Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s spring and Akechi Goro is dead.

Akira’s back in his hometown, where people cross the street to avoid walking past him and shopkeepers track his movements as he peruses their shelves; where barren trees blossom pink buds and bees buzz pollen between them. All around him, the death brought on by winter revives, every death except the one Akira wants to undo the most.

Alongside the road, dandelions protrude from the earth, overtaking lawns and rising from the cracks in the sidewalk. He pauses to pick one, twirling the stem between his fingers.

Dandelions, despite their flowery appearance, are actually weeds.

Akechi had been the one to tell him this, in one of his typical bouts of random information dumping. Ryuji argued he did this to show off his intellectual superiority, but Akira silently argued that Akechi simply liked to know things. Maybe he felt it gave him the upper hand in a conversation, or maybe he simply is—was a massive nerd. Both could be true. Akira leans more toward the latter.

“It’s quite foolish to make a wish on a weed, Kurusu-kun. Something so valuable dependent on something without any value. Considered a nuisance, even. Won’t that make the wish worthless?”

Akira ruminated on the question as he brewed Akechi’s coffee. By the time he placed the mug in front of him, Akira had his answer.

“People wishing on dandelions is what gives them value.”

Akechi had smiled in that fake way of his and replied, “You have a unique way of thinking, Kurusu-kun,” which Akira later came to realize meant, I think your opinion is fucking stupid.

Akira holds the dandelion in front of his face, mouth tugged in a slight frown. Ever the hopeless fool, he blows a gentle breath against the seedy puff and makes a wish.

A passing breeze sends the seeds fluttering right into Akira’s face. He sneezes once. Twice. Three times. As he digs a crumpled napkin out of his school bag, he pictures Akechi’s ghost admonishing him from the great beyond, summoned from the afterlife to blow the breeze at that exact moment and remind Akira that he remains a sentimental fool. He hears Akechi’s voice, crisp as the wind, admonishing him, You already wished me back to life once, dumbass, don’t you dare think about trying it again.

Akira pushes his glasses back up his nose and tucks the stem into his back pocket, resuming his walk home.

—

Morgana waits on the sill of his bedroom window, the sunset casting an orange glaze over his black coat. He’s licking his paw, tail flicking against the glass with a soft thump, thump, thump. When Akira calls his name, Morgana perks to attention, leaping on all fours.

He leaps from the windowsill onto the neighboring tree branch, disappearing into the mass of pink buds. A few fall from the branches as he skits through, dislodged by his movement. Akira waits beneath the tree with open arms, catching Morgana with a grunt after he dives off the lowest branch.

“Hey, hey. How was sch-” Morgana pauses, tilting his head. “Why are your eyes red?”

Akira shrugs. “Pollen season.”

“I don’t remember you having allergies in Tokyo.”

“There’s not a lot of nature in the city. I had country-bumpkin immunity.”

“Hm. I guess you’re right.” Akira scritches Morgana under his chin, smiling at his responding purr. “You should take something for that.”

Akira gives an appeasing hum of agreement and walks them to his front door, fumbling with his keys. Inside, the house is dark aside from what’s left of the sun peaking through the cracks of the blinds. There are no shoes near the entryway, only three pairs of slippers. Akira toes off his sneakers and flicks on the light switch.

“I’m home,” he mumbles, though he hasn’t felt at home since he boarded his train back to Inaba. Home smelled of coffee beans and curry, a faint jingle of a bell when he opened the door and a gruff, You’re back. Home displayed a mother’s final painting, a portrait of her cradling her son. Home sat in the second chair from the entrance, a briefcase leaning against the seat to his left. Home took his coffee black, loosened his pin-straight posture to slouch against the counter. Home’s hair swayed when he turned to the door, eyes curved into crescents with a smile only a tad less fake than the one he showed on TV, worn down by a long day of posturing or murder or paperwork. Home greeted, Welcome home, even though he didn’t live there, and just like Akira, had come to see Leblanc as more of a home than the apartment his shitty father paid for or the house he grew up in.

Morgana hops from his arms and onto the floor.

“I scouted for some intel today.”

Akira wanders through the empty rooms switching on lights, pulling lamp cords, shutting curtains. He washes the two mugs left in the sink, one with a lipstick stain on the rim and the other half full of instant coffee.

“Turns out Inumaki-san is cheating on her husband. That same car pulled into the driveway while her husband was at work, and the same younger guy got out and kissed her in the doorway.”

Akira snorts, shoving his hands in his pockets and leaning against the counter.

“When I brought you back to Inaba I didn’t expect you to become the town’s gossip.”

“Hey! What else am I supposed to do while you’re at school all day?”

Unlike Tokyo, Morgana hiding out in his bag and squishing into his desk lasted all but a week. His homeroom teacher looked more baffled than angry, saying although bringing a pet to school wasn’t technically breaking any rules, she thought it was obvious enough no one ever bothered to write it in the student handbook. Morgana tried to win her over by rubbing against his homeroom teacher's legs and putting on a truly commendable display of cuteness, but his teacher didn’t budge. As sweet as he is, don’t bring him back to school, Kurusu-kun. If I see your cat again I’ll have to write you up and contact your parents.

Afterward, Akira tried to insist on sending him back to Futaba, but Morgana wouldn’t hear it. If Morgana left, he’d truly be alone. He knows it isn’t right, isn’t fair to make Morgana stay and suffer boredom and isolation alongside him. Akira isn’t fun to be around anymore. If he’s not in school he’s in bed, and if he’s not in bed he’s in school.

Akira carries the guilt with him every day, staring out the window in his classroom knowing his town is so small, and there is only so much of it Morgana can busy himself with before he’s explored it all.

Morgana’s ears droop. “Sorry, Akira, I didn’t mean—“

“You should start a gossip column.”

Morgana doesn’t respond at first, and Akira can tell he’s debating whether to let Akira’s diversion slide or to try and push the subject further. In their prolonged stare down, Akira twirls a curl in his hair while Morgana’s blue eyes narrow to a squint. His cat gives a soft sigh and relents. “That’d be hard to write without opposable thumbs.”

Akira grins. “Voice-to-text exists for a reason.”

“Phones can’t pick up my voice, genius.”

Their banter continues as Akira leads them upstairs to his bedroom. He drops his bag to the floor and kicks it into the corner, then flops backward onto his bed. The popcorn ceiling is a bare, bumpy white, void of the glow-in-the-dark stars or wooden beams he’d grown used to. Morgana hops onto his chest, his whiskers tickling Akira’s chin as he looms over his face.

“Akira?”

“Mn.”

“Are you gonna take a nap again?”

“Yeah, probably. Why?”

Morgana shakes his head. “Nothing. You must be tired. Get some rest.”

He pads in circles once, twice, three times before settling into a loaf on Akira’s chest. Akira sighs, pulling off his glasses and tossing them onto his nightstand. They skid along the top and clatter to the floor. He sighs deeper.

With one hand thrown over his eyes and the other resting atop Morgana’s fur, Akira tries to fall asleep, the weight of Morgana a heavy warmth atop his tight chest. He’s unsuccessful. Despite the exhaustion that pulls his bones taught, weighs down his eyelids as he sits in class and makes his calves protest when he climbs a staircase, Akira has trouble resting once he’s finally in bed. Though his body sinks into the mattress, he can’t get used to the plush, soft feel, his back yearning for thin cotton laid atop three wooden crates. He only resists tossing and turning out of consideration for Morgana, but the stillness makes him restless. Even with his eyes closed, his mind pleading for the relief of unconsciousness, his thoughts bobble around his skull. Unrelenting. Unforgiving. The dandelion stem burns in his pocket.

Akira slips it out, twirling the thin stem between his thumb and forefinger. His nail scratches against the side, a soft slit leaking red juice into the quick. Akira startles, dropping the stem to the ground, a steady stream of blood pussing out where his nail cut it open. He’s standing in a field of dandelions, their stems sprouting from a crimson pond that pools around his ankles. A gust of wind pushes against the seeds, sending them twirling into the air. They condense into a thick haze, pulling tighter together as if grasped by a black hole until they form the shape of a person. A boy. Long, brown hair. A trenchcoat. A plaid scarf.

The air yanks from Akira’s lungs.

He stumbles, then dashes forward, bare feet squelching against the bloody pond, streaking splatters of red up his uniform pants. Akira shouts his name. He doesn’t doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t move. Akira runs faster, his chest heaving, but when he inhales, he feels no relief. No oxygen filling his lungs. With each inhale, he feels more and more breathless.

“Akechi!”

He throws his arm forward, fingers reaching, grasping, yearning to brush against the wool sleeve. The one he sought on that February evening, right after Akechi asked him to make an impossible choice, the one he hesitated from until it slipped out the door with a chime of a bell and left Akira’s bleeding heart on the floor.

“We have to win this—no matter what.”

Akira’s hand swipes at the coat, but latches onto nothing. The last thing he sees is Akechi’s stoic face as he scatters into a whirlwind of dandelion seeds.

—

Morgana’s no longer lounging on Akira’s chest when he startles awake, breathless and fingers digging into his sheets. He forgets where he is for a moment, the blur of the cream popcorn ceiling too similar to the flurry of dandelion seeds—the Akechi that burst into nothing beneath his hands. Those final words, uttered with apathetic conviction, echo in his heart.

No matter what.

Akira pushes himself into a sitting position, digging his palm into the steadily building throb between his brows.

“Oh! You’re up?”

Morgana slips in through the crack of his door, front legs extending in an exaggerated stretch. His chin is wet, a steady drop of water trickling onto the rug.

“Do we have any sushi left? If I eat another bowl of those prepackaged pellets today, I’m gonna be sick.” His nose twitches, and he sticks out his tongue as if to prove his disgust.

“You finished the last can yesterday.”

Morgana nuzzles against his legs. “Junes time?”

“I can’t. My parents will be home for dinner soon.”

As much as he’d love to skip the torturous hour of stilted silence— chopsticks knocking against bowls, his mother’s routine questions, and his father’s uninterested grunts—these meals weren’t something Akira was allowed to miss.

Morgana hops up beside him. “If you have salmon again can you slip me a piece?”

His mother hates cats, only allows Akira to keep Morgana so long as he kept his friend out of sight, and ‘trained’ him not to jump on counters or scratch at furniture. Akira wasn’t sure if you could stop a normal cat from doing those things, but luckily a single chat with Morgana nipped those problems in the bud. She definitely wouldn’t like him slinking under the table during mealtime. Maybe he could hide a piece in a napkin.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Morgana cheered as Akira slaps at his bed in search of his phone, finding the device wedged between the mattress and the nightstand. When he clicks it open, a red bubble containing the number 59 clings to his messenger icon.

Mother 6:34PM

Your father and I will be back late tonight. There’s money

on the counter for dinner.

Phantom Thieves Retirement Home 5:52PM

52 Unread Messages

Yusuke 12:15PM

I stumbled upon the most exquisite twig this morning. Though

snapped at its center, a few strands still united the halves with

inspiring resilience…

Sumire Yesterday

Hi Senpai! 😊 How are you finding things in your hometown?

It’s been a while since I heard from you so I wanted to check…

Futaba Yesterday

You liked an image.

Ryuji Wednesday

duuuude i just freakin’ destroyed ur high score in the arcade

Goro Akechi Sunday

We’re sorry, you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected

or is no longer in service…

Ann 4/17/2017

okaaaay! if ur sure! but always lmk if u need anything ❤️

Haru 4/12/2017

Thank you, Akira-kun! Mako-chan and I’s apartment is quite

lovely. I’ve taken to decorating with potted plants….

Makoto 4/5/2017

Yes. Sis sends her regards as well.

Akira responds to his mother with a curt Okay and exits out of the conversation. His thumb hovers over the thieves’ group chat before clicking it open, skimming through a conversation that begins with Ryuji complaining about Yusuke’s recent fixation on buying a lobster plush from a chain retail store. He’s amassed seven so far, all at the expense of meals or train fare. Ryuji, Ann, and Futaba have taken it upon themselves to name each of the lobsters, the conversation ending with a photo of Yusuke lying in a coffin pose on his bed, the lobsters huddled around his body like some insane sacrificial ritual.

Akira snorts. He types out a reply, but when he goes to send it, the usual tightness grips his chest. He backspaces the message and pockets his phone. A microwavable meal for dinner it is.

“Good news, Mona. We’re going to Junes after all.”

Morgana cheers, hopping into Akira’s school bag as he picks it up and heads out the door.

—

Some days Akira struggles getting out of bed.

He finds he doesn’t really have a reason to. Not like before. Even after being drugged and brutalized by the police, Akira woke up with the same gusto as ever, determined to right the wrongs of society. To defeat Shido. To save Akechi. After the engine room, injustice blazed through Akira’s heart, and he woke up every day because he would not let his final promise to Akechi go unfulfilled. And then he had to kill the God that pitted them against each other, that took a vengeful, lonely fourteen year old boy and prevented him from making bonds, left him completely isolated as he took on the weight of a power much too heavy to bear alone. And after that, Akechi was back. That was enough to get him out of bed even when he lost all his friends to Maruki’s reality.

But after the Metaverse, after Akechi was gone for good, he couldn’t find much of a reason for anything anymore. Akira spent the better half of two months he’d already lived in a juvenile detention center. But he wasn’t there. Not really. He felt like one of the lifeless, choiceless dolls of Maruki’s making, all without the illusion of happiness. Akira went through each day numb, only putting on the airs of being okay when Sae came to visit him and promised his friends were working on getting him out.

Though he lost Joker’s mask, Akira had no trouble slipping it back on. In those few weeks before he returned to Inaba, Joker became a permanent fixture on his face. Akira didn't want to spoil his last weeks with his friends, so he continued on as normal despite the hollowness lingering behind every smile. Back then, he wondered if this was what it felt like for Akechi all those years, putting on a persona with his true feelings locked in the cage of his heart.

In Inaba, Akira didn't have anyone worth fooling. His parents didn’t pay him any attention aside from the common nag of do your homework and stay out of trouble. Everyone in town treated him like a criminal. He tried to find a part time job to fill his time but even though his record was cleared the town gossip was not, so no one would hire him.

He was the type to set five consecutive alarms before he gained a cat-shaped one, so he had his fair share of trouble waking up even before. Yet none of those mornings ever felt like leaden weights replaced his bones, the thought of standing coaxing him to curl further under his blankets. Now he’ll wake up wrung out of any emotions besides an exhaustion that cast a fog over his brain, leaving texts and calls from his friends unanswered for days. In Tokyo, Akira cared for so much, for so many people that he felt he might burst from soaking it all in. These days, he is bereft of anything or anyone to care about, the lack of purpose hollowing out any guilt that comes from neglecting his friends.

Even faking takes an energy he no longer has.

“Akira. It’s past noon already. Wake up.”

He feels the soft impressions of two paws in his hair. Two more weighing on his neck. He buries his face deeper into his pillow and ignores them.

“Akira you can’t stay in bed all day again.”

He could. It’s Sunday. There’s no school, therefore, no reason for him to get up. He doesn’t have a job. Or friends to see. Or a world to save.

Akira’s phone vibrates beside his head—a steady, consistent buzz.

“Futaba’s calling.”

“I’ll call her back later,” he says, words muffled.

“You won’t.”

He won’t. He hasn’t answered Futaba’s calls, or anyone’s, for that matter, since the week he got back to Inaba. Akira thinks the last time he texted her was a few days ago, replying to a meme with a thumbs up reaction. He winces and reaches for his phone.

“He lives!” Futaba shouts into his ear.

“Hey,” he groans back.

“Woah! Why do you sound like you’ve been doused in a sleeping position? Did you just wake up?”

“No,” he lies.

“Yes!” Morgana tattles.

“Lying decreases your social stats, Akira!”

Akira ruffles his hair. “Sorry.”

A hint of insecurity bleeds into Futaba’s voice. “Did I call at a bad time?”

He winces. “No, of course not,” he assures, clearing his throat. Still, the exhaustion weighs on his body, only allowing Akira to shift onto his back, not sit-up. He’s once again staring at the stubble of his cream colored ceiling. “How’s school?”

He had enough sense to text Futaba after her first day, but she’d responded with a photo of an empty battery and then set her phone to do not disturb. She continued to send the same image every day after school until the weekend, where she finally responded, This whole going to school thing’s got hands.

