Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

His life, these days, is modest. Comfortable, even. The Adachi Tohru of the past had wished for such comfortability, had craved being anything other than stepped on and disdained. Competent... incompetent, it simply didn't matter; some people simply didn't deserve comfort. 

And Tohru had believed that with his entire, sad soul. 

Had believed it was only his rightful place, to be stepped on. Had thus lashed out against his fate, but his rebellion had been little more than the murder of people who hadn’t deserved it. 

What a mess, his life. 

These days, he had new gaming systems, learned to cook basic meals for himself, could afford drinking out with his coworkers (who he all despised). He even finally bought those nice, blue, skinny ties that are currently in fashion. Everything the old him had fantasized about, between the fog of ennui that Ame-no-Sagiri had unleashed upon his psyche. 

Oh, to realize that all that glitters isn't gold. He might be distracted, but happiness is nothing more than a far-off illusion that calls to better people. With better hearts.

Well, better than his. 

His heart was a disgusting mess, even the name of his persona was a tainted copy of someone else's. He'd sat through the whole psychiatric breakdown of just what that meant, in front of everybody. There'd been speculation as to the motive behind Izanami's movements, but a lot of it had been a rightful thrashing of his actions, character, and mental state. 

Where once he'd been angry, now he was just... tired.

Wrung out and hung to dry by the world and by Shirogane. Even if the Detective Prince never did get those charges to stick without conclusive evidence beyond hearsay, they certainly hadn't stopped trying for a good long while. These days his job at a measly, little private security company was the highlight of his monotonous life.

The low points were these: Narukami's visits. 

Silver hair, silver eyes, silver persona - a reflective surface to better cast a light. Tohru was one of the ugly things revealed in the dark - and it was never more apparent than when the other man sat across a table from him. Chosen.

Six whole years since Izanami revealed her possession of him and her goals for the whole of society, starting with Inaba. Since he had been supernaturally compelled, apparently by her, at his lowest moments to do something his morals dubiously allowed but his fear of repercussion would have never. And now he lives with the consequences of his actions. 

Part of his dues is reporting to the little Investigation Team of his day-to-day; his activities, which he's sure are laughed at over dinner alongside their usual immaturity. Isn't it so funny? Our nemesis is actually a total loser. Who would have thought? No wonder he almost got away with it!

Farcical. 

What else is there even to say, after so long? He comes home, occasionally gets a letter from Nanako, plays a random game, cooks a random meal, hates something random while smoking a "cigarette" on his top-floor patio, and then moves inside where he watches the weather with a beer before going to bed. 

And he tells these things to Narukami every single month without failure.

True-to-form, without missing a beat, just like every single time before this one and likely every time after, Ryotaro's nephew cocks a brow and looks at him over the notes he's taken like they are nothing but lies lies lies. Tohru simply sits there; stone-faced and grim, he knows from the way he can feel his facial muscles freeze in place. 

After so long of playing the fool, there are still silences where he refuses to any longer. 

It takes a few minutes of silence after the recounting, but the younger man finally stands, assumedly to go report to the detective. Tohru doesn't really care what he does. He says some, very fake, shit about how it was nice to see him, and things are on-track, he's made progress, whatever bullshit that means.

A scoff is his only answer, the only thing ‘Adachi-san’ gives the impetuous youth on his own. His derision, and silence, is signal enough for Narukami to get the fuck out of his home. 

Progress, whatever. Lies for them to comfort themselves with, to quiet the guilt so they can sleep peacefully. Tohru is the same as he's always been, on the inside, it's just on the outside for the uninformed to perceive. 

When the younger man finally leaves, after another minute of obtaining free Derision stacks, Tohru simply sits on his couch; blank, wondering. 

'Is this... it?' 

He goes to sleep in his comfy futon, with nice sheets he only had to save a few paychecks for, and hated hated hated .

-----------------------------

Tohru doesn't remember the dream; he only knows it was horrific. He doesn’t remember migrating to the couch at some time in the night either, but that happened too. Coming into full awareness as he's lurching out of his comfy throw blankets in a cold sweat, he hits his leg on the low table and topples, dreamy fever rising off of him into the cooling room.

He can practically see it steaming through the darkness of the apartment as he lies on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Fear still clings to him alongside the feverish sweat, cloying and nasty. It slices away at his insides until his heartbeat skyrockets, and it'd be a good idea to go-

He slips out of his sweat-soaked throw blanket and off the floor, stumbling his way up and into his bathroom and washing the sweat from at least his face and neck. The man in the mirror has self-cut hair, his eyes are flat and black, there's an air of instability about him. His pallor is worse than usual, and his bags are fresh and dark. 

Gross. Tohru hates the man in the mirror, indescribable and enigmatic to him, a stranger wearing his skin. 

(Yellow eyes watch him back, glowing like eerie lanterns in the fluorescent lights. Terror shoots through him and he yanks his head back violently, but his face is normal again and the flash of anger and hate is gone like it was never even there.)

He leaves the bathroom without looking back, stopping at his sweaty spot on the couch before trudging to get his floor cushions and a new blanket. He settles himself at the table in front of his TV, where he quickly determines to not think about the reflection. 

The weather station is tuned to quickly and Tohru watches it with burning eyes and a rare, inside joint. Slowly, the noise and the herb do their jobs, and he calms enough to relax his back to slouch against the worn loveseat behind him.  

His thoughts swirl, and he doesn't quite feel the passage of time, only knows it's his day off and he's not due in to work. There are no alarms to remind him of the hour, so the night stretched incoherently around him. Only the obnoxious commercial ads of the television and the meagre light beyond his window blinds keeping any semblance of temporal signage for him. 

The shadows almost look kaleidoscopic in the early dawn, and Adachi Tohru falls asleep on his floor, a small white butterfly watching from the railing of his patio. 

----------------------------

Tohru wakes up sick with a hollow stomach and is ravenous. He's too... something he refuses to name to cook. He throws on a random pair of black joggers from his floor and is stepping into his sandals before he remembers his phone. 

It's early, light is barely cresting the tops of the neighborhood houses. Students are migrating to school, people walking to and fro up ahead as a busier street comes up. It's peaceful. 

And disgusting. 

Tohru hates it. Hates this. 

Narukami and his friends had, according to their own accounts, faced down Izanami herself for people to see past the fog of delusion into reality. Just so they can go and, as a whole, ask for a master to lead them. And it's all there to see, plain as a sunny day on the face of humanity, in the mindless clamoring behind figureheads of all genres. 

The konbini door chime shakes him from his grim, past-soaked thoughts, which are beginning to lean towards the other world. Again. Unwilling to interact with anyone longer than necessary, he quickly makes a beeline for the onigiri and a packet of apple slices. It is only as the employee is handing him his bag at checkout that his phone rings. 

Like a motherfucking funeral knell.

He freezes.

Narukami? No, he's literally done nothing wrong. There is nothing for- Tohru brings the phone, with an unknown number blasted across his home screen, to his ear. 

"Tohru?" His sister, Minami, is as welcome as the rest of his family. That is, not. 

"Minami." The distaste must be clear even through the phone-line distortion, because she sighs at him through her teeth like he’s nothing more than a wayward child. Ugh, parents. Once they become one, they never stop.

It didn't help that Tohru had always really disliked his sister's core personality. Adding sprinkles of patronization on top only made that so much easier. 

"I heard that you're back in Tokyo, these days." 

"Cut the chit-chat, you miserable shit-drip. What do you want?" He wouldn’t be so abrasive if he was still surrounded by people. Another sigh, but Tohru is leaning casually up against the wall of a building and scowling impressively at the brickwork across him.

"For you to own up to the shame you've brought on my family and take responsibility!" What a near-apocalyptic level of shit. Tohru rolls his eyes, unseen. Kurusu Minami and that husband of hers can go fuck themselves and their version of responsibility. 

"Spit it out, Kurusu-san." His simpering sarcasm did the trick because there was complete silence for a minute. 

"Your nephew," Interesting, he never claimed ownership of her spawn, "has gotten himself into a... situation. Kazu and I cannot deal with him, we left him with a work-friend from..." She quickly hurries past some unknown delicate topic that he doesn’t give a whit about, and Tohru listens to her verbal scuttling with something like satisfaction, "It's a cafe called LeBlanc. You're his listed emergency contact for everything. So... you might want to go meet him. He arrives today." 

"You... shipped your son across the country!?" He cannot believe his ears, staring down at his feet in an unfeeling sort of rage. Unable to process, feeling nothing. "You've always been an absolute pile of disdain and shitty intentions, sis, but this is something else." She starts to say something, but Tohru is too busy hanging up and silencing his phone. 

Dressed in black joggers, flip flops, and a rumpled black V-neck, Tohru Adachi makes a decision, out of spite, and looks up the cafe location on his phone. Yongen-jaya is only two blocks from his apartment. Better get walking then...

Three missed calls in his notifications already, he notices, stowing away the de- "What, in the foggy fuck, is that?" 

Glowing red with a black eye motif that makes Adachi think of tv's and other worlds. And a red sky, with so much fog. No, thank you. It was obviously Bad News. In short, it's creepy and it needs to go. Now.

The app and its data are quickly, and shakily, removed from his device. 

Finally, his phone, sans creepy app and calls from long-estranged family members, is in its rightful place: his pocket. 

“Madness is my left hand; tenacity is my right.”

Yongen-jaya is quaint, crowded, and weathered. Worn in like a pair of faithful trainers, it doesn't bustle, it shuffles quaintly. It is a nice change of pace, and, had Tohru not had a truly awful previous day and night, he would have soaked it in like a chloroplast does sunlight. 

A single turn has him at the quaint glass door of LeBlanc, a push has him through the door. 

"Welcome to LeBlanc, sit anywhere and I'll be with you in a minute." The weathered man behind the bar wears a light, blush pink that draws Tohru's eye. A woman with silver hair and her brunette junior are sipping brews at the bar and a goth-punk woman is doing a crossword in one of their booths while eating curry. 

"Actually," Tohru clears his throat, "I'm here about your new tenant. I understand you're an acquaintance of my sister?" Urgh, that question tasted like curdled milk on his tongue. 

The barista turns with his eyebrows climbing up his lined forehead, "Kurusu's brother then?" Ah, there must be a distance there. Good, Minami had always been caught up in truly nasty business. "The kid's upstairs but he'll be down in a few, we have to go get him registered in an hour or so." 

Tohru nods, "I'm Tohru," He slides his eyes around the shop in distaste at being overheard and meets the russet eyes of the youngest one there. Curious, and nosy. He turns back to the proprietor, "I received a... call. An hour ago." The urge to fall back into the persona he'd used in Inaba is so great, but he tamps down on it. 

"An hour?” An almost disbelieving laugh, “That’s certainly not a lot of a heads up." He reaches a hand across the bar, "I'm Sakura Sojiro. Just call me Sojiro, it'll be easier." 

Tohru shakes his hand, warm and dry in a way human touch never is, while trying to keep his scowl under control. "Minami and I agree on very little. I guess this includes familial obligations." Even though Tohru knows intimately why he would not be given guardianship over his nephew; it doesn't reduce the sting, apparently.

Light footsteps and suddenly. He’s there.  

Kurusu Akira comes downstairs, fashionable and with wide dark eyes that make Tohru's veins fill with untrodden snow. Despite being darker, meeting his nephew’s eyes is almost like making eye contact with Narukami. There is a palpable similarity the two, though Adachi has no idea why he feels that way.

