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1.
Ryuji meets Akira on the first day of preschool.
Well.
“Meets,” if meets is more “accosts in the classroom and demands to be his friend.”
Ryuji is five years old and has no impulse control, and Akira is five years old and sitting like a lump in the corner of the room, and he hasn’t even
touched
his bento yet. Ryuji’s is almost gone, but he saved the octopus sausages for last because they’re so cute and because his ma put little sesame-seed eyes on them and he almost doesn’t wanna eat them if they’re gonna look at him like that. He’s
hungry,
though— they spent all day walking around the class learning where things are, and running around outside (though come to think of it he didn’t see Akira do much then either).
So it’s only natural that he take his bento and plop down beside him. “Aren’t you hungry?”
Akira (though he doesn’t know his name yet, doesn’t know the impact those eyes will have on him, doesn’t know the personality or the grin or everything that’ll carry him through the next six years) blinks over at him, and then shakes his head.
“Why not?” Ryuji asks, and when he doesn’t get an answer he frowns. “Do you want one of my octopus sausages? Look, they’ve got little eyes on ‘em.”
He shakes the octopus sausage a little. One of the eyes slips down and goes all dopey.
The boy who Ryuji will eventually know as Akira gasps a little. “....it fell down.” His voice is quiet, so quiet Ryuji can barely hear.
“Oh, it did.” Ryuji shakes it a little more, hoping to make it go back up, but instead the sesame seed just slips down to rest on a tentacle. “It’s…..special octopus. Their eyes move. Like a kamen rider villain! Here.” He holds the octopus out. “Eat it before it gets too strong!”
As he wiggles it in Akira’s direction, the eye falls off completely. “...oops.”
Akira takes it and eats it. Just the eye, not the octopus, and Ryuji breaks out into loud laughter. “That’s not it! You gotta eat the whole thing! What if it grows more eyes?”
“I ate it.” His voice is still quiet, but there’s a little sheen of determination in his eyes that Ryuji’s instantly drawn to. “Now he can’t see.”
After lunch, when the teacher calls for them, Ryuji takes Akira’s hand firmly in his and drags him over to his table. “Sensei,” he says, “Akira’s gonna sit here from now on.”
“Is that what Akira wants?” Sensei asks.
After a long, tense moment, Akira nods, and says “yeah” in that tiny little voice, and Ryuji
beams
.
They’re gonna be friends
forever.
2.
Akira’s favorite piece from the class toybox is a big black cape.
He’s still small enough that it covers him completely, so he can brood under the playground equipment in almost complete invisibility. Ryuji, laying claim to the pirate hat day after day after day, thinks he’s kinda dumb, but it makes him happy, so, whatever?
“You gotta admit it looks cool,” Akira tells him from where he’s gotten on top of the monkey bars, swinging his legs back and forth through the gaps. The playground monitors have told him at least three times not to get up there this week alone (Ryuji knows because he’s been hanging around beneath him every single time) and as soon as they notice that he’s back up there Ryuji’s sure there’ll be a fourth.
Maybe he’ll get detention. Ryuji hopes not, because it’ll be really boring to wait outside the school for him until he’s done.
“I mean yeah,” Ryuji says dubiously, “but you also look like a dork.”
“A
cool
dork,” Akira insists. Ryuji doesn’t know how he managed to get up there while still wearing the cape. “Like, I’m like a sneaky….thief. A gentleman thief. Like Tuxedo Mask! Like Lupin. I’m gonna sneak into everyone’s houses and steal their stuff.”
Ryuji takes a moment to process this. He has to shove the hat back up where it covers his eye. “But why?”
Somehow, it’s that that takes Akira off guard, makes him bend over to peer at Ryuji between the bars. “Um...hm.” He’s quiet for a little longer before he says “Sometimes adults get weird about stuff. About things. Like, actual things that they have. My mom and dad brought me to a party the other week and I wasn’t allowed to touch anything. It was just a bunch of old people drinking weird stuff and talking about boring things. I went off to the bathroom and there was just, all this
stuff
on the walls, on shelves, and...I took one.”
He pulls something out of his pocket and lets it drop. Ryuji barely catches it in time. It’s a golden egg— not a real one, way too heavy for that, it’s made of metal and covered in little sparkly gems. “I took it because the guy mom and dad came to see was mean,” Akira says, like it’s perfectly normal to take things from people who are mean to him. “I didn’t like the way he was looking at my mom, and I didn’t like the way he talked to me. And he never even noticed. I had it in my pocket
all night
and he never noticed. He just had too much
stuff.
”
Ryuji looks at the egg for a long, long time. When he tries to hand it back, Akira shakes his head. “I don’t want it. You can keep it.”
“You sure?” Ryuji says dubiously, but Akira nods, still staring out across the playground in that dorky cape with that weird look in his eyes, like he’s a million miles away. “Well, alright, I guess.”
Akira’s gaze drifts back to earth, back to Ryuji. “Hey. Come up here. You can see all the way down to the Junes, it’s real cool.”
