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Akane Kurashiki is six years old when she meets Jumpy. He is significant in ways she doesn’t understand yet, but she feels him begin to orbit with her, a pair of binary stars.
Akane is twelve when her life shatters into a million pieces. When she begins to wear thin clothes, even at the height of winter. She has burned, is burning, will burn in a thousand worlds. She will not suffer the heat in this one until she has to.
Akane is nineteen when she and Aoi begin in earnest to shape the kintsugi of her life, where she will rise triumphant, a literal phoenix from the ashes. Akane knows much of what will happen, but she needs assistance setting up the checkerboard so that Jumpy can make the final jump, capturing her opponent’s pieces.
June is twenty-one when she spends nine hours burning, only for Jumpy to find the right series of moves to save her at the last minute. She remembers resonating with him, her sobbing, while suddenly she knew everything she needed to solve the puzzle, giving her hope and love. She takes only a moment to savor the freedom granted by her completed game. She still resonates with her future, as strange a concept as that is to her, who has spent years preparing for this very moment, and now that it's here, she almost falls over with the giddiness.
Akane is twenty-two when the world explodes. She spends ten minutes mourning the dead while the newly-young Dr. Klim readjusts to his body, and the changes that happened while he was away. He is just like she remembers, will remember, from forty years in the future.
Akane is sixty-four when she meets Kyle. She knows that he will see her as the mother he has always wanted, and she plays along with his desires, encouraging him to interact with his father, the Dr. Klim she first met in D-Com. As much as it pains her to lead the lamb to slaughter, she’s seen enough to feel no shame in manipulating the young man to suit the project’s goals.
Akane is sixty-eight, and she knows Dio is coming. It will be quick, like the incinerator. It will be painless, unlike the incinerator. She has not spent forty-six years jumping at each glint of silver, unlike that interminable middle ten, where she could never be too cold. One final breath and –
Akane is sixty-eight, and Jumpy Tenmyouji is looking at her with pity and regret in his eyes. She knows what he is about to say before he says it, having heard it echo numerous times as she closed her eyes to sleep in this timeline. She has loved him for many, many years, and he her. But she knows that she is no longer his primary focus, hasn’t been since Quark appeared. She accepts that, at least now, she is not the Akane who spends her happy-ever-after with her knight in shining armor. It hurts more than she was prepared for, watching him take Quark with him back to Earth.
Akane is twenty-two, leaving D-Com alive, with Jumpy’s hand in hers. She knows the cost it took to bring him here. Somewhere, in another world, she has paid it. The timeline ahead of her stretches onward, fresh and untrodden, as though a wave has just washed over the beach. She can see the cracks elsewhere in her many lives, soldered back together or not, but here is unbroken.