“I don’t knock out as soon as I get home anymore, so I’d say I leveled up a bit.”

Akira nods. “Good.”

“Sumi-chan’s been a suuuper big help too. If we weren’t in the same class I would be doomed! Just yesterday we had to pair up for an assignment and, well, I’m still not great at talking to my classmates, but since Sumi was there she redirected the conversation when I got too overwhelmed by our group members' attention. She’s like you in that way, looking out for me without me needing to say anything.” There’s a crinkle, and then the crunch of a potato chip. “We’re both kind of the odd ones out in our grade. I heard Sumi got a bad rep last year too for getting special treatment, but ever since she stopped pretending to be Kasumi, people look at her strangely. I guess they don’t understand the Maruki mind-fuckery like we do, but it's still cruel, right? And when I asked Sumi-chan if it bothered her, she said that you and Ake—”

The rustling of cellophane halts. For a few moments, all Akira hears is the thump of his heart.

“She said you taught her not to run away from who she is anymore,” Futaba continues, voice softening. “To be true to herself, despite what others may think.”

“Right.” Akira swallows. “I’m glad she’s doing better.”

A silence hangs between them, as if Futaba is expecting Akira to say more. When he doesn’t, she fumbles to continue. “W-Well! Enough about me. How’s your hometown?”

“It’s fine. The same as it was before I left.” Except now Akira’s gotten a taste of a life much more fulfilling, a calendar busting to accommodate his friends, a brief train ride away from Shibuya and Inoshika Park and Kichijoj where he’d catch a movie with Ryuji or talk a walk with Ann or meet up with Akechi for a night of jazz or billiards or both if he was lucky. Now he struggles to find joy in the greenery that once brought him peace; before, he could spend hours sitting and observing the sway of the trees from a bench or watch the sun cast an orange hue atop Inaba’s low-roofed buildings from a hill overlooking the small town. The familiarity, the simplicity, the quietude—it’s all grown dull in comparison. Every day predictable, from the walk to school in the morning to the clink of his parent’s silverware at dinner.

“Any interesting side quests?” Futaba tries.

“Not unless you count Morgana’s new position as the town gossip.”

“This again?” Morgana groans.

“Mwehehe. Well, Mona-Mona? Anything to add?”

“I mean, if you’re asking…” Morgana then paints an elaborate, but detailed picture of the household drama of Inaba, pausing for suspense and preening with delight at Futaba’s responding exclamations. Akira doesn’t contribute, content to sink back into his mattress as the two rattle on, their chatter a pleasant background noise as he closes his eyes.

When he wakes again, the slant of the sunlight cuts through his blinds, dashing a blend of orange, red, and yellow diagonals across his wall. Morgana had disappeared, and Futaba’s voice no longer staticks through his phone’s speaker. Akira takes a deep breath, fussing a hand through his bedhead. His tongue sits heavy in his mouth, his throat dry and rough when he calls out for Morgana. Wincing at the thickness of his breath, Akira groans long and loud as he stretches his legs out of bed, standing for the first time all day. Shuffling to the bathroom, he blinks his phone screen on, absentmindedly swiping his thumb through his notifications.

Ann 1 Hour Ago

heyyyy akira!!!!!!! how’s your sunday going?

Futaba 1:13pm

can’t believe u fell asleep -_____- i decree u must grovel

for forgiveness by gaming with me tonight! no exceptions!!!!!!!!!

Turning on the faucet, Akira closes the drain and watches the water level rise. He dangles his phone above, considering. If he breaks his phone, he won’t have to keep up with keeping up with everyone. Won’t have to answer questions about how he’s doing or what his hometown’s like. The phone buzzes once. Twice. Akira pitches it into his mountain of dirty laundry, the peak toppling over and avalanching into his tub. Hunched over the sink, he splashes water onto his face, scrubbing at his crusted eyes. Guilt surfaces through his irritation. He knows they only want to help. If Akira were them, he’d do the same—barge through the walls they’d bricked around them and force his friends back into the limelight. Akira can’t fault them for being good friends. Still.

When he looks into the mirror, he no longer sees Joker. He sees a teenager with chronic bedhead, worsened by the fact that he’d brushed a comb through it maybe once since he left Tokyo. Muted grey irises, framed by splotches of plum hanging beneath his eyes. A terrain of acne has amassed on his forehead, hidden only by the shag of his bangs. Cracked, chapped lips with a prominent red patch where he’d picked the skin off. His jawline is more prominent, cheeks less full.

Akira sighs, grabbing his toothbrush and squirting a gunk of white paste on the bristles. He scrubs hard enough his gums ache and bleed, using the other hand to parse through his clothes for his phone. When he locates it, he sends a single text.

I’m a hypocrite.

A few minutes later, he gets an automated response.

We’re sorry, you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected

or is no longer in service.

Akira spits into the sink.

Yeah, that’s just about what I expected from you.

We’re sorry, you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected

or is no longer in service.

—

On the days Akira’s not fusing with his mattress, he’s usually walking up and down the same streets, looping around blocks, circling the duck pond alongside bikers and middle-aged women pumping weights as they jog. He exists on two extremes—mind-numbing exhaustion and mind-buzzing anxiety, and today he finds himself dealing with the latter. He needs to move—to do backflips across rooftops and swing across a ten story drop with his grappling hook; to hop on an enemy’s back and peel the mask from their face; to drive his dagger into their heart; to put a gun to their head and pull the trigger.

Instead, he speedwalks for hours around town, dodging weary glances and whispers behind hands. Akira spots a group of boys from Yasogami that keep trying to corner him into a fight, looking to beat up the local convict for street cred, and ducks into the bushes to avoid them. He follows a dirt path through the park, stopping at a stone table with two, matching cylindrical stools and sitting on one, his leg assuming a tempoed shake as he catches his breath. Akira crosses his arms and rests his chin atop them, staring out at the road. The sun’s long started its descent, half submerged below the horizon. He should probably head back if he wants to make it in time for dinner.

The table he’s sitting at has a checkered pattern painted onto the cement, the black faded and the white grayed from the elements. A chessboard. Akira breathes a laugh, then considers slamming his head into the surface. He doesn’t.

There’s no pieces, either because they were stolen or you’re meant to bring your own. Akira doesn’t have a set. He only owns one piece—the black king sitting at the bottom of his school bag right beside that stupid fucking glove.

Akira stares at the white square where the king’s supposed to go. There’s a chip in the upper left corner, a fissure striking through the center of the square. He traces his finger along the grove, nail gritting against the cement. Akira can almost picture him, sitting across the table. He likes to imagine Akechi as he existed in his final month, brown trench coat and plaid scarf and perpetual frown. They’d never gotten to play a match after Akechi dropped the detective prince facade. He wonders if Akechi would scowl after Akira made a favorable play, rather than smiling and commending him for his clever move. He wonders if Akechi would still place a hand on his chin, pointer finger tapping along his jaw as he contemplated his next play. He wonders if Akira had accepted Maruki’s reality, Akechi would’ve visited his hometown and shared a match with him at this very table. He wonders and wonders and wonders. He wonders too much, these days.

“Care for a match?”

Akira jolts, wincing at the crick in his neck. An elderly man hunches next to him, scalp bald except for two patches of grayed fluff above his ears. His mustache hair covers his upper lip, but it doesn't stop the spit from flicking out of his mouth when he speaks, “I got a set in my bag.” He pats his fanny pack. “Never go anywhere without it.”

Akira does not want to play chess with this old man, but he’s already wobbling on his cane to the seat across from him and placing the chess pieces on the table. Akira is notoriously awful at setting boundaries, so he quietly helps move the pieces to the appropriate spots while the old man rambles about how he bought the set while he was overseas for his honeymoon. Surprisingly, once Akira moves his first pawn, the old man stops talking. He’ll hum while he thinks, but doesn't say another word until the end of the match when Akira checkmates him.

“My, my.” He claps his hands, laughing. The wrinkles increase in number around his eyes, which crescent into a near-squint. “You’re quite good for your age. You must’ve had a good teacher.”

Akira tugs at his collar. “I learned from a friend.”

“Well, you must bring them around for a match sometime!” When Akira only nods, he continues, “Thanks for indulging the whims of an old man. Ever since my wife passed, I haven’t had anyone to play against.”

“Your wife?”

The other’s smile takes on a morose shade. “Yes, my wife. We met at a chess club competition in high school. We were on rival teams, if you’d believe it. She asked me out after beating me in our final match at the prefecture championship.”

When Akira swallows, his saliva irritates his sandpaper throat. Sorry for your loss feels empty. A platitude. The sun’s nearly set by now, the park lamps buzzing on, gnats crowding around the yellow light. A guy of few words. Someone who chooses his words carefully. That’s how those in Tokyo always described him. Akira doesn’t think so. He likes to listen, sure, but he finds he often can’t find more than a trio of responses circling in his head before he settles on which his company wants to hear. There was only one person who he spoke at length around—who wanted a thoughtful, drawn-out response more than mere satisfaction or validation. A rival who wanted to be challenged.

Instead of condolences, Akira asks, “Does it ever get easier?”

The elderly man tilts his head, his smile a worn thing. “What?”

Akira tugs at his curl, fiddling with the ends. “Losing your rival.”

His companion stands, scooping the chess pieces in his bag one-by-one. Then he walks over to Akira, giving him a hearty pat on the shoulder. “I can’t say it does. Ever since she left me, there’s been a dullness to every day I can’t seem to shake.”

Akira inclines his head, staring back at the chip on the chessboard.

“Though, you managed to alleviate that dullness a bit tonight.” The pressure on his shoulder lifts. “Thanks for indulging a bitter old man.”

The knock of the cane against the gravel path grows fainter and fainter and again, Akira finds himself alone. The earlier anxiety is gone, replaced by the familiar droll of exhaustion. He treks home with his hand gripped tightly around his bag handle, heavier with his mind on the contents of the pocket zippered shut inside.

—

On his worst days, Akira texts him.

Discreetly, when Morgana’s not looking, because Akira hates the pitying stare he receives in return—the soft, concerned call of his name with a hint of a warning, a lecture Morgana only sometimes leaves unsaid.

Akira often wonders what became of Akechi’s smartphone. If it was sealed in an evidence bag at some station back in Tokyo, or abandoned in Akechi’s old apartment, or tossed in the trash when no one came to collect his belongings. Or maybe Akechi had his phone on him when he entered the Metaverse and never returned, his phone buried in the collapsed wreckage of Shido’s palace, sunken to the bottom of a cognitive sea.

Regardless, none of Akira’s messages ever go through. All he receives is the same, automated text that the number’s been disconnected.

3/19/2017

Was that you? At the train station?

I’m going home today.

I wanted to chase after you, but the train left…

Please tell me it was you.

We’re sorry, you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected

or is no longer in service.

Are you ignoring me or are you dead?

We’re sorry, you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected

or is no longer in service.

3/20/2017

Asshole.

We’re sorry, you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected

or is no longer in service.

3/26/2017

I think you’d hate my hometown.

I’ve only been back a week, but I don’t know how I lived here before.

I don’t think I knew there was something better.

We’re sorry, you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected

or is no longer in service.

4/2/2017

Is this how you felt?

We’re sorry, you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected

or is no longer in service.

4/19/2017

I made a wish on a dandelion today.

The seeds blew in my face.

It was a stupid wish.

We’re sorry, you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected

or is no longer in service.

4/22/2017

I played a chess match with an old man in the park.

He said I must’ve had a good teacher.

We’re sorry, you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected

or is no longer in service.

You’re the good teacher, if that wasn’t clear.

We’re sorry, you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected

or is no longer in service.

4/28/2017

I really hate you.

We’re sorry, you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected

or is no longer in service.

4/29/2017

No, I don’t.

I am mad at you though.

We’re sorry, you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected

or is no longer in service.

5/2/2017

[Attachment: One Image]

Think I can make this jump?

Akira pockets his phone and appraises the gap in front of him. He’s balancing atop a brick wall, the surface thin enough he can’t place his feet side-by-side, but rather must keep one flattened ahead of the other, his arms outstretched at his sides. The wall’s not high enough. Barely taller than himself, and a fall wouldn’t do more damage than a few bruises.

Nothing. He studies the empty space of the cemetery’s gateway, wide enough a truck could drive through with ease, and he feels nothing. His heart isn’t racing, body isn’t humming with adrenaline. In the Metaverse, he could make this jump without a second thought.

Akira hoists himself onto the gate’s column, shifting to accommodate the lantern bolted to the top. He toes the spear point of the cast iron gate, the metal squeaking as it shudders, but the gate doesn’t swing more than a few inches before it’s yanked back flush against the wall. Too bad. Akira was wondering if it’d hold his weight while he dashed across the tips.

Hands on his hips, Akira assesses the gap again. The column only brought him about three feet higher, but there’s a slight tremble in his legs when he looks down. Akira lets one foot dangle over the edge, and his heart rate picks up. He smiles.

Akira backs up to the edge of the column and bends his knees. Around him, all is still. The sun’s long since set, crickets overtaking the slight rustle of the trees. Fingers tapping and leg bouncing against his mattress, he’d slipped out his window only after his parent’s bedroom door clicked shut and Morgana’s breathing slowed into a slumber. He couldn't bear the thought of lying there all night again, staring at the red blink of his digital clock.

Akira isn't certain he can make the jump. Not in the real world. But that is what he needs right now. A risk. Not the monotonous drone of every day. Safe, but dull. Alive, but not truly living. He flexes his hands, takes a deep breath. You’re Joker, he reminds himself, closing his eyes. Joker could do this in his sleep.

Akira springs off his left foot, then makes one final push with his right, and he’s flying— breaking through glass, the thieves in his ear calling him reckless, a show-off, but he’s twirling, shards reflecting the neon glow of Sae’s palace floating around him, sharp grin on his face, heart thumping, veins singing. He’s Joker. He can do anything, can scale a castle, can rob a bank, can sink a ship, can raid a tomb, can shoot god in the face, can—

Akira misses the other column and falls to the pavement with a crack.

He limps home. With every step on his left foot, Akira bites harder into his cheek. By the time he reaches his block, he’s gnashed deep enough the bittersweet tang of blood coats his tongue. His phone buzzes once. He knows it’s another out of service message, so he ignores it. Except after another moment, it buzzes again. Akira pauses, bracing his weight against a street sign as he fumbles for his phone. And there, on his home screen, await two impossible notifications.

Goro Akechi

Do you have a death wish?

Or are you just that fucking stupid.

Chapter Text

It’s spring and Akechi Goro isn’t dead.

By all accounts, he should be dead. Instead, he’s knees deep in soil, dirt crusting beneath his nails as he packs another tomato seedling into the earth. He mutters a curse under his breath after he feels yet another earthworm wriggle against his palm.

Goro really fucking wishes he was dead.

“Now, now, Akechi-kun,” Okkotsu tuts, “the plants will never grow if you spew such harsh words at them. Connect with the earth. Find peace in nurturing a new life.”

“Okkotsu-san,” Goro says, looking up at the elderly woman with a tight smile. His bangs stick wet to his forehead, yet he tempers the urge to brush them aside, all too aware of his grime-coated fingers. “I’d be more at peace if I was six feet under this garden, decomposing.”

At least dead, he’d not be conscious of all the crevices soil could slip into, nor would he be any the wiser of the insects surrounding him, the echo of their wriggling thin bodies and absurd quantity of appendages ghosting over his skin. Goro kept flinching at the sensation of crawling on his arm, only for nothing to be there when he looked. God, he needed a fucking bath.

“There’s peace in death, yes, but it is far from your time to be considering that.” Okkostu shakes her head, slapping his shoulder. “Come. Up with you! You’ve done enough of this for today. Go wash up.”

You don’t have to tell him twice. Goro wobbles to a stand, biting his tongue as pins and needles prick at his sleeping calves, the blood flow cut off from sitting on them for too long. He’s at the pair of shoji screen doors by the time the numbness subsides, having pretended to walk as dignified as one can when every step feels as though knives are slicing at their nerves. Sliding out of his sandals and into a rubbery pair of house-slippers, Goro shuffles through the halls to the rehab’s onsen. Unfortunately, the space is not empty.

