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Chapter Text

When Akira opens his eyes to a ceiling covered in cobwebs and a distinct lack of Morgana on his face, he spends the next ten minutes slowly working himself up to a full-blown panic attack. He ends up curled into a slightly pathetic pretzel of shaking limbs, fingers twisting in his hair as he tries to figure out what had gotten him into this predicament. 

His memories are decidedly unhelpful, lining up in two discrete blocks with the first being going to bed in his university dorm and the next, waking up a sixteen-year-old delinquent on probation. 

I didn't ask for this, he thinks loudly. 

“I didn't ask for this,” he says loudly for the benefit of the cruel, twisted cosmic puppet-master that was in control of his life just in case they hadn't been paying enough attention. It doesn't seem to be very effective since his phone, now glaringly void of all his contacts, is still telling him that it's 2:46 AM on April 11, 2017. 

To his endless embarrassment, his first instinct is to bury his face in his pillow and cry until the weight of crushing responsibility and looming dread stops threatening to overwhelm him. Not that he can really blame himself, as there is very little else that is as discouraging as having to start over from square one with no confidants, no yen, and no guarantee if he will even survive the upcoming year. If any of them will. 

He takes a calming breath. Or two. Or fifty, but Morgana isn't around to call him out on it. The important part is that he eventually reaches that place of zen that he had been known for, prior to his temporal displacement. 

Akira’s thumb hovers over the mocking red eye of the Metaverse-Navi and deletes it with a passive-aggressive click. Palaces, false gods, precariously averted apocalypses - bring it on.

… but just not right now, preferably. 

Right now, Akira is going the fuck to bed. 

Akira finds himself mildly regretting his decision to catch up on shut-eye instead of frantically diving for a pen and paper and capturing every remembered second of the future in search of some method or strategy for some kind of perceived advantage in the second round of this unjust game. Because then he might have remembered to bring an umbrella. 

Instead, he is once again seeking shelter under a storefront and resembling a half-drowned cat as he squints to see through his fake glasses. 

He scarcely remembers getting ready that morning, running on an autopilot of old ingrained habits as he absently buttoned up his Shujin blazer and shoveled curry in his face, all the while not looking Sojiro in the face to avoid seeing the cool, distrustful indifference there. Knowing that his closest friends and found family were complete strangers at this point and experiencing it are two very different matters and Akira needs a lot more sleep and as much alcohol as he can buy on a student budget before he thinks he will be remotely ready to face this new reality head-on. 

So he decides not to. Face reality, that is. In fact, Akira is determined to spend the rest of the day in a shell-shocked stupor and go straight home to bed and sleep for at least sixteen hours. Then he’ll worry about things like saving Tokyo from non-existence.

Alas, his fledgling plans are foiled before they even get out of the nest when he spies movement next to him. He turns just in time to see a bright head of blond hair shaken loose from a white hood and Takamaki Ann is suddenly standing next to him, just as stunning as the first day he met her. 

Because it is the first day he met her. 

Of course, she notices him staring at her like a weirdo and Akira self-consciously flips his soaking wet bangs out of his eyes, hoping that it comes off as nonchalant rather than criminally nervous. He’s too busy reeling over his sudden and unwelcome revelation to notice that she had gone rather still, cheeks flushed with colour. Somehow, he had failed to connect the dots that today is (was?) the day that he stumbles blindly into the Metaverse and discovers his will of rebellion while ripping half the skin off his face. Akira can only conclude that he should never have gotten out of bed this morning because he is most certainly not up for any of that. Butterfly effect or not, surely things will be fine if he took a sick day? A sick month? 

“Oh, do you need a ride too?”

Akira is unwelcomely wrenched from his thoughts by a sickening baritone and his head snaps up to see Kamoshida Suguru, the multi-limbed, slobbering ruler of lust himself. He blinks and the horrible image is replaced with a slightly less horrible image of a normal-limbed human wearing a smarmy grin that dripped sleaze. Akira takes a half-conscious step back in reflex and shakes his head in rejection and fights to keep a fake smile on his face. He ends up with a grimace, a grin with too many teeth and a jaw too rigid with tension. 

Luckily for his mounting blood pressure, Kamoshida drives off though his eyes linger on him for a fraction too long. But just as his pulse starts to steady, it skyrockets back up again at another all too familiar voice. 

“- screw that perverted teacher! Who does that bastard think he is? The king of the castle?” 

Akira takes a deep calming breath and runs in the opposite direction. Or he would have if his stupid body would listen to him instead of shaking like a newborn foal. Instead, his body just makes an aborted sort of jerk as dismay spreads across his face since he isn't ready for this. 

Apparently finding his existential crisis offensive, Sakamoto Ryuji regards him with far more aggression than he has ever directed at him before. 

“What? Are you going to rat me out to Kamoshida too?” he growls and Akira is too stupid to do anything else besides on staring blankly at him in horror.

“Kamoshida?” he hears himself parroting because he's stupid. Unfortunately, he must have picked the wrong dialogue option because Ryuji looks like he wants to lunge for his lapels and slam him into a locker. 

“Don't play dumb! That's a Shujin uniform, ain't it?!” 

Akira wracks his brain, trying to salvage the situation. 

Shujin? I don't know her. 

Sorry, I just transferred here today. 

Ryuji, I'm a time traveler. 

Akira opens his mouth to explain but all he ends up saying is, “oh shit,” when the Metaverse-Navi pings and reality warps around them.

Before Ryuji can ignorantly provoke the armored shadows, in one swift motion, Akira clamps a hand around his friend's loud mouth and drags him further into the Palace. He is moving more or less on autopilot, guided by déjà vu and a spiteful refusal to succumb to the trials he had once successfully faced. 

In a maelstrom of fire and blood, Arsene comes to him again and then it's child's play to slip between their blindspots and tear away their masks, unerringly striking at weaknesses. Despite all his time outside of the Metaverse, he eases into his Personas like a second skin and he can pretend that nothing had changed. 

(Because nothing has changed. Except for him.) 

And it pains him, far more than he could have expected, to see the unquestioning awe on Ryuji’s face and hear the peppering of questions that he could not answer. Other than that, the infiltration goes well, with Akira and the ignorant Ryuji inching ever closer to the treasure that they couldn't have known about. 

Everything is happening too quickly and all Akira can do is keep pushing forward, past his own fears and doubts because once he stops to think, he might not have the will to keep going. He wants answers, he wants to go home, he wants--

“A monster cat--?!” Ryuji yelps at the same time as pure, unadulterated relief flooded Akira’s body. The cell door rattles noisily from how quickly he had thrown it open but Akira doesn’t care because he is too busy crushing Morgana to his chest in the clingiest hug he has ever given in any timeline. 

Eventually, he is forced to let go, partly from Morgana’s indignantly horrified squirming but mostly because he can see a threatening glint of sharp claws. He steps back with a neat flourish of his coat and his hands held passively behind his back like he hadn’t been doing his best to button-mash his delightfully soft head. 

Ryuji rounds on him in disbelief. “What the hell do you think you were doing, man? That… that thing could have had rabies!” 

Akira smiles vaguely while the furry personification of humanity’s hope sputters in apoplectic rage. “I just really like cats.” 

Unwilling to give himself away, now with Morgana’s more suspicious eyes in the picture, Akira hides his proficiency. Or tries to. But the third time a Pixie knocks him back on his ass, he pumps her full of dream needles with a grin that is probably closer to crazy slasher than a righteous phantom thief. 

He needn't have bothered anyway. With Ryuji’s enthusiastic eyewitness account of Akira’s awakening and Akira’s first-class skills at playing dumb, Morgana doesn't question why he's frighteningly good at dodging shadows and climbing up banisters. If anything, his praise for Joker seems to be twice as admiring, his grudge from being button-mashed completely forgotten. Maybe, Akira thinks for the first time with something like hope blooming in his chest, maybe this time Morgana will respect me enough to let me decide my own bedtimes. 

Everything goes perfectly right up until they arrive at the exit. 

“This is where we part. I have other things I need to investigate.”

Akira stares blankly at Morgana’s retreating figure while Ryuji jumps for the duct behind them, feeling his throat constrict and suddenly all of the jokes they had made about Morgana having separation anxiety aren't at all funny. 

“Wait,” he calls out, darting forward to catch his shoulder. His best friend, the literal personification of humanity's hope and his best and only hope of figuring his way out of this mess. Not to mention portable space heater. 

Morgana turns and shoots him an odd look. 

Don't go! I love you, space heater! 

Morgana, I'm from the future. 

Let us repay you for saving us. 

“Repay me?” Morgana asks with just a hint of suspicion as Ryuji lets out a horrified “You want us to what ?!” behind them. 

“We couldn’t have made it out without your expertise,” Akira butters him up shamelessly, still remembering the desolation on his furry face when he thought himself unneeded. “At least let us treat you to a meal.” 

“Dude, I can’t believe I’m the one saying this but,” Ryuji hisses, “we have school! And you’re talking to a monster cat! What are we supposed to feed it, human souls?!” 

Of course, Ryuji possesses the unique power to get under Morgana’s skill in every timeline and he predictably bristles and is either going to launch into a tirade or run out of Akira’s life forever so he smoothly interjects, “What about sushi?”

“Su… sushi?!” yowls both Ryuji and cat, although one sounds a lot happier about it than the other and that's how he successfully lures Morgana to his attic days ahead of schedule.

(Akira makes a quiet promise to buy him as much sushi as he can afford for the rest of his life.)

(He also spends all the savings he doesn't have on fatty tuna before he remembers that he and Ryuji are supposed to be in class.)

That night, there's a familiar weight pressing against his chest and Akira sleeps soundly. Until an evil cup decides to drag him out into the realm between the conscious and the unconscious.  Akira opens his eyes when his uncomfortable mattress turns even more uncomfortable and finds himself looking stylish in prison stripes and shackles once again. 

He continues to lie there, catatonic. 

A bubble of hysteria rises up into his throat and he bites his lip to hold it there, hidden beneath the layers of his skin and flesh. To think that after all he's been through, after he even received the World, his heart is still a prison. 

In the city where he first tasted freedom, surrounded by his loved ones, he has never felt so trapped before. 

“On your feet, inmate! Show some respect when you are in our Master's presence.” 

Ah, there it is, Caroline's dulcet tones accompanying the harsh rap of her baton against the bars. But the idea of letting his poor, sensitive feet touch the cold stone floor is not an appealing one. Especially not when it will be Fakegor’s bloodshot eyes glaring at him from the other side of the desk. 

Akira draws a deep breath and listens to it rattle in his lungs. If there wasn't a non-zero chance that his continued non-compliance could mean that the holy cup would lose patience and end the world early, he would just continue to lie there. 

He pulls himself to his feet, dragging them like he's walking to his own execution. 

Kamoshida goes down, falling helplessly onto his knees as Ann stands before him, haloed by fire and rage like a goddess of vengeance. Everything plays out almost perfectly as if following a script. There had been a moment of tension when Ann had hesitated just a bit too long and Akira had panicked, bracing himself for the stench of searing flesh. But Ann had always been the best of them and the flames singe walls instead of Kamoshida’s face. 

They tentatively celebrate their victory as Akira stares down at the medal clenched too tightly in his hand. 

Another prisoner, back in his cell. 

Triumph tastes of ashes but he forces himself to smile, banishing the dead-eyed phantom of Kamoshida’s shadow self. 

Afterward, things slot into place like clockwork. 

During the day, he lives an honest student life. Eating curry for breakfast, napping through his classes, working as many jobs as he can, and slowly reconnecting with his former confidants. But meetings that once brought him joy now feel like empty, useless motions with his progress undone and his friends once again trapped in their old uncertainties. Everything is both easier and harder the second time and he loses track of how many times he nearly said something he shouldn't have known. 

Akira wonders if he is as much a cog in the wheel of fate as an overworked robot employee in Okumura’s palace. 

He had once faced insurmountable odds, armed with a dagger and a smug grin on his face, but now, knowing exactly what lies around the corner makes the days long and the nights longer. 

“Hey, hey,” Morgana calls from what sounds like the other end of a long, narrow tube. 

Some days, when the sky is overcast in muted shades and the air is filled with grey static, Akira wonders if patience is a finite resource and if there will come a time when his will finally dry up. He wonders how many more hours are still ahead of him and how many more hours he can bury himself in the mundane and avoid the inevitable. 

He would give anything for it to come now, to face the false god at the height of his power. Boredom and an ever-increasing sense of futility, on the other hand, is a far deadlier foe, a slow erosion of one’s will and sanity. 

“Akira! Shouldn't you be paying attention?”

Akira shrugs noncommittally as his head droops another inch lower, tilting with just enough proficiency that the piece of chalk sails harmlessly past his head. 

He goes right back to sleep, ignoring the tittering of his classmates. Some days, reality is just easier to bear from within a dream.

The monotony comes to an abrupt end when he trips, of all things. 

Lost in thought as he was, Akira had neglected to give the important task of ‘putting one foot in front of the other’ the attention it deserved. Consequently, the universe decides to remove the ground beneath his feet and Akira goes flying. 

So much for Joker’s charisma. 

But his uncharacteristic clumsiness isn’t the issue. The real issue is that he had been standing at the top of a set of stairs and he still has Morgana in his bag. Akira’s eyes widen as he finds himself weightless. His body lurches forward and he scarcely has a moment to brace himself for pain before he feels a sudden pressure around his wrist. 

It jerks him backward, painfully out of gravity’s treacherous hold. 

“Are you okay?” a pleasant voice sounds in his ear and it hits him way harder than the concrete would have, knocking the air from his lungs and the sense from his brain. 

The world empties; bustling subway tunnels turning red and bare as wretched screams fill his ears. But the moment passes as soon as it arrives, leaving him stunned and breathless and half-draped against a dead boy who plotted to kill him. A dead boy whose chest is warm and solid, whose gloved fingers are still loosely encircling his wrist. Akira forgets how to breathe, standing stock still against the phantom while the heavy sound of his own heartbeat reverberates in his ears. 

he can't be here, he can't, he's not ready, he'll never be ready

“Excuse me?” that voice speaks up again, as gentle as before but with a nearly undetectable twinge of impatience seeping out from the facade and the overpowering familiarity of it is what forces Akira to yank his arm away and run.

He doesn't (refuses to) look back and misses the way those garnet eyes flash with surprise. 

It’s not like he has eidetic memory like Futaba or has some kind of GameFAQs cheat guide telling him every single action he took on every single day of his life.  So he forgot a few things. Sue him. 

(Actually, please don't sue him. That's what got him stranded here in the first place.)

To be fair, most of the important things had worked out, the first time around. 

Aside from minor hiccups like Haru’s father dying, personally experiencing a traumatizing amount of police brutality, Akechi Goro dying alone on the other side of a barrier to save them... for the most part, things had worked out okay.

Akira buries his face in his pillow and breathes deeply until the world stops spinning. Eventually, he sits back up and pulls out a pen and paper, resigning himself to weeks of sleepless nights. 

Akira had spent a very long time thinking about Akechi Goro. In the days after Shido’s palace, throughout the months after Yaldabaoth’s defeat when he sat in his cell, and in all the quiet nights that came after. The pain of regret hadn’t so much as faded as it had become a part of him, seeping into the fabric of his soul in a permanent imprint. He had lost count of how many times he had replayed their encounters, wondering with morbid fascination just what he could have done differently. If there had been a correct dialogue option he could have chosen to magically make everything right. 

Perhaps they could have become real friends without all of the smoke and mirrors they had both hidden behind. If he had been smarter, or if he had just been quicker, maybe he could have dragged Akechi through before the floodgates fell. In the end, he was merely fooling himself with what ifs and hypotheticals. The dead could not be resurrected. 

But Akechi isn't dead. Not now. Not here. Here, he still has time to plan, to act. To rewrite the ending to their story that goes beyond Shido’s palace. 

The thought fills him with as much elation as it does with dread. 

It is only when Morgana wakes up with a startled yowl that Akira realizes he hasn't slept and that his room had transformed itself overnight from ‘shabby but livable’ to ‘lair of a mental hospital escapee’. He had run out of paper sometime between 2 and 3 AM and decided the walls would be a good enough substitute. 

“Joker!? What's going on!?” Morgana cries out, spinning around on his paws to look at the fruits of Akira’s manic brainstorming. “Did you even sleep!?”

“It's nothing,” he deflects, badly, as he hides the sharpie behind his back to try to look less guilty. “There was a problem I needed to work out…”

“Pulling all-nighters is bad for your health!” Morgana says crossly and Akira is pretty sure his days of staying up past nine are over.  “And Boss is going to kill you for vandalizing his attic!”

Impending death by Sojiro or not, Akira feels quite accomplished as he drags himself down the creaky steps to get himself presentable for school. It had taken him all night, dozens of simulations and flowcharts but he finally had something resembling a workable answer.

He glances up from splashing water on his face and despite his new collection of dark circles, his eyes don’t look lifeless for once. 

Akira tries out a smile and Joker grins back at him. 

Chapter Text

It had taken several hours to transcribe his work and scrub the ink out of his walls but it had been well worth it to sleep through the night without gunshots ringing in his dreams. 

Akira wakes up the next day refreshed and with roughly twenty pages of (hopelessly illegible) handwriting detailing everything he can remember on every encounter and interaction that he will have with Akechi Goro over the next seven months.

He thumbs the pages with conflicted nostalgia, sifting through all that remains of the Akechi Goro he knew. If all goes well, its contents will never be more than memories; a record of words that will never be said and encounters that will never be had. 

Akira knows three things:

One, Yaldabaoth is the endgame. If he isn't defeated, Mementos will once again rise into the world and trap humanity into a hell of its own creation. 

Two, the only way to get to Yaldabaoth is to spread the name of the Phantom Thieves to expand Mementos enough to reach its depths. 

Three, spreading their name would cause unwanted attention of the Akechi Goro kind, allowing him to suspect them and infiltrate their ranks, eventually leading to a betrayal and a lifetime of nightmares.

Therefore, the solution is simple - Akechi can’t infiltrate and betray the Phantom Thieves if he never comes to suspect them. As much as Akira would like to think that he was confident enough to come up with a better plan to save Akechi Goro than avoid him like the plague, but it’s either that or he throws all his chips into betting that he can reform Akechi with the sheer power of friendship. 

As much as Akira longs for a return of their chess dates and quiet banter over coffee… it might not amount to anything. There is no guarantee that more heart-to-hearts or quiet offers of friendship could sway Akechi from his chosen path. 

There are too many factors, too many unknowns, and Akira isn’t reliving all of this just to fail again. Just to fail him again.

If a collision of their fates will end in one of their ruin, then the only way to win an unjust game is to not play it at all. 

Granted, their group had never been lowkey in any sense of the word, not with characters like Ryuji who was always just one decibel shy of announcing their identities to the world. Akira will just need to impress on him the importance of having a secret identity and take more precautions than they had before.  He’ll have to play it by ear. At the least, Akira is decently sure that he has not changed enough of the timeline to have affected any major differences. 

“You’re the one I have been searching for all this time! Ever since I laid eyes on you, I have been captivated by your overwhelming charm! Please, won’t you be the model for my next piece!?”

Kitagawa Yusuke at sixteen looks so much like he does at eighteen, enough that Akira can almost believe that time has reversed (advanced?) without him noticing. Yusuke had always gone at his own pace, gazing straight at his target with intense dark eyes, gesturing with the same unchanging grace like an oasis untouched and untempered by time. 

Except now, his cheekbones are just a bit too sharp. His Kosei uniform hangs just a bit too loose on his frame and the intensity in his eyes is almost equal parts passion and desperation. 

But he's not looking at Ann. 

Bemused, Akira’s gaze drifts down to the hands gripping his own. 

“...Me?” he asks with a side-glance at the girl standing next to him as if there was still a chance that the eccentric artist had marched right up to the wrong person.

Yusuke leans forward in response and Akira can feel his fingers tighten ever so unsubtly. “But of course! I cannot imagine a more worthy subject to grace my canvas!” 

Before Akira can formulate an answer through his bewilderment, Ryuji jumps to his rescue and forcibly inserts himself between them. “Hey! Personal space, man!” he exclaims, drawing himself to his full height and projecting every bit of dangerous blond delinquent that he can muster. “You're up to something shady, aren't you!?”

Akira is kind of touched by his show of protectiveness but mostly worried that Yusuke is going to get punched in the face. 

But Yusuke only has eyes for him, gazing adoringly at him over Ryuji’s outstretched arms like he's a platter of free sushi. “Please give my proposal some thought,” he implores and manages to foist three art gallery tickets on him while evading Ryuji’s attempts to stop him. “I will be helping Madarame-sensei with his opening exhibit tomorrow and would love for you to come. I look forward to your positive response.”

There is a moment of silence after Yusuke leaves while the fledgling Phantom Thieves of Hearts recover before they all burst out yelling at once. 

Ryuji is the first to round on him, making one more attempt to grab the tickets out of his hands and toss them into traffic. “You’re not planning on going, are you!?”

“Akira, this guy is suspicious!” Morgana yowls right into his ear. “Really, really suspicious!” 

Akira hums noncommittally and stuffs the tickets into his pocket and away from his friends’ destructive hands. “He seems nice,” he says mildly and eases into his practiced slouch. “And you caught who he said his sensei was, didn't you?”

Right on cue, his friends catch on, speculating on Madarame and the accusations of plagiarism. Akira more or less blanks out the discussion, mentally fast-forwarding through the dialogue and nods occasionally in feigned attention. 

As they part ways, he catches Ann muttering quietly to herself. “Am I really that self-conscious, after all?”

“You came!”

The way Yusuke's eyes lit up upon seeing him (like Akira had personally hung all the stars in the sky or promised to treat him to AYCE sushi) was a far cry from the chilly reception he and Ryuji had gotten before. Akira finds the change just as bewildering as he did yesterday but despite wracking his brains at length, he still can't pinpoint exactly what could have caused this deviation. In the end, he chalks it up as a part of the butterfly effect, a minor link in the chain of cascading changes.

The only thing he knows for sure is that it definitely isn't his "overwhelming charm". 

Bemused, Akira allows himself to be dragged away by an over-enthusiastic Yusuke, much to the deep, over-dramatic concern from his other friends.

Akira later wonders if their concern might not have been misplaced as it really is not doing his tenuous self-control any favors to hear the concealed pain in the pauses between each word of praise that Yusuke heaps onto his undeserving mentor. Especially not with the Madarame standing proudly before his gallery of stolen futures, painted lips stretched with false kindness. 

“I hope it will be a good piece, Yusuke,” Madarame drones and Akira’s strained, polite smile morphs into something decidedly more Joker as he remembers Fox’s proud form looming over a sniveling, ink-stained shadow. For once, he allows himself to indulge in the comfort of prescience.

“I'm sure he will be magnificent.”

After the exhibition, Akira shows up alone (with the usual exception of Morgana hitchhiking in his bag). 

“We don't want him to think we're ganging up on him,” Akira had suggested reasonably and that had been enough to stall most of Ryuji’s protests. “And besides, I’ll have Morgana with me,” took care of the rest. 

“We’ll be hanging around Center Street,” Ann promised. “If he does anything - weird, call us, okay!?”

It struck him as strange that his friends had almost displayed more concern over his supposed virtue than they had for Ann, before. 

“Well, you just seem the type that doesn't know how to say ‘no’ to people,” Morgana had unhelpfully explained when he tried to express that thought. 

“Akira!” The joy on Yusuke’s face could not be more apparent as he practically threw the door open in his haste to greet him. Akira’s pretty sure that if it hadn’t been a sliding door, it would have come off its hinges. “Please, do come in! I apologize for the clutter, I didn't expect you would come so soon.”

Akira steps into the atelier after him, keeping his face carefully neutral at the squalor of his surroundings. “Thank you for having me.” 

“No, no. Indeed the pleasure is all mine!” Yusuke insists, ushering him inside with the enthusiasm of someone who is afraid he will run away. He guides him down the hall with a visible spring in his step that has Akira biting his lips to stop himself from grinning out of nostalgia  “I’m afraid I do not have any refreshments to offer you, aside from tap water.” 

“That’s okay.” Without missing a beat, Akira fishes out a small bag of snacks and smiles sheepishly when Yusuke gazes at it like it held the answer to all the mysteries of the universe. “I wasn’t sure what snacks you liked-” a bald-faced lie since Akira knows exactly what snacks Yusuke likes “-so I got a bit of everything.”

“I have picked a worthy muse, indeed,” Yusuke murmurs, clutching the bag with reverence and had this been a game, he probably would have maxed out his confidant ranks all in one go. 

“Why, are you buttering him up!?” Morgana hisses from his bag but Akira returns Yusuke’s smile warmly all the same. 

With great reluctance, Yusuke directs his attention back to his canvas, proving that his lust for art outweighs his lust for snacking. 

Akira finds himself relaxing; the ensuing silence is so comforting and familiar. In the future, by virtue of being the only roommate willing and able to indulge Yusuke’s sudden and unexpected bouts of inspiration, he has been long acquainted with donating his body to the pursuit of art. There is something timeless in the stillness; a sanctuary where he can close his eyes and lose his troubles to the sound of graphite scratching across sketch paper.

He's sure that even decades from now, even with wrinkles lining his eyes and white in his hair, his dear friend would be exactly the same. 

“It's odd,” Yusuke muses after an age as he sits back on his stool. “I have never felt so at ease in the presence of a stranger before. But I feel as if I have known you my entire life. Like a friend from the fading echoes of my childhood memories.” 

Akira stills, but eventually concludes that it's just Yusuke being Yusuke. He smiles wryly and shrugs. 

I would have remembered meeting someone like you.

Haha, what a strange coincidence.

Maybe that’s because I’m a time-traveler, Yusuke.

“Perhaps so!” Yusuke’s eyes light up endearingly as he lets out a throaty chuckle. “Hm, yes. That would explain your familiarity with my preference for jagariko!”

Akira can't help the laughter that bubbles out of him, doubling over until his entire body shakes. Yusuke looks mildly confused yet pleased at the same time when Akira shoots him a dazzling smile. 

“I hope you never change, Yusuke,” he says, impossibly fond.

In the end, Yusuke doesn’t manage to produce anything to his satisfaction but Akira emerges from the shack with a promise to return (with snacks). He had gently waved away his friend’s unnecessary apologies for taking up his time, assuring him that his company is all the reward he requires. 

And it is. His shoulders feel so curiously light like he had left all of his burdens behind.

His shoulders really are light. And his schoolbag is conspicuously empty. 

Right on cue, he can see a small furry figure struggling to unlatch one of the windows without the use of opposable thumbs. 

“Joker!“ Morgana yowls, wronged and abandoned. “You left me!”

Whoops.

Mementos had always been unsettling. The eerie murmurs, the ever-persistent feeling of being watched and judged by the unseen and the way the walls pulse around them like a living, hungry thing… And the knowledge that all of humanity is directly feeding said hungry thing like glorified saline bags does nothing for Akira's comfort levels. 

Anyone with a modicum of self-preservation would have taken one look at this hellish hellscape and exited stage left. But the whispers of the unknown called for them and like fools, Akira had driven them right into the depths of its greedy maw. 

It takes every last scrap of his will of rebellion to willingly subject himself to its walls again, even if the thing threatening to rebel the most is his stomach. But he has no choice but to press on.

Morgana’s apology sushi doesn’t come cheap, after all.

"I still can't believe you left me," Monabus piles a bit more guilt on Akira's already precariously stacked collection. "And we didn't get anything else out of that guy except for his big fat crush on your clavicles!" 

Panther and Skull are suddenly 100% less invested in arguing about carbonated drinks and 100% more invested in hanging on for dear life when their ride suddenly pitches to the side. At the last moment, Akira manages to save their lives and his dignity at the expense of a pair of horrified shadows.

"I really must apologize." The frustration in Yusuke's voice hangs in the air like a tangible thing. "Try as I might but I cannot seem to adequately capture your essence today. Perhaps, another day…?"

Akira shuffles on his seat, keenly aware that he can hear another set of footsteps echoing from somewhere within the shack. Morgana had long gone off to run a certain errand which left it up to him to execute the last phase in their plan. Mischief curls his lips, despite his best efforts to fight it down. 

Maybe you just need a break? 

We should go for a walk. 

Do you want me to strip? 

Yusuke surges to his feet, his formerly listless appearance coming alive with renewed motivation.

“Yes, of course...! That’s it!” Akira catches him muttering to himself, eyes wild as his hands tremble with frenetic energy. “The naked form is the true pinnacle of human beauty!  I can feel inspiration welling up within my soul… like Michaelangelo crafting the image of David…! Very well, Akira! I will have you bare it all before me!”

