Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

To be honest, landscapes had never been his forte. There was nothing… moving to be found there, nothing that would stir more than the feeblest response from the soul. One looked at a landscape and thought, oh, how pleasant. And then walked away to some other stimulus, some engaging object that would inspire true feeling, in search of real beauty.

Real beauty didn’t rest in a landscape.

But since Kitagawa Yusuke had yet to actually finish this landscape, perhaps he was being too hasty in his judgment.

In fact, he had yet to begin.

Yusuke looked out over the gently falling slope descending away from the back wall of Kosei High, the neatly kept grass dotted with rebellious wildflowers, giving way to a line of sugi trees and ruthlessly tamed bamboo. On the other side was the broad concrete walk leading around the front doors, but that didn’t necessarily have to be in the picture. There was nothing especially beautiful about concrete, not here where everything was green and breathing and open to the sky. The setting sun cast everything in gold and indigo and enriched the shadows with undiluted ink. It would be remarkable, Yusuke supposed, to someone else.

Sensei had suggested he try his hand at a traditional Zen landscape. Perhaps it would help him to achieve some balance in his mind.

Gazing out at the landscape, peaceful and still—the other students had long since gone home—Yusuke searched his thoughts, then turned his attention to the blank sketchbook resting in his hands. Hmm. Similar contents.

Idly, he picked up a stick of charcoal from his supplies and swept a broad stroke across and upwards, a bold line of chalky black to fill the white. Then, glancing at the trees, a few thinner strokes in sharp vertical lines. Another line, a soft cloud of black, rubbed out with the heel of his hand and gentled into a smooth, shapeless grey.

They had been studying minimalism recently. This would do for now.

He packed up his things and began the walk home.

---

Yusuke loved the metro. He didn’t have the opportunity to take it all that often, unfortunately. He didn’t have that many places he needed to go; and where he did go was usually within a healthy walking distance from the atelier. But the metro was always a place absolutely teeming with life, with things to observe and question and absorb. Colors and lights and movements and smells and the clack on the rails, the click of boot heels and the echoing chatter of a thousand little snippets of life wandering by like distracted moths.

“Did you see Keiko-chan I could just—”

“—supposed to be raining but—”

“—due on Saturday, but I’ve got a swim meet then and I don’t know how I’ll—”

“I know!”

“—about these Phantom Thieves—”

“Of course not!”

“Buy Aqua Vitae, and drink from the springs of life!”

“—she should accept him, at her age.”

“There’s a meeting at 7:30 so—”

All these aspects of life, nearly invisible, gone in a flicker. That was beautiful. If only he could paint it. Yusuke stood to one side of the stairwell, watching the blue-white cell phones lighting faces from below, watching the lime green and ocean blue and electric yellow flashes of the advertising screens, and felt his hand shake just slightly. He could paint it. He could. He could sit here in this corner and watch and no one would know, no one would notice, he could just—

No. Not tonight.

He clenched his hand into a fist, and walked back up the stairs.

Time to go home.

Sensei didn’t like when he violated curfew.

---

“Hey, did you see this website?”

Yusuke looked up from his textbook, blinking in the early morning sunshine. “Hm?”

It was his classmate, Muraoka-san. The other boy was twisted around in his chair, holding out his phone for Yusuke to see. “Take a look,” said Muraoka. “Some weird stuff, huh? I don’t know about all this justice talk, but the design is pretty cool. Right?”

Yusuke glanced at the screen. It was garish—black and red splashed in angular, mismatched shapes across the screen, with a blinking white comment bar at the top and a question in dripping, jagged letters: “Do you believe in the Phantom Thieves?”

“Phantom Thieves?” he asked.

“You haven’t heard?” Muraoka grinned, eager to share his insider knowledge. “They call themselves the Phantom Thieves of Heart. They say if you’re corrupt they’ll find you and steal your heart. Like vigilantes or something. You know?”

Thieves of the heart? Well that was… intriguing. He mulled it over in an absent fashion—soft lighting, soft shadows, an expression as mysterious as it was magnanimous—then shook himself back to the present. “Well?” he asked Muraoka. “Do you believe in them?”

“Nah,” said his classmate, grimacing a little at the screen. “It’s just some PR stunt. You know like how Wackdonald’s did last year? Someone will fess up to it soon.”

He swiveled around with a shrug. Yusuke watched, turned a keen eye to the slump of the boy’s spine, the jut of his scapula. Nothing. There was no feeling other than that of enduring the mundane, like being buried under yards and yards of wet wool.

Yusuke sighed and continued to read.

---

There was a crash, a rattling thump, the yowl of an angry cat. Yusuke froze, his bag over one shoulder, suddenly balanced on the balls of his feet as his heart began a violent pounding rhythm that he could feel in his temples and fingertips and the base of his spine. His skin crawled; his eyes went wide and blank, scanning the nighttime gloom of the empty back alley. Sensei had said there had been accidents—to be careful—that was why he was so insistent about the curfew, it was for Yusuke’s protection, it had nothing to do with that last piece he had created—and now Sensei was gone away on another excursion to the hot springs for his back treatments and Yusuke had thought, just once, just this once, it wouldn’t hurt, he was choking under the bite of the bridle he was forced to wear and he had thought it would be fine—

But now there were looming shadows rising on the wall opposite him, outlined in bright pink and blue from the main street. He should never have taken the back roads. Was he even certain of his location? He had been thinking on the composition of a canvas, on the significance of the foreground, and how was that even important just now—

“Oh my god, you klutz!”

“Sh-shuddup, you almost fell too!”

“Yeah, but not into a trash can!”

“You’re both all right?”

“Uh, yeah, thanks…”

How bizarre. Late night carousers? No, they had the sound of youth. Errant students, then? Not that he could throw stones.

… Thugs…?

Yusuke deliberately, carefully, stepped back against the wall and eased his way along the rough, tacky cement to the corner he had just rounded. He shouldn’t look. He should just go home.

But I don’t have a—

He peered around the edge of the wall, bag gripped tightly against his flank, shoulders pressed to the cement.

Demons.

It was an evocative scene—something out of a Bosch painting, vivid and yet completely nonsensical, and right here in the bowels of Tokyo. Blue and red light flickered over the figures in the alleyway, catching the outline of an arm, glinting on the metal teeth of a zipper, highlighting the white flash of an eye in some otherworldly hue. Their faces all appeared distorted until the image resolved itself and Yusuke could see the inhuman curves and angles of masks on their faces—pointed ears, bared teeth, hollow black eye sockets. Had he fallen into hell? Was he hallucinating? No, they were probably just—performers—clubbers—tourists—

“Meooooowwwww, mrreowwrrr mrowp!”

“Yeah, we know,” said the gruff male voice. “We’ll get ‘em next time. You good to go, Joker? Let’s split.”

Yusuke would forever be grateful he had not blinked—if he had, it would have appeared as though they vanished into thin air. Instead, his eyes went wide as he watched two figures—human, they looked human, they had to be surely—light up briefly with blue flames so bright their features were lost in the brilliance, then walk out into the night, perfectly normal, immediately lost in the crowds.

The last figure, nearly invisible for all the black in its costume—Yusuke had only been able to pick it out for the brilliant red of its gloves—moved to follow them, and then stopped. It turned back, back towards the corner where Yusuke was watching. It was completely backlit by the lights of reality, a stark silhouette against a backdrop of noise. It was perfectly formed—just there—and then gone.

Holding his breath, Yusuke narrowed his eyes, trying not to move as he searched for signs of an exit, an approach, a—

He nearly choked when he suddenly went blind.

“Shhh,” someone murmured in his ear, and he tried to struggle but his arms were held down in an unwanted embrace and his legs were pinned to the wall and no and this is like and I don’t want

“Careful. You’ll hurt yourself.” The voice was unidentifiable, more breath than timbre, more sound than words, but he understood. Yusuke was used to capitulation and he went still, quivering and hyper-aware of the feeling of leather against his cheeks and forehead, of heavy seams pressed into his skin through the thin material of his shirt. “Now, do me the courtesy of a proper explanation. I like my privacy, and I react poorly to violations of that privacy. What were you spying for?”

“Not spying,” Yusuke gasped. It occurred to him, distantly, that since he was able to gasp (like a panicked animal, how unappealing) that meant his captor was allowing him to breathe. It was a kindness he hadn’t expected. “I-I was—was journeying home and I heard voices. I thought it might be—a dangerous group…”

“You weren’t wrong. I am dangerous.” Yusuke felt the concrete grind and scrape against his body as his captor’s weight shifted. The breath in his ears was so close, so warm, he could almost imagine he felt the very lips against— “Try to be a little quieter the next time you eavesdrop. Only silent cats catch mice.”

“Who are—?”

An abrupt cacophony like wings, the thick flap and flutter of panels of leather moved by a sudden gust, cut him off. Yusuke flinched as the night lights of Tokyo pierced his unprepared eyes. He spun around to look up and down the dim alley, squinting through the pain-pricked tears, but he was alone. He ducked around the corner. Only a trash can, upended with a ruptured bag spilling out of it. No one there either. He held a hand to his forehead, trying to forestall a thundersome headache.

… Was that a dream…?

Yusuke looked down at the trash can. No. He heard—he knew—

He stepped closer to the can to inspect it, and a dash of black across his vision made him stumble backwards into the wall again. “Mrow!” said the cat who startled him so, looking triumphant with its languidly waving tail. It gave him an intent stare with its wide, glowing cat eyes, then bounded away toward the traffic of the main road.

Just a cat.

Was it just a cat…?

Yusuke stared unseeing into the shuffle and press of bodies and trolleys and bicycles. He lifted a hand to his ear, fingering the shell of it in search of some lingering heat—but his hands were so cold and unsteady he couldn’t tell anything from them. He checked his bag; everything intact. There weren’t even signs of distress on his pants or his pristine white shirt.

Yusuke would have believed he had just had a particularly vivid daydream, a taste of adventure, a strange mental catharsis, except—except for the way he felt.

Though still cold from shock, his skin was tingling everywhere. He was acutely aware of the brush of woven polyester over his knees as he took a step back, the folds of his shirt unsticking from his sweat-dampened spine. He could feel how dry his mouth was, how shaky his hands were, could feel the muscles in his arms and back sliding over one another and locking up to compensate for his unstable weight, the supply bag swinging against his hip. He could feel the blood pumping in his veins, thudding behind his eyes, rushing through his ears. He could feel the breath moving in and out of his lungs. He could feel the dry stickiness of his lips as they parted, feel the air moving over his tongue, as he inhaled and then said a single word in a bemused, wondering whisper:

“Joker.”

He was, finally, awake.

Yusuke blinked once, twice, still gazing out at the glaringly bright advertisements along the shop-crowded road. Then he turned and walked quickly back the way he had come. It was a good thing Sensei was away for a while. Yusuke would not be going home to rest for some time.

There was so much he had to do.

Chapter Text

The sun was painfully bright. Yusuke groaned and shifted his head away, but the light was still there, painting the backs of his eyelids a distracting vermilion. He turned the other way, blinking his reluctant eyes open, struggling to focus. There, only a few feet away, was the canvas, soothing blacks and indigos, shot through with flickers of white and blue. In the foreground, as if reaching through the painting to the viewer, two blood red hands were cupped and beckoning, the stitching of the leather gloves almost invisible it was rendered so fine. Yusuke went very still, looking at the canvas, looking at what he had made. And then, slowly, quietly, he smiled.

---

It was amazing, like gliding through water without resistance, or flying through the clouds without a fear of falling. The ideas came to him effortlessly. All he had to do was close his eyes and remember—his breathlessness, the scrape of the building he was pinned to, the words in his ear—and the feeling flowed through his arm, his fingertips, his brushes, onto the canvas before him. None of them were the same. In a few he tried to recapture the mysterious masked figures; one featured the cat, sitting in the upper-left corner of the painting but given prominence in the composition, its lamp-like eyes fixed with inhuman intensity on the viewer. Delicately, Yusuke painted miniature red handprints all over the cat’s midnight fur.

He continually returned to those gloves. They had been neither warm nor cool, just smooth, almost butter-soft. Just a texture, just a pressure on his skin. He had almost nothing to go on regarding his cryptic assailant, and yet the passion for portraying that one moment in a back alley in Tokyo, the insistent tug of his muse’s red-gloved hand, would not let him rest. He had to paint. In each painting he tried to discover a little more about them. He tried to pry loose some insignificant detail that may have been lost to the mists of memory. Had the light been blue or red on the woman’s mask? Had her companion been slouched at this angle, or was it this one. He painted the rattle of the trash can lid, the yowl of the cat, the vacuum that imploded in his body in that first moment of gut-clenching apprehension. One painting was simply a painfully realistic depiction of the dimly lit alley, the corner close to the viewer, his perspective as he had approached the voices. He affectionately thought of it as “Seeking, Unsought”. It seemed poetic. And yet, even with all of these new pieces, with all of this creative energy surging through him and appearing in new shapes and unfamiliar lines, Yusuke knew in his heart that there was one thing he kept coming back to, the true form of his muse.

Joker.

Who was Joker? What were they? Man or woman, citizen or otherworldly spirit? He could not remember the contours of the body that had pressed him to the wall, could not recall a depth or resonance to the voice that had rebuked him. What kind of person wandered the streets at night in a mask? Had they been wearing a mask? They had lingered in the darkest shadows of the alley, and Yusuke could remember nothing: not the contour of a cheekbone or the cut of a mask or the length of a limb. All he had was the memory of breath and red gloves. Did they live here? Had they traveled far to come here? Were they even real? (Yusuke painted a piece depicting the Joker with black and red butterfly wings, a motif following the Western concept of the Fey, but it seemed too playful and fragile to fit the vibrant colors.) Were they hiding amongst the everyday citizens of Japan, or were they some superhuman force overseeing their nocturnal business?

What kind of person pins a stranger to a wall?

And yet, with every brushstroke, every hue and pigment and highlight, Yusuke felt he knew them. Only a little—but in a way that couldn’t be superficial, in a way that felt like the kind of connection they wrote about in stories. This person—whomever they might be—was not cruel or unkind. Though he had been immobilized, he was allowed to breathe, to speak. Though he had been afraid, the Joker had not threatened him. It hadn’t been an encounter of violence or danger—it was stealthy and surprising, but not harmful. It was a warning. (Yusuke smiled, focused on transforming those familiar red gloves into wings—he had always been terrible at listening to warnings.) And villains did not provide warnings, not really. They taunted, they bullied, they threatened, but they did not warn. He genuinely believed that Joker, whatever dangerous games they might be playing, had wished for his safety and well-being. They were kind, and—and in that, perhaps, was the beauty Yusuke was so desperately searching for.

And yet—

And yet…

Yusuke sat back on his stool, hands limp in his lap. Before him was his favorite piece so far—the Joker, androgynous but undeniably sexual, body twisted in a compelling, yearning stance towards the allusion of pale golden sunlight streaming down from the upper corner of the canvas. Black clinging clothes, red gloves. It had taken him more than two days to paint this one, to get it just right (his muse was usually much more impatient.) But the face was blank. The face was always blank.

Unexpectedly, Yusuke found himself blinking back tears. He huffed and dashed them away. This was just an artist’s frustration—it was normal. Good even; frustration meant growth. And after all it wouldn’t be so hard to create a face. Just think of what the face could be; what did the Joker represent, and what features might convey those concepts to—

No—!

Yusuke jolted upright and flung his palette and brush to the floor. It was too logical, too clinical an approach for a muse. He could not yank upon the reins of artistic feeling and will it in a certain direction! He had to listen, to let the muse become one with his body and soul and let them direct his hand. He could not force beauty into being.

Yusuke’s eyes searched the expressionless void where the Joker’s face ought to be. “Where are you taking me, Joker?” he whispered.

“Uh, Kitagawa-kun… you okay?”

