Chapter 9: Akari's Past / An Almost Perfect Person
Haruto was confused.
He was found sitting sideways in a chair, reading a book, upside down, by Sora, who became slightly more concerned with how his friend's head worked. Harutos mind puzzled even Sora.
Sora found many more things wrong with this picture, however.
One of them being Akari, who was sleeping soundly in Harutos lap.
This is what confused Haruto and Sora the most.
“Why is Akari sleeping in your lap?” Sora asked.
“I woke up and she was there. I have no idea.” Haruto answered.
Both of them were baffled as to why this would occur.
Haruto was dense, and probably very confused about this whole thing. Akari would probably have to say to his face how she feels. Sora, on the other hand, understood how Akari felt towards Haruto. She was what is referred to as a tsundere, according to Soras vast knowledge of weird manga and game terminology. Oh, and what the god told him. But this was Akari being dere and not tsun, hence Soras confusion.
They were at the library that day, however, to learn about magic, not about love. Sora had already learned about that earlier and will continue to learn more in the future.
Sora gently shook Akari awake, since asking Haruto to do so would result in him being quite forceful, even if it wasn’t his intention. And so Akari woke up, who seemed to have had quite a pleasant nap.
"Ungh? Er...." Akari mumbled, waking up.
“Hello, Akari, welcome back. You’re the genius magician here, can you help me find a good book which explains the different elements and elemental Magics?” Asked Sora.
“Huh? Oh, uh, yeah. It should be on the second floor, third shelf that carries the letters e-f, and it should be three books to the side on the left shelves, in the middle column.” Akari said, in an oddly monotone voice.
Akari was an interesting person, all things considered.
She had been considered a genius at birth, having been born with photographic memory, and her parents became quite proud of her. As time went on, however, only memorizing how to do something wasn’t enough to actually do it, and people began to lecture her.
Their expectations having been way too high for such a young child, she became crushed under the pressure. She developed an inferiority complex, feeling as though she failed at everything she did, and started having behavioral problems.
She started getting into fights easily, and not listening to instructions.
A good person at heart, she never did anything that would be considered truly bad, and never did anything that could even get her punished.
She was the type of person to care for others, but she became withdrawn and her inferiority complex refused her to admit it. She spoke aggressively, making people think she was a bad person, who wished bad things on others.
If they had listened to her words a little more, and heard what her heart wanted to say, it might not have gone past the breaking point.
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Her parents were strict, and because of the expectations that had been drastically increased due to her being considered a genius, she failed to meet the expectations. Her parents didn’t take it well, and became worse and worse, their personalities twisting into something that couldn’t be called human.
It may not have only been Akari that was crushed by what was expected of her, but maybe it crushed her parents too.
Her dad became a heavy drinker, and became physically abusive with her mother. Her mother, scared of her father, took her anger out on Akari.
It got so bad that Harutos' family, the Suzuki’s, heard about what was being done to her. Since her grandparents had connections and friends within Harutos' family, they took her away from the father who became involved with the underworld, and had chosen to drag Akari and her mother into it. Her father was shot and killed by a drug addict, her mother sold to some unknown person, and Akari, found by Harutos' parents in a small closet in her house.
She was found, with tears falling from her eyes, a gun that had fired all its bullets in her hand, and underworld debt collectors on the floor, bleeding. A single bullet in each of their skulls between the eyes.
There were more empty clips found around the house, and the amount of bodies totalled over 30.
And that was only inside of the house.
She was taken in by Harutos' family with open arms, and no expectations of her, nor did they fear her.
She didn’t trust anyone, and seemed to hate everything.
Until one day, at least, when she drove herself a little to far into a corner. Aggressive with her words, she often got into unintended altercations with others. Haruto found her one day, cowering in a corner, from a group of boys who had been hitting her, almost insane. Tears wouldn't stop flowing, staining her beautiful face. Her trauma from being assaulted left her tembling, in shock.
Haruto was the one who brought Akari back from the brink of insanity. He saved her, not just physically, but mentally. She grew to depend on his carefree and optimistic smile, the sole light that shone in the darkness around her heart.
While she still has an issue with being truthful to herself, she probably values Haruto more than she does even the world, existence, or herself.
While she had been staying at Harutos' family home, she showed herself to be a genius, almost equal to Sora. Though she chose to lie low, and didn’t like attention, she helped them without others knowing about her publicly.
She eventually became the genius magician we know today, earning the title of the most powerful mage within around a day and 3 hours after they first arrived.
Magic in this world is an interesting thing, it depends on you picturing things in your head, and using your imagination combined with your mana to make it happen. If you could say anything about Akaris strengths, it would be her memory and imagination that would be the greatest. She is the most creative person on earth, moreso than Sora by a long shot. It was like comparing the distance between the moon and the sun to a single inch.
If you gave her clay, her mind could think of endless things to turn it into, and she would remember every single one of those things she imagined perfectly, for the rest of her life.
The thing about Akari, however, is that her body often cannot keep up with her skill. She wasn’t born with a very strong body to begin with. If you asked her to memorize how to play a piano, she could remember the smallest of gestures from the greatest minds of history's musicians, but her hands can’t glide the way she knows they should, and she would sprain her wrist or injure her fingers. If you asked her to make a piece of art exactly how it was originally drawn, she would know how, but when she actually tried to do it, she may unintentionally spill paint or make the wrong brushstroke, ruining the whole thing. The thing Akari lacks in most areas would be the required skill, the muscle memory to do it without thinking about it, and the physical requirements that would be necessary. It would take her just as long as anyone else to make what she works on second nature to her. However, this doesn’t matter when it comes to issues of the mind. As long as you don’t need her to move her body to do something, there’s nearly nothing she can’t do. The perfect team leader in a lot of ways, she would be able to easily direct the teams skills to maximize their effectiveness. If you ask her to lead an army in a losing battle, she could find countless ways to turn the tide. Even if she had a single soldier. She could easily topple kingdoms with a few words. Games like chess were less than childs play for Akari, and battle strategy was no more difficult to her than chess was. She was someone who is not easily outwitted, but not necessarily the brightest.
This person fell in love with an idiot.
“Magic is the greatest thing to exist!” Said Akari as she destroyed a mountain in the distance.
Akari is able to take the way spells work, and change them with merely an idea. She can make a new spell in mere moments, or change a current spell to be 100x more effective. This realization shocked even Sora. He had had problems with memorizing even the most basic magical circles, something that takes a powerful mage in the magic world at least a few years to learn. Sora had done so in a few hours, while Akari had done it in mere moments.
Despite how smart he is, Sora had absolutely no clue that Akari was the one who caused the greatest rise of the Suzuki family in history. He only knew that they were secretive and hidden. It was at this point that he could easily put two and two together, though.