It is probably a good thing that Morgana should be otherwise occupied when Yusuke’s declaration is immediately followed by laughter that is just on the side of maniacal. Akira, of course, takes it all in stride with the practiced air of someone who has been in various stages of undress in various locations for the sake of Yusuke’s art.

With the impeccable timing of someone listening on the other side of the door, Morgana chooses this exact moment to shriek at the top of his lungs. 

“Akira, I told you he was suspicious!!!”

Akira puts on his best impression of someone who has just noticed their cat has unexpectedly wandered off and gotten into a locked room filled to the brim with counterfeit ‘Sayuri’s. 

“I’m so sorry,” he says, getting to his feet, fighting back a mad grin of his own as the sounds of Madarame's urgent footfalls fill his ears. “Morgana must have gotten out without me noticing-- I’ll go get him now.” 

Time passes and the seasons change; the skies clearing up after a season of rain and daily visits from Yusuke, now that Madarame is out of the picture. Behind bars, both physical and metaphysical while the gears of fate continue to spin onwards. Akira is no closer to the answers that he seeks.

It is all too easy to be lulled into complacency with his foreknowledge waiting quietly in his head, laying out the path of choices that he should take to get back to where he is meant to be.  He thinks about the future; a world unbound from its slavish desire to be controlled, where destiny and choice are once more in the hands of humanity. He thinks about the life he left behind; scribbling down notes in a lecture hall, weekends spent with Sojiro and Futaba, Ryuji banging on the door to the shared bathroom to urge Yusuke to move faster. He thinks of Ann’s bright smiles, Makoto’s warm gazes, and Haru’s gentle laughter.  

But then he thinks of the blood seeping through the cracks in Akechi's ruined mask and how he is about to fuck everything up like a bad video game sequel. 

Akira draws a deep breath and tries to become one with the concrete wall that he's leaning against. He pictures his existence quietly dissolving, crumbling away into dust and leaving the world none the wiser because roughly five meters away, Akechi Goro is standing by the bike racks. 

Morgana picks this exact timing to pop his head out of his bag.

“Hey, Joker, what's wrong? Why did you stop all of a sudden?”

In Akira’s peripherals, a pair of red eyes suddenly flicker in his direction and he immediately feels his soul leave his body. Surreptitiously, he tries to quiet him without causing him offense because Mona, bless his adorable, soft, furry heart, is about to get him murdered months ahead of schedule. For a moment, he thinks he had successfully avoided detection but his abilities in the Metaverse have not completely carried over when he hears the telltale tap of Akechi’s shoes. He quickly takes stock of his surroundings: the next alcove is too far away to escape to, not before Akechi discovers him. His other option is to scale the wall but with his luck, the detective will look up just at the last second and arrest him for trespassing. 

Heart pounding, palms sweating, Akira tells himself that everything will be fine and the best thing to do is just to act normal and that he needs to walk around that corner like a normal person because theoretically normal people don't get shot in the head by murderous detectives. 

He doesn't even sound convincing to himself. 

But if he stays here, hiding behind walls like a creature, he is for sure going to arouse suspicion, or worse, Akechi might suspect him of being a Detective Prince fan. 

Akira takes a deep, calming breath and decides to face the music. Somewhat literally because he mistimes his entrance and nearly smacks into Akechi face first. They both yelp and are forced to steady themselves by grabbing onto each other’s jackets.

“Oh!” he says and Akira’s stomach plummets down, all the way down into the depths of Mementos to flop weakly down next to a giant cup when he sees that Akechi’s eyes are filled with recognition. “You are-?”

“-the wrong person,” Akira interjects smoothly as he steps back, his face so stone-cold poker-faced that it could put a moai to shame.  “Whoever it is that you are thinking of, I’m not them. So, I’m just gonna be on my way.” 

The utter surprise and confusion on Akechi’s face will be something that brings Akira a tiny sliver of comfort when Akechi inevitably shoots him in the face at the end of the year so he takes care to memorize it before he makes a strategic retreat.

Chapter Text

Akira glances up just in time to see a brown-haired girl in a Shujin uniform hastily slide a textbook in front of her face and kindly pretends not to notice her. 

It reminds him again with increased urgency that the window to deal with their next target is steadily closing.

Kaneshiro Junya. Bank. Shibuya.

Although Kaneshiro’s palace is a mere button click away, without an invitation it will remain out of reach; his shadow sneering from its untouchable throne in the sky. All he does know is that, as much as he misses Makoto and knows that her friendship and support have been invaluable to him, he would rather throw himself off a building than knowingly put her in unnecessary danger. Not that he doesn’t regularly endanger all of his closest friends on a regular basis but there is a key difference between tangling with shadows in the metaverse and being at the mercy of cruel adults with no way to defend themselves. 

Of course, Akira has the option of not going after him at all. The Phantom Thieves could be kept busy enough; there is no shortage of other twisted hearts to steal, especially ones that won't put Akechi and Shido on their trails. And even if they do remove Kaneshiro from the seat of his power, the machine called greed will continue churning on without him. 

It is too bad that the part of him that threw himself between Shido Masayoshi and his victim, the part of him that became Arsene in a storm of fire and darkness, absolutely revolts at the thought of retreating. Even if his grudge with the mob boss isn’t personal like it had been with Kamoshida and Madarame, his sense of justice will not allow him to walk away without consequence.

Akira lets out a sigh, the heaviness of his responsibility dragging at his ankles like lead weights. Short of personally walking into Kaneshiro's lair, there seems to be no other way for them to proceed. It really had been so much easier to fly blind, without the nagging wisdom of hindsight to tell him just what a lucky fool he must have been.

"Is something the matter, Akira?" 

The welcome sound of Yusuke’s voice cuts through his musings and he quickly returns to giving him his full, undivided attention. Makoto had long since hurried away, allowing him to shelve his concerns for the time being. 

"Sorry, just thought I saw someone I recognized," he replies. “You were saying?"

Yusuke resumes their discussion on the merits of different painting methods, occasionally remarking that he is surprised at Akira’s knowledge (who doesn't have the heart to tell him it's because they've had this conversation before.) 

He still looks much too thin for Akira’s liking, but his complexion seems to have improved, now that he is no longer under Madarame’s thumb. It's nothing a few extra meals won't fix. 

"Here you go! Two Big Bang Burger challenges!" 

Yusuke blinks in surprise, having been too distracted to notice that Akira had already ordered for them.

"Don't worry if you can't finish it," Akira laughs. "It'll be on me."

Yusuke's eyes look a bit moist as he picks up the towering burger monstrosity. 

"Akira," he says with solemnity just before he digs in with no reservations. "What are your thoughts on marriage?" 

Amused, Akira only watches over him fondly to make sure he doesn't choke and occasionally stops to pass him more water. 

It is a testament to how hungry he is that Yusuke finishes every last bite well before Akira does. 

After the tenth consecutive morning that Akira wakes up in his bed, alive with all four limbs accounted for and his head free of bullet wounds, he is finally able to relax his guard and conclude that Akechi probably does not suspect him of being anything except for a giant weirdo who may or may not be a stalker-fan. 

Which, of course, is why he descends the last couple of steps into Leblanc on his tailbone when he sees who is perched on a chair by the counter. 

To his credit, Akechi looks just as stunned as he does. 

"Get dressed before you scare off my customers, kid." Sojiro breaks the awkward silence with a judgmental sigh as he eyes Akira's rumpled sleepwear and bare feet. 

He could only be so lucky, Akira laments as he flees to the bathroom and then proceeds to drown himself in the sink.

"Sorry about my lodger," he can vaguely make out Sojiro's gruff voice and makes it a point to drown out the rest of his complaints by turning up the faucet. 

Akira looks into the mirror. His pale reflection stares back at him with eyes so haunted that, between it and the literal ghost of his past sipping drip coffee at the counter, people would have trouble figuring out which of them was meant to be swimming with the cognitive fishies.

He takes a breath, the cool air sharp and tacky in his lungs as he aims for calm. He falls slightly short of his goal but lands within the acceptable parameters of ‘not completely hysterical’ as he tries to find the silver lining on this cloud of disaster. His plans to avoid fate is now a smoldering ruin of failure since Akechi now knows his place of residence, and short of running away from Leblanc to eke out a life on the streets of Tokyo, that fact will not be changing any time soon. 

However, the situation may yet be salvageable. There is still a chance that Akechi is only here in Leblanc due to a case of genuine coincidence rather than a case of genuine stalking. 

Of course, if Akechi’s deductive powers are even half as good as his fans believe, he must have realized by now that there are others using the powers of the metaverse. But objectively speaking, it should be nigh impossible that Akira has already given the Phantom Thieves away when the total length of their interactions thus far would sum up to around twelve seconds. And as far as he remembers, at no point within those twelve seconds did he make any proclamations along the lines of “cops suck, thieves rule!”

He just needs to calmly, normally, step outside and shake off Akechi’s suspicions.

He can do this. Joker is nothing but adaptable and with any luck, Akechi will be long gone by the time he leaves the bathroom.

Of course, fate didn’t send Akira to Shibuya on probation because it wanted him to have a nice time. Despite Akira’s best efforts to take as humanly long as possible to freshen up, Akechi is still present when he emerges with cold resignation in his heart and damp hair curling around his face. 

The sight of Akechi Goro smiling placidly in one of his horrible sweater vests hits him like a punch to the gut. He looks exactly the same as Akira remembers him and nothing like him at all. 

The specter that resides in his dreams is bloodied, snarling at him through the cracked edges of a broken mask. His laughter crazed, monstrous, and so desperately human. Akira blinks and the illusion shatters like a bullet through glass, falling to pieces as its stepford doppelganger takes its place. 

Suddenly, Akechi is no longer just a collection of regrets to be shoved into the darkest corners of his mind, but a real, breathing, tangible person. The subject of both his dreams and nightmares made corporeal and recreated down to every remembered detail. Brown hair neatly combed, lips curved into a smile more out of habit than any true desire to be pleasant. Garnet eyes downcast as their owner idly thumbs through his notifications while a cup of coffee cools beside him. 

There is a dead boy sitting at the counter.

Unconsciously, Akira takes another step towards that impossible sight. Eyes wide open as if the mirage would fade the moment he blinks.

As if sensing his gaze, Akechi looks up and the moment is lost, swept along by the currents of time like any other. 

For what is meant to be a momentous collision of fate, it is a lot less earth-shattering than Akira had anticipated. Not that he expected Akechi to whip out a gun and shoot him on sight, but the sight of the detective going as stiff as a board as he gawks back at him like a deer caught in the headlights definitely isn’t it. Self-conscious, he reaches up to adjust the barrier of his glasses and realizes too late that his face is bare. He trades one nervous tick for another one and the aborted gesture becomes fingers twisting in his fringe.

Akechi’s lips part but no sound manages to make its way out of them and that is how several seconds pass by without a single word being exchanged until Sojiro coughs to remind them of his existence.

“What are you still doing here?” 

The gruff words are obviously directed at Akira in his sleepwear judging by the pointed glare that he receives but it is Akechi who wrenches his gaze away like he had been set on fire.

To add to his utter confusion, the famed charisma detective immediately begins to pack up his belongings. “I-I should be taking my leave soon. School calls, you know. It was a delicious cup of coffee, sir.”

Akira watches him hurry towards the exit, trying to place the feeling stirring in the pit of his stomach; it’s not cold enough to be dread, not hot enough to be anger. 

Akira is... confused. 

Confused and cheated that he had spent weeks losing sleep over this encounter only to be given less consideration than a napkin dispenser. Before he can dissect why he is feeling anything besides relief and joy at not being shot in the face today, Akechi pauses at the door.

He turns back just a fraction so he can look at Akira without meeting his eyes. “You…”

The budding stirrings of dissatisfaction immediately morph back into dread as Akira wonders if the detective had managed to see through him after all. The “Yes?” that slips out of his mouth comes out meeker and guiltier than he had meant for it to. 

“You… it looks like you had a bit of a fall earlier.” Under Leblanc’s overhead lights, Akechi’s face seems strangely flushed, adding more to the unreality of the situation. “I hope you didn’t get injured.”

Akira’s abused tailbone twinges at the reminder. “... no, I’m fine.” 

Akechi lingers by the door, shifting his weight to his other leg. “Yes. That’s, um. Good. Well, goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” he echoes, staring at the back of his argyle sweater long after it disappears through the door. The look that Sojiro shoots him when he finally hurries up the stairs is an even mix of pity and disgust.

The first thing he does when he has retreated to the safety of his attic is to climb back into bed and smother a scream into his pillow, startling Morgana awake.

Akira resolves to go on more runs with Ryuji as he clutches at his chest, hoping to relieve the burning in his lungs. He leaps up onto the shell of an abandoned train car to get some distance from his pursuing shadows and privately admits that he may be in a bit of a jam.

Mementos is even more nightmarish at night with the shadows at the peak of their strength while humanity is at its most vulnerable; tossing in their beds and kept awake by their fears and hopes while their unconscious minds run amok. 

Traversing the dark, twisting tunnels alone is foolhardy at best and downright painful when one is doing it on foot instead of from the warm, purring confines of a Monabus. And it offers Akira the perfect distraction from the fact that his first real conversation with the boy who has haunted him for years was Akechi asking him if his ass was okay. 

He leaps off his perch, using the momentum from the dive to stomp a crowd of shadows into the ground. The movements come to him as easily as dancing. Joker cycles through one persona to the next, fire swirling into ice and then dissolving into curses in time with the staccato of bullets. Despite his flagging stamina, he moves with agility and grace, even when performing for an unappreciative audience.

And a certain detective prince had been the most unappreciative of all. 

Akira stumbles slightly on his next landing at the intrusive thought and quietly laments that not even fighting for his life in the sewers of human desire looks to be enough to stop his mind from wandering back to it.

The conversation. 

On the one hand, since there had been no mention of phantom thieves, metaverses, or pancakes, it should have been a victory by anyone’s definition. On the other, it feels too much like a pyrrhic one at best with Akira trading Akechi's suspicions for his utter disinterest. 

Of course, Akira is well aware that between the choice of Akechi's continued existence and Akira’s dignity, there is no choice at all. He should be pleased that "Operation Avoid Akechi" did not die in its infancy. Pleased that Akechi had acted like looking at Akira would give him an eye infection. That Akira can't get a full night’s sleep because he keeps dreaming of a boy that doesn't even know his name. 

But as he beheads yet another shadow with far more force than necessary, Akira comes to the realization that he is still mildly vexed. Not that he expects to have any kind of outlet or closure for this unnamed irritation bubbling beneath his skin since the object of his vexation will probably never grace Leblanc with his presence again.

Akira glances up at the oncoming stampede and the adrenaline and frustration churning in his gut involuntarily pull his lips into a savage grin.

The shadows pause when they see his face and collectively take a step back. It is the last step most of them will ever take. 

With his pockets full of yen and his heart full of conflict, Akira makes his way back to the surface. As he passes through the gates, something flickers in the corner of his eye but there is nothing there when he turns.

He spies Makoto a few more times over the last week, always just hovering in his peripherals and painfully obvious about it. It leaves him feeling a tiny bit embarrassed that she had managed to corner them so thoroughly before. But very soon, knowing Makoto's resourcefulness and stubbornness, a confrontation will be inevitable and Akira’s time for deliberation will be over. 

"Hey, so what should we do for the social studies trip?" 

The casual question sends cold shivers down Akira’s spine and his drifting attention immediately snaps back to the conversation. 

"What about the TV station?" Ann suggests cheerfully. "Maybe we'll get to see some famous actors or actresses?" 

As Ryuji visibly brightens up to the idea, Akira realizes that, before worrying over Kaneshiro, there is another disaster that he needs to avert first. 

"Actually," he says, deliberately affecting the best doe eyes in his arsenal, "I really want to go to the water filtration plant."

There is a beat of silence where Ryuji and Ann slowly turn to look at him dubiously, the words 'that sounds like a terrible bore' etched clearly on their faces. 

Akira returns their skepticism by clasping his hands together and extending his lower lip into a pout that wouldn't lose out to top idol Risette's. 

It would mean so much to me. 

I'm very passionate about clean drinking water. 

Pretty please?

His dear friends cave pretty much immediately and Akira returns home, smug and triumphant like someone who is about to have an Akechi-free field trip. 

"Akira…" Morgana mumbles by his shoulder. "Your grin looks kind of scary…"

The trip to the water filtration plant surprisingly goes off without a hitch; perfectly Akechi-free from beginning to end.

What he hadn't expected was how much of a terrible bore it hadn't been. 

"Wow!" Ann gushes. "I never would have guessed that the tap water in Tokyo is actually much more regulated than bottled water!" 

"Our treatment regime includes 200 parameters for safety and quality," their guide boasts, thumping a fist against his chest in a display of passion. "Here at the Misono Treatment Plant, we only use the most cutting edge technology!" 

"This is seriously crazy!" Ryuji exclaims, eyes bugging out as he leans over as far as the railing can safely allow. "I knew they clean the water but I never even thought about how much work goes into it!!"

"More like you don't think, Ryuji," Morgana teases under his breath but even he looks incredibly thrilled to be here. "Humans are even more amazing than I thought…"

"I'm going to drink tap water from now on!" 

"Me too!"

"Tap water rules!!"

Maybe he should consider taking Yusuke here too.

Tokyo is another world in and of its own. Akira can spend a lifetime wandering its streets and never tire of it. 

As he pulled into Shibuya station for the first time, seventeen and freshly out of a holding cell, he had never felt more alone surrounded by the sea of faceless strangers. It had been a little like drowning; hope warring with despair, the latter slowly winning out with every hostile gaze or cold whisper. Slowly, it crept into his chest, pooling into his lungs until he could no longer breathe.

If it hadn’t been for the metaverse… If it hadn’t been for Ryuji, Morgana, Ann… everyone. Time and again, they had saved him.

He could never have expected to fall in love with the very place that was meant to be his prison. To love the bustling streets of Shibuya, the eye-catching fashions in Harajuku, the colorful characters in Shinjuku… Against all odds, stacked against him by a manipulative god, he had carved out a home, filled with beloved people and precious memories within this vast, sprawling metropolis.

And out of this vast, sprawling metropolis, Akechi Goro decides to pick this particular supermarket to buy his cheap riceballs. 

For a moment that feels like it stretches into eternity, Akira develops serious existential doubts over whether or not fate is preordained, leaving humans only with the illusion of choice and free will. He wonders, not for the first time if he really has the power to change his fate and pull them all away from the path of ruin. 

Then he remembers that he is playing against an evil god of control who he knows for a fact has done everything it could to stack the deck against him. Counterintuitively, the happy thought helps him regain his senses enough to drop to his knees and disappear behind the counter. He even holds his breath for good measure since it supposedly guards against bear attacks. 

His efforts are in vain because Akechi's voice still rings out through the store anyway. "Excuse me? I'd like to ring this up. Hello?" 

Holding on to the denial that his Akechi problem might go away if he ignores him, Akira continues to play dead. Unfortunately, the increasingly louder taps of brand name leather shoes tell him that his farce is over and he had better reveal himself, lest Akechi peers over the counter and sees him cowering on the floor like a doomed horror movie extra. 

Like Sadako rising up from her well, Akira reluctantly ascends from the safety of his hiding spot after making sure that at least 50% of his face is hidden behind his bangs and glasses. 

"Sorry," Akira mumbles quietly in an attempt to disguise his voice. His eyes are glued to the cash register so he doesn't have to meet his eyes. 

He hears a sharp draw of breath but he ignores it in favor of scanning the items in Akechi's assorted grocery basket. Two ready-made onigiris, one with umeboshi and one with salmon, one small order of karage, and one bottle of unsweetened green tea makes up one sad but cheap convenience store dinner. It somehow reminds him of the cup noodles that he had eaten alone in his dusty attic on his first day in Tokyo. 

"That will be 680¥, please." he recites dully towards the counter, leaning heavily on his automatic customer service training to speak to Akechi like he means absolutely nothing to him. 

He reaches out to accept the 1000¥ bill only to pause when Akechi fails to let go of it. 

"Um," they both say at the same time and it startles Akira enough to look up for the first time. 

Akechi looks almost the same as the last time he saw him, dressed in a crisp white shirt beneath his usual jacket. There are faint dark smudges peeking out from beneath the concealer under his eyes but aside from that, his appearance is stylishly immaculate. Akira has suddenly lost the ability to speak or look away and they both stand there, motionless. Fingers separated by a tiny gap which may as well have been an impassable chasm. 

Akechi lets go first, stepping back with the hurry of someone realizing that they are committing a terrible social faux pas and Akira slowly regains his senses once he is out of his space. 

"I'm terribly sorry for forgetting my manners," Akechi says hastily, cheeks as red as Joker's bright gloves as his eyes dart towards a special promotion on laundry detergent. "I just thought… Have we met before?" 

The anxiety that he had kept at bay for weeks comes charging forward with a vengeance. Rattled, Akira makes to take a half-step back but stops himself in time. 

He just needs to be cool, calm and collected so Akechi will take his cheap, sad person dinner and go away forever. 

He can do this. 

I would have remembered meeting such a stud. 

Je ne peux pas parler japonais. 

Yeah, you shot a cognitive me in a previous life and then asked me if my ass was ok. 

He can not do this. 

With his mind tragically empty of acceptable dialogue options, Akira just stares blankly at him in lieu of speaking like a proper being, his face growing steadily hotter with stress. 

"Um," he tries again, to buy himself another precious few seconds to mulligan his thoughts. 

I don’t think so...

Maybe you’ve seen me on TV?

I'm your biggest fan, Akechi-senpai! 

Akechi, who clearly has cottoned on to his bald-faced lie, continues to frown thoughtfully. "No, I'm almost certain we've met before -- Ah!" Akira isn't proud to admit he bodily flinches the moment he sees the light of eureka enter Akechi's eyes. "You are the one living at the cafe in Yongenjaya, aren't you? What was the name… Leblanc?" 

Shit.

Akira hurriedly debates the merit of lying through his teeth and risk Akechi showing up unexpectedly at his house to catch him red-handed. There is no use. Akechi has his king in check. 

"Oh, that's right," he admits meekly, hoping his expression leans more towards surprised realization than outright panic. Maybe he should give Lala a call after all. There’s no reason why he can’t lead the phantom thieves and hide from his parole officers in a wig and a skirt.

Akechi unexpectedly smiles in response, but he is probably just pleased to be once again correct about everything. It is bright and boyish and lights up his face as blindingly as the searchlights that the police had shone into Akira’s eyes. 

“So you are a part-timer here? … Kurusu-kun?” Akechi asks, finally exercising his finely honed powers of observation and deduction by reading the nametag pinned to his store uniform.

Akira nods mutely, unable to shake the disorientation to hear Akechi calling his name again. He worries that he might faint. Instead, he twists his fingers in his fringe for something else to do instead of slamming the emergency alarm button so he can escape in the chaos. 

Akechi continues on, bulldozing through the awkward silence with an equally awkward laugh. "Ahaha… I didn't expect to run into a familiar face here since this isn't usually a part of town I frequent." He trails off, as if unsure, his expression briefly faltering before steadying, solidifying into something more intense. 

"Maybe this is what you could call fate?" 

Akira’s mouth opens but no sound comes out. Instead, he just gapes at him in sheer bewilderment. His voice has deserted him completely. Even the creeping tide of anxiety seems to evaporate as he wonders if his ears have failed him like everything else. 

The Akechi he had known enjoyed making similar grandiose declarations which at the time had seemed entirely appropriate, considering how they were playing a game of cat and mouse with fatally high stakes. But to have such a line delivered to him in the middle of a mundane grocery store gave off a very different kind of feeling. A very complicated feeling with the flavor of acute chuunibyou embarrassment. 

The strained silence is interrupted by an exceptionally shaky laugh as Akechi seemingly regains his self-awareness as his cheeks begin to flush with mortification. 

"Just kidding…! Aha, I apologize again! I'm deeply sorry, it has been a long day and I swear I don't normally run my mouth like this with strangers…"

Well, it's true that he never pegged Akechi as the type to chat up beleaguered retail workers who just want to close up shop. 

"It's okay, I don't mind," he lies, finally taking pity on him and because Akira can't stand to keep listening to whatever this is and trying to figure out Akechi's incredibly opaque motives is going to make his sanity collapse like a fragile house of cards. He even wills his lips into a small, disarming smile while he finishes ringing up the order in record time. "Your change is 320¥."

"Please, keep it," Akechi says, eyeing Akira's extended hand with something like despair. "... Once again, I'm sorry if I have troubled you."

He turns on his heels, grocery bag clutched in a white-knuckled grip as he prepares to walk out of Akira’s life forever. As if in a daze, Akira watches him go, watches those hunched shoulders get farther and farther away from him. 

"Wait!”

Akechi spins around, clearly startled. But no more than Akira who is only just realizing that it had been his voice that had shouted. 

He doesn't know what he's doing. Despite all of his plans and all of his bravado, Akira has no fucking idea what he's doing and he may sooner burn the world to the ground in his attempts to figure it out. 

For now, he meets Akechi's garnet stare. And then gestures sheepishly behind him. 

“Do you... want your food warmed up?”

Chapter Text

It was serendipity that led Goro to the Yongenjaya backstreets, but he has long grown used to spending odd hours in places a high school boy has absolutely no business being. Between lurking in alleyways to follow an unsavory lead for one part-time job and stalking through the metaverse for another, he had practically cornered the market on not being where he is supposed to be.

During one such excursion -- a house call to interview a witness relating to a minor attempted assault case scheduled at far too early in the morning -- Goro finds himself exhausted and wandering the streets aimlessly as he tries to decide between getting breakfast or catching an earlier train to class. Or just heading straight home to collapse bodily onto his bed and not move for the next 48 hours.

The third option grows more and more tempting, relative to the growing exhaustion creeping into his muscles as he forces his legs to keep moving with masochistic stubbornness. 

There had been far too many things that required his attention lately. And not without resentment, he grits his teeth as he zeros into the most recent bane of his existence: a nebulous group going by the unimaginative moniker of "The Phantom Thieves of Hearts". Based on his research, the so-called group had come into the public eye after a high school gym teacher had publically confessed to abusing his students for years. A series of “calling cards” had been found plastered on a bulletin board the day before, written in garish language and proclaiming to steal the man's twisted desires. Had anyone asked him a month ago, he would have dismissed it as a mere case of blackmail and not worth a second of his dwindling time. A washed-up athlete taking advantage of his waning fame was a dime a dozen, barely making a splash in the sea of human scum that covered this planet. Revenge cases were not unusual.

But that was before Madarame Ichiryusai, renowned artist and treasure of Japan, blubbered like a fool on national television and started listing off every crime he had ever committed, from pushing his pupils to suicide to shoplifting at a local department store. Needless to say, the likes of Shido and his allies had been displeased to lose a funnel of steady campaign donations and the Thieves were elevated from urban legend overnight into a possible threat.

This, of course, translated to more work for Akechi Goro. 

Between answering the police department’s requests for his investigative expertise, making the cognitive rounds with Shido’s enemies and allies alike and studying for his midterms... he has been stretched a bit too thin lately. He occasionally entertains himself by imagining what his shadow might look like had he not been a persona user; possibly something pale and gaunt, spidery limbs suspended in a web of hopelessly tangled threads. Yanked to and fro by too many masters and his own wavering conscience. But that he is only in this position by virtue of being a persona user makes the exercise moot.

Every time a shadow cuts another strip of flesh from his body, every time his cheeks start to ache from another mundane talk show appearance, every time he has to bow subserviently to his mother’s killer, he tells himself to be patient. To endure, long enough to see his plan to fruition.  Triumph is so close at hand he can practically taste the ash of gunfire in his mouth and the warm fuzzy thought of putting a bullet between Shido’s despairing eyes is what lets Goro sleep peacefully through the night.

Speaking of sleep...

After nearly walking into a sign advertising a sale on used televisions and finding nothing but more residential areas, he finally makes the decision to skip breakfast in favor of heading home to pay off his crippling debt to Morpheus and heads in the direction of Aoyama-Itchome station. Then, he pauses when he turns the corner, mildly baffled that fortune appears to be smiling down on him for once

Tucked nearly out of sight is a small cafe, obviously French-inspired, judging from the name and its decor. A cheerful red and white banner proclaims it to be “Leblanc” and though the “& curry” part of the tagline makes him blink in confusion, the “coffee” part of it is more than enough to propel him through its doors. 