“Akechi-kun!” a deep voice bellows. “You’re looking a little worse for wear there, yeah? Aren’t you too old to be rolling around in the dirt?”

Sugawara Daisuke lounges in the steaming waters, graying chest hairs plastered to his skin and days-old stubble framing his lopsided grin. If Goro didn’t desperately need a wash, he’d turn around and walk right out. Sugawara had been a resident of the rehab center for half a year now, admitted two months before Goro’s arrival in late December. He had a grandchild on the way, as he constantly reminded Goro, and his daughter insisted Sugawara get a handle on his drinking problem if he wanted any part in the child’s life. Not total scum, per se, as Goro’s obligatory digging revealed Sugawara was not a violent or abusive drunk. Just a neglectful, absent father. Goro’s dealt with more than enough of those in his lifetime.

“Hello Sugawara-san,” Goro acknowledges, continuing over to the showers. He peels the white t-shirt from his torso, crumbling the damp fabric into a ball and letting it fall to the floor. After pumping soap into one palm, he uses the other to unhook the hand-held shower head from the wall and begins to scrub the grime from his flushed skin.

“Hana-chan used to roll down hills whenever we took her to the park,” Sugawara continues, undeterred by the loud rush of water smacking against the tiles. His laugh echoes across the room. “Grass blades would get all in her pigtails. Not to mention the dirt stains in her clothes. My wife had a hell of a hard time scrubbing those out.”

Sugawara’s chuckle deteriorates. When he next speaks, his voice holds a tint of melancholy, “Hey, Akechi-kun. Did Hana-Chan mention when she’s visiting next? The baby’s already gonna be due in three months…think I’ll be out by then?”

Goro pinches between his brow. He doesn’t want to console a washed-up old man right now. “That depends on your resolve, Sugawara-san.”

“Pah! I don’t want your prettied-up by-the-book answer. Give it to me straight, kid.”

Goro sighs, deep and aggrieved, as he attempts to clean the dirt trapped beneath his nails.

“With all due respect, Sugawara-san, I’m not certain you could handle that.”

Sugawara scoffs. “I’m a veteran, you know. Words can’t hurt me.”

Goro silently finishes rinsing off, then approaches the baths with a towel wrapped around his waist. He has little interest continuing the conversation, and he doesn’t want to trouble Okkotsu-san by snapping at one of her patients again. He pointedly enters the bath the furthest distance from Sugawara as possible, jaw unclenching as the heated water relaxes the tension in his muscles. It’s silent for a couple minutes, and Goro makes the mistake of thinking Sugawara’s given up.

“What’s your dad like, Akechi-kun?”

All the tightness kneaded out by the hot springs rushes back, stiffening his shoulders. Head leaning against the granite, Goro considers slamming his skull into it hard enough to knock himself unconscious. The question hangs between them, tension thicker than the steam rising from the water’s surface. Goro lets it build, but Sugawara doesn’t squirm. He doesn’t appear the slightest bit uncomfortable.

Sorry Okkotsu-san, he tried.

Goro sits up and levels Sugawara with a hard stare. “Why was she not worth getting sober? Why not your daughter, but your grandchild? If you were capable of change, why did she suffer for so long? These questions likely haunt Hana-san, but I doubt you’ve thought of them at all.”

Sugawara’s lips thin, his fingers clenching the bath’s rim. Goro knows he should stop, but the old man asked for it, hadn’t he? And no one else in this place is going to give him the hard truth.

“You should consider yourself lucky your daughter’s given you a second chance, Sugawara-san. If you were my father, I would’ve let you drink yourself to death. I’d even hand you the final bottle.”

Sugawara stills, more wrinkles forming on his already creased forehead. When it becomes apparent he isn’t going to respond, Goro sinks back into the springs and closes his eyes. He doesn’t open them again even when there’s the telling splash of Sugawara leaving the bath, nor the wet slap of his feet on the tile as the man leaves.

-

Not much of Goro’s room has changed in the five months he’s stayed here. A twin bed with a white blanket and white sheets, a modest wooden desk in the corner, a lamp on a bedside table with two drawers. Even though he’s not a patient, he resides in the same halls as them. Unlike most patients, his room looks the same as it had when he arrived, no gifts from visiting family or pictures tacked onto the walls. The only personal item is a stack of manila folders on his desk, sheets of paper bulging past the intended capacity.

They’re the first thing Goro spots when he returns each night, and each night he has the same thought, I need to shred those.

He should have gotten rid of the folders months ago. In February, to be exact, after they had fulfilled their purpose. Akira was free now. There was no need to hold onto them anymore. He did his part. His debt was repaid. And yet.

Goro’s phone buzzes against his thigh. He sighs, already knowing who it is. There’s only one idiot who’d keep texting the dead.

Akira Kurusu

I made a wish on a dandelion today.

The seeds blew in my face.

It was a stupid wish.

Goro scowls. Is he trying to wish him back to life? Sentimental fool. Was once not enough? He swipes to his notes app, copies the pre-written message, and pastes it into the text box.

We’re sorry, you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected

or is no longer in service.

Goro stares at the screen, watches as the delivered box changes to read, then pockets his phone. His gaze flickers to the manila folders once more before he gets ready for bed.

-

“Akechi-kun can you fetch fresh linens from the laundry room closet?” Okkotsu-san asks, peeking her head out of a bedroom with a mop in hand. “We need to change the sheets after I finish with the floors.”

He nods, pausing his scrubbing of the windows. The skin of his hand feels tight around his bones, dried-out from cleaning product seeping through the rag. Goro lets it flop onto the sill, his temples aching from inhaling fumes.

“Blankets and pillowcases as well?”

“If you can,” says Okkotsu-san. “Thank you, Akechi-kun.”

He leaves the residency halls behind, grateful for the break. His back aches from bending over, and the light pouring through the windows irritates his eyes. As Goro makes his way to the laundry room, he pauses at the door leading to the outdoor area. Maybe he should step out and get a breath of fresh air. Try to alleviate the scent of bleach burning his nostrils.

He slides the shoji door open and steps outside, taking a deep inhale. It’s April, but the breeze still carries a faint chill that’s pleasant against his cheeks. All the patients are eating in the dining hall around this time, so it should be empty.

It should be empty, except there, in front of the tomatoes he planted, is Kitagawa Yusuke. Even without his signature sleek, blue hair, Goro would know it was him. Very few, if any, other people would be strange enough kneel to in the dirt, hunched over and arms straight, thumb and pointer fingers framing a single leaf. And the thing is, Goro very much could’ve walked away. Could’ve slipped back inside and hid in room until Kitagawa left, and there’d be no way for the other to know he was even here. That he’s alive. This would be his conscious choice, the very first thought appearing at the forefront of his mind the moment he realized who was terrorizing his tomato plants.

Unfortunately, his mouth has other plans.

Kitagawa’s arms slacken, his single-minded focus disrupted by Goro’s very loud, very derisive scoff. Goro slaps a hand over his mouth, but the damage is done. Kitagawa turns around almost comically slow, yet not slow enough for Goro to bolt inside. He sees the moment the other teen realizes he’s not alone, but there’s no telling flash of recognition in his eyes. He does not gasp or shout or even flinch, despite a person he thinks four months dead appearing behind him in a random garden in a random rehab center hours from Tokyo.

Kitagawa merely blinks.

“Oh,” he says, “hello, Akechi-kun.” Then, Kitagawa turns back to the plant and holds up his framed fingers once more.

Goro waits. And he waits. But Kitagawa doesn’t say anything more, attention recaptured by the tomato leaf. The smart, rational action to take would be to turn around and disappear. Hope Kitagawa thought Goro a figment of his overactive, absurd imagination. Or, take his few, meager belongings and run, as he always has, because Kitagawa would mention meeting Goro to the others and then Akira would find out he was alive and demand the rehab center’s location from Kitagawa and before Goro knew it he’d have a wide-eyed Akira appearing in front of him like a kicked puppy and Akira would know he’s alive, oh god, Akira would know.

Again, Goro’s mouth has other plans.

“Seriously?” he snarks, sounding more offended than he actually feels. “That’s it?”

“Pardon?” Kitagawa asks, not diverting his gaze from the plant. He moves his arms further and closer, left and right, peering through the frame of his fingers with one eye.

“You don’t have anything more to say?”

“About what?”

Goro’s temple throbs. “About me being alive.”

“Why would I have anything to say about that?” Kitagawa retorts, starting to circle the plant and murmuring to himself about the sun exposure. Goro’s eye twitches. He stalks toward Kitagawa, about to the rip the tomato plant, roots and all, right from the ground and chuck it at him, when—

“Aha!” Kitagawa shouts, and Goro very much does not flinch. “Yes! This is the ideal angle. The way the light hits the surface! Akechi-kun, do not move an inch, you are blocking the sun at the ideal percentage! I must capture this in my sketchbook at once!”

Goro watches as Kitagawa scrambles for a pad of paper and a pencil and begins scratching furiously at the surface, only pausing to glance up and hold up his makeshift frame. When Goro tries to take a step toward him, he’s rooted to the spot by a sharp glare and an adamant, “Don’t move!”

Bewildered, he can’t help but think Kitagawa’s reaction was better suited for discovering Goro’s alleged revival rather than Goro daring to disrupt the light exposure of his current muse.

Goro must be out of his mind, because he plays along, not attempting to move again as Kitagawa works. The sun presses uncomfortably at his neck, and Kitagawa doesn’t threaten him when Goro shifts to do up his hair, so he gathers the strands into a low tail and ties them together. He tries speaking with Kitagawa, but after his third unanswered question he concludes he won’t be getting another word out of the teen until he finishes.

In that time, Goro thinks.

How can he get Kitagawa to keep quiet?

Kitagawa Yusuke. Second, now third year at Kosei High School. Former pupil and adopted son of Ichiryusai Madarame, the phantom thieves second target.

Goro has probably interacted with him least out of all of the thieves. Kitagawa never seemed to hold any particularly strong feelings toward Goro. No indication of like or dislike, like Sakamoto’s unfiltered jabs and Nijima’s passive aggressive remarks. He wasn’t overly inclusive and chatty like Takamaki, but he never shifted away when Goro stood nearby. Kitagawa was a hard one to read, for he only seemed to exhibit strong feelings when discussing natural beauty or art, neither which Goro cared to understand. With his earlier reaction, Goro can only conclude Kitagawa is indifferent to him. Doesn’t care if he is present or not, alive or a forgotten corpse.

It is strangely comforting, that indifference. More people should view Goro this way. They’d be better off for it.

“At last!” Kitagawa springs to his feet, his pencil falling in the dirt. He stretches his arms to the sky, sketchbook perched between graphite-stained fingers. Goro takes that as his signal to move again, and he approaches Kitagawa with his neck craned to glimpse the drawing that held him hostage for the better part of an hour.

The focal point isn’t the tomato leaf, as Goro thought, but a caterpillar lounged at the center, chewing a hole into the green. The rest of the plant is lightly shaded, almost blurred, while a single leaf with a caterpillar is in sharp focus, so detailed he can make out the thin hairs protruding from its body. A simple subject. Goro can’t tell what’s so special about it that Kitagawa needed to capture it in that moment. If he liked it so much, he could’ve snapped a photo instead of putting in so much effort to sketch the caterpillar himself.

Akechi the detective prince would’ve lathered Kitagawa with praises of technique, fluffing up his observation with a philosophical quote or two. Akechi of a false January would’ve called Kitagawa an imbecile, said the whole thing was a waste of time. Ridiculous, even. The Goro of today, though still cynical, is tired and curious, so he asks, “Why would you waste time on something so insignificant?”

His inability to understand, once a humiliating mark of weakness, doesn’t make him want to claw off his skin anymore. Though Kitagawa is the thief he’s interacted with the least, Goro’s confident that he also won’t think less of him for asking.

Kitagawa is quiet, his brow furrowed like he’s carefully considering Goro’s question.

“Perhaps there are countless caterpillars feasting on tomato leaves across the world, but there is only this caterpillar, on this particular tomato plant, on this day, at this angle. By this time next year, there may very well be another caterpillar on another leaf growing here, but it will never be the same tomato plant, nor will it be the same caterpillar.” Kitagawa fully turns toward Goro now, the sketchbook tucked against his side. “A moment one thinks insignificant may mean the world to another. A caterpillar’s life, overlooked and forgotten, will be remembered by my pencil and the time I spent preserving a fraction of it’s short existence. In that way, it will never be a waste.”

Goro frowns, gaze flitting past Kitagawa to the caterpillar. He doesn’t quite get it. Doesn’t think he can ever cherish the small details as Kitagawa does, nor can he see significance in the mundane. It’s just a stupid caterpillar on a stupid tomato plant. Still, Goro feels the need to tell the other, “I grew that tomato plant.”

Kitagawa nods, a quiet smile painting his lips. “Ah, no wonder I sensed a powerful longing in it’s stature.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Kitagawa throws his head back and laughs, full and hearty and belly-deep. Goro stares at him, incredulous. Yeah. He’s definitely not normal.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re strange, Kitagawa-kun?”

Kitagawa’s smile stays fixed on his face. “Quite often, yes. And please, Yusuke is fine.” His stomach grumbles. “Could I trouble you for some food?”

-

They’re sitting across from each other on floor pillows beneath a short table. Yusuke digs into his meal with gusto, slurping down Okkotsu’s ramen while making questionable noises of pleasure. How wonderful one of your friends is here! She exclaimed after Goro returned inside with Yusuke. She’d been searching for Goro when he failed to return with the clean linens. He begrudgingly told Okkotsu he was acquainted—not friends—with Yusuke, and the meddlesome woman insisted Goro spend the remainder of the day with his friend. Acquaintance, he corrected her.

Yusuke’s stomach grumbled rather obnoxiously, and she ushered them here with promises of a warm meal.

Goro isn’t hungry. He prods at his soggy noodles with his chopstick, picking them up and then letting them fall back into the soup. Only his glass of water is empty. No matter how much he drinks, he can’t seem to sate the parched scratch of his throat. Like his own body is trying to prevent him from speaking. The question gets caught there, an obstruction in his airway. He’s choking on it, the words suffocating and dying before they can pass through his lips.

And so, Goro doesn’t ask how Akira is doing. He doesn’t want to know. Except he has a faint idea, given the texts he’s been receiving the past two months since Akira returned to his hometown. Acknowledging the other thieves, Tokyo, Akira, would pop this odd bubble around him and Yusuke. Make it all real. It would invite discussions Goro doesn’t want to have, especially not with Yusuke, who speaks in flowery abstraction and pretty metaphors. He’d much rather someone like Ryuji or Futaba, who would be straightforward and call him a selfish bastard.

Yusuke scrapes the last grain of rice from his bowl, then lifts the remaining soup and gulps it down. The ceramic knocks against the table as he gently sets it on the surface. Dabbing at his mouth with a napkin, he sighs, satisfied. “A fine meal, indeed. I’ll need to give Okkotsu-san my regards before I depart tomorrow.”

Yusuke takes one look at Goro’s untouched food and frowns. “Is everything alright, Akechi-kun?”

Goro almost laughs in his face. All that manages to slip through is a slight quirk to his lips before he reigns his expression back under control. “What are you doing here, Yusuke?”

“Have I not said?” Yusuke blinks. “My apologies. I am visiting a fellow former pupil of Madarame’s, Haruto Sasaki-senpai. He’s admitted here.”

It makes sense. Madarame had terrorized dozens of young talents, one even driven to suicide. There is bound to be more than one with lasting issues. As for Haruto-san, Goro hasn’t interacted with the man much. He’s not much older, only twenty, but he’s got a small, unobtrusive presence. Quiet and keeps to himself. In the times where Goro has cleaned Haruto-san’s room, the floor is always messy with crumbled up paper and pencils snapped in half.

“I see,” Goro says.

“I am one of the more fortunate of the children he abused. I often ponder what may have become of me had I not met the others. If the anger and pain budding inside me would’ve devoured me whole, or decimated all that surrounded me. It is a thin rope to balance on. I fear no one is strong enough to make it to the other side alone.” Yusuke folds his hands in his lap, his eyes fixed on Goro. “That is why I am here. To ensure Haruto-senpai has a hand to guide him forward.”

Goro’s lips twist. “How very noble of you.”