Those plutonian orbs are hidden beneath fringe, glasses, and a hunched posture that reflects light off of the lenses. Akira wordlessly takes in the five people, strangers, three of whom are quick to look away, gazing at him with the grace of a teenager. 

None. 

Incredibly awkward, and perceived, sixteen-year-old aside, Tohru is now awkward just from the atmosphere. Lovely. Push forward, tenacity is my right. "Well! This is awkward, I'm sorry. We haven't met, I'm Adachi Tohru." No recognition, that's fine. Did he really expect them to mention him, especially after the case? "Uh... I'm your uncle." 

Akira immediately looks wary. Not good. "Oh, why haven't you been around?" 

'Excuse me?'

He has to stomp down on a manic laugh, fluttering and squirming in his throat like a trapped bird.

What a question to ask him in a crowded cafe with three strangers and a guardian listening in. By the way, why did that kid at the end tickle his brain so weirdly? Annoying, everyone and everything here was annoying. Minami, that sow, so gods-damned insistent upon familial obligations to reach across the abyss of his self-isolation.

Tohru frowns, though the ever-present urge to smile dopily is there, "I haven't been on speaking terms with my sister or parents since I left home to join law enforcement." Another wary look from the teenager has him backpedaling, "Uh... long story short, I am a convicted felon with a classified case. I've been told to," Tohru clears his throat, "'take responsibility', whatever the f..." He trails off with an uncomfortable noise that draws a chuckle from the woman in the booth, "that means." 

Akira shrugs, throwing out an, "I have an assault record." like he's telling Tohru what shape a cloud in the sky is. 

‘And I murdered a student who wouldn't give me what I wanted.' He knows this tactic, has employed it himself. 'As if that's going to scare me off like all the other pissants crawling around you, but you probably think I'm a thief or something equally petty.’

Adachi wonders to himself too often how much of what he did was a manipulation and how much of it was him. After all, nearly everyone decried that he was also just a victim. 

Was he?

At the time, he hadn’t felt like one. He’d felt in control, bored and a little manic after being cooped up in Inaba. Even now, he didn't feel like he'd been anything but spiraling spectacularly into a breakdown. And that breakdown happened to be supernaturally catalyzed.

"Yeah? Lots more people have them than you'd think. Bet you probably got caught up in a situation or something, yeah?" Akira nods, twisting his bangs. "Don't worry about it too much." 

The dismissal is obviously the last thing the teenager is expecting from an estranged, former law enforcement, felon uncle who has unceremoniously appeared in his life. Judging from the raised brow, Sakura Sojiro-san likely thought, and had more than likely said, differently about the matter in question. That is of no consequence or concern to Tohru, he is simply imparting a fact of life. No one worth the time will care overly much. 

The two patrons also looked up from their empty dishes in clear astonishment. Tohru meets their raised gazes with the dead-eyed stare of someone unamused with what they’d found. 

Tohru Adachi is a convicted murderer, only kept out of jail because he had been deceived and guided by a deity from the other world. A world of the collective unconscious, as it was aptly put; where everyone is equally able to be victim to the beings that dwell there. 

He doesn't know how, to be honest, that convinced anyone. It didn’t convince him, just scared the living shit out of him. Thinking back, it was probably something to do with that unfamiliar woman present at his case. The one with the long mane of crimson hair and the appearance of someone who grew up with money. 

But hey, he's just a former detective of decent skill who had been exiled to a nowhere town to run errands for some asshole with a kid too sweet to deny. 

Nanako. He means Nanako, Narukami Yu can, kindly, immolate himself. 

Sojiro, apparently immune to any kind of discomfort, sets a cup of coffee and a plate of curry on the bar as the two on the end excuse themselves. "Here, kid. Eat and we'll go register you at Shujin Academy." Akira nods and slides into a bar stool with a look in his eye Tohru has seen too often, but not in recent years. 

He is about to begin making his own excuses to leave. Is even in the middle of constructing grand plans to disappear like a fine mist, except when it behooves him to visit, when Akira turns to him. There's a sharp quality about his gaze that makes his blood stop shearing into his muscles. 

"Come with us." 

Huh? He's frozen stiff, onigiri and apple slices in a bag at his side, phone in his jogger's pocket. "Why?"

Akira shrugs at the abrupt, sharp question like the hunched, awkward sixteen-year-old he is, embarrassment crawling across his hidden features. The corners of his mouth tug downward, "I'd like you to." Sojiro is nodding like that is that, very quick to take on a role of guidance. 

Adachi can't do anything but sit next to his nephew with eyes like his enemy and place money on the counter for a plate of curry. A complimentary coffee is given to him, and it is so much better than a konbini breakfast in his empty, stale apartment. So much easier than answering Narukami’s incessant questions. 

How are you? What’s been happening at your job? How have your therapy appointments been going? Any nightmares? Noticed any flashes of the other world lately? What do you feel about the events of Inaba? What does the name Izanami invoke? 

On and on and on. 

A literal laundry list of questions compiled every month like rote clockwork. 

‘How are you?’ More like: Who are you? Why are you even still here? How did you manage to avoid prison? Killed anyone lately? Any obsessive rages befall you recently? Is it easier to not kill when you aren’t being abused in your workplace? 

“Okay, Akira.” 

I am thou, thou art I. 

Chapter Text

The next morning is started under the downpour of rain, a not-quite surprise as he’s returning from an overnight rotation. Knowing that it was due does nothing to make his absolutely soaked suit and shoes any more comfortable, doesn’t erase the spring chill dusting the storm winds. 

It had taken him over an hour to get home because of another accident, mental shutdowns are in nearly every conversation he passes. Meanwhile, the political upheaval means Tohru also has to listen to everyone’s opinions on nearly everything. Every single bozo who ever watched a news channel suddenly thinks they know best. 

Annoying annoying, it’s all so goddamn annoying! 

In addition to the last eighteen hours pushing Tohru to his limits, yellow eyes have been showing up everywhere. His mirror while he gets ready for work, the reflection of his eyes in the microwave, in puddles, store windows, even in his own phone; he can feel the frustration beginning to leak out of him. 

Like a boat destined to sink. 

The rain sounds like television static outside of his apartment, the eyes of his shadow glare up hatefully from his own being cast from the light in his living room. He might be going crazy. 

Wrung out, sliding his eyes pointedly away from the yellow cigarette holes in his lower wall, and tired, Tohru cannot possibly slump onto the couch any harder, his work-issued firearm (returned to him just this year, tch…) deposited onto the low table. His jacket and tie are flung over the back of the couch and his soaked socks are a bad memory. 

Keeping his gaze away from the TV sitting innocuously in his living room, he’s about to get up and make for his fridge when a blaring ringtone from his phone stops him. Well, it makes him flinch back and almost drop his phone, which he scrambles for. 

It vibrates in his hand as he looks down at the unknown number blasted across the home screen. ‘Well, there’s nothing for it…’ The resignation inside him feels like a loss. 

A full three rings pass. 

The weight of a stranger’s life is contemplated for a shred longer than any sane person would with a screaming, crying phone in their hands. Eventually, the small part asking what he would do if it was important won out. Tohru reluctantly opens the line, bringing the phone up in hesitation. 

“Hello, is this Kurusu Akira’s emergency contact I’m speaking with?” The voice is deep and tired, Tohru can just see the pinched brows and pitiful expression. 

“Yes, this is Adachi Tohru.” 

“This is Kawakami, Kurusu’s homeroom instructor from Shujin Academy. I believe we met briefly yesterday.” Oh yes, yellow shirt. She really did have pitiful expressions. It doesn’t answer why she’s calling Tohru - oh… wait. “Kurusu wasn’t in class with us this morning and I was just calling to check and make sure everything was okay.” 

There’s a disbelieving sigh and murmuring as if she’d pulled the phone away to complain or something. What a character, Tohru can feel his eyebrows hitching upwards. Then again, Tohru remembers some of the… characters that had populated the Yasogami High School teaching staff. 

He shifts his weight restlessly, a lie automatically flying from his lips. “Of course, everything’s fine! I apologize profusely, we’ve had a familial emergency. Last minute paperwork and sisters, amiright? I’ll send Akira-kun along to school once we’ve gotten this mess sorted out.” 

Akira not being at Shujin by now, past sunrise, was Not Good. Tohru has no idea where he’d even go, or what trouble he’d get himself in. The kid can’t afford anymore marks on his record and if Minami even hears about this? 

She’ll crawl up both of their asses and never let go of her newfound control over their brainstems. Bitch. 

Kawakami buys his lie with a sigh, fake cheer rising up like some sort of unholy Customer Service persona. “Of course, not an issue! Please notify me of any incidents like this in the future and we’ll get them sorted so Kurusu isn’t unduly punished." Her  voice takes on a more natural tone, gossipy and a little mean around the corners, “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what a precarious situation his education here is in.” 

Unfortunately for her, Tohru doesn’t have the time to deal with her and her half-baked personality. His voice is so pleasant, he shocks himself when he finally says, “I’ll be sure to do that, Kawakami-san. Thank you so much for your understanding.” He can even feel a dopey, stupid smile pulling the corners of his lips as he simpers and then disconnects the call. 

Her answers would have only further irritated him anyway, lackluster and annoying. 

The sound of the rain fills the silence left in the wake of the unexpected call. Tohru is left standing at an awkward place in his eating area, staring at his fridge. Where was Akira? Where did he go? Who did he ask? 

Not Sojiro. Akira is a fairly well-mannered, surprisingly responsible kid and if Tohru accidentally snitches on him to his host for the year, it’d be a bad year for him. 

What a dilemma. 

Tohru can feel the panic beginning to rise again, as his mind stutters to a grinding halt. ‘I don’t know where Akira would go. I don’t know where he is. Fuck! Fuck!’ A hand works its way to the longer strands of hair framing his face, the other’s fingers pulling at his face as he tries, desperately, to jumpstart the rational thought processes. 

Akira is straight edged, his social media is nothing but five random photos of his hometown, bereft of him. He itches to call Sojiro and ask if Akira had left that morning, but it’d do nothing but tip the man off. With nothing to work with, he has but conjecture and guesswork. 

Forcing the panic down from where it has closed his throat in a vice, he opens his phone back up and quickly, shakily, finds Akira’s contact. It’s cute, Aki-kun , with a little character as the image that holds passable resemblance to Tohru’s (missing) nephew. It smirks at him, holding a card beneath crimson eyes. 

Childish, but reluctantly heartwarming. 

He presses to call and can’t even wait with bated breath because it doesn’t even dial. Straight to voicemail. 

Huh. 

Numbly, he navigates back to his home screen and stares at it blankly. It can’t provide answers to him, but it still feels worth a try. 

His nephew, Kurusu Akira, had disappeared between his commute from LeBlanc to Shujin, and it likely wasn’t anywhere but Aoyama Itchome, considering that someone in Shibuya would have noticed. A crowd hides less than people think, especially when there’s surveillance everywhere these days. 

From Akira’s vibes, he wasn’t likely to stray on his own. He didn’t have a social media to stalk for any allusions to wrong-doing, and what, even, would Akira do? He seemed to really enjoy small past times that could be found in Inaba. 