A tiny bell announces his arrival as he takes a moment to look around. The interior is old but neat and well-maintained; the polished countertops gleamed, even if the faded wood showed its age. The shelves are stocked with jars of beans, labeled carefully in a tidy hand. Over a quiet, jazzy tune, he can faintly hear the gentle whir of machines and liquid bubbling in the background. Hanging lights with stained glass covers added a few whimsical spots of color to the room, along with what looks like an unusual forgery of a painting that had featured rather prominently in his current case. 

But most important of all is the delicious aroma of coffee that gently wafts through the air. Goro calls out a greeting with his order and slips into a barstool by the door, setting his case beside him. 

The barista is a gruff, middle-aged man who thankfully does not try to engage him in any small talk which earns him an appreciative smile from Goro when he sets down his coffee with a perfunctory greeting.

To his pleasant surprise, the blend is even better than he had been expecting, gently soothing his fatigue with its sweet, mellow taste. The warm steam tickles at his nose, chasing away the lingering chills from the metaverse. 

Goro lets out a sigh. He finds his mood brightening despite the terrible start to his day. There is something about the cafe that he finds soothing; tucked away in a small corner of the world, away from prying eyes and responsibilities. He takes another gratifying sip and for the first time in a while, he can feel his tension sliding off his shoulders. There is at least an hour before he has to be somewhere else or be someone else, he fully intends to take the time to indulge in this small piece of stolen tranquility.

With a lack of anything better to do, he pulls out his phone, swiping a conspicuously red icon out of the way and brings up his Chirper feed instead. For a moment, he can pretend to be any regular teenager, scrolling through mundane social media posts and occasionally retweeting a cute cat video.

Until the peaceful atmosphere comes to an end, heralded by a literal crash. 

Startled, both he and the barista’s attention turn towards the side. There is someone in a crumpled heap on the ground at the bottom of a stairwell, left there by what sounded like a rather painful fall. In the dim lighting, all Goro can make out is a thin, male figure with an unruly mop of black hair. Somewhat vindictively, he is glad that he is not the only one who had started his morning off poorly.

The barista kneads his temples and lets out a groan, his annoyance audible.

"Get dressed before you scare off my customers, kid."

The boy, possibly the man’s son, lurches off the floor as if it had burned him. In less than the time it took him to blink, his figure had disappeared, accompanied by the slam of a door. Embarrassed, no doubt, to have witnesses to his clumsiness. 

The barista offers him his apologies but he waves them away with a disarming laugh and a polite but insincere quip about how it had made his morning more exciting. Goro turns back to his phone, amusing himself by making idle observations. He notes the emptiness of the cafe and wonders about the barista’s living situation; the building had looked far too small from the outside to have much space for anything more than an attic, let alone a living area to raise a teenager in.

When the display on his phone informs him that he now has roughly ten minutes left before he will miss his train, he is mildly surprised that he had barely noticed the passage of time, having spent it in relative comfort. The only regret he has is that he should have ordered another cup. Making a mental note to find his way back here again, Goro prepares to take his leave. 

He has his wallet in hand when the bathroom door creaks open again and the sound draws his attention to the boy as he steps into the light.

...beguiled, enthralled, mesmerized...

Nothing in his very extensive vocabulary seems to be sufficient to describe how his world suddenly stands still. The jazz music, the machines, even the drumming of his own heartbeat fade into white noise like someone had stolen the sounds along with the breath inside his lungs.

The boy, he realizes, is beautiful.

He feels like he had been struck dumb, or more appropriately, like someone had repeatedly struck him in the head with a hammer until all he could see were stars: the starlight that clings to the boy’s thick lashes, like jewels reflecting the shine of galaxies in his cat-like eyes. The dark hair he had so foolishly dismissed as unruly, falls in artful, damp curls, framing a face that could have only been chiseled by the hands of deities. Fair, unblemished skin… regal cheekbones, sharp enough to cut his throat on... a charming, straight nose ending in a delicate point... pink, gently pouted lips... the feline grace underlying his movements… the subtle hint of defined muscle beneath his clothes as he moves… the perfect clavicles peeking out from his collar… the magnetic pull of his overflowing charisma... 

Like a sailor drowned by a siren’s call, like Paris who commanded a thousand ships, like a complete and utter idiot, he drinks in his every feature like a man dying of thirst--

“What are you still doing here?” wonders the barista.

-- Goro chokes, nearly swallowing his own tongue along with his saliva.

Oh no. 

He wrenches his gaze away and the enchantment shatters, leaving his voice in stutters and his mind in shambles. His mouth moves on autopilot, tossing out memorized pleasantries. His hands fumble with his wallet, scattering 100¥ coins in his haste. In the end, he leaves enough change behind to pay for at least three cups, as if in penance for his sinful thoughts and the knowledge that he can never set foot in here again.

But like Odysseus hesitating at the mouth of hell, or Edith turning back to Sodom, he too lingers by the door. He speaks without meaning to, addressing the vision of absolute perfection that he had left behind him.

“You…”

“Yes?”

The broken remnants of his psyche shatter once more when the boy utters just the one syllable, his voice soft and musical like a choir of angels. Goro must be possessed, or just plain stupid because he continues to speak, streams of nonsense tumbling out of his mouth fueled by nothing more than an overpowering need to hear his voice again. “You… it looks like you had a bit of a fall earlier. I hope you didn’t get injured…”

The boy speaks again after a short pause, his voice having exactly the same impact on him as it had as before. “... no, I’m fine.”

“Yes,” he replies a beat too late and with a shaky inhale because “fine” is so far removed from his situation. Finally making the decision to stop torturing himself, he stammers out another stream of useless words. “That’s, um. Good. Well, goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” the boy sends him off softly and Goro doesn’t so much as leave the shop as he flees.

Flees like a thief in the night, clutching his briefcase in one hand and his heart in another. Flees with his entire being gripped in some unnameable primal terror that had grabbed ahold of his head, flipped it upsidedown and then proceeded to vigorously empty it of any thought it had once held.

Oh no.

Chapter Text

“Do you want your food warmed up?”

Akira regrets the question well before it leaves his mouth, regrets it with the crushing weight of two separate lifetimes, but by then it is already too late. Later, when he is making a menace of himself in Sojiro’s tidy kitchen, he will look back on this moment and wonder what the fuck he had been thinking. Nothing, it seems. Not the ruined future, not his tentative, burgeoning plans that would be easily shattered with just one wrong word. 

Nothing aside from the lonely impression of Akechi’s retreating back.

Akechi doesn’t reply right away, his face a mask of frozen politeness, and Akira almost convinces himself that his impulsive idiocy has gone unnoticed. His hopes are quickly dashed when Akechi flashes another one of his usual perfect megawatt smiles. Except it's different. It (reaches his eyes) breaks across his face like bright, dazzling sunlight and slams into him like a powered-up kougaon. Akira cannot voice how glad he is that the counter perfectly conceals his sudden buckling knees as vertigo sweeps over him. 

“Oh! Yes. Please,” Akechi says, and before Akira can mentally prepare himself, he is once again looming over him despite their one-inch height difference. “That would be wonderful.”

Akira takes a discreet breath, but it only seems to fill his lungs with anxiety instead of air. Like the trembling milquetoast that he had been before arriving in Tokyo for the first time, Akira takes the shopping bag from him to make good on his word not to let Akechi eat a cold, sad-person dinner. He keeps his attention glued to the microwave, watching the display tick down with painful slowness.

On the other side of the barrier, Akechi is standing close enough to touch. He is solid, made of flesh and blood instead of shadow and smoke. From the corner of his eye, Akira counts the rises and falls of his chest, incontrovertible proof of his aliveness which still manages to catch him off guard. But then again, ghosts are not so easily banished. His cognition is stuck like a faulty cassette tape, caught on an endless replay of two gunshots and the three years of emptiness that followed.

"Thank you again, I really appreciate this. I'm looking forward to having a warm dinner, for once." Akira is nudged out of his recollections by Akechi's smooth, charming Detective-Prince-voice, warm with gratitude that Akira does not deserve because he had let him die alone and not even reheated fried chicken can make up for it.

“Mm,” he hears his own voice saying, sounding tiny next to his internal dialogue which has since devolved into one long, incoherent scream. Against his will, his eyes slide back over towards the would-be detective as if drawn by a magnetic force.

He had a thousand things he had wanted to ask him. They ranged from the mundane — like his opinion of the controversial new Featherman spin-off that came out last year — to the more important secrets that he kept buried deep inside his heart, and around it, he constructed a fortress to prevent them from ever escaping. 

Akira wanted to ask him what he really thought about him. He wanted to know if he really would have joined them in the end, if they ever had a chance of walking into Shido's diet chambers, standing shoulder to shoulder. If they had ever stood a chance against their unjust fates. He wanted to know the him hidden beneath layers of duplicitous civility, the one he had only seen in stolen glimpses and fragmented dreams, to revisit all of their past conversations with all of their masks set aside so he could finally untangle the Byzantine mess that is how he feels about him.

He wanted to tell him that he had kept his promise to him in the end.

The passage of time was supposed to heal all wounds but each new day only added another item to his list, another reminder that he was another day older than Akechi ever will be. Another day that he would spend with his thumb hovering next to a name on his contacts list that he never could bring himself to remove, rereading the last message that had long since lost its meaning.

I'll be waiting for you.

But now, standing in front of this familiar stranger, Akira can't think of a single thing to ask and even if he did, this Akechi would not be able to answer him. The only one who could have has long been out of his reach.

"Are you a high school student?"

Akira blinks, confused.

He is still confused when he looks up at Akechi's expectant face, taking an inordinately long time just to process that he had been asked a question. One that is unexpectedly difficult to answer correctly due to personal reasons like temporal paradoxes. 

Before he can come to a conclusion, Akechi speaks up again, misinterpreting his troubled silence as unwillingness to speak. "It's just that, you look rather young. And there are some schools that have a policy against their students working—  ah! Obviously, I am not going to say anything if that is the case. Just curious!" 

"... yes," Akira ends up saying because the only other alternative would be to continue saying absolutely nothing and he would rather Akechi have one less thing to hold a grudge against him for, in the event that he fucks everything up. "Second year," he adds, just enough to not be offering monosyllabic answers. 

Carefully, he peers up through his bangs to gauge Akechi's reaction and notes that for some unfathomable reason, the other appears to be pleased. 

"Oh! That would make me your Senpai, then," he says with a truly mystifying amount of cheer. "I'm a third year student, myself. As I also have an after-school job, so it would be very hypocritical of me to take issue with that. It's difficult, isn't it? Having to juggle so many priorities at once."

"...yes, it is," Akira says for the sake of filling the air with something other than more awkward silence or an unfortunately mistimed quip about part-time assassination gigs while he tries to figure out why this conversation is happening to him. 

Then, as if by divine providence, the microwave beeps twice to deliver him from his endless suffering. He nearly drops the chicken in his haste to pack it up because the sooner he can get it into Akechi's hands, the sooner he can get him out of here. It turns out that the answer to the question "why did Kurusu Akira stop Akechi Goro from leaving when he is incapable of speaking to him in full sentences" is simply "because Kurusu Akira is stupid". But the answer to the question of "why is Akechi Goro still talking to him" remains a mystery.

"Thank you again! It was nice speaking with you," Akechi Goro says with another flawless smile that almost convinces Akira that he loves nothing more than wasting his afternoons away on one-sided conversations. "Perhaps I'll see you around Leblanc. I'm thinking of making it my coffee go-to. It was one of the best cups I've ever had." 

I can make you a better one.

You should try it with curry.

The next time Akira visits Takemi, he needs to book an appointment to get his larynx surgically removed because it is clearly causing him more harm than good. 

Oblivious to his suffering, or because of it, Akechi looks no less than delighted. His eyes crinkle up into crescents as he laughs — the quiet admission, 'it seems that I am unwelcome, wherever I go' floats into his mind unbidden — with a perfect mixture of surprise and flattery. “Well then, I suppose I must if that is your recommendation. I will see you around, Kurusu-kun.”

"... yeah."

Still smiling, Akechi pulls away from the counter, plastic bag in hand. This time, Akira does not call him back.

The bell tolls, signaling that Akira is finally alone so he eases his death grip on the counter and collapses on the ground. He draws his knees to his chest and puts his head between them and waits for the world to stop spinning. Through the cheap fabric of his uniform pants, he can feel the layers of heat emanating from his face and wonders if he had spent the entire encounter looking like a tomato. 

"What's the deal with that guy?" asks Morgana from out of nowhere, nearly sending Akira into cardiac arrest.

Akira is exhausted. 

He stumbles into Leblanc after his shift in a daze, changes out of his convenience store uniform in a daze, and gets ready to help out at the cafe in a daze. The rest of the evening passes by in a similar, absent-minded blur if only so he doesn't have to process how he had been only one meow away from utter disaster. But by the third time he knocks over a mug, Sojiro stops him with a careful hand on his wrist. 

"Kid, are you alright?" There is concern barely hidden behind the gruffness. 

"Oh- Sorry,” Akira apologizes. Shaking his head to clear it, he adds, “I'm fine." 

Sojiro merely raises a single eyebrow, having seen through him so clearly that Akira may as well have been transparent. “Take the rest of the night off,” he says in a tone that brooks absolutely no argument. “At the rate you’re going, I’ll be forced to replace all my tableware.”

Contrite, Akira carefully places the plate he was holding back into the sink before he can do anything else to fall out of Sojiro’s good graces. “Sorry,” he mumbles again. 

“... Not that I care or anything—" Sojiro's penetrating stare could have punctured steel. “You’re not getting in trouble or anything, are you?”

The suspicion would have hurt if Akira didn’t know that this is just Sojiro’s way of showing concern. He hopes. Two months was not enough time for him to get used to treading on eggshells around his guardian again, but he is managing to adapt as he always does. Involuntarily, his gaze drifts over to the stool that Futaba had claimed for her own and he has to forcefully shake himself out of his reverie. "No, d- sir," he stumbles over the last syllable and decides to gather his things and quickly flee the premises before Sojiro decides he's too weird for his attic.

He sets his bag down on the table and Morgana spills out of it, seemingly more liquid than cat.

“It was nice of the Boss to let you off early,” he comments, arching his spine in an adorable little stretch that makes him envious when he remembers the knots in his own back. “What are you gonna do now? Go hang out with the others? Craft some more lockpicks? Oh, and don’t you have DVDs that are overdue?”

Akira stays standing for a moment, staring blankly out the window as he considers his options and the horrible realization that he never did get around to returning ‘The Running Dead’ three years from now. Just off the top of his head, he can list off a million other things he should be doing. Helping Iwai and Takemi out with their increasingly shadier requests, ingratiating himself with Lala in the increasingly likely event that he needs her help to prematurely fake his own death. Figuring out exactly how he's going to tackle Kaneshiro's palace without unduly risking his best friends' lives. A seemingly infinite list of mementos missions… an entire semester of missing homework… his laundry… 

Ultimately, he fails to picture himself doing anything besides collapsing on his bed and sleeping until December so he kicks off his shoes to do exactly that. 

“I think I’ll go to sleep early,” he mumbles like a recently reanimated zombie, unable to muster up the will to even change into his loungewear.

“...Really?” Morgana asks, sounding incredibly skeptical. The bed dips and then four little paws pad their way up into his lap.  “But it’s only 8 pm?”

With a gargantuan effort, Akira turns his head enough to look at the clock that Sojiro had gotten him as a passive-aggressive way to tell him to stop sleeping in until noon on weekends. It is indeed 8 pm. 

“I only have the energy to do a maximum of two things per day,” he says sadly. Especially if one of those things had been trying not to fall to literal pieces in front of his murderer-rival. It truly is a testament to how tired he is when he barely registers the tiny bite of claws when Morgana accidentally kneads his thighs.

“Well,” Morgana sighs, “you do look tired. Maybe you’ll wake up before noon tomorrow if you actually sleep at a decent time.” 

Akira doesn’t respond to the jab because he is already facedown on his pillow, hoping his dreams will be free of velvet prisons. He breathes in, only to choke on a mouthful of sand.

Curious as to why he's suddenly asphyxiating in his own bed, Morgana bounds up onto his shoulders, stabbing him several times with his small, pointy claws. "Urk! How did your bed get so dirty?!"

Only half-conscious, Akira attempts to formulate a plausible lie that doesn't implicate his past-bedtime activities in any way. 

Wow, cognitive sand tastes just like regular sand.

It's because I'm a dirty, dirty boy.

Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream! Make him the cutest that I've ever seen!

Luckily for Morgana, he's asleep before he can open his mouth.

Mr. Sandman, Akira concludes as he sadly nurses his poor, bruised knuckles, is kind of a jerk. Although, one would think that having an erudite level of knowledge would help him wise up to the fact that "don't be stupid" is probably not the right thing to say to an evil god. 

"You've got some nerve, inmate!" As friendly as always, Caroline's glare promises a slow but brutal demise while Justine looks at him with pitying fascination like one would a particularly suicidal sunfish. (He always liked her better.) Although the twin wardens are both as cute as buttons, imposter Igor, decidedly, is not. 

"Trickster," the god of control croons over the interlaced digits of his stolen hands, unblinking bloodshot eyes gleaming with hidden menace. Unfortunately for poor, exhausted Akira, he only half-hears what he has to say since Yaldabaoth had picked a truly dreadful time to call. "Something something, those will become the strength behind your rehabilitation. Something, something, inescapable fate, something something, ruin."

The jarring crack of Caroline's baton tells him that he had waited too long to provide an answer to whatever Yaldabaoth had said and he is forced to tear his glazed eyes away from the chains dangling over his metaphysical prison toilet and feign attention.

........................

Did your nose get bigger? 

Akira blinks, mildly nonplussed as he doesn't think he has ever heard the Velvet Room so quiet before—even the haunting tunes in the background had come to a stop to form the loudest silence he has ever experienced. He plays back the last couple of seconds and realizes that he had accidentally said his last thoughts out loud. 

In front of him, the twins are a tableau of stupefied horror as their eyes swivel over to the being sitting before them. Even Akira is a little nervous at his own stupidity audacity and starts considering the odds of having to fight his way out of somewhere between the conscious and the subconscious.

But Yaldabaoth merely replies with a low chuckle that comes across slightly more amused than murderous. "Ever the Joker, hm? As usual, you continue to prove entertaining." 

It is unexpectedly magnanimous of an evil god that plans to wipe humanity away like a water stain (though Akira suspects that's only because it isn't technically his nose in the game seeing as giant cups don't have noses). After all, Akira is under no illusions what would happen to him if he fails to dance to his tune. 

"I do so hope you will come out of your future trials with that humor intact. And a final word of advice, from the overseer of your rehabilitation. You really ought to take a more proactive approach on your journey." 

Here, Yaldabaoth pauses, and even with Satanael lying dormant in his soul, Akira is unable to shake the sense of foreboding that creeps over him at the cruel, inhuman smile splitting across the false god's borrowed face. 

"After all, ruin is fast approaching, whether you try to run from it or not."

With that friendly parting remark, Akira feels himself slipping backward, dragged down by unseen hands into the abyss of sleep. 

Maybe Akira should have listened to Fakegor and spent less time running from his problems and more time impressing on his friends the value of discretion. Maybe then he wouldn't be sitting here again, one week later, listening to a mildly incriminating recording.

"If not for us, who else could have taken down those bastards? Kamoshida would still be lording it over us here!"

"But wouldn't it be bad for him if we got caught…?"

Makoto smiles placidly at him across the table with her ankles crossed and hands folded neatly, looking every inch the perfect honor student. But the glint of predatory triumph in her eyes is one hundred percent Queen. A fact that both comforts and concerns him as he wonders if fate is really so inescapable.

"Well?" she continues with steel in her voice. "You can't explain that away, can you? So how did you do it? How do you make them confess?"

On his lap, Akira's school bag mews in distress, and he gives it a soothing pat that is partly for Morgana's sake and partly for his own. His own pulse drums against his temples, warning him of an impending migraine as he tries not to crumble beneath her scrutiny.

"If you don't feel like talking." Akira can see her lips purse from the effort not to smirk. "Perhaps you would feel differently if I forwarded this recording to the police?"

Part of him wants to tell her everything; Akira is tired of dodging her suspicious gaze, tired of meeting yet another hostile stranger in a familiar guise. But he stops himself because this Makoto isn't the Makoto he knows. She knows nothing of the bonds they forged, the gods they had slain. The countless, arduous hours they spent together cramming trigonometry into Ryuji's head. This Makoto is just as sharp, wielding her mind with almost brutal efficiency, but at this moment, all of it is being turned against him. If his experience with Sae is any indication, any attempts now to convince her of his truth would be met by doubt or outright anger at the apparent insult to her intelligence.

And even if he tries to choose the same words, tries to retread all the steps from his memories, how could he possibly be sure that everything will work out as it once had? How could he possibly live with himself if anything happened to them? Unlike Kamoshida and Madarame whose potential for violence was limited in the damage they could do, Kaneshiro is different. One misstep, one false word and it could be Makoto or Ann with their hands cuffed behind their backs and poison in their veins. Or Ryuji and Yusuke, sprawled over the ground, sightless eyes gazing at nothing as blows rain down on them. (Or Akechi, sinking silently beneath the waters.)

— how could he possibly live with himself…? — 

Akira takes a breath to calm his nerves and twists his fingers in his hair as the tapestry of fate spreads out before him with all its countless branching paths. But there is only one that he can take.

"Are… Sakamoto-kun and Takamaki-san in trouble?" he asks in a tiny voice. 

"So you're denying that you're the Phantom Thieves…— ah?" Makoto cuts herself off mid-sentence, looking rather thrown by what Akira knows is an unexpected response. Of course, being Makoto, she recovers quickly. "Well- that- that depends entirely on your cooperation, Kurusu-kun." 

Akira takes another moment to breathe, emptying his mind of useless apologies and regrets as he reaches for his masks, drawing on them for the skills he needs to get through this encounter. "...Niijima-senpai…" he mumbles, more lost and afraid than he had ever allowed himself to sound before. "I just… I just didn't know what else to do." 

"W-What?" Through the gaps between his lashes, he can see Makoto blink, her composure wavering. "Is this your... confession, Kurusu-kun?"

Akira nods, as meek and nonthreatening as he can manage even as Morgana starts squirming in horrified protest. He lowers his gaze and begins to speak. 

"It all started back in April," he says, dully, almost detached in his reminiscence. "I lost track of time in the library. By the time I left, it was already dark. On my way out, I bumped into Sakamoto-kun near the P.E. office." He pauses, taking note of Makoto's thinly veiled impatience and tries to force his fists to unclench. 

"We heard someone screaming. A girl's voice, but it was muffled. So we forced open the door."

"A-and? And then what happened?" 

Hidden behind the curtain of his bangs, Akira's eyes darken with remembered rage. "And we found Kamoshida. Trying to force himself on Suzui-san."

He pushes on, ignoring Makoto's sharp intake of breath, and tries to conceal the trembling in his hands at just how close it had been. The primal terror in Suzui's dark eyes, the bruises on her body. Kamoshida's monstrous leer. 

"Kamoshida was furious. He said he was going to expel us. That he was going to go after Takamaki-san if Suzui-san didn't—

"I didn't know what to do," he repeats his earlier words, injecting into them all of his helplessness and frustration. If in another universe, Igor had picked someone else, if he never awakened to Arsene… what could he have done? 

"There was no one we could tell. The other students, the teachers — they already knew about it. That's why I… That's why I posted the calling cards. We were angry and  desperate and I needed to do something to stop it. But I..."

Akira closes his eyes, his heart beating hard enough to crack open his ribs. "I never imagined something like that would actually happen. I don't know anything else."

The ensuing quiet stretches over the room like a cloud of thick, cloying smoke. With each passing second, Akira slumps further in his chair from the weight of his lie. He feels it crushing him, anchoring him down like cement. But he knows that the show must go on.

Despite feeling as though he had spent his entire quota of words for the next decade, he opens his mouth again, his voice soft. Beseeching. Pleading for Makoto to believe him, just long enough for him to think of a way to keep them all safe. "I'm the one who posted the blackmail. Sakamoto-kun and Takamaki-san have nothing to do with this. "

Makoto doesn't speak for a long stretch of time. But when she does, it's strained and careful. "Kurusu-kun," she says. "You…"

Akira forces himself to meet her eyes, defiant but wary of what he might find there.

"You… you aren't in any trouble," Makoto murmurs. There is a weak smile on her lips, even if the distress is obvious in her eyes. "It… It must have been hard for you. For all of you."

The relief and exhaustion hit Akira so hard that his vision temporarily blurs. "I'm not…?"

"If you ever…" Makoto swallows, hard enough for Akira to see her throat bob. She visibly straightens in her chair, hands folded again in some semblance of normality. "If you are ever troubled again, I hope you will come and confide in me first. I am the student council president, after all."

Her voice is firm but kind and so familiar and it is only when Akira finds himself blinking back moisture through stinging eyes that he realizes just how much it affects him. "I—" he stammers around the knot in his throat. "Thank you."

"There's no need for that," Makoto says, attempting another smile that might as well be daggers for how they stab into his conscience. His only consolation is that if the weight of his guilt (or Akechi) doesn't do the job first, he can probably count on Makoto to kill him when she eventually finds out the truth.

"I'm the one who is sorry for taking up so much of your time with something like this. You're free to go if you need to. But before that… I just wanted to say. What you did… was very brave, Kurusu-kun."

Akira nods mutely, denials caught in his throat because he knows it isn't bravery that makes him lie to his friends. Before he can lose his nerve or let himself doubt his choice, he quickly gathers his belongings, bowing hastily as he bids Makoto goodbye.

Despite how much it leaves a poor taste in his mouth to admit it, Akira breathes a lot easier when he isn't being stalked by a well-meaning student council president. 

Perhaps it was fortune, or perhaps it was because Akira had teared up like a toddler towards the end, Makoto had decided to believe in his paper-thin claims of ignorance. Even going as far as to greet him in the hallways, much to the rest of the school's dismay.

Akechi, Akira knows, would have torn his lies apart in an instant — as easily as firing a bullet at point-blank — grinning all the while like a shark in the waters. Although, it speaks more to her kindness that she would allow her sympathy to blind her, than to Akechi's deductive ability. After all, just being seen with Yusuke in public would be more than enough circumstantial evidence to implicate him, for anyone who might be paying close enough attention. 

But since he is not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Akira finally uses his borrowed time to set his plans into motion. 

"So we're executing Operation Maidwatch tonight for sure, right?" Mishima suddenly asks him on his way out from school and Akira freezes, his mind flashing back to the single most embarrassing memory of his teenage years.

I'm really scared of maids, actually.

I have to go to work now.

I'm a dad.

Gathering up his school bag and his dignity, Akira tears out of the classroom without making eye contact with anyone and doesn't stop running until he's on a train to Shibuya. The next time he can reliably slip away from Morgana's watchful eyes, he will pay the Takases a little visit but otherwise, he is perfectly happy to never see his homeroom teacher in a maid outfit again.

On his way to Untouchable, he is cornered and solicited to be a drug mule no less than three times and has to double-check that he hadn't ended up in Shinjuku by accident. The situation is clearly deteriorating fast and each day Akira delays is another day that someone else will have to pay for it. 

The bell jangles above him and he is immediately greeted with a blast of air-conditioning and a mildly irritated glare.

"You're late, kid," Iwai says but without too much venom. Akira's only response is an irreverent shrug as he goes to set Morgana down in the back, a vague idea slowly taking shape in the back of his mind. An objectively bad idea, perhaps, but at this stage, it is preferable to no idea at all.

"Got stopped on my way in here," he says casually, angling his head to watch Iwai's face through the reflection in the display case. "Some guys offering another part-time job."

Iwai doesn't outwardly react, aside from a slight furrow of his brow. "You telling me you're quitting?" he asks with careful disinterest. "Or complaining that I'm not paying you enough?" Not that he actually paid Akira in anything other than the privilege of buying his guns.

Akira makes a noncommittal sound and turns until he's leaning against the glass. "So it's that lucrative?"

Iwai meets his pointed gaze and holds it for a second before he breaks it with an eye roll. "You'd be way in over your head. Just having guts ain't gonna do anything for you if you got Kaneshiro after your ass."

"He a friend of yours?" Akira raises a brow, partly in challenge and partly in surprise that his half-hearted fishing expedition had already reeled in a catch.

"Hardly." Iwai levels a cold glare that Akira has long since grown immune to when he remembers the last time Kaoru tried to convince him to bake a cake. Then he drops the act, exasperated. "Don't think I don't know you're just riling me up. There's no way you're actually hurting for money with the way you go through my guns."