“Is it noble?” Yusuke questions, undeterred. “At times, I think my motives are more for my own satisfaction than Haruto-senpai’s well-being. I wonder, then, if it is selfish to help others to heal ourselves.”

A face flashes in Goro’s mind. A mop of black hair. Glasses hiding piercing grey eyes.

“If I may return the question,” Yusuke continues, “what are you doing here, Akechi-kun?”

Isn’t it obvious? He’s hiding. Goro’s running away again. He could’ve texted Akira at any time and let him know he’s alive. He could’ve left this place months ago, his bullet wound now nothing more than a faint scar on his chest. He has all the reasons to go, and hardly any to stay. But somewhere along the way, he’s decided it’d be easier to stay. Easier to let Akira move on. Easier to convince himself the increasingly concerning texts he’s receiving will peter out when the wound is less fresh. Easier if in all their minds, he remains dead.

Under Yusuke’s nonjudgmental gaze, Goro’s self-deception crumbles, and he coughs up the question he doesn’t want the answer to because he knows hearing it aloud will make the hiding a lot less easy. “How is he?”

Goro doesn’t need to specify who. Yusuke understands his meaning, and for that, at least, Goro is grateful.

“I’m unsure. He hardly replies to our messages anymore, and Futaba has to guilt him into answering her calls.” Yusuke looks down to his folded hands, his voice mellow. “From that, even I can deduce he’s not well.”

Goro grits his teeth, scowling. Stupid fucking Akira and his worthless group of friends who can’t return the support he gave them. What a fucking joke.

“So what? I’m the bandaid you’ll slap onto his bullet wound so you all can pat yourselves on the back and pretend everything’s fine? If my friends were so shit at comforting me, I’d stop answering them too,” he spits, ignoring the knot forming in his stomach. He’s fine. He doesn’t care. It doesn’t even matter. Akira can take care of himself. He doesn’t need Goro to show up and make everything worse.

“I have not been a friend worthy of Akira these past months, perhaps even longer,” Yusuke says, his shoulders drooping. “As you are well aware, he does not like to burden others with his feelings, and for too long, we’ve let him brush off our concerns. Now, Akira has wandered beyond our reach, and I fear there’s little we can do to reel him back in.”

Yusuke shakes his head. “His grief…he’s drowning in it. Akira’s sunk so deep he can no longer see or hear us. What Akira lost is different than the loss of a parent, which many of us understand. His bond with you, it is beyond us.”

“And you blame me,” Goro drones. Because he died. Because he didn’t stay dead. Because he is alive and choosing to hide. As sure as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, Goro is the source of Akira’s anguish. When Akira is hurting, it will always be his fault.

“The others might,” Yusuke admits, “but I do not. Let me be clear, Akechi-kun. I have no intention of telling anyone we met today. That is what we fought against Maruki-san for, correct? The right to choose our own paths. I will respect your choice to remain hidden if that is what you wish.”

From his sketchbook, Yusuke tears out a piece of paper and hands it to Akechi. It is the drawing he did earlier—the caterpillar on the tomato leaf.

“But do remember, lives are not so easily forgotten.”

Yusuke stands, brushing his hands against his shirtfront. “Please excuse me, I must resume my visit with Haruto-senpai.” He bows, then makes his way over to the sliding bamboo door. Before Yusuke opens it, he pauses and says, “It is a relief to see you are well, Akechi-kun.”

The door clatters shut, and just like that, Goro is alone again, the paper crinkling between clenched fingers.

-

Yusuke is gone the next morning, but his presence knocks Goro off-kilter. His mind wanders more than it should, drifting to memories he’d thought he’d left behind. A future he decided he could never have.

It pisses him off.

He moves around the rehab center with a scowl that worsens the more he catches himself thinking of a thin, pale hand slapping his after he throws a bullseye, of sharp grey eyes narrowing as they assess a chess board, of arms leaning against a wooden counter as Akechi sips a cup of coffee. The other patients avoid him, even Sugawara stops trying to initiate conversation, and when Akechi stumbles upon Haruto, he glares at the man as if he’s Yusuke himself.

It all comes to a head when he snaps at Okkotsu while they’re folding laundry.

He’s thinking about Akira, because of course he fucking is. Last night, he received a text. Two, to be exact. The first one read, I’m a hypocrite. Goro squinted at his phone screen, trying to decipher what the hell that meant. Akira better not turn his inbox into a confessions board. By the time he’s copy and pasted his fake automated message, he still didn’t understand what Akira’s referencing, and when Akira sends a second text, one that reads, Yeah, that’s just about what I expected from you, his lip curls in annoyance. Why’s he blaming him all of a sudden? He can’t respond to Akira’s cryptic texts. He’s fucking dead, goddammit.

“Akechi-kun, can you take the bathrobes out of the dryer? Akechi-kun?”

“What?”

Goro is more startled by the anger teething his voice than Okkotsu. She watches him with knowing, sad eyes, ones that make a humiliated flush crawl up his neck. He looks down at the table, at his fists clenched around a half-folded towel, nails pressing into the cotton.

“Akechi-kun, you’ve been cooped up here for too long. Why don’t you take the next week off? Explore the area?” Okkotsu poses it like a question, but Goro knows a demand when he hear’s one.

“My apologies, Okkotsu-san.”

“It’s quite all right, Akechi-kun. I’m also at fault for working you so hard. Go rest. I’ll finish up here.”

Goro’s too embarrassed by his outburst to protest. He bows to her, his hair a curtain around his face, and shuffles out of the room with his tail between his legs.

-

The next day, Goro cycles.

He cycles far too much considering he hasn’t done it in over half a year and he’s terribly out of shape, so he’s panting and sweating and his thighs are going to be so sore tomorrow he won’t be able to walk, but he keeps going anyway because he’s got this rage lighting his nerves that won’t die out no matter how much his body begs him to stop.

Goro nearly collapses at the top of a hill, his calves trembling as he knocks down the kickstand and stumbles off the bike. The hill drops off to a cliff that overlooks the modest town, so far from the rehab center it’s no more than a spec amongst the buildings. Goro leaves the bike behind, wobbling over to the edge of the cliff and plopping down so his legs dangle over the edge.

He’s a little less angry now, the tightness in his chest not as suffocating. But he’s still unsettled as he takes in the setting sun, watches the yellow meld into orange and red. His heaving chest slows to a natural pace. By the time the sky is dark, he’s calm.

His phone buzzes, and Goro considers chucking it over the cliff. Against his better judgment, he unlocks it and opens the messaging app to the only active text thread since November.

Kurusu Akira

I really hate you.

Goro doesn’t immediately paste his response this time. Instead, he types, You should. His thumb hovers over the send button, the cursor blinking back at him in mockery. He considers it, what would happen if he pressed send. Would Akira curse him out? Call him? Start spamming sappy shit? Demand Futaba track his IP address and board the soonest train? Goro isn’t sure. He hates all the options. Doesn’t like how even the thought of them feels like chains constricting around his heart. As he backspaces, Akira sends two consecutive texts.

No I don’t.

I am mad at you though.

Goro scoffs. Can’t even commit to hating him. Typical Akira. He sends the automated text without hesitation this time, shutting off his phone and shoving it back into his pocket. The anger doesn’t return, but he feels the dissatisfaction intensify, sink in his stomach and sit there, solid and unmoving. He keeps his hand in his pocket, thumb brushing over his phone screen like he’s considering pulling it out again. He doesn’t.

Goro gets on his bike and begins the trek back.

-

He bumps into Sugawara Hana in the lobby. Her eyes are puffy and red-rimmed, but there’s a satisfied smile gracing her lips. She’s sitting on a couch, one hand drumming atop her pregnant belly. When she spots Goro, she breaks into a toothy grin and beckons him over.

“Akechi-kun!”

“Hana-san,” Goro greets, still catching his breath. He’s disheveled, dirt stains on his sweatpants from sitting on the cliff and hair in desperate need of a wash. He runs a hand through it self-consciously, wincing as he feels the oil slicking back the strands.

“Out exercising?” she asks as he settles into an armchair across from her.

“Yes, cycling. I used to wake up early every morning and bike through the park, though I haven’t done it in quite some time.”

Hana groans. “I get it. I haven’t been able to do my morning jogs since I stopped looking down and seeing my feet.” She pats her stomach. “Soon, though. I might end up one of those moms who jogs with a stroller.”

Goro can picture it—Hana with her long, brown hair tied up, a ball cap on her head, jogging through her neighborhood pushing a stroller. As chatty as her father, she’ll stop and talk with her neighbors, allow them to fawn and coo over her baby. Happy.

“That suits you, Hana-san.”

“Doesn’t it?” she laughs, but the vibrancy fizzles out. “Sorry, Akechi-kun. I can tell you’re tired, so I won’t talk your ear off tonight. I just needed to thank you.”

Goro tilts his head. “Thank me?”

Hana nods. “Of course I’m relieved my father’s trying to get his head on straight. I want my child to have a grandfather in their life, but as much as I tried, I couldn’t suppress that voice that wondered, why now? Why was I not good enough?” Her voice cracks, lips pressing into a thin line.

“I’ve never forgiven him. I thought I had, but I was lying to myself. Over time, that resentment built more and more, and ironically, it’s only worsened since he started getting help. But I didn’t want to acknowledge that. It felt childish. Selfish. I stopped visiting as often to avoid these feelings, like I was trying to punish him. Finally, I felt like I had control over our relationship. That I could hurt him like he hurt me,” Hana admits, fingers curling protectively over her belly. “That’s not the kind of mother I want to be, Akechi-kun. I don’t want to use my child as leverage.”

Goro bites down on his cheek. In the recesses of his mind, he hears snippets of a woman’s voice—young, around Hana’s age—as she pleads over the phone. For money. For love. To see him. She knows but won’t acknowledge that Goro will never be the leverage she needs. That he is a knife too dull to pierce through Shido’s heart, but not her own.

“Dad said he’s sorry that it took me saying I’d cut contact with him once the baby is born to realize he’d taken my love for granted. For the first time, he hugged me tight and cried. He told me I was always enough, and there’s nothing I could’ve done back then to make him realize that.” A tear slips down Hana’s cheek, and she hastily wipes it away. “He’s proud of the woman I’ve become.”

Goro doesn’t console her. He doesn’t think Hana needs his vapid words of comfort, nor would she appreciate them. Instead, Goro listens. He doesn’t look away when she meets his eyes, accepting her emotions head on.

“But he admitted he didn’t realize my feelings himself. He said a sharp-tongued brat gave him a hell of a whipping.” Hana smiles. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

A sharp-tongued brat, huh?

Goro snorts. “Well, I did warn him I wouldn’t hold back.”

“Sometimes, that’s the only way to get through to someone,” Hana says, back to her usual cheer. “Especially when that someone is my father. So again, thank you Akechi-kun. Truly. You’ve saved my family a lot of pain.”

His chest lightens at that, though he’s quick to stomp down the feeling. Goro’s the first to break eye contact, the sincerity in Hana’s gaze too honest to bear. “Let me know if I need to whip him into shape again. God only knows no one else in this place will.”

Hana laughs behind her hand. “Of course.”

A breeze whips through the lobby as the front door opens, a man strolling inside and swiveling his head. When he spots Hana, he grins and jogs toward them, holding out a hand to help Hana to her feet. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she insists, swatting at him playfully, but still takes his hand. He presses his lips to her cheek once she stands. Goro rises with her, giving the man a sharp once over.

“You haven’t met my husband yet, right, Akechi-kun?”

The man looks to Goro, his expression friendly. “Ah, so you’re Akechi-kun. Hana’s mentioned you before, the teen always taking care of her when she comes to visit. I’m Yamada Takeru. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Hm. An outwardly amiable personality. Attentive, considering he rushed over to help Hana stand, and her response didn’t indicate it was an unwelcome gesture, one taken because he thought her pregnancy made her incapable. Wearing a suit, so an office-worker of some kind. Nothing glaringly wrong, and Goro believes Hana is more than capable of taking care of herself.

Still, the smile Goro plasters on is fake and vaguely menacing.

He bows. “I’m Akechi Goro. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“I tell Takeru I can drive myself, but he insists on dropping me off and picking me up everywhere lately.” Hana rolls her eyes. She turns to Goro, faux-whispering. “I’m enjoying it, though. Might as well cash in my benefits while I can, right?” She winks.

Hana steps closer and pulls him into a hug. He stiffens beneath her touch, unable to return the gesture with the swiftness in which she pulls away. “I’d like you to meet the baby, Akechi-kun. You’ll still be here in the summer, won’t you?”

A yes dangles on the edge of his tongue, nearly slipping off before he catches it. A month ago, Goro would’ve agreed without a second-thought. He has nowhere else to go, nothing he wants or needs to do, so of course he will still be at the rehab center repaying Okkotsu for taking him in. After Yusuke’s visit, that guarantee wraps like chains around his limbs, traps him like an anchor thrown overboard.

“I’m…not sure,” he answers truthfully, and the chains loosen. The uncertainty isn’t freeing, but he can move a bit easier. He can slip out if he chooses to. Sail forward if he lowers the mast.

Hana ruffles his dirty hair, and Goro’s face contorts.

“Please don’t do that, Hana-san.”

She laughs. “You’ll still visit, won’t you? You’re kinda like the grumpy little brother I’ve always wanted.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

Hana shrugs, clinging onto Yamada’s arm and pulling him toward the entrance. “I’ll see you around, Akechi-kun!”

Once she disappears out of the front, Goro’s hand raises to his head. He lingers on the strands of hair Hana disturbed, the faint echo of her warm hand fading softly.

-

Goro is in the gardens again.

He shouldn’t be. It’s dark, only the patio light illuminating the outdoor space. Gnats bounce in front of the bulb, creating a flickering effect like it’s dying, but he knows the bulb is fresh. He changed it last week on a night near identical to this one.

Goro’s never been one to have a restful sleep. Perhaps that’s why he couldn’t die, his body too wired to yank him back to consciousness whenever he grazes a chance at peace. Maybe it’s his punishment. Maybe it’s just insomnia.

He pinned Yusuke’s drawing on the wall beside his bed. It looks ridiculous—the piece of sketch paper too small on the otherwise bare surface. It needs a frame, though the thought of buying one feels like losing, somehow. Pinning it to the wall already irks Goro, but shoving it in his desk drawer also felt like an admission of defeat, and he wouldn’t be caught dead losing to Kitagawa Yusuke of all people.

The issue is he keeps staring it as he tries to sleep, when he wakes up in the middle of the night and can’t sleep, when the sun begins to rise and the warm orange slants to hit the paper and he decides to give up on sleep and begin his day. He lingers on the caterpillar, on the hole it chewed through the tomato leaf. He hears Yusuke’s voice, saying, It is a relief to see you are well, Akechi-kun.

The gardens are further out, flush against the picket fence, so they’re even harder to make out in the dim light. Goro’s in his pajamas, a cream robe hanging loose around him. When he squats to look at his tomato plant, the caterpillar is, of course, gone. But as Goro leans closer, he sees the hole it chewed is still there.

He reaches toward the leaf, cupping the bottom with his fingers and tracing the hole with his thumb.

Lives are not so easily forgotten.

Goro’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He flinches, tearing the leaf from the stem. For a moment, all he does is stare. Without the stem, the leaf will wither from green to brown, go from soft to stiff and crumble into nothing. He’s ruined it.

He ruins everything he touches.

The second buzz comes, insistent, and the leaf slips from Goro’s hand as he grapples for his phone. Oddly, the first message is a photo of a gap between two walls, presumably where a tall gate should be. It’s wide enough for two trucks to drive through side-by-side. In the background, Goro sees the blur of tombstones. The second message makes Goro curse.

Akira Kurusu

Think I can make this jump?

Goro’s thumbs fly across his keyboard, hit send, type out a second message, hit send again. He’s breathing fast, chest heaving, hands gripped tight around his phone. His eyes, attuned to the dark, burn from the white light, but he can’t look away from the screen.

The messages remain on delivered for far too long. Long enough he’s glaring at the call button so intently he misses it change to read. Misses the three bubbles appear in bottom left corner.

His thumb mashes on call the same moment his phone buzzes with a new message:

We’re sorry, you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected

or is no longer in service.

