weird.
He flips through the notebook until he reaches the latest page. There’s the account of everything that happened yesterday. Again, not written by him. And below that: Detective Prince. Nothing else.
For a second, Akira thinks it’s Shirogane. but only for a second—they have rather distinct handwriting. So if it’s not Shirogane, it’s gotta be—
He scrambles back across the room to get his phone, tripping over a stray ladder. He’s going to have to move that eventually. Eventually.
Akira types ‘detective prince’ into the search browser. And the first article is: “Latest news of the second coming of the Detective Prince: Akechi Goro."
But if Akechi’s the one occupying his body, that would mean—
—
Goro stares at the latest journal entry on his phone. It’s relatively detailed—oddly specific descriptions of Yusuke and short, concise descriptions of school and work related things, but—
No, those aren’t the things drawing Goro’s attention. Because underneath everything: I’m Kurusu Akira. Nice to meet you, Goro.
Then that means—
Kurusu Akira isn’t merely an imagined, outlandish boy formed from the most hopeful places of Goro’s mind. He isn’t just a dream.
He’s real.
And they’re swapping places.