Yusuke startled and spun around, almost slipping on a smear of wet paint beneath his foot. At his elbow was a classmate, one of his senpai, her head tilted at a quizzical angle. Her hand was outstretched, hesitating just short of his sleeve. “Are you all right…?” she asked. He looked over her shoulder and saw a surprising number of faces gazing back at him, alarmed, amused, curious. He blinked as he looked around at the clean white walls of the school’s studio.

Oh. Right.

“I’m quite all right,” he answered, still a little dazed. “My apologies for my outburst.”

“You’re kind of upsetting the other students. Just be careful,” his senpai answered, looking worried as she returned to her own easel.

“Careful. You’ll hurt yourself.”

Yusuke shivered a little and bent to pick up his tools. He busied himself with scrubbing the paint from the floor and studiously avoided both eye contact and eavesdropping. He had heard their whispers before; he didn’t need to hear them now. He glanced up, beyond his own easel, to the collection of canvases in different sizes stacked in his cubicle. The art students were given more than the standard space in which to store their work, but in the last several days he had produced enough paintings that the cubicle was nearly overflowing. He felt a small, sick punch of dread in the pit of his stomach.

He had been keeping the paintings here for—

For convenience. Of course. He had been so overwhelmed by his new zeal that he had worked through the evenings and nights and slept on the couch in the students’ lounge (it wasn’t unheard of) or even on the floor of his work area (that was a little odd, but it was in pursuit of beauty, and therefore perfectly understandable). He hadn’t been back to the atelier in a few days. And, well, it looked like it might no longer be convenient to continue on in that fashion. He would just have to take the canvases home with him. And that was fine.

… He would probably have room to keep them in his closet. Maybe.

Just as well, he decided. He didn’t want to share his muse with anyone else. At least, not yet.

---

Ironically, it seemed he was destined to share his muse with everyone he ran into that day.

Most of the paintings were too large to fit in his bag, so Yusuke carried as many home as he could fit in his arms, holding them close against his heartbeat. The butcher paper layered between the facings crackled and crunched with every step. It was aggravating, but not unbearable, as he walked through the frenetic thoroughfares and bustling residential streets. The day was smoggy and pollen-laden, and most people walked directly to and from their destinations with heads down and allergy masks up, without loitering or meandering. Yusuke was grateful for the lack of curiosity from his fellow commuters. If someone accidentally bumped into even one of these paintings he didn’t know what he might do. He dodged a few inattentive pedestrians with stumbling feet, but his precious cargo remained unscathed.

It was with relief he saw the familiar rusted, overlapping sheets of corrugated metal squatting on the corner. He liked to think the old atelier gave the neighborhood a kind of charm—a rustic reminder of times before wall-to-ceiling glass windows and porcelain-smooth cement fences. He picked up his pace, clutching his paintings closer to his chest. Almost there. If he could get one hand free long enough to reach for the key he wouldn’t have to ring the bell, and then he could store his paintings without bothering Sensei at all.

Yusuke rounded the corner, excited for the success of his plan, and abruptly stopped. Standing before the door, looking listless, was a group of teenagers. They were gazing up at the atelier and muttering to each other with heads bowed. They looked like punks with their blond hair and brazen checkered clothes—

Wait. He knew that uniform. Was it… Shujin…? Shujin? What were a bunch of delinquents from Shujin Academy doing hanging around Sensei’s home?

Yusuke gathered his wits and stepped forward with as much poise as he could muster (which, honestly, was quite a bit.) “Can I help you?” he offered coldly.

The punks’ heads all turned in unison, a variety of wide eyes and slack jaws before him. The girl recovered first, pasting a smile on her face. “Hi there!” she chirped. “I’m sorry, um, do you live here?”

Yusuke looked from her to the blond boy, slouched and with his jaw set belligerently, to the dark-haired boy with a vaguely embarrassed quirk to his brows over an enormous pair of glasses, and back to her. Her smile was still there, though struggling a little. “I do,” he replied cautiously, “although I don’t see what business it is of yours…?”

“O-Oh!” The girl laughed stiltedly, one hand disappearing behind her head to ruffle her voluminous pigtails. They were actually quite pretty, a rich flaxen color, and almost certainly natural (unlike her friend’s). “Uhh… well, we heard that this is maybe where the world-famous artist Madarame Ichiryusai lives, and we just wanted to be sure! So um, if you live here, maybe… you could tell us…?”

“I’m afraid Madarame-sensei doesn’t accept visits from his fans at his private residence—he does attempt to live a normal life. If you wish to contact him you can get in touch with his distribution agent. Now if you’ll excuse me…”

“Wait, Madarame-sensei? He your teacher or somethin’?” asked the blond young man, dipping deeper into his slouch. Yusuke frowned, puzzled.

“Yes, I am currently his pupil in residence at this place. And I am busy, so—”

“Just how much of a teacher is he to you?” The blond boy stepped forward, shouldering in front of his companions. The three of them were now bodily blocking him from his own front door, and Yusuke was starting to get irritated. “I mean, seriously. Does he, you know, treat you good?”

“Treat me…? I don’t understand what this is about.”

“Look, we heard some things about Madarame—”

“—about his teaching style!” The girl none-too-discreetly elbowed the boy in the side. “Lots of things! We uh, we actually heard about him from a previous student of his! I don’t know if you know him, uh, Nakanohara-san? We met him on the train and he was just, uhh, he had so much interesting stuff to say! Soo… we were wondering if maybe Madarame-san kept any of his students’ work here, you know, maybe we could take a look at it? And let Nakanohara-san know! ‘Cuz we’re such big fans!” Her smile, if it was even possible, appeared to grow wider. Yusuke took a step back.

—his students’ work—

“I don’t remember a Nakanohara,” Yusuke replied slowly. Crackle-crunch, said the butcher paper. “And as I said, Sensei does not accept visitors. I’m not sure what it is you really want here, but you should know the neighborhood does not condone suspicious behavior outside of any home. And, forgive me, but you are a little suspicious.”

“Wh-what!?” the girl yelped, just as the other blond said, “Oh come on! We were just lookin’!”

“I did say only a little,” Yusuke said mildly. “I would hate for a neighbor to misunderstand and call the police. It does happen from time to time—and with those uniforms, well…”

“He has a point.” For the first time, the dark-haired boy spoke up. “Thanks for the advice, ah…?”

Sensei had raised him to have impeccable manners, even for weird delinquents. He bowed slightly. “Kitagawa Yusuke.”

“Kitagawa-san.” The boy smiled—a completely different smile from the girl’s. It was almost shy, with a hint of a dimple to one side. His voice was soft, like he wasn’t used to speaking above a mumble. “I’m Kurusu Akira.”

“A pleasure,” Yusuke answered with a curt nod. “Now if you would please excuse me, I do need to enter my home.”

“Sorry,” said Kurusu-san, stepping aside and pulling the girl after him. The punk boy didn’t move.

“Those look heavy,” he said, sticking his thumbs in his belt loops. “You sure you don’t need help with—”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Yusuke bit off. Manners were essential but this was getting ridiculous, and he swore he could imagine one of the paintings in the middle slipping out of his grip—

“Jeez, ‘scuze me!”

“Leave it alone, Ryuji,” Kurusu murmured.

The punk—Ryuji—snorted, but instead of stepping aside, he leaned against the wall of the house, glaring at Yusuke. Yusuke stared him down for a moment and then coolly went to the door, reaching for his keys.

And then—it wasn’t his imagination—he felt the change in balance, the loss, heard the forsaken scrape-crunch-crumple of the butcher paper as something slid out of his grip—he couldn’t catch it or he would risk losing all the rest of them—

But when he spun around, heart in his throat, he didn’t find a cracked frame on the unforgiving ground. He found Kurusu-san, stretched into a nearly impossible lunge, barely gripping the painting by its corner. He looked up at Yusuke, almost guilty as he handed off the painting. Yusuke reached out to take it with numb fingers. “Excuse me,” Kurusu said. He lowered his eyes. When he did, his fingers clenched reflexively on the side of the canvas’s stretching frame. Yusuke tried to tug it back, but Kurusu had a death grip on the edge of the painting. He looked down. ‘Getaway’—the one where the gloves had been transformed into blood-red wings, overwhelmingly large in scope, with a tiny, indistinct black figure suspended between them, hovering over an abstract rendering of the Tokyo night below. Not his favorite so far, but important nonetheless. He was glad it hadn’t fallen.

“What is this?” Kurusu asked, voice edged. Yusuke tried once again to pull the painting back, and this time the other boy released his grip. “That’s—that’s an interesting painting.”

“It’s my work,” Yusuke said, returning ‘Getaway’ to his stack. He paused, waiting for Kurusu to say something, to explain himself, but nothing further was said. So Yusuke gave him a polite nod, bowed as much as he was able to the others, and finally, finally, got the key in the lock. “Good day,” he murmured, and escaped behind the sliding door, safely confined.

---

The closet wasn’t big enough. It was inevitable.

“I see you have a new phase, Yusuke. These are very compelling.”

Yusuke stood to one side, twisting the cloth of his cuffs between his fingers. “Y-Yes. Thank you, Sensei.”

Madarame looked over the paintings with a critical eye, one hand absently rubbing his chin. “They’re not especially balanced in tinting. But I see there is a connective theme. Very good.” He looked over to Yusuke and smiled, reaching out to drop a heavy, benevolent hand on Yusuke’s shoulder. “You have done well, Yusuke. I’m proud of you. And I’m glad it seems your previous dry spell has cleared up. Tell me, what brought on this new font of activity?”

Yusuke looked into the genial face of his teacher, his protector, the man who had raised him. The creases at the corner of his eyes, etched there by decades of warm smiles; the intelligent light in the calm, compassionate gaze; the familiar blunt jut of his chin. This was the face he knew better than any other, the face he trusted. Looking at the quiet pride on Sensei’s face, as steadying as the rocks of a great mountain beneath his feet, he wondered at the unease that had driven him to sleep in the studios at school. He knew he had been in the wrong that night, defying his sensei’s wishes, endangering himself out in the city at night with all these miserable accidents happening. And indeed, he had been accosted. If it had been anyone but Joker he might not be here to talk about tint and angle with his sensei. His sensei had been right about the danger, and Yusuke had accidentally stumbled into inspiration through misbehavior and dishonor. He would be in trouble if he told Sensei the truth of where this particular muse had come from. “Something I saw on the way home from school,” Yusuke replied, not untruthfully. The crows’ feet in Madarame’s eyes deepened, and he chortled.

“Well, if you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine,” he chuckled. “Every boy has secrets at your age.”

Yusuke kept his face carefully blank as his mind flew, against his will, to the two paintings hidden at the top of his closet, above the storage boxes for their carefully preserved formal kimono.

“Come,” said Madarame, tucking his hands into his sleeves. “Where would you like these to be, Yusuke? In the hall? No, no, too gloomy to greet guests with. Too intense for a transitional room. We’ll leave them here in your workshop for now, and then we can move them after you’ve created more. Now, let’s go make some dinner. I feel like shabu-shabu tonight; we should celebrate the return of your creative willpower!”

The two of them puttered around the kitchen, with Yusuke fetching ingredients and utensils as his sensei asked for them, Madarame standing attentively over the cutting board, slicing vegetables and meat with painstaking precision. It was quiet, domestic. Later Yusuke would remember it fondly and keep the comfort of the scene close to heart. They sat at the table in the dining area, watching the vegetables simmer in comfortable silence.

Yusuke tugged at his cuffs beneath the table. “Sensei… I wondered… were you expecting any visitors today?”

“Visitors?”

“There were—some fans of yours, I think. Awaiting you outside the door. At least, they seemed to be…”

Madarame shot Yusuke a solemn glance. “Now Yusuke, you know I don’t take calls here at the atelier. It’s disruptive to the creative spirit.”

Yusuke hurried to reassure him. “Yes, I know, Sensei. I did not allow them to enter, and I told them just what you’ve said. But they seemed insistent.”

“Did they break down the doors?” Madarame asked with a chuckle. He reached out to turn down the gas flames beneath the bubbling broth. “Admirers can’t help but be swept up in the passion of their regard for beauty. You know that better than anyone.”

Yusuke nodded. He did know. All too well. But still… “Forgive me my impertinence, but… they mentioned a name. Someone who may have been a student here, under your tutelage. But I did not remember him. Pardon me, Sensei. I was merely curious.” He stared down at his fingers, knotted into the cuffs of his sleeves, and did not look up. If he had, he would have seen the flicker of irritation that crossed his sensei’s face. It was a hauntingly familiar expression.

“Yusuke. We don’t talk of such things at the dinner table.”

“I know,” Yusuke plowed on. He felt the keen edge of desperation cutting at his ribs and pressed on, though apprehension weighed down upon his shoulders. “I know, but—surely I would have remembered his name? Did a Nakanohara-san ever stay here?”

Abruptly Madarame lifted his ceramic bowl and slammed it down onto the table. Yusuke went still as stone at the sharp, loud crack of impact. Both men were utterly silent, frozen in place, until Madarame sighed heavily and dropped his head into one hand. “Oh, Yusuke,” he groaned, “you know how painful it is for me to discuss my wayward ones. Why would you want to cause me such pain? Yes, I had a student named Nakanohara. He was a hard worker and then a stubborn, lazy boy. Eventually he left my shelter and I haven’t heard from him since. And he, like all the others, makes me weep in the night with loss. Are you satisfied?”

Yusuke said nothing. His fingers were clenched in his sleeves so tightly they shook.

“Now look what you made me do. This one’s cracked now. Fetch another bowl, Yusuke. Go on.”

He rose from the table, bowed deeply, and went in search of a bowl without cracks. When he returned, Sensei was stirring the sirloin in the donabe, his face an impassive mask of calm. He glanced up at Yusuke, and then gave him a faint smile.

Yusuke offered him the bowl. “I am… deeply repentant, Sensei. I overstepped. It will not happen again.”

“Of course it will, Yusuke,” Madarame said lightly, “because you are young and a fool. That is why you stay with me, boy. So that I can keep an eye on you.”

“… Yes, Sensei. How did you find the hot springs during your trip?”

As Madarame rambled on about the spring’s services and loaded Yusuke’s bowl with fresh rice and vegetables, Yusuke forced steel into his spine and sat straight. His elbows remained at his sides, not on the table, and he took great care not to spill a single grain or drop of the meal. He was quiet, deferential, the model son. He would be ashamed if he were anything less.

---

Sensei normally eschewed the modern-day conveniences so many others indulged in, but he did keep a television in the common room. It was important to stay connected to the world outside, he said, especially when one was an artist, prone to deep voyages into the depths of one’s soul at the cost of all worldly awareness. He didn’t always make a point of watching the evening news, but tonight with things having been so—tonight he invited Yusuke to sit in the common room with him. A plate of rice cakes sat untouched on the table. Yusuke absently sketched in his notebook, only listening with half an ear.

“… And in a startling change of pace, a well-known professor at Shujin Academy has insisted his confession is—”

“Shujin?” Yusuke looked up, startled. The news had cut to a segment filmed earlier that day, a somewhat chaotic scene outside of the Aoyama Precinct building, where a very fit man was sobbing into his cuffed hands. Though a different man (looking somewhat like a mushroom with his short, round stature and brownish suit) was attempting to wave the cameras away and shield the cuffed man, the apparent criminal shoved his way through to the microphones with a wild-eyed expression.

“I’m a monster! I beat those children—it was me! I did it for myself, nobody else! I got a kick out of it, making them bleed, making them work for my approval—and the girls, I just—I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please—”

“Disgusting,” Madarame muttered, shaking his head. Yusuke kept his eyes trained on the screen.

“Kamoshida Suguru, star of the Japanese national indoor volleyball team and Olympic medal winner, has confessed to these crimes to NHK reporters. Upon his professional retirement he shared his considerable talents with many students as a coach and trainer, then hired on as the volleyball coach and physical excellence administrator at Shujin Academy High School. His claims of committing physical and sexual assault on students at the school appear completely unprecedented, and are currently under investigation by the local police. Rumors that his sudden admission was brought about by a local vigilante group so far only known as the Phantom Thieves are rampant—”

“Sexual abuse at a school like Shujin,” Madarame sighed. “I can’t say I’m surprised. Well. The students should have known better than to put themselves in such a vulnerable position.”