He feels confident that Akira had made it to his destination, but the walk between the station and the school isn’t long. Did he- 

Tohru’s eye catches the edge of a familiar, creepy app and he rears back in alarm. He deleted that app. ‘ Is it Malware? Why won’t it delete?!’ 

The app sits on his home screen, unaffected and glowing, right between his settings and his clock apps. 

Unfortunately, in his ensuing panic of Akira’s whereabouts, his hands were clammy and slippery. His phone slides from his grip like it was always meant for freedom and Tohru is caught between a surprised, “Oh, is-!” and a heavy gasp as he dives for the phone and falls. 

His entire hand mashes the screen, and that’s all the opportunity an app like the Metaverse Navigator needed for an individual as singular as Adachi Tohru. 

For anyone else, it never would have worked. 

Tohru’s sight is obscured by the ethereal wings of a butterfly and when it flutters past, the world turns bizarrely. His phone bleeds out red and black, spinning with the room as it turns and turns, and soon Adachi is turning and folding with it. 

It is a disgustingly familiar sensation as he falls onto a street just like the one outside his apartment building. There’s even a bizarre, abandoned park down the foggy, disgusting road. Littered with fake money and hanging beneath a blood-soaked sky, looming over Tohru like a guillotine. 

It is all wrong, and everything out of his nightmares. 

A shape moves in the distance, floating between buildings and spinning like- “Is that a UFO?” The shape moves further and further away, in the direction of Shibuya and Tohru isn’t curious enough to chase it. 

Knowing his luck, it’d just be another deity and he’d be in its way or something. Better to not risk it, it’d be nothing more than a hassle. 

In any case, something like that in a place like this is foreboding at best. 

And that’s when he looks down. 

In his hand, it sits. The traitorous little piece of shit that started all of… whatever was going on now. He almost gives in and throws it as hard as he can at the ground; except, he knows that if it got him here, it’s likely going to be how he gets out. 

Nothing can happen to it until then. And who even knew if he’d be able to leave, the damn thing won’t turn on. He shoves it into a pocket and heaves a deep, shuddering breath to keep down the hysteria. 

Because this? This is goddamn hysterical. Of course, this would happen! Not even a full 50 hours since that damn conversation with Narukami and here he is. He’s just about to keel over and laugh himself into a grave when he turns. 

The breath leaves him in one go, any laughter, any sense of hysteria, is swallowed up wholly by fear. Primal, racing, blood thumping fear. 

His apartment building doesn’t exist, it’s gone. In its stead, a gargantuan stack of televisions, all of them boxy and outdated. Some older than others, they all sit there, facing outwards, in a haphazard pyramid. As much as an exclamation would be cathartic, nothing can make it past the knot in his throat. 

His hands burn as his nerves light up when every, single one of those TVs’ screens power on, a pair of familiar incandescent eyes glaring down at him. Some of the TVs only hold one eye, some hold both, and they all burn burn burn with hatred. 

The eyes bore into him, through him, and all at once Tohru is breaking eye contact and tearing down the street.

Away, away. Simply away. From those televisions, from that scorching hatred.

He can’t breathe, his breath hitches awkwardly while he sprints. There is no energy conservation, only a burst of motion to get the fuck away from whatever that was. 

Tohru can’t help frustrated tears; he remembers how the people he killed wound up after their trips. He can’t even fight anymore; all he can do is what he’s always done best. 

His tie and jacket would have flapped distractingly, instead he can only be acutely aware of their loss as his bare feet slap the disgusting concrete. They burn with each step, and his lungs are beginning to burn as well but he continues to run, panics, and cries simultaneously; but he runs anyway.

Who gives a shit what it was, or where exactly it was. The worst thing he can ever imagine is the closest it’s ever been to happening, being dragged back into that fog. 

That same, awful fog is lingering here, even still, lurking in forgotten alleys and in the corners of deserted streets. 

The gruesome glowing red that spiders out across the blackened and grimy concrete bleeds into a wavering line of red as he sprints as fast as he can, dodging past milling humanoids and broken ATM machines. 

"Fuck!" He takes a turn, and there, in the middle of an alley, is a large, boxy television. 

His nerves seize up and his body stops against his will.

Tohru can only watch in silent, frozen horror as, like a scene from a horror movie, the screen flips on; colorful bars slowly bleed red and black, swirling into concentric circles, spreading outward until they burst from the tv. 

The red and black drips and sputters from the bottom of the TV screen, pooling across the ground. The viscous substance spreads steadily closer to where Tohru stands, stuck in his own fear of what is to come. 

Bright, glowing, eerily yellow eyes blink open on the spilled liquid; they roll asynchronously in their visible sockets to focus individually on him and, suddenly, he's confronted, for the second time in his life, with a vision of himself with glowing, hateful, dead eyes. 

Eyes the color of saffron, clear and perfectly formed.

The body is still constructing itself, warping like a mirage in some areas and dripping like sewer scum in others. Its form bubbles into his own approximate shape and then, as Tohru takes a step back, it comes into perfect clarity. Like it now knows what it is. 

Somehow, this half-baked visage is suddenly more alive than the man Tohru sees twice a day, morning and night, in the mirror. 

It is both infuriating and frightening. 

“Going to run away again?” It watches him for a few seconds, and then it laughs at him; a mocking, high laugh. Because it knows the answer is yes. It’s been yes since he was a little kid running from bullies, disdainful parents, and a disapproving sister. 

Tohru moves backwards a few steps anyway, watching his shadow warily. 

Its face tugs into a smile, one he remembers the feel of, at this. It’s not a nice smile and the emotions burning behind the yellow eyes were as familiar as an old coat he’d left in his closet. Forgotten, but full of recollection. 

“Always running.” It’s a mockery of light-heartedness, the same mockery Tohru used just this morning. “Even when you were murdering innocents, you were still just running away from everything.” It grows gleeful, hateful, a fervor growing in its words. “Nothing more than a tantrum-throwing idiot, unwilling to see the truth.” 

Tohru clenches his hands, trying to keep calm beneath the rising tide of… something at those words. 

“And now, you’ll turn from me.” Another round of mocking, hysterical laughter. It is a wild, feverish kind of laugh. Manically, the shadow grips its own head, looking both elated and tortured as it continues to laugh at him. “Of course you are, go on. Run.” 

Oh fuck this guy. 

“Yeah, you know what,” Tohru’s voice is strangled and weak, “FUCK YOU!” He screams at it, the echo of his yell around them eerie and wrong, “Fuck you! If you think I wasn’t right to leave, that there wasn’t anything to run from, then sit and twist you yellow-eyed-!” 

The shadow had been growing frenzied while he cursed,“Fuck yourself for not fighting back! Weak, cowardly, little salaryman. Taking out his rage on everyone but himself.” The shadow lunges forward, sharp fingers grabbing at his shoulders meanly. Tohru stumbles back into the dilapidated bricking behind him.

“I’m not a coward, not anymore.” 

The shadow stares him down, latched onto him, like a predator sighting a meal. The singular focus is frightening. And then its smile, mocking and angered, grows into something much more sinister. “In the end, you allowed yourself to become exactly what you ran away from being in the first place.” The laugh is worse up close, ringing in his ears. “Hilarious! Well done, for a shitty jester like you. I appreciate the laugh you provided me though.” 

Tohru is reeling, emotions coming and going too fast to properly identify and process. An emotion rises up within him, boiling beneath the fury and hatred. And then it crests over them, a tide of agony brought with it. Tohru writhes as it burns its way out from the center of his being. 

The both of them, human and shadow, topple over heavily as Tohru’s flailing limbs buckle. The concrete is painful and jarring, his teeth clack together and he uses the quick shock to dislodge his doppelganger. 

“Madness is my left hand; tenacity is my right.”

He scrambles onto his hands and knees, rumpled and gasping as something heavy forms over his face. The edges of it feel ornate and metal, curved and delicate but it. It won’t get off!  

His fingers dig between the mask and his skin, blood running in rivulets down his cheeks, but there’s a peak of freedom beneath the weight and the heaving, burning tide of pain and emotion within him. “I am no clown!” 

The shadow has fallen some feet away, shoved away by the fall and the swirl of power around Tohru, who can see blue fire and chains beginning to form around him. The mask is lifted and a sea of blood falls with a howling laugh. “I’m not you!

‘I'll prove it!!" 

Those horridly excited features bubble up and melt together grotesquely. The other version of himself folds over like a brittle, fleshy house of cards, eyes rolling back and dimming to a weird pale, white.

The features bubble and gurgle like it cannot seem to decide what to be. Its spine folds like a chair the wrong way and the haphazard amalgamation collapses in on itself like a stellar event. Eventually something large and horned begins to cut its way from the mass. 

The new monster’s knife-feet gouges the concrete in deep scores as it shifts its weight, more blades growing and shrinking from the bubbling mass of cognitive flesh. 

Blood distorts his vision of it, chains weaving and breaking him around him as a voice he recognizes rings out. 

"After a descent into hell,

Ascend and illuminate the night!" 

"I am thou, thou art I."

"The moon runs from no one

Digging his fingers beneath the new space beneath and pulling that weight off of his face is a bright agony, visceral and sharp. The freedom of it burns frigid in the aftermath across Tohru’s face, radiating deep, so deep it seems to seep straight into his mind. Right into his soul.

He can smell and taste the iron tang of blood, even more of it splatters to the ground in front of him. He can feel it crawling down his neck to soak his white shirt collar, but blue fire distracts him as it flares around him in a way that hadn't happened with Magatsu Izanagi.

It simply is."

"Tsukuyomi!" 

The discomfort of a blood-soaked collar fades. His clothes, new different clothes, are ruffled by a wind whirling around him. Strange, alien clothes he wouldn’t find anywhere in a store, for sure.

Spellbound, free, he watches as his new persona rises up, Tsukuyomi , black and white stripes on its body suit, tall and thin with a segmented black cloak flying around it. Its mask is silver and angular, situated high on its... face area.

Above the mask is a segmented moon wedged horizontally into the top, cracking and reforming, white and glowing. The shattered pieces forming, rising, and dissipating off of the shattered crescent moon and the energy behind the unequal pieces look like the ears of a hare.

There is an ornate mirror that shines on its back, and the crescent scythe it swings at the bubbling mass of shadow is just as the moon on its head is. 

Tohru can't do anything but laugh and laugh, even long after the shadow has dissipated, and his new (only) persona is settled back into the mask on his face. 

He just keeps laughing, until it doesn’t sound like laughing anymore. 

It echoes around the distorted city like the call of a madman.

-----------------------------

Akira is numb. 

His brain feels heavy, like he has cotton instead of gray matter in his skull. Ryuji, at least, is still spirited and energetic, but Akira isn’t. 

Arsene sits heavy and inquisitive in a space that feels as though it’s been opened up within him. And it may not be unpleasant, but it is new and distracting, and now that the castle is nowhere to be found, he’s grown weary. 

‘I just want to go take a nap in my new attic.’ 

“-at’s goin’ on here?” 

A counselor, arms crossed, and glare set firmly on his face, looks down at them from the top of the stairs leading up to Akira’s new school. The one he hasn’t even properly attended yet. “That’s exactly what I wanted to ask you. We received a call from the police.” 

Akira and Ryuji both tense at this for separate reasons. Ryuji is upset because, “That damn cop snitched on us after all!” Akira has just remembered that both Sojiro and his uncle are probably going to be demanding answers. 

