AnaPudim

i feel like i can't form coherent thoughts about the boy other than I LOVE OKUMURA EIJI SO MUCH. I mean, he's definitely /not/ the bubbly puppy we met in the anime. not just that. i knew the anime toned down his more abrasive insults and i could figured out he was in his own kind of depression after the injury from anime only, but it's the breaking of the facade that he had a perfect life before the main series.

He's probably still raised with love and adoration that's why he was able to radiate that. He had an ordinary life, came with it ordinary troubles. I don't know if i find it personally relatable, but it's just realistic to have regrets in your life.

I could understand better why he fell for Ash. It was his assertiveness, confidence, and the fact that he kept fighting back that inspired him. There are attractive qualities in general, but fly boy informed why Eiji in particular would be drawn to those qualities that he didn't have. And you can see how he was influenced by that strength, particularly in his growth in the second half of the series.

Hello! I've been working on this project for literal months, and I'm crazy relieved that it's finished. It was super fun, and now I know the manga more intimately than ever before, but whew! What a lot of work!

For those who are curious about the title, I've created this specifically as a resource for fanfic writers who need to sort out what happened when in the manga canon. Because of that, this sucker is DETAILED.

I've pulled out every official date, every approximate date, and then gave my best educated-guess-dates for everything else. Because so much of it is based on conjecture, please don't think that I think it's like the end-all, be-all of accuracy. It's not! There are issues that couldn't be resolved at all, so I did the best I could.

I fully expect this to be a living timeline--by that, I mean that if someone points out a mistake or a better reading of any situation, I'm happy to go back and make amendments, whether those be in the form of notes or changing the timeline altogether. This is a tool for the whole fandom, and I'd love as much helpful, critical feedback as possible.

asheiji because what else at this point

I shall call this one "Squeezing the Boyfriend"

Man, Ash's self-loathing never fails to absolutely devastate me.

You can tell, when Eiji says Blanca didn't seem like such a bad person, that Ash is thinking about how Eiji keeps on insisting the same about him. And when he tells Eiji that Blanca is a professional assassin, that he kills people for a living, and then says that he's the one who taught Ash how to kill people, he's trying to make Eiji see the supposed naivety of his views on Ash specifically. He's trying to make Eiji understand that he's a "bad person". Of course, Ash is the opposite of a bad person. He's an exceptionally good person, heartbreakingly selfless and compassionate. It's one of the most tragic aspects of Ash's story, that no matter how much Eiji loves him, or how many people end up becoming his friends because they can sense what a good person he is, he still believes so completely that he's bad, and undeserving of such love. It's the ultimate destructive consequence of the abuse he's suffered, that he's been so convinced of his own lack of worth.

You can see it also in the way Ash responds to Eiji admitting that he misses his family back in Japan. He feels guilt-ridden at having kept Eiji from them, and that guilt is again rooted in this belief he has that he doesn't deserve Eiji's friendship.