Akira grins and re-adjusts his glasses. "Who knows." Phantom thievery is an expensive hobby after all and there's only so much money he can extort from a shadow in a given day. "A friend of mine is in trouble," he says, this time serious. "I wanted to know if you had any dirt on him."

Iwai stills. He sets down the model he had been wiping down and leans forward with his hands clasped. "Despite how it looks, I do run a legit business around here." 

"I need to get in touch with him," Akira continues on as if he hadn't heard. "I want to strike a deal with him."

"Don't be stupid!" The sheer amount of thunder in his voice makes Akira feel very touched. "You'd be paying for that deal your whole life."

"If you don't want to help me, I've already had five burly, tattooed men invite me inside their unmarked black vans today."

Their staring contest lasts for nearly a full minute until one of them breaks. 

"Fine," Iwai groans just as Akira knew he would. "Fine. You win. You're lucky Kaoru actually likes you for some reason."

It's because I'm cute.

It's because I'm charming.

It's not just Kaoru.

"You're absolutely insane, kid. Certifiable," Iwai replies flatly. "I can get you a temporary dishwashing job at the club he frequents. The owner isn't someone he'll want to mess with so as long as you're not extraordinarily stupid, you might actually get out of this intact. Now, get to work or get out of my shop."

Akira responds with a cheeky salute and saunters off into the backroom where Morgana awaits him with eyes the size of dinner plates.

"I can't believe you were brave enough to say all that to him," he whispers in both awe and mild reproach. "Even Ryuji can't look at him without shaking."

"Despite all evidence to the contrary, my lionhearted guts are not just an informed attribute."

Chapter Text

"Well this is a surprise. It's not even noon yet." 

Akira hovers at the top of the staircase. He gives the cafe a thorough sweep — the polished wooden tables, unoccupied, the neat row of chairs by the bar, vacant, the immaculate floors that he had spent the previous night mopping to suck up to his guardian, empty — before descending one careful step at a time.  "Good morning," he says, a little uncertainly when he notices Sojiro's increased scrutiny.

"Going out?" he asks, nodding towards the bag slung over Akira's shoulder — the left one today, at the advice of his future chiropractor because he may as well try to avoid a lifetime of back pain too. "You got a date or something?"

Akira's hands pause midway through composing a text to one of his many managers. "No," he says, trying to keep the sheer confusion out of his voice, "Just work."

"Ah, that so," Sojiro sighs, and Akira can detect a hint of wistfulness for some reason. "I thought maybe you and that blond friend of yours were..."

"Um," says Akira. 

Which blond...?

I'm into brunettes.

Coffee is my one true love.

"Is that supposed to be a dig at me?" Sojiro asks with a raised brow that radiates mild disapproval which tells him that he really should have confessed his fascination for coffee-colored hair. "Well, don't let me keep you. Get out of here."

Akira doesn't need to be told twice, and he is out the door in a heartbeat.

"I think Boss might be warming up to you," Morgana confides into his ear as they leave Leblanc behind. It's a nice sentiment, even if Akira is pretty sure that at this point Sojiro only likes him for his free labor. "Anyway, that text this morning was from Iwai, right? You think that Kaneshiro guy could be our next target?"

Unseen, Akira's wry smile becomes closer to a grimace as he gives Morgana's soft ears a gentle scratch. "Could be."

Hanasaki's delighted — if not slightly frazzled — smile makes Akira feel both better and worse about himself when he thinks of how many times he had ghosted her to hit up batting cages with Ryuji. He supposes there are worse ways to spend his Saturday than being surrounded by the sweet fragrance of freshly-cut hyacinths and white mums.  And he does actually kind of need the money, more direly than he expected when he did his books last night. He had clearly underestimated just how much feeding two additional mouths would bump up his expenses.

It is unusually busy for a Saturday; perhaps the warmer weather played a part in convincing every young, starry-eyed youth in Shibuya that today just might be the day that they'll be lucky in love. As the crowds grow, so do the number of Akira's nervous glances towards their dwindling stock of fresh merchandise. 

Hanasaki slips him another order for an elaborate wedding bouquet and he quickly gets to work. There is something soothing about allowing himself to fall into routine, allowing the buzz of his own thoughts to fade into the background as muscle memory takes over in their stead. His fingers are nimble as he picks out and sets aside a dozen snow-white roses and thin sprigs of olives. He tends to them carefully, peeling away damaged petals and browned leaves, removing the imperfections one after another. Humming under his breath, he weaves the long stems together, trapping them securely in layers and layers of ribbon and tape. Finally done, Akira holds it back at arms-length, brow slightly furrowed as he inspects his handiwork. 

"Ku-Kurusu-kun...?"

The bouquet slips from his fingers and he nearly stumbles over himself to catch it again. Akira straightens up, the flowers clutched in his fists like a metaverse weapon before he finally places the voice. His own throat clams up faster than a watertight gate can slam itself shut and Akira wonders if he is cursed. Sure enough, when he pulls himself together enough to peek over his defensive bridal accessory, Akechi Goro is indeed right there in the flesh, standing next to a row of blue and black dahlias and staring at him with a slightly dazed look in his eyes.

Kurusu whomst?

Sorry, I'm Amamiya.

.........

Akira is doubly relieved that Morgana is too busy exploring to see his illustrious leader bumble his way through basic conversation. He wonders, very seriously, if all Wildcards have the ability to nullify his social stats or if it is just Akechi.

"O-Oh, good morning!" Akechi is smiling as he approaches and looking altogether too cheerful for someone who has to be awake before noon on a Saturday. "I did not expect to see you here of all places!"

I didn't either, Akira thinks to himself, helplessly. At least by now, he had made peace with the idea of Akechi Goro existing, enough so that his first instinct is no longer to crawl behind the counter and hide—his first instinct is to shove the roses into Akechi's face and hope it distracts him long enough for him to slip into Mementos. Thankfully, he is in possession of enough of his faculties that he does neither of those things. Instead, he just stands there, frozen and breathless like he's underwater, processing stimuli through a thick paste, and seconds from either falling apart or saying something unconscionably stupid. 

Thankfully, before his vocal chords can betray him again, Akechi sidesteps past the volumes of Akira's awkward silences with the grace of a seasoned TV celebrity. "This really is quite a serendipitous meeting. I was actually planning on visiting Leblanc later today to try the curry."

.........

Don't let me keep you!

Maybe this is fate?

Why? Akira wonders sadly. Why didn't he get the emergency laryngectomy when he had the chance?

Across from him, even Akechi seems to be struggling to form words in the wake of Akira's astounding stupidity. His lips part, only to close again. Akira watches Akechi repeat the process in a masochistic fugue state, only snapping out of it when a bright, musical laugh bubbles out from his mouth.

"Ah, I see," Akechi says, politely covering his mouth amidst his chuckles but it does little to hide how surprised he is. "A clever callback to our last conversation. Yes, at the risk of sounding trite, perhaps there really is some unseen force drawing us together." 

Either that or a certain megalomaniacal open-top container is just really invested in watching Akira get shot in the face again. 

Akira tries to buy some time by returning a nervous laugh of his own and furtively looks around for salvation. Several feet away, Hanasaki is hastily counting out 1,000¥ bills as the suited customer before her swells with impatience. Next to his feet are several crates of tulips, waiting to be transplanted but none of them would suffice as a distraction from the fact that he still has absolutely no idea what to say. At least this time he gets to make a fool out of himself in front of Akechi in regular clothes instead of eye-searing pink and chartreuse. 

Luckily for him, if Akechi takes issue with the fact that his unwilling conversation partner has the eloquence of a lawn ornament, he does not voice it. 

"Ah, I'm sorry, are you currently on duty?" he asks instead, once again exercising that famed detective instinct, inferring his occupation from the fact that Akira is standing in front of a flower shop, wearing the flower shop uniform, and holding a bunch of flowers.  "I never would have imagined that you were working as a florist as well. You truly are a man of many talents."

To Akira's undying mortification, the sudden compliment hits him like a shadow ambush, hard enough that he thinks he can see stars, or perhaps he is just seeing the aftermath of his remaining brain cells self-destructing into little fireworks of distress. Heat floods into his face, sharp and dizzying, and he wonders if it is possible to get sunstroke while standing completely underground.

Thanks, it's the phantom-thieving.

Thanks, but it's really not that impressive.

I can also fit over twenty marshmallows into my mouth.

Yaldabaoth would be pleased to know that Akira is now very willing to fade from all human cognition if only so he doesn't have to exist through the rest of this conversation. There is a loud ringing in his ears that sounds like alarm bells going off in three distinct tones, but it isn't enough to drown out Akechi's response. 

"A-Ah, is that so?" he stammers after a beat, visibly perturbed, though, to his credit, anyone would be hard-pressed to follow up on a response like that and still project a kind, princely image. "I-I assume that you're referring to the popular party game, yes? If I remember correctly, twenty is certainly an impressive number, although I haven't had a chance to play it myself."

"That's too bad," Akira hears his voice saying without any input from his higher-order brain functions because those brain functions are suddenly preoccupied with a hallucination of Akechi Goro with his cheeks stuffed to bursting. He solemnly shuts his mouth and decides that the next time he opens it again, it will be to beg Akechi to put a bullet in his head, and with any luck, he'll either wake up again on April 11 or not have to wake up at all. He moves to nervously mess with his fringe, only to remember that he is still holding someone's bridal roses in a bruising death grip.

"Kurusu-kun, is the bouquet ready yet? The customer called to say he's on his way—ah?" Hanasaki's words trail off when she finally notices the reason why her employee's productivity has dropped to zero. Her gaze turns from the roses, slightly crushed, following Akira's line of sight all the way to a familiar face framed by gentle waves of warm, caramel hair. Recognition dawns, breaking over her face. But less like rays of the first brightening and more like a sledgehammer as she registers that it is indeed, the Akechi Goro, the second coming of the Detective Prince himself, standing before her in the flesh and obstructing her business. "You're—!"

Akechi's smile momentarily dims — almost too quickly to be noticed, had Akira's gaze not left his face for the past five minutes — before it pastes itself right back on. "Ah," he says, with just the perfect amount of bashful chagrin, "well—"

"—Akechi Goro!" She doesn't so much say his name, as much as it punches out of her completely involuntarily in a breathless, choked whisper in the same manner a mortal dares to name a god — with awe and fearful reverence. Akira can see the way her knees lock and the way shock widens slackens her face but he cannot hold it against her, considering how his own response to meeting Akechi Goro in the flesh had been to immediately fall down a flight of stairs.

Akechi's eyes immediately flicker to meet his own, pinning him in place with a deep, searching stare. Akira doesn't know what he hopes to find, or if he can find anything at all beyond the blanketing fog of his own confusion. After what feels like a lifetime, Akechi breaks away, turning back towards Hanasaki with a sweet, bashful smile.

"Ah… Yes, I am. Guilty as charged." His laugh is sheepish, contrite like a schoolboy in front of his scolding teacher, caught in a place he had no business being. "I'm terribly sorry for taking up Kurusu-kun's time— I'm afraid I let my excitement get the better of my manners!"

Hanasaki's disbelieving gaze is a perfect match for Akira's own incredulity that this Akechi would feel any positive emotions in his presence — "you truly are interesting" — let alone excitement.  With pinked cheeks, she laughs as well but it is just a little bit too high to be natural. "Of course, it's not a bother at all! Kurusu-kun is nearly done with his shift, anyway. He's all yours!"

Akira, who still has a full two hours left on his shift, looks up at his manager akin to the way Mufasa looks up at Scar moments before plummeting into a herd of stampeding wildebeests. But it is apparent that she misinterprets his reluctance when she returns his accusatory look with an encouraging smile and a wave.

Akechi, to his credit, looks a little less interested in trampling him beneath his feet and a little more concerned about the potential stampede that seems to be waiting to happen around them; the already dense crowds seem to have multiplied in the span of a few minutes, rippling with quiet whispers as they move as one single, crawling entity to fill up the bend in the hallway. 

— "isn't that…" — "Akechi-kun?" — "the famous high school detective...?!" — "no way!!" — "is he buying flowers?!" — 

"Oh, there's no need. I'm afraid I must be on my way soon, if I don't want to be late to my meeting," Akechi deflects. The only crack in his princely demeanor is the nervous way that he casts a surreptitious look over his shoulder, his cheeks paling in a way that Akira cannot help but find endearing, but mostly pitiful. "I apologize for having to cut this short. Until next time, Kurusu-kun!" The parting look that Akechi sends him looks almost regretful but he flees through a gap in the crowd before Akira can even begin to try to unpack what it meant.

He doesn't move, standing rooted in place with a dozen roses loosely clasped in his hand, watching as Akechi's silhouette is swallowed up by the tide until he can no longer pick out his brown hair from the sea of shoppers. 

"So," Hanasaki's voice is just loud enough to be heard over the chorus of 'Akechi-kun!' s resounding through the mall, "are you and Akechi-kun…?"

Akira stops staring blankly at nothing and directs his blank stare at her instead.

"Nevermind," she says quickly. "I'll just— go ring up some orders. Um, if you get started on one of the other arrangements, that would be wonderful!" 

After making sure that Hanasaki is busy with customers, Akira takes a moment to gather his wits back to himself, after Akechi had so carelessly scattered them to the four winds just by flashing a smile and a compliment. He touches his face and his fingertips come away burning hot — just as he feared — and it redoubles his conviction that Akechi Goro needs to be avoided at all cost.

The rest of his shift goes by without incident and if there is an increased number of school-aged girls lingering in the area and whispering — did you hear? did you hear? akechi-kun was buying flowers for his lover! — Akira blithely pretends not to notice. He decides it is better to not dwell on things he cannot change; so he takes his memories of the encounter and carefully folds it up, taking care to properly crease each edge, and files it away in the furthest reaches of his mind along with all the other moments like it.

Instead, he focuses on his hands — watering, wrapping, pruning, planting, replanting — waiting for his clock to run out so he can get to worrying about the message burning a hole in his pocket.

Tomorrow.

The word rings with a strange finality and makes his stomach crawl with both dread and anticipation. A knot in the pit of his stomach that tugs at him as the hours drag on, pulling him closer and closer to an unknown destination. It is the same feeling that he gets, every time the Phantom Thieves post another calling card, a little like falling backward without a lifeline and a little bit flying. Freeing and absolutely stifling all at once. 

Only this time, Akira isn't going to be traversing familiar waters with his trusted friends at his side and the only personas he has access to in reality cannot rain down hellfire to smite his foes. 

Tomorrow, in just under thirty hours, he will be gearing up to face Kaneshiro alone. It feels like a long time away and yet no time at all.

Eyeing the display on his phone, Akira starts to clean up his station, taking care to wash the pollen off his hands because it makes Morgana sneeze. Throngs of idol-hungry schoolgirls were an unexpectedly good deterrent for hopeful romantics and business had been steadily declining throughout the rest of his shift, which Hanasaki would probably consider to be mixed blessings because their stock had dwindled down close to nothing. Only the mystery white-rose bouquet remains unclaimed, sitting quietly by itself in a makeshift vase because Akira had begun to feel sorry for it.

"Great work today, Kurusu-kun!" Hanasaki's hair is slipping out of her ponytail and she looks all around exhausted but pleased all the same. "You managed to handle most of the orders today so I included a bonus for you!"

Akira accepts his remuneration with a slight bow, pleasantly surprised at her kindness. He returns her smile, feeling some of his own exhaustion lift. "Thank you very much." 

"If you don't mind, will you lock up after a few minutes while I make a quick trip to the ATMs? Just in case the customer who ordered the roses shows up."

He sees her off with a quiet "see you later" and settles against to take some of the pressure off his tired ankles. While he waits, he scrolls through his missed messages, holding his breath until he confirms that there's nothing new from Iwai. A sign that everything is still proceeding as expected. 

Akira taps out a few responses, apologizing to Ryuji, rescheduling with Takemi, answering positively to Lala-chan. He sighs and knocks his head back against the wall as he thinks about his next activity of the day.

As much as he would love to answer the siren call of his sandy bedsheets and dusty milk crates, there is still too much daylight remaining to justify sleeping it away. He sighs again, once again running through his unending to-do list. While it would be nice to get a head start on his backlog of names, with the promise of tomorrow looming ahead, it may be the most prudent to spend the evening scoping out the location in advance and plan an infiltration route, just as insurance. Mind made up, he reopens his chat with Iwai.

"Oh! As expected, you have done exceptional work. I knew I was right to trust in your aesthetics."

The familiar voice startles him into nearly dropping his phone. Sure enough, when Akira looks up, he is met with the sight of Yusuke peering critically at him through the frame of his long fingers. 

"... Yusuke?" he asks, uncertainly.

Yusuke nods, sweeping the roses off the counter with an elegant flick of his hand. "Ah yes, I was the one who commissioned this bouquet."

Akira slowly looks to the roses and then back to Yusuke. 

Congratulations.

When's our wedding?

Is it for a painting?

"Indeed!" A feverish light enters Yusuke's eyes and Akira braces himself to receive the full brunt of his thesis. "As you know, I have been struggling to come up with a theme for a painting to submit to my upcoming art competition. Your help so far has been invaluable, even going with me into the depths of humanity's darkness and helping me find the light that guides me through it! But last night, I was visited by a new vision of you, bare as a newborn babe and smiling with a devilish magnetism amidst a field of white roses! Ahahahahaha! I am overflowing with inspiration with this next piece — I will title it『 Innocent Sin 』!" 

He breaks off briefly, throwing his head back with another deep, full-throated laughter while Akira and a number of whispering shoppers watch on in various shades of bewilderment. "Alas, I could only afford the dozen so I was forced to settle."

"Yusuke," Akira says again, his face reddening and his eyes stinging with an overwhelming urge to cry because he knows this will set Yusuke back about 7,000¥. 

I thought you were submitting『 Desire and Hope 』?

I'm not sure if the art world is ready to see my junk.

Make me beautiful.

"Oh, Akira," Yusuke says earnestly, reaching out to offer him the bouquet. "I only fear that these unworthy hands will fail to capture your magnificence." 

In the face of his passionate sincerity, Akira has no other choice than to take it and quietly resolves to slip his paycheque back into the cash register the second Yusuke isn't looking. His smile comes out a little watery and with any luck, Yusuke will assume it's because he's too moved for words.

"Hey, cut that out!" A voice suddenly scolds from the vicinity of his legs. Akira looks down to see Morgana scowling up at Yusuke in consternation, crouching with flattened ears. "Can't you see you're drawing too much attention?!" 

The look that Yusuke returns is the affronted bewilderment befitting someone who was born entirely lacking in situational awareness and Akira hastily tries to defuse the tension. 

Morgana, I'm going to be a bride.

Does anyone want sushi?

"Su-sushi?!" Just as he intended, both Morgana and Yusuke perk up at the magic word, staring at him with such hunger that he can practically see visions of spicy tuna rolls reflected in their eyes. 

"My treat," he adds to sweeten the deal as he mentally tallies up the contents of his wallet. "Just let me close up first."

Unfortunately (or fortunately for his savings), they never do make it to sushi.

"Hey, Akira! Yusuke!"

Halfway towards Central Street, a very familiar loud-mouthed highschooler jogs up towards them with full-bodied enthusiasm, waving an arm laden with so many shopping bags that it looks like he's waving a colourful clothesline. Following behind him at a more sedate pace are two girls, one blond and one dark-haired, arms linked and heads bent together as they attempt to walk and share a crepe at the same time.

The sight of their bright, carefree smiles stirs his heart, hitting him with a powerful wave of relief and euphoria — the incontrovertible proof that no matter what else happens, no matter what else he might ruin as he seeks to unravel the strings of fate, Akira had managed to do something right.

"Yo!" Ryuji greets them with an easy grin, once he is no longer a blurry silhouette in the distance. He pauses long enough to catch his breath and to eye the roses in Akira's hands with raised eyebrows. He opens his mouth and closes it, wisely deciding not to comment. "Just got your text and happened to be in the area with these guys."

"Akira! Yusuke!" Ann, the most likely owner of most if not all of the bags, beams, and waves with her free hand. "What a coincidence! Ah, you guys haven't met, have you? This is Suzui Shiho, a second-year like us. And this is Kitagawa Yusuke, a friend from Kosei." 

"Nice to meet you, Kitagawa-kun." Suzui bows as best as she can with one elbow looped around Ann's and a needlessly extravagant crepe balanced delicately in her hands. Like Ryuji's, her eyes also linger on the bridal bouquet that is slowly but surely becoming the bane of Akira's existence. But her gaze is full of warmth — and gratitude — when they land on him. "And it's good to see you, Kurusu-kun."

She looks brighter than he had ever seen her in two lifetimes. There is a liveliness in her steps, her gait steady and sure with no echo of the injury that had featured so heavily in Ann's nightmares. Even years into the future, there was at times a fragile, brittle quality to her smiles. Like something inside her had been hollowed out by far too many horrors.

"It's good to see you too, Suzui-san," he says, meeting her eyes and understands the unspoken volumes within them. They share a smile before turning back to Ann as she starts to explain.

"Remember how I said I wanted to learn to work out properly? Well, I asked Shiho for some tips and she recommended this imported brand of protein. We were looking for it when we ran into Ryuji." Who had inevitably become their pack-mule, Akira infers. "I never thought we would all run into each other like this! Shibuya is so big, after all."

"Indeed, this truly must be a meeting of fate," Yusuke says, inadvertently making Akira wince. "Akira and I are on our way to dine on sushi, in celebration of my breakthrough. Would you care to join us?"

Ryuji and Ann's eyes also briefly flash with visions of spicy tuna rolls, but their faces soon fall afterward. "Oh, I don't know if I have the money for it right now," Ann says sadly with a longing look at the heavy-looking bags hanging off of Ryuji's arms.

"Same here, man," Ryuji admits, glumly, his entire body sagging with disappointment. "I just bought a new pair of trainers. Hey— wait a sec, can Yusuke even afford it?"

"Akira said he would treat me," Yusuke announces with just the barest hint of shame. "He is truly a worthy muse. But know this, I will surely repay you a thousand-fold over—" 

"But we can't make Akira treat all of us," Ann interjects before Yusuke can go on too much of a tangent. "And you've been working so hard lately. Why don't you let us treat you to something for a change!"

Akira blinks, nonplussed. "Me?" 

"Yeah!" Ryuji exclaims, elbowing over so he can throw a companionable arm over his shoulder, and Akira has to hide another wince when a couple of bags knock into his ribs. "You're always the one looking out for us—" 

"—even doing their laundry—" Morgana chimes in quietly from his bag.

"—so we should be returning the favor for once," Ryuji finishes.

With four sets of eyes suddenly looking expectantly at him, Akira finds himself at a complete loss for words. "Um," he says, unusually flustered. "It's fine. Really. You guys really don't have to." 

"Why don't we go to Dome Town?" Suzui suggests reasonably. "It's free to get in and the rides aren't too pricey."

"Free entry?" Yusuke gasps as Ann cheers.

"That's a great idea, Shiho! We can get something to eat in the food court too! I've always wanted to try the crepes at Marion."

"...Isn't Suzui literally holding your crepe right now?"

"That's not the point, Ryuji!"

"Dome Town, huh? Is that the one with the giant building that looks like a huge pancake?" Morgana pipes up and Akira's heart nearly gives out for the second time that day. He glances around him, his pupils alight with a golden sheen until he is sure that there are no well-dressed detectives in their vicinity and finally allows his shoulders to drop.

"Dome Town it is, then," he mumbles in resignation.

After quickly debating the logistics for a few more minutes, the six of them, plus one hitchhiker, set off.

"We haven't hung out together like this in a while! This is as good a time as any, right?" Ryuji's conspiratory grin is as infectious as it is bright. To his credit, he does remember to lower his voice after a furtive glance at Ann and Shiho, who were catching up with Yusuke further up ahead. "'Sides, it's not like we have any other leads right now."

"Hmph!" Morgana snorts into his ear. Akira can feel him rock back on his paws as he puffs his chest up, along with a rising sense of unease. "That's the difference between you and our leader, then!"

Predictably, Ryuji's first response is to bristle, but he manages to catch onto the implication long enough to stop himself from fighting a smug cat in public. "For real?" he asks in a hushed voice that does nothing to hide his excitement. "You found a target? Someone with a Palace?" 

"You bet," Morgana preens before Akira can stop him. "In fact, we're scoping them out tomorrow night!"

"What?!" This time Ryuji forgets to manage his volume as he rounds on him.  "Why didn't you say anything earlier?"

Akira nearly misses his next step at the crosswalk. The world wavers and the streets are suddenly dyed in red, white bones reaching greedily up towards the bleeding sky. His friends, falling to their knees one after another, crying in fear and pain as their bodies melt into ash. He blinks and the vision fades back into the slightly betrayed look on Ryuji's face. Akira smiles placatingly, glad that his pockets hide the way his fingernails dig crescents into his palms. "We're just investigating a rumor," he tries to deflect around the sudden weight in his throat. "Nothing concrete yet."

To his relief, Ryuji is quickly mollified, waving away Ann's concerned look when she turns back. "Reconnaissance work, huh? Let me help too!"

"You'll just get in the way," Morgana huffs, his tail thumping against the inside of his bookbag. "Information gathering is delicate work."

"Huh?! What was that, cat?! "

Akira quickly cuts in before Ryuji actually does try to throw down with a cat in the middle of a packed street. "Morgana, please," he says, giving his furry head an admonishing pat. To Ryuji, he gives him his most placating smile. "I'm sorry for not mentioning it earlier. We just thought we might stand out too much with more people. I promise to let you know if I need any backup." 

Ryuji pauses, eyeing him with a surprising amount of seriousness, and Akira meets his gaze calmly, even while his insides clench with guilt. Eventually, he deflates. "Well," he says with a grin, "You're the Leader, after all; if anyone knows what they're doing, it's you."

Even Morgana concedes with a grumpy huff. "That's right. It's Akira, after all."

If only that were true. Akira's heart swells with the warmth of their trust, even if it stabs into his chest like hot daggers.

"C'mon, you two!" Ann suddenly calls, breaking him out of his self-flagellation. "You can flirt after we get on the train!"

"W-What—!" Ryuji sputters. His face cycles so exaggeratedly between indignity and mortification that Akira finds himself holding back a startled laugh. "Damn it, who the hell's flirting— ugh, I'm not Yusuke! " 

While Ryuji stomps ahead, Akira tries to wrest his features back into order. He takes a moment, observing the five of them as if to immortalize them into his memory: Ann's playful teasing, Shiho hiding her giggles behind a hand, Ryuji's thunderous scowls, and Yusuke's utter bewilderment at getting dragged into the conversation. But in the end, the wide grin on his face refuses to fade. 

Then his phone buzzes against his leg. 

Chapter Text

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence.

Akechi Goro does not believe in coincidence and neither does Masayoshi Shido for that matter.

"I had expected the SIU to at least have a lead by now." 

The voice coming from the other end of the receiver is nothing more than a series of mechanical vibrations sparked by transmitted electrical signals — it is only his cognition that makes him believe he is in fact hearing Shido's voice, but it fills him with disgust all the same. Goro can picture his face with perfect clarity; nostrils blaring, veins bulging over his temples, a cruel mouth twisting into a sneer. 

"Clearly, I have been overestimating their capabilities. Do not make the same mistake, Akechi."

He smiles out of habit, the plastic stretch of his lips is a useful reminder not to snarl. "You can rest assured, sir. I will take care of it."

"See to it that you do. You know well enough that I do not tolerate failure."

"Of course, Sh—" The dial tone is obnoxiously loud in his ear but he finishes his sentence anyway. "—ido-san." 

He slides his phone back into his pocket instead of throwing it into the wall, unwilling to be baited by the particularly unsubtle attempt to get under his skin. As gratifying as it might be to watch it explode in a shower of plastic and metal, it would not be worth the later inconvenience to replace it. By the time he steps out of the alcove and melts back onto Shibuya's bustling crowds, Goro's smile is nothing short of flawless because, in the grand scheme of things — in his scheme — all of it matters very little. All he needs to do is continue playing his role like a good little lapdog, carefully biding his time as his prey gradually tightens the noose around its own neck. 

But until then, he is at his master's beck and call. 

Goro checks his phone, nothing with another burst of annoyance that, thanks to Shido's impeccably poor timing, he has missed his window to avoid the afternoon rush and the last thing he wants to do now is to spend another commute pressed up against the masses.

Deciding that he may as well spend his time in a meaningful way while he waits, Goro slips off the main streets and into a roadside café; one of the many popular but generic franchises that boasted of atmosphere and quality. It really offered neither but it did have relatively private seating and free wi-fi. With another plastic smile, he orders a coffee and settles down with his files. As expected, the drink is only mediocre and he has to fight back a grimace when he inadvertently compares it to the sweet, addicting aroma in the small, tucked-away shop (that he can never visit again). 