A deep, frosty resignation wells up in him. He’s… probably about to be expelled, isn’t he?

“Hmm… it’s rare not to see you alone. Where were you roaming around until this time?” The question is enough to make Ryuji visibly fidget. 

“Uhh..” 

‘Don’t say it. Please. It didn’t go well last time.’ Akira pleads. 

“A ca- a castle?” Akira sighs. 

“So you have no intention of giving an honest answer?” 

“What’s this I hear about a castle?” That voice and that… face. Akira squints at the man beneath his glasses, wondering where he’d seen that teacher before. He’s built, but he has a long square face and a weird bob of hair. 

“Kamoshida?!” Ryuji manages to keep it to a startled exhale, instead of a startled yell, which Akira is grateful for, because the guy stops at the top of the stairs, within hearing range. 

“You seem so carefree, Sakamoto. Quite a difference from when you were devoting your time to practice for the track team.” Very pointed, Akira noticed, watching Ryuji’s shoulders tense up and his stance shift. 

“Shuddup, it’s your fault tha-”

“How dare you speak that way to an instructor!” The counselor’s enraged voice cut through Ryuji’s protestation like butter. He crossed his arms again, “...There’s not much leeway left for you, you know?” 

And oh boy did Akira know. Ryuji seemed to know too, but he certainly cared less. “He’s the one who provoked me!” 

“Do you really want to be expelled!” A massage to the bridge of the man’s nose, a sigh, and he’s speaking again, “In any case, you’ll have to explain yourself, follow me!” 

“That’s bullshit!” Ryuji looked panicked and angry, railing against a system that has obviously decided to target him. Akira feels uncomfortable just being around, but Ryuji seems to rally around his presence. Feathers rustle in his soul at the feeling of being generally useless. 

“Come now,' 'Kamoshida’ demures with a fake smile, “I should have been more considerate, too. Let’s just say that we were both to blame.” The fake smile thing was quickly becoming irritating. Akira watched the counselor be effortlessly charmed. 

Must be nice. 

“Well, if you say so…” The other man relents, looking back down to Ryuji, calmer than he was before the other teacher’s intervention. “Still, you’re coming with me. It’s undeniable that you’re extremely late.” 

“Fine.” Ryuji huffs out, stomping up the stairs with a mean mug directed at Kamoshida the whole way. It’s kind of impressive how intimidating he could be walking his way to be disciplined. 

Kamoshida is still standing there when he looks down, “By the way, you’re that new transfer student, correct?” Akira gives him a quick, terse nod. “Have we met somewhere?”

“At the castle” 

“Castle?? Oh yeah… I saw you at the station. Well, I’ll overlook this for today.” Contrary to what they say, third time was actually not the charm. “I’m sure you’ve heard from the principal but cause any trouble and you’ll be expelled. Understand?” 

“Can you overlook more?” It was out of his mouth before he could stop it, bubbling up from the place within him with horns and feathers that laughed with an echo. 

“Is that supposed to be a joke? I’m not laughing.” Akira keeps an impressive poker face while the man glares down at him “At any rate, hurry up and go to the faculty office. I’m sure Kawakami-san’s tired of waiting.” He smirks nastily. “Good luck trying to enjoy your new school life.” 

Getting to the faculty office is easy, ignoring the whispers that followed is less so. Kawakami-sensei is much the same as the last time Akira laid eyes on her; that is, tired and deeply unimpressed to the point of disdaining having to have contact with him. 

She greets him with a sigh, “Unbelievable,” Her face is irritated when she looks at him, “Being over half a day late on your first day? You’re lucky your guardian was nice enough to explain to me your situation.” Tohru? Well, that was nice of him. 

… except now he had to answer questions, because his uncle was certainly going to have them. Maybe the castle line will work this time? No no, surely not. “My train was late after I left, I guess there’s another accident.” 

Kawakami settles an incredibly unamused look upon him, obviously able to hear the lie but unable to tell where in his story it was. She doesn’t call him on it, instead she turns in her swivel chair. 

“ Look, you’re… technically excused for today.” Another sigh, her face morphing into the kind of expression that usually finds its home on his mother’s face, “Will you pull yourself together? You were given fair warning yesterday, and I heard you were caught along with that Sakamoto-kun?” Her crossed arms show how disproving she is of this. 

Akira is unamused at this, like… what? “That Sakamoto?” His tone must speak volumes for his thoughts on the conversation at large because Kawakami looks both guilty and disdainful. 

“Don’t get involved with him, okay? He’s nothing but trouble. He wasn’t like that when he was devoting his time to running track and field though…” She seemed to be wistful for those days. 

Akira turns his gaze away, unsure of how to respond to that. He barely knew Sakamoto Ryuji, who was he to say otherwise. He seemed nice enough, though. At least, undeserving of the harsh demeanor people took on to deal with him. 

“Anyway, break is almost over. Classes will end after fifth period today.” Akira nods, hanging around awkwardly. “I’ll have you introduce yourself when class resumes. Follow me.” 

Numbly, he followed. 

-----

7/16/2023: A very nice commenter has asked if I accept art/have concept art. I do! Here's just a base-color concept sketch for the image of Tsukuyomi I had in my head, one day I'll exchange it with a finished concept design in the lighting it was summoned, but we readers can use our imagination can't we~

Chapter Text

Class is, predictably, as bad as he feared it would be. His classmates both fear and hate him, leaning far away when they share any supplies with him. The whispers and the gossip is hard to ignore when the girls sit only one row over. 

The day ending early seems a blessing, now. 

Akira’s out the door of the classroom faster than he thought possible once class ends. He’s left standing hesitantly in the hall, frozen in fear at facing his uncle and Sojiro, when Kawakami catches him. 

“Oh, and about-” this is when Ryuji strolls up, hands in his pockets. “Speak of the devil…” Akira thinks the roles are reversed, because he hates every second of interaction with the school administration. “What do you want? I heard the police caught you cutting classes today.” 

“Ugh… It was nothin’.” Ryuji looks away, either guilty or growing irritated. Or both. 

“And you haven’t dyed your hair back to black either.” 

“Sorry ‘bout that.” Ryuji’s sorry rang more insincere than it sounded, which was already dismissive, when he immediately tunes out the woman’s existence, turning to Akira to mutter quietly, “I’ll be waiting on the rooftop.” 

Then he’s gone, walking down the hall nonchalantly towards the water closet. 

Kawakami watches him go with a long-suffering expression, “See? That’s why I don’t want you getting involved. Understood?” 

Akira gives her a nod and is moving to the stairs before he can really acknowledge the biased garbage she was spewing. The platform to the third floor between sets of stairs is bereft of any students at this time, all of them leaving school in a rush to beat the rush of traffic following the accident. 

A voice draws his attention.

“Why did you allow a student like him to transfer here? He’s already started associating with Sakamoto. A student with a criminal record and the culprit of an assault case?” Akira ducks around the corner of the wall when he sees a mop of wavy hair come into view. “At this rate, it’d be pointless how much I contribute to the school.” The same, built teacher who he’d provoked earlier is doing a damn good job of sounding like he’s truly lamenting the fact that Akira’s even here. 

Akira scowls deeply at the floor from around the corner to the stairs, confused and frustrated with this school.

“Now don’t be like that. This school counts on you, Kamoshida-kun. You are our star.” What? That’s such a doting answer, is that the principal’s voice? It’s vaguely familiar… “Still, a steady build-up is necessary behind such brilliance as well.” They must be talking about something entirely different. 

“..Your troubles never seem to end, do they, Principal Kabayakawa?” Another strange answer, what the fuck is even today? A sigh from the instructor, Akira can almost see the fake expression sitting on his face. “Alright, I understand. I’ll continue to do my best to answer your expectations of me.” 

Akira leaves before he can hear anything else upsetting or confusing. A steady build up? Troubles? And how did any of that have to do with him? 

The rest of the trek to the roof is peaceful, other than whispers as students pass on their ways out of the building. A few minutes more and he’s staring at an unlocked door. The sign is easily ignored as he pushes it open, the sun peeking through the clouds and lighting the world up for a few seconds. 

Did Ryuji dry off the stuff he’s sitting on? Akira looks around the wet rooftop, the smell of city rain is strange. Less green and grayer, which is also a strange thing to notice. 

His attention is drawn to the blonde immediately, “There you are. Sorry for callin’ you up here like this.” Akira shrugs, because who cared? He certainly didn’t. Or maybe he was just overly exhausted. “I bet Kawakami already told you stuff like, ‘don’t get involved with him,’ huh?” 

“She said you’re trouble.” But also, spot on prediction of what people were saying. That’s kind of a talent, to be able to see and observe past yourself so accurately. Ryuji was an incredibly observant person, for all his theatrics and shouting. 

“We’re pretty much in the same boat. I heard you got a criminal record. Everyone’s talkin’ about it.” Akira can feel his scowl pull at the corners of his mouth. He knows. “No wonder you were so gutsy.” 

‘..gutsy?’

Akira leans against the desks in front of Ryuji, unsure what to do with the sudden praise. “What was all that.. that happened? You know, how we almost got killed at a castle… It wasn’t a dream… right? You remember it too, yeah?”

“I don’t know.” 

It could have very easily been a dream, but Arsene’s continued weighty presence signals otherwise. Akira doesn’t really want to encourage Ryuji, who is a pretty ordinary teenager, by all accounts, to continue investigation into whatever they had a chance encounter with. They’d only escaped because that cat had taken pity on them. 

“Yeah… There are dreams you die in, after all.” Akira nods, just to agree, but dreams don’t ever feel like that . “I mean, even if it was a dream, you saved me from Kamoshida. So yeah… Thanks, Akira.” 

“No problem.” A thumbs up, which seems to only further enthuse Ryuji, who grins at him, bright and sunny. 

“But man, that Kamoshida we saw there….” He grows dim quickly, “You prolly don’t know about it, but there are some rumors about him.” ‘Rumors’ is said with a strange weight to it that Akira cannot decipher. 

“Kamoshida…” The guy with the hair? From the castle? 

“You know, the guy you met at the school gates. The ripped one. That asshole who was all full of himself at the castle.” Oh. It makes sense that the instructor already making a real ass of himself would be the one with the creepy castle.

 “No one says anything against ‘cause he’s some medalist who took the volleyball team to nationals. The way Kamoshida was king of that castle felt crazy real ‘cause of that….

“...I wonder if we can go back to that castle again…” Ryuji seems to come back to himself, remembering their very close brush with death in that place. “Ugh, forget it. Must’ve all been a dream! It has to be!” Ryuji sounds like he’s trying to convince himself more than Akira, who feels like a passive witness to the conversation at this point. 

“Sorry to drag you out here like this. That’s all I had to say..” He eyes Akira, “You know, we might be pretty similar. I feel like we’re gonna get along fine as ‘troublemakers.’ I’m Sakamoto Ryuji, don’t ignore me, alright?” 

As if anyone could, but Akira smiles back and nods to him anyway. And then his brand new friend is gone. Throwing a “See ya” backwards casually as he leaves. 

Akira sits there for a few minutes before his phone makes the first normal sound it has all day. A single text message has finally come through.

Uncle (handcuffs) : Are you at school?