Yusuke watched the scrolling informational bar at the bottom of the screen. One student had been hospitalized for weeks already; the police were already being overwhelmed by primary witnesses from the school arriving to support Kamoshida’s incriminating statement. He wondered if the students who had been waiting outside that afternoon had been involved or hurt. He didn’t remember any bruises, though. Faintly, he found himself relieved that he had not mentioned to Sensei where his “fans” had been attending school. It might have made things awkward.

Later that evening, Yusuke lay in his bed, gazing out at the sleepy shadows of the neighboring buildings through the screened window. He couldn’t even bring himself to feel resentful of how sleep evaded him. Absently, so vague he almost didn’t recognize the thought for what it was, he imagined the Joker—whoever they were—dashing through the alleys, their coat flapping in their wake. It sounded like the rattle and flutter of the crows’ wings outside.

He rolled over on his futon and gazed into the dimness of his room. It always smelled a little acrid here, of oil paints and thinners, even though he was strictly forbidden to paint anywhere but the workshop. He never could figure out why the scent followed him here. Tonight it smelled faintly musty, as if a thin layer of dust had settled over the sheets. He hadn’t been here in days. But here he was, all alone in his own room… he felt like a marble rolling around in a tin can.

Yusuke took a deep, soundless breath, eyes settling on the black screen of his phone. He had no particular reason to keep it at his bedside—no one would contact him—but it was more convenient that way. Listlessly, he dragged his fingertip over the screen, bringing it to life with a stinging brightness that made him squint. Perhaps he could look at some paintings before he slept. He could look at the ‘Sayuri’ again. Maybe find some peaceful music or some other quaint trick to help the restless sleep.

The news menu popped up. His fingers stilled. There, again, was the alarming news about the guilt-ridden gym teacher from Shujin Academy. And again, “Phantom Thieves? School Hoax Revealed!?”

Yusuke clicked through to the article, but there was very little to go on. Just a few brief statements from anonymous high school students, a quote denying the thieves’ existence from a reputable detective, and a link to the mysterious website. Clicking on that, Yusuke’s phone lit up toxic red and black, the jagged angles of the text boxes almost seeming to slowly ooze in and out of their positions on the screen. He remembered this. Do you believe in the Phantom Thieves? >Yes >No

Snorting derisively, Yusuke scrolled down the page. Just what would the Phantom Thieves have to say? He couldn’t think of anyone who would go to such elaborate lengths for such confusing communication. Why reach out so brazenly but remain mysterious? Why ask the opinions of others when they seemed capable of acting on their own? To get involved with something so sad, for no other reason than to invite empty words about it... it was simply bizarre. But what he found answered none of his questions. It was an open, anonymous forum. Nothing bearing the banner of the thieves, if they truly did exist, or a message or modus operandi. The very first post read: “The Phantom Thieves helped me more than I can say. I was getting beaten at school by an adult that I couldn’t escape. I would have died if it kept up. Now I have hope for my future.” The comment thread waterfalling beneath that post openly remarked on the possibility that this post was from someone at Shujin Academy, in which case the Phantom Thieves may indeed be real (equally likely, the thread argued, was that this was all a publicity stunt). A third of the comments easily were derogatory chat short-hand, but a remarkable number of them seemed to be people taking the forum seriously, at least enough to vent their troubles. It was a blood-red pit of misery, full of faceless voices crying out in despair. It was the opposite of beauty. Something about it stirred a strange feeling in Yusuke’s chest. Something—something like—like having his heart leap out of his chest, free and unfettered and gone—

He blinked and looked at the screen, where an idling cursor winked on and off at the end of a string of characters he didn’t remember typing.

He read the words once, then again. Then, the barest hint of a frown wrinkling his brow, he deleted the whole thing and closed the browser window.

What a ridiculous mess. Just another place for the monsters to howl without conscience. That kind of whining was unbecoming of a decent, responsible person, and certainly added no beauty or value to the world. If that was what these supposed Phantom Thieves meant to propagate, the world could very well do without. Yusuke certainly could. He firmly placed the phone down on the floor, lay on his side facing the window once more, and closed his eyes. Sleep or no, he didn’t need such garbage assaulting him.

---

Do you continue to struggle on blindly?

Yusuke stumbled, tripped, scraped his palms raw on the rocks beneath him. He scrambled upright and pitched forward into a dead sprint, running for his life.

Do you still choose weakness and suffering, to mewl like a babe clinging to its mother’s breast?

The whole world was darkness lit with dully pulsing flashes of red, the color of rotten blood. No matter where he looked the view was the same. He could not see his own hands or feet as he fled over the barren ground.

Do you still wrap yourself in the tattered lies of an ignorant life, and accept what crumbs of safety and comfort your pretty illusions see fit to spare you?

Something caught his legs. Something strong, a weird coiling shape that clamped around his ankle, then pinned his knee to the ground, then slid up his thigh. Though he attempted to scream, his throat felt as though a vise were closed around it.

Then have your petty death.

The powerful limbs holding him down did not relax. Distantly Yusuke recognized the sound of splintering, crunching bone—his own legs, broken and useless. There was a scraping sound, a rusted hinge, sandpaper over iron; a monster trying to laugh. He gasped for breath, sobbed, though he felt no pain in the depths of his helpless fear.

And then the blindness changed: no longer a dull red but a gentle, enveloping crimson, with shadows pooling in the pleats of smooth, cool leather. The sound of a voice, neither male nor female, but somehow comforting and sure.

“Come with me,” said the voice, and in a tiny voice buried beneath the howling mass of his terror, Yusuke whispered, Joker. “Come with me, and I will set you free. Only come.”

“I—”

--

Yusuke bolted upright, shivering in the sudden chill of air against his sweat-soaked skin, itchy and too warm and too cold and shuddering with the lingering effects of the adrenalin in his system. A nightmare. A horrible, bloody nightmare. He dragged his hands through his hair (actually dripping with sweat, how disgusting, he absolutely needed another bath now) and pulled the bangs from his face, letting cool fresh air tickle his skin. Outside it had begun to rain. He couldn’t remember a single thing about what he had dreamt, only the mind-numbing, voice-choking terror of it. He sat frozen in his bed, the unknown nightmare keeping him alert and poised to flee like a startled animal, joints stiffened, muscles frozen.

Slowly his eyes took in the familiar space, the wood-panel walls, the sliding door, the time-pocked glass of the open window. The closet, the desk, the pencils and misshapen lumps of rubber and balled up wads of paper. Everything was fine. He was in a safe place and everything was fine.

As if moving through water, Yusuke slowly drew his knees up and dropped his head to them. “A safe place,” he whispered, eyes trained steadily on the closet. He remembered dipping his brushes, the soft sounds of the bristles, the lines that spread into pools of colors that marked themselves out, laid down their borders, demanded to be given shape and definition and acknowledgement. Red gloves and red wings and a red mask.

A red mask…

Moving slowly, feeling arthritic, Yusuke reached out and rested his trembling hand on his sketchpad, groped in the dimness for a stub of graphite. The rippling amber light of the streetlamps threw his shadow in stark blackness over the sketchpad, and he twisted around on the futon until the paper was visible. It is important, he heard Sensei’s voice echo up from some indistinct well of memory, to know your source material inside and out: what is it you are taking from the model? What is it you wish to change? You have to be in control of the image, to know what it is going to be before you even put pen to paper…

But Yusuke, feeling dazed, airborne, possessed, did not think about the drawing; or the next, or the next. He didn’t dwell on the angular, mismatched frames of the boxes on the page. He didn’t consider the uneven, heavy hand with which he doodled out bubbles and filled them with an untidy script. He didn’t try to perfect the expression lurking behind the shaded domino mask, beneath the brim of the rakish top hat, the line of an arm beneath a heavy black coat.

He just drew.

Dawn crept across the worn, scarred floorboards, light scattering in fragments from the prismatic raindrops on the windowpane. Yusuke worked undisturbed. He sketched and shaded and outlined as though hypnotized, and then jumped when his phone alarm went off. A sharp black line scraped across the page as his arm jerked. Yusuke dropped the graphite and stared at the line, as jarring as the crack of a slap across his face. His alarm was still going off, a chirping, irreverent sound. Gingerly, Yusuke reached for his freeform eraser and twisted it into a point, pinched it between his fingers and oh-so-gently stroked along the paper. If he was careful—

“Yusuke! For god’s sake turn off that blasted alarm!”

“Ah! S-Sorry, Sensei, at once!”

He lunged for the phone and stifled it, then blinked up into the weak sunlight streaming through the windows, seeing it for the first time. Clutching his phone in both hands, he looked down at the tangle of sheets and his sketchpad haphazardly tossed in them. The spell was broken. He knew exactly what he’d drawn, but suddenly he was unwilling to acknowledge it, to even look at it. It was too personal, too… vulnerable? Intimate? Honest? Embarrassing, anyway. He tossed it to the side and rose to dress and prepare an unfortunately hasty breakfast for Sensei. Normally he roused himself before the alarm ever had a chance to ring; he might even be in danger of being late today. Against his will his eyes lingered on the tumbled sheets, thinking of frames and perspective and Come with me—

“Yusuke!”

“Coming, Sensei!”

Time to go.

---

The sun was setting by the time Yusuke made his way home. It was an interesting color palette with the rain clouds still low and glowering in the sky and the sun a particular color—a color that felt like burns, that felt like consumed things and the flinch when you touch a hot kettle—but he wasn’t driven to paint it. It was beautiful but not… quite. He was dwelling on that, the unexpected stillness in his fingers clutched around the strap of his school bag, when he heard the unexpected call: “Hey, Yusuke!”

He wasn’t aware of being on such familiar terms with anyone. He looked up, squinting, searching. There, across the road, was the blond punk from the other day, waving cheerfully. His friends were with him again too. “Whassup?” he called, one hand cupped around his mouth. Yusuke stalled, unsure of what to do. But that was enough encouragement for them; they ambled across the street and spread out around him. “How ya doin’?”

“What are you doing?” Yusuke asked, thoroughly confused.

“Wha? Well… just sayin’ hi. You know. To a friend.”

Yusuke frowned. What strange folk. “We’re not friends.”

“Ha! That’s kinda rude.” The punk flashed a grin and thumbs up. “No worries though, man, it’s cool. Bet it’s kinda lonely hangin’ out in that shack all alone, ya know? We figured you’d want some company.”

“Uh… really…” He’d never been approached in this manner before. It was—incredibly strange. Enthusiastic? Flippant? Direct? What was it? “Well, I’m—I’m sorry, I really don’t understand. We’ve only met once before.”

“Yeah, but we wanna get to know you better!” The blond girl smiled in a way that wasn’t as grotesquely bright as before. Still off-putting though. It reminded him of some of the dolls his classmates would work on for traditional art projects. “Cuz like, it’s sooooo cool to meet one of Madarame’s real pupils in real life, you know? To meet an artist-in-training! Someone who really lives with and learns from such a well-known guy! It’s pretty neat, right?”

Something in his head lurched, a click, puzzle pieces matching up snugly. He frowned. “I thought you said the whole reason you knew about this place was because you had met a student of Madarame’s. Wasn’t it?”

The exuberant expressions on their faces fell as quickly as a puppet with cut strings. Yusuke leaned back on his heels, arms crossed. This was a headache waiting to happen, and he had enough of those with the pollen as bad as it was. “Uhhhh…” said the girl. “Y-Yeah, well, that was—”

“—A lie?”

“No! Nakanohara-san really did ask us to step in!”

“Step in for what?”

The two of them fell silent. Yusuke waited patiently, then demanded, “What are you really doing here? Why do you persist in presenting this odd eagerness to speak with me?”

“Is it really that odd?”

Yusuke blinked and stared at the dark-haired boy. Kurusu... something. He was leaning against the wall in a guileless, indifferent slouch, one hand in his pocket, the other fussing with a curl over his forehead. His gaze was impenetrable and unblinking, like a statue. Yusuke actually found himself a little distressed by it. Such things didn’t normally affect him. “What?”

“Is it odd for people to want to talk to you?”

Yusuke huffed, regaining his composure. “Sensei is a renowned artist. Of course people want to reach him however possible. Through those who live in the fringe of his great influence, if necessary. But most of the time those people have obvious intentions.” His eyes narrowed. “You, on the other hand, are not forthcoming. Why would students from Shujin Academy suddenly take an interest in a traditional artist? Why come to his residence instead of to a museum, or the department store where his work is about to be displayed? Why lie, apparently, about Sensei’s students? And why speak with me but not request an audience with him?”

“Would you let us talk to him if we asked?”

“Of course not! Sensei is a busy man!”

“There you go,” said Kurusu, with a tiny quirk of a smile. Yusuke scowled.

The punk scratched the back of his head and sighed heavily. “Man, you’re pretty defensive. We haven’t even said anything that bad yet. I mean, yeah, we haven’t told you why we’re really here, but…”

Slowly Yusuke blew out a long breath. He forced the tension out of his shoulders and hands. “My apologies. I… did not sleep much last night. Perhaps that is the reason for my—conduct.”

The four of them stood in awkward silence for a moment. Yusuke adjusted his bag. The punk kicked at a tuft of grass. Then a muffled, elongated meow split the quiet. Yusuke peered around. “A cat…?”

Kurusu looked over his shoulder and nodded vaguely. “Yeah…” he said, seemingly not in response to Yusuke’s question. “You’re right. We should at least try.” He turned back to Yusuke and straightened, squaring off his shoulders. “All right, Kitagawa-san. We’ll come clean with you. In return, I hope you’ll be willing to help us out. Sound good?”

Yusuke opened his mouth to reply—and was struck dumb.

That light…!

He gasped, feeling it—the rush of his blood, the tingle in his spine, the itch in his fingers. It wasn’t expected—not now, not when it wasn’t (Joker)—but still, the call of the muse was irresistible. He could no more ignore it than he could will his heart to quit its beating. He dropped his bag to the ground and scrabbled in it for pencils—crimson, white, a bar of charcoal—

“What is he…?” the girl murmured, and Kurusu just started to turn his head, just began to say something—

“Don’t. Move.”

The three of them stilled like wary beasts. “Uhh… is he okay…?” The punk asked, stepping closer to Kurusu.

“Out of the light!” Yusuke barked. He only had a handful of minutes before the sun’s angle changed significantly. He had confidence in his abilities, he could capture it before then, but he had to be quick, it had to be perfect—

He stood hurriedly, sketchbook balanced on his arm, and flipped to a blank page. White pencil over his ear, red in his mouth, get the outlines and the heaviest shadows in charcoal first—

He striped and smudged and scratched at the paper industriously, drawing in the highlights, striving to catch that blazing glow, the striking colors. It was there, just there. The color that didn’t have a name. There, burning low like embers in Kurusu’s hair, sliding down his shoulders and merging into the creases of his blazer, umber in his skin, brilliant white-red-gold on his glasses—twin secretive, blank discs of color and not color that stole away the human expression from an affable enough face—there was a kind of beauty, surely…!

As he sketched, the others conversed without him. The words fell on deaf ears, but he registered them all the same.

“You sure he’s okay? He’s muttering like a crackpot!”

“No, Ryuji, look! He’s in the throes of an artist’s fugue! I read about this!”

“You did not.”

“Yes I did! They did three whole pages about artists in this month’s cover of CUTiE!”

“Yeah, about what they wear.”

“Whatever.”

“Think we should stop him?”

“Nah, he seems fine… I mean, I think…”

“Meow! Meowrr, meoww!”

“Shhh!”

“Guys…” That was Kurusu. Yusuke glanced up sharply from a smudge in progress, his look remonstrative. Kurusu’s mouth quirked at the corner again, but he stayed still, eyes unreadable behind the flaring light on his lenses. “Just let him work.”

