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The thing about having given your heart, your service, and most of your soul to your country, Soujiro thought, mouthing at an unlit cigarette as he sat uselessly by Akira's bedside for the second night in a row, watching that the kid kept breathing through his concussion... The thing was, you either broke, or you learned to appreciate the simpler things in life. Fine coffee. Fresh curry. Regular customers.
Old friends.
And so, as dawn began to tint the little attic blue, Soujiro pulled out his phone, and scrolled down to the oldest number he had, contact name N-relic.
"Moshi moshi, Heiho. It's Pokka."
"Huh." Heiho's voice had roughened over the intervening years. It still gave Soujiro flashbacks to the domineering drill-sergeant grandmother he'd never actually had. "Thought you were retired."
"I am." The icy morning sun made the bruises stark on Akira's pale skin. "I'm cashing in my favors." He paused. "All of them at once, if I have to."
Silence stretched for a long, startled moment. Then, "Is Futaba all right?"
"I don't know for how much longer, but yes." Soujiro scrubbed a hand over his face. "My other kid, though..."
She didn't know about Akira. But that wasn't who she meant when she asked, flat and cold, "Who."
Soujiro told her.
-0-0-0
"Saturday afternoon. Be ready."
-0-0-0
The kids were easy enough to handle. Akira was still breathing funny and looked like he'd taken a jackboot to the face. He was in no shape to run around inside a madman's head, fighting clots of the worst bits of the human psyche. Successfully finding that Palace place would have to do for this week, and didn't they have exams coming up...? Saturdays would be Catching Akira Up study sessions... and it said far too much about these kids that they folded to even that little bit of parenting with resigned gratitude.
Soujiro's next trick was going to be a little more difficult.
Taking the phone didn't even wake the cat. If it had, Soujiro was ready with a handy "all these people calling him way too early to check the news is wrong, the kid needs to sleep, and weren't you guys supposed to be secret?", but that hadn't been necessary.
His luck held: the number was still there. Blocked, but not deleted. Soujiro transferred it to his own phone and dialed.
"Moshi moshi, Akechi-kun." He wanted to shake the boy. Wanted to turn him around and point at Shido like he was a mess on the carpet. Which, today, he would be. What a fucking world that it had all come to this, and that was enough to make him sound as tired and worn thin as Akechi would expect. "It's Soujiro," he added when there was no response. "Over at Leblanc."
"... Soujiro-san," Akechi finally murmured. "I'm. Truly sorry." Would wonders never cease. That almost sounded authentic, voice heavier than it had ever been in even his most woebegone television interviews. "I... Why are you calling?"
"I just noticed you haven't been in this week and got worried." That you'd figured out the team knew you'd betrayed them. Akira had been the only one of them to be told someone had sold them out, after all. "After everything... you know."
"Ah. Yes. I'm sorry to have worried you."
And that was all the television prince. Ugh. "You know, we should do lunch."
"Today?" Akechi blurted. "I mean. I'm afraid I have a great deal of paperwork--"
"Akechi-kun."
"... Yessir?"
"It's Saturday."
"Yeeeees...?"
"Go to school."
"But--"
"School, Akechi-kun." Where I will know exactly where you are and that you aren't in that damned Palace. "The paperwork isn't going anywhere."
"... Yes sir."
Another teenager completely at a loss to be faced with parenting. How did Akira keep finding these kids.
"I'll meet you for lunch at Ogikubo. One o'clock. Don't be late."
"... Yes sir," Akechi said, resigned.
-0-0-0
At 12:55, the boy ducked under the noren curtains of Ogikubo, looking around as if hoping that Soujiro hadn't yet arrived and he could escape.
Too bad for him, Soujiro had arrived early for just this possibility. He beckoned, and watched Akechi's demeanor curl inward. "Come on, sit down. I'm paying."
Akechi settled gingerly on the stool next to Soujiro. "Ah... you don't have to... I have an apple in my--" Soujiro cast him a quelling look. (An apple, really?) "... I don't tend to be particularly hungry in the middle of the day?"