The contact photo is one that Akira had snapped when Adachi-san wasn’t looking, the other man watching the news, bored, with a coffee mug rim steaming in front of him. It’s a nice photo, Akira thinks, unable to squash the weird, contented feeling in his chest. 

He quickly types out a reply and leaves the rooftop.

----------------------------

Tohru is visibly relieved when Akira emerges from within the school not even five minutes after sending an affirmative reply. Exchanging messages and having a visible proof of existence are two very different things, especially after the day that Tohru had.

He knows his relief is visible because he can feel his shoulders slump and the tension in the back of his neck eases, arms hanging as he watches his nephew slowly approach. Akira is hale and whole, and that was all that Tohru could be bothered to care about at that moment. 

Shoving aside his gross feelings, Tohru places a hand on Akira’s shoulder, more a reassurance to himself than his nephew. It’s not like he’s going to yell at him, anyway. His voice is scratchy and his throat burns. 

‘Thank whatever is up there that he’s okay. I don’t think I’d dodge prison this time.’ In spite of his thoughts, he offers a tired smile. 

Is this possibly… the urge to give a hug? Egh.. that’s disgusting. 

Akira still ducks his head apologetically, not meeting his eyes. “Sorry ‘bout today.”

Tohru can’t contain his grimace. “All in a day’s work.” His cheer is flat and he rubs the back of his neck, face falling. “You do owe me an explanation though, Akira.” 

“Right…” 

The walk and following train ride is mostly silent. Now that relief and other fluffy emotions aren’t clouding his senses, Akira seems as pitifully exhausted as he is. With this revelation in mind, Tohru doesn’t bother doing much more than idly directing them both towards a nearby crepe stand while they walk through Central Street.

“Get whatever you want.” 

Akira looks at him like Tohru is about to murder him while his back is turned. Tohru can feel his eyebrows raise in askance until the teen eventually looks at the menu.

Weird. Akira is a weird kid. 

He orders something that Tohru cannot even begin to comprehend on a good day, let alone through the surrealism of ordering a dessert that doesn’t have yellow or chocolate syrup in it - lest he just finally vomit. The guy taking their order waits until Tohru gets a something-something macha, doesn’t matter what it was, it is very green and that is what was important. 

Crepes in hand, they walk further and further until the shops fade into houses, the people milling eventually thinning out to nothing. 

Not tasting what he’s consuming, Tohru stops at a quaint street corner to look at his nervous ward. “So.” 

“So…” 

This kid. “You disappeared today, presumably on your way to school. My guess was after you reached Aoyama.” Cold, hard facts are the hardest to run from, and Tohru was trained in how to verbally corner people. 

Poor Akira never stood a chance. 

The teenager chews on his crepe nervously, looking as drained as Tohru feels. Finally, he swallows and breathes. “I was walking from the station to school today when, suddenly, a castle was where it was supposed to be.” He leans against some fencing, watching a family tread further up the street. “Me and another boy got locked up and lost in there until something decided to be nice enough and guide us out.”

‘Hey… that kind of sounds like… Surely not, right?’ Tohru finishes his crepe and tosses the leftover paper in a receptacle sitting nearby. 

“A castle, huh?”

There is a long-suffering resignation in Akira’s face that lends credence to his story. And if that’s the case, then… “The king was some guy with yellow eyes, he seemed to know the boy who got lost with me.”

Tohru can feel his mouth form a grim line, they got sucked in on the same day? As much as he wants to write that off as a coincidence, he simply cannot. That world didn’t work in coincidences, Tohru had found that out the hard way. 

“So you make a wrong turn, with this boy, and your school is suddenly a castle with a king. This king locks you up and you escape.” Certainly sounds like the other world, a different iteration than the TV world he’s familiar with. 

“The king ended up being one the teachers. He and Ryuji have beef.” Tohru is going to assume Ryuji is the other student that Akira got lost with. 

King of the Castle… Tohru scoffs. “Well, he doesn’t sound like he’s particularly original, if you ask me. I’m glad you came back safe.” Exponentially more so now that it’s been confirmed to be worse than his fears. 

He doesn’t want to think about his nephew encountering any of the horrors that exist there. 

“You..” Tohru looks up from his feet at the sound of his nephew’s voice warbling. “You believe me?” 

God damn it all, that is so sad. How the fuck is Tohru supposed to remain apathetic and detached when it matters when Akira looks up at him with those eyes and… oh no, he’s sniffling. Panic rises within him as he watches the pale skin of his nephew’s face flush as he begins to cry. 

Frozen in inaction, unsure of what to do with a grown, crying teenager standing next to him, he eventually says. “Yeah, I believe ya, kiddo.” He lowers his arms when Akira looks at him again, “There’s some crazy shit out there kid. I’ve seen it for myself.”

The fog had been almost a non-concern of his in Inaba. He’d mostly been preoccupied with ensuring everyone thought he was way too incompetent and bumbling to possibly kill anyone and stalling the investigations through his own inaction. 

What did the fog matter except to reveal bodies, reveal the truth? And boy did the truth fucking hurt. Fragile nihilism, they’d said, someone fighting against and running from reality in equal measure.

The truth changes as reality changes, and the truth now was that he (reluctantly) cared for Kurusu Akira, who was crying. As the adult in the situation, he would, fuck, offer comfort and give him a hug. Or something. He throws his eyes skyward and grips the teen’s shoulder to reel him in. 

If he can't see any expressions and avoid eye contact, maybe the embarrassment will be survivable. 

Akira latches on like he’s been waiting for a hug for years; it is weird and restricting. Tohru doesn’t really… give hugs? It’s been an uncountable number of years since he’d last been given a hug. 

Akira doesn’t sob, his shoulders don’t shake, and he’s mostly silent but Tohru can feel a patch spreading as tears soak into the fabric by his collarbone.

A few minutes pass.

“It was my first day.” Akira finally mutters, lanky and curled against Tohru before he lets go to turn away. While he’s throwing away his own crepe wrapper, he presumably wipes his (nonexistent, as far as Tohru's concerned) eyes while his face is hidden. 

Fucking lamentable, in Tohru’s opinion. “Your next day will be better, and normal.” He promises, even if he can’t find a way to enforce it. Worst case, he could always dive into that world after him. 

“..” Akira just looks at him, hesitant and wary - he looks like he needs sleep, which might explain the tears.

“We can talk more about this later. You need sleep, first and foremost.” He laughs nervously, not liking how fast things have gone off the rails. Tohru looks away, towards Shibuya central watching a billboard in the distance play an ad for the new Risette single. “You look like you’re about to faint.” 

“..Thank you.” Tohru waves off the thanks, shaking his head. 

“Please,” He begs again, “Go home, eat curry, take care of yourself, and sleep.” Akira laughs at this like Tohru has told him a dirty joke. “I am not joking.”

“No no… I just- you’re good at this.” Akira smiles brightly. The kind of smile Nanako would give him when he told her shortcuts to her homework that she’d then avoid using.

‘What?’

“Goodbye, Oji.” 

Tohru stands there without a thought in his head while his nephew puts his hands in his pockets and slouches away like he hadn’t just cried in his uncle’s arms about a first day at school being sucked into another world. 

Eventually, his thought process restarts, and he goes home. He does exactly what he’d ordered Akira.

On a whim he sends a message his nephew’s way. Go to sleep, idiot.

----------------------------

He’s getting ready for his next shift on rotation, his tie is silky beneath his fingers and… cerulean? His ties were a wide range of shades, but he didn’t own this particular one. The TV drones on comfortingly in the background, but Tohru is stuck staring at this tie.

His next shift isn’t for three more days.

Plans for dinner and the rest of his next eighteen hours slide out of his brain like water through a sieve. Is this a dream? His dreams aren’t usually so peaceful. It's almost like being under water, sound feels like it should be muffled and the air is more... substantial than a usual mix of gas molecules. Out the window, which is larger and more expansive than the one that sits in his actual apartment, the moon hangs high, large, and beautiful above an ocean.

It is a mistake to continue gazing at the shining moon, because he moves his attention to the surrounding night sky and the stars that seem to wink in and out of existence up there. As if the heavenly bodies were simply waiting for him to just notice, they begin to fall. It's like watching sparkling snow. Each star leaves a trail of stardust behind it as they fall and fall and then sink into a chaotic black sea. 

Sick with horror, Tohru watches, frozen, as star after star is eaten, slovenly cannibalized by the not-water like a coordinated, cosmic joke. Eventually, he gains enough of his senses to twist away from the borderline disgusting sight as a clock tower chimes. It's... wrong, with twenty-five hours blazen on its face as it rises from the writhing sea. 

A white, starlit butterfly flutters across his vision, distracting him. It is so delicate and unaffected, out of place. 

“Fear not…

…for I am thou.”

A man is suddenly next to him, tall and clad in white. Tohru flinches away, violently. He puts the kitchen table between them. 

His face, masked though it may be, shows the bottom of his nose to his chin, only a quarter of his face, Tohru is marking the line of his jaw in confusion when the visible half of a delicate pair of lips pull into a smile. 

It is kind and unfamiliar, which raises all sorts of alarms with Tohru. He swallows, watching the unfamiliar figure warily, “This… isn’t a dream, is it?”

Outside, the moon begins to grow larger. 

“No, it is not.” The man’s eyes are sharp, watching him unwaveringly in the weird lighting of Tohru’s (not) dream-apartment. The man’s long sable ponytail swishes as he turns to watch the moon grow ever closer. “And yet, it is.” 

Tohru eyes him warily from the other side of his living room. “Who are you, and what,” he asks, pointing out the window, “is that?” The weird ocean continues to eat stars and that clock tower is growing taller and taller as it reaches for the falling heavens. 

“We are in the sea of humanity; this is a port. On one side, the sea, and on the other, safe harbor.” The man’s smile is knowing, accepting, even fond. It’s weird, and creepy. Tohru scowls back at him, which seems to just delight this stranger. “You may call me Philemon.” 

A strange man with a strange name, with a strange intensity in his strangely red-brown eyes.

“So, you brought me here to-  what? Invade my dreams like a weird stalker?” Tohru crosses his arms, disbelief writing itself in the lines of his face. “Well, nice to meet you, dream invader.”

The laugh is strangely satisfying to pull out of the enigmatic, but clearly troubled, entity. How Tohru knows this when a majority of his face is covered by that mask is a mystery. It is also grating because it was not his intention to provide a laugh, which always leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. The intention was to go back to non-dreams so he could sleep. 

They don’t speak any more than that. Which Tohru is fine with; instead, both of them sinking to the couch to watch the program it was tuned to idly. He doesn’t ponder how stuff like this works in whatever a ‘port’ was. The silence resonates between them like someone’s hit a tuning fork, and Tohru just lets it be.

Even here, he’s exhausted.

He and Philemon sit on the couch, occasionally watching the sea instead of the TV, all the way until the moon eventually crashes into the black, twisting waves.

Tohru turns to catch a edge of a gentle smile as everything goes white-

----------------------------

Akira wakes up in a dream on the most uncomfortable cot in existence. Chains hang and clink around him, and the walls are padded, dyed a familiar blue. Sitting up, he tries to clear the spinning in his head. 

‘Am I… a prisoner?’ His outfit seems to suggest so, and the manacles and shackles have real weight to them. Beyond the bars to his left is a desk, where a man with overly wide eyes and a long nose above a sinister grin watches him. 