Over-brewed coffee aside, he has more important things to focus on, such as the ignoble task of tracking down the latest fools to incur Shido's ire. His usual targets are known well ahead of time and delivered to him in his bastard father's electronic voice, as monotonous and bland as if he were dictating a list of household chores. Clean your room, Goro. Wash the dishes, Goro. Take out the trash, Goro. Assassinate my political opponents, Goro. It just figures that this would be as close to proper parenting that he can ever expect from the likes of Shido Masayoshi. 

Unfortunately, his current assignment is proving to be slightly more of a nuisance, thanks to the inconvenient anonymity of the fools brazen enough to christen themselves 『 The Phantom Thieves of Hearts 』. It forces him to do some actual detective work for once. Not that his latest opponents are actually offering much in the way of a challenge. From the crude, vulgar craftsmanship of the initial 'calling cards' to the fact that only a member of Shujin Academy could have had access to the initial scene of the crime, it is as clear as day that he is dealing with a group of sloppy school-children who had miraculously gotten a taste of power. Sloppy, impulsive, and lacking in both subtlety and sense to an utterly appalling degree.

Only an imbecile or someone with a literal death wish would think it was a good idea to broadcast to the world that they possessed supernatural, mind-altering powers. Assuming their abilities worked in similar ways to Goro's (as much as he despised the idea), they could just as easily disposed of Kamoshida Suguru with no one the wiser. Indeed, had they possessed a modicum of sense, a case this inconsequential would never have made it anywhere near Shido's desk. 

But it is far too late for regrets. These fools had already committed the most cardinal sin of all: making him read through two-hundred and sixty-seven sets of student records when he could have been studying for midterms. He can already feel his already thin patience waning; every additional crossed off suspect inspires him to add one more bullet to his nameless opponent's face when he eventually catches him.

Unfortunately, his fishing expedition at the television station had yielded disappointingly little, even after he had gone to the trouble of ensuring his appearance coincided with the timing of the Shujin visits. For the most part, his carefully prepared criticism and subtle threats had been thoroughly wasted on his dull-eyed audience. The only student with a visible reaction to his bait had stunk of so much cowardice when he approached him that he could not fathom having the strength of heart to confront so much as a Pixie without losing control of his bladder. 

Eventually, around the time he closes out of Kitamura Haruhito's truancy write-ups with disgust, the gnawing emptiness of his stomach becomes too much to ignore and he is forced to call it a day with not much to show for it. Frowning at the cold dregs of his coffee, he briefly debates ordering something else to go but quickly decides that he's hungry, not desperate. With another vapid smile and a practiced lie about how much he had enjoyed his time here, he packs up his belongings and vacates his booth in search of an actual meal. Or a passable substitute, at least.

Lightning never strikes twice. Or so they continue to say, even if this has been long since debunked by the scientific community.

A much truer adage is that history always repeats itself. Although fate has enough originality that it never quite does anything in exactly the same way (weaving its misfortunes with different actors on different stages), in the end, it employs the same themes, the same Aesops. Any student of Shakespeare would know that every cautionary tale is about hubris; the fatal flaw that makes fools of the wise, paupers of kings, and brings entire empires to their knees. 

Goro is not a king, does not consider himself wise, and could hardly care less if the entire country was razed to the ground in a single night. But his hubris brings him to his knees all the same.

The odds of being struck by lightning twice in one lifetime are one in nine million, almost infinitesimally small due to how poorly human minds are equipped to comprehend large numbers. Which means that Goro must be doing the metaphorical equivalent running through wheatfields through the pouring rain, dressed in a full set of medieval armor while flying metal kites on each finger into turbulent clouds. 

There is no other logical explanation for why in the vast metropolis of Tokyo (with a chance encounter rate that is coincidentally also one out of nine million) Goro had chosen to patronize the one convenience store that also happened to employ him.

The boy from the café.

All he had wanted to do was to get some nourishment to sustain his decaying body, at least long enough for him to complete one last distasteful errand before he can finally return home and collapse beneath the weight of his own choices. What he hadn't expected upon entering the sliding glass doors was to find his own personal hell awaiting him with limpid gray eyes and plush red lips. 

The only consolation is that the combination of thick frames and glass on Kurusu's face manages to keep some of his devastating beauty contained. Of course, he is still the single most breathtaking creature he has ever laid eyes on, but at least Goro no longer feels like worms are devouring his brain when he beholds him.

With his head down and long lashes lowered, he looks as deceptively sweet and beguiling as blossoming meadow saffron, beautiful enough to make him forget that even a taste of its forbidden fruit would prove fatal.

Being lulled into a false sense of security would explain why "maybe this is what you could call fate?" comes tumbling gracelessly out of his mouth. His own mouth. The mouth of Akechi Goro, a minor celebrity in his own right, a man who has legions of women screaming over him and selfies on twitter that get shared no less than a thousand times within the first few minutes of posting. He needs to sew the stupid thing shut. 

His gravest miscalculation is that his bumbling Detective Prince persona had been crafted for a very specific purpose: to be palatable towards arrogant, vapid adults who lacked the capacity to see him as anything other than a tool to advance their own agendas (and incidentally, hordes of idol-chasing school girls).  It is once again hubris that had led him to judge his peers and find them so deeply lacking in anything resembling independent thought that he had excluded them entirely from consideration. Hence, Goro could not be any more ill-equipped to interact with people in his own age group, Niijima Makoto aside. Not that he can use his interactions with the stuck-up people-pleaser as a base unless he wants Kurusu to immediately develop a deep, undying hatred for him. 

He knows he must be better than this. "Akechi Goro" had come from nothing, had been nothing. But he had clawed his way out from the mud with nothing but his own rebellious will. Facing trial after trial, demon after demon until he stood above all the rest, climbed to the highest echelons of society. He is a household name, hailed as a genius, wielding powers beyond human comprehension. With a mere thought and a flick of his wrist, he can rain divine judgment down on his enemies. He has ruined far greater men than a nameless, inconsequential grocery store employee. Even if he has a slightly pretty face.

"Just kidding!" his accursed mouth opens without permission and he has never felt more repulsed by the sound of his own voice. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that it continues to speak for him in between bursts of unspeakably pathetic laughter. "Aha, I apologize again! I'm deeply sorry, it has been a long day and I swear I don't normally run my mouth like this with strangers." Especially not like he had been force-fed a potent cocktail of pulinpa, marin karin, and devil touch all at the same time.

In contrast, the cause of his suffering appears to be wholly indifferent to his plight. The boy's exquisite face is as blank as an antique bisque doll — all porcelain skin and unparalleled craftsmanship with glass eyes that shone like cold jewels — seemingly content on watching him make an utter fool out of himself, like an eager puppet dancing on a string. 

Goro is suddenly seized with a blinding rush of hatred, a maddening need to smash that face into the ground and watch it shatter into a million shards if only to break its pestilential hold over him— 

"It's okay," the boy says. Soft as gossamer drifting on a warm summer's day, smooth like the caress of velvet against his ears, and as disorienting as a metaverse ambush. "I don't mind." And then he smiles — a shy quirk of his lips like a flower budding in a field of desolation, a brilliant spot of technicolor in a monochrome world. It was a smile that could launch a thousand ships and it robs him of his anger as quickly as it had come.

Blood rushes to his head, blurring his eyes and filling his ears with static. He is an outsider in his own body, incapable of understanding as he watches him delicately punch numbers into a machine. His gaze is expectant as he turns to Goro with an outstretched hand, cupid bow lips parting to say, "Your change is 320¥."

Goro slowly looks down at his loosely clasped fingers, staring at them in incomprehension for an unacceptably long time before the sobering might of reality finally hits, slamming into him with the crushing force of a thousand metric tonnes. 

What the fuck is he doing?

The answer to that simple question is this: he is standing in the middle of a convenience store, making eyes at a cashier like some kind of insipid idiot.

"Please, keep it," he says, utterly drained as he eyes the boy's outstretched hand like he would a live snake. "Once again, I'm sorry if I have troubled you." 

He turns on his heel and woodenly drags himself to the exit, his mind a melange of fractured thoughts and half-formed self-recriminations, but before he can escape

—  

"Wait!"

The world comes to a stop; not with the slow, gradual grind of aged gears, but the abrupt, violent slam of brakes and screeching tires. His senses desert him as if the momentum of the impact had torn them from his body and propelled it through the shredded windshield. 

His voice — his cry — made something stir in the depths of his soul, something that permeated every fiber of his being with fathomless emotion. He whirls around, with blood in his eyes and agony in his lungs and

— 

Kurusu's expression is endearingly abashed as he glances up at him through sinfully long lashes. His lips part and the gentle sound of his voice brushes against his ears like warm velvet, but its meaning slips through his fingers like water, along with the vestiges of something that had been almost in his grasp. 

It takes him an unacceptably long time to realize he has yet to formulate a reply and even longer to play back his memories to realize what he needs to reply to.

“Oh! Yes. Please," his mouth once again moves on its own to produce words that were not most definitely not sanctioned by his higher-order brain functions. However, with most of his mind still reeling, still chasing after the increasingly nebulous echoes of whatever it is that he had encountered, he can only resign himself to allowing it to run.

Instead, he decides to seize the rare opportunity to finally observe the source of his recent misfortune up close. As if he can decode the source of his inexplicable attraction in the curl of his lashes and the angles of his jaw, or find his answers in his enviously smooth skin or the pale pink of his lips. But his pursuit of answers only results in more mysteries. Goro, despite his fraudulent beginnings, had in fact managed to pick up enough tools of his supposed trade to tell that the boy is uncomfortable in his presence; from his stiff shoulders, near monosyllabic answers and a reluctance to make eye contact, he seems to be seconds away from violently springing away like a startled fawn. 

Except that he also listens to every clumsy, inane word that tumbles from his mouth and answers his half-baked interrogations with infinite patience. Goro can sense the weight of his attention, the way he tracks his gestures through the corner of his eyes… and the gentle glow of red upon the pale canvas of his cheeks.

Could it be?

Goro wonders if it's the trick of the light, a phantasmagoria of his impoverished mind — but before he has a chance to chase after the mirage, the quiet ding of the microwave oven beckons him back to reality. His time here is up.

Swallowing down his disappointment, he reaches out for the bag, feeling the residual heat from his fried chicken waft up against his wrist. The boy — last name Kurusu, 2nd-year high school student, lives above a café — pulls his hands back beyond the barrier of the counter and as Goro gazes into his eyes, he finally identifies the emotion strangling his lungs to be reluctance. The same unwillingness that resurfaced every time he had been torn from what he had hoped would be his last home. But Goro, who has long since grown accustomed to not getting what he wants, simply wills his lips to form another smile. 

"Thank you again! It was nice speaking with you," he says, fully aware of the painful irony of his claim despite the fact that the boy had spoken almost entirely in monosyllables. Because it had been nice; for the one minute and forty-five seconds that it took to reheat his sorry dinner, he had managed an entire conversation with a stranger out of nothing but pure, inconsequential curiosity. There was no need to watch his words, to sidestep hidden meanings and thinly veiled barbs. No insinuations of his worthiness, his usefulness, his disqualifying age — indeed, there had been no expectations of him at all in the warm gray of Kurusu's irises, as clear as a mirror and just as dazzlingly opaque. Goro had never felt more at ease (and more like the bumbling teenaged boy that should have only existed for the cameras). 

"Perhaps I'll see you around Leblanc," he says on impulse, a whimsical flight of fancy, even though he knows he has no actual intention to visit Yongen again. "I'm thinking of making it my coffee go-to. It was one of the best cups I've ever had." For now, he is satisfied in immersing himself a little longer in this fiction and pretends that the genre of his life can be anything other than horror and tragedy.

But it turns out that Kurusu has no intention of following his script. "You should try it with curry," he replies, nearly sotto voce, but an entire full-length sentence. For a moment, there is only static in his ears. Then, its meaning hits him like a powered-up ziodyne and sends him rocking back on his metaphorical heels.

It was such a deceptively simple sentence; a mundane observation that would, in any other context, be nothing but empty pleasantry or an attempt to establish a cheap rapport based on a shallow connection.

You should try it with curry.

He laughs — a bewildered sound that startles out of him — part disbelief and part elation when he recognizes it for what it is.

An invitation.

A suggestion that the door to the modest but charming little café would be open to him should he ever decide to return. That, such a visit might even be welcome. Of course, the part of his brain that has yet to be eaten by worms scathingly points out that such an establishment would hardly turn away a paying customer, but the rest of it is mired in yet another staggering observation. 

“Well then," the giddiness in his own voice sounds decidedly foreign over the dull hum of the air-conditioning but his mind is too far away to ponder over it, "I suppose I must if that is your recommendation. I will see you around, Kurusu-kun.”

This time, he makes his escape without a backward glance, marching out with brisk, purposeful strides. But he can't outrun the rapid pounding of his heart; it only races faster and faster with each additional step. His lungs constrict, not with reluctance, but because Kurusu's cheeks were — undeniably — flushed. A deep, fetching crimson that had blossomed vividly over his skin along with the fireworks in his chest and this is how Akechi Goro realizes that he is in far deeper trouble than he could have imagined.

Chapter Text

Akira pushes through the crowd. In the cloying haze of the artificial darkness, the club-goers resemble metaverse shadows — faceless silhouettes gyrating to the beat of unseen music and outlined in flashes of neon blue and red. The bass pulses in his chest, a heavy, violent beat hammering against his ribs that only grows with his every step. His ears are filled with the static of indistinct conversation — buzzing, like a swarm of black flies — punctuated by bursts of laughter and loud, sudden riffs of guitar. 

He blinks the fog from his eyes as he tries to match the crowd's momentum, but his attempts to stay on course are thwarted by failing limbs and loud, drunken demands. Finally fed up, Akira lets Yaldabaoth's gift take hold; immediately, there is a blessed silence — the murky darkness sharpens into focus, narrowing his field of vision until he can see his objective beckoning at him from beyond the rippling bodies. Tightening his grip on the tray, Akira presses forward with renewed determination until he finally arrives at his destination.

The glasses clunk dully against the varnished wood as he sets them down, barely even audible against the din but just loud enough to get their attention. With a soft "please enjoy" and a polite but exhausted bow, Akira turns to go, only to find himself stalled when a hand clamps around his wrist. 

"Amamiya-kun," a rough voice purrs into his ear, close enough that he can smell enough alcohol on their breath to knock out a bison. Another set of fingers join the first, forcing him to lean precariously over the table. "Why don't you come and have a drink with us?" The strobe lights flash overhead, illuminating a malicious stare over a smile that gleamed like knives. He can feel fingers running along the exposed skin of his forearm, punctuated with the occasional scrape of sharp nails. The patron's companions titter next to them, indistinct shadows made of flashing irises and glints of white teeth. 

Akira attempts a smile, letting politeness settle in place of his discomfort. "I'm sorry," he says, tone apologetic even as he tries to extricate himself. "I'm still on my shift." But the fingers hold fast, tightening in subtle warning. As the lights flash over them again, he sees the eagerness in their stares. 

"Now, don't be like that, Amamiya-kun. We'll make it worth your time." The grin stretches along with Akira’s unease, too wide and too sharp. "What about this much?"

Akira's attention is helplessly drawn to the raised digits on their hand, as the sound of cruel laughter erupts around him. He stares at it — as blank as a fresh blanket of snow — before a sweet smile stretches across his lips. He leans in, close enough for his breath to graze his would-be captor's ear, unmindful of the sudden hush that had befallen the group. 

"I'm sorry," he murmurs, still smiling as he casually dislodges the slackened grip with ease.  "But my time will cost you a lot more than that."

Before any of them can react, Akira ducks back into the crowd with his emptied tray clutched to his chest like a shield. This time, he lets its current sweep him away and does not break his stride until he finally escapes the lounge. 

The tap of his loafers echoes crisply in the corridors, the sound unbearably loud, evoking a unique sense of paranoia born from months of palace infiltrations. 

"Amamiya!" 

Akira jumps but keeps a firm grip on his instincts and his tray so that it remains in his hands and not lodged in his overseer's throat. He turns, doing his best not to grimace at the sight of the heavyset man stomping up to him. The man hollering his alias in a loud, booming voice is dressed in an even louder suit — a bright, lurid orange paired with a collared shirt with too many buttons undone. He averts his gaze and stares at his feet instead of at how the leopard-printed fabric bulges around his gut. "Yes, sir?"

"Where the fuck were you?" the man snarls into his face. Akira takes a step back but the man matches it, chest swelling up like he could explode into a shower of red and black ichor at any moment. He wishes he would. "Sato-san might have recommended you, but I'll have you out on your ass if I catch you slacking again!"

Akira keeps his head bowed, letting his bangs fall over the muted outrage in his eyes, and reminds himself that there are only so many shadows that he can hunt down in one evening. "I'm sorry, sir," he says with careful neutrality and thinks longingly of his glasses tucked away in his bag. "It won't happen again." 

Wearing a sneer cut from the same cloth as so many tyrants before him, the man pulls back with the satisfaction of a great spotted predator, just enough that Akira can breathe again without choking on his cheap cologne. "It had better not," he says, words spraying out from his mouth with a fresh volley of spittle, so sure of his own power, his dominance that it makes Akira’s fingers inch towards a dagger that isn't there. 

Static crackles beneath his skin and fills his ears. He thinks of Akechi, of flat, placid smiles and clockwork marionettes being wound tighter and tighter until there is no more room to turn. The man's mouth is still moving, a dark, gaping maw that spits out venom and vitriol, aiming to chip away at the foundations of his convictions until all of it comes crumbling down. For no other reason besides the fact that he can. But Akira weathers the assault with the poise of a man who had stood firm before a false god; compared to the entity whose form had enveloped the world, the mortal before him — with his ill-fitting suit and sweat-stained pits — is so pitifully small. Eventually, the man runs out of steam, rancid breath sputtering out of his hefty figure like an air mattress deflating. Barking a final order to, "get back to work", he shoves past him with the lumbering grace of an enraged Girimehkala and goes out of his way to knock Akira aside with a meaty shoulder.

Akira waits until he can no longer hear the heavy footfalls before he bolts for the washroom. 

The door shuts behind him with a firm click and the sounds — the thundering bass, the distant screams — distort into muted vibrations. He slumps against it, loosening the fabric noose around his neck to welcome the sobering blast of air-conditioning against his clammy skin. His improvised safe room is mercifully empty. Akira focuses on breathing, in the simple act of taking air into his lungs and expelling it until the tension in his spine dissipates and the hammering in his chest slows enough to let him pull his phone out with steady hands. 

The group chat flashes with dozens of unread notifications, white digits bubbled in a bright, accusing red, and his chest tightens with a familiar swell of guilt. He taps on Iwai's chat instead to bring up the blueprints, trying not to think of Yusuke's downcast eyes, the dip in Ann's shoulders, the strain in Ryuji's voice despite Akira’s half-hearted promises of another time. Thankful for the small mercy of not having to draw his own maps, Akira marks off the lounge he had come from with another red 'x' with the same careful dread that he had counted down the remaining days many Novembers ago. 

When he checks the map again, there is only one room left unmarked.

The realization hits him with a rush, a sickening pull of gravity that yanks the bottom out from his stomach and shoves his heart up into his throat. He takes another breath, this time clutching his phone hard enough that the screen threatens to crack. 

He knows it is an objectively bad idea. 

A terrible, stupid idea that could go wrong a thousand times over, as bad as getting himself arrested or running off to confront a god, armed with little more than wishful thinking and desperation. If Morgana had any inkling of the hornet's nest he is about to kick over, he would never have agreed to let him out of his sight, let alone wait outside for a signal that Akira doesn't plan to give.

But without an invitation, Kaneshiro's palace will remain out of reach. Beneath it lies a cognitive mountain of broken bodies, expelling plumes of gray exhaust and coughing up sparks as the remainder of their lives fizzle out. Fallen from a place that leaves no tracks. 

He had come too far to stop now. 

Better him than Makoto.

Akira takes another breath, holding it in his lungs until the burn forces him to let it go. He pushes himself off the wall, brushing sweat-dampened hair from his eyes. Prepares to face the palace ruler at the height of his power.

Kaneshiro had been the least memorable of their targets, not because he was any less cruel, less hideously vile as the others, but because it wasn't personal. He had failed to leave his mark on them in the way Ryuji's gait is still uneven, the way Yusuke devours his meals (or the way his breath quickens as the fingers close around his wrists).

His shadow, for all that its bulging insect eyes had frequented his nightmares afterward, had gone down with relative ease. There had been no sign of his smug leer in the pathetic figure groveling at their legs, his greed torn from his heart as easily as tearing a page from a book. They had walked out of the fight, unscathed and flying high on the thrill of taking down an untouchable ruler of the skies, never once thinking of how far they could have fallen.

They were lucky. Unbelievably, staggeringly lucky that none of them had been ripped from their homes and beaten bloody. That none of them were made to feel the sharp sting of needles in their necks and learn to dread the fire that chases after it. The way it crawls under their veins and licks at their skin. The way the dull haze lingers for weeks and months afterward, in the tremor of their hands, in the dreams splashed in shades of vivid red.

Now, as he observes the silhouettes shifting through the white clouds of nicotine-laced smoke, Akira knows it must have been ignorance that allowed them to be so unafraid.

He takes a step in the same way he would take a plunge off a ledge — a casual push of his heels with just enough momentum to drive him forward. The second step comes much easier, catching his weight with a quiet tap of his soles that is quickly swallowed up by the cacophony of percussive beats and raucous laughter. 

The final lounge is much smaller than the others, lit up in an otherworldly blue that is unnervingly reminiscent of Yaldabaoth's velvet room, but with the prison bars replaced by dancers on elevated stages and gleaming leather couches. This time, his search takes almost no time at all; under the glow of the third eye, Akira can make out his target's sickly yellow outline and has to remind himself to breathe.

He keeps his pace even, only pausing long enough by the bar to leave with an additional weight on his tray. The wine glasses rattle and within them, the deep red liquid glows under the lights while it sloshes gently in time with his footfalls.

The distance steadily narrows, and soon, he steps past the point of no return.

Kaneshiro looks just as he did in his memories, reclining back against the settee with the arrogance of a king — or a lord of the flies, perched on a throne of filth and dung. There is an unfamiliar woman draped across his lap — brown-haired and giggling — and a pale cigarette dangles from his fingers, lit end glowing dimly. Grey smoke curls out from it, joining the arid mix of tobacco and cologne in the air; a smell that burrows into his lungs and makes his eyes water as he approaches the table. There is little room to set anything down; the once polished surface is littered with half-emptied glasses and overflowing ashtrays. Something on the floor glints in warning and Akira steps over the discarded syringes with a stab of unease. 

There is a lull in the conversation, a sudden dip in its volume as Akira draws near. But the naked hostility in their gazes falls away just as quickly as they scan over the black of his serving uniform and the drinks balanced on his tray. "It's about time," he hears someone comment, a muttered complaint with little gravitas before it becomes indistinguishable amongst the buzz of chatter.

He lifts a wine glass from his tray. It makes a quiet clink as he sets it down and he continues onto the next. 

Clink.

Clink.

Clink. 

He reaches for the last glass, but an impatient hand gets there first, knocking against the side of the tray just as Akira upends the contents all over his clothes.

The glass falls and breaks against the floor, followed by a shriek — a high pitched wail that cuts through the air like the piercing bite of hot needles in his ears. It is the girl, clawing her way to the end of the couch but too late to avoid the red, vivid drops that had rained down on them like a shower of blood.

Around them, the room explodes into chaos, the shadows surging to their feet, screaming curses and expletives as they swarm onto the scene. Only Akira is unmoving, standing still with the empty tray cradled to his chest, until he is forced to drop it when hands clamp around his wrists like steel manacles, twisting them behind his back. A foot slams into the back of his knees and his body topples forward, only the grip in his hair keeping his face from falling into the sharp glints of shattered glass.

Akira doesn't have to feign his dread as Kaneshiro finally moves. He rises off his seat with deliberate slowness, a bright red stain spreading rapidly over the white of his shirt like he had been shot. 

"Do you know what you just did, you little brat?"

The room hushes; quieting in waves and ripples until the silence becomes deafening. The shadows stop swaying and the silhouettes stop dancing as if trapped in a moment of frozen time. Only Kaneshiro remains unaffected by the paralysis, stepping through the tableau with a sneer splitting his face. 

"This shirt cost me three million yen, you know." 

His voice is conversational, almost affable, as he glares down the bridge of his nose with seething beetle black irises and yellowed sclera.

Akira doesn't reply at first, and then he can't reply at all. Instead, he cries out — a choked, bitten off scream as pain explodes in his ribs. His breath wheezes out of him and he tries to crawl away — the steel cutting into his wrists, the chill of the water soaking into his clothes — but more pain bursts in his scalp, fingers digging into his (dry) hair to drag his head up.

"What do you have to say for yourself?" he asks again, expectantly, and the pressure on his scalp increases in warning. 

"I—" His head is ringing. His vision swims but his thoughts are sluggish — a ship submerging into the sea, still stuck on the image of the falling glass, the spreading red stain. His mouth moves, forming syllables that he barely recognizes as words. "I'm sorry."

Laughter circles him — echoing in his ears as the room starts to spin.

"He said he's sorry, boys."

The grip in his hair slackens, easing the pressure on his roots, but the respite is short-lived when it is replaced by Kaneshiro's fingers around his throat, clenching just tight enough to strain his airways, to bruise. They are suddenly face to face, close enough for him to make out his leer, the neon-sheen of his sweat as it drips down the folds of his chin to darken his collar.

"Too bad sorry isn't going to cut it today." Kaneshiro's mouth is moving, stretching wide with vicious delight. "But since I'm such a generous guy, I'm gonna teach you a lesson for free. In the world of adults," — another man, sneering face cast in shadow by the overhead lights, words overlapping together — "one must take full responsibility for their actions. If you pay me back for this shirt, put the three million into my hands, then I'll let you off the hook. I'll even give you until the end of the month to do it. What do you say? Do we have a deal?"

The grip on his neck tightens — a warning — fingernails digging hard into his skin and the discomfort morphs into a burn that races down the length of his throat and burrows into his lungs. Akira forces himself to nod, the barest dip of his chin because he has little choice to do anything else, a pained acquiescence wheezing out from his throat — his hands trembling around the fountain pen, the black ink on the papers blurring out of focus — and Kaneshiro finally lets go.

He gasps, not just for air but in realization — somewhere above them, a fortress greedily opens its doors in welcome — but his relief, his only solace that everything had gone exactly as he planned, is quickly drowned out by a new, crawling dread when he sees that same realization mirrored in Kaneshiro's eyes. Something in them changes, pieces of his cognition rearranging themselves as they rake across his uncovered face. 

"Hang on a second."

Kaneshiro murmurs to himself, slowly, consideringly. His hand leaves his throat to seize his chin despite Akira's best efforts to shrink away. Like a jeweler appraising his merchandise or a butcher readying his knife, his gaze sears into him with piggish abandon as he jerks his face to the side. 

"Now that I'm getting a good look at you… You're a pretty little thing, aren't you?" 

For a moment, Akira hears nothing but ringing as the world around him dissolves into white noise. His insides are submerged in ice water — the cold settles over him, chilling his bones down to the marrow. His vision swims. Above him, Kaneshiro is standing in profile, the flaps of his mouth moving, glints of teeth lit up by flashes of light, as he speaks to someone further out in the darkness.

"I think I have a different part-time job in mind for this one," Akira hears him say, but the voice grows fainter and fainter next to the roaring in his ears. "Would be a damn waste to set him up with the regular course." 

His body is numb, frostbitten, so stiff with cold that it starts to burn — not with the sickly, feverish burn left behind by the pinpricks of a syringe, but a dark, smoldering flame. He thinks about the pain in his ribs, the hands on his wrists, the nauseating traces of fear that linger in his lungs and the flame becomes a hot, blazing rush of fury that bursts through his veins.

And coiled within that fury is triumph.

Checkmate.

A flash of light blankets his vision and sears his eyes, but he stares the camera down. The form looming over him wavers, blurs at the edges, colors bleeding into a memory, a promise of the future — one with their positions reversed and Kaneshiro is the one on his knees, cowering against his mountain of ill-begotten gold. 

"Don't worry," Kaneshiro coos — still so sure of his own power, his complete and utter dominance over him — not realizing that he had just invited a thief into his den. "It's just a little insurance. It'll be a problem for me if I can't follow up on my investment." 