Chapter Text

When Akira sees the messages, he feels as many emotions as he did watching his cognitive double get shot in the head—the rising triumph of a plan succeeded, the sinking dread of a friend lost, the regret that he hadn’t tried hard enough, and the certainty that even his best could never be enough. Above all, the detachment, both achingly present in heart but relievingly absent in body; a dissonance between him and his surroundings. If Akira looked into a mirror, he isn’t sure he’d recognize the reflection as himself.

Staring down at his phone, the bright screen anomalous amidst the dark, those two messages sent in quick succession, the fingers gripping, knuckles white, trembling, shifting in and out of focus. A dandelion, a wish, a field of dandelions, a boy in the field, his back turned, he reaches out, the boy is dandelions twirling up, up, into the sky, too far. Let’s go back. No. Let’s go back, to our true reality. Not again. We have to win this. A plaid scarf, red, green, grey. We have to win this, no matter what. Bells chiming. A door shut. Gone. Alone. Far, far, away in his last moments. No matter what. He is up, up, in the sky, too far, pressed against the glass of the helicopter. Christmas Eve. Gone. Alone. No matter what.

All these months, alone.

Akira veers left, catching himself on a railguard, a slicing pain returning clarity as he steadies himself on his sprained ankle. Months of messages, unanswered. Answered, but with a reply reminding him there was no one to answer them anymore. At least that’s what he thought.

If Akira deludes himself, he can think Akechi just woke up from a long coma. It’s easier that way. Less painful. Unfortunately, Akira knows Akechi too well, and when it comes to Akechi, the less painful route is never possible.

All the texts he sent; his grief—raw, vulnerable, exposed. His chest burns, acid licking up his throat. Akechi read them all, replied with the unfeeling repetition of a bot, and Akira fell for it. He didn’t question the inconsistency atypical of an automated message, the variations in respond time, the delays that seemed to grow longer as the months dragged on.

We’re sorry, you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service.

How many times had Akira received that message? How many times had he tugged at his hair or chucked his phone across the room or sunk beneath his comforter, begging to reverse time? The automated message was a mockery, except now, he knows the mockery was never at the hands of a bot.

Akira can breathe again. He cannot deny the relief as the much as he cannot deny the anger. The burn in his eyes can be joy, can be heartbreak, can be rage. They meld together, indistinguishable. Akira can curse Akechi out. He can call him and cry, spill out all his regrets until he’s wrung dry. He can text Futaba and ask her to track Akechi’s IP address. He can board the soonest train. And what will Akira do when Akechi is in front of him, alive and whole? Hit him. Hug him. Strangle him. Kiss him.

Akira only has to swipe up once to find the message. He copies it. Pastes it into his text box. Hits send.

The screen darkens, phone vibrating against his palm. He has the absurd notion that the world will begin warping around him, that he’ll be transported into the Metaverse his body’s craved since February. But his phone darkens because he’s receiving a call, and on the screen, the contact reads: Akechi Goro.

Akira’s thumb is on the green button before his mind catches up. He is unprepared to hear the silence on the other end, the faint echo of crickets and trickle of a fountain so quiet yet so loud. He’s even more unprepared when a familiar voice, dry, yet dripping in mockery, speaks.

“Really?”

A single word, but Akira’s heart skips in his chest.

When he’d read over his old messages with Akechi, the other’s voice was clear in his mind. The variations in intonation, the fake versus the real, pleasant versus rageful. Akechi haunted Akira’s subconscious, made quips on Akira’s thoughts and actions as if he were really there. The habit was a balm that soothed as much as it burned. He didn’t want Akechi to only live on in his memories, feared the day where that voice would grow quieter and quieter until that piece of him too faded away.

Akira’s silent for far too long. He considers hanging up, considers staying on the line but refusing to say anything just to see what Akechi will say. But the faint huff of breath scratches Akira’s ears, reminding him, Akechi’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive.

“Doesn’t feel good to be on the receiving end, huh?”

His voice is raspy, too weighed down with emotion for the tease. It falls flat. Sounds like an accusation instead. The swipe of a cat backed into an alley corner, but his nails are dull.

There’s no answer. Akira yanks his phone from his ear, afraid Akechi’s hung up. He hasn’t.

“Did you jump?” Akechi asks finally.

“What?” His ankle throbs. “Oh, yeah.”

“Did you make it?”

Akira scratches the back of his neck. “No.”

A deep sigh crackles through the speaker. Akira thinks his intelligence will be insulted again. It isn’t.

“Where are you?”

Akira drags his focus from the sidewalk, blinking as he takes in his surroundings. A residential street full of apartment complexes, late enough that most windows are dark. Streetlights cast an ugly hue down the road.

Oh. He’s here.

Akira looks down at the guard rail he’s leaning on, the same one Masayoshi Shido fell over and bonked his massive bald head on. Orange tinted glasses strewn on the curb. A frightened woman behind him. Police officer approaching, approaching, kicking him, a pen forced into his hand his ribs are cracked his lip is bleeding a needle in his arm more kicking bruises everywhere, stop, stop, stop—

“Kurusu-kun,” Akechi says, and the sound of his name is like being doused with cold water. He is on the street again, the only pain in his ankle and his chest.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

Another extended silence.

“I’m in a garden.”

“A garden?”

“You made me pull off a leaf.” Akira can hear the frown in his voice, as if he’s actually vexed about pulling a leaf off a plant.

“It’ll grow back?” he offers.

“Yes,” Akechi agrees, “but it won’t be this one.”

Akira pauses. “Oh. I guess so. Yeah.”

Neither of them say anything for awhile. Akira wants to, but the words won’t come. Everything he wished to say to Akechi these past months blanks from his mind. He doesn’t know what he wants Akechi to say, either. Most people would want an apology, but Akira thinks of I’m sorry echoing through the phone and that feels like a concession, somehow. Feels like a forfeit instead of a win, and the Akechi he knows—knew—knows would never forfeit.

“What kind of plant is it?” Akira asks.

“Tomato.” Then he adds on, almost absent-mindedly, “I grew it.”

Akira nods to himself. He takes the knowledge that Akechi, wherever he is, has been there long enough to grow a tomato plant, and pockets it for later.

“Have you eaten one yet? A tomato.”

“It’s likely they were in one of my meals, yes.”

A place where meals are provided. Akira tucks that away, too.

“A caterpillar was on this leaf. It chewed a hole in the center. Someone…told me it was proof of the caterpillar’s existence, but who cares that this particular caterpillar existed on this particular leaf?” There’s an edge to Akechi’s voice, an incredulity. “It’s ridiculous. It has no purpose. The caterpillar will die and the tomato plant will die and the leaf will die and there’ll be no proof of any of their lives left behind, so there’s no point in remembering any of it.”

Akira takes a moment to ponder the question lingering beneath, how to give an answer that’ll affirm what Akechi needs to hear. Speaking in riddles doesn’t bother him so long as his feelings get across.

“Even if physical mementos are gone, lives exist in our memory. I think there’s a point in that, at least.” And isn’t that what Akira’s been toiling over all these months? Akechi—all of him, the truth of him—existing in Akira’s memory alone? Doomed to be forgotten as Akira’s mind blurred with the passage of time?

“Sometimes all we can do is remember,” Akira trails off, his voice hush. “The caterpillar, the leaf, all of it’s worth remembering, regardless of how little time it was there.”

Akira’s grief had been all-consuming for that same reason; even as he grew older, the eight months he knew Akechi would never lessen in significance. He knew his regrets wouldn’t either. Still, given the option, he would never choose to forget. The pain was in the remembering, but Akira resolved to carry that pain for rest of his days. That is the price of being the one left behind.

Akechi’s breath statics the speaker. “Just the sort of brainless sentimentality I’d expected from you.”

Akira’s lip’s quirk upward the same time his chest tightens. He knows he shouldn’t ask, knows what the answer will be, but he’s a little pathetic, maybe, so he does anyway.

“Can I see you?”

He rolls his sprained ankle, wincing at the pain stiffening his muscles. He keeps doing it through the silence, waiting for Akechi to speak.

“Not yet,” Akechi says.

“But not never?”

He can wait, give Akechi whatever time he needs to figure out whatever it is he’s struggling with, so long as Akira knows he won’t vanish again. Sure, he’s still angry with Akechi for letting Akira think him dead all these months, but, knowing him, he probably did it for a reason, however misguided that reason was.

“Not yet,” Akechi repeats. It’s not exactly an answer, but it’s enough.

“Okay. One more question and I’ll stop. Promise.”

Akechi sighs. “Get on with it.”

“Are you safe?”

If some of Shido’s goons were after him, if he was forced into hiding somewhere, Akira wouldn’t stay still.

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t ask if you were fine, I asked if you were safe.”

Akechi must’ve moved the phone further from his mouth, because Akira only vaguely hears, Goddamn persistent piece of shit, before Akechi snaps, “I’m somewhere I stayed with my mother once. I’m well taken care of. Are you done now?”

Akechi’s annoyance with him is relieving, somehow. “Yeah.”

“Great. I’m going back to bed. Goodnight, Kurusu-kun.”

“Goodnight-“ The call ends. “Goro,” Akira finishes, disappointed.

It doesn’t matter. He’ll call him by his first name next time.

“Next time,” Akira says, limping the rest of the way home with a smile.

-

Akira texts Akechi as soon as he wakes up the next morning.

Akechi Goro

mornin

can i call you???

For a moment, Akira fears he’ll get the same automated text that he always has. That last night was nothing more than a dream. But Akechi responds within seconds, and not with a copy-pasted message.

I see your grammar has regressed. Who would’ve thought it’d take me dying for you to use proper punctuation?

it was for tone’s sake

but your alive so im back to normal yippeee

*You’re

No. I’m working.

working??

working where?????

None of your business.

come on

at least give me a hint

No.

plssss

pretty please

plus

plez

pees

You’re incorrigible.

mm keep using big words ur so sexy ahaha

do you need to use fancy vocab at ur job

I’m not dignifying that with a response.

:(((((((

“What are you smiling about?” Mona hops on Akira’s back, trying to peek at the screen. “Is it Lady Ann?”

Akira slams his phone face down on his bed. “No.”

“Why are you acting so suspicious? Show me.”

“No time. I need to get ready for school,” he says, ignoring Morgana’s yowl as he sits up on his bed. Mona flips over his phone but can’t make it past the lock screen.

“Stupid passcode. Stupid facial recognition. Why don’t phones recognize cat’s faces, huh? Isn’t this discrimination?”

Akira stands and almost immediately falls over, a bolt of lightning shooting up his left leg. Right, his ankle.

“Woah! What’s wrong?” Morgana hops down circling his legs. He peers at Akira’s swollen ankle, the skin purple and inflamed, nearly three times the size of the other. “Did you hurt yourself? How?”

“I uh-“ Akira stumbles into his lie. “Tripped down the stairs last night when I went to get a glass of water.”

Morgana squints at him, more confused than suspicious. “Really? I didn’t hear anything.”

“It was a graceful fall.”

“How do you sprain your ankle gracefully?”

Akira shrugs. “Months of gymnastics training with Sumire.”

“I guess…” Morgana presses his toe beans against the swelling light enough not to hurt. “Try to fall gracefully not onto your ankle next time. Your reflexes are seriously out of practice.”

“Thanks for the feedback. Care to leave a starred review as well?”

Morgana sighs, ignoring him. “You can’t walk on this all day. Is there a clinic nearby? Too bad Dr. Takemi’s not around the corner anymore.”

“I’ll be fine. It’s just a sprain. I’ve dealt with worse,” Akira says, not remembering returning bloody and bruised, walking around with his hood pulled up, wincing at every step because his ribs are cracked. Unable to see out of his swollen eye, unable to wear a blanket without feeling too restrained, flinching every time the door to Leblanc opened.

“Akira?”

He flinches, back in his room again, Morgana staring up at him with worried eyes.

“Sorry.” He feigns a yawn. “I’m just tired. Couldn’t sleep well after I fell.”

“Are you sure that’s it?”

“Positive,” he says, tugging his shirt over his head and tossing it aside. He doesn’t look at Morgana again as he limps into his bathroom, not wanting to see the sadness drooping his ears and stilling his tail. Hating that he’s the cause of it so often these days.

The dread returns as Akira clicks the door shut behind him, slithering around his legs and rooting him to the spot. He stares listlessly around the room that’s somehow too spacious, missing a square room where he’d bump his elbows into the walls while brushing his teeth and could hypothetically wash his hands while sitting on the toilet. His adrenaline, his restlessness from the day before is bled dry. Akira stumbles over his growing mountain of laundry and into the shower, shedding his sleepwear with shaky hands. And, like every other day where he wants to sink and sink until he drowns, he twists the knob with gritted teeth.

Cold water needles his bare skin. Akira hisses, fists braced against the tiled wall as he keeps his head below the current. His heart rate picks up. His muscles tremble beneath the onslaught.

Akechi’s alive.

A mop of black plasters against his forehead and obstructs his vision, the curls flattened and soaked. Water drips from the ends down his cheeks, onto his lips. He inhales.

He’s fine now. Akechi’s alive. There’s no reason for this anymore.

Still, he stands there until his skin is numb to the cold, his fingers pruned and back trembling, reminding his body, you can stop now. He’s alive.

-

Akira ends up not going to school. His mother takes one look at his ankle and the wrinkles in her forehead deepen, a curt sigh hissing past her red lips. He insists he’s fine, that he can go to school this way, but she snaps at him, “What will the other parents think of me if I send my son to school with an untreated injury?”

Then she’s calling into her job, saying she’ll be in late today, yes, sorry, my son injured himself, no, he’s not a toddler, a teenager yes, a troublemaker, you know how they are at this age. Akira keeps his head lowered, fiddles with the bangs that droop to the bridge of his nose. Morgana’s upstairs, having long learned to steer clear of his mother, but Akira knows he’s listening. A nauseating mix of shame and resentment burn Akira’s throat as his mother stomps around the house, grabbing her bag and swinging the front door open with far too much force, all the while muttering complaints under her breath.

Morgana slinks down the top two stairs, his little head peeking through the railing. “You okay, Akira?” he whispers. “Want me to tag along in your bag?”

Akira shakes his head, limping after his mother. “No, it’s alright.” She’ll only get more agitated if she discovers he brought Mona along.

When they got off the train in Inaba, the first thing Morgana asked was why no one picked him up at the station. Akira shrugged the question off, said his parents were busy. But when Akira arrived at his house, ringing the doorbell because he no longer had a key, and his mother did not greet him at the door with a smile but with a frown, he knew he wouldn’t be able to hide the truth. He could only ask Morgana to not tell the others.

“I’m sure they’d understand,” Morgana said. Akira knew they would. They all had their fair share of shitty, absent parents. Still, he was stuck here, and there was no point making them worry when his parents’ hearts couldn’t be changed.

Akira takes a deep breath before slipping into the backseat, already regretting his decision to leave Morgana behind. At some point, Akira’s bag strap digging into his shoulder from the weight and the warmth where it rests against his side became a comforting constant. Without it, he’s off-kilter.

“Really, Akira,” his mother finally huffs, tapping her finger against the steering wheel. “How did this happen? You’re not getting into fights, are you?”

Akira shakes his head.

“Well?” his mother says, “Are you? You don’t always come straight home after school—don’t bother lying, Miyamoto-san tells me when you do get home, you’re usually covered in grime.”

Miyamoto-san, the elderly woman who lives across the street. Akira used to shovel her driveway and walk her dog. He tried to wave to her the week he got back. She looked away.

Akira wraps his hands around his seatbelt and squeezes. “No.”

His mother makes a low, disbelieving sound. Their eyes meet in the rear view mirror. “Just keep your grades up and your head down. You have your entrance exams this year. Not being on parole anymore doesn’t mean you can afford to cause trouble.”

He doesn’t really want to go to college. Doesn’t know what he’d study. But he also knows college is the only way he can get back to Tokyo, and his parents want him gone almost as badly as he wants to leave.

“Hopefully it’ll be quick since it’s early,” she continues, “I have so much work to get done and now I’ll be delayed by hours.”

Before, Akira would’ve apologized, responded to every complaint with a sorry. Now, he says nothing, the pulse in his ankle intensifying with the weariness in his bones. If he is not indignant, he is exhausted, and since February, the first February, the fake February, the flames in him have dissolved into embers.