Another guard, calmer and more apathetic, watches him in annoyance, “Our master wishes to speak with you. It’s for your own sake that you take his words to heart.” 

“First off, let us celebrate our reunion.” He smiles wider, like a shark scenting blood, “Oh..? You’ve awakened to your powers- and special ones at that. Your rehabilitation can finally begin.” 

“My what?” 

“There is no need to understand it all for the time being. You will be training the power of Persona, which you have awakened to.” The tapping of his long fingers draws Akira’s eye, clad in white gloves and resting on the warden’s desk beneath the loudspeaker. “Personas are, in other words, a ‘mask’ - an armor of the heart when confronting worldly matters.” 

Akira absorbs this silently, watching the strange man and his strange assistants from the other side of the bars. 

“I have high expectations for you.” 

----------------------------

The next morning is just as rainy as the day before. To Akira, it seemed like the day was more honest, with the downpour slamming against the sidewalk outside his window. His morning routine is more tiring with all the new sets of stairs involved. 

Sojiro hands him curry and a coffee but is more busy watching someone explain the atmospheric conditions than paying attention to Akira. He tosses a quick, “Don’t forget your umbrella today, it’s by the door outside,” as he’s leaving. 

He is less exhausted today than yesterday, and Arsene seems to have fully settled into the space within his heart dedicated for Personas. According to that weird guy in the dream. Which… Akira sighs. He probably can’t tell his uncle about that. 

Castles and the other world are one thing, dreaming of weird jail cells probably isn’t anything bad right? 

That feels like a flimsy excuse, but he clings to it anyways.

He is on the platform when a girl draws his attention with her conversation. It’s a confusing one to follow, Akira doesn’t understand why she’s so hung up on the ribbon. 

The two draw his attention to the other red ribbon in front of him, tied in a head of smooth, dark crimson hair. What a cool hair color, Akira wishes his hair was like that. He could do modeling or something with hair like that, he’d be so pretty.

The train arrives and Akira drives the thought from his head by peering down at his phone, some of his mutuals are reposting some student’s food blog. ‘This guy… he’s kind of pompous, isn’t he?’ He scrolls through a few more posts before he’s boarding the train. 

Unfortunately, he looks up just in time to see the girl with the hair offer her seat to an elderly woman only to have it stolen. She watches him as he pretends to sleep a little helplessly. What would Tohru do?

“Want me to wake him up?” He has a few ideas on just how to do that, but she brushes him off, and not in the usual manner for Shujin Academy students. She’s kind about it and her face never falls from its positivity. 

“I can understand his position as well.” She’s saying but Akira doesn’t really buy it. It sounds, to him, like running. He watches as she apologizes to the elderly woman, “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of any help.” 

“It’s alright, dearie. Don’t you worry.” She clasps a shaking hand on the girl’s shoulders, but Akira can’t help but feel dissatisfied. He was about to say something when he’s distracted by the brush of feathers against his mind. 

In the past, Akira normally would have helped by now but… 

Was his decision back then a mistake? Arsene seems to be a testament to his thoughts otherwise, but he’s still wholly unsure about it. He continues to play an unwilling witness to the whole situation, but at least the girl offers the woman, “... to carry your luggage, at least.” 

“Thank you, ain’t it heavy though?” The older woman inquires, worriedly watching the student shoulder bag after bag. 

“No, not at all,” She smiles beatifically at the woman, “I train plenty!” Oh, was she another runner, maybe she played a sport? Maybe this was a sign from the world that Akira should start working out? Maybe he'd just stick to what he can manage quietly in his room for now, public gyms are kind of embarrassing to go to alone. 

He’s all too eager to leave behind the awkwardness left in the wake of his (poor, in his opinion) attempt to offer assistance. He’s made good headway, too. In fact, he's almost to the next gate when the girl from earlier encounter catches up to him. 

“Pardon me…” She bows very properly and precisely, “Thank you so much for earlier.” 

“With what?” He hadn’t done anything but watch, his fingers fixed his bangs back into place.

“For speaking up when I offered my seat on the train.” She explains cheerfully, like the thought was something precious to her, “You’re a second-year at Shujin Academy, correct? I’m a first-year student there myself. Thanking you totally slipped my mind back on the train, and I didn’t want to be rude to my senpai.” 

Akira looks at her blankly, ‘Does she not know who I am?’

She doesn’t seem dissuaded by his silence, or the bewildered staring, “Please, excuse me!” She bows once more and then moves past him quickly. 

It was nice, not being treated like the scum of society for a little while. Akira eventually follows, heading to board his second line of the morning. For some reason, he feels like something's missing from his day-to-day, but he can't put a finger on it. Maybe he just needs a cat or something. 

Yeah, a cat. 

On his walk to the school, he finally gives up on talking Sojiro into allowing him a pet and decides he'll just save up and feed some of the strays around Yongen in the evenings. It is disappointing but a quick reminder to himself of his living arrangements douses his disappointment a little, maybe Tohru will help him feed them? 

Standing outside Shujin, tentative hopes blooming beneath his umbrella, he pauses to send a message to his uncle letting him know he made it to school. He also sends a brief thanks for yesterday. 

----------------------------

Tohru wakes up on Tuesday, the twelfth, to the sound of a text from Akira, letting him know he made it to school. 

Heaving out a sigh of relief, he rolls over and stretches out the stiffness clinging to him. His joints make some disturbing noises and his tendons feel refreshed. Twenty-seven is as good an age as any to start stretching. He doesn't want to be like the old people from Inaba, hobbling and hunched from a lifetime of sedentary boredom. With no work for the next three days and no nephew to immediately track down and cover for, going to LeBlanc for breakfast sounds better than him trying to cook anything after the past few days.

He deftly rolls a quick joint and watches the rain fall heavily outside of his apartment to quell the nausea every time he notices the space within him that hosts his Persona. It was supposed to clear up later, but the rain is still inconvenient, he notes as he carefully cracks his apartment window a little and settles in to idly hate atmospheric convection. 

He’s washing his face in the mirror (and secretly enjoying the lack of spine-melting terror when there are no yellow eyes to greet him) while half-listening to the news when he remembers the dream. Drying wet skin, he pointedly shoves away any thoughts to do with watching stars writhe and die in a sea of chaos and emotion. Or moons flashing bright red irises at him, none of that.

Well, he does his best. 

He is on his way out the door, trash sorted and ready to be set out, when he walks out and comes face to face with a familiar mask of white porcelain with gold leafing. The single butterfly wing on the eye is a clear marker of identity even if the white suit and waist-length ponytail weren’t singular enough. 

Unaffected by the strange man standing in what looked to be cosplay, people stroll by without looking at him. In fact, they don’t notice him at all. 

Tohru passes through him on his step out the door and can’t do anything but keep walking lest he turn and super-critically melt down.

The entire way to LeBlanc, he spies the man in strange locations: on a bench near the park, standing stock still in the middle of a second-hand resale shop, leaning over a man’s shoulder while he works a cash register, looking down at a brunette teen with a briefcase’s phone. Tohru just averts his eyes as best he can. 

The closer to LeBlanc he gets, the more the hallucination turns its attention from the surroundings and on to him. He can feel something cold and fragmenting shift inside of him at the fear response. 

‘This morning had been so normal, too. I can’t have a single fucking day.’ He ducks into the empty laundromat across from the café before anyone can notice the distress rising from him like steam. He can almost imagine it, ridiculous in the way he always looks - a clown still, even in moments like these. ‘And now I’m hallucinating some character I must’ve seen somewhere.’ 

Definitely not from that dream. Nope. Tohru proceeds to sink to his knees and try to remember in vain how to breathe. His skeleton rattles within its cage of muscle and his heartrate doesn't want to slow down but he keeps manually timing his breathing the same anyway - it'll work eventually. It has to. 

One second, he is staring down at his own shoes, breathing, and the next, there is a second pair across from his. “You seem distressed.”

“You’re here.” 

His voice is flat with an embarrassing wobble that betrays his fragility. 

“A port is a crossing both ways.” Tohru grips at his hair tightly to ground himself, but long, dexterous fingers are pulling his hand away gently. “I am real because I am thou.” Philemon observes Tohru’s panic with the gentle and alien patience of something more and less than human. 

Pointedly, the figment of his imagination insisting it was real does nothing to try and help it. Typical.

“I’m not crazy, this is actually happening. I’ve actually acquired a supernatural stalker. Or this is a hallucination and I've finally cracked. Tell Narukami your methods as a parting gift, why don't you?” He giggles fervently at the man’s masked face. Philemon remains unmoving but attentive in a deeply embarrassing way. Though his grip is gentle, he more has steel for a skeleton than bone. Even his pupils do not waver the way someone’s eyes do when they are looking over features. 

The man doesn’t sigh, but he shifts. “The World has no bearing upon my presence here. However, I am.. regretful that this has distressed you. That was not my intention, only to assist the Trickster via a loophole.” Fuck this Trickster character, Tohru’s sanity isn’t worth some random asshole’s life. The solid hallucination's explanation makes no sense. Nothing about his life makes any sense anymore. His nephew, with his situation and existence, baffles him. The fact that he likes the kid and reluctantly wants his life to be a little bit easier? Confusing, troubling, it's erratic behavior he can't afford anymore. 

Look at where caring about anyone got him. Caught. 

“Do not flatter yourself. I don’t care about any Trickster.” Tohru hisses at him like a snake that’s been stumbled upon, even the name is enough to send him into an apoplectic rage. Trickster, Jester, Clown, Joker, Jack, Fool - nothing but entertainment for the kings of the world, the most humiliating-! “I care that I’m going out of my damn mind here and you’re just the cherry to top that shit cake.” 

Not for the first time, Tohru stands there, staring into the indecipherable face of someone and hates his entire forsaken life. Hates his parents, his sister, hates his recruitment experience and the lifestyle he's trapped in, hates being a cop and a convict, hates Inaba, hates this. He'd been bored, and hated that too, but at least it'd been peaceful. A gentle sort of interlude to the shitstorm of his life. 

His apology -if you could call it that (it was more of a minor emotional outburst.. yeah) was not nice or gentle, but it is as much a reassurance that Philemon has nothing to be so… weird about as he’s going to give. Silence greets him, but the not-hallucination is still there, stealing away Tohru’s fragmented attention all too easily. 

“I mean it. This is nothing more than a minor panic attack.” Absolutely nothing more. “Stop giving yourself so much credit.” Even his disgust and anger are shaky at best in the cold aftermath of his breakdown. Everything feels comfortingly distant, but he's left with thoughts he'd wished had stayed buried under four years of exhaustion. God damn it all. 

“Lying to me, Adachi Tohru,” It is the first time that the stranger has uttered his name in any form, and it is terrifying, “is as good as lying to yourself. Thou art I, after all.” 

Tohru throws up his hands in a frustrated show of surrender, giving up on understanding anything about his own life anymore. He rolls his eyes and walks out of the dusty, machine-lined room to get some damn good food from across the street. Philemon follows, assumedly. 

Tohru wouldn’t know, he doesn’t look. 

Chapter Text

He… hates his life. 

This isn’t a particularly inspired revelation for Tohru, he’s known this for years. Waking up to a masked man staring down at him, through him, is enough to express deliver his relatively young heart to the end of its pitiful life. He almost launches himself into the air but just barely manages to minimize it- twitching pathetically and flinching back into the mattress. 

