The Heaviest Thoughts Linger

A dream, yeah right…

Akari could no longer think that whatever was happening now was ‘just a dream’, no matter how many times he pinched himself or hit his head against his chamber walls, he was certain death was the only thing that could take him out of this world. However, he wasn’t interested in such an option, because what if he tried … and it didn’t work too?

For the rest of the afternoon, he had taken himself back to the garden, after seeing that he wasn’t locked in his room, he at least wanted to look around a little more.

Like playing detective, he had brought himself back to the scene of the crime, taking the time to look at all the statues Salaeus had mentioned back in the manor. Characters in plays? It was a diverse array of both people, creatures and even some props here and there. But what stood out to Akari was the fact that this wasn’t Salaeus' property. Though he commanded a maid with the gusto of a lord, he knew the story enough to know that it wasn’t his.

Anywho, he had more important things to recognise, such as the fine handiwork on all the sculptures he’d examined so far. They were lifelike, which is to say they felt like actual characters. Every plaque against plinth stated the name of the character, their epithet below and a small description of their role in their play.

ELISE NIGHTVALE
'The Daughter of the Magician'

After being kidnapped from her home in Great Fellwood,
she makes a harrowing journey back home, meeting all
kinds of monsters, beasts and even the prince of death,
who helps her home and eventually falls in love with her. 

Not every description seemed to interest Akari, he had heard better plots before, but he couldn’t fault the sculptor who created such gorgeous work.

Elise herself was sculpted mid-run. Holding a hand mirror in her left hand and a dagger in the other, with her face looking back over her shoulder as her dress and cloak were sculpted to be flowing behind her; it all accentuated a great chase. As he looked up at her expression, it was etched in fear but the furrow of her brows and the wrinkles around her eyes exhibited a fierce determination. One that was sure to stick by her until the end.

It made Akari wonder how the play must’ve gone. He somewhat wished he could see it for himself.

Moving on, he had returned to the fountain amidst the statue yard, wonderfully positioned halfway through the grounds and protected by short hedges, shaped with an expert precision.

He couldn’t help but lean over the water, reluctantly peering down to see his reflection staring back. That’s when he noticed how gloomy he looked. He had such a handsome face and this was how he was using it? His eyes looked tired although he had been ‘alive’ for barely a whole day, drooping slightly in an uninterested gaze. He looked distant, more distant than a high school senior moving mid year to somewhere new and being shunned for the next six months—that’s what happened to Akari at least.

‘Being somewhere you know you don’t belong’, that’s how he’d put it.

As horrible as it was to have such an unwelcoming mindset, it didn’t mean that everything else Akari would come across should be the same. This was like a dream for artists and writers alike, to actually, physically, exist in a world they’ve made and worked on for so long. Like jumping into a simulator, and this simulator was incredibly real.

He retreated from the fountain and continued his way down the path. The sun was on the verge of setting, as the sky cast itself into a burst of orange and yellows, with a purple undertone from the shadows. In a way, it resembled Akari’s art. He was a fan of overlaying vibrant blues and purples underneath shadows, a gradient from one end to another. What remained of the sunlight was its long rays cutting across the horizon, and when he had reached the temple, it seemed as if the light behind it was illuminating the structure as a whole.

Unlike the rest of the statues, Akari couldn’t find a plaque of any kind, not even a plinth or pedestal situated inside. He couldn’t remember if Ain did have one at all, since his centrepiece upon awakening was really just the marble temple.

“Nothing fancy for me, huh?”

He joked lightly to himself, bringing his hands to his hips before stepping inside himself, spinning around on the spot to face the opposite direction before kneeling down to pick up a piece of stone. It didn’t look like it came from the temple, so he had assumed it was from when he woke up—the shard-like chunk was in fact a part of the stone that encased his face, covering just a bit of his lips and the right side of his cheek.

He lifted it to Ain’s mouth, trying to see if the piece still fit and unsurprisingly, it was a perfect match.

Akari decided to keep it, like some keepsake of sorts. He had returned to the manor, holding the section close to his chest as he was met with Marianne standing in the foyer, facing the front doors Ain stepped into. It seemed like she was waiting for him.

“Will you have dinner?”

She asked, both genuinely curious and out of sheer duty; she must’ve been aware of what he was.

“I don’t need it,”

Without another word he continued back to his room, assuming she was content with that answer.

The second chapter should’ve ended after Ain changed out of his armour, but to Akari’s apprehension, it just continued. Of course it would, why would it suddenly skip to chapter three out of nowhere; it would break the realism held so far. The third chapter was a day before the Prince’s birthday celebration, and Salaeus’ final preparations of Ain before he was to ride into the kingdom for the affair.

Oddly enough, it was slow and a little agitating to go through regular time whilst knowing what was going to happen. Rather, Akari was impatient to the point of lying in the most comfortable bed he’d ever laid in, and not being able to sleep whatsoever.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the events of the day—or the last six hours—and comprehending it all was another challenge in and of itself. He hoped for his sake that Haruka’s last manuscript didn’t include any unexpected arcs, since that was what he was best known for. Adding this and that without telling Akari, and then later Akari finding out through Yuma. But it was different this time, obviously, since he was quite literally living through it all.

With no one to confide in with all his theories, suspicions and worries, he had fallen into a pit of overthinking. There in bed, he settled on his side, holding the piece of stone he retrieved simply admiring it even in its broken state. He wondered where the rest had gone, if maybe Salaeus had one of the manor’s staff to clean up what remained or it just disappeared—considering the laws of this world weren’t exactly linear.

Akari at least wanted to figure out how he got here, and if he got a clue, he assumed it would help him return back to his world.

My world…

He could remember what happened before waking up here. In fact, it was one of his best memories apart from all those months writing this manuscript; his fall, or in this case, his accident.

Did he die?

Surely, that could’ve been the only reason.

He died and this was a heaven of sorts, the heaven he wrote with tragedy pooling at the bottom. Was it fitting? Certainly. But this tragedy, the one he knew that was at the end of his tunnel, wasn’t scary. He wasn’t scared of this character’s end, but he worried regardless. He couldn’t help it. The real Ain wouldn’t be scared, but perhaps that’s why he wasn’t half stone and flesh as Akari had written him to be. His human was slipping through, that much was obvious.