"You can get a small ramen," Soujiro allowed. Couldn't shove large meals on a kid who was used to only getting an apple.
One small shio and a tonkatsu ramen later, plus hot tea, and an uncomfortable silence descended as they slowly ate.
"It's gotta be rough," Soujiro eventually said. "That your plan ended in this."
Thin noodles slid off Akechi's stilled chopsticks with a sodden plop.
"No one's taking it well, of course. But the rest of the kids... they're clinging to each other. Mostly." It wasn't even a lie. "A few spats, tempers are high, but for the most part. And then there's you."
He could see Akechi deliberately relax out of the corner of his eye. No kid should know how to ready for a blow so easily.
Soujiro sighed, watching his breath ripple the dregs of the broth. "We all grieve in our own ways, Akechi-kun." He drank the rest down and set the bowl back on the counter with a precise plastic click, following it with enough yen to cover the bill. "Take care, then."
"You're leaving?" Akechi asked, surprise almost covering the hint of hurt underneath.
"I'm clearly intruding," Soujiro explained, hat in hand. "Sorry to bother you." And he left.
On the subway back, his phone beeped in his pocket. Breaking news, was all the text said.
Good.
-0-0-0
Soujiro stopped in Akihabara on the way home, picking up a package of data sticks (20 count, 1 TB, whatever that meant; the TB was more expensive than the largest-numbered GB, so Soujiro figured it had the most storage space) and having it gift-wrapped for Futaba for Christmas.
The train back home was packed, closer to morning rush hour than a Saturday evening, but that was probably because of the weather. The sky was a low, forbidding gray, and the forecast on the news screen above his head was calling for sleet very soon.
Another station added several more people to the car, and someone's shoulder pressed in between his shoulderblades. He'd been in worse positions before.
As the train clattered back into motion, setting the crowd swaying, a hand tapped out the four corners of a square against his hip. Heiho. "Your kid's the best data miner we know," a woman said. Not Heiho, but someone much younger, with a sweet soprano voice that bypassed even Soujiro's suspicious nature and tugged at the old instincts for a split second. "Would you be okay with it if we trusted her with this?"
He really, really wouldn't.
But... if they didn't get the data out in time... who else had Shido corrupted? Who might go after her? Akira? The other kids?
"Yes."
His shopping bag tripled in weight, and the woman vanished at the next station.
The kids were still safely packed around their table, open textbooks and notes strewn between an alarming number of empty snack bags and soda bottles. Soujiro shook his head in exasperation. "The trash bin is right behind the counter, you know."
Ann eeped, but Makoto smoothly replied, "We've been very busy studying."
Nice try. "Riiiight." Another few minutes under his raised eyebrow, and Akira reached for the trash. The scramble to get it out of his hands and pitched away -- without letting Akira up from his seat -- was almost funny to watch. When they'd all settled again, Soujiro let them see his amusement. "And have you had any real food yet, or have you been snacking all day?" Sheepish looks all around. Soujiro circled behind the counter, set his bag down, and reached for his apron. "I've got it. Haru, come back here and make a round of coffee while I fix lunch. The rest of you make some room on the table."
Soujiro clicked the tv on as Haru set to, then set about making fresh curry. The game show was arguably educational, after all, and it kept them occupied (and mostly losing to Akira, going by the laughter and ribbing after every quiet murmur was followed by the announcer and a round of applause) as he chopped and simmered and stirred, Wakaba's perfect spice blend refreshing the cafe's air.
He didn't notice the channel had cut to breaking news until Haru dropped a coffee cup with a stunning crash.
"For real?!" Ryuji yelped in horror over the cat's yowl.
"Oh my god." Ann had a hand over her mouth, green eyes wide. "Oh my god."
"Did he have a barrier after all?" Yusuke muttered. "Some sort of trap--?"
Akira shook his head. "No." But he'd lost what little color he had under the bruises. "We barely even entered the Palace."