Another text from Akira pings on his phone, seeming to be far out of reach to him at that moment.

Unperturbed by Tohru’s glare darkening from astonished to aggravated, Philemon gives a facsimile of a gentle smile. “Good morning. You seemed to rest peacefully.” 

Tohru blinks at the man and turns as his thought processes catch up to him. “I feel like I just got pulled through a concrete wall.” 

“I can confirm that your dreams were your own.” Tohru resists rolling his eyes, but only just barely. He makes haste for the bathroom in lieu of giving the man (or whatever he was beneath that mask) an answer. It’s only been a full day and already Tohru knows how much an exercise in futility it was to hold a conversation with any semblance of logic with the entity. 

No, only metaphors alluding to things Tohru doesn’t know about, and doesn’t want to think about. 

In the twenty minutes it takes to do everything but shower, Philemon has migrated to walking along his living room’s ceiling like his own private horror show. He looks out the window at something Tohru can’t see and proceeds to ignore the owner of the ceiling he’s scuffing.

Aki-kun: Made it to school :)  btw know any rumors about Shujin? This school is weird.

Tohru reads the text over leftover rice and egg. Nah, kid. Have a good day though. He gets a weird sticker character in reply. He can’t really say if he has the sanity to spare actively wishing for a good day for him, a text is good enough for now. 

He hopes. 

The food is good enough but for some reason, it just doesn’t taste so good when there’s a man casually defying gravity in eyesight. He'd collapse on his couch and smoke, but the aforementioned man would be in his direct line of sight. More so than now. 

His ponytail doesn’t even have the decency to be a hair out of place, it still swishes around the white-suited arbiter like he’s in a shoujo anime. Tohru cannot fathom having hair that long. It must be soft… Tohru violently slices that thought into tiny little pieces and sets them on fire. 

His day is slow, as most days where he doesn’t have work are. He lounges, he games, he paces, he even exchanges another quick conversation with Akira, before he remembers his nephew is supposed to be learning. 

Nothing, nothing is effective in distracting him from Philemon. 

He hovers behind him, leans over his shoulder, walks along the walls and ceilings, reads his messages, and continuously makes cryptic comments. Such as now, while Tohru smokes and plays a turn-based Featherman R game. 

“Like birds on their wings, your thoughts flit around me.” 

Tohru groans, “Please, can you not say such things when I’m toasted?” He looks at the man, or entity, who is now leaned over the back of the couch. “Also, that’s kind of creepy, stalker. Stay out of my mind or I might have you arrested for trespassing.” 

“I’ve never been to jail.” 

Tohru, with his brain melting out of his ears, glances at his phone for a distraction. He thinks to text Akira but instead scrolls through a blogging app - some food blog he followed a year ago has become strangely active. He’d originally followed it because the owner was obviously as fake as he was, but the posts have been getting more and more traction lately. 

He tosses the phone down and tries to ignore the fact that his new house guest can read his mind and has no context on real world consequences. 

----------------------------

I’m counting on you, alright? Don’t go ditching school on me!

The last message from Ryuji sits innocently before him, despite the sense of foreboding that skitters its way up his spine.

Trying valiantly to shake himself out of it, Akira changes into his pajamas and sits heavily on his bed, suddenly feeling the exhaustion of another trip to that strange castle settle into his bones. The cognitive world, as that strange cat had named it. He yawns and lays back, too tired to keep thinking about it. 

He falls asleep so fast he doesn’t remember if he actually made it beneath the comforter. 

That song… it’s becoming familiar. So is the uncomfortable ass cot, the blue walls he opens his eyes on, and the light filtering in through the cell bars. His head… it aches but putting his hand to his temple is harder with the shackles and chains. 

He slowly slouches off of the threadbare bed and pulls himself upright against the cell door. 

“Welcome to the Velvet Room. I thought about resuming our previous conversation tonight. That is why I have summoned you.” A white gloved hand swings out, “What are your thoughts? Are you becoming accustomed to this place?” The questions feel like nails digging beneath bone, right into marrow.

Was that supposed to be a joke?

“Don’t be stupid.” Akira scoffs out, incredulous and confused.

Immediately the more aggressive of the twin wardens whirls and smacks the bars with her nightstick. The resounding clang is still ringing in his ears as she scorns him. “You’ve got some nerve, inmate!” 

Igor just lets out an unsettling little chuckle, “I imagine you have many reservations about returning here from your joyous, everyday life.” What a mocking sentence, Akira decides, narrowing his eyes at the rictus of the man’s grin. “However, it will be problematic if you do not become accustomed to this.”

Akira did not want that. Akira just wanted a year where something didn’t go horrifically wrong for him. And with the raising stakes and this fucker here talking about ruin, he can feel where this is all headed. 

“The goal of your rehabilitation is to thwart the fated ruin. However, such a feat cannot be done by you alone.” Huh? “Today, you entered a partnership with someone who awoke to the same power, did you not?” 

“You mean Ryuji?” What did he have to do with this weird nonsense?

“Involving yourself with others is an important foundation for your recovery. You’ve done well.” Akira just feels guilty for turning the entity’s attention towards Ryuji, who had seemed to just be a victim of the same brand of bad luck as him. Until now that is. 

How much of the past two days had been orchestrated? 

“That said, I am not advising the formation of superficial relationships. It must not be of frivolity, but a ring of those who would, by morals or faith, lend you their strength.” Igor continues as if he isn’t watching Akira’s expressions with a focused intensity. “In other words, they are bonds with those who have been robbed of their places to belong.” 

What the fuck? 

“The expansion of said ring will, in turn, help you mature as well.”

The calmer of the twins turns towards him, clutching that clipboard of hers. “Personas are the strength of the heart…The stronger the bonds that surround you, the more power your Personas will gain.” 

The other twin huffs, “There are countless people in the city who have talents that a weakling like you doesn’t. You better wrack that noggin of yours and get them on your side.” Akira can feel his eyebrows rising beneath his bangs. ”We’ll change that into power.” 

Which still makes. no. sense.  Akira simply nods anyway, unwilling to show them anymore of the conflict beneath his carefully arranged face.  

“Indeed, you should be prepared to use even myself, or your ambitions will not come to fruition.” 

Akira can feel a scowl pulling at his lips. He doesn’t have any ambitions, not like this. Another unsettling laugh from the man at the desk, sitting beneath crimson light, vibrates through his skeleton. 

“We have a deal then.” 

----------------------------

That night, Tohru is startled awake by the touch of another human. 

Before he can recognize what has happened, the barrel of his gun is pressed insistently to the forehead of Philemon, who simply lets the metal rest against his mask with an illogically uncomfortable amount of detachment. “My apologies for disturbing your rest, but I wish to investigate something... unique.” 

So?

“S’ go investigate.” Tohru slurs out, hyper-alert and also beginning to crash from the rush of the adrenaline-fueled wake up call. “Le’me sleep, please.” He sinks back down into bed in a futile desperation to regain the comfort lost. He didn’t even care that he’d whined like he was still walking Inaba’s homely roads as a bumbling excuse for a detective. 

Nice and comfortable, he can feel his consciousness slowly slipping back into that nice oblivion from before. 

His gun is put back under his pillow while he yawns and idly wonders if he remembered to brush his teeth before going to bed. Eyes struggling to stay open, he looks away from Philemon and rolls over. 

“I’m sorry, Adachi Tohru. But you must accompany me if I’m to get where I need to go.” Huh? That… that doesn’t make sense? Is he really a demon bound to him or something? A laugh pulls him from his frustrated thoughts, “I am bound, in the way a sailor is to their sea-faring vessel. I am no demon.” 

Tohru knew that, dammit. 

He yawns widely, right in the hovering entity’s face. “Ugh… fine." A hand drags down his face, it does not help, "I’m not dressing up though.” 

“That… likely will not be an issue.” 

Tohru sighs in what can only be acquiescence of the most painful sort, “Alright, then. Start explaining.” 

Mementos is creepy, and that is really the entirety of what Tohru can describe it as running on three hours of sleep and following a white-clad figment of his imagination deeper down the train tracks and past gates. 

Trains with eerie red windows rumble past far out of reach, monsters shamble through the dingy corridors, and were those veins? The entire entrance is barren and stagnant whilst the area below and beyond almost feels like walking through the skeleton of some gigantic monster. The clack of train wheels against the tracks even occasionally sounds like a heartbeat.

Even their footsteps echo strangely through the subway corridors. 

“I hate this place.” 

Philemon spins around gracefully, catching Tohru’s gaze as it slides around the entrance. “The correct response to an aberration such as this.” It is perhaps the first time he has seen Philemon not be perfectly at peace, despite his serene comment and expression, something dangerous lurking beneath that perfectly placid exterior. “The entity I wish to observe is here, traversing these paths.” 

“An entity? Like you?” 

There is a grain of condescension within the look that Philemon gives him. “An attempt, by someone other than myself, to bring forth life within the Sea. A copy of my attendants, named with the same conventions I use. I am quite singular.” A special snowflake, Tohru surmises in his head with begrudging fondness. “Yes, a good metaphor.” 

“Is it a metaphor?” He genuinely asks, because fuck if he knew. 

“I am unsure, I do not avail myself of human literature often enough to tell apart creative comparison devices.” Wow, he probably actually did. Tohru calls the man a nerd in his head for the entirety of a floor, knowing now that the white clad arbiter can hear it. 

Very entertaining. 

He is still laughing to himself when they step off the weird escalator to the next level. Philemon merely smirks, a small thing. 

“As long as you’re amused, Adachi Tohru.” And the fun was ruined. The growing amusement on the masked face was quite telling. How it was so telling is mystery to Tohru, how does one read emotions from an almost-full face mask?

“Asshole.” 

“So I’ve been called before.” 

Whatever was going on with Philemon, he was a better conversationalist today. Though Tohru suspected he was being distracted from asking questions with overly long answers or that led to something the masked man didn’t want to speak of. 

Like he cared. 

“Whoever did must've had the right idea.” He snips back, his voice walking a tightrope between light-hearted and sharp enough to cut, “And why aren’t you haunting them instead? I’m sure they’d be a much more accommodating, and affluent, host for you than lil’ old me.” He can walk along some other over-thirty, poor bastard’s ceiling.

Philemon stops, staring at a train as it races past. “That avenue is not open to me any longer. I… made a mistake.” 

Tohru scoffs, “You mean like everyone does?” The look he receives in return is nigh unreadable, he tries not to let it stop him, “If you say something like ‘I am different, better’ or blah, blah, blah I might just kneecap myself.” He waves the gun in his hand lightly. “Some mistakes are worse than others - some of ‘em are intentional. Even unforgivable. No use worrying over it.” 

Story of his life. Make a mistake, run from the mistake, manically embrace the mistake, end up alone, rinse and repeat. 

“I am held to higher standards, a mistake on my part is the unintentional rigging of a cosmic game. There are things that do not hesitate to take advantage of such weakness.” He gestures around them at ‘Mementos’ but Tohru doesn’t understand the underlying implication, though he’s aware it exists. 

“Man, do you ever get tired of wallowing in the past?” Not that Tohru is any better in that regard, but damn. “You know, professional gamers don’t usually worry about their previous game rounds except to learn how to do better for the next one.” He shrugs in nonchalance, “But I’m just a lowly killer salaryman. What do I know?” 