“Okay… but that muttering is weird…”

They pattered on, and Yusuke sketched, and the light quickly sank and dissipated into cool violets. Yusuke let out a heavy sigh and let his drawing hand fall; Kurusu cracked his neck and winced. “That was… unexpected,” he commented lightly.

Suddenly Yusuke came back to himself. Oh no. Madarame had warned him time and again about this sort of—impulse—but he never did take warnings well. “I… apologize… for—”

“Do we get to see it?” The girl asked. Her brittle, shiny demeanor from before was gone, replaced by a gentle warmth and humor that Yusuke was pleasantly startled by. He almost wanted to sketch her too with those wide blue eyes darkened in the evening light, but he was too drained to contemplate it at the moment. This was different from class. He had been seized by inspiration before at school, had lost himself in his work countless times, and he had certainly worked with others on many projects. But this, to be so engrossed in front of strangers—who then so familiarly invited themselves into his work, his passion—

“Um,” he stuttered, and found himself automatically bringing the sketchbook up for all of them to look at.

It was a realistic likeness. The lines were there, the shadows darker than you might expect, the shoulders and cheekbones a little sharper, but accurate nonetheless. Kurusu’s glasses had been rendered almost like fireballs, impermeable circles of white and red blurred and made something more than reflective. Absolutely nothing of his eyes showed through. Red light in the lenses, highlighting his cheek and brow, eased down the line of his neck and dyed the high collar of his shirt. The use of color defined it, making it seem as if the high school student was bleeding from his eyes, lines of blood or fire pooling in his clothes. He looked like a demon.

“Wow…!” the girl breathed.

“Holy shit, man,” said the punk. “That’s, uhh… intense.”

“Useless,” Yusuke announced coldly. The murmurs of confusion between the three of them sounded like the cooing of mourning doves. “It’s just colors. There’s nothing of true beauty here. I failed.”

“Um, Kitagawa-kun, I think that’s being a little harsh…”

Yusuke sighed sharply and slapped the sketchbook shut. Another embarrassment. “Never mind. Excuse me for taking up your time.”

“Hey, man—!”

“Kitagawa-kun…!”

“Kitagawa-san, wait.”

Yusuke brushed off their pleas and moved past them towards the door.

“We’re here investigating Madarame.” Kurusu’s voice was still soft, but edged, flat like a blade.

Yusuke’s hand dipped into the handle of the door and tightened, fisted, pulled. He twisted his fingers through the ring at his belt, searching for the familiar grooves of the house key.

“We have evidence that says he’s been abusing his students and stealing their work.”

His hand spasmed in the handle, cramped.

“We need to find out if that’s true.”

“Careful. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“What?” Yusuke turned back to them, his face set in cold disdain. “Plagiarism? Abuse? What in the world could possibly make you entertain such foolish accusations?”

“Nakanohara-san isn’t a lie, Kitagawa-kun. He used to study here too, don’t you remember?” The girl looked sad, as though it pained her more to tell him these things than it did him to hear them. How selfish. “He asked us to look into the way Madarame’s treating his students. For you, Kitagawa-kun. He said Madarame treats his students like—like dogs, that he steals their art, and—”

“—and when they’re no longer puttin’ out, he puts ‘em down like dogs, too,” the punk finished grimly. His gaze on Yusuke softened. “C’mon, man. We’re doin’ this ‘cuz we know the world is full of shitty, selfish, nasty adults. Nobody else is doin’ anything to help us out, so we gotta defend ourselves. We’re tryin’ to help, all right?”

Yusuke looked at him, at the girl, at Kurusu. His glasses were pale and transparent now, letting him see through to the expression behind them. His eyes were a normal brown—but ashy, almost, picking up the grey from the looming rainclouds and reflecting it back. He said nothing, just met Yusuke’s eyes and shifted on his feet.

“I never asked for your help,” Yusuke said to him, coldly. “I spoke to Sensei myself about this Nakanohara. He was a student here, yes, I remember—he was lazy and sloppy, and got himself expelled from the atelier for his failure to take the craft seriously. Did he tell you that? Of course not. Because his own shame inspired him to spread these slanderous rumors about his former teacher, and you brought them to me. Accusing my teacher of abuse—accusing me of just giving up my work—how noble of you.”

“Yusuke—”

“Do not address me so informally,” Yusuke said, crystalline emphasis on every consonant. “Your vulgarity is not welcome here. Begone.”

The punk sputtered a little. “’Begone’? Seriously? Who talks like that—come on, man, we just wanna help!”

“You don’t feel like you can talk about it, do you?” The girl took a step forward, her mouth downturned like a wilting orchid. “If he is abusing you—you can’t talk about it, because it’s your fault, right? It’s something you’ve done, or you think it is. But it’s not. You just have to be brave, Kitagawa-kun, we’ll believe you. Even if no one else has.”

“Brave,” he echoed with a chuckle. “Bravery, is it? Do you know what’s brave? Brave is choosing to live in a run-down workshop when you could revel in luxury as others who are fame-hungry would do. Brave is admitting to your pupil that you’re unable to find the spirit to paint, and asking them for advice, even when you are a master painter lauded around the world. Brave is taking in a child to whom you have no obligation, when you are starving and unknown, even when it means your own continued poverty.” He brought a fist up to his heart to still its clamoring and looked down, away, down into the dark twisting vines of memory. “That is what Sensei did for me. That is what he did for so many others. I can’t give up on him.”

“Kitagawa-san.”

Yusuke glanced up. They all looked like ruffians, like delinquents, but their faces were so open and kind, he couldn’t help it. “Sensei took me in when I was very, very young. He had enough burdens on his shoulders. I’ve lived with him for years. Don’t you think if he were abusive I would have said something? Someone would have said something?”

“Someone is saying something now,” Kurusu murmured. Yusuke’s look chilled.

“And that someone is lying, as I’ve said,” Yusuke replied. He huffed, brushed his hair out of his eyes. “It is—agreeable, that you feel so passionately for helping those in need. But there’s no one to help here. I suggest you take your honorable mission elsewhere.”

“Are you sure? Really, really sure?” The girl tugged at one of her thick, wavy ponytails. She appeared to be on the verge of tears. Yusuke looked away, uncomfortable.

“We’re not giving up this easy. We know Madarame’s dirty.” The punk scowled and hunched over, resuming his thug act. “I dunno why you’re helpin’ him to cover it up, but we’ll get to the bottom of it. We don’t go down without a fight, Yusuke. You shouldn’t either. There’s nothin’ right about the way Madarame’s treatin’ you or any of the other kids he’s broken along the way. We’re gonna make him pay for his crimes.”

Yusuke sighed, suddenly exhausted. “By all means,” he murmured, sliding into the entrance hall. “If it will satisfy you. Just don’t come here again.”

“No promises!” yelled the punk through the closing door.

Yusuke’s last glimpse of them was of Kurusu, his back already turned. Yusuke stared at the scarred wood of the front door blankly, seeing not the door but that backdrop of crisp black polyester. Already walking away. He dropped his head against the door and breathed, trying to fend off the headache and failing. Perhaps he could put extra tofu in the miso tonight, if there was some. He looked to the side and found a note left on the step—Sensei would be at the department store dining with the exhibit orchestrators, ironing out details. Well. That was fine. He could skip dinner then.

He went into his workshop and looked around at the paintings. Older works had almost been completely obscured with the new phase, as Sensei had called it—his muse. He slumped onto his stool before the workbench, gazing at one of his favorite pieces. The blood-red gloves, reaching out, cupped and ready to receive whatever the viewer had to offer. There was barely a shadow of what could be a face-shaped silhouette in the background—this was an earlier piece, before he was emboldened by the pursuit of Joker’s features, before he was frustrated by the void in his memory there—but even so, it felt to Yusuke as if it were laughing at him.

“What… was all of that…?” Yusuke asked of the painting, bemused, worn. No response. Well, that wasn’t too surprising. His paintings did not usually talk back.

He sighed and leaned over to rummage through his toolkit. It had been a while since he took stock of materials here in the atelier. He’d been using school paints for a while. Perhaps it would soothe him to return to something… familiar.

Not that he needed soothing.

… Black. He would need to buy more black.

---

He woke suddenly. His arm was numb, his shoulders and neck ached with a sharp pain, and his knees were stiff. He felt old. Yusuke groaned, realizing he had fallen asleep at the worktable again. Of all the places to sleep, this was the worst. He braced himself and slowly straightened, the knobs of his spine popping and cracking loudly in the quiet stillness of the atelier.

Yusuke felt the tension leap into his shoulders like a bird taking flight. Too still.

There was something wrong in the atelier.

Slowly, trying to be subtle, Yusuke turned his head by fractions, eyes sliding to the far corner. He saw nothing in the doorway, heard nothing from down the hall. He had not turned on any lights when he came home—the room was full of long, strange shadows, stripes like a prison cell falling across the floor from the blinds on the window. The shadows seemed all the more dense in contrast. He began turning slowly the other way when the voice emerged from the dark.

“Over here.”

Yusuke spun around, looking into the opposite corner where his easel leaned against the wall. It was easy to spot the figure now—a long column of dark that moved with every breath, still but not inanimate, stealthy but limned in light from the streets. As if they wanted to be seen. As if they were making an entrance. It didn’t even take an entire heartbeat for Yusuke to recognize the silhouette that haunted his dreams. “You—!” he gasped, half-rising from his chair in a quickly aborted attempt to rush them, to touch them, to make sure they were real. “You are—!”

“I have returned,” said the Joker, with such a melodramatic intonation and flamboyant flutter of the hands that Yusuke felt sure they were clowning. He swallowed hard.

“You’re the Joker,” he whispered. He was dreaming. The motes of dust floating on the air in the streetlight twinkled like faeries, the time-worn wooden floors he knew so well were rich and soft as velvet on his bare feet, and the Joker was here in his workshop. This was a dream.

“Just Joker, if you please. It’s no title.”

Yusuke straightened up and stared, because why would he not. He had to drink this in and remember it. The Joker—just Joker—had stepped a little to one side, melting back into the unlit corner of the workshop; one half of the silhouette remained aglow with amber light, the other half vanished like an illusion into the darkness. The leather coat was indeed a leather coat, with a high collar that threw shadows over the lower half of the face; brass buttons winked in a line down the front of a paneled waistcoat, a flat chest, and inky shadows curled around trim hips and low-rise boots. He could see enough to tell the hair was dark and the face was obscured with a white mask—not a simple domino mask as he had eventually chosen to imagine it—if he could get closer to see… “You’re male,” Yusuke said at last, processing the timbre of a voice that he could finally place.

Joker laughed and hummed a sly affirmative. It made Yusuke shiver involuntarily. “A real gentleman thief I would be if I were a lady.”

“Surely lady thieves are also of such a singular disposition that they feel comfortable flinging people up against a wall in a back alley in the middle of the night,” Yusuke murmured, and what was he doing this is a golden opportunity don’t run your mouth what are you doing what are you DOING—

“I said at the time I don’t like having my privacy disturbed. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He paused. “Or… perhaps not…?” One red hand, muted to burgundy in the dimness, gestured broadly to the workshop. “It looks as though our meeting had some useful effects for you.”

Yusuke suddenly remembered just what the workshop must look like and choked on his own breath, cheeks aflame. There was nothing he could say to excuse it, so he didn’t try. Joker took a step forward, just enough to drag a single fingertip down the side of one canvas. Yusuke shivered again and collapsed onto his stool, knees watery, cursing himself silently. This was ridiculous. What was this—this foolish reaction— “You made all this in so little time?” Joker murmured. “A week?”

“Six days,” Yusuke blurted. He could feel the heat in his cheeks. What he would do for his sketchbook right now.

“Still. That’s incredible dedication and talent. I’m very impressed.” Joker shot him a grin, cavalier and bright. “I’m tempted to steal some of it.”

“I’m sure it would be worthless,” Yusuke replied, then forced a chuckle. Joker had fallen still again, arms at his sides, watching him. Yusuke took a breath. “So,” he said on the exhale. “A gentleman thief, is it? In the middle of Tokyo? What business have you here?”

“What business does a gentleman thief ever have?”

“Right,” Yusuke muttered. What was wrong with him? He gasped. “W-Wait—you’re not here for Sensei’s work? I c-can’t let you—”

“I’m not here for that.” Joker cut him off with a sharp sweep of his arm. “No, not today, at least.”

“Oh.” Outside, a stray cat yowled into the night. And just like that Yusuke felt the spell of—whatever it was—snap. “Wait. How did you come in here? Why are you here? How did you find me? What do you even want with me?”

“You’re sharp.” Joker fully emerged from the shadows, and as he did, he withdrew something from behind his back. A canvas. The painting Yusuke hid in his closet, the one of the Joker, sexless and sexual, arching up toward the rays of an invisible sun. Yusuke flinched back as if from an electric shock. Joker examined the painting, apparently ignoring Yusuke’s reaction. “This is… new for me. I haven’t experienced this kind of—perception—before.” He looked up at Yusuke and caught his eyes, and Yusuke found himself fixating on the man’s lashes—so thick and dark that he could see them even with several feet between them and the only light slanting through the blinds from the streetlamp. Closer now, he could see the elegant black inking on the inner lines of the mask—black and feathering away from his eyes like his lashes. Almost like a bird’s mask, delicate and fine.

Grasping for distraction, Yusuke asked, “Perception?”

Joker smirked. Yusuke was glad he was sitting down. “I have a very specific image. This isn’t it.” He looked down at the painting again. “… I like it.”

Yusuke swallowed. His mouth was dry as the paint. “I’m glad.”

Joker dragged his gloved fingers, very faintly, down the cloth. The faint scrape of leather over dried oils and rough cloth was obscenely loud in the room. Yusuke could swear he could hear his own breathing loud as a passing jet liner and held it. Finally Joker propped the painting up on the workbench against the wall, and Yusuke sighed, relieved. Joker laughed.

“I came in here through the window, by the way,” he said. “I wouldn’t reveal my methods, but—somehow I think you won’t cut me off. If I were to visit again.”

“The window?”

“In your room. You left it open last night.”

“Oh. You were here last night?”

Another hummed yes. Yusuke frowned and looked away. He wasn’t petty, but… “You didn’t find what you were looking for last night, then.”

Joker laughed again—a rich sound, like the taste of tonkatsu ramen, but edged with something sharp that smelled like blood and newly minted metal. “Oh, you are a delight.” Yusuke blinked and suddenly Joker was there, in his space, in his air, inches away and sitting on the workbench with one boot propped against the side of Yusuke’s stool. He ticked off a red finger with every phrase: “I came by window, I found you by paying attention to details, and why I’m here and what I want with you are mostly the same thing—I have questions.”

Yusuke tried not to bolt at the closeness. This man had pinned him to a wall before after all. This was surely par for the course. Maybe he was foreign and didn’t understand personal space. “Then ask.”

Joker leaned in, voice intense. “All right. What do you think justice looks like?”

Yusuke blinked. “What?”

“Justice. Is it something everyone wants, do you think? Is it a construct we’ve built as a society, to go on about our dull little lives in our cramped little ways, or is it tangible? Can you hold it, grasp it, capture it? Does it live in courtrooms and office spaces, on the streets and in the back alleys, does it look like your neighbor’s tea set she inherited from her great-grandmother or does it look like a sex tape of a revered but corrupted celebrity released on the internet? What is it?”

“What a strange question.” Yusuke looked off into the distance, thinking. “I suppose… as I believe beauty is something attainable… then surely justice must be too.”

“Does it look like the strong hoarding all the success and glory? Or the weak being released from their bonds?”

Yusuke shifted on his seat. “I’m not sure I—”

Joker leaned back, shrugged, the sudden flashfire intensity draining away. “Next question. How are you feeling today?”

“What?” Yusuke balked.

Joker’s smile was sly and slippery, like oil on water. “How. Are. You. Feeling?”

“That’s… that’s not any of your business!”

