The first time that Riku spots someone slightly reminiscent of Sora peeking from a crowd, there and gone again, he’s convinced he’d imagined it. Every time he loses Sora at any point in his life he swears he can sense his presence where it isn’t remotely near, and this time is no exception to the last.
It’s almost haunting just how strongly his intuition screams at him to just look for his friend, however. There’s something in their connection that pushes and pulls, tugging at... well, tugging at his heart. And this confuses him in a way that it never has before. Normally, he wouldn’t be so quick to question it — there were extenuating circumstances, some of the inhuman and dream-eating kind, that made it possible for him to literally sense his presence before — but...
In no uncertain terms, Riku had left the world so that Sora could continue on.
... So he has to be imagining this.
The idle way Riku’s gone about his life in the past couple of days has been nothing if not uneventful, despite the wide expanse of a new world — one he’s unable to leave, no less — stretching out before him. He thinks it’s fine, really, it’s a change of pace and he may be restless, he may be plagued with anxieties and uncertainties and worries, but... it’s... okay. These thoughts pitter through his mind as he weaves through a crowd, almost trapped in his own mind, resigned to his emotions and —
The tension building in his mind as his thoughts continue breaks unceremoniously in an all too sudden SNAP and Riku’s head swivels to find the source of what broke him from his thoughts. And as if compelled, he’s pushing through the crowd back the way he came, apologizing profusely to passersby but barely paying attention to his own steps, because... that was Sora’s voice, wasn’t it? He wasn’t talking to Riku, but the sound was too familiar, too easy to pinpoint in a crowd, the lilting playfulness and underlying excitement all too familiar to him.
“Sora — !!”
Gods be damned if this was a mirage, but Riku’s voice carries over the crowd regardless.
@levitersora