“Your mind is wholly unique due to your experiences with Izanami, overbroad generalizations aside.” Philemon is striding forward with purpose again, like he can walk away from the awkwardness of their conversation - at least, Tohru feels like that might be what he’s doing. “You have been through singular experiences that even other Persona users have not endured.” 

His breakdown? Or is he talking about how that group of high schoolers had tarot cards to crush for their Persona’s summons and it felt like Magatsu Izanagi had been ripped from sinew and bone every time he called upon it. The only thing about that thing had been the, admittedly, fun ability to teleport around as he pleased. 

“Ah… I believe the being we’re searching for is on this floor.” 

Tohru perks up, “Finally, I’m fucking tired.” 

Philemon peers back at him as they step off of the escalator, his gaze amused and too sharp all at once. “It won’t be too long now. I would not even be able to enter this place if not for you, Adachi Tohru.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be here either, mister.” A small child is standing there, next to a car? Can he actually drive it? He has balloons tied to it and a variety of what appeared to be junk in the back, but Tohru can’t figure out how any of these things are useful in such a viscerally disgusting place. 

Tohru turns, “Good thing I make it a habit of breaking laws and not following them.” He shrugs at the small, yellow-eyed child. A shadow? 

Philemon is shaking his head, “We are simply here to speak with you. I find myself most curious about your existence, Jose.” The boy turns, as if incensed that the white clad mystery knows his name. 

“I don’t have to do anything for anyone who isn’t the Trickster.” This guy again, Tohru rolls his eyes and tries not to thin his lips in irritation at the mention of the character once more. Another Persona user? Not that it matters, Tohru doesn’t want to think about them. “In any case, you aren’t my assignment. I must ask you to leave.” 

He wants to tell the little brat ‘No’ on sheer principle. Philemon is nodding in direct contrast to Tohru’s instincts, though his expression is stony, and his eyes are more distant feeling than ever, “Of course, false attendant. Do tell your creator that his rigged game will only end in his demise.” He turns, gloved hand grabbing Tohru’s shoulder, his grip an inescapable vice. “Have fun collecting those flowers of yours. They’re nothing more than imitations, just like everything in Mementos.” 

And then they leave. Philemon is much more expeditious in getting them back to the entrance than when they were descending to wherever it was that Jose resided. Occasionally, his grip on his shoulder shifts strangely, an odd moving sensation of folding - a reminder that despite the veneer of humanity, the man is anything but. Silence follows them like a funeral wake. 

Eventually, they reach the entrance again, and he finds himself released from the other's grip.

This time, it is Tohru who reaches out, hand landing on a surprisingly solid white-clad shoulder. His mask is heavy upon his face, the tightness of an unfamiliar collar seems choking, the layers of fabric he’s wrapped in claustrophobic. “You don’t seem like you’re happy with what you found.” 

“I did not expect such insult.” Philemon murmurs, allowing himself to be turned. It is frustrating to know he’d never be able to make the masked man move in any way he didn’t want to. “A mockery of what I have built in order to give humanity a chance. And masterminded by a deity who seeks to control my influence.” 

Tohru has never seen Philemon so angry; the former hallucination is seething. Tohru can feel some manner of energy wafting off of him like steam, though he can't quantify it more than that. “Influence in that cosmic game you mentioned, yeah?” 

Silence is his answer for a long while, longer than is appropriate by human conversational standards.

“Let us return home.” 

Tohru lets that sit for a little while, like a rock after sinking into a river. He sighs, feeling the weight of the night settle over him. 

“Alright, but I can tell you that letting this fester is just going to be agony for us both. I also feel as though you owe me a very nice dinner for all this.” Tohru doesn't comment on the obvious gratitude, too uncomfortable to mention it. 

----------------------------

He wakes up in the afternoon, pulled from a dead sleep only by the incessant ringing of his phone. Which would be less annoying if Tohru didn’t have work the next day. “Wha’ ‘s it?” He asks, not bothering to see if he recognized the number. 

His eyes were too bleary anyway. 

“Do you mind coming by LeBlanc today?” Sojiro’s voice is hesitant and resigned. “The kid brought home a stray and I - I don’t mind him having a cat, so long as it stays out of the cafe. I figured you ought to come by and give the kid an official okay.” Tohru cannot argue with this logic or the contented feeling of having the final say if Akira got to keep a cat. “The darned thing is quite cute, actually. Talkative too.” 

“It might be a few hours, but I’ll be there.” Tohru has to work hard to speak around his tiredness. 

“See you then.” And then Tohru is left alone in his bed, tired and wrung out, with a head bursting with information from the midnight jaunt of the night previous. 

He’s dressed and idly working his way through leftovers from the fridge when Akira sends him a text. Isn’t he adorable? I named him Morgana. 

The attached image is a small tuxedo kitty, unnatural blue eyes lidded in an unhappy expression above an obnoxious yellow bandana. It’s begrudgingly sitting still, from the hand blurred in the side of the frame. Even Philemon is looking at the photo with a smile. Tohru tosses a reply his way about being there to meet him later and goes back to his food. 

The cat was kind of cute, but he’d never admit it. 

By the time he gets to LeBlanc, it is with twilight ringing overhead and more coworkers entering and leaving bars than when the sun is shining full force. His walk had been a rare peaceful one, no bitter emotions in sight. Just silence and a masked man he cannot speak to in public. 

Fine by him. 

The café is empty save his nephew and the cat in question, sitting on stools at the bar and sipping coffee that he’d made for himself.

Like all things in Tohru’s life, the encounter starts out innocently. 

A cat being adopted by his nephew, a joint decision to be made with the man currently housing him for his probation since Tohru is, through his own folly, involved. It’s chatty, meows a lot, and Akira is surprisingly indulgent with the thing. In true cat-fashion, it focuses its gaze on Philemon, forever a half step behind him. 

This is, perhaps, the most warning before something went wrong that he’s ever gotten. Enough that he is left wondering about the cat for all of a minute before it opens its mouth and speaks. “Akira!” It hisses, an actual cat hiss echoing beneath the speech like an eldritch horror, “What is that?!” 

Akira doesn’t get to answer his talking cat because Tohru can feel his mania dripping from his eyeballs. “Nephew-mine. Did your cat just speak human words?” 

The question sounds innocuous, glib and gentle but it falls like a stone in the tranquil waters of the evening, everyone stopping to stare at him. It is obvious, at least to the former detective, that Akira had known about the speech and hadn’t expected his Uncle Adachi-san to be able to perceive it. 

Much the same way that one bear has always been treated by those kids - as if Tohru isn’t smart enough to glean that there is something fishy about it all. 

“He knows! He knows and he has a ghost following him around!” The cat screeches, using its claws to grip Akira’s shirt and try to shake him, “I thought you said everything would be fine!” 

Akira shrugs before meeting Tohru’s unimpressed gaze, “Morgana, meet my uncle.” 

The tuxedo grows more frustrated, “You unbearable frizzy-haired human! Regular people do not understand me, and they don’t have weird men in white following them around!” 

“Are you sure? There’s just Adachi-san here.” Akira mumbles, looking unamused and nonplussed at the panicking of his companion. 

Tohru cannot bear to listen to anymore inanity. “I can hear you. And there’s no guy behind me.” He adds, resting his chin on a hand, “You’re from that other world, aren’t you? You have the stink of it clinging to you.” The cat didn’t actually smell but he frantically sniffs himself anyway. His disdain cannot possibly gain any more depth. 

“I don’t stink!” ‘Morgana’ retorts, “And I’m not from there, I’m a human!” 

Tohru catches a complicated twist to the corner of Philemon’s mouth, a narrowing of the eyes but he can’t linger his gaze very long. Turning back to the ‘human’, he hums. “Okay, so you’re a human, with ears and a tail, and I’m a very nice person who would love it if some random guy wasn’t shacking up with my nephew.” 

Nevermind, this is absolutely crossing a line. 

Morgana’s ears fold back, “I would never… Akira, tell him!” 

“Morgana’s primary concern seems to be getting me to pay for his sushi intake.” 

“So, a freeloader, too?” Tohru posits sharply, growing less and less amused with Morgana's continuing existence by the second, “How about this,” his temper is showing in the sharp edges of his voice, “You can stay,” The duo’s triumphant cheering is cut off by, “but if my nephew gets hurt - I’ll ensure I boot you back to where you came from myself.” 

His words ring in the uncomfortable silence as his threat is digested. 

“So protective, Adachi Tohru. Inspirational.” He tries not to visibly grit his teeth as Morgana’s ears perk and swivel towards the masked man. 

Tohru cannot stay any longer, not with a nephew undertaking dangerous endeavors he isn’t trusted enough with. “I’ve got work in the morning, so I’m heading back. Got what you wanted out of me?” Caring about others is so damn overrated. 

Why does he care if his wayward nephew makes bad decisions and gets tangled up in supernatural bullshit? It's obviously not his business, but he still feels... guilty and shameful and like he's not worthy. Certainly not of trust. 

“Uh… I’ll see you later?” Akira’s reply is to the wind his uncle left behind him as the door to LeBlanc shuts, sign already flipped to ‘Closed’.. 

The laundromat across the street is abandoned and dark, so he ducks in to take a brief respite there before he’s to try and walk all the way back to his apartment. Without an emotional outburst that will somehow make it back to Narukami and his team.

“Something in that encounter has upset the balance of your psyche.” 

Philemon is as calm and immovable as he always is, but the curiosity in his eyes is sharp - like a puzzle he can't see the final image of has been set before him. 

Tohru frowns at the man but can’t bring himself to do more than sit atop one of the machines. “He’s been going back and keeping it a secret from me.” He grits his teeth, “I know that I’m not trustworthy, but isn’t it hilarious how much it hurts when people are smart about me? He's smart about the one thing I wish he wasn't.” 

Good ol’ untrustworthy Tohru, good to have around but don’t tell him anything important. And there’s a good reason but Akira doesn’t know those reasons, which makes the sting all the more genuine. 

“You are not meant for his journey; The Fool has already embarked.” 

What exactly is that supposed to mean? The uncharitable answers he draws forth are more focused on his own shortcomings, but they filter away like silt and sand. “I don’t get what you’re saying.” Tohru sighs out, unwilling to put his precarious amount of brain power into deciphering what Philemon is expressing this time. 

White shoes enter his lowered vision, and, once again, Tohru’s gaze is forcibly drawn up to meet the man’s. “I’ve already imparted upon you that your experiences have made you singular amongst Persona users. The rigged game has already been rebalanced in the Trickster’s favor once more; there is no reason for your presence in it.” 

Tohru takes a minute to let his brain run the hamster wheel before opening his mouth. That sounds kind of like supernatural forces are at work for his failing family relationships and that is just... too absurd for words. 

He sighs, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I’m going home you incomprehensible asshole.” 

“Have you given thought to nourishment for the evening?” Tohru pauses at the door, confused as Philemon smiles at him, mysterious and familiar at once. “I’m in the mood for sushi, I think.”

Expensive asshole, more like. Tohru rolls his eyes, “Only if there’s a shop on the way back. Do you even eat? Where would it go?” 

The unimpressed stare makes that hurt inside ache a little less with someone, even an entity as removed as Philemon, there, even if it was entirely justifiable for a lowlife like himself. He would never rise above his mistakes, and it never felt more obvious than that moment. 

He was just another ugly thing, hiding out in the dark.