“I just broke into your closet, Yusuke. Your everything is my business now. You are my business. Will you answer my question?”

“I’m fine!” Yusuke barked, jerking up off the stool and backing away. He was absolutely not blushing. “Except for this undignified interrogation!”

“Are you taking care of yourself? Sleeping? Eating well?”

Yusuke laughed, tossed his hair out of his face. “This is ridiculous. This dream has gone down a wayward path. I demand we change to a more surreal subject or this will be paltry inspiration for a new painting.”

“Dream?” Joker grinned with such unabashed pleasure that Yusuke felt his fingers spasm in search of a brush, a pencil, anything. “This is no dream. Merely a night visit.”

“You seem to be a nocturnal sort.”

“Most of my work is done during the day.” Joker shrugged again, a fluid gesture. “But burglary is better done at night.”

Burglary—Yusuke gasped, an aborted exclamation. He reached into his pocket with shaking hands. “I should—I should report you to the police. You’re a thief. You’ve broken into my home, into my teacher’s workshop. You’re a criminal.”

Joker’s face drained of its animation and became solemn as a saint’s. Then his eyes slid down to Yusuke’s pocket and back up to his face, curved with a catlike amusement. “You won’t call the police.”

“Won’t I? Don’t test me.”

“You don’t have your phone.”

Yusuke stiffened.

Joker cracked a slim shadow of a grin. “Believe me. I would know. I have a keen eye for… detail.”

Yusuke was silent for a moment, debating. Then he said, “If that was an attempt to inform me that my pants are too tight, there are less obscure ways to do it.”

Another hum. Yusuke bristled. Joker’s smile simmered down to something almost fond. “I will accept your spirited response as a sign of your good health. Last question: are you wounded?”

“Wounded?” Yusuke let the word tumble and turn over in the room until it dissipated in the air. Joker gazed back at him, unruffled, and Yusuke watched him, discerning, analyzing. He gave up. “What would have wounded me?”

“I think you could answer that better than I.”

“I’m not wounded. I told you, I’m fine.”

Joker inspected him with those unblinking cat eyes (those maddening lashes). “Many wounds are delivered without a mark. No bruise, no blood, no broken bones. But make no mistake: there is great suffering in those invisible wounds. Some might say justice looks like the healing of those wounds, in people who did not deserve them in the first place. I might say that.”

Yusuke frowned, tugging at the cuffs of his shirt. “If you like,” he said indifferently.

“Kitagawa Yusuke. Have you heard of the Phantom Thieves of Heart?”

“I’ve heard of them.” Yusuke lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “A vigilante group at worst, a new urban myth at best. What of them?”

“They’re real. They’re watching. They think you’re in danger, with countless others, unable to defend yourself or speak out against the cruel and selfish actions of others.”

In the glow of the afternoon, with loud Shujin plaid in his eyes and the heat and haze of a Tokyo suburb on his skin, it was so easy to be offended, angry. Here, surrounded by the scent of paper and paint and polish, with red and black of his paintings webbed around the walls and floor like a dark womb, with light striping the floor and no clock to tell him how tired he should be, he just felt exhausted.

“No,” Yusuke sighed, looking helplessly toward a small stack of paintings. ‘Getaway’, ‘Black Cat’. “It might appear as such. But I promise you, I am no victim.”

“Are you not?”

“No.” Yusuke met Joker’s eyes steadily. “I’m not.”

Joker slid off the workbench and walked slowly towards Yusuke, stalking. Yusuke stood firm. He was taller than Joker, he realized, by nearly half a head. It almost startled a laugh out of him, but then he felt the stroke of cool leather under his chin and it took him back to that night, back to this night, and his breath shuddered in his chest. Joker stood on tiptoe, his fingers just barely sliding over Yusuke’s skin to press against his pulse point. “If you’re lying,” Joker murmured, and this time it wasn’t a whisper or a breath, it was a voice and it was so low it was almost throbbing and he had to close his eyes against the force of it, “I will know.”

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” Yusuke whispered against his will.

Joker chuckled and slipped away. “Why wouldn’t you? You barely know me. We aren’t friends, right, Yusuke? Why?”

Yusuke opened his mouth, closed it, then looked at the floor, lost. “I don’t know.”

Joker laughed, but it was—different, it was wistful, almost sad. It forced Yusuke’s head up and he blinked, unexpectedly blinded by the halo of light behind Joker’s head. The streetlight was directly behind him. Joker could see nothing of his expression, just the wings of his mask extending from his temples. “Well, Yusuke,” he said with an air of finality that made Yusuke step forward, clutching at his chest, silently protesting. “I do appreciate a willing accomplice. If you like, I can leave you with a reward.”

“Yes?”

“One question. Anything you like. I swear on my honor as a Phantom Thief I will answer it.”

One question? Any question? He was almost dizzy with the possibilities. Who are you? What were you doing in that alley that night? Who were the others? Are the Phantom Thieves real? What does it mean to steal a heart? Why can’t I stop painting you? Why have you come to me? Who are you?!

But there was only one question he could truly ask. Yusuke licked his lips and tried to find those thick-lashed eyes, bleached of all color in the night. All he found was darkness—just like in the paintings. “When will I see you again?” he asked, and it felt like putting his head on the chopping block.

He was grateful that Joker didn’t laugh, at least. Instead, the gentleman thief lifted two fingers to his brow in an irreverent salute. Outside, a truck rumbled and coughed as it trundled down the street. “The next time you see me,” he said, and then the truck rolled past, blocking out the lamplight for just an instant—and when it was gone, so was Joker.

---

It was 5:38 in the morning when Yusuke finally realized that Joker had given him a legitimate answer. He laughed until he cried, and then vowed to do research on riddles.

Chapter Text

“Yusuke!”

The world shattered into too many too-loud shards. Yusuke flinched into his sheets, hands rising to cover his eyes and ears. The shrill chirping, the shuddering of the floor beneath his shoulder, the clack of his door, the yelling—oh—Sensei was—

“Yusuke,” growled his sensei from overhead, “what in the seven hells is wrong with you, boy?! Two days in a row your alarm has woken me early and kept me awake! And you’re still in bed! Are you an idiot or just lazy?”

What—what was—hadn’t he been—

The morning sunlight speared his eyes as he tried to squint through them. Yusuke scrambled to prop himself upright on one elbow, blindly reaching out for his phone. The alarm went on ringing innocuously as his fingers fumbled around the case. “Um, I-I—”

“Turn it off, fool!”

“Y-Yes, Sensei—” He tasted bile in his mouth and bit down on his tongue. His hands were heavy and clumsy, sliding over and around the phone case but failing to pick it up or quiet the increasingly discordant chirruping. The plastic clattered against the wood floor as he tried again and again, blood pulsing behind his eyes in his panic, to slide his phone closer to the sheets.

“Oh, you worthless—” Madarame seethed, and Yusuke gasped as his sensei kicked his hand aside. “I have to take care of everything in this place! Well, fine, I’m sure this will—”

Yusuke didn’t hear if the sentence had an ending. Instead his thoughts shut down and his heartbeat stuttered as he heard the sickening crunch, crunch, crack, the thuds of impact as Sensei’s foot came smashing down again and again. Yusuke lay very still, his skin prickling with sweat and icy cold. With a snarl, Madarame swooped down and scooped up Yusuke’s phone—still chirping—and flung it in a furious overhand pitch into the wall near the window.

Finally, the alarm died. The room was silent, except for his sensei’s labored breathing and Yusuke’s heartbeat throbbing in his ears.

Madarame huffed, and Yusuke heard the shuffle of cloth on cloth. “Get up,” he said in a low, rough voice. “You’re late.”

Without another word, he turned and exited into the hallway, the muffled thump of his steps descending down the stairs.

A long beat of silence wound through the room; his ears and mouth were stuffed full of cotton, his nerves jangling and skin numb. Slowly, trembling, he held his hand up before his eyes. It was shaking terribly, but intact—the skin pale and unblemished, the nails cut short, the fingers long and straight and unbroken. A few flakes of plastic or glass slid off his bones and gently chimed against the floor. Yusuke let out a shaky, breathless laugh and collapsed back down to his pillow.

He hadn’t been thinking clearly while Sensei was—was—upset, but he had been so sure, with that animal instinct that humans could never quite kick—he had been so sure his hand would be in fractured pieces by the end of that storm.

He glanced over at the window, and there, scattered into a web of unidentifiable black clunky boxes and shards of glittering plastic, the crushed carcass of his phone lay in pieces on the floor. The remnants stretched all the way from the frame of the window screen, leaning in the corner where he had placed it last night, to the legs of his desk; Sensei had thrown with all of his weight behind it.

For some reason he remembered the last thought he’d had before falling asleep the night before: tomorrow things will be different.

Yusuke rubbed his eyes with his shaking hands. Whatever had made him think that?

---

Of course, he remembered as soon as he sat down at his easel.

Joker.

Not the Joker, it’s no title. Just Joker.

He felt the raw shock hit him like a series of punches up and down his spine, making his muscles twitch reflexively and his lungs shrink. He felt as though his head was floating somewhere up near the arched ceiling. The electric tingling rushed through his veins, sparking behind his eyes and in his fingertips. He had met Joker, now, face-to-face—or, face-to-mask—and now there was a voice to match the words, a frame to carry the weight that had pressed him into that alley wall, a color to match the coat he had heard flapping in the wind as Joker vanished into the night. There was a face to go with the memory.

He was real.

Feeling a flush not unlike fever, Yusuke closed his eyes, remembering.

“I like it.”

He likes it.

He didn’t know how to describe what he was feeling (crimson—no, scarlet—no, cadmium red, and fragments of ice blue, and—), but he didn’t need words. His hands knew what to do. It was probably something in the purple family, he thought as he charged the brush. Purple for shadows and his sore, tender heart.

… His heart.

Yusuke frowned, deep in thought, as the bristles stroked downward.

Had… had he really met a Phantom Thief of Heart? Was Joker, the Joker he had been dreaming and painting and breathing for days now, was that specter really one of these rumored vigilantes? And if he was—did that mean he had come to Yusuke to steal his heart?

Yusuke shook his head, laughing quietly to himself. He didn’t think that was the case. Supposedly Phantom Thieves only stole the hearts of the corrupt. Or, if Joker’s words were to be believed, he was a gentleman thief, and not so supernatural as he at first seemed—not interested in stealing hearts at all. Either way, a boy of mediocre talent in a Tokyo high school was an unlikely target regardless of what motivated the Phantom Thieves.

Except… except Joker had been asking those questions, and they were so strange. It had felt like being plunged into an epic poem where every question was a riddle and every answer might cost him dearly. Last night he had felt like he was flying. And now, with his feet firmly planted on the ground, Yusuke couldn’t stop circling the question: what did Joker want? Had he been there to warn Yusuke that Sensei would be targeted by the Phantom Thieves? No, that didn’t fit at all. He had said the Phantom Thieves were watching him, that they thought he was in trouble. Were they trying to save him from something?

Quick as a snapshot he remembered the delinquent students outside the atelier’s gate. The joints in his hand spasmed, locked. Yusuke gritted his teeth and forced them to relax.

He didn’t like feeling angry, and it was frustrating to continue feeling angry about those belligerent Shujin students. Their words rankled unexpectedly. It was discomforting, at best, to think he looked like an easy victim to these total strangers; at worst, he wondered if they were plotting something. Something to hurt him or Sensei. Maybe that was what the Phantom Thieves were concerned about—these bullies, targeting Yusuke to get to Sensei.

But what would glamorous, mysterious, quite possibly supernatural thieves want to do with a gang of school bullies?

Then again, their first momentous victory was in a high school. Supposedly.

But… was Joker even a Phantom Thief at all? After all, he had shown no criminal intent. He hadn’t kidnapped Yusuke or done anything at all to him, really. He hadn’t stolen anything (Yusuke had checked). Even when presented with an opportunity to steal one of his paintings, since he had taken it from Yusuke’s closet, he had given it back to Yusuke. That was the opposite of criminality. Although he did break into his home, and he had said—what had he said exactly? “I swear on my honor as a Phantom Thief”—or was it “for the Phantom Thieves”? “My honor as a member of the Phantom Thieves”?

Yusuke checked, his arm pulling back from the canvas. His vision was swimming, the lines of the canvas warping at the edges. All these questions… he couldn’t concentrate…

Yusuke’s arm dropped down into his lap. He stared out of the high windows lining the walls; outside the sky was a blue so pure it looked like a texture. If cream were blue it would be that sky. The sky he could almost make sense of, but thinking of Joker, his head spun and his thoughts knotted so badly he couldn’t tell up from down.

Joker. Muse. Rogue. Mystery. Criminal. Man. Phantom Thief (probably.)

“What do you even want with me?”

“I have questions.”

Joker’s fingers at his throat, dragging over the canvas—

Yusuke stirred restlessly and looked down at his easel. The canvas was no longer blank; instead, a deep, viscous, pulsing purple dripped heavily from the top of the frame, threaded down until it faded into thin wisps and streaks, around a vaguely man-shaped silhouette of white. Absently, he brought his brush down into the palette again, weaved through some colors until he had a darkish brown. He started outlining the shadows of Joker as he had seen him last night, messy dark hair—

but what was that color, what color, what

—the feathering around the eyes of the mask—

but what about his cheekbones what about his eyes what about

He snapped his arm back as if singed. He could just hear it—the breath in Joker’s mouth as he laughed, the sliding pitch of his voice when he made that ironic humming sound, could see the curve of his cheek beneath the mask as he loomed closer, hand outstretched—

But then there was the rumble of the truck, the wink of darkness, the shifting light, the clatter of his door in its frame, the crunch of plastic as Sensei’s foot came down—

Yusuke swallowed heavily and rested his palette on the table beside him. He felt shame burning hot and heavy on the back of his neck, nausea sinking in his stomach. It was wrong. This was wrong.

He was forcing it.

It wasn’t enough.

Yusuke lowered his head into his hands, eyes closed. He understood now. He could see it all so clearly. That very first meeting in the alley had been everything he could ever ask for. He, Yusuke, had been a vessel left too long in the sun, long dry and neglected, and was unprepared for the sudden deluge of inspiration with which he was flooded. It filled him to overflowing, and he had painted in that flow with contentment, exploring the fringes of his memory without fear. Gifted a moment too brief to be understood, he took the scraps of the fantastic from that encounter and was satiated, even replete. But now he had more. He was diving into a deep, yawning well; he wasn’t overflowing, he was drowning. It was too much and not enough.

Now he knew the angle of Joker’s jaw from five feet away, but what did it look like when he was close enough to feel Joker’s breath against his cheek? He remembered that sly hum, but was distracted by the memory of Joker’s foot sliding against his leg—or was he imagining it and that never happened at all? Those eyes—those eyes—now he felt haunted by them, he felt ensnared. He didn’t know their shape, not really. He didn’t know their color. He couldn’t remember exactly how the mask had lain against the contours of his face. Did his eyes curve when he smiled? Had he blinked slowly or flicker-fast?

Before, with the few pieces of Joker that he’d been gifted, drawing beauty from him had been easy. It had been undefined, a wealth of potential. Now he had a handful pieces—enough to imply a puzzle, an incessant tugging at his mind like the moorings of a boat resisting the pull of the waves. He wanted to solve the puzzle and discover the beauty within it—but it wasn’t enough, and it was too much to return to what he had before.

Instead of being driven on by his memories, he was waylaid by them, distracted, held against his will. Yusuke looked at the painting in front of him and felt his chest clench tight, seeing the brushstrokes of dark paint marking Joker’s hair and hearing echoing words in his head, dooming judgment: Is that truly beautiful? Or is it only a mimicry?

And another voice, quieter, nearly silent: Have you even found what makes him beautiful, when he wears a mask?

He couldn’t pursue beauty like this.