He gives Akira's cheek a pat, dragging sweat and grease across his skin. With another leer, he turns away and pockets his phone, waving a hand in clear dismissal.

"Take him back to the usual place. You can rough him up if you need to, but leave his face alone."

The vice grip on his wrists are transferred to his biceps and Akira allows himself to be dragged to his feet. He stumbles, briefly numb from kneeling, but an impatient yank forces him forward, away from the cloying darkness of the lounge, down the staircase through a sea of quickly averted gazes, and out into the night. 

The fingers dig into his flesh like a brand — his arms are growing stiff, cut off from circulation as the rest of his body dangles from them limply.

His surroundings are dark and moldy, filled with the characteristic damp and decay that seeps into abandoned spaces. The cool air chills his body and brings with it the rot of trash — the gases released from decomposing organic material as it is assimilated into the concrete jungle. Only the dim glow of disused vending machines light their way.

The streets are silent, aside from the scuff of shoes against uneven pavement; he can feel every scrape and groove they pass over as the ground jots against his feet. Above him, his captors are conversing, laughing as they recount the night's events.

There are three of them; tall, burly, reeking of sweat, alcohol, and the stink of cigars. One at each of his sides and one following behind to box in the lamb they are sending to slaughter. Their conversation is light and bantering as if there isn't a teenager bruising beneath their hands.

After all, there are no witnesses.

Around the bend, past a long road blanketed in cans and newspapers, a black vehicle waits for them, illuminated by a street lamp that flickers between pale orange and nothing.  

"Get him in the car," the one on his left says, letting go of his arm to palm his suit jacket. 

The others take his cue, one roughly leading him around the other side while the third dogs their footsteps. "Better not make a fuss now, unless you want to ride in the trunk," the man warns, hissing into his ear, close enough that he can feel his grin against it. "And you're gonna want your last ride outside to be comfortable, don't you?" 

He continues to say nothing, wrapping his silence around him like armor with his head bowed, fingers curled into fists, squeezing hard enough to feel the bite against his palm. The static beneath his skin crackles louder, beating against the insides of his chest. He can hear rustling on the other side, the man by the driver's door rummaging through his pockets. There is a low growl, a frustrated one, followed by a complaint.

"Shit," he hears him mumble. "Where the fuck are the keys?"

Akira finally lifts his head, a sweet smile stretching across his lips as he unfurls his hand.

"You mean these?" 

His grin stretches, wildly, savagely — two sets of eyes are glued to the glint of metal resting in the curl of his fingers, mouths falling open as if in slow motion — and Akira moves. 

He tosses the keys without looking, letting them sail in a sharp arc into his right. He slots the teeth between his fingers and slams them backward. There is a wet, sickening crunch as the cartilage gives away beneath his knuckles — a scream fills his ears, agonized and so immensely satisfying. 

The grip on his arm is gone, flying up blindly towards its owner's face and Akira drops, throwing himself to the concrete and twisting out of the way of a desperate lunge. 

There is screaming all around him, words jumbled by alarm and fury, but the laughter that echoes off the walls is his own. A reckless, burning laughter that is finally freed from his lungs — the same one that had once come to him as blood and fire streamed down his cheeks.

He's laughing because he's angry.

He's angry because he is alone and powerless, chained down by a future already lived, treading a path already paved out in stone and sacrifice.

He didn't ask for this.

He didn't ask for any of this — the curse of a second chance disguised as a blessing, a cruel hope dangled before his eyes that can just as easily be snatched away. To see his convictions falter, to be choked with indecision, to know intimately what consequences failure will bring him.

Always wondering if he is indeed the one pulling his own strings.

The first man he had struck lies crumpled on the ground, toppled onto his back where his legs had betrayed him, a hand clamped over his eye while expelling a litany of curses.

Another assault charge in the making. The thought bubbles up unbidden, but it only makes his smile grow.

The second lunges for him again, and misses, hands catching nothing but air and then the pavement when Akira sweeps his legs out from under him. His howl is indignant and pained, but he recovers, scrambling to get back on his feet. The third man is moving as well, sputtering threats one after another, but Akira does not wait around for any of them to be realized.

Instead, Akira runs — tearing into the night, past the blur of colors and sounds — the pounding of shoes against the concrete, the shouts of the men steadily gaining ground (like the steady rattling of chains).

He needs to move, to get back to the main streets, to get away. But the narrow path suddenly ends, and Akira is forced to turn, the rubber of his soles screaming against the asphalt as he veers sharply down another. 

There is sweat dripping into his eyes, blurring his vision as the shadows climb up around him. Closing in with grasping hands and frenzied shouts. Akira pushes on over the hoods of parked cars, past heaps of scattered trash, through the mesh of fences pried open with wire cutters, leaving behind him a trail of scattered handprints and rolling bottles — the scrape of glass and metal, grinding inside his ears as they spill across the concrete — and the pounding footfalls behind him. 

But at the end of the next road, he hits a snag — a tall gate of wrought iron bars — and there is nowhere else to turn. He stands, frozen, just for a moment, before he hears them again — a pair of shouts, triumphant and far too close —  tearing through the air like a crack of electricity.

It jolts him back into motion and he dashes forward. Bracing his hands against the metal  — the rust grainy beneath his palms — he climbs. Arms, legs, chest, all burning, screaming with sour exhaustion, but he forces them to grip, to move. Just not fast enough.

A hand clamps around his ankle, dragging him backward away from freedom.

Akira hits the ground, and the world spins with nothing to steady it. He would have screamed, but the impact had long since knocked the air from his lungs. He gasps instead, tasting sharp copper on his tongue as the shadow slams a foot into his chest. It looms over him, lips pulled back so wide over a mouth set in a face that it no longer looks human. 

"Di⸙ yo⸗ real⸋y thi⸙k you could get aw⸴y?" it asks, sneering, rejoicing, and the pressure builds, grinding down harder and harder until stars explode behind his eyes and pain explodes in his body. There is a crack, followed by the realization that something is horribly wrong that something inside him is broken — 

— and Akira lashes out, thinking of nothing except to destroy, to disperse the shadows, to just make it stop. 

A fist catches him in the cheek and knocks his head aside; there are hands descending, holding down his wrists, his ankles, dragging him bodily from the ground. He wishes for his dagger, the bite of metal in his hands, but his teeth cut just as sharp, cleaving just as easily through flesh and sinew as the creature holding him howls. 

It drops him. He spits around the copper in his mouth as the roar of static returns; it drowns out the shouts, the dull pound of bone on flesh as his fists and feet connect again and again and again. There are bruises on his knuckles and skin beneath his nails, a body crumpled on the floor and he can't think — can't hear over the rush of blood in his ears. 

Until a pair of hands wrap around his throat, slamming him up against hard bars of steel, hard enough to make his head rattle until clarity finally returns in an unwelcome rush of dulled pain and regret.

Mona is going to be so mad at me.

Akira observes the eyes before him — half-swollen shut and brimming with murderous fury — with a curious detachment like he is occupying someone else's body, a mere spectator as his body is lifted, feet dangling over nothing.

"I'm — going — to — fucking — kill — you!" he hears, rattling in his head between each dash of his skull against the metal.

And he wonders — hilariously — if maybe this is how his justice ends.

He looks up at nothing, at the dark clouds blanking out the sky. Tokyo is too bright for stars but his vision is swimming in them all the same. 

But even those stars are dimming, 

fading, 

until he can't see or think at all — 

i want to see him again 

i'll do anything

i'm sorry, i'm so sorry everyone 

i want to be selfish just this once

even if it means i will disappear

"Let him go."

A voice cuts in, cleaves apart the darkness, and makes his chest ache from its familiarity. It is less of a voice and more of a growl, low with the promise of danger and retribution that never failed to send shivers up his spine.

Akira forces his eyes open, having closed them at some point, and sees him. 

Hair haloed by the pale light, eyes glowing in a face cast in shadows. He is holding something in his hand, something that glints silver, something that makes the man drop him with a panicked yelp, but Akira can't make out what it is because he is too busy falling, too busy collapsing onto the ground like a doll with cut strings.

Someone is calling for him.

The syllables of his name are ringing out in the air, parts of them obscured by static but he recognizes them.

And then, there is warm leather pressed to his cheek and notes of jasmine and sandalwood lingering in the air. Fingers — careful, gentle — pushing matted hair from his face. Someone is calling for him, with urgency and concern and fear and that's how Akira knows he must be dreaming.

"Akechi," he hears himself say, with emotion bleeding out from his soul, pouring hotly out of his eyes and down his face. "Akechi."

He reaches out, blindly grasping at nothing 

but this time, someone reaches back.

Chapter Text

"K...r……...-......n..."

Akira was falling for a very long time. 

The wind whipped against his face like serrated blades. It stabbed at his eyes and screamed in his ears, quickly robbing him of his senses — his sight, his hearing, his speech — until it all blurred together in endless, distorted darkness. He tried to scream (or maybe he didn't) but the void swallowed his empty syllables all the same.

Akira was falling for a very long time. 

He was at the impartial mercy of gravity; limbs bound by its shackles, a heavy burden that drags him down and down and down. Down toward the unknown, a destination that beckoned to him with greedy hands, hands that had waited all this time to claim him.

Akira was falling for a very long time and no time at all.

"K▢r▢su-▢un…!"

The voice calls to him again; insistent, urgent. It is a voice that he knows because it echoes through his dreams, sometimes softly — a bashful chuckle filled with charm and artifice, a thoughtful hum paired with russet eyes narrowed in interest —  but sometimes screaming — in madness and agony as the pitch-black ichor of hatred flows endlessly from his orifices. A voice, belonging to someone that he desperately longs to see…  

... and so, Akira opens his eyes.

Or he tries to at least, lashes fluttering like the wingbeats of a trapped butterfly as he fights against weighted lids — until, he finally struggles free of the morass of the darkness.

Akira opens his eyes — nearly closes them again at the bright flash of searing pain that shoots through his skull like a silenced bullet — and wonders if he must still be dreaming.

The owner of the voice is a blur of color and shadow — haloed by a pale orange glow like an avenging angel or a sympathetic demon — but Akira knows him in the way the side of one coin must know the other.

There's something he's not remembering. But when he tries to grasp it, it flows through the gaps in his fingers like sand, like the turn of an hourglass, like time trickling away; never to be recaptured again. Except that isn't true either. 

Just what is he forgetting?

"Kurusu-kun," the dead boy calls out to him again, with genuine, clumsy relief, like catching a glass just before it can shatter on the floor. "You're awake! How are you feeling?"

Is he awake? Akira wonders, confused because his apparitions had never followed him into the waking world before. But everything feels real enough. There is a dull, pounding ache in the back of his head, around his throat, and a sharpness in his chest that accompanies every breath. His body is sore in places, some bone-deep and others concentrated in patches of broken blood vessels beneath damaged skin. His mind feels bloated; heavy and swelled with too many thoughts scattering in different directions like a flock of started seagulls. And the apparition's face is warm and smooth when he reaches out to touch it (even if it does jerk away from his fingers with a noise like a strangled cat or the sound the Monabus makes when Akira accidentally drives it into a wall).

"Ku- Kurusu-kun?! " The dead boy blurts out in a familiar voice but in an unfamiliar pitch that spans an entire octave by the time he reaches the last syllable of his name. Akira lets his hand drop back to the ground and watches in dazed fascination as his face flickers through a long array of complicated expressions before it finally settles back on neutrality. "Ah, but of course, you must be disoriented. Do you remember what happened?"

With a start, Akira realizes that he does not — there is something that he is not remembering, a vital puzzle piece disconnected in his mind. But there is a reason why he is lying here, with concrete digging into his back, with a ringing in his ears and tremors in his hands — the hands around his wrists, digging into his scalp, around his throat — 

"Shit," he thinks he hears over the sudden tide of roaring in his ears, and then, suddenly, the hands on him are gentle, a grounding force instead of a restraining one as they try to coax him to lie back down. "Kurusu-kun, no, you should not be moving yet!" 

He fights against the fog, tries to chase the darkness from his vision, but he is unmoored, adrift in a sick ocean of confusion. His head hurts. His ears ring — 

— with the slam of hands on metal, the fluorescent lights overhead, the glare of a camera recording, flashing like a single red eye — 

answer me, a woman demands,

with a sharp gaze that pierces at him across the table,

— with the jeering laughter, the pressure in his throat, the blinding burst of pain in his chest — 

you must remember, cries another, 

trickster, trickster

— but now, there are fingers in his hair, anchoring him to reality with light, careful touches. 

"Shh… shh. You're okay. You're safe now," the dead boy promises him as he gasps for air. The same hand that would have pressed a barrel to his head now cradles it, while the other coax his own fingers to unfurl, to stop them from digging red crescents into his palms.  

So gentle, so painfully, painfully gentle.

Something stings his eyes; within him, a dam crumbles against a torrential deluge that it can no longer hold back, sweeping away with it all the nameless feelings that he cannot voice. The first sob is barely more than a faint hitch of his breath, followed by a quiet gasp and a shudder. It is followed by a second, a third, and then he loses count of them entirely, tears flowing uncontrollably as he latches onto those cruel reassurances. 

It's alright, he murmurs. I've got you. I'm here now. 

You're safe. 

You're safe. 

You're safe.

After a lifetime, the shivers subside, the sobs taper off into sparse hiccups and Akira finally comes back to himself. Exhausted, wrung out, with his head pillowed on a warm lap and careful fingers brushing the last traces of his tears away.  

Akira opens his eyes.

The ones that gaze back at him are the colour of rust and fire, 

— the colour of aged wine

— a glass falling, shattering

— a spill of red, blossoming against the tiles

and he finally remembers.

"Kurusu-kun…?" the dead boy murmurs, nearly timid and almost as horrified as Akira is beginning to feel. 

Because Akechi Goro isn't dead.

"Kurusu-kun? Are you… are you well enough to speak? I need you to tell me if you're hurt anywhere. Can you do that for me?"

Because Akechi Goro isn't dead and Akira is still clinging to his hand and weeping into his shirt.

I'm totally pea-hee-chy, ho!

Scream incoherently.

Akira takes a deep, shaky breath instead, trapping the scream inside his throat and stubbornly swallowing it back down. It tastes like copper, brimstone, and nausea, curdling in his lungs as Yaldabaoth's taunts — ruin is fast approaching, whether you run from it or not —  echo through his ears.

"…Akechi?" he asks meekly, in the vain hope that he is hallucinating the fingers that are still threading through his hair.

The fingers still.

"A-Ah!" Akechi says — stammers — snapping his hand away like lightning. "My apologies, it's just. You were rather upset earlier — understandably so — and, well, my mother. She used to do this for me. When I had nightmares, I mean. But I apologize, again — I typically arrive at crime scenes only after the fact—"

"It's fine," Akira mumbles hurriedly. The words feel thick on his tongue, syllables blending together like soup to go with his noodle limbs as he tries, unsuccessfully, to push himself up. His efforts to escape are thwarted by the lance of pain shooting through his wrist — sprained, his mind supplies — followed by a merciless bout of vertigo that has him crashing back down into Akechi's lap.

After the residual stars clear from his vision, Akira is forced to admit that had not been the smartest idea — and judging by the way Akechi's grip on his good hand suddenly tightens, he was likely in agreement.

"...Ku-Kurusu-kun," Akechi says, stiffly. "Stop moving. Please. "

Akira stops moving, but only after he fails to free himself from Akechi's unbelievably firm bouldering grip — all the while wondering how in the world Akechi Goro of all the people in Tokyo could have ended up taking a midnight stroll in the exact same back alley Akira had decided to get beat up in. 

Maybe this is fate, he thinks over another bubble of hysteria, but only because the idea that he is but a plaything before the fickle machinations of destiny is slightly less terrifying than the alternative that Akechi Goro had somehow followed him here. Or perhaps it is sheer spite, that Akechi would always choose to appear wherever he was most unwelcome and never in the reverse.

"It's alright," Akechi repeats carefully, the way one would speak to a spooked horse, or perhaps to a cornered rat. It is highly unnerving either way. "Everything will be fine. Ah, that's right — first things first, we need to get you to a hospital. I'll make a call right now."

Akira does not register Akechi's meaning at first, the words rolling around in his head like mismatched marbles — until he finally realizes, there is something wrong with him.  

His thoughts are too sluggish. It hurts to breathe and to move — a fact that should have alarmed him much more, if not for the small, tired voice that tells him that he's had worse. That the pain is just another unfortunate side-effect of doing what needs to be done; nothing that bed rest and a diarahan won't fix. Better that than a masked stranger, asking questions he doesn't want to answer, prodding his body with instruments — the shine of glass, end sharpened into points, sloshing with a sickly grey liquid — 

"No," Akira blurts out, startling them both. "No," he repeats, only slightly more sedately. "It's fine. I don't—"

— "In other words," his new guardian said, with the same cold, distrustful eyes he had been stupid enough to believe he had left behind him, "they got rid of you for being a pain in the ass... cause any problems and you'll be sent straight to juvie."

"—want to make any more trouble." 

Akira is tired. His head hurts. He wants to go home. Bury his face in his sandy pillow and sleep it off like everything else.

Akechi's expression falters, twisting with something unreadable as he opens his mouth and then closes it without speaking. He sucks in a breath — Akira can feel his chest deflate when he expels it. 

"Kurusu-kun," he says, after a much longer pause, "you're not… you're not making trouble. But you are in need of medical attention." 

"It's fine," Akira insists, as though his vision is starting to dim again, darkening at the edges like smoke curling on burned parchment. He struggles to keep the shadows at bay to not make a liar of himself, and because he really doesn't want to be here when Akechi's famed detective instinct finally kicks in and starts wondering why an ordinary schoolboy is wandering the streets of Tokyo in the dead of night. Stubbornly — or stupidly — he attempts once more to rise to his feet, only just remembering to put his weight on his elbow instead of his wrist. But he finds his body just as unresponsive as before, especially with Akechi's hands firmly holding him in place.

"I think not ," he snaps and Akira barely manages to suppress a flinch at the sudden harshness. His next words are much gentler, with patience more befitting of a detective prince than a metaverse assassin, but it does nothing to curb his desire to bolt.   "Please forgive my bluntness, but you are clearly not in your right mind at the moment, Kurusu-kun. We need to get you to the hospital."

"No," Akira rejects immediately, blanching at the thought of Sojiro getting a call about his troublesome charge in the middle of the night. Or worse, Mona catching wind that he had severely downplayed the extent of his risk-taking. He doesn't need a hospital. He managed just fine last time with — practiced, methodical hands, cleaning and bandaging up his cuts, running stitches over the broken skin across his back, her touch impersonal and her face carefully, thankfully blank, free from the overpowering horror that adorned Sojiro's face.

"You stupid kid," he whispered when he was sure Akira had been asleep, hovering by his bedside as he helped replace his compress. His hand had lingered there, brushing the hair off his forehead — a hand that trembled with the same regret in his voice. "Why did you try to do everything by yourself?"

"...Dr. Takemi," he mumbles, through the dull pounding in his head, the darkness that beckons to him. His ears buzz with static as he fights back another tide of nausea. "... the clinic at Yongenjaya..."

"Dr. Takemi? Is that your family physician — Kurusu-kun? You have to stay awake…! Kurusu-kun?!"

Akira does his best to keep his eyes open, until he can't. The last thing he registers is the panicked sound of his own name.

He is moving — or rather, he is being moved. Strong arms hooking under his knees, bracing his back. The scent of jasmine, sandalwood, and vanilla as his body floats off the ground, gently undulating in time with unseen footsteps. An unfamiliar sensation, but somehow a nostalgic one, something he has not experienced since he was very young. Instinct makes him curl up against it, burying his face in the warmth to seek refuge from the cold.

The steady pace falters like a skipped heartbeat, followed by snippets of voice — achingly familiar as it glides across his ears like soft velvet.

"... I can't believe this… what … even doing…?"

Akira stirs, groaning quietly when he begins his descent, landing softly onto something plush that cradles his body. With a dull roar, his surroundings thrum to life, and the floor beneath him begins to move once more. His head still hurts, but the rumble around him makes it almost tolerable — Mona's gentle purring, the quiet chatter of his friends crammed around him, Akechi's steady warmth against his side.

"Kurusu-kun," Akechi's voice is saying, blanketing him like the warm comforter in his attic bedroom, thick enough to block out the morning light if he pulls it over his head, "are you awake?"

Akira struggles with his eyelids again. "Mm…" he replies and notes that his shoulder is really just the perfect height for him to rest his head upon, and does so. Dimly, he registers a sound — something like a sharp intake of breath or an aborted exclamation but he is finally comfortable again.

"Kurusu-kun."

Someone is calling his name again but this time, the voice is all wrong — wry sarcasm edged with a faint undercurrent of concern, too high and too feminine.

Akira opens his eyes.

The ceiling of the examination room swims into view, a view he is intimately familiar with after the number of times he had woken up beneath it, nauseous and disoriented as he tries not to throw up whatever medication he had ingested. Except Takemi's medicines had never quite hit him like this. Like he had been run over by a herd of rampaging shadows who had taken great care to stomp on bone in his body. But even the soreness is oddly remote like he is experiencing it with someone else's body.

"What have you gotten yourself mixed up in, my little guinea pig?"

"Dr. Takemi...?" he rasps out, his throat straining against a slight restriction around his neck made of some kind of cloth — bandages? Something cool and damp presses against his cheek, followed by the sting of alcohol. He winces.

Takemi smiles, exposing a neat row of pearly white teeth. "You were very, very lucky." Then, she begins to sound off on a list of injuries like a recipe to the disaster that has become of Akira's body: two cracked ribs, one sprained wrist, a sprinkle of angry, purpling bruises across the palette of his skin, followed by one mild concussion, served both hot and cold in flashes. "Traumatic brain injuries," she finishes off, "should not be taken lightly. But thankfully, for the both of us, your prognosis is… Well, optimistically, you should be able to take another clinical trial in a couple of months."

"... doesn't hurt," Akira tells her, experimentally moving his wrist and getting only a faint twinge of discomfort back. 

"I should hope not," Takemi says, a warning in her dry smile that only goes away when Akira guiltily sets his bandaged arm down. "Not with the amount of morphine you're on."

"Sorry," he murmurs, avoiding the weight of her penetrating stare in favor of wondering about just how much is left in his wallet. Or where his wallet even is. "... how much?" 

"It's already been settled," she says, waving a dismissive hand. "Speaking of which, your friend here has been beside himself with worry. You really are a lucky boy." 

A friend? Akira flounders, confused — how did Ryuji know to come here — until Takemi moves out of his line of vision.

Akechi is standing in the doorway like a ghost; the colors of his hair and jacket washed out under the fluorescent light. It highlights his pallor, the hint of dark circles beneath his worn-out concealer, the tired lines of his shoulders and this is how Akira knows that he is real because ghosts have no need for sleep. Even though he seems to be haunting him all the same.

"Well," Takemi says, a bit more cooly amused than normal as she gets up with an elegant sweep of her legs. "I have some papers to file, so I'll leave you two to it."

The clicks of her heels are loud in the sudden hush that falls between them, followed by an even more deafening click of the door as she shuts it behind her. Blankly, Akira watches her go, only belatedly realizing that he should have been weeping and begging for her to stay.

For the moment, Akechi lingers by the door, eyes glued to Takemi's vision charts like he's studying for an eye exam, looking more out of place than a stripper in a church. A disorienting intersection of his lives that he does not really appreciate. 

What is he doing here?

Akira takes a deep, calming breath, valiantly swallowing down a burst of inappropriate terror as he debates the merits of suddenly feigning unconsciousness because he can only think of a handful of reasons why a famed Detective Prince would waste his Saturday evening at the bedside of a random delinquent on probation — nothing that could bode well for him, to say the least. 

He can only imagine what he must look like now in Akechi's suspicious eyes and squirrels his taped wrist out of sight if only to look slightly less pathetic for his inevitable interrogation.

Look at you, all roughed up, he can almost hear him sneering, red eyes glittering with spiteful interest. Finally bit off more than you can chew, Joker?

But that was in a different time with a different Akechi. This one is still firmly rooted by the wall like he thinks the floor is lava, an odd trace of redness in his cheeks and the outline of his ears.

"Akechi… -san?" he ventures, wincing the sound of his sandpaper voice and barely remembering to tack on the honorific.

Akechi seems to start, breaking out of whatever stupor he had found himself in. "Ah, Kurusu-kun," he says as if he had only just spotted him. "How are you feeling?"

Akira hesitates to answer and wonders if this is another calculated attempt to unsettle him because it's working like a charm. There is a dull pounding in his head, a distant awareness of something unpleasant that begins in his temples and tunnels along the pathways of his thoughts.

But other than that, he is sore. 

Tired. 

Naked, he realizes with a jolt of panic when he realizes that he can feel the texture of Takemi's threadbare sheets against his back. 

Couldn't be better! 

Like I got run over by a fleet of penis chariots.

Not as bad as last time.

"Last time?" Akechi says a bit too sharply, zeroing in on his very ill-timed slip of the tongue like a bloodhound scenting, well, blood. Exactly how much morphine did Takemi give him? 

"Um," Akira stammers before feigning a deep interest in the displayed x-ray scans of what he assumes is his own ribs. "It's nothing..."

To his dismay, his entirely unconvincing denial fails to convince Akechi that it is indeed nothing. In the next moment, he finds himself boxed in, trapped against the hospital bed with a murderous detective looming over his feeble body. 

"Has this happened before?" Akechi demands, his face suddenly inches away, red eyes boring into him like needles. 

Akira is momentarily distracted from the terror spiking his veins — the sound of black leather cracking as Akechi's hands curl into fists, the glint of fury sparking behind his eyes  — but his anxiety returns full force when the meaning of his words slams into him with the force of a truck. He tries not to panic, and fails, dread mounting in between the gaps of each heartbeat — loud, loud enough that Akechi must be able to hear the thumps of his telltale heart. 

His mind jumps straight to the absurd and chases it wildly to its illogical conclusion — does Akechi actually remember? is he angry? would he still want to kill him? should he tell him the truth?

Involuntarily, he shrinks back, away from Akechi and his frightening questions. "Has what happened?" he poses in return, determined to feign ignorance to the end. And perhaps, it might have even worked if his voice hadn't decided to wobble.

From his position of lying helplessly on the bed like a frog with its skin peeled back for dissection, he has the perfect vantage point to watch the individual muscles working in Akechi's smooth, elegant jawline as he presses on with his interrogation.

"Are you," Akechi says, low and dangerous, "involved with those men?"

Akira freezes, in bewilderment. 

Involved?

It takes him three rounds of playing back their conversation before the pieces finally connect, snapping him back into clarity. He nearly chokes, torn between a laugh and a sob when he realizes that Akechi must have gone to all of this trouble — saving him from a beating, escorting him all the way to Takemi's — because he suspects him of being involved in criminal wrongdoing. Just not of the Phantom Thief variety.

While he can probably afford the additional nail hammered into his already ruined reputation, he definitely can't afford Akechi Goro with his police connections connecting him to Kaneshiro in any shape or form.

"No," he replies, with a shake of his head that he immediately regrets when his skull throbs in protest. And he isn't even lying for once. "I was just finishing up a shift and…"

He trails off, not daring to meet Akechi's eyes as the silence hangs between them — like a declaration of war — stretching like an elastic until it finally snaps.

Akechi reels back as if burned and is halfway back across the room before Akira can so much as blink. "Ah! Please forgive me," he stammers, looking so unexpectedly genuine that it makes Akira more paranoid than ever. "I truly did not mean to interrogate you, especially not after you've gone through such a terrible ordeal!" 

The word ordeal conjures up the painful memories of Akira sobbing his heart out against a warm, firm body and it makes him want to bury himself in Futaba's cognitive desert and never resurface again. Heedless of his impending mental shutdown, Akechi continues to babble, running a hand through his hair in a convincing show of nervousness.

"It's just — I don't know if you've seen me on — I mean, I believe I've mentioned my after-school job to you before? I am actually doing some work with the police and recently, I have been assigned to investigate a string of blackmail incidents involving students in Shibuya. I was...  concerned. That you might have gotten caught up in it. "

Akechi's exceptionally long lashes are lowered, casting shadows on his garnet eyes. His cheeks are dusted with the red of chagrin and self-reproach, looking so remorseful that Akira's heart lurches in his chest with an overwhelming need to reassure him that he will be exonerated for any past or future transgressions that he may or may not commit. Despite knowing full well that Akechi has a VIP ticket straight to Kaneshiro's palace and is still on the trajectory to shoot him in the face, come this November.