Akira’s phone buzzes against his thigh. He tunes out his mother’s ranting as he slips the phone from his pocket.

Akechi Goro

What do the others think?

???

Your little band of friends. What did they say when you told them I’m alive?

oh

i havent told them

Not even the cat?

nope

didn’t think you’d want me to

The texting bubble appears. Then disappears. Then appears again.

So it was for my sake.

Alright.

The wording gives Akira pause. For Akechi’s sake. That’s why he hadn’t texted them after their call last night.

should i have?

Appears. Disappears. Appears.

No. It’s fine.

Was it truly for Akechi’s sake? He thinks of sending that message in the group chat after weeks of silence. It’s not that he expects them to be disappointed, not that he’s dreading any particular response. Sure, he doesn’t want to dredge up any conflicting emotions for Futaba or Haru. He knows Ryuji, as much as he dislikes Akechi, didn’t want him to die. Makoto will acknowledge it, perhaps comfort Haru, tell Sae. Ann will be happy, relieved. She’s always got along with him best. And Morgana, Morgana would look at him with those sad, knowing eyes and—

tbh

i dont wanna tell them yet

Right.

I’m sure my survival wouldn’t make much of a difference, so why bother.

no thats not why

they’d care. they really would

it’s just

His grief is a shield. If he’s no longer grieving, how can he explain feeling like no more than a cage of bones with nothing left inside?

we haven’t been talking a lot

everyone’s busy

Hm.

His phone vibrates in his hand. An incoming call. Akira declines it before his mother notices.

Really?

Weren’t you the one begging for a call earlier?

yeah

sorry

in the car with my mom rn

I see.

going to the doctor

sprained my ankle last night

Well, obviously.

Do you do that often?

sprain my ankle?

No, idiot.

I meant wander out at night.

when i can’t sleep

And the jumping distances no reasonable human being could make?

what can i say

i live for the thrill

I knew you to be impulsive, yes.

Reckless, at times.

But this is a new low even for you.

it got u to answer didn’t it?

Please. We both know that wasn’t your true objective.

what was my true objective then

do your worst, detective

“Akira!”

He flinches, head snapping up as his mother knocked against the back window. She’s already out of the car, purse slung over her shoulder and arms crossed.

“What are you doing? Get out of the car,” she calls, voice muffled by the glass.

Akira obeys, pushing the door open and sliding out. He braces his hand against the roof to avoid leaning on his ankle, his mother striding ahead as soon as the two beeps signal the car’s locked.

“Let’s make this quick. I want to try and be in the office by ten.”

He hobbles after her, only pausing when his phone buzzes.

The Metaverse.

You miss it, don’t you?

Akira reads the message. He reads it again. He tilts his head back and looks up into the cloudy haze in the sky, a humorless smile quirking his lips. Akechi never was one to pull his punches.

-

Akechi asks again later than day, when Akira’s got his phone balanced between his shoulder and his ear, hands both occupied by crutches. He’s perhaps having more fun walking home with them than he should be, testing out how far he can swing without falling over.

“Well?” Akechi says in lieu of a greeting. “It’s been six hours and you’ve yet to answer my question.”

“Didn’t realize you were keeping count.”

“I’m not. You’re the one who called me.”

“I couldn’t answer.” Akira successfully dodges two more breaks in the sidewalk. “I just got out of school.”

“Bullshit.” Akechi scoffs. “We both know that’s never stopped you before.”

On the next swing, his phone nearly slips. “Yeah, I just don’t really wanna talk about it. It’s fine.”

“Is that what you tell your friends? That it’s fine?”

“Well, yeah. It’s normal to miss it, right? So it’s fine.”

“You said you didn’t want to discuss it.”

“I don’t.” Akira pauses. “Do you miss it?”

“No.”

“That was quick.”

“It’s like asking someone who’s cancer-free if they miss the cancer, Kurusu-kun.”

“Makes sense.” Akechi’s relationship with the Metaverse was much different than his. He nearly tips over on his next swing, his crutch landing in a crack in the sidewalk. “You know you can call me Akira, right?”

“Oi. Kurusu.”

Akira looks up from the ground, his neck still twisted at an awkward angle to keep his phone in place. Three students, all in Yasogami uniforms, block his path. Underclassmen, evident from the number two pinned on the lapels. It’s the wannabe delinquents who keep trying to corner him after school. He should’ve taken the roundabout way home after all.

“Well, well. If it isn’t Kurusu-senpai.” The tallest of them cracks his knuckles, spitting out the honorific like a curse.

Their leader, around Akira’s height with a shaved head and septum piercing that’s definitely fake, steps forward. “Take us to your boss, Kurusu. We won’t ask nicely again.”

Akira sighs, his eyes darting around them to the street. Usually he could outrun them, but with this ankle…

“Listen, I don’t know where you all got the idea I’m in a gang. But I’m not. So can you let me pass please?”

A boy with badly bleached hair scoffs. “As if we’d believe that. Why’re you always banged up then?”

“Uh. Parkour?”

“What’s going on?” Akechi’s voice cuts in. “Who are you talking to?”

“Nothing. Can I call you back later?”

“Who’s that? Your girlfriend?”

“As if a girl would want that ugly mug,” the leader scoffs.

“Didn’t your girlfriend say he was dark and mysterious, Kazuki?” Bad Hair Dye says.

“Yeah. I wouldn’t say he’s ugly,” the tall, knuckle-cracker adds. He stops cracking his knuckles to squint at Akira’s face. “Definitely got pretty boy features.”

“Shut it!” Kazuki gets in Akira’s face, so close he can smell the salmon he must’ve eaten for lunch on his breath. “I’m sick of you looking down on us, Kurusu. You waltz back into town after a year on probation and expect us to be cool with you lurking on our turf? Stirring up shit, but thinking we’re not good enough to join your ranks? Running off at the sight of us cause we’re not worth your time?”

“That doesn’t sound like nothing,” Akechi drawls.

“I can handle it,” Akira says. “I’ll talk to you later. I’m hanging up now.”

“Hey! Akira-!”

Akira doesn’t have time to relish Akechi saying his first name before a fist comes flying at his face. He dodges it by a short margin, his phone slipping from his shoulder and bouncing along the concrete. Ah. He really hopes it didn’t break. He doesn’t want to ask his parents for a new one.

Bad Hair Dye comes at him next. Akira trips him with his crutch so he goes skidding along the sidewalk, then smacks Kazuki in the shins with the other. Kazuki grunts and falls to his knees, but aims an elbow at Akira’s stomach that hits. Akira stumbles back, faintly registering a pain in his ankle as he leans his weight on his left foot.

“What the hell are you smiling at you freak?” Knuckle Cracker spits.

He’s smiling? Akira crouches to dodge Knuckle Cracker’s fist, then stomps the crutch down on the boy’s foot. Yeah, he’s smiling. He’s enjoying this. It’s much more thrilling than balancing on high walls or climbing trees. His heart pumps in his ears, nerves tingling with the rush. Bad Hair Dye grabs him from behind, and Joker slams the back of his head into the boy’s face. A shout, then the arms around him fall away. Joker pivots, Kazuki’s fist flying over his shoulder—and seriously, was throwing punches all he could do?— letting the crutches clatter against the sidewalk, and aims a kick at Kazuki’s side. It sends Kazuki flying sideways, right into a mailbox. He curses, trying to wobble back to his feet. Joker doesn’t give him the chance. He comes up behind Kazuki, grips his jaw with one hand and places the other over his eyes, ready to pull away a mask…a mask?

Akira falters.

What is he doing? This isn’t the metaverse. These boys aren’t shadows. When did his moves switch from defensive to offensive? The whispers of his classmates at Shujin, the distrustful glances when he returned to Yasogami. Were they right all along?

“Get your hands off Kazuki you bastard!”

Arms slip under his, yanking him up and away from Kazuki. Akira feels it when he lands on his ankle this time, the pain shooting up his leg and weakening his knees. When he tries to break free, Knuckle Cracker tightens his grip, and Akira can’t dodge this time when Kazuki throws a punch at his face, knuckles colliding with his cheek. The force rattles Akira’s skull, makes him bite down on his cheek to keep from shouting.

“You broke my nose you asshole,” Bad Hair Dye says, blood-soaked hand curled around his nose. “Let me return the favor.”

Akira can’t hold back his shout this time. He hears the crunch of the cartilage, tastes the blood as it pours out of his nostrils onto his lips. What remains is a sharp throb in tempo with his ankle, so potent it dulls the rest of his senses. Akira’s vision blurs. A strike at his midsection leaves him gasping for air, and another makes tears spring from his eyes.

It’ll end eventually. He just has to endure it. At least they didn’t inject him with drugs this time. He’ll be fine. This will be worth it. This is all for the plan.

“I’ve called the police!” Akechi’s voice cuts through the teen’s curses and Akira’s pitiful groans. Did the call not disconnect? Has he been listening this whole time?

The attacks stop. Akira squints an eye open, sees Kazuki pick up his phone.

“Liar. You don’t even know where we are right now.”

Kazuki’s silent for a few moments, but Akira can’t hear what Akechi’s saying to him. He sees Kazuki’s face pale and then twist into a scowl. “Whatever.” He juts his chin at Knuckle Cracker. “Let him go. Let’s scram before the pigs arrive.”

Akira doesn’t have the strength to catch himself. He falls to the ground in a heap, cheek striking the sidewalk and sending a fresh jolt of pain through his head. He vaguely registers someone spitting on him before the sound of three sets of footsteps grow fainter and fainter.

“Akira?”

His phone is too far to reach. Akira grunts as he crawls toward it, every movement sending a fresh wave of pain through his body. Akechi’s still shouting his name when he picks up the phone and places it to his ear, rolling over onto his back.

“Hey.”

“Are you fucking stupid?”

Akira’s laugh turns to a wheeze. “You love asking me that lately.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you didn’t keep making idiotic decisions.” Akechi’s voice softens. “Are you injured?”

“M’fine.”

“You’re most definitely not fine. You’re slurring your words like a drunken fool.”

Akira chuckles, groaning as it aggravates the fresh bruises on my stomach. “Stop making me laugh. It hurts.”

“I haven’t said anything remotely comical. Those dumbasses must’ve smacked the sense out of you.”

“Mm. Maybe.” Akira blinks, watching a Mona-shaped cloud crawl across the blue sky. “By the way, what did you say to him?”

“Vapid threats about my father being the police commissioner in town. He seemed to think I was a girl, so I pitched my voice to match his expectations.” Akechi snorts. “Truly an imbecile, if he fell for such an half-baked lie.”

“Well, you can sound pretty scary when you want to.”

“Hmph. I’ll have to use it on you sometime. Perhaps now, so you’ll call for help and won’t pass out trying to walk the rest of the way home?”

“Won’t work. But feel free to try. I like when you get all menacing.”

Akechi huffs. Akira likes to think he’s smiling. “Ridiculous.”

“Isn’t there anyone you can contact?”

Akira pauses. Definitely not his parents. God, how’s he going to hide his broken nose from them? Lie and say he fell down a flight of stairs? They won’t buy it a second time. If only Mona could still turn into a car.

“Mona doesn’t have a phone.”

“Morgana also does not have opposable thumbs, nor can he transform into a vehicle. I meant friends, Akira. Surely you have some. You had no short of them in Tokyo.”

“Tokyo’s much larger than Inaba.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“You could come get me?” Akira half-jokes.

“That would take far too long.”

“That’s not a no.”

“Are you all right?”

A girl in a middle school uniform hovers over him, blocking his view of the sky. Her brown hair’s cut to her shoulders, pink bow clips holding the strands out of her face.

“Oh. Yeah. I’m okay. Sorry, am I blocking your way?”

She scrunches her nose, ignoring him. “You don’t look okay. Your face is all bloody.”

Akira tries to push himself up into a sitting position but fails spectacularly.

“I’m calling my dad.”

“Hey, hold on a moment.”

“Akira,” Akechi warns.

“Ugh. Fine.”

The girl’s already dialed her father’s number. He picks up before the second ring. “Hey Dad? No, I’m okay. I found an injured high schooler on the way home. Yes. Near Block Five.” She glances down at Akira. “He looks like he got beat up pretty badly. A broken nose, maybe? He’s got crutches too. Mhm. I’ll stay with him. See you soon. Love you too.”

The middle school girl squats beside him, arms hugging her knees. “Dad’ll be here in a few minutes. The station’s quiet today, so he can leave early.”

Akira’s stomach drops. “The station?”

She nods. “He’s a detective.”

“Well aren’t you lucky,” Akechi says.

Akira tries to stand again. He’s marginally more successful, though he has to rely on the girl to not lose balance. “Thank you, but I’ve had my fill of detectives.”

“Oh have you?”

“You especially.”

“Hmph.”

Nanako frowns at him. “What’s wrong with detectives?”

-

Akira’s grounded.

After patching him up, Detective Dojima did not listen to Akira’s pleas that an escort home would worsen his situation. “I’m not letting an injured kid walk home alone. What if you get jumped again?” he said. “You’re my responsibility now,” he said. “Get in the car,” he said.

And so Akira arrived home in the back of a cop car. The whole ride, he prayed his parents were working late, as they often did. He isn’t so lucky. At Detective Dojima’s knock, his mother answered the door and proceeded to turn several shades of red in an effort not to yell at him in front of the cop. She held no such reservations after Dojima left, didn’t seem to care that he was injured, let alone believe he’d done nothing to instigate a fight.

Akira was to come straight home after school. No wandering around town picking fights, as she put it. Nevermind that he was trying to go straight home when someone picked a fight with him.

He doesn’t mind this as much as he should. There’s fuck-all to do in Inaba, and if he needs to he can slip out at night while they’re asleep. The more concerning aspect of his punishment was his phone being taken away.

“Is your mom usually this harsh?” Morgana asks, resting his chin on Akira’s thigh. Akira’s sitting on the edge of his bed with an ice pack on his face. He’ll have to go to the hospital again tomorrow after all. He’s also definitely worsened the state of his ankle, the sprain no doubt escalating to a fracture.

“She’s always been strict, but it’s definitely gotten more extreme since my arrest. I didn’t really cause trouble before then. Did what I was told, never asked questions. I wasn’t much of my own person before I went to Tokyo.” He’s terrified of becoming that again, of his year away being no more than a blip in an otherwise mundane life. “If it weren’t for you and the others, maybe I’d have stayed that way forever.”

“I don’t believe that,” Morgana says. “You’ve always been special, Akira. Even without the Metaverse.”

Akira smiles. Mona always has such faith in him.

“Thanks Mona.” He pets Morgana’s back, comforted by the purrs rumbling against his leg.

“I can try and scout out the house to find where she hid your phone,” Morgana offers.

Akira shakes his head, wincing when the movement makes him dizzy. “She’ll definitely have put something so she knows if it’s been moved.”

Morgana’s ears droop. “We didn’t even have time to warn the others before she took it.”

Not that Akira’s been that active anyway. He’s less worried about the thieves and more about Akechi, the last thing he heard being Akira shuffling into a cop car.

“It’ll be fine. Probably.”

Akechi would put two and two together.

Chapter Text

Akira hasn’t answered Goro in six days.

His texts won’t deliver, his calls won’t go through, and the dozen voicemails he’s left are rife with flavorful threats and expletives. A search online reveals no one named Kurusu Akira was arrested in Inaba this week, but that does little to settle the tightness in Goro’s chest—doesn’t stop him from forgetting to bring in the towels from the clothesline before the thunderstorm or water the bonsai tree in the lobby.

Inaba’s a small town. They didn’t even report on Akira’s first arrest, though it’s more likely that was Shido pulling strings than anything else. To put it lightly, Inaba’s record keeping is shit. Their most recent incident—the burglary of a metalworks shop—wasn’t reported on until three months after the fact. Some more digging reveals their lack of urgency toward minor crime reporting began after they struggled to keep up with the high profile string of murders that occurred in 2011. Goro clicks through a few more articles about the incidents. Akira must’ve been around twelve at the time. Why hasn’t he ever mentioned it?

Goro shuts his laptop and leans back in his desk chair. That’s irrelevant. If Akira was arrested, Goro has no way of finding out through his current resources. He no longer has access to the police network, and even if he did, that would only extend to Tokyo.