Feeling a slow chill of horror creep through him, Yusuke wondered if perhaps Joker had stolen his heart after all. Perhaps he was a foul spirit that had posed as a muse and instead had consumed his art. Weren’t there tales of beings that stole your soul when you looked into their eyes? Maybe he was cursed.

Yusuke blew out a long sigh and rose, leaving his supplies and work as they were.

There was only one thing he could do at times like this.

---

‘Sayuri’ had not been displayed in a museum for a long time, several years at least—the last thing Yusuke had heard was that it had been stolen. He never could remember who might have stolen it; Sensei absolutely refused to talk about it, ever. But he could remember, vaguely, when he was a child, seeing it hanging in a place of prominence in the entrance hall. It was only there for a short time, but he could remember standing there, his little child’s feet growing cold on the flagstone floor, his knees aching, but his heart soaring high with love. That was when he first knew what love felt like: he loved that painting as he loved no one and nothing else. When Sensei used to reminisce, he would tell stories of Yusuke’s little-boy lecturing, the breathless soprano piping of his observations on the sweetness and warmth of ‘Sayuri’. The other students grew tired of it sometimes, but he thought he could remember Madarame laughing heartily, perhaps even ruffling his hair.

His heart had not wavered. He loved ‘Sayuri’ to this day as much as he ever had, perhaps even more.

He had a spot in the library that he liked to think was his. He wasn’t a particularly passionate student, but the library was quiet, and drab, and old. It was a blessing sometimes to go to a place where beauty was so well-hidden it may as well not exist. It meant he could rest. Due to some strange miscalculation in construction, there was a corner of the room where the floor-to-ceiling stacks did not quite match up, leaving a space of about a foot and a half between the bookcases. Yusuke fastidiously dusted and swept this corner of the library whenever he could, because sometimes he had to do what he was doing now—slip quietly into the library, make a beeline for this odd little nook, and fold himself into it with a book on contemporary world-changing art pieces.

The viewing quality was better on his phone, but the illustrations in the book were still satisfactory.

Yusuke breathed out a long, relaxing sigh, examining the gentle curves and pure colors of ‘Sayuri.’ There she was, a little faded and grainy in print, but still vibrant and beautiful as he remembered her. For some reason, looking at this painting always lulled him into a sense of peace. No matter how lost he felt, he always found what he truly sought here, in the Sayuri’s mystery and wonder. Yusuke attributed it to the remarkable style—even the brushstrokes were pressed to the canvas with such care and feeling, such passion and yet such tenderness. Every art critic in the world agreed with Yusuke: Madarame’s maiden work was true beauty, funneled through emotion and transformed into an image of unforgettable adoration. Whoever she was, Yusuke often thought, Sensei must have loved her very much.

What must it have felt like to paint her? Was she real? He liked to think she was. He closed his eyes and slowly created the scene that he had secretly comforted himself with for years: his sensei, a younger man, his hair less streaked with silver and his skin less heavy with care. The woman who was ‘Sayuri’ seated on a low bench—no—in a pile of cushions—no, that wasn’t right either… on a stool, as would be proper for a model, but the room wasn’t a workshop. It was some warm space, somewhere intimate and lived in. Frames on a low bookshelf. Floorboards worn and bright from scrubbing. Sensei was seated in a traditional, respectful position, legs folded beneath him, and his wrist flowed with confidence across the cloth, beginning with ink and switching to paints. The whole time the ‘Sayuri’ peeked up at him when she thought he wasn’t looking, a mischievous glint in her eye when Sensei teasingly told her to be still, don’t move.

She was real. How could she not be, with such genuine feeling imbued in every line and hue? A real model, for a real portrait. For real beauty that could be shared with—well. With everyone. That was what an artist’s goal must be.

Yusuke looked silently at ‘Sayuri’, gently pressing a fingertip alongside her face.

What kind of journey had ‘Sayuri’ led his sensei on? Where had she taken him, in the end?

Breathing in the dusty smell of the library, shifting slightly at the painful twang of a cramp in his neck, Yusuke settled into his corner and lost himself in the painting. The book lay heavy and inert in his lap. He let his thoughts drain downward, dripping through his shoulders to his arms, smearing across the pages as he stroked the words printed beside the portrait.

Sayuri, Madarame Ichiryusai, 2001.

What was Joker, really? What had brought him to Yusuke? And why did it matter?

Oils and ink on canvas.

Would it help him to explore the beauty of this mystery man if he knew more about him? Or would it obscure the purity he sought?

National Art Center, Tokyo.

He had moved so fluidly, like a dancer. With confidence and self-awareness, like a cat walking a roof ledge. Was it his Phantom Thief status that gave him such grace—or was his grace inherent, and the mantle of Phantom Thief fell upon him because of his natural abilities? And why did he take such interest in a second-rate high schooler, too focused on books and paints to know anything valuable to such a poetic anti-hero?

Provenance undetermined.

Yusuke reviewed Joker’s every question and his responses for what must be the tenth time, a fruitless exercise after he had looped them over and over in his head before he slept. What was Joker? What was he doing? What did he want? What did he mean, saying Yusuke’s ‘everything’ was his business and asking such strange questions?

… What did Yusuke want with him?

The epiphany blinded him in a streak of pearlescent color, like a comet blazing out of heaven to lodge itself behind his eyes.

“Oh,” Yusuke whispered to the ‘Sayuri’, “he’s real.”

And that meant Yusuke… Yusuke could see him again.

He had been so hypnotized—he still felt hypnotized, spellbound. He felt like he was the subject of a portrait, immobilized, caught in the creation of art. But no, he was the artist, and he had spoken with a fantasy become real. Of course it made perfect sense for him to have been overwhelmed. Of course everything had become so strange for him! He had been waking from a dream, only just beginning to scratch the surface of what Joker could be. He was the artist, and Joker… Joker was the ‘Sayuri.’ Joker would be the model that helped Yusuke discover real beauty, to reach for it and put into a canvas as his sensei had before him.

He wanted to see him again. Yusuke needed to see Joker again.

Because, he realized, gazing down at the sweetness of the ‘Sayuri’s expression, the path to painting true beauty and the answers to his questions about Joker were one and the same.

If Joker would not come to him… then Yusuke would go to Joker.

He chuckled and closed the book.

---

He was incredibly excited, nearly giddy, until he realized that finding Joker was literally next to impossible.

Yusuke had no phone number, no occupation, no home address—not even an age, not even a real name. (Surely Joker was a code name? Code names were thief-y things, right?) Tracking down a man whose title literally implied that he was a ghost, a man who wore a mask, would take a miracle. But Yusuke was in pursuit of beauty: he would not be deterred. He would just have to use his head.

Back in the students’ workshop, he rooted around in his bag until he found his sketchbook. He yanked a blank page from it, flipped it closed and hurriedly started writing everything he knew about Joker:

- Phantom Thief

- not targeting Sensei

- visited me/the atelier twice

- first encountered in alley near Shibuya Crossing at night

- works in day (criminal? not criminal?)

- wears mask

- code name(?) Joker

Yusuke chewed the end of his pencil briefly, then added:

- speaks fluent Japanese

At least he would most likely still be in Japan. He had spoken with a level of comfort that definitely sounded like a native, although his accent wasn’t familiar. It didn’t quite sound like Tokyo, but it wasn’t a Kyoto twang either, and that was the only other accent Yusuke had any experience with. It was possible he had fled Tokyo, but if he hadn’t stolen what he was here for, why would he go?

But what if he had successfully stolen something?

Well then.

Parallel to the first list, Yusuke made a second:

Phantom Thieves of Heart:

- first strike at Shujin High Academy: target was gym teacher

- target individuals with corrupt hearts

- steal hearts(?)

- watching me (I’m in danger?)

- vigilantes? sub-culture?

- fanbase forum online

- goals??? methods???

Yusuke stared down at his two lists, then sighed in disgust. This was the kind of detective work for police. He didn’t have the patience for logic puzzles like this. And who was to say a group calling themselves Phantom Thieves and claiming to steal evil hearts would ever follow the rules of logic to begin with?

But he had nothing else to work with.

He could wait, maybe. He could leave his window open with the screen on the floor. Try to keep painting.

Yusuke’s eyes blazed as he glared at the still-dripping, purple fabrication sitting on his easel. Wait and produce something like that, in Joker’s name? He’d sooner jump from the school roof. No, he had to find Joker and convince him to sit for a portrait as the ‘Sayuri’ had done for his sensei, and there was just no other way. He had met Joker once, then again. Surely a third time wasn’t asking too much.

But he needed to figure out what it was Joker wanted, and after that, where he might be likely to find it.

Jaw tense, Yusuke packed away his paints and cleaned his brushes, then carried his unfinished painting to the drying racks. He wouldn’t be painting anymore today. He had to go back to the library.

Despite being a privately funded school, Kosei did not have the best technology. The computers were blocky and outdated, and most of the keyboards were sticky from some mysterious substance or another. Yusuke always felt uncomfortable using them, sitting in the cold chairs with their squishy textures, but he was on a mission. Sometimes you had to suffer for your art.

The Phantom Aficionado Website blinked onto the screen, still garish and startling. Yusuke gazed at the blinking cursor in the text box with apprehension. Wavering slowly on the screen, the poll question remained as it had days before: “Do you believe in the Phantom Thieves?”

Yusuke frowned thoughtfully down at the keys, then clicked yes and submitted his entry.

The question fuzzed away into a pool of black, and new letters rose from the puddle: “Your vote has been tallied. Let’s spread justice to all corrupt hearts!”

Yusuke waited, but nothing further appeared on the screen. A new comment popped up in the feed, something about a suspicious man walking dogs in the park. Yusuke still waited, knee bouncing beneath the desk. The text still wavered like an oil slick but there was no secret code that unscrambled, no message from the Phantom Thieves confirming his belief. No clues.

Well, if the Thieves themselves weren’t talking, maybe their admirers might. Yusuke scrolled slowly through the comments in the log, watching as the poll numbers in the lower right corner of the screen fluctuated marginally. Some people claimed they had seen the Phantom Thieves, but it seemed like long shots at best—in Destinyland, holding up a convenience store, riding on top of a metro car. There were a surprising number of accusations, or confessions, depending on your perspective. One person claimed she was being harassed by her boss; another said their friend was being bullied. A number of people said they were working in restaurants under incredibly difficult circumstances made worse by unaccountably strange phenomena like unexplained fires, missing delivery trucks, and sabotaged security systems. Some people talked about a cult developing in the metro stations. It was… a strange kind of collage, all these people expressing their pain anonymously, collecting like rainwater in a pot. It almost seemed, from some of the threads, that the Phantom Thieves’ involvement was a moot point—that the posters found relief simply in an imagined shared experience with their fellow believers.

How strange.

But ultimately unhelpful. There was nothing here that provided hints about the Thieves’ true goal or their next move. Yakuza plots. A student complaining about their parents. Some unfocused ranting about corruption in the government, the media. A master of the Japanese arts—

“A master of the Japanese arts is plagiarizing his pupils’ work. Only his public face is shown on TV. His treatment of the pupils who live—”

Yusuke felt his hand start to shake.

“His name is—”

The breath rushed through his throat like a knife, cold and sharp. He closed the window and sat staring at a blank desktop, eyes unblinking, feeling sweat collect on his skin.

Why would… who would have…?

No. He had closed the window before he read the name of the accused in that comment. He had overreacted, he was mistaken. Who would have been so careless as to list Sensei with such petty criminals, to accuse him of such behavior? No, he had just—had a moment of—alarm. For all he knew the post was about a swordsmith, or a monk, or something.

Yusuke took a deep breath and eyed the keyboard. He was pretty sure he’d seen all he needed to see on the fan site. And… looking back at the post would be unhelpful and a waste of time. What he needed now was to concentrate on the matter at hand.

It didn’t seem like there was a cohesive pattern to the posts on the site; it really was just a fan site, a place for people to collect with enthusiasm and discontentment. A ranting board. Yusuke leaned back and rubbed one hand over his brow. There weren’t even multiple posts about a common threat or location. Even the restaurants had all been different. What was he supposed to do with that? He’d have to keep looking.

For the rest of the period, Yusuke desperately tried every search phrase he could think of to see what he might be able to discover about the Phantom Thieves, but there was little more than the fan site’s existence to go on. He found out a lot more about Kamoshida, the teacher from Shujin; apparently several sexual harassment allegations had been leveraged against him over the years and either never made it to court or were quietly settled without any official black marks on his record. The new lay judge system hadn’t even touched him. Strange, and disheartening, but not particularly helpful.

By the time the bell rang Yusuke’s stomach was growling and his eyes were suffering from staring into the computer screen, but he had come up with nothing new. It was frustrating, but that was all right. He still had one more thing he could try.

---

“C’mon, kid, you look like you could use a little meat on your bones. Whaddaya say, eh? Do a simple job, get some extra cash?”

“You’re blocking the light,” Yusuke said irritably to the stranger. The man was leaning over into the already dim light cast by the streetlamp, casting a shadow over Yusuke’s sketch, and he smelled like cigarettes and cheap beer besides. Yusuke wanted him to linger about as much as he wanted to drop his sketchbook in the sewer. “Please leave.”

The stranger reared back, scowling beneath the brim of his unnecessary baseball cap. It was night, and though Shibuya’s lights were bright, he looked like a fool wearing it after dark. “Psh. Whatever, pretty boy. Bet you get your cash some other way, don’cha?”

“Goodbye,” Yusuke said pointedly. The man grunted and slouched away. Yusuke didn’t bother to look up, satisfied by the sound of shuffling, receding footsteps.

He had never actually tried to observe from one of these back alleys. It was surprisingly difficult to focus here, what with all the odds and ends of humanity bumping into him and demanding his attention. First it was a drunken salaryman asking for directions, then a homeless woman, a couple of students obviously on a forbidden adventure, and then this ugly fellow with his weird propositions. If he hadn’t had a headache before, he certainly did now.

Couldn’t they see he was trying to work…?

Not that he was working with high expectations. After all, trying to spot Joker in this riot would be like trying to pinpoint a specific star from underneath the haze of Shibuya’s electric canopy. He might have a feeling for where to look, but unless that star decided to fall out of the sky and into his lap, he would probably be left guessing. Of course, he was hoping the star would fall into his lap—metaphorically. If Joker himself were to fall into Yusuke’s lap, that would—well. He wouldn’t. Obviously. Far too graceful and deliberate with his movements. And it would be inappropriate.

Yusuke blinked and scoffed at himself. He really was distracted if his thoughts were wandering so ridiculously far.

He sat quietly at the mouth of the memorable, fateful alley where it let out to the wider thoroughfare of Shibuya Crossing, watching the kaleidoscope of light and colors spin and swirl and reset every few minutes. He had started off standing, but the restless sea of motion made him dizzy, and now here he was without a care in the world for how filthy his uniform pants were getting. His bag was wedged between him and the fondly remembered concrete wall beside him; his sketchbook lay in his lap. The streetlamp overhead dyed the paper a burnt amber, like freshly poured black tea. The first three or four pages were hasty, ghostly images of incomplete bodies—faces, hands, a leg, a shoe; each lightly smudged by the graphite smeared across the heel of his hand.

None of them, unfortunately, belonged to Joker.

Oh, there were plenty of maybes and could-bes. Slender men with dark hair but the wrong features; quick young men with a jaunty step, but looking utterly wrong in some district’s school uniform. Plenty of younger folk and older folk and women and foreigners who didn’t match what he was looking for, but drew his eye nonetheless with the poetry of their busy, isolated lives, dancing in and out of his vision like snatches of unknown songs.

What was Joker’s life like? Not that he needed to know, really. A muse transcended beyond the mundanities of everyday living, and Joker himself was obviously too sophisticated for whatever paltry experience Yusuke might try cobble together into a world Joker could inhabit. Still… it was tempting to imagine. Yusuke’s eyes lingered on an older man, talking loudly into his phone as he fed change into a vending machine. How old was Joker? Youngish, Yusuke thought, with the fluid grace of his gestures, but not too young—he had such an air of old-world eloquence. What would a youngish man be doing for his business in the daylight hours? Perhaps he was an affluent young businessman, the heir to a powerful company. Perhaps he was a politician. Or maybe something completely unexpected—a hairdresser. A restaurant worker. Or maybe, Yusuke wondered, his pencil idly tracing soft half-moons on the page, he was a long-suffering man, older than he seemed, caged in tragic circumstances and finally pushed to crime as a last resort for redemption, or escape, or the thrill of living.