It is little wonder that he could get away with murder.

"Sorry," Akira says, somewhat stupidly. 

Akechi pauses in his Oscar-worthy self-recriminations to shoot him a bewildered stare. "What... for?" he asks.

"Sorry—" I let you die "—that I can't help you. With your case."

Akechi makes a sound like he had been punched. His stricken expression turns a shade darker that for some reason strikes him as funny. Or maybe it isn't.

"No! That's not why I— I mean," he trails off, filling the air with another awkward pause. For a moment, he looks like he's at war with himself, oddly reminiscent of the way Akira’s personas had struggled as the twins dragged them onto the guillotines. And then, something softens in his features.

Or perhaps soft is not the correct word.

Akechi Goro had long since made softness his brand — in the gentle way he spoke, in the warmth of his big russet eyes that he encourages you to drown in, in the beatific smiles meant just for you — and weaponized it. Beguiled you into trusting him, confiding in him your darkest secrets and desires because surely someone as soft as him could never betray you.

So Akechi's features do not soften, but something in them opens up in a way that Akira had never seen. 

"You don't have anything to apologize for, Kurusu-kun," he says. There is a rustle of cloth and Akira startles when he feels a careful weight on the back of his hand. "If anything, I am just relieved that you are safe."

Akira makes the mistake of meeting his eyes, and his stomach jolts with a sting of heat and tension when he thinks Akechi looks like he means it. 

He doesn't know this Akechi, he realizes.

He doesn't recognize this Akechi amongst the glimpses he had seen beneath his masks, caught in stolen moments that he had cataloged and guarded like a jealous dragon draped over its hoard.

Crow — elegance personified as he cleaves through the shadows like velvet wrapped steel, red eyes bright with intelligence and wit as secretive smiles dance across his lips.

The Black Mask — tearing through them with brutal, animalistic efficiency, his entire being thrumming with an explosive violence that made his blood sing in answer.

Akechi Goro — surprised laughter ringing out over the gentle patter of rain, white steam warming his cheeks as he leans over the bar, "you truly are interesting."

The look on his face stirs something inside him that had been long forgotten — a greed, a hunger to dig beneath his masks, and excavate them layer by layer until he can unearth all the parts of him that he had hidden away.

He had gotten just a taste and he had wanted — 

But there just wasn't time.

What if, he wonders when the night is at its darkest, when he lay awake in the loneliest hours:

• the wind disheveling his neatly combed hair as the world rushes and blurs around them. his expression tight, mouth twitching with the effort to maintain his composure until the first drop of the roller coaster makes them both scream 

• a pencil tapping on paper, blending in with the quiet whirl of the coffee machines. a sigh of exasperation, followed by a scolding, "really, kurusu, for someone who supposedly graduated high school at the top of his class, you are very poor at partial derivatives"

• the sun setting over the white sands in hawaii. gentle waves lapping at their feet, toes crusted with wet sand. his long brown hair, overdue for a cut, gathered into a tail at his nape as he gazes out into the horizon with the barest hint of a smile playing on his lips

What if. 

What if. 

"Akechi," Akira says through the tightness in his throat. "I—" 

"You two might want to get cozy somewhere else," Takemi says. "We're technically closed."

Akira does not jump, but it is a close thing. He does manage to snatch his hand away, pressing it to his chest to keep his heart from falling out. At the same time, Akechi springs up from the foldable visitor's chair like he suddenly discovered it was lined with nails. 

"We're not—" Akira stammers and then falls silent when he realizes another voice had rung out at the same time as his with even more vehemence. He only manages to catch a glimpse of Akechi's expression — flickering? shuttering? — before Akechi angles his face studiously back towards the eye charts. 

Takemi delicately raises an eyebrow. "I see," is all she says, returning her gaze back to her clipboard with a distinctly dismissive way. "Well, in any case, I'm finally done with all the extra paperwork so you're free to leave. Should I give Sojiro-san a call to come pick you up?"

"No, that's fine," Akira says evenly, as not to betray the sudden lurch of his pulse. "I can manage."

"Oh?" Takemi asks, her clipboard stilling in her hands. "And I am assuming that he knows to be expecting you home?"

Akira does his best not to waver. "Of course," he says, just a beat too slow. The lie sinks into the bottom of his stomach like lead, but he tries to play it off as the concussion. Another thing that he does too slowly is to remember that Akechi is still in the room. Then, the weight becomes an iron shackle around his ankle, growing heavier and heavier until he finally confesses with a weak shrug. "...it's just down the street, anyway."

"And I'll be accompanying him back," Akechi interjects so smoothly that Akira thinks he must have hallucinated it. He continues on, steadfastly not meeting his eyes despite his best attempts to nonverbally get his attention, "There should be no problems with that, correct?"

"Um," Akira says, as soon as he finds his voice again because he thinks there are lots of problems with it. He directs his distressed gaze over to his doctor instead, hoping for some form of salvation that also never comes.

Takemi says nothing, allowing the judging silence to speak in her stead. 

"Well, if you're sure," she says, in the same way, one would say "it's your funeral", shattering the last of Akira's fragile hopes like glass. "Make sure to take it easy for the next couple of weeks, guinea pig. Don't do anything strenuous tonight — and I mean it.

"It should be safe enough to sleep but make sure you get someone to wake you up every once in awhile, just to make sure you don't deteriorate. I'll be over to check on you later tomorrow. But for now," she pauses with a delicate cough, "you might want to get dressed."

For a moment, Akira stills, realizing once again that the only things currently preserving his modesty are the bandages wrapped around his chest and a thin cotton sheet pooled around his waist. 

Takemi smiles, visibly amused at the sudden flame of crimson in his cheeks. "Yell if you need help. I'm sure Akechi-kun would be happy to assist again."

What?

Akira tries to process Takemi's unsettlingly cryptic statement over the roaring static in his ears, but she is already gone. He thinks he hears a noise, a sharp, strangled sound that is followed by a loud clatter as Akechi bumps into the folding chair with his leg.

"I'll— I'll give you some privacy, Kurusu-kun," he says hurriedly — eyes shadowed by his hair — before he flees the room as well. 

And then, Akira is alone.

Gazing blankly at the closed door, he tries to slot his thoughts back into order, lining them up in neat rows, only to have them topple like dominos. 

Because his every attempt is waylaid by the vivid splash of colour on Akechi's pale cheeks.

Chapter Text

The hot, humid air, paired with Loki's skintight suit reminds him of hot foil wrapped around a potato in the oven, only that he is the fucking potato. He tells himself that this is all cognition, that the cloying heat is nothing but an extended metaphor that he just so happens to be perceiving as reality. Gritting his teeth, he pushes himself onwards as the palace continues to cook him alive. 

As if to personally mock him, his surroundings are serene and picturesque like something out of a Destiny movie: long swatches of rolling green knolls, dotted with artificially neat rows of blossoming roses and azaleas in bright reds, whites, golds. Their petals gently sway in a breeze that is both unseen and unfelt as evidenced by the fact that he is still sweltering. Which is why he takes great pleasure in tearing his way through the flowerbeds, leaving behind him a devastated trail of torn-up roots and scattered stems.

The sight of it, unfortunately, brings to mind an encounter that he had spent a good part of the day trying to erase from it; the memory of long lashes feathering over pools of liquid mercury — the sweet fragrance of freshly cut roses, the colour of the delicate petals contrasting with the dark of his hair and the pink in his cheek, the playful lustre of his eyes, the almost mocking curve of his plush lips as they mouth his own foolish words back at him — "maybe this is fate?" 

White doesn't suit him, he had thought with a fleeting but powerful conviction that tasted of copper and gunpowder. The remembrance causes something to stir in his abdomen, something hot and unsightly, something savage that does absolutely nothing to alleviate the fact that he is still drenched in his own perspiration.

But in a place ruled by cognition, even a veteran like him can ill afford distractions. Irritated, Goro sweeps the buzz of his disordered thoughts away with the same violence he would swing an electric fly swatter. Until his cursed imagination fizzles and dies, taking with it the image of the boy named Kurusu Akira, with his mouth stuffed to bursting with something other than marshmallows. 

Eventually, he comes to the end of the trail as the babbling brook bleeds into a cascading fall. But Goro is not deterred. He leaps from the raised cliff, sailing through the air in a graceful arc before landing powerfully on the ground. 

With one swift motion, he is on his feet again, pistol in his hand and bloodlust in his lungs. Though his damp suit continues to cling to him like an unwanted second skin, he is far too experienced to let his aim waver. Goro fires three times in rapid succession and allows himself a well-deserved smirk as he watches the shadows crumble, dissolving before they can fully hit the ground.

The fourth patrolling shadow lets out a squeal, staggering with an almost human-like terror from behind its bone-white mask. "I-Intruder," it gasps, feeling for a sickle that Goro casually shoots out of his hand.

"Raise the bridge," he grounds out, teetering on the knife-edge of his patience as he lines up another shot. Another trickle of sweat runs down his temples that he has no avenue to wipe away, and thus, can only tolerate its slow, grating descent down the length of his face. It only figures that the metaphysical embodiment of his own hatred seems to be as much directed at his bastard father as it is at himself. 

The shadow wavers with indecision until Goro kindly incentivizes it with a bullet through its kneecap. To the palace ruler's credit, its bravado immediately devolves into blubbering pleas of mercy as it drags itself towards the control panels. It hastily punches in the code, possibly cutting his infiltration short by hours judging by the sheer amount of tedious mechanisms he had stomped past. The ground rumbles, letting out a groan that is almost as miserable as Goro feels as he watches as the brambles elongate, twisting and weaving to form an unnecessarily intricate footbridge that stretches out over the river. 

In the distance, the far distance, he can vaguely make out his objective: a structure made of cut glass that shimmers like the same ugly paperweight on Shido's desk that he had always fantasized about shattering against his head. Goro sucks in another gust of hot air that sits with heavy wetness in his lungs, in anticipation of the long, tedious trek ahead.

"Thank you for your service," he says, smiling with teeth at the trembling shadow as it is only polite to give credit where it is due. Thus, he showcases his gratefulness by putting it out of its misery.

The bridge thankfully holds, only deciding to collapse behind him after he has crossed it: the thorns crumble apart and sinks beneath the waters, perhaps in angry retribution for his unsporting behaviour. Not that Goro cares to linger to observe it as he is already impatiently brushing his way past the curtains of gently swaying wisteria that demarcate the exit. 

The area that Goro finds himself in next is slightly more temperate, with the heat turned down from broil to bake. But what it lacks in cloying humidity, it makes up for in distastefulness. 

Gone are the rolling green fields, leaving in its place an elaborate show garden, rich with exotic plants and white marble sculptures, carved in the image of a nondescript man; a dead ringer for the file he had been handed earlier that day. Above it, hanging vines are spread out like a network of exposed arteries, knitting together around large domes of translucent glass. The domes are arrayed like suspended snow globes — cages, he soon realizes, disgust curdling in his throat like spoiled milk when he catches a better glimpse of what's inside them. 

Tens of cognitions (pale, with young faces and old eyes) cower in huddled groups, petal-hair rustling with each tremor of their green-tinted bodies. Kept in plain sight but unable to move for the thorny vines strangling their necks and for their own roots binding them to the ground. His lips curl into a sneer, but the edge of his rage is dulled like a blunt knife as he is saving his sharpest for a different monster. 

Kataoka Shoma. Massage parlour. Greenhouse.

Just another one of Tokyo's parasites that would have spent its days gorging itself on the flesh of the weak and the vulnerable, burrowing its way into the lungs of society as it paraded around in human skin. He would have been utterly inconsequential, if not for the fact that one of Shido's many clients happened to find him an eyesore. But it really is rather trite how they are all the same; vile, greedy creatures that plunder and take, that surround themselves with splendour and opulence in the vain hopes of disguising the festering rot of their innards.

In that respect, at least, Goro is honest with himself. 

He tears his gaze away from the pathetic cognitions and their vacant eyes in favour of scanning the area for the next annoying mechanism that will allow him to advance. He knows that the palace ruler must be near, having sensed the sudden spike of hostility when he first stepped into what must be his prized showroom.

Unfortunately, aside from an unnecessarily elaborate sundial etched with cryptic gold inscriptions, there is not much left to examine. He had just hit the twenty-minute mark of his increasingly frustrated attempts to decipher them when the ground beneath his feet begins to shake. 

Cursing, he darts to the side, adhering himself to the shadow of a marble column, as stealthily as he can manage, considering how the dark of his outfit stands out like an angry facial blemish. Goro watches in consternation as the structure begins to turn, accompanied by the loud mechanical groan of rotating gears. The smooth brass surface breaks apart, separating into kaleidoscopic petals until there is a gap large enough to accommodate the rising platform below.

Standing upon it are another pair of masked gardeners, carrying in yet another young, pitiful looking cognition. Unlike the others, this one is still struggling, pushing against the confines of its planter in hopes of escaping. It is almost comical in the absurdity that a rose would have the agency to simply uproot itself at will. The palace owner certainly seemed to think as much; this hamfisted attempt at a metaphor has been all but shoving down his throat the idea that he thought of his workers as merely flowers waiting to be plucked — 

( soft brown hair, spilling out of its tie, 

tired eyes over a tight stretched smile,

"honey, i'm sorry, mommy needs to have some friends over" )

— Goro sucks in a breath and slowly unfurls his fists, one knuckle at a time until he is back in the present. The shadows are now stepping off the platform with their captive in tow, but more importantly, leaving behind what appears to be a key slotted in the mechanism.

He has to marvel at how generous these shadows are, always so conveniently handing him all the tools he requires to break into their masters' psyches. Were he in a philosophical mood, he might postulate that it is human nature to desire to be seen and understood, no matter how vile and filthy it may be. Or perhaps it applies even more so to the basest of them all; in the end, is not every villain the hero of their own story? Perhaps that is why they so often architect their own demise, crying out for acceptance with every new sin they commit.

But as he is far too busy to dwell on useless sentiments, Goro steps out from behind the column instead. With another well-placed shot, one of the hanging domes shatters in a violent spray of tempered glass and the pair of shadows whirl around in alarm. 

"What the...?! An intruder!" 

Goro smiles again, the corners of his lips stretching too wide to be considered anything other than deranged. "Two at once," he comments, stowing away his pistol in favour of drawing his sword with slow, menacing intent. "Just the way I like it."

With twin shrieks of rage, the shadows finally shed their skins. They lunge for him, insofar as a pair of tree demons can lunge, sweeping out with barbed wooden tendrils and poisoned mists. Unfortunately for them, their attacks are as uninspired and predictable as one of Shido's rally speeches and Goro dodges around them with ease, blood pounding in his ears and singing a song of destruction in his veins. 

Normally, these pathetic creatures are not even fit to grace the underside of his boots. But today, he welcomes their resistance with another savage smile as he finally tears his mask away.

"Come! LOKI!"

The rage, the frustration that had been simmering beneath his skin is finally expelled in an arc of white-hot energy. It clips through the shadows, cleaving away the first one's arm before it continues on to atomize the delicate gazebo behind them. Another sweep of Loki's sword sends the other airborne, flying with clipped wings until it smashes through the trees, scattering petals and splintering wood.

As his outclassed opponents struggle on their remaining limbs, Goro finds himself laughing — like the scrape of a knife, the wailing of sirens — a wild, ugly laugh that is more of a scream.

He continues to carve into them with the patience of a master carpenter but with none of the finesse, grinning madly as their flesh whittles away. He drinks it all in; the sound of their cries, the sight of their frenzied desperation, the feel of sinew parting like butter beneath his gauntlets. Strip by strip, he collects his dues, in recompense for every scar torn into his own body, for every slight he had ever suffered. 

All too soon, his fun begins to come to an end as his opponents' movements grow sluggish, impeded by the lack of usable limbs, although Goro has barely scratched the surface of his grievances. Still, he is nothing if not a consummate professional, and so he straightens and composes himself again.

The last shadow fades to ash following a sharp swing of his blade and he allows himself a sigh, sweeping his sweat-soaked bangs out of his face before he settles Loki's mask back over his eyes. The exercise, at least, had somewhat improved his mood, even if it did nothing to improve the heat. With the path ahead clear, he makes his way towards the empty platform, intent on finally getting this farce of a job over with.

Until something snags around his ankle.

Goro lashes out, the steel tip of his boots slamming into something thin and willowy. But to his surprise, his would-be assailant was not another shadow as he had assumed, but one of the pathetic cognitions that had been left cowering on the ground. He had spared them no thought — they were eyesores at worst, but ultimately, posed no threat other than to his sensibilities.

He raises his pistol, preparing to remove it from his sight — until he catches a glimpse of its face.

And the heat inside his lungs is suddenly replaced by ice.

The cognition is beautiful. But it is a sickly, repulsive sort of beauty — rose petal-hair curling softly to frame a bloodless face —  a long, graceful neck strangled by thorny vines that criss-cross over his throat like dark, vivid stitches — the grey eyes that peers out from beneath feathery lashes are so empty that they could have been two gaping holes in its skull — 

For a fleeting moment, Goro is frozen, the cold in his lungs migrating to his veins as he gazes down at the hollow-eyed thing — at its ghastly pale cheeks, its trembling lips, its twisted limbs — and he thinks of nothing as he reaches down and gently puts a bullet through its head.

A coincidence, he tells himself, still cold as the platform descends further and further down into the darkened bowels of the palace. 

Just a disgusting coincidence. 

The rest of the palace is laughably easy.

Aside from a few more tiresome puzzles, there was little challenge to be had from its amateur defenses or the small fries that patrolled them. Then again, much of its trappings were designed to keep its prisoners within rather than intruders out. Perhaps the oversight was a reflection of the ruler's hubris, or perhaps there could be a jest made about stones and glass houses. But in the end, all Goro had felt upon painting the white floors with the shadow's brains, was exhaustion.

It was an exhaustion that followed him all the way through the crumbling palace — through the smoke and fire, the shattering of the crystal facades, and the innumerable wails of dying cognitions. It clawed at his heels, wound around his ankles as it beckoned for him to slow, to stay and be buried with their sins. But as he had every time before him, he breaks free, throwing himself through the narrowing exit just before it collapses.

Goro is welcomed back to reality by a crisp blast of cool air and dark, foggy skies. Bent double, he greedily fills his lungs with air that doesn't taste of dirt and ash as he tries to catch his bearings. 

When the stars recede from his vision and the stinging knot in his chest unravels, he finds himself in an alleyway devoid of human presence; a sign that he must have spent far more time in the bowels of his target's cognition than he had meant to. The first thing he does next is to check his phone and he has to bite back a curse when it confirms his suspicions that it is well after midnight. Almost past the narrowing window to board his last train (and definitely past closing time for cozy little coffee shops).

After scanning for potential witnesses, he ducks out of the alcove and makes for the station, brushing past the cheerful advertisement for the wretched parlour that will never open again. Despite the fatigue still clinging to his legs, he keeps his pace brisk, refusing to bow to the limitations of his own body. It is a small mercy that, after a night of annoyances, the streets remain relatively deserted with the majority of its revelers having retired for the night. As should he.

Goro retraces his steps, guided by the glow of neon signs and lanterns swaying above rows of shuttered storefronts. The area is just remote enough for the sounds of traffic and chatter to fade into a distant hum. Had he been less weighed down by bone-deep weariness and a conscious decision not to think any thoughts until he can collapse on his bed, he may have enjoyed the brief respite: the freedom of being able to move through the streets unseen and unimpeded, a luxury that he had ill been able to afford since he had become a public figure.

But as he walks on, something disturbs the tranquility. Angry voices — sharp staccato bursts of screaming — ring out in the distance, clearly the sign of another late-night altercation in progress. Goro frowns, annoyance being the primary emotion piercing through the fog of his metaverse exhaustion. By now, such sounds are as commonplace as background graffiti in this cesspit of a city. He doesn't need to be a detective to postulate a number of scenarios: another drug deal gone wrong, another gang dispute, or just another run of the mill mugging.

He changes his course to avoid them, scornful of anything and everything between him and his bed, and more than willing to kill to get to it. Behind him, however, the sounds continue on — the dissonant scramble of pounding footfalls, the infuriated shouts that unfortunately appear to be crescendoing in volume despite his efforts. He hears a crash, the dull, telltale thud of flesh against concrete, and resists the urge to clench his jaw.

The voices are close now, close enough that the indistinct patterns of garbled noise begin to coalesce into words. 

"... did you… could get away…?"

"—… little… fucking bit me...!" 

Goro walks faster, the leather of his glove wrinkling around the handle of his suitcase as he tightens his grip. But not fast enough to avoid the sickening tug of something cold and shriveled that may have once housed his conscience. 

Especially when another voice cries out — stifled and broken off. Young. 

His steps slow to a crawl, hesitating at the mouth of the alleyway as it spits out the sounds of violence, the crunch of bone, the wet gasps of agony — hollow eyes, trembling lips parting and closing in a silent plea — and finally, a threat. 

"I'm — going — to — fucking — kill — you!"

Goro is moving again — his case unlatches almost of its own accord and when he straightens, it is with a pistol clutched securely in hand. He strides forward with purpose, his own footfalls loud in his ears as he readjusts his grip.

At the end of the alleyway, stands a tall, burly man in an ill-fitting suit, pinning a slender figure against an iron fence. A teenager, male, judging from the build, grasping weakly at the fingers around their neck, dark locks of hair obscuring their eyes but it does nothing to hide their pained, desperate gasps.

And Goro sees red — the red of petals scattering through the air, the red blooming vividly from the center of a smooth forehead.

"Let him go," he says. It is dark, nearly too dark to see if it were not for the pale slivers of light from a worn-out lamp. But the audible click as he slides the hammer back is all he requires to make his point.

The assailant spins around, the frenzied expression on his face melting into one of terror. His eyes are drawn down, guided by the glint of metal to the barrel of his gun. He swallows, the bob of his throat visible even from a distance. 

"L-Look," he stammers, letting his victim drop from his hands as he holds them up in the air.  "I don't want any trouble. Sir." 

Goro gestures with his unloaded gun, watching with dark amusement at the fearful way the man tracks its path. "Then what are you waiting for?" 

Not needing to be told again, the man stumbles away amidst useless apologies, only stopping briefly to drag his companion off the ground who, Goro notes with a pang of irritation, he had failed to notice. But judging by the substantial chunk of hair missing from his scalp and the swollen eyes rolled back in his head, he wouldn't have been in any shape to be a threat either way.

Goro resists the juvenile urge to roll his eyes as he de-cocks and stows his gun back away. The teenager is left crumpled on the ground, the only signs of consciousness in their weak, shuddering gasps. From the blood caked along the sides of their face, they were most likely in need of medical attention. But it is no longer his concern. 

Having already done his second good deed of the day, he refuses to be inconvenienced any further — he is many things, but he is not magnanimous enough to risk fielding media questions about why Akechi Goro, detective prince extraordinaire, would be wandering the streets at night while carrying a SIG-Sauer P230 with a detachable suppressor.

He prepares to take his leave, snapping his case shut, and rises back up to his feet. As he does so, the flickering street lamp suddenly flares, sparking briefly to life before it fades back into obscurity.

But it is enough for him to see his face, and for the second time that day, his blood runs cold.

It couldn't be.

The case clatters back onto the ground and he moves without thinking — until he is kneeling at his side, brushing the hair away from his face just to be sure.

In place of an arresting grey that shone like polished stars, the boy's eyes are dull and glassy with pain but they are unmistakably his. He has the same lips, the same dark hair that curls around his face, like petals, is matted with blood. 

But of course, he is still beautiful. 

Goro is transfixed, frozen in a moment of stunned inaction as he becomes a hapless observer — staring at the way the dewdrops bead on the boy's lashes as he fights to focus, the way it gathers into crystalline trails as they spill over the bruises blooming like morbid roses on his cheeks.

White doesn't suit him, he had thought. Only now he knows what does. 

"Kurusu-kun?"

The name drops from his mouth in a voice that does not sound like his own — Goro has never heard himself speak in such wretched, horrid tones since he was a child — since the roses blooming in the water — but he far too occupied — checking his scalp for visible wounds and trying to stall the tremor in his hands  — to allow his thoughts to wander.

But Kurusu's eyes — dulled like tarnished silver jewels — are dimming. His pale lips, split and bruising, part with laboured difficulty as he calls out — for him.  

"Akechi," Kurusu whispers, reaching with a shaking hand that he immediately steadies in his own. " Akechi …"

"Kurusu-kun," he tries again — to gather his scattered thoughts, to wrest back control over the situation. But before Goro can begin to formulate a reply — to erase the pain in his eyes and the anguish in his voice —  Kurusu's eyes begin to close, plunging them both into darkness.

Goro doesn't know how long he waits for the boy to awaken — his face wan and his body as cold and still as a corpse's. 

He measures time in the number of heartbeats against his thumb and in the rises and falls of Kurusu Akira's chest. Objectively it could not have been more than minutes. But subjectively, he had counted an eternity — one spent with ice in his veins and cold fingers gripping his lungs like a vice — before those grey eyes finally opened once more. 

"Kurusu-kun, you're awake!" he exclaims, too caught up in the rush of hot, dizzying relief to berate himself for stating the obvious.  "How are you feeling?" 

But his relief may have been premature. Kurusu looks barely more lucid than he had when he laid limp in his arms — his stunning, grey eyes are vacant, peering through him as though he is seeing a ghost. Goro frowns and tries again but the phantom sensation of fingers gently cupping his cheeks makes him pull away as if he had been burned — and he must have been because nothing else could explain the way heat explodes in his cheek, or the electrifying way Kurusu's touch sears. 

His voice falters, caught in his throat despite his best efforts to maintain control. It isn't surprising, he reminds himself, that the boy appears to be disoriented. The blood on his face must have been the result of blunt force trauma, and the look of intense emotion in his eyes must be a trick of the flickering streetlights. 

"Ah, but of course," Goro says to himself, barely remembering to play his role, "you must be disoriented." He schools himself once more, reaching for his detective's calm, for the facade of trustworthy competence that had served him so well in the past. "Do you remember what happened?"

But Kurusu reacts — poorly.

The glassy calm in Kurusu's eyes shatters. His pupils constrict — until they are swallowed up by the terrified grey of his irises and Goro only has a second to curse his mistake before he is forced to grab his shoulders to stop him from bolting. 

"Kurusu-kun, no," he exclaims, scrambling through his memories for everything he had ever read on traumatic brain injuries and being forced to conclude that he only remembers how to inflict them. "You should not be moving yet!"

Kurusu does not respond, nor does he appear to have heard him at all. There is nothing doll-like about him now — he moves like a wounded creature, wild and near animalistic as he claws at Goro's wrists, struggling not with the tragic grace of a butterfly strangled in silk, but with the ferocity of a snarling panther.

Distracted with trying to stop the boy from aggravating his injuries, he completely misses an elbow to his diaphragm, but it is the look in his eyes that knocks the breath from his lungs. Goro can see himself reflected in them — beneath the obfuscating layers of fear and the pain, he sees fury. The same burning rage that he sees in his mirror, the same rage that he is forced to swallow until it chokes him, until all he can taste is the ash of powerlessness — 

( like the bloom of roses in the water, 

like the wailing of sirens, 

like cold lips curved in sleep)

— and suddenly, Goro knows what to do.

He pulls Kurusu into his arms, guided by the memory of warmth, by the scent of vanilla and pine, delicate fingers in his hair, and the gentle voice that whispers beautiful lies into his ears.

"You're okay. You're safe now," Goro murmurs — echoes — endlessly spewing soft, meaningless reassurances until Kurusu's struggles finally abate into weak tremors, until the fear in his eyes is finally extinguished. 

Compared to the way he had fought him, his cries are distressingly quiet. Small and restrained — with just the barest whisper of uneven breath, the occasional shudder in his slender frame, and the look of pure heartbreak that he suddenly wishes he could brush away as easily as he does his tears. 

"You're safe," he repeats, again and again, because there are some lies that become more convincing through repetition, like how justice exists to protect the innocent. But as Goro gazes down at him — his dark curls in disarray, his trembling fingers curled tightly around his own — he is compelled to keep lying.

Like this, Kurusu looks fragile. Vulnerable.

And suddenly, he is somehow more than a collection of intrusive thoughts, more than just the enigmatic figure from the cafe that only danced in the peripherals of his life. The blood drying on his hands and the warmth in his lap are proof enough that Kurusu is made of flesh and bone instead of porcelain.

I could still break him, a voice says in his ear, shatter him like glass. 

