Akito

Akito started out as sort of an indulgence of my love of bishounen and shounen ai, and nothing more. He was one of many guys from a world where all of the people were guys with a tendency towards bishounen-ness. His world was a sort of cosmic joke, created by a bunch of fangirls (and fanboys) who just wanted somewhere where there would be lots and lots of gay pretty boys. Since there wasn't one already, they created one, and that's how Akito's world came about.

Of course, that was long before I even thought of The World Web. Akito originally had his own story. Then when I started with NaNoWriMo and started writing The World Web, I decided he would be better off being put in there, with the "dimensions" that he was familiar with being the different worlds of the universe instead.

As I said, Akito is from a world where there are only men. On his world, homosexuality is the norm, especially since no one knows about the existence of women. Those who aren't attracted to men are confused and lost, and quite lonely. Because of the interesting quirks that come with the absence of females, the men of Akito's world are genetically not really the same as normal human males. Instead, they are much closer to women, which is much of where the typical bishounen looks of the men come from. (To be specific, the Powers That Be who created Akito's world more or less merged the X and Y chromosomes, so that the men of the world actually have two "special" X chromosomes. If they can breed with normal human women, which is quite likely, all of their children would be male, though even more feminine than they usually are.)

Because of the genetics of Akito's world, the guys there usually hit puberty closer to when normal females do, sometimes earlier. Akito first became aware of sexual attraction (to other men, of course) at age 11 or so. He was in sixth grade at the time, and one Kyou Takegawa (scientific genius, finishing his bachelor's degree at age 16), a student teacher for his school, became the first target of his attraction. They ended up a couple, despite the fact that it looked very bad for Kyou because of Akito's extremely young age and the difference in their ages. It helped that neither boys' parents minded. Rather, they were quite supportive of the two.

When Akito and Kyou were 12 and 17 respectively, the two of them both went to the United States for school, Akito as a seventh grade foreign exchange student and Kyou for graduate work at an American universtiy (namely University of Wisconsin - Madison ^_^). While there, Kyou met Dryyen, who was enrolled as another dimensional theory graduate student. Dryyen realized that he had the Traveling ability, and he tried to take it from Kyou. Unfortunately for him (and fortuantely for Kyou, actually), Kyou's Traveling was still locked, and the ritual backfired, sending Kyou flying to another world. Akito found out about this and went after him, assuming that it was the machine Kyou was working on that did it, not another person. He has been searching for Kyou for the last five years, and still hasn't found him.

Akito was an extremely happy and bubbly child. He isn't anymore, not in the slightest. He's quite aware of the change, and it sometimes makes him afraid that when he finally finds Kyou again he won't be loved. After all, Kyou fell in love with the happy, innocent him. Now he is serious and quite focused. He rarely smiles, and it worries the family he is still staying with in the US. Still, deep below that focused and serious attitude of his is buried a rather fragile young man. The only thing that keeps him going is his hope that someday he will actually find Kyou. Should he ever lose that hope, he would probably commit suicide, or something equally drastic.

He is a mage, though it tends to be rather difficult to get him to admit it. In addition to being a mage, he is a Traveler, even though there weren't supposed to be any Travelers on his world. His other two innate abilities are telepathy and telekinesis, both of which are almost completely untrained. He tends to get a cerulean aura for anyone with Sight or who is sensitive when he uses his magic, and his reserves are not terribly deep. Because of this, he cannot use his Traveling ability too often, nowhere near as often as most Travelers can.

When he isn't off searching for Kyou (he has no idea where Kyou might be, by the way), Akito is a college student. He started studying for his dimensional theory degree when he was sixteen. He is quite intelligent, though nowhere near Kyou's level, which is about the only thing that keeps his grades up when he spends at least half of his time off of his world, searching for Kyou. He does find dimensional theory quite interesting, but the main reason he went into the field is because it is what Kyou was most interested in as well, and because he feels that knowing as much about it as he can will help him find Kyou faster.

Akito is Japanese, but not by blood. His father Rei was adopted at birth. He was raised as a Japanese, but is quite non-Japanese. His father Jason moved to Japan when he was younger, and the two of them met in college and fell in love. Thus, Akito was born and raised Japanese, even though he doesn't look it in the slightest. (Yes, I come up with reasons to have red-headed pretty boys with Japanese names and mannerisms!) Kyou, on the other hand, is Japanese by blood, and is actually shorter than Akito now, surprisingly enough.