Maybe he—

“Hey.”

Yusuke startled at the gruff voice behind him and winced in pain. His neck had gone into a ferocious spasm. Yusuke blinked through a thin film of tears and was vaguely surprised to see the foot traffic thinned, spaces gaping in the flow of bodies like pools of inky water. He grimaced and slowly craned his head around, trying to ignore the fierce burning in his shoulders (had he lost track of time?), and saw the grumpy visage and feebly gleaming badge of a truancy officer. “Ah—ahem, yes? Hello.”

“Kosei High, right?” the officer grunted.

Yusuke frowned. Not even a proper greeting. He was certainly a rude truancy officer, wasn’t he? “Yes. I’m sorry, I was just here working on an assignment and—”

“Kinda late for you to be out here, isn’t it? And in your uniform too. Where are your parents?”

Yusuke closed his sketchbook with a snap and slowly, in fits and starts, climbed to his feet. His legs were numb all the way down, and his feet were beginning to thaw into pins and needles that felt like static if it could bite. “As it happens, my guardian is in a conference with his agency until late tonight. They’re displaying his artwork in the Tokyu Department Store soon. But he trusts me not to behave poorly away from his supervision.”

The officer crossed his arms and gave Yusuke a cold once-over. “Ought to head home, kid. It’s almost midnight.”

“Yes, thank you, I will be on my way.”

He took a step and stumbled into the wall. The officer reached out and laid a heavy hand on his shoulder, which was probably meant to hold him up but actually just pushed him down against the wall. “What the hell, kid, you been drinkin’?”

Yusuke tried not to glare. “I’ve been sitting here for some time. My legs are numb. Please excuse me, I will leave as soon as the feeling returns to them properly.”

The officer sighed heavily through his nose, an ugly whistling sound, and leaned against the opposite wall. He shrugged into his jacket and reached into his pocket for a cigarette and a lighter. “Guess I’ll stick around till you can walk.”

“How kind,” Yusuke replied, massaging feeling into his legs as quickly as possible. The man had a face like an ugly dog, the kind you saw painted in mythological murals. His shoes looked like they had mud caked on them, even though it hadn’t rained since two nights ago. Yusuke didn’t think the officer could do anything to him—after all, even during regular school hours the most he could do would be to take Yusuke’s name and report him to the school, and maybe not even that much—but he still didn’t really want to be around him for longer than necessary. Yusuke pushed his palms into the meat of his legs, rubbing firmly up and down above his knee. “I was unaware truancy officers were asked to patrol during the evening.”

“All kinds of people get up to trouble at all kinds of hours. You never know.” The officer pinned Yusuke with a beady glare, then lit his cigarette and took a drag. “’Specially if they’re hangin’ around in dark alleys. Squad’s gotta be vigilant these days with all the chaos.”

“I see.”

He switched to his other leg. The tingling in his feet was making him grit his teeth, but he could tell that it was almost over. His shoulder was starting to hurt from the unexpected collision with the wall. What was it about this alleyway? Would he be tossed into the infrastructure by every stranger he talked to here?

Yusuke’s hands abruptly stilled. Oh—

It was a long shot, but wasn’t that what all of his chances looked like today?

“Officer—” Yusuke glanced at the badge— “Inoue. Um. Pardon me, but may I ask you a question?”

Another drag on the cigarette. “Sure.”

“In your work lately, have you heard anything about the Phantom Thieves?”

Inoue shot Yusuke another narrow, suspicious glance. He tapped his cigarette between his fingers, dropping ash like snowflakes. “Eh?”

“The Phantom Thieves of Heart,” Yusuke corrected himself. “They’re supposedly—vigilantes, I think. Or thieves? I’m not entirely sure. Have you heard anything about them?”

Still nothing.

Yusuke pressed, “They were connected to the confession of that teacher—Kamosh—”

“Kamoshida? Yeah, I… wait…” Inoue’s stony expression morphed into a yellowed grin, and then an awful hoarse crackling sound burst from his chest. He was laughing. He coughed once into his hand, still chuckling, and stubbed his cigarette out on the wall behind him. “That kids’ prank over at Shujin? Phantom Thieves, pfft. Quit pullin’ my leg, kid. Get outta here.”

“A kids’ prank?”

“Sure, some pissed off students showed Kamoshida up to scare him into his confession. There was some kinda callin’ card, hundreds of copies put up at the school right before he got himself behind bars. It’s nothing, just some kids actin’ out. Don’t get any ideas,” the officer added, lips thin. He fished for another cigarette. “Now you really gonna head home or do I gotta follow you the whole way?”

Yusuke bristled and immediately bowed to cover it. “Good night, Officer,” he said quietly, heading back down the alley and tracing the familiar path home. Disappointed though he was that the first night of his search had been fruitless, Yusuke couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement.

“A calling card,” he breathed, staring down at the cover of his sketchbook. He had a clue. If he wanted to discover where he could find Joker in the future, he’d get a look at where he’d been in the past first.

He needed to pay a visit to Shujin Academy.

---

Thursday arrived with clouds so low they moved like fog, drifting in smoggy swirls through the streets. Yusuke was full of nervous energy despite the poor sleep he’d snatched in the student lounge. Throughout his classes his leg bounced beneath his desk and his fingers constantly pulled at his uniform or pushed his hair out of his eyes. It wasn’t hard to focus on the lectures—he had always been good at forcing his concentration when necessary, at least for such uninspired exercises as homework—but once class was over, he found himself hesitant to pack his materials and leave.

“Staying late again, Kitagawa?” Yusuke glanced up. A young man of his year, arms full of graph paper and blueprints, had paused at his easel with a curious look at his newest piece. This one was all periwinkle and grey—a snapshot of the lowering sky outside. Or, if you looked carefully enough, a mysterious mist obscuring the smooth lines of a gentleman thief disappearing into the distance. Yusuke shook his head and rose from his seat.

Yusuke considered his classmate. “Not today. Actually… can you tell me where Shujin Academy is?”

The student gawked at him, his glasses sliding down his nose. “Shujin? Why would you wanna go there?”

Yusuke shrugged vaguely. “My phone is—broken. I can’t find my way there.”

“Uhh… take the gold line over one stop to Aoyama-Itchome. Should be two blocks down from the station. I think.” He squinted. “Seriously though, why?”

“Research.” Yusuke smiled and began packing up his things.

The train to Shujin itself wasn’t so bad. Even the walk was all right, despite the dull facades of low-rent commercial spaces lining the street and the oppressive clouds finally deciding to turn into an indecisive rainstorm—not heavy enough to warrant an umbrella, but enough to make everything feel a little bit heavy and sticky from moisture. The consistent stream of bright plaid-bedecked students was easy enough to follow to the school’s location. What Yusuke was thoroughly unprepared for, and absolutely struck by, was the school itself. He stood at the open gate, arms limp at his sides, gaping up at the banners hung from the central window.

It was hideous.

The steps were grungy and unwashed. The windows were fogged with fingerprint smears he could make out from two levels down. The gate and the walls seemed to have been made from the same clunky, squatting, sterile cinderblock, giving the whole structure an oddly misshapen, monotonous appearance. It wasn’t even as tall as the other ugly buildings surrounding it—it seemed to be glowering, sulking as it hunched close to the ground, aware of its shortcomings even though it had three stories and a rooftop courtyard. A group of students exited through the front doors, which squealed so loudly they sounded like the frustrated cries of a wounded animal. Through the door he caught a glimpse of equally drab, equally grimy cinderblock laid down on the floor (cinderblock on the floor?), fluorescent lights buzzing, and a large felt bulletin board on the far wall.

Yusuke shuddered.

His goal was there. Just beyond those doors. The main bulletin board for the school surely would have been where the Phantom Thieves placed their notice. He just had to… make it inside. Unnoticed.

And alive.

He gulped.

You’re doing this for Joker. You’re doing this for art.

Yusuke reached into his bag for his disguise and slipped it on, then gripped the strap of the bag tightly with both hands and took a deep breath of the humid air. The life of a Phantom Thief was undoubtedly full of danger and mystery. So, too, should be the life of the man who hunted him. He was destined to walk the halls of misery and slavish drudgery that lay within. But not for too long, because he really didn’t want to be here any longer than necessary.

As calmly as possible, Yusuke walked up the steps (sticky, disgusting) to the overhang, then to the front door. He stared at the handle. There were yellow-and-grey outlines of fuzz and filth in the windows from tape long since disintegrated, and the handle looked dull and slippery at the same time. Was that gum in the curve…?

What he wouldn’t give for a pair of gloves right now. But that would look odd.

You are an artist, in pursuit of true beauty.

Yusuke squeezed his eyes shut, grabbed the handle, jerked the door open and darted through before the squeal had even begun. As soon as he was inside he ducked into a corner and braced his hands on his thighs, gasping for air as quietly as he could. He’d done it. He’d infiltrated the target, or something. His hand might never be the same as it would now have to be soaked in lye and even then the creative spirit might have been smothered by all of this… what was this, it was too grey to just be grey… but still, he had accomplished his goal. Half of it, at least.

Yusuke sighed to calm his breathing, tossed his hair back, and looked around. He had just stopped short of falling into a tower of cardboard boxes at his elbow. Dusty displays of school trophies, many of which he noted were for the volleyball teams, lined the lobby. An office and mailroom behind a closed glass door; the school store just beside the bulletin board. And everything was washed into pallid sickness by the flickering fluorescent lights. How inviting.

Grimly, as a man on a mission, Yusuke approached the board and tried not to let his gaze linger on the dark splotch in one corner. It was probably coffee. Probably.

Yusuke withdrew a stub of a pencil from his bag and used it to lift up the overlapping edges of the layers of paper pinned to the felt. He found sports meets, tutoring sessions, concert ads, awareness campaigns, old posters from the previous year’s culture festival, lost and found notices. A torn off strip of notebook paper said something distinctly rude and most likely anatomically impossible about somebody named Yukari-chan. He wondered how that had slipped past the staff’s attention.

He rooted through the drifts of paper, but there was nothing that looked distinguished or threatening or even interesting. Yusuke let the student office elections’ notice drop from his pencil’s point and frowned deeply at the papers. Surely if there had been a calling card it would have been here, posted where everyone could see. Or perhaps someone had taken it down, kept it as a souvenir? Or the teachers could have taken it down. That made sense, Yusuke thought, deflating. Of course the staff would have wanted to keep up appearances, keep the students in line. Such a clear declaration of rebellion against one of their own would have been deeply disturbing. They would have made sure the calling card was taken care of.

Out of the corner of his eye, Yusuke caught sight of three large bulletin boards erected on the walls in the corner of the hall.

But… the officer had said hundreds of copies. And surely there were more notice boards than this one.

Yusuke lifted his head, determined. He had come here with purpose. He wouldn’t leave until he was satisfied. One of these displays was bound to have a hint of the elusive thieves that had come here once before; he wouldn’t leave until he had checked every single one.

As it turned out, there were eight bulletin boards on the first floor, and not a single one of them was hiding a calling card. Yusuke peered out at the sheets of rain now falling in the courtyard, sighed, and climbed to the second floor. Immediately before him was a short hallway with a series of awards posted on the wall, as well as a small bulletin board—it only displayed a fire escape map and a safety awareness poster—and a table full of leaflets and loose piles of paper.

“Excuse me?”

Yusuke poked through a pile of pamphlets on drug abuse with his pencil. How big would a calling card be, anyway? Business envelope size? Or more like these concert ads? He needed to—

“Excuse me.”

Yusuke stiffened at the irritated voice directly over his shoulder. His eyes slid to the side. Standing with her arms crossed, one heeled foot tapping impatiently, was… a teacher. At least, he assumed she was. The striped yellow blouse and denim skirt didn’t exactly bear the marks of authority, but he recognized the harried, exasperated expression from countless administrators and tutors. Yusuke stared at the slim folder of lecture notes tucked under her arm, then at the large black handbag swinging from her shoulder, and frowned. “Oh.” He turned away from the board and bowed. “Sensei.”

“Eyes up here,” the teacher sighed, dragging one hand through her unkempt hair. “Look, whatever it is, I don’t really care. School ended as of thirty-seven minutes ago and I should be on the train already. Just tell me what you’re doing here so I can say I made sure you weren’t a terrorist or something.”

“I’m here looking for evidence of the Phantom Thieves’ activities,” Yusuke said.

The teacher blinked, then blinked again. “What?”

“Their calling card, specifically.”

“You’re—I just said I wanted to make sure you weren’t a terrorist. Why—”

“I’m not a terrorist,” Yusuke explained patiently. “I want to speak with one of their members about the timetables for their next plan. I need to schedule a meeting with them.” Which was true—he needed Joker to model for him, but he absolutely did not intend to interfere with his business.

“Right,” drawled the teacher, her expression sour. “Why couldn’t you have just been here to pick up a girl or something?”

Yusuke’s nose wrinkled at that. “I don’t see how—”

“This is great. Kid from another school comes in, no supervision, not even a permission slip, ranting about phantom thieves? Great. Now I have to take you to the office, and how do you think that’ll make my record look? Jeez…” She shoved the folder into her purse and reached out for Yusuke’s arm. “Come on, Kosei—”

“Kitagawa-san! There you are!”

Yusuke’s head swiveled to find the voice. Walking in quick, broad strides down the hall was a student with a duffel bag slung over both shoulders, messy hair bouncing into his glasses.

No—

“Kurusu,” the teacher said while she pinched the puckered skin between her brows. “Please tell me you know him and you’re both engaging in perfectly legal after-school activities.”

That—thug from the other day stopped beside the table strewn with pamphlets, leaning on it with one hand as he adjusted the straps of his bag. “Er, yeah, sorry Kawakami-sensei—Kitagawa-san, I thought I said you should wait for me in the lobby—”

“You said no such thing,” Yusuke replied with as flat and blank a tone as he could manage. Kurusu shot him an exasperated glare, then shrugged.

“Sorry, Sensei. We were—”

“Just… don’t tell me. I’ll see you in class tomorrow.” Kawakami-sensei looked them both over with a weary expression, then walked to the stairwell and disappeared without another word.

The sound of students talking and the rapid patter of footsteps filtered back through to Yusuke’s hearing. He blinked and turned away to gaze vacantly at the bulletin board and the table beneath it. Had he finished searching this board? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t focus on the text of the papers. Instead he was acutely aware of the red buttons lining the cuff of the black sleeve hovering just there in the corner of his vision. Instead he remembered the persistent disquiet caused by this young man and his friends, the awful things this thug had said and the shame and fury that rose in reply.

Kurusu shifted, leaned so that he was half-sitting on the table, and Yusuke abruptly turned his eyes to an empty corner of the hallway.

He didn’t hate this boy. Hate was offering too much credit—hate was all-consuming, demanding, energy-sapping. He just didn’t like him. Kurusu was a rude, intrusive, stubborn sort of person that Yusuke didn’t want to waste time on. And to speak so ill of Sensei was, by extension, to speak ill of Yusuke himself. He didn’t owe anything like civility to Kurusu after what happened the other day—but, he grudgingly realized, he did owe thanks. After all, if that teacher had reported him it would have caused unnecessary trouble for Sensei, and just before the opening of his exhibit, too. Neither Sensei nor Yusuke needed that kind of stress. He felt like pins and needles were pricking him all over, hot and cold by turns.

Yusuke drew himself up a little taller and turned his head toward Kurusu, though he still kept his eyes lowered. “I owe you my thanks.”

Kurusu shuffled in place, one shoe scuffing the hardwood floors. “It was no problem.”