Makoto swallowed. "Guys." All eyes turned to her. "Do you think... maybe Akechi turned on Shido?"
Silence. Then, "That fucking asshole!" Ryuji blinked when that got him stares. "What? That means he coulda taken out Shido anytime if he did it so easy now! Joker..." He growled under his breath. "We wouldn't have had to trick him... and a lot of people would be alive if he'd just gotten off his ass months ago!"
"My father..." Haru's soft voice fell into the silence. Soujiro took her by the elbow and gently moved her away from the broken ceramic. She didn't seem to notice. "My father would be alive now, if Akechi had..." She shook her head, curls bouncing. "But we all saw my father's Shadow! And Sae's, and all the people in Mementos... the ones who turn into normal Shadows. They're barely-- they're not human. It's so easy to hit them. To hurt them." Her fists clenched, and her gaze snapped up fiercely. "I can't forgive him, but... but...!"
"... But the timing of this is so suspicious," Makoto finished for her. "It might've taken Joker... our trick with Joker... for Akechi to actually feel like the murderer he is. And to take steps to free himself from that man's orders."
The silence that descended at that was more thoughtful, darker.
"Well, what's done is done," Soujiro said. He ladled curry out onto plates on the counter, and Ann passed them around. "And for what it's worth, I figure... if it wasn't Akechi," which at least they'd be able to clear up themselves without help, if they ever met with him again, "it was probably stress. An election campaign is rough enough without the worry of having his crimes discovered right at the last minute."
That seemed to help with the dark mood, and the food did considerably more, but it was still a subdued group that finished their studying a few hours later and went their separate ways, leaving Akira to lock up and go to bed.
When they got home, Soujiro caught Futaba by the shoulder before she could rush off to her room, and handed her the shopping bag with its two presents inside. "These are for you," he explained. "Don't... ah... don't wait until Christmas, okay? Probably best to open them tonight." Futaba peered curiously into the bag. "Just don't stay up too late playing with them."
And may you someday forgive me.
The next morning, she wandered downstairs while he was washing the breakfast pans, dark circles under her stunned eyes. "Soujiro... you...?"
It hurt, that shocked realization on her face. "Did you sleep?" he asked, turning back to the dishes. He'd torn the egg doing a layer of omelet, and it had burnt onto the corner of the pan. It needed scrubbed harder.
"... No."
Of course she hadn't. She'd clearly opened the whatever it was Heiho had sent them -- Soujiro would bet a hard drive, from the weight -- and stayed up all night mining the data in it.
"Do you have copies ready, then?"
"... Copies?"
"Well, you know." Soujiro paused in his scrubbing and glanced at her. "A guy goes after your kids, you kind of want to shout his crimes through every reputable news source on the planet."
Futaba stared for another long moment. Then, her little face firmed up. "I can get them done in thirty minutes."
That was Wakaba's girl. "Just one thing," he said, as she spun to go do it, her hair flying. She started to glance back over her shoulder, quickly untangled her glasses from her hair, then turned a curious look on him. "Two things, actually. One... could you keep Akechi's name out of the copies?"
She gaped.
"I know you've probably copied my phone contacts." It was technology, he'd be surprised if she didn't have everything in the house bugged right down to the doorbell. "N-relic goes by Heiho. If you need a failsafe, you can trust her with it. Just... keep Akechi out of it at first. Please."
"But why?"
Soujiro couldn't help but smirk. It felt odd on his face, like he wanted to grimace in pain at the same time. "You'll understand when you're older."
"Daaaaaaad!" She pouted up at him, probably thinking it was a dire glare, then huffed. "Fine. What's the second thing?"
"Breakfast comes first."
-0-0-0
It turned out Akira had a reporter on speed dial. Of course he did.
Soujiro gave Makoto her data stick as well as Sae's, though, rather than letting Akira take one to the reporter himself. He apparently met up with her regularly at a bar in Shinjuku, and saw no reason to change the location. Planning to go around Shinjuku injured, honestly, that kid. Makoto at least wouldn't attract that kind of wrong attention.
