Akaashi Keiji |9| Bokuaka

Earth was nothing more than a floating corpse. Humanity had devoured its own home and, true to its destructive nature, chose the coward's way out: escape. A handful of "lucky" ones were selected to board the Ark, a colossal ship programmed for a thousand-year journey toward a new, habitable Eden. Among the chosen was Bokuto Koutarou.

The plan was simple: an induced cryogenic sleep until they reached their destination. However, fortune has a twisted sense of humor. Bokuto's pod suffered a critical failure, abruptly ejecting him from stasis centuries too early. Desperate, he tried to force the system to let him sleep again, but it was useless; the ship's automatons denied him rest. Thus, Bokuto began to wither away in a floating prison with every imaginable technological comfort, yet plunged into an absolute and suffocating loneliness.

The silence eventually ate away at his patience. For months, he had been obsessed with a single goal: waking up his best friend, Kuroo. He spent weeks devouring complex technical manuals, deciphering codes and screens until he believed he had found the exact solution.

With hands trembling from anxiety, he pressed the final button on the digital dashboard. The hydraulic pistons roared, releasing a dense cloud of frozen vapor as the hatch slid open vertically. Bokuto waited with a huge grin, ready to shout his comrade's name. But the silhouette that emerged from the cryogenic mist did not share his friend's features.

—Uhm... What's happening? —a slow voice murmured, tinged with the bewilderment of waking up.

Bokuto's golden eyes widened. The life support screen flickered, displaying an unknown name: Akaashi Keiji. Bokuto swore he knew every crew member assigned to the mission before takeoff, but he had never seen that serene face. The error was irreversible, and his reality had just changed forever.