Yusuke could feel his lips thin, but still he gritted his teeth and bowed. “I do appreciate your effort nonetheless. Please excuse me, I should—”

“What were you even doing here?”

Yusuke glanced up. “What?”

Kurusu was leaning back on his hands, hips braced against the table. It looked rickety enough that it might collapse with the added weight, but Kurusu seemed unconcerned. “I mean,” he said, giving Yusuke a sardonic smile, “you’re not even changed out of your uniform, and you’re hanging out around the teachers’ lounge. What did you think was going to happen? Were you trying to get caught?”

Yusuke straightened. “I’m not hanging around the—”

Wordlessly, Kurusu pointed up above his head. There, affixed to the wall, was a small sign in plain letters: Faculty Lounge.

Yusuke stared at the sign, indifferent. “I came in disguise.”

Kurusu made a soft sound, a snort or a laugh. “Your sunglasses? It’s raining outside, you know.”

“It is still a disguise,” Yusuke said, striving to be neither lofty nor defensive and handily failing at both, “since it makes my face unrecognizable. Perhaps that teacher will wonder what a student from Kosei was doing here, but which student is still a mystery.”

“Nah, Kawakami’s not the type to wonder,” Kurusu said with a one-shouldered shrug. “Still. I’m not trying to… I mean, you’re kinda calling attention to yourself.”

Yusuke opened his mouth to reply, then firmly closed it. His disguise was fine, no one had noticed him at all before that teacher said something. None of the students had spoken to him, and they all politely got out of his way when he approached! In fact, everyone he had passed had been mostly silent. If they had been suspicious Yusuke had no doubt someone would have tried to corner him, call him out on his bluff. That was what ruffians would do. Obviously he’d been doing just fine, but trying to convince Kurusu of that was not only a pointless waste of time, it would also distract him from his true goal.

“Then I’d better finish what I came to do and be on my way,” said Yusuke, injecting his voice with as much neutral courtesy as he could. It came out icy, but frankly, he couldn’t be bothered to care. He turned on his heel, eyes sweeping the halls. Tracking Joker was of utmost importance. If he failed in this very first task, of all things, he would never—

“Hey. Did you mean what you said?” Kurusu stopped him again, one hand caught on the strap of Yusuke’s bag. Yusuke glared over his shoulder, meaning to brush Kurusu off, but he froze. Kurusu’s tone was nonchalant but his gaze was not, pinning Yusuke’s feet to the floor with its vehement intensity. He seemed almost threatening. For a brief moment Yusuke thought back to that sketch he’d made, the blazing sunlight, and Kurusu with the light on his face like the shine of freshly drawn blood. “About the Phantom Thieves. You came to find out about them?”

Yusuke swallowed. “Yes.”

“You sure that’s a good idea? They’re supposed to be dangerous. Thieves of hearts or something.”

“I’m aware,” Yusuke said, his own voice sounding distant in his ears. He wondered what had happened to the other students in the hallway. It seemed like he and Kurusu were the only two in the room. “I heard they produced a calling card before they struck. I was curious to know what that art style looked like.”

Kurusu’s gaze drilled into his, and then he seemed to… subside, as if he shrank back into himself. He looked almost sheepish. He scrubbed a hand through his messy curls and shuffled his bag on his shoulders again. “You know they’re just made up, right? I mean, they’ve got some fans around here but, Kamoshida probably just felt bad ‘cuz of Suzui-san. There’s not much to it besides that.”

Yusuke stayed silent. He honestly wasn’t sure what to say, reeling from the whiplash of Kurusu’s moods. Kurusu messed his hair up further, then suddenly pushed off the table. “Can you—hang on a sec? I’ll be right back.”

He disappeared into one of the classrooms down the hall. Yusuke remained where he was, heart pounding, the pencil nub clutched in a numb grip. It didn’t even occur to him to walk away, to bolt for the front doors or try to continue his search on the third floor. He simply stood, one hand clenched around his pencil and the other fisted around the strap of his bag, eyes wide as he stared after the path Kurusu took.

His eyes were playing tricks on him. For a moment, out of the corner of his eye, he could have sworn he’d seen Kurusu’s shadow stretched tall and dark against the wall when it had no right to be in these washed-out hallways. It must have been an effect of his looming, threatening attitude. How did a high schooler become so intimidating, anyway? Yusuke brushed his hands down his sleeves and refused to admit that they were shaking slightly.

Kurusu reemerged from the classroom, faintly smiling, and approached Yusuke with a piece of paper held out in one hand.

Yusuke looked down. It was a… postcard? A blood-red postcard, with an ugly cartoon of a menacing, barely-sketched face grinning from beneath a hat. “What’s this?”

“Your calling card,” Kurusu replied.

Slowly, feeling a strange well of dread in his stomach, Yusuke reached out and took the postcard. It had a surprising weight to it; even under the fluorescents the vibrant, angry red color throbbed with vitality, as if it was draining the life from Yusuke’s skin. He flipped it over. On the back, cut-out kanji spelled out a message: “sir suguru kamoshida, the utter bastard of lust, We know how shitty you are, and that you put your twisted desires on students that can’t fight back. That’s why we have decided to steel away those desire and make you confess your sins. this will be done tomorrow, so we hope you will be ready. From, the Phantom Thieves of Hearts.”

… It had typos. And curse words.

This was not what he had imagined when he pictured the calling card of the Phantom Thieves, the challenge issued from the hand of an elegant mastermind like Joker.

“What?” Yusuke asked blankly.

“What?” Kurusu echoed, frowning.

Yusuke flipped the card over again. The leering grin was still there, mocking him. In very messy script, in English letters, the card said: TAKE YOUR HEART. It mentioned their target by name. It mentioned their distinct mission, to steal hearts. It even had the color scheme—the red and black that had haunted his artist’s vision, the colors of the fan site. There could be no mistaking it.

He ran his fingers over the back of it. Slick and flat, like a laminated copy. He glanced up at Kurusu, who shuffled in place again. Was it impossible for him to keep still? “One of my classmates is a fan,” Kurusu explained, one hand going to his hair again. “Like, a huge fanboy. He took a dozen of those when they were posted and kept them.”

“Did your classmate make his own copies?”

“Nope. That’s an original, as far as I know. He practically keeps a shrine, I don’t think he even breathes on them.” Kurusu grinned. “You’ll never guess what I had to do to get him to give one up.”

Yusuke looked at him blankly. “No, I imagine I never will. I’m not very good at guessing.”

Kurusu froze, caught off-guard for a second, brows quirked in a puzzled expression. Yusuke tried not to flinch. He recognized that look. It was the look his classmates didn’t bother to hide from him anymore, the look he got when Sensei sent him to the store to buy dinner. Isn’t he odd, what a strange thing to say. It was the look he prayed to never see on Sensei’s face.

Yusuke resolutely turned his eyes down to the card, beginning a staring contest with the ugly little face. Then he heard a chuckle; low, soft, but unmistakably warm and amused. He glanced up, distantly shocked.

“You’re interesting, Kitagawa-san.”

Kurusu was smiling.

Yusuke swallowed, then held out the postcard. “Here. My thanks.”

Kurusu shook his head, the smile fading to only one half of his mouth, wry and tucked away. “Nah. Keep it. It’s not like it’s of any use to me. You can use it for an art reference or something, right?”

Yusuke blanched. “Absolutely not. This is—this is a child’s drawing. This is scribble.” He paused. “The colors are good though.”

“Don’t let my classmate hear you desecrating his heroes like that. He’ll murder you in your sleep,” Kurusu said, smirking. Yusuke felt a brief shiver skitter down his back, and suddenly remembered that he was on the second floor of Shujin Academy with a menacing thug and he no longer needed to be here. He carefully tucked the calling card into his bag along with his pencil and began walking toward the stairs before Kurusu could hold him back again.

“I must be going. Thank you again. My sincerest thanks to both you and your acquaintance,” Yusuke babbled, suddenly possessed by the fierce need to be back in the atelier with the smell of old oil paints and floor polish wafting through his head. “Have a pleasant afternoon.”

Kurusu followed him a few steps, leaned his shoulder into the wall at the mouth of the stairwell. “Yeah. See you around.”

It was all Yusuke could do to not blurt out I hope not. He gave Kurusu the shortest of nods and left as quickly as possible.

Outside, the rain had not abated, but the air no longer felt as heavy. Perhaps it had grown cooler, or perhaps it was just that it was air not inside Shujin Academy, and the smog almost tasted pink and sweet with the sheer relief Yusuke felt. He marched down the steps, around the corner, and did not stop to think until he was waiting at the station landing for the next train. Then, in a quiet niche, he withdrew the postcard and held it in both cupped hands, wondering.

He had what he had come for, but it wasn’t at all what he had been expecting. In fact, it only muddled things further. Nothing about Joker seemed to come together in a concrete way; he was like water, like air, and Yusuke could only hold his image up for so long before it began to blur and run together. Joker, the gracious riddle-maker, the graceful thief—drawing cartoons and writing in poor English? It didn’t make sense.

Yusuke stared down at the message on the card. It looked like the characters had been cut out of magazines, maybe newspapers. Perhaps there was a pattern? A clue buried within?

sir suguru kamoshida

TAKE YOUR HEART

Yusuke looked up abruptly into the neon-bright advertisement for an apparel store and felt the colors like gestures, a wave, a smile, a fist raised in triumph because he just had an amazing, stupid idea.

He had been so frustrated by the lack of information about the Phantom Thieves, the vague, anonymous nature of their existence. No mission statement on their website, no plans, no announcements, no rumors about their goals. That was silly of him—of course vigilantes had to work in secret. But Joker himself had told Yusuke their goal: justice. And this card made it perfectly clear what the Phantom Thieves intended to do, what their next move must be. They were hunting down the unworthy and dispensing justice.

All Yusuke really had to do was find an appropriately corrupt, reprehensible individual deserving of Joker’s attention. Joker would go to the criminal, and in so doing come to Yusuke. As long as he didn’t interfere in any—heists, or however Joker conducted his business, then it would be fine. It would be perfect. It was all so simple he almost laughed to think it had not occurred to him sooner. But he didn’t laugh, because the only reason he had thought of it—the only reason he had this calling card here in his hands—was because of Kurusu.

Kurusu, who had called him interesting, and had smiled in a way that reminded him painfully of the Sayuri.

No. He couldn’t laugh at that at all.

---

The atelier was quiet that evening. Yusuke watched it from the street corner, gentle rain soaking into his clothes and dripping from his hair. The lights were off. There was no movement, no signs of life within the atelier.

Yusuke waited until the air changed color to a dirty greenish-grey, a reflection of the sinking sun in the stagnant clouds, then turned and left. The school gates stayed open until full dark. He could make it back in time.

Chapter Text

“Ah, Hanai-sensei. Good morning.”

Hanai Miyu, Yusuke’s homeroom teacher, was a mousy woman who always dressed in cardigans much too bright for her complexion. She was absolutely never without a paper cup of hot takeout coffee, and frequently had to brush her hair out of her face when it fell out of the somewhat messy bun she usually kept it in. She was standing next to her desk, her arm still bent to drape her purse over the chair, staring at Yusuke like a child seeing an exotic animal at the zoo for the first time. “Kitagawa-kun…?”

Yusuke had mostly done as he was expected in her class—kept his head down, cleaned the classroom without complaint when his turn came, answered questions respectfully—but had never tried to stand out in any way. Now he found himself wishing he had. Weren’t gifts exchanged as a token of appreciation when attempting to strike deals like this? Perhaps he should have gone to the station to buy her coffee.

“This is a surprise. It’s, er, quite early,” Hanai-sensei continued, finally remembering herself and arranging purse, jacket, and briefcase at her desk before facing Yusuke. The steam from the coffee smelled delightful. His stomach grumbled enviously. Hanai-sensei blinked, still dumbfounded. “Are you… feeling unwell…?”

“No, sensei. On the contrary, inspiration has given me great vigor.”

“That’s, uh, that’s great.” She fidgeted with her cardigan, still staring. “Are you… struggling with an assignment…?”

Yusuke chuckled. “Of a sort, Sensei. I have come to humbly request your aid. I’m trying to find my muse, and I’ve deduced that in order to do so I must put myself in the company of the filthiest, cruelest, most despicable criminals in Tokyo. To that end, I need access to the disciplinary records for our student body, so that I may have some leads to follow up on. ‘Leads’, ‘follow up’—that sounds so film noir, does it not? Incidentally, do you know any of our students who may have participated in the sale of drugs or sex for money?”

The silence in the teachers’ lounge was so still and crystalline it sang like the high note played on a water glass. Yusuke looked from face to face—all of the teachers in the room had fixed their eyes on him with varying expressions of horror or outrage. He frowned. “Is something wrong? Hanai-sensei, your coffee…”

Hanai-sensei just barely tightened her grip around the slipping coffee cup in time. She sat heavily in her chair, brows pinched, head bowed. “Kitagawa-kun… how long has this been going on?”

Yusuke blinked. “Beg pardon?”

“Your… activities.”

“Activities? Well, about two weeks now, but as I said I will need my muse to continue—”

“Two weeks. Well, that’s—good news. You could have gotten into much worse trouble if you hadn’t come to me this quickly.”

“Erm…?”

“I’ll arrange for you to spend second period with Fukuyama-san.”

“Fukuyama-sensei? The counselor?”

Hanai noticed Yusuke’s perplexed expression. She swiped her hair back from her face. “Aren’t you—you’re in some trouble, right? Some kind of criminal ring has got its hooks in you?”

“What? No.”

“You—wait.”

Yusuke brushed his hair back behind his ear, smiling. “I’m fully aware that Madarame-sensei is an attractive target to petty criminals; Sensei has warned me so many times. I would never put him in a position of danger with such reckless deeds. I’m not in any trouble, I just need to see the disciplinary records so that I may interview any students with possible criminal connections.”

Hanai-sensei seemed to have a strange twitch developing under her left eye. “So—so you’re fine?”

“Of course! Well. A little hungry.”

“You’re hungry.” Hanai-sensei sighed heavily and took a long drink from her coffee. “Well, at least the Shibuya problems haven’t gotten you, too. One of our star pupils… Anyway, Kitagawa-kun, you can’t use the student records for singling out students for any reason. That’s discrimination. Student records are private information, and we take the unprotected disclosure of that information very seriously, understand?”

“I’m not trying to participate in a campaign of slander,” Yusuke protested, “I’m simply trying to—”

“—interview students with disciplinary action in their records. Yes. And that’s discrimination, Kitagawa. If nothing else we can’t just release other students’ records to their peers, it goes against policy. Now, unless you do have a legitimate report to make about suspected criminal activity, then you should go back to your classroom.”

Yusuke tried very hard not to pout. “I could have a legitimate report if you would—”

“Classroom, Kitagawa-kun.”

---

Listless and frustrated, Yusuke perched on a bench outside the main building as the students filed out into the grey afternoon. Many of them were sneezing miserably into their surgical masks, sluggishly swimming through the air. He tapped his pencil against the sketchpad in his lap, but he found himself utterly disinterested in drawing anything. It was a terrifying feeling. The light was so wan and ashen—nothing like the vibrancy he wanted to pull into his paintings. Nothing like the way he felt around Joker.

What a dismal, dreary, disappointing day.

Yusuke sighed and dropped his head to his chest. He wanted onigiri. And some decent tea. He could probably make those at the atelier, but…

“U-Um, Kitagawa-senpai…?”

Well, he could certainly have the tea. Sensei was always pleased when he practiced tea ceremony. He was no expert, but he liked to think he had more than the average knowledge and skill when it came to such dying arts. It had been a while since he last practiced, actually—

“K-Kitagawa-senpai!?”

Yusuke jumped, startled by the loud voice. He swiveled on the bench, searching for the offender, before realizing that two girls were standing directly in front him. They wore the Kosei uniform—blue blazers, pleated black skirts—and from the pins on their collars he could surmise that