They both get detention when the playground monitor finally notices, but that’s fine. Ryuji’d rather be in there with Akira anyway than waiting outside, any day.
3.
Ma doesn’t like Akira’s parents, but she adores Akira.
It’s something Ryuji works out slowly, over the course of a few months, a few years. Akira’s not allowed to come over for a sleepover until they’re
nine
, which is like an
eternity.
They hang out all the time, of course, but there’s something different about hanging out after school, or during the weekends, then there is curled up together reading manga by flashlight and trying to keep the noise down.
Ryuji’s been to a handful of sleepovers himself— birthday parties for classmates, fun little overnight trips to go camp on the mountain— but Akira’s never there, and he always gets really quiet and grumpy when Ryuji asks why.
“Mom doesn’t want me to,” is the only answer Ryuji ever gets. He stops asking so much, but he never stops asking completely.
His ninth birthday is what he really pushes for. Ma has the whole weekend off and she’d asked him what he wanted, and all he really ever wants is Akira, so… There’s a funny little wrinkle in her brow and the side of her mouth when he says that, but it smooths away before she can ask.
She spends a long time on the phone that night. Her voice is different; it’s crisp and clean, not the long, lazy loops she talks to Ryuji in, to Akira when he comes over for juice and cookies. She sounds like she does when she’s at work and Ryuji’s kicking his heels in the uncomfortable plastic chair next to her desk. Polite, but...cold.
Ryuji doesn’t hear a lot of what she says, but when she’s done she puts the phone down and stands at the kitchen counter for ages, long enough that Ryuji gets antsy and comes up to lean against her back. He’s going through a bit of a growth spurt— just hit 132cm, and still going— and he’s tall enough now that she has to rest her forearm on his shoulder instead of the top of his head when she wants to tease him.
She doesn’t do that now, just wraps her arm around him and pulls him in for a rough cuddle. “You’re a good egg,” she says, one of her weird mom-phrases that she pulls out when she’s feeling emotional, “y’know that, right?”
“You’re an egg egg,” Ryuij says back, and she laughs, shoulders relaxing. “What’d they say?”
“Clean your room and
maybe
I’ll let you have him over,” his ma says affectionately, and he whoops loud and starts sprinting down the hall.
When they drop him off, Akira’s quiet like he never is; eyes downcast, pillow wrapped in both arms as Akira’s parents talk to Ryuji’s ma. He’s trying not to eavesdrop, but Akira looks so
uncomfortable,
so uncomposed in a way he hasn’t been since they were
babies
, that Ryuji just...wants to be there. For emotional support.
He catches phrases—
no sugar after dinner,
and
bed by 9:30,
and
strict supervision
, and Ryuji watches his ma nod her head in the way that she does when she’s pretending to listen but absolutely not. Akira doesn’t know about that, though, so he just keeps his eyes on the ground, his pillow white-knuckled in his grasp.
His parents drive away, and as soon as they’re around the corner Ryuji pops out from behind the door and heads down the stairs, but his ma is faster; she’s already kneeling on the ground, scooping Akira into her arms. “We won’t have any of that nonsense at my house, mister,” she’s saying as Ryuji comes up behind her, “or else the two of you won’t get through anywhere near as much of the snacks we’ve got in the time you have. Who ever heard of no sugar after
dinner?
How else are you supposed to eat your dessert?”
All the tension melts out of Akira’s frame as he hugs her back, blissful, eyes squinching up even happier when Ryuji slings his arm around his shoulder. “Dessert first,” Ryuji says firmly. “
And
last.”
It’s the best birthday he’s ever had.
4.
“We’re moving back to Tokyo,” Ryuji says, and the octopus sausage slips from Akira’s chopsticks to fall back down into the bento box.
It’s sudden, even to Ryuji; his ma had only told him last night. He’ll be finishing up the school year here in Inaba, but then…
She says she’s got a better opportunity back there, now, says that Ryuji will have so many more options in Tokyo, but the only option he
wants
is sitting in the grass beside him in the weak spring sunlight, staring at him as if he’s just taken the wrong piece off a jenga tower and is watching the whole thing crumble in horror.
“You can’t go,” Akira says blankly. “Who’s gonna share my tent on the school trip,
Nakase??
”
It’s a surface-level thought; the longer Ryuji holds off on answering, the more the realization sinks into him, enough that Akira actually puts down his food and turns to face him fully. “You can’t go,” he says again. There’s something dark and fearful brewing in his eyes, like one of the foundations has just been knocked off his world. Ryuji understands completely. “You—”
“I know,” Ryuji says just as miserably, knocking their knees together. “I know.”
Akira doesn’t say a single thing throughout the rest of the lunch break, but Ryuji can feel his eyes on the back of his neck the whole rest of the day.
He gets it. He feels it too.
Akira’s been his best and closest friend for over half his life now. Last year’s birthday was even better than the year before, and Ryuji’d had serious plans for his 11th. They spend every possible waking moment together in school and out, working hard and playing harder. He knows every side of Akira, and Akira knows every side of him.
