// language is losing its edge || akashi
It's evident, when he claws back into consciousness from the depths of a surreal dream landscape, that the scene behind his heavy eyelids is not the same as the night before's. The light casting down upon his face is at the wrong angle and when he blinks into it, blurry vision clearing with each sweep of his lashes, the sight before him is certainly not the accustomed comfort of his own room.
It takes him a while longer, stumbling through streets that might as well belong to another country if not for the language scribbled on unfamiliar signs, to realize that he's no longer in Kairos.
There's a feeling, nipping at his heels and chewing at the corners of his mind, that causes him to pause frequently and cast about an unsure glance. The landscape is wrong. It's all wrong, but not in the way it should be.
He feels...
invisible.
Someone, another nameless body in a sea of unfamiliar faces, brings him crashing out of reverie - a dream, for all that he is waking - as they shove past. Kuroko stumbles, his breath a soft exhale of surprise that curls his tongue into a name. "Akashi-kun."
Though he's certainly never heard it before it weighs heavily in his mind, oddly familiar.
The memory of it sieves between his fingers when he tries to reach out.
But bar for a handful of change, plucked up off the ground as he walked (he always did have an eye for missing or forgotten things), the name is all he has in this foreign landscape.
It takes him a while, polite inquiries in a polite tone that nonetheless manages to startle nearly time, but Kuroko is eventually able to uncover two things: the name of the town, Paralia (obvious, in hindsight), and the residence bearing the name which has taken his mind captive in its talons.
The change, at least, though not nowhere near enough to get him home, is sufficient fair for the bus.
As he stands on the threshold of a veritable fortress of wealth - opulence, which sits uncomfortably against Kuroko's comparatively unremarkable and average bearing, and leaves his throat slightly dry in awe - he wonders if, perhaps, this was a bad idea after all.
(He understands, now, why those he'd questioned had all but laughed at him.
"You have business with the Akashis?"
And maybe he doesn't, after all.)
But the name won't leave his mind and neither can he abandon the stoop so with a finger that shakes only slightly, he rings the bell.
The echo throughout the home is nearly deafening.
He licks his lips and repeats, more to himself than anything, "Akashi-kun."