He eyes the manila folder laying in the upper right corner of his desk. God, Goro can’t believe he has to help Akira get out of police custody a second time. With a sigh, he reaches for it, his fingers swiping away a thin layer of dust.

Goro rifles through the papers to the section with profiles on the Inaba police. Dojima, he’d heard the girl say over the phone. Detective Dojima. He wasn’t involved in Akira’s first arrest a year ago, but he ranked pretty high in the station. If Shido had connections there, it isn’t far-fetched to mark the whole place off as corrupt. Still. His thumb traces over the phone number in the man’s profile.

By the fourth ring, Goro’s mentally gone over his lines and prepared potential threats, if necessary.

“Dojima speaking,” a voice answers, gruff like he’s just coming off a sore throat.

“Greetings, Dojima-san. Is this a good time?”

Papers shuffling. “Depends. Who’s this?”

“My apologies. I should have introduced myself. I’m Akechi Goro, a detective with the Tokyo police.”

The shuffling stops. “That kid that’s always on TV?” A brief, but pronounced pause.

“Is something the matter, Dojima-san?”

“No. Nothing. Strange, I feel as if I’m remembering something I forgot.” Dojima clears his throat, the sound crackling through the speaker. “Don’t mind me. An old man’s griping, is all.”

Hm. Seems the erasure of the Metaverse truly did remove him from people’s cognitions. Not the information he seeks, but nevertheless good to know.

“A non-issue, I assure you, Dojima-san. I’ve remained out of the public eye for awhile now due to health concerns. Perhaps that’s why I’ve slipped your mind.” Goro lowers his voice, sheepish. “Actually, Dojima-san, my reason for contacting you is a rather selfish request. Would you indulge me?”

“That depends, kid. Though I’m not sure what a small town cop like me could do that you can’t.”

Goro keeps his laugh light and controlled. “You flatter me, Dojima-san.”

Dojima scoffs. “Yeah, yeah. I’m too old for this peacocking. Just tell me what you want.”

Goro bites down on his tongue. Hard. “Of course. I actually have an acquaintance in Inaba, Kurusu Akira-kun. The reason I contacted you in particular, Dojima-san, is because I was speaking to him when your daughter found him on the street a few days ago.”

“Oh, that kid,” Dojima grunts. “Yeah, he was beat up pretty bad. I drove him home after patching him up, though.”

“Drove him home?” Goro latches onto Dojima’s words, pressing. “You mean you didn’t bring him back to the station?”

“Huh? Why would I do that? He was the victim here.” Dojima sighs. “Kurusu’s mother insisted on not pressing charges, even when I told her I’d make sure those kids were dealt with.”

Goro settles back into his chair. “I see.”

“Why call me? Can’t you just ask Kurusu himself?”

“Ah, well.” Goro clears his throat. “He hasn’t had great experiences with the police, so I wanted to ensure he didn’t receive any legal repercussions.”

“Right. There was that incident a year ago. Though back then, I didn’t…” Dojima trails off. “Nevermind. I’m glad Kurusu has a friend looking out for him. Kid’s got a good head on his shoulders.”

“Right. I’ll let him know you said so. Thank you, Dojima-san.”

“Happy to help. And uh, if you’re ever in Inaba feel free to swing by the station. My daughter’s a fan of yours.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Some more empty pleasantries, then the line disconnects. Goro lowers the phone from his ear, slowly, until his arm hangs limp at his side.

So Akira’s not in custody.

That’s good. Splendid, even.

Goro stares at his phone screen. Clicks on the messenger app. A red exclamation point marks the side of four chat bubbles, his texts still undelivered. Perhaps Akira broke his phone? No, if the damage incurred during the fight was that extreme, he would not have remained on the line. Would not have spoken with Akira up until he ducked into Detective Dojima’s car. Even if Akira broke his phone, he could’ve fixed it by now. Or used another device to contact him. A pay phone. Inaba seemed old and run-down enough to still keep one of those. As Goro combed over the possibilities, the most fitting answer, hidden deep beneath the others, showed itself bit by bit until the reasoning was undeniable.

Akira simply no longer wished to speak with him.

A light knock on his door.

“Akechi-kun?”

Goro clicks his phone off. The growing wave of anxiety has crashed, and now he is receding, flat and still, back into the depths. “Yes, Okkotsu-san?”

“If it’s not a bother, would you mind mopping the onsen? Takahashi-kun splashed water all over the floors again.”

Goro pinches between his brow. That man-child needed to stop treating the onsen like a public pool. “Of course.”

Okkotsu thanks him and leaves, her footsteps slow-moving as their shuffle grows fainter. Goro glances at Dojima’s file once more before sliding the pages into his folder and placing it back on the corner of his desk.

—

Nothing good can come of putting your faith in people who haven’t earned it.

Finally, after a false-January spent trying to convince him of that fact, Akira realized what should have been obvious from the start—from the moment he realized Goro’s interest in him was as pure as his Detective Prince smile.

Akira’s brief scare with the police reminded him that Goro was the one to put him in that interrogation room, where the officers beat and drugged and forced a confession out of him, where Goro placed a gun to his head, smiled, and blew his brains out.

Goro knew Akira—that detestable, enviable part of him that gravitated toward the good, the compassionate, the forgiving—must have a limit. Akira Kurusu is not a saint. He saw that truth in the sharp tilt of Joker’s smile, in the glint of his dagger as he pressed the blade to a shadow’s throat. Yes, Akira’s capacity for good is of a scale Goro cannot fathom, but it is not endless.

Goro squeezes the water out of the mop and into the bucket, then slaps it back onto the tiles and scrubs. He never earned Akira’s faith. Squeeze. He warned Akira that he was not a perfect victim. Slap. Nor was he looking to be saved. Scrub. If Akira was too dense to get that through his skull until now, it was not his fucking problem.

Sugawara whistles from where he’s lounging in the onsen. “What’d that mop ever do to you, kid?”

Goro ignores him. Continues scrubbing. He never wants to deal with Sugawara’s shit, but especially not right now, when he’s more inclined to snap the wooden stick of this mop in half and stab it through the old man’s throat.

“Come on, Goro-kun. Bottling it all up inside never did anyone any good. That’s how you end up with a drinking problem. You want that, Goro? To end up alone at a rehab center, trying to convince the people you love you’re worth keeping around?”

Goro levels Sugawara with a glare, his nails digging into the mop’s handle. “Don’t fucking call me that.”

Sugawara raises an eyebrow. How unaffected he is by Goro’s disrespect lately—how he seems to think because Goro, begrudgingly, accidentally improved his relationship with Hana-san and therefore is what? Someone he’s indebted to? A friend?—pisses him off even more.

“And don’t act like you know me or what I want, you washed-up waste of fucking air.”

He doesn’t need Sugawara consoling him. Sugawara’s just another shitty old man telling him what to do with his life, trying to weigh in on his choices. It doesn’t matter that Akira decided Goro wasn’t worth his benevolence anymore. He didn’t want Akira’s faith anyway. He tried to stay away, but Akira kept fucking texting him and then broke his ankle chasing adrenaline like some sort of junkie and Yusuke’s fucking stupid caterpillar and the damn fucking leaf.

Goro’s breathing heavily. His shoulders have risen to his ears. His heart strains against his ribs, trying to squeeze in the spaces between his bones the quicker it beats.

“There it is.”

“What?” He hisses, ready to lob the mop at Sugawara’s head.

“The anger. It’s always there, teething at you. Stop tryin’ to make it loosen its grip and let it bite, kid. Let it chew and swallow.”

Goro thought his anger had left him. Died in the engine room. Died again in Maruki’s palace. When he woke up, disoriented and aching but alive, he was not angry, just tired. Wrung-dry. He is aimless without his anger, his rage scathing behind false smiles, polite bows, sharpening the jagged edge of Loki’s blade, pressing his finger against the trigger, always there, always urging, you will make him pay. Shido did pay, but not by his own hand, not in the way he yearned for. Maruki paid, too, but that didn’t satisfy him either.

His anger is not gone, but without direction. It bleeds through in his thinned patience, how he stabs at the garden’s dirt with his shovel, plucks the tomatoes from his plant with a force that leaves them shaking, presses the mop into the tiles so hard his shoulders ache.

“Your analogy is lacking,” he says instead. “You fail to consider an anger so vast it will devour until nothing is left.”

If Akira’s capacity for good is of a scale he cannot fathom, then so is Goro’s anger. How could he ever have thought it gone? Ever thought it dried up? Satisfied?

Sugawara shrugs. “I wasn’t a good student, so that’s all I got. You’ll need to figure out the rest yourself. I know you’ve gotta big brain inside that pretty head of yours.”

“And you’ve got a pea-sized one behind that receding hairline, yes.”

A bark of a laugh. “Yeah, well. That’s what drinking will do to you. Now stop beatin’ the crap outta the floor with that mop, will ya? I’m trying to relax.”

Goro’s less violent with the mop after that, yes, but not to respect Sugawara’s request. His arms ache, is all, and now that he’s acknowledged the anger, he lets it bite, lets it chew, lets it swallow. And much later, after he finished his mopping, after it’s eaten its full, he sends a text.

Ann Takamaki

Takamaki-san.

Goro’s sitting on a bench inside the local train station, still catching his breath after biking the couple miles from the rehab facility. He’s brought nothing aside from the clothes on his back—a half-wrinkled navy sweater and a pair of khaki slacks—the wallet bulging from his pocket, and the newly purchased train ticket to Inaba clenched in his fist.

In an attempt to cool down, Goro tugs at his collar as he watches Takamaki’s chat bubble appear. The air’s sticky with the promise of rain, but he’d be sweating regardless. Goro, despite now indulging his old habit of sunrise bike rides, remains severely out of shape.

????

??????????????????

Akechi????

Good. You didn’t delete my contact information. That will spare unnecessary introductions. I am in need of your assistance.

Definitely Akechi. Oh my god!!!!!

You’re alive!?

Irrelevant. I need you to give me Akira’s home address.

What? Why??

Also you don’t get to just gloss over the being alive stuff!!!

Goro eyes the time. Ten minutes until his train departs. The bench’s back presses against his spine. He shifts, trying to find some semblance of comfortability. He fails.

It doesn’t matter. Just give it to me.

Nuh-uh. No way.

I’m all for a big romantic showing up on his doorstep with a bouquet and apologizing for pretending to be dead for several months but…

Akira’s been pretty deep in his grief. He’s…really isolated himself ever since he went back home. He barely even responds to our messages anymore. I don’t think it’d be fair of you to bombard him out of nowhere.

Goro scoffs. So Akira’s friends have noticed his behavior, too. Perhaps that’s all this is—Akira needing a few days to himself. But Akira miscalculated. His friends may be willing to give him that space, but Goro refuses to be shut out. He tried to force the distance, to let Akira grow and thrive in a world where he thought Akechi Goro a dead man, no more than a ghost of his past. He warned Akira to direct his brainless sentimentality elsewhere, that Goro would never be someone Akira could save, and Akira would just have to suck it up and live with that.

He takes a breath.

Your concern for Akira is noted. However, he already knows I’m alive.

What!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are you usually so generous in your punctuation usage?

My concern is that he hasn’t contacted me in nearly a week.

That’s just how he is these days. I’m sure it’s nothing personal.

The last I heard from him he was being shuffled into a cop car.

WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That’s far too many exclamation points.

It is an appropriate amount of exclamation points!

Akira’s been arrested again?

No way! I need to tell the others!!

He hasn’t been arrested. I confirmed with the Inaba police department myself. Do not contact the others.

Akira’s address.

Please.

Hmm.

I’ll give it to you!!! On one condition…

His temple throbs. He should have contacted Yusuke after all, eccentricities be damned.

What is it, Takamaki-san?

Okay! Two conditions!!

First, call me Ann from now on! I hate this “Takamaki-san” stuff. It’s too stiff. We’re supposed to be friends!

We are not friends.

Then why’d you text me first out of everyone?

I simply deduced you to be the least likely to give me a hard time.

A deduction that had flaws, it seems.

Hmmmmmmmm.

Sounds like we’re friends to me!

I will call you Ann. Can we move on?

Yay!

Now for the second and most important condition…bring him flowers! Blue ones. That’s his favorite color. Maybe forget-me-nots? That’d be pretty symbolic or whatever right?

Absolutely not.

Don’t they symbolize remembrance???

They do, but I will not be bringing them, nor any type of flower, to Akira’s doorstep.

Guess you won’t be getting his address then! <3

Takamaki-san.

Ann!!!

Ann-san.

Just Ann.

Ann.

I will knock on the door of every family home in Inaba.

Sounds like it’ll take a long time. Good luck!

…

:)

Say I agree to the flowers.

After you provide me with the address, you have no way of ensuring I uphold my end of the bargain. I am a known liar, after all.

Maybe not, but I’ll be mad!!!

You don’t want to make me mad! Ask Ryuji!

I am sure your displeasure is a force to be reckoned with.

However, so is mine.

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhh

Hold on.

Goro’s phone buzzes in his hand. A brief pause, and it buzzes again. Ann is calling him. Why is she calling him? What is with Akira and his friends calling mid-conversation when texts would surely suffice?

He answers.

“What.”

“Wow!” Ann’s voice is as loud and chipper as ever in his ear. “It really is you!”

“You still held doubts?”

“Only kinda.”

Goro breathes harshly through his nose. “Why did you call, Ann?”

“Partially to be super duper certain you were actually Akechi. You know cops tried to tail us when we drove Akira to the train station? I don’t want to accidentally hand out Akira’s address to them.”

“The police have no reason to impersonate me for Akira’s home address. They can obtain that information very easily through Japan’s criminal database.”

“Huh, you’re probably right,” she says. “Well, whatever! I also wanted to hear your voice!”

“And why on earth would you want to do that?”

The line crackles as Ann goes silent. Even though he can’t see her, Goro senses the shift in her demeanor. What a ridiculous notion. He never knew Ann well enough to pick up on the intricacies of her moods.

Still, her voice is softer, somber, when she speaks again, “I’m really happy you’re okay. Like, really, really relieved.”

The damn bench is digging into his spine again. He stands up because it’s uncomfortable, not because he feels the itch of the bullet-shaped scar on his chest, tugging inches from his heart. Not because even though the bullet had dissipated when he woke up in an alley near the Diet Building, the wound tied to it had not.

Brainless sentimentality, Akira’s infected the lot of them with it. First Yusuke with his, It is a relief to see you are well, Akechi-kun, not even allowing Goro to get a word in before he slid the door in his face. Now Ann, with her absurd amount of punctuation and emphasis on her reallys.

He checks the time again.

“My train departs in five minutes. Will you give me the address or not?”

She sputters. “What? Why are you at the train station?”

“I told you.” He holds the ticket in a grip tight enough to strangle. “I’m going to Inaba.”

“You don’t even know Akira’s address yet!”

“Again,” he emphasizes. “I said I am prepared to knock on every door.”

Ann has gone silent. She’s not going to give him the address, is she? He’ll have to try Yusuke, and if Yusuke doesn’t know, then he’ll be forced to shake down Sakamoto, and if that doesn’t work he really will have to go door-to-door like some common solicitor. He wasn’t lying to Ann. He’s stubborn enough to do it. He has the people skills.

“If you refuse to be of help, I’m hanging up—“

“No no no! Don’t hang up,” she protests loud enough to aggravate his headache. “I’ll give you his address. Geez.”

“Was that so difficult?”

“Everything with you and Akira is beyond difficult. I literally thought you were dead fifteen minutes ago.”

“I suppose that’s a fair assessment.”

“Interrupted my morning video call with Shiho too!” She huffs. “I literally get up early just for this!”

He hears the groan and screech of his incoming train, watches it slow and grind to a halt beside the platform.

“I have to go. Don’t tell anyone I spoke with you.”

“Well, I already told Shiho.”

He sighs.

“We don’t keep secrets anymore, unlike some people.”

“I’m hanging up. Send the address.”

“Don’t forget the flowers!”

“Goodbye, Ann.”

As Goro settles onto the train, he squints at his reflection. What was it Akira said? He saw Goro at the station in Tokyo despite Goro already residing in the rehab facility at that time?

His phone buzzes on his lap.

[Address Sent]

You owe me!