But whether that voice is a warning or a prophecy, he does not know, nor does he care to know because Kurusu is finally calming down. His tears have stopped falling, the tremors that had wracked his body are now fading into tiny aftershocks. And somehow, he is even more breathtaking than on the first day he met, even with red-rimmed eyes, flushed cheeks, and wet lashes that look longer and darker than ever. 

Squashing down an irrational spike of envy, he calls out to him again, "Kurusu-kun?" 

Kurusu looks understandably worn, his gaze tinted with confusion and a slight hint of unease as he appears to visibly gather himself. "...Akechi?" he replies, his already soft voice barely above a whisper — with a hoarseness characteristic of damaged vocal chords that makes his gaze involuntarily flicker to the vivid finger-shaped bruises on his neck. A cold, sobering reminder of what he must have suffered, and what he would have if Goro had continued on his way.

But there is no use dwelling on what-ifs, or so he tells himself over the tightness in his chest. He goes to adjust his glove out of habit… only to remember that he is still stroking his hair.

Aghast, Goro snatches the offending hand away like it had been burned. He clears his throat, a perfectly prepared excuse on this tongue, but the worms in his brain decide to speak up in his stead. 

"My apologies!" they say. "It's just. You were rather upset earlier — understandably so — and, well, my mother. She used to do this for me. When I had nightmares, I mean. But I apologize, again — I typically arrive at crime scenes only after the fact—"

"...it's fine," Kurusu rasps, thankfully cutting off the horrid stream of nonsense pouring from his mouth. Not so thankfully, for his eroding nerves, he immediately attempts to rise a second time — only to collapse back into his lap when his wrist suddenly gives out.

Goro stiffens, and carefully thinks of nothing. Not the warmth emanating from his body, pressed flush against his thighs. "...Ku-Kurusu-kun," he says, keeping very, very still. "Stop moving. Please." 

This time, he remembers to keep a firm grip on Kurusu's hand and shoulder and his caution pays off when the boy almost immediately makes another attempt to escape. Eventually, he stops moving, though the recalcitrant glint in his eyes (another surprise considering his usual docile demeanor) suggests his cooperation was not out of obedience but necessity. Kurusu looks exhausted — the fight in his eyes is dimming, like the embers of a dying fire and the sight of it fills him with renewed urgency. 

"It's alright," Goro repeats, just as much for Kurusu as it is for himself. "Everything will be fine." 

Now that the immediate danger to Kurusu has passed, the most expedient thing to do next would be to call an ambulance and get him the medical attention that he sorely needs. There would be time after that for questions, he assumes. A police report will need to be filed along with a copy of the boy's statement on how he came to be caught up in such an ordeal.

"First things first," he says out loud for Kurusu's benefit as he shifts to retrieve his mobile phone, "we need to get you to a hospital. I'll make a call right now—"

"No!" Once again, Kurusu manages to catch him off guard, cutting him off with a panicked cry, louder than Goro had ever heard him speak, louder than Goro had assumed  he could speak.  But his next words are meek, barely audible over the whisper of wind and the sudden roaring in his ears.

I don't want to make any trouble, he says, in the small, resigned way that all unwanted children do and Goro thinks of his downcast gaze and hunched shoulders, his refusal to make eye contact, and the desperate, heartrending way he had leaned into a stranger's touch — 

He cuts off his thoughts with a sharp intake of breath, unwilling to continue along that path to madness. "Kurusu-kun," he says, for the first time finding himself utterly inadequate in his quest to deliver anything other than shallow platitudes, or biting, venomous retorts. Still, he reaches, rifling through his soul for some measure of softness and fashions it into the only reassurance he knows — another gentle lie. 

"You're not making trouble," he says, taking the truth of how close he had come to concluding otherwise and buries it. "But you are in need of medical attention."

Goro is used to being right. His superior intellect combined with his capacity for observation (honed through years of necessity, of surviving foster home after home and dodging shadows in the metaverse) means that he is rarely if ever caught off guard. 

And as he continues to observe and contend with Kurusu's stubborn but weakening denials — the deepening fear in those quicksilver eyes, every aborted flinch feeding into Goro's growing unease — he realizes that he was wrong about just how much trouble the boy from the cafe would bring him.

Especially when Kurusu slips back into unconsciousness without warning.

Once more, Goro is left choking on the syllables of the boy's name as he struggles to rouse him. It is only after he verifies that his breaths are even and his pulse is steady that Goro takes a deep one of his own. Calmly, he reminds himself not to panic. That he had a plan. That there are precedents in place for what to do in case of such emergencies — and many of them are merely one Goggle search away. He pulls out his phone again to do exactly that, paging impatiently through the how-to articles, as he rehearses what he will need to tell the 119 operator. 

The patient is an unconscious male student, 17-18 years old. Believed to be the victim of a mugging. The student woke up briefly but showed signs of confusion and disorientation — possibly due to traumatic head injuries. An ambulance would be appreciated.

Of course, Goro reasons as he dials the line, Kurusu will be fine. The hospital should be able to contact his next of kin — the gruff, middle-aged barista with the sharp eyes and tired slouch — allowing him to wash his hands of this whole situation. He has already done enough, more than what anyone could have expected from a good samaritan. If he lingers any longer than he already has, he is sure to wake up to his face plastered all over the gossip rags by morning — a link that he can ill afford, considering that a body is scheduled to be discovered mere blocks away.

The line connects on the third ring and the operator's mechanized inquiry is transmitted through the receiver, calmly asking for his emergency. But instead of responding, Goro finds himself ending the call with a decisive click of his thumb. 

"What the fuck are you doing?" he hisses at his reflection in the darkened glass. "You sentimental fool."

But as expected, there is no reply.

Chapter Text

There are over fifty Dr. Takemis in Tokyo, but thankfully only one in Yongenjaya. 

Takemi Medical Clinic, as he had politely informed the taxi driver as he shifted his careful hold on Kurusu's body to let the darkness shield him from view. However, it appeared that his caution was for naught as the thin, balding man had accepted his cash without a single question or even a glance at the battered, unconscious boy in his arms. As much as Goro is thankful for the lack of scrutiny, he is equally disgusted with yet another sign of the apathy that festers in Tokyo.

Beside him, Kurusu slumbers on. His plush lips are parted in sleep, sending gentle wisps of breath against his neck. Illuminated by the flashes of artificial lights, his once flawless skin is marred by bruising, like flowers vessels blooming red over fresh snow.

Once again, Goro is forcibly reminded of it — of rose petal hair and empty glass eyes — and has to divorce his gaze from Kurusu's face before the two images can converge. But he knows that even if he averts his eyes, the sight of dew clinging to wet lashes has long since been seared into his memory. The same way the tremors from Kurusu's chilled body had seeped through his clothing and into the wretched thing that functions as his heart. 

The way he had leaned into his touch, unknowingly seeking comfort from bloodstained hands.

Like this, Kurusu looks as delicate as gossamer, as soft ephemeral as a wisp of smoke, every feature so perfect that they must have been crafted on an artisan's dais. Like a glass sculpture that could shatter at a careless touch.

Except, Goro can see the defensive wounds on his hands, map the shape of the cuts on the men's faces to the angles of his knuckles. He remembers the fury in his eyes and the promise of violence in the flecks of dried blood beneath his nails. 

The boy from the flower shop who had looked as sweet as saffron, as docile as a lamb knew how to use his hands — not just to weave together white ribbons and green stems with hypnotic dexterity — but also to hurt. 

Goro is transported back to the dimly lit alleyway, back to the thug crumpled on the ground. With crudely misaligned cheekbones and a ruined scalp that suggests that the blood soaking through Kurusu's clothes had not been his alone. He thinks of the fresh layer of calluses on his palms and the second joint of his trigger finger, so inexplicably similar to his own.

There is something more to Kurusu Akira than meets the eye. Something that shakes him to the depths of his soul.

What are you, he wonders, but only within the safety of his own mind. 

Outside of it, Kurusu slumbers on, plush lips parted in sleep, wisps of gentle breaths tickling his neck. A stray dark curl had fallen into his eyes as if begging to be brushed away.

Goro turns his gaze out the window and keeps his hands clenched in his lap. 

The clinic is closed.

Had he stopped to actually use his brain and beg the question, 'just what kind of private clinic would still be taking clients in the middle of the night?' this would not have caught him so completely by surprise. 

But since he hadn't, Goro is left staring at the closed shutters in dumbfounded consternation. 

"Shit!" he curses, biting down the urge to put his foot through a window because it would not do to exacerbate Kurusu's injuries. Instead, he sets the slumbering boy down by a stack of crates, rearranging his limbs in what he hopes is a more comfortable position while they wait for Goro to call the fucking ambulance like he should have done so in the first place.

Kurusu barely stirs at the movement; his face is still worryingly pale and the smudges of dried blood on his temple only serve to highlight it. Goro curses again, but ultimately, he can only blame his grievous oversight on another resurgence of the brain worms for allowing sentiment — in the form of beseeching grey eyes — to override sense. Akechi Goro, the celebrity detective, would have known better than to defer to a disoriented, possibly concussed teenager for medical advice.

But as he fishes out his phone to rectify his mistake, something flickers in the corner of his eye — a pale blue flash that he momentarily mistakes for the wings of a fluttering insect. Upon further observation, he finally realizes what he is actually seeing — a thin sliver of light peeking through the gaps of the closed blinds.

In the next breath, he is at the door, repeatedly slamming his hand against the buzzer.

After what felt like an age — spent with his heart in his throat and static in his ears — the front door opens just a crack, stopped in place by its chain. A single dark eye peers out of it, wariness etched into every inch of what he can see of their shadowed face. 

"Dr. Takemi?" Goro demands, urgency turning his voice harsh and he has to deliberately pause to smooth the irritation from his face.

"Yes…?" A voice asks slowly, likely a woman judging from the pitch. 

"I have a — a friend who has been injured," he begins by stumbling all over his relation to Kurusu. "He needs medical attention."

The gaze turns from guarded curiosity to cool dismissal in an instant. 

"Then go to a hospital," the woman replies dryly and the door would have slammed shut in his face if he hadn't the foresight to wedge his shoe through the opening.

"Please," he bites out, the word bitter and unfamiliar on his tongue, especially when he feels the pressure increase around his foot. Why the fuck did Kurusu insist on coming here again? Subtly gnashing his teeth, he tries again, reaching for as much pleasantness as he can muster. "He… He was adamant about not calling an ambulance. Please, I realize this is very poor timing but my friend needs your help. His name is Kurusu Akira—"

It is only thanks to Goro's reflexes, honed after years of traversing the metaverse, that allows him to narrowly avoid being hit in the face when the door is flung all the way open.

The woman — younger than he had thought she would be, short-cropped hair, unprofessionally sharp nails — quickly sweeps over her surroundings with sharp, keen eyes that land unerringly on Kurusu's crumpled form. A hand flies up to her mouth as she rushes towards him with sharp clacks of her heels. "Guinea pig?" 

Guinea pig?!

Goro startles, questions forming on his tongue but before he can voice them, she turns to fix him with an impatient glare.

"Well? What are you waiting for?" she demands as if she hadn't been doing her best to crush his foot. "Help me get him inside!"

In sharp contrast to her initial reluctance, Takemi had wasted no time in ushering him into the examination room, a hair's breadth away from physically shoving him through the doors.

Frowning at Kurusu's injuries, she had gotten to work immediately after directing Goro to set him down, first checking his pulse, then his pupils. He had hurriedly averted his gaze, but the sight of his blank, gray irises had lingered uncomfortably afterward. Beneath the fluorescent lighting, the full extent of Kurusu's injuries is laid bare. The dark bruising on his cheeks extends to the length of his throat in angry rings that encircle it like a necklace of finger-shaped thorns. The blood in his hair had been too dark to see, but there was no missing the drying copper flecks on the sheets. He looks so fragile, like a discarded doll with cold, porcelain skin. Deceptively so, he tries to remind himself, but all he can remember are the tremors of his near-silent cries and the desperate way he had clutched at his hands.

When was the last time someone had touched like that? Like he had been needed?

"What happened?" 

The woman's voice momentarily intrudes on his thoughts. Her tone is cool, with a hint of calculated sharpness that further hints at a more personal connection between her and Kurusu, but it is a line of thought that Goro is too distracted to chase. His attention is still caught by the fluttering shadows cast by Kurusu's impossibly long eyelashes.

He wonders, not for the first time this evening, if there really was some kind of preternatural force drawing them together. That perhaps, it was not chance, nor luck, nor even serendipity that had led him into the quaint little kissaten. That their meeting had long since been ordained by something he could not perceive.

Maybe this is fate, had come tumbling foolishly out of his mouth, for Akechi Goro had never believed in determinism. It was antithetical to his entire existence — the idea that Laplace's grinning demon could so easily derive a proposition that would neatly encompass the chaos of his life rankled him to no end. 

If not even his choices were his own, if his every thought and action had long since been determined by the random occurrences of his universe that led to his birth, then for what purpose did he struggle so desperately? Was he supposed to simply accept that Shido was always meant to betray his mother, that his mother was always meant to break? Or that Kurusu with his soft smiles and flushed cheeks was meant to nearly meet his end in the back of a cold, filthy alleyway? 

And yet.

There were too many coincidences, too many chance encounters for him to shake the feeling that there must be something else binding them together like links of a chain— 

"Hello? Still with us? Or do I need to give you a check-up too?"

Goro nearly jumps, uncharacteristically unalert as he snaps back to reality, just in time to meet the doctor's unimpressed gaze. 

"Ah!" he stammers, fishing around for an excuse that wasn't, ahaha, just contemplating my inescapable fate with Kurusu. "My apologies. It has been a rather long day."

He schools his features away from deer in the headlights and puts on something more appropriate for the occasion. A widening of his eyes to convey faint distress, a slight tremor in his voice suffused with worry over an acquaintance's well-being. A flawless act that perfectly conceals the boiling rage now slowly bubbling up underneath his skin. 

The initial shock of the situation had worn off enough for him to remember that Kurusu hadn't just happened to get into this condition — that this had been done to him. That the bruises on his delicate throat had been left by human hands — hands that he should have wrenched off at the bone for daring to besmirch something they had no right to.

He should have shot them, sprayed their blood over the concrete just as callously as they had spilled their victim's, and watched the life drain from their lungs as they begged for forgiveness. He should have shot them while he had the chance, and now that chance was gone. 

For the first time since he had unlocked the secrets of the metaverse he had never felt so powerless or realized the limitations of his power. Without names, Kurusu's attackers would simply disappear into the shadows and melt into the faceless collective beneath the sewers of reality, never to face the consequences of their crimes.

"I believe he was attacked," he says, lacing his fingers together on his lap to stop them from digging bloody crescents into his thighs. With any luck, the doctor would dismiss the tremor in his limbs as nervousness instead of murderous rage. Goro angles his face down, worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth. "I'm afraid I didn't get a good look at them before they escaped. But, ah, is… is Kurusu-kun going to be alright?"

Takemi pauses, fingers hovering over a particularly painful-looking bruise on Kurusu's cheeks. From the current angle, he cannot see her face but he can only imagine what kind of look passes through her eyes. 

"He'll live," is what she says with a sharp click of her tongue. "Wouldn't be the first time he has gotten into trouble, I suspect." She glances up, her expression suddenly bordering on sly. "Though this is the first time he's had such a famous escort. You said the two of you are friends?"

As someone who has faced down murderous psychopaths and monstrous representations of the worst parts of humanity, Goro does not stiffen at the odd note of insinuation in her voice, but he does sit a little straighter. 

"Ah, well, it's something like that," he says, perhaps a little bit too quickly. He clears his throat, making an effort to modulate his next words. "I've frequented Leblanc before and we run into each other occasionally. I… I suppose it was a lucky coincidence that I happened to be passing by."

The doctor is silent for a minute as she turns her slow, appraising gaze to him and he meets it in defiance. "How lucky that you did," is all she says after what felt like an eternity of scrutiny and Goro tries not to think just how much it rings true. If he hadn't been at the right place at the right time, if he had been moments too late once again… 

The thought is sobering like a splash of cold water — overflowing from a white tub and pooling pink on the bathroom tiles — 

"Well, in any case," Takemi says, seeming content to dismiss the topic at hand. "Help me take off his clothes."

Goro freezes. "...Excuse me?!" 

"I can't very well examine him properly with his clothes on," the crack doctor explains with distracted condescension, but she is otherwise occupied with her notes.

"Ah," says Goro. Like a clockwork marionette, he jerkily turns his gaze to where Kurusu rests. It lingers on the thin, delicate shadows cast by his lashes, on the way the gentle puffs of his breaths stir his hair.

Goro swallows. "Right," he says, even though he makes absolutely no effort to move.

"Problem?" Takemi asks after another few moments of inaction, again with that unsettlingly sly look in her eyes like a large, coiled serpent lying in wait. 

"None at all," Goro says through a pleasant smile and gritted teeth. To prove his point, he pushes himself upright and marches towards the examination table.

There is no problem. None at all. 

Except his fingers might as well be sausage links for how much use they are to him right now — thick, disgusting, and greasy with nervous sweat.

Right. Clothes. Kurusu's clothes.

Goro swallows again, but it does little to moisten his sandpaper throat.

Kurusu is wearing a black silk shirt with its sleeves rolled up to his elbows — some sort of uniform based on the way the material stretches too tight across his shoulders. The top button is missing, likely torn off during his struggles.

So he starts with the second one, fumbling with unanticipated difficulty as he tries to free it. The third is just as uncooperative but he eventually manages to undo it as well. Only to freeze at the slice of smooth creamy skin that suddenly becomes visible due to his ministrations.

Goro nearly flinches, feeling as if he had been teleported into a metaverse greenhouse — with sweat on his brow and refracted sunlight in his eyes. He quickly takes care of the rest of the accursed buttons, desperate to touch the other as little as possible for the sake of his precious few brain cells.

Unfortunately, it is then that he realizes he had made a fatal miscalculation: he had foolishly believed that the rest of Kurusu would be any less unimaginably perfect than his face. 

His schoolmates are gormless things with gangly limbs and pockmarked faces but the heavens are as unjust as they are cruel because they are very clearly playing favorites. If he had any doubt at all that Kurusu Akira was blessed by the gods, this view alone would dispel any such blasphemy. Unlike what his shy, meek demeanor had made him assume, Kurusu is toned — long, slender limbs with lean, wiry muscle, a smooth expanse of bewitchingly soft skin, and any creature with eyes would be compelled to worship at the altar of his sculpted abs. 

But that perfect canvas has already been marred — painted over with the violence of evil men. His own chest constricts. Another rush of hot, directionless anger builds up inside him with nowhere to go, because how dare they — 

"The pants, too."

Goro swivels around to gape at the quack doctor in horror. 

"Go on," she says with dry encouragement, "I won't tell him if you don't."

In the refuge of the waiting room, Goro's mental facilities slowly recover. Now that the hypnotic power of Kurusu's face — and his firm, smooth thighs attached to athletic legs that went on for miles — is firmly sealed behind a set of solid doors. 

With only a lone drooping houseplant to bear witness, Goro finally allows himself to silently scream into his hands, only one burning question ripping through his mind. 

What the fuck is he still doing here?

The worst of the night's crisis has been averted — Kurusu is safe and in the hands of someone who is presumably a medical professional (even if the state of the shabby clinic seems to cast its reliability in doubt). 

All that is left is for him to pack up, go home, and wash his hands of this veritable media minefield. He can almost see the headlines now: half bloated with overblown praise, half asking uncomfortable questions about why their darling Detective Prince was skulking around seedy alleyways and trafficking unconscious teenage boys across the city. 

Thus, he reasons, there must be some other explanation for why he remains glued to the cracked leather seats. 

His uncharacteristic actions were the product of stress and metaverse exhaustion. Whatever he had seen in Kataoka's disgusting mindscape had destabilized him enough to trigger a sudden lapse of judgment, enough to allow the greatest poison of his profession to seep through his fortified defenses — sympathy.  

It would explain the subconscious parallels he had accidentally projected on a stranger who happened to show him a tiny modicum of kindness and happened to be… not offensive to the eyes. 

His interest in Kurusu should have only been skin deep, a purely superficial admiration of — his mesmerizing beauty, his effortless charisma, his perfectly formed clavicles — his looks.

Except… something tonight had caused that interest to evolve. 

The realization is enough to make Goro want to scream again. 

As if Kurusu needed to be more than just an astonishingly pretty face — but he just had to come with a mystery. 

Even if Goro is only nominally a detective who stages his own crimes, anyone with even partial use of their half-eaten brains would conclude that there was more to this incident than just a typical mugging gone wrong.

First, was the location he found Kurusu in. Goro himself aside, there were very few good reasons for an ordinary high schooler to frequent the area he had found Kurusu in. It was far too remote, too much of a detour from transit to see many commuters. Judging from Kurusu's attire, and more specifically, the server's apron — that he had slowly untied from his body — he should have been working at some sort of dine-in restaurant. Except, nothing around that area should have been open that late. Nothing reputable at least. 

Next, was Kurusu's injuries — or how not all of them were fresh. Beneath the lurid collection of purple and red, he had seen faded traces of old bruises, thin white scars stretched across his skin in patterns that had alarmed him. Coupled with the small, hesitant way Kurusu holds himself, his extreme rejection of hospitals…  

And finally, that one, unsettling coincidence that he just cannot shake — the cognition with rose-petal hair and empty glass eyes. 

The ill-fitting fragments slot together, forming the beginnings of an uneasy hypothesis.

But Kurusu's mystery should have nothing to do with him. 

Solving it would bring him no benefit, no closer to his goals. If anything it would only be to his detriment, to involve himself with irrelevant distractions. Distractions that could prove fatal, when facing an enemy such as Masayoshi Shido.

And yet… 

Thoughts of Kurusu — with his impossibly long lashes and shy smiles — circle his mind endlessly like vultures picking apart carrion. They gnaw at him, whittling him down to the bone, eroding his sense of self until only a blithering, tongue-tied imbecile remains. Truly, the greatest mystery of all is how the boy named Kurusu Akira could have so thoroughly stolen all his brain cells when he isn't even conscious.

He knows he needs to leave. Pack up his belongings and go before this parasitic fascination can take root any deeper — 

His introspection is interrupted by the door handle turning. Goro startles to his feet, spurred on by a guilty conscience as he blurts out, "How is he?" 

"You're still here," Takemi remarks with the mildest note of surprise, unknowingly hammering in yet another nail in the coffin of his self-recriminations. 

The woman leans back against the door frame, seemingly in no hurry to speak. Instead, she watches him like she is taking him in for the first time. As a public figure, Goro is no stranger to having every inch of his life dissected and scrutinized, with his name on thousands of gossip rags and wagging tongues. But somehow, it is this woman's gaze that makes him feel like a specimen peeled open beneath a scalpel. He endures it regardless, fingers fighting the urge to curl into fists as he stares her down. 

"He's seen better days," she says eventually, in a tone that would have been dismissive if Goro hadn't personally witnessed her tearing up the concrete to get to her patient. "But why don't you see for yourself? It looks like he'll be waking up soon and I'm sure he'll be happy to see his knight in shining armor." 

With an infuriatingly knowing smile on her face, the woman steps back and gestures towards the open door with her clipboard. 

"And plus, you have such an anxious look on your face."

Goro does not respond immediately — stunned by the sudden accusation.  

Anxious? Him? Preposterous. 

He opens his mouth to protest, his mind spinning uselessly as it tries to excavate a retort from beneath the layers of hidden insinuations. Except the woman is already gone, taking with her his only chance at a rebuttal. 

His nails dig into the flesh of his palms as he considers storming from the clinic just to prove her wrong.

Nothing good can come from this entanglement with Kurusu. This is something he knows to be true if only by virtue of him knowing that nothing good has ever come from a life characterized by an endless parade of partings. 

All this is, all this will amount to is a passing and ill-timed flight of fancy. A momentary distraction — to chase after a river in the desert, only for the oasis to slip through his fingers like sand.

Even still, Goro finds his traitorous feet moving to follow, led through the doorway like a hapless thrall. 

In his absence, Kurusu's wounds had been dressed and bandaged. But it only makes him look even more fragile — like a broken doll with its cracked edges hastily glued back together. 

This is why the sight of Kurusu stirring — a flutter of his lashes, a faint knit of his brows — hits him with a flood of relief. Not that Goro was at all anxious about Kurusu's recovery. He justifies it as a side effect from a sudden drop in his cortisol levels, the lifting of unwanted weight off his chest. 

He hovers in the doorway, keeping his gaze firmly fixed to the wall and averted from Kurusu's figure — all but bare under the sheets — to combat the noticeable and inevitable decline in his IQ. Instead, he listens absently as Takemi breaks patient-doctor confidentiality, all the while formulating his next plan of action. 

Since he had already come this far and any chance of him catching the last train home had long since vanished into smoke, he may as well see this through — whatever "this" is. Whether it is a moment of insanity, or worse, a misguided attempt to appease his own shriveled conscience — he will ensure that Kurusu is delivered safely to his guardian, thus fulfilling his civic duty as a friendly neighborhood detective prince. 

Afterward, he will return to his usual life of juggling schoolwork, assassinations, and plotting his revenge. Until he either succeeds or dies from one of the aforementioned. And this little detour will remain what it should be — a minor footnote of an unimportant, unsolved mystery in the case files of his life. 

"Your friend here," Takemi suddenly says, unapologetically ripping Goro out of his musings, "has been beside himself with worry."

Goro freezes in place, his stomach dropping like the tiles had vanished beneath his feet. His heart begins to pound — with the guilty conscience of a suspect caught in a lie. 

He barely notices the doctor brush past him, a smirk playing at her lips, leaving the two of them alone in this suffocatingly small enclosure. And the fragile resolve he had slowly built up immediately crumples like a conquered palace with just one word. 

Friend.

It was the keyword he had thoughtlessly used to gain entry into the clinic —  but now, it hangs awkwardly in the air. Friend is perhaps not the correct label — Akechi Goro has never had a friend but has no plans to start now. But there is power in names, in definitions — and once something is given form, it can not be taken away again. And now, something is forming in the space between Kurusu and himself where there should have been nothing at all.

Kurusu Akira turns to face him, with those big, beguiling eyes, watching him with awe and trepidation. He still looks fragile, like he would shatter at a single touch, but the striking chiaroscuro of dark hair and white bandages makes him come alive. It strikes him suddenly that the other boy is in front of him now, damaged but whole. That the reason why he is here in this examination room and not left discarded in that filthy alleyway is because Goro had found him in time. 

That he is here because of Goro. 

And perhaps this is fate after all. 

"Akechi… -san…?" Kurusu says, with a hesitant tilt of his head, his dark curls cascading into his eyes in a way that makes his chest tighten. The sound of his name coming from those lips sinks into his chest, like the slow rattle of chain links, forming shackles around his heart. Despite his trauma-roughened voice, it sounds like music — a glorious orchestra for his ears alone.

His knight in shining armor — the doctor had jested, but now her words loop endlessly through his thoughts as realization explodes through his body.

Somehow, by some ironic twist of fate, Akechi Goro with his blood-drenched hands and corrupted soul had become a savior. 

For a moment, it resurrects a fragment from his forgotten childhood, an old dream that had made his mother smile until death had stolen her away. It was a dream he had long since abandoned, one that went beyond his reach with every new unfortunate soul that Goro had personally sent to follow her.

But now, Kurusu is different — a soul he had chosen to reclaim from the reaper's grasp.

And in a way, that… 

That makes Kurusu Akira his.

The implication fills him with a rush of dizziness that hits him with enough force to make him stumble, his mind once again overtaken with static. 

Suddenly, he wants — a deep, bottomless yearning for this mysterious boy from the cafe, for his magnetic gaze, for his warm hands and warm smiles that set his chest ablaze and methodically empties his head of anything resembling sentient thought. Whatever this is, he desires its continuation, more powerfully than he has ever desired anything else aside from his revenge. He wants this time to stretch on until the seconds bleed into eternity, to claim this warmth for himself, to indulge in this heady drug until he loses the rest of his senses.

He wants to take the plunge, to step onto the edge of the precipice, and finally allow himself to bridge that gap that divides one stranger from another.

"Ah, Kurusu-kun," his mouth suddenly starts to reply as if he had only just spotted him. Like a fucking idiot. "How are you feeling?"

… 

But first, before he dreams of chasing after butterflies, he needs to do something about these fucking brain worms.

I am thou, thou art I...

Thou hast acquired a new vow.

It shall become the wings of rebellion

That breaketh thy chains of captivity.

With the birth of the ■■■■ Persona,

I have obtained the winds of blessing that

shall lead to freedom and new power ...