So it’s not unexpected when Akira meets him outside the school with fire burning in his eyes, dragging him away to a secluded corner. What
is
surprising is the knife.
“I dunno about this,” Ryuji says, a little apprehensively, but Akira’s firm. He won’t be placated. “It’s gonna hurt—”
“Everything hurts,” Akira says. “This way we’ll be— you’re my best friend, and this—” He sniffs hard and wipes the back of his arm across his eyes like it’d hide his tears. “It’s just a little prick on the thumb. Then you say this thing, and I say it too, and then we’re blood brothers
forever.
”
He sniffs again, and Ryuji surges forward, knocking their foreheads together as he wraps his arms around Akira’s shoulders. “You’re always gonna be my best friend,” he says, low and fierce, “we’ll stay in touch, I’ll write you so many letters—”
“You
better,
” Akira chokes out, his hands fisted tight in the back of Ryuji’s shirt and his face wet where it meets Ryuji’s neck. “You
have to
.”
“I will.”
After Akira’s calmed down and blown all the snot out of his nose, they do it. It does hurt, and he bleeds, and cries a little too, but in the end it’s only a little prick, and when it heals it heals shiny-silver, a tangible reminder that he and Akira are connected
forever.
He does write, too. He writes so much, he sends a letter packed to the brim off every week.
But no matter how many letters he sends, he never gets one back.
So, eventually... he stops.
5.
There’s something about the guy under the awning that catches Ryuji’s gaze and holds it, even while he’s still glaring after Kamoshitty, his leg aching from his quick dash and the incessant pressure of the weather. There’s an echo of something familiar, even though he’s pretty sure he’s never seen the guy before, even though he’s wearing the same Shujin uniform Ryuji himself is, and without thinking about it Ryuji presses his finger to his thumb, right over the tiny raised ridge of an old scar.
Too late to distract Kamoshitty, too late to help Ann; the least he can do is help get the new transfer student to school. Sucks that even that’s beyond his capabilities anymore.
There’s something so achingly familiar about the guy behind him that Ryuji has to physically stop himself from turning and staring, from reaching out. Something about the shape of his face, the fall of his hair, the flash of his eyes behind his big ol’ glasses, something that sits at the back of Ryuji’s hindbrain and distracts him long enough that he doesn’t figure out they’ve gone someplace they shouldn’t until they’re too deep into it.
It persists even as the weird metal suits of armor capture them, as Kamoshida in that weird fucking outfit glares at him, spits on him, swings his fist into his stomach over and over until he feels like he’s about to hurl. He thinks he hears something behind him when Kamoshida says his name, but before he can look the transfer student explodes into fire.
Literally.
His glasses off, the weird mask pulled off, the shape of his face and his eyes is like an alarm bell, even more so when he turns to Ryuji and grins wide and wild. “We gotta talk,” he says, “but after.”
“You won’t be talking when my guards are finished with you,” Kamoshida says. Big words, when the transfer student and the weird demon he summoned tear through them like tissue paper.
Then, the fancy outfit and demon vanishing like they’d never been there before, transfer student turns to Ryuji, bends over to grab his hand and help him up, and says accusingly “You never answered
any of my letters,
Ryuji.”
They get beef bowls after school, after Akira deals with the fallout of being late on his first day, of whichever asshole spread all those rumors about him (and when Ryuji finds the dick he’s gonna get some answers because
not cool, bro).
He’s still in shock, still in awe— that happened, this morning really happened, and
Akira,
his Akira, his best— or, well… his once-best friend. Who never answered any of his letters.
“I never
got
any, you jerk,” Akira says, glaring at Ryuji through the steam condensing on his glasses. “You never—”
“I sent
so many!”
Ryuji says, a little louder than he needs to. “Dude, I sent letters for months, what the hell, you’re the one that ghosted—”
“Holy shit.” He drops his chopsticks. “Oh my god, my
parents,
they weren’t bringing them to the mailbox after I left for school at
all,
the assholes—”
“Y’mean, you think they grabbed mine too—”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely,” Akira says with the air of a man solving a half-decade-long mystery. “Ryuji, I’m
sorry,
holy shit, I’m so sorry, I thought you’d decided you didn’t wanna be friends anymore…”
Ryuji leans over way too fast to knock shoulders with him, hard enough to jostle him halfway off his stool. “Hell no, man!” He raises his right hand and sticks out his thumb. The silvery scar still stands out, plain as day. “You said it, man, we’re best friends forever, right? Blood brothers? Just cause we lost track of each other for a while don’t mean anything’s changed.”
The smile on Akira’s face is the same one that’s imprinted on his heart, stretched wide to fit an older frame, and Ryuji smiles right back. “Yeah,” Akira says, and presses the scar on his thumb to the scar on Ryuji’s. “Now let’s figure out how we’re gonna deal with that weird other world and your asshole teacher.”
The beef bowls go cold while they talk, and Ryuji’s never been happier to eat cold gyudon in his life.