—

Inaba is a quaint, run-down town made up of two-story homes and streets lined with telephone poles. The sun dips below the horizon, washing gable roofs in a faint tangerine. Muted yellows line the edges of curtained windows, and when Goro passes an open one, he catches a whiff of seared beef and sukiyaki broth.

It is not difficult to imagine Akira growing up in such a place. The quiet broken only by Goro’s heels tapping against the sidewalk and the occasional bird is well suited to an equally quiet boy. For better or worse, thinking must come easier here. Silence slows, welcomes pauses for contemplation in a way that Tokyo’s constant buzz does not.

Silence also doesn’t allow one to drown out their troubles with hustle and bustle, a facet Akira seems to struggle with since returning to his hometown.

Yes, Goro can picture Inaba as a town where Akira grew up in the physical sense, but he cannot see Akira growing here as he had in Tokyo. Quiet though Akira is, Joker belongs to crowded streets and flashing lights and a calendar packed full to bursting.

The Kurusu household is indistinct compared to the others lining this particular street or any of the streets Goro’s strolled down thus far. Same gabled roof. Same two stories. Same green lawn. It’s one of the few properties with a tree in the front, branches knocking against a shut window on the second floor, but that’s all. Nothing to indicate the leader of the group that saved the world twice over resides inside.

Goro’s anger, like much of the things in his life, has abandoned him in his time of need. Anger guides him down foolhardy paths, up ruinous mountains, and leaves him one foot over a cliff, about to step off. Doubt slithers out from between his ribs in its wake, just as familiar, but fearing the plunge.

And because Goro has lived his life never indulging in doubt—not even when it reared its ugly head while he held a gun to Akira’s—he knocks on the door.

Akira isn’t the one to open it.

A woman stands beyond the door frame. She must be Akira’s mother; they possess the same eyes, intense and invasive in their gray, only hers are not hidden behind a pair of fake glasses. Goro receives the full force of that stare, heightened by the straight, black hair yanked into a tight bun, the strands plastered to her scalp with a precision and meticulous care so unlike the wild tangle of Akira’s curls. Yes, Akira and his mother’s similarities start and end with their eyes.

Goro plasters on his smile. “Apologies for disturbing your evening. You must be Kurusu-san?”

She lifts her chin. “I am. You are?”

“Akechi Goro,” he says, giving a slight bow. “I was wondering if Akira is home?”

Kurusu-san squints at him, and just like when Akira watches someone, Goro notices her catalog his appearance, his mannerisms, his demeanor, as if these elements will aid her calculation of how to proceed. Unlike Akira, though, there is an undercurrent of judgment, an assessment of whether Goro is worthy of her time. One distinction, but it is enough to make Goro dislike her.

It happens again, like with Detective Dojima, except Goro sees rather than hears the moment Kurusu-san recognizes him. He wonders if it was an act of mercy or cruelty for the Metaverse to make him no more than a distant memory, residing on the outskirts of Japan’s cognition. He is bitter all the same.

“The Second Coming of the Detective Prince, Akechi Goro?” she frowns. “As in, Naoto-kun’s Tokyo counterpart?”

Goro detests the mention of both the ridiculous nickname and the comparison. He has never met Shirogane, and as much as he despises being called a detective prince, he loathes being second even more.

Still, his smile remains fixed. “I suppose that is one of my titles, yes.”

Kurusu-san recovers quickly. “You’re looking for Akira?”

“If he is available.” Or if he isn’t. Goro will find him regardless.

Kurusu-san purses her lips. “One moment.” She closes the door, and though muffled, her shout is clear, “Akira! Get down here!”

Goro wraps a loose thread from the neck of his sweater around his finger. He never deluded himself into believing Akira’s family situation was perfect—much better than his own, certainly, but whose wasn’t? Akira is a product of Inaba, but he is also a product of parents who’d rather ship him off to Tokyo than be inconvenienced. Goro yanks the thread, snapping it off his sweater.

“What trouble have you gotten yourself into this time,” Kurusu-san hisses, “to have a detective take the journey from Tokyo? I already confiscated your phone, what else must I do to prevent you from disgracing this family more?”

Goro stills. Confiscated…his phone?

“A detective?” Akira’s voice soothes as much as it irritates, and Goro suddenly feels very, very stupid. Sakamoto levels of stupid. Of course Akira’s silence was not because he decided a week of speaking with Goro was enough to wipe his hands clean of him. How could he think that of Akira, who notoriously refused to leave him alone?

Stupid. His self-righteous fury always makes a fool of him.

He needs to leave. He needs to catch the last train back, return to the rehab center, and beat Sugawara over the head with his mop for giving Goro such ridiculous advice. He needs to drown himself in the onsen for listening to Sugawara of all people in the first place. Let it chew and swallow? Dumbass fucking analogy. Now he’s here in Inaba and Akira’s right on the other side of that door and he needs to leave.

“Akechi?”

The voice comes from above, not behind the still closed door, where Kurusu-san continues to rant at Akira. Goro looks up, toward the window with the tree branch knocking against it, and sees Morgana.

He’s perched on the windowsill, his pupils blown wide and little cat jaw hanging open.

Right, Akira hadn’t told any of his friends about Goro. Not even Morgana, it seems.

Morgana darts back inside the window, yelling, “Akira! Akira!”

“Didn’t I tell you to keep the cat upstairs?” Kurusu-san snaps.

Goro’s already turned on his heel and walking away from the house when the front door swings open. He keeps walking when he hears Kurusu-san exclaim, “Akira! Where do you think you’re going?” He keeps walking when Akira calls after him. He keeps walking when he hears footsteps approaching. He keeps walking until a cold hand circles his wrist, holding him in place.

“Goro.”

He holds back a shudder. He schools his expression into the blank, vaguely displeased one he donned all of January. He looks over his shoulder.

Akira’s not wearing his glasses.

For some inane reason, that is the first detail he notices. Instead of hiding behind black-rimmed frames, overgrown bangs fall into his eyes. A different mask, but a mask all the same.

“I never said you could call me that,” Goro answers, noting how Akira’s left cheek sports a swelling, purple bruise, yellow tainting the edges before fading back into pale skin. A cut strikes through his lower lip, another on his jaw. Remnants of those imbeciles’ assault, undoubtedly.

The Akira before him appears not dissimilar from the one he found in that interrogation room, hands cuffed at his back and ignoring Goro’s taunts, not bothering to speak a word and making Goro feel that, although he wasn’t the one with the barrel of a gun pointed at his head, he had not won. And he hadn’t, but that had not settled in until much too late.

Somehow, this Akira, the one that outsmarted Goro, jailed Shido, shot a god in the head, and resisted the therapist-turned-pseudo-god that took its place all without killing anyone, seems more worn down, less defiant. Tired.

Akira shrugs, but stays silent. He still hasn’t let go of Goro’s wrist, as if he’s afraid Goro will disappear once he does.

“You should head back. Your mother sounded rather displeased with you.”

“It’s fine,” he says, continuing to stare at Goro through his too-long bangs. It’s infuriating.

Goro glares at him. “You need a haircut.”

Akira shrugs again. “Probably.”

“You won’t ask why I’m here?”

“Doesn’t matter why so long as you’re here.” His grip on Goro’s wrist tightens, and in the light pressure, Goro hears a request of Akira’s. One he’s always denied. One he’s never considered indulging because he didn’t see a future where it was possible, where doing so wouldn’t lead to Akira’s ruin.

“Hey.”

He looks up. He’d been staring at Akira’s hand, the way his pointer finger rests atop Goro’s forearm, his thumb pressing into Goro’s pulse.

“I have something for you,” Akira says, scratching the back of his neck in what some may deem endearingly shy, but this habit only makes Goro’s stomach turn. “Back in my room?”

Akira lilts the end of the statement like it’s a question. It isn’t, but Goro hears the question in it, and is reminded of nights in Tokyo where they would almost part. Almost, until Goro lilted the end of a statement like, “I heard the desserts here are delightful,” while they passed a pastry shop on the walk back to the train station in Kichijoji. Or how Akira would refill Goro’s mug a sip before it was empty, and Goro would stay to finish rather than excuse himself.

An invitation.

Goro never accepted them back in January. His death was a fact, then. Spending more time with Akira than strictly necessary held no purpose, lest it impact Akira’s decision to deny Maruki his insipid reality.

What reason did he have now?

He possessed no grand plan that required him to get closer to Akira, gain his trust. There was no longer a false god holding him hostage as a last resort to win Akira over. To accept Akira’s invitation, for Goro to follow him back to his room, what purpose would it serve other than to indulge in Goro’s selfish desires? To rob Akira of a future where Goro could no longer ruin his life? Why had he responded to Akira’s texts in the first place?

Akira shifts his weight from one foot to the other, drawing Goro’s attention down. Akira’s wearing blue slippers, not even proper shoes, and the left foot is wrapped in a thick, white cast that he most definitely shouldn’t be standing on.

Goro meets Akira’s gaze and raises an eyebrow.

“It’s, uh, not as bad as it looks.”

“Really.”

“I couldn’t chase after you with the crutches, so.” Akira’s smile is sheepish. “Listen, if you don’t want to go back with me—”

“When did I say that?”

Akira blinks. “What?”

“I’m going. You obviously can’t be trusted with your health. Wasn’t that supposed to be a sprain?”

“Yeah. It’s fractured now.”

Goro takes a deep breath. “How you survived this long is beyond me.”

“Does that mean I can lean on you for the walk back?” Akira asks, tugging at his curls. His grin makes Goro’s chest feel tight.

“Don’t push it,” Goro says, but guides Akira’s arm up and around his shoulder anyway, inviting him to lean his weight on Goro. Akira does, but barely, as if he’s more concerned with burdening Goro than relieving the pressure on his foot.

“Stop holding back.” At Akira’s questioning glance, he continues, “If you’re going to lean on me, don’t half-ass it. Unless you think I’m not strong enough to carry your weight?”

Akira frowns, holding Goro’s stare. When Goro doesn’t budge, he gradually sinks against him, a warm, steadfast weight against Goro’s side. His face gets closer, too. Too close. Goro snaps his head forward.

“And push your bangs out of your eyes. It’s pissing me off.”

Goro feels rather than sees Akira nod, Akira’s hair brushing against his cheek.

They slowly hobble back down the block to the Kurusu household. The sun’s nearly set by now, streetlights flickering on one-by-one. It’s quiet except for Akira’s labored breaths in his ear and the slap of Akira’s slippers against the sidewalk. In his peripheral, Goro notices Akira open and close his mouth at least three times before he gets fed up.

“Spit it out.”

Akira jolts. “Hm?”

“If you have something to say, say it.”

Akira takes three and a half hobbles to consider this, then. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Goro nearly scoffs. Akira’s not glad Goro’s here, he’s just glad he’s not dead. Glad he doesn’t have to carry around the guilt of the one life he couldn’t save. There’s no reason for Akira to be glad about Goro himself, physically present and shouldering more than half his weight, because Goro has only ever taken, not added, to Akira’s life. He tormented Akira in life, and he tormented him in his false death. Made Akira believe Goro was a person worth grieving, when truly the Metaverse should have wiped any trace of Goro from Akira’s memory along with the rest of the world.

“Why?” he says, not faltering in his steps. “So I can act as your personal crutch?”

Akira huffs a laugh, but it ends sounding somber. “No, not really.”

He doesn’t elaborate, and Goro doesn’t ask him to.

—

They dismiss Kurusu-san by assuring her that no, Goro is not here on behalf of Tokyo’s police force. He was simply concerned with Akira’s lack of response, apologies for barging in like this, etc.

Kurusu-san doesn’t fawn over him like most middle-aged women tend to. For a moment, he thinks his charm must have rusted over, unpolished and abandoned since December. But no, she is like Akira—unfazed by pretty masks and false pleasantries. He dislikes her even more for it.

Still, she allows Goro to stay, commenting that it’d be good for Akira to have a role model in the police force as they trek upstairs to his room. He nearly snorts at that.

They stop outside Akira’s door.

“Sorry about the mess.” Akira rubs the back of his neck. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

“You lived in an attic,” Goro says, his expression flat. “Surely this is an improvement.”

Akira’s silent again, contemplative. He doesn’t say what’s on his mind though, shaking his head and opening the door and, well. Akira always did surpass Goro’s expectations.

His room is a shithole. There’s laundry everywhere—piled on top of his desk, stacked in hills at the foot of his bed, in front of his dresser, and beside a dead potted plant where its withered, brown leaves hang limp over the sides.

The room’s also barren. In Tokyo, Akira displayed various tchotchkes on that wobbly, wooden bookshelf: a ramen bowl replica, a shogi king piece, a swan boat, even a damn giant spatula. All gifts from friends, Akira had said. It was the same reason he had a poster of Risette and a fucking chocolate fountain. The reason there were glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and a Gi-Nyant doll despite Akira stating he wasn’t a fan.

None of that is here. The walls are empty, the ceiling bare and bumpy. Akira has a bedside table, but on it sits a lone lamp, a spiderweb stringing from the lampshade to the wall. Two cardboard boxes are stacked beside a window, but the tape sealing them looks untouched. Goro’s certain that if he swept his finger along the top, it would come away coated in dust.

“Akira!”

Morgana comes flying at them as soon as the door opens, dodging the clothes strewn about the floor as if it was common practice.

“I wanted to follow you, but your mom locked me in here and the window was shut. You shouldn’t run on that ankle!” Morgana nags. He glares at Goro. “And you! You shouldn’t have run away. How are you even here?”

Goro bristles. “I did not run. I walked. Briskly.”

"Not the point! Do you know what Akira’s been through—”

“Morgana,” Akira cuts him off, voice soft. “Can you give us a few minutes?”

“But!”

“Please.”

The two look at each other. There’s a conversation happening, one Goro cannot hear. Akira must win, though, because Morgana’s tail droops and his ears flatten.

“Fine,” he says, hopping onto the windowsill. “Open this and I’ll do a lap around the block. But only one!”

“Thanks.” Akira pats him on the head, and Morgana pretends to not enjoy it. He levels Goro with one last glare before he hops onto the tree branch and disappears.

There’s static in Goro’s ears, and the same feeling that gripped him on the doorstep earlier returns with a vengeance because Goro is nothing without revenge, even when it’s directed toward himself. He could hear the end of Morgana’s complaint loud and clear. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know, but he didn’t need the stupid fucking cat telling him he ruined Akira’s life by pretending to be dead as much as he ruined it while being alive.

Akira’s kneeling on the ground, rustling through his schoolbag. It’s the same one he carried Morgana around in Tokyo, with the coffee stain on one of the straps.

"You’ve wasted roughly half a block digging through your bag,” Goro says. He doesn’t know what Akira could possibly have for him, considering he thought Goro was dead up until a week or two ago. Goro owned only a few things, and he doesn’t think he left any of them with Akira. Unless—

A black glove thwaps against Goro’s chest and falls to the ground, right on top of a wrinkled t-shirt. He squints at it, then glares back up at Akira, unimpressed.

Akira’s got his right arm extended, sporting a tilted grin.

“That was a lot cooler in my head. Did you feel this lame after you threw it at me?”

Goro scowls, trying and failing to tame the flush crawling up his neck. Akira did look foolish, and he didn’t like the implication that he had appeared the same.

Akira shoves his hands in his pockets. “Do you accept?”

The duel proposed by Akira carries a weight much different to the duel proposed back in November, when Goro was high off indignation and irritation that Akira could surpass him in every way. Now, he considers how Akira had to retrieve the glove from his schoolbag— one he must carry with him to and from school every day—and he takes note that the schoolbag sits right beside Akira’s bed.

Akira tries to appear nonchalant, and if Goro hadn’t long since noticed how he shifts his weight from one leg to the other when he’s nervous, he’d have succeeded.

Throughout his life, Goro’s desires have been minimal, but all-consuming. He wanted his mother to love him. He failed to fulfill that wish. He wanted to make Shido pay, to acknowledge Goro as his son and beg for forgiveness. Hah. He truly was a fool to think he’d ever fulfill that desire. But the need to beat Akira—who handled his circumstances with grace, whose heart was not chained by his past self, who seemed to have all Goro didn’t—was unexpected. He failed at that, too, and that loss…the scar on chest aches something fierce. Akira promised, hadn’t he? That he’d hold onto it. In those moments before he thought he would die, what had Goro wanted?

He picks up the glove.