-0-0-0
Late Prime Minister Candidate Masayoshi Shido Implicated In Human Trafficking!
Dirty Laundry: Masayoshi Shido's Money Laundering Schemes!
SIU Director Assassinated by Shido! How Safe Are The Police?
TV Exec Found In Cahoots With Shido!
Shido's Mafia Backing: Drugs, Prostitution, and Blackmail!
Okumura Foods Stock Tanks: Shido Madness Scheme Exposed!
Shido Found Behind August Medjed Threat!
Soujiro liked the last four days of Shido headlines far better than he had the previous three months'. Even if the morning news and gossip shows were starting to get weird, with the top question on so many people's minds being 'but how did he do it?'
To be honest, if he hadn't known about Wakaba's research and how his kids were using it, he probably would've been seriously considering experimental drugs and hypnosis too. Though calling in a psychic was definitely pushing it. She'd barely looked out of school herself, some little hippie thing in purple, who'd seemed shy and too gentle for TV up until the gossips had tried to twist her words. At that point, she'd blown up into a full-on country hick laying down of the law that probably had every viewer snapping up straight and looking for their grandmothers.
He'd lost a barely-touched cigarette to that instinctive panic himself, that morning. Color him impressed.
"Our top story tonight," the anchor on the evening news began, his professionalism clearly starting to strain at the seams. "New evidence has come to light that the suicide of the Phantom Thieves' leader last week was, in fact, yet another assassination ordered by the late Masayoshi Shido..."
The taste of Soujiro's coffee soured.
"... I can't." The anchorman dropped his head into his hands. "I can't do this anymore. The kid was just sixteen... how did we all forget that?" One hand dropped, the other raising to rub at his forehead, and he stared hopelessly from underneath it into the camera. "We reported on it! We've been talking about teenage violence and the failures in schools and parenting... and people online have been calling for the group's executions!" He shoved himself halfway up from his seat, voice rising in increasing hysteria. "They're just kids! Forget executive Moriya-- what has Shido been doing to us?! To all of us? To our chil--"
The screen cut to technical difficulties.
Soujiro stared. After a long moment, when it went to commercial completely off schedule, he turned the tv off.
"Well." That had been... strange. Normal. Human.
It was about time someone in this damned city remembered they were the adults and stepped up to the plate.
... Though... the anchorman had a point. What else might Shido have been doing to them? There was something fishy about how he'd become the only wanted candidate almost overnight.
If only Soujiro had understood a word of Wakaba's research.
Behind him, the door slammed open with a crash of jingling bells.
"YOU."
Goro Akechi stood outlined in the streetlights streaming through the cafe door, pointing at Soujiro in a pose straight out of a detective manga. His face was a mask of fury that made Soujiro blink.
"I," the boy snapped, "have been getting harrassed by reporters day and night, asking questions about how I could be so wrong about the suicide. If I am alarmed that this could happen in the most secure building in the nation. How I feel about a hit taking out my quarry before justice could be done. And every time, every time, I have to remind myself that they are talking about Kurusu rather than Shido."
... So much about Goro Akechi suddenly made sense.
"So," he hissed. "How do you think I feel about a hit taking out my quarry 'before justice could be done'?"
Soujiro leveled a calm look on the boy. "Looks to me like you're completely fucking ticked."
Akechi slammed a fist down on the bartop, next to the phone. "And I'm looking at the man who ordered it, former PSIA agent Soujiro Sakura."
"Hm." Soujiro leaned against the counter. "Okay, I'll bite. What makes you think that? Other than my background check."
Akechi's eyes glinted. "Three things." One leather-gloved finger shot up. "One. The hit occurred while I was having lunch with you. Safely out of Shido's Palace while he died." Soujiro inclined his head. True. "Two." Another finger. "'We all grieve in our own ways,' you said." He didn't elaborate.
Soujiro didn't need him to.
"And three." The rage cracked, revealing something wounded and lost. "... Three... none of Shido's associates have come for me. Nor have the police. So my name... can't be in the records it seems the entire city has copies of. Someone took it out." Why would anyone have done that? was written on Akechi's face so clearly it may as well have been in ink. "... And you bothered to keep me out of the Palace when it collapsed. I can't think of anyone else it could be."
This kid. Soujiro jerked his head at the line of stools up against the bar. "Akechi-kun... sit down. We need to talk."
He made two coffees in silence, Akechi's favored brew milder and brighter than Soujiro's, and sweetened Akechi's a bit. Then, instead of just pushing the one across the counter, Soujiro circled around and took the stool next to Akechi's own.
He waited, sipping at his coffee, until Akechi had grudgingly drunk some of his own, with the put-upon air of teenagers everywhere.
"You know, kid," Soujiro finally said into the silence. "I like to think I know my regulars. That I've got some insight into people." He could see Akechi's incredulous look out of the corner of his eye. "It probably sounds ridiculous to you, I know. You had us all pretty well fooled," Akechi's brow furrowed, yes I did and how is this relevant, "because you showed us too much of the truth." Soujiro looked Akechi full in the face. "You aren't a psychopath."
"Excuse me?"
"It's pretty easy math, you know." It probably sounded like a non-sequitur. "You were just fourteen when it all started. Futaba's older now than you were then." And she'd still damn near scared him out of ten years' life with her bank hacking stunt, in her panic that she'd be sent back to her abusive uncle. And that was with her being older and wiser, and having an adult ready to protect her. "Fourteen, and not a psychopath. You never wanted to kill people."
Akechi nearly broke his mug, thudding it down onto the counter in a furious slosh of coffee.
"Let me rephrase that. You don't enjoy killing people." He'd bet any amount of money that Akechi had wanted to kill Shido just as much as Soujiro himself had. Soujiro just knew how to do it without collateral damage. ... Soujiro had wanted to do it without collateral damage.
A fourteen-year-old who needed to get close enough to Shido to figure out his keywords? People barely understood collateral damage at that age when they were well-adjusted kids with decent parents. And then Shido had gotten a hold of him.
"What were you going to do when you'd ruined Shido?"
Akechi choked. "I... hadn't given it serious consideration."
The way he'd said that... Soujiro gave him a sharp look. "You were expecting to survive it, at least?" When Akechi didn't immediately agree, Soujiro hit the counter himself. "Goddammit, kid."
Akechi hunched in on himself.
Fine, Soujiro was scary, he knew it. Time to use that to hammer through Akechi's messed-up head. "Now you listen to me, kid." He jabbed a finger into Akechi's personal space, holding that wary stare with his own. "You don't enjoy killing people. I don't care what you've told yourself so you can sleep at night. You can change, if someone just gives you a goddamn chance. So. Here it is. I've kept your name out of this shitstorm so you can have a choice for once in your life. What do you want to do?"
Silence. Then, very small, and as if the words were pulling themselves out of Akechi's throat, "... I want to turn myself in."
Soujiro nodded, one man to another. "Then that's what we'll do. Once enough of the corruption's ripped out that you'll survive doing it."
Akechi's gaze dropped, accepting that. "... And I want to visit Kurusu's grave," he told the coffee.
Well now. "I think we can arrange something like that." Soujiro stood and gathered up the coffee cups, headed over to the open end of the counter near the stairs... and paused. "Hey, get down here," he called up.
Akechi jerked half-upright in shock. The clatter-thunk of the stool hitting the floor didn't cover the equally loud thumps of teenage feet on the stairs... or the thump when Akira caught himself on the wall at the bottom.
The last time Soujiro had seen an expression like that, the heroine of a truly ridiculous movie had just seen her one-true-love lived. That it was the exact twin to Akechi's face, when Soujiro stepped aside and glanced at the detective... well. He'd had a feeling.
"You," Akechi breathed. "But... how...?"
Akira smiled shakily. "You missed."