Keep me in distant sight

Chapter 12 : Drifting Time Misplaced

60.

He's still riding the high of knowing his journey through the stars will end in the splendor of Kōtarō's planet welcoming him. It helps with the sad anniversary of the two months since his awakening, which he spends inside his bed with a fever that doesn't go down. It's not enough to stage a trip to the med shelf but the bare minimum to not climb down if he doesn't want to snap his neck. This kind of fever always comes to him when he's tired beyond his breaking point, as a way to force him to lay down and take it easy. He can recognize the warm sickly feeling flowing inside his veins and the fuzzyness of his brain finally slowing down. The only cure is to sleep the fever away.

(As if he doesn't sleep enough. It might be the only thing he does besides replying to Kōtarō and talking out loud. These two aren't mutually exclusive.)

It's not a problem anyways. If he goes down to the first floor, he will end up glued to the windows like he always does. His bed is much more comfortable than a cold hard floor and a window that shows nothing but the blackest night. He can spend the whole day inside his bed, it won't change anything.

Kōtarō's message was wiped a day after it was written, replaced by mundane news and random thoughts as always. But Akaashi still sees the ghostly remanence of these words everytime he looks at his thigh. He wishes he had ink and a needle, to engrave them inside his skin - he wishes he could etch them on his bones so they will stay with him for all eternity. To pull apart his mortal flesh to sear this promise right onto his very soul. If he could write in blood (he can't, he has tried it a long time ago with a nosebleed) he would drain his body just to have the chance to speak again.

"Let's not go to that kind of thoughts." He mumbles, casting aside the sinister wishes he has for some light-hearted talk.

"Do you think Hinata talked to his Soulmate? And Yachi?"

"I don't know... I think he did, it would be really hard to hide this from his Soulmate after all. Hi-chan's bond is trickier than ours so I don't think she could tell her Soulmate. Perhaps his Soulmate will reach what you called the Galactic Alliance before you. I don't know how advanced their technology is."

Akaashi coughs a little and pulls himself up along with pillow, adopting a reclined position on his bed. He feels disgusting, sweaty and tired. He eyes the shower with a glare - he wishes he could drown himself in water instead of a laser. He sips a bit of his water pouch for good measure, checking the water level before - even if he's sick, he needs to monitor his water consumption.

Then, he's back at his one-sided conversation, ignoring the way his suit sticks to his skin.

"He'd nickname his One Tobio, because he wanted to. At first he didn't know how to talk to him at all so he chose this name. I think Tobio took it as his own? I wonder what it feels like to share your thoughts constantly... It might be a better option than Hi-chan and her pain-sharing bond nonetheless. The number of times she fell down or broke something because her Soulmate was hurt..." Akaashi reminisces with a fond smile.

Gods, how he misses his family. It went unsaid between them all but Akinori and him really did think of Shōyō and Hitoka as their little siblings - how could they not? It was them against their world. They met when he was 16, Akinori 17 and they were 15. It wasn't love at first sight but in the end barely five months after their meeting, they had a heart-to-heart and discovered they were soulbonded individuals. It's hard to remember the exact expression his siblings wore that day, yet he knows Hitoka was relieved and Shōyō ecstatic. They didn't manage to really dive into this subject until the fire of 2408 which raged for a week and destroyed the other cities around the EASA's branch of Osaka. It wasn't dangerous enough to submit the whole branch (from pupils to employees) to a lockdown underneath the buildings but they had a nice week of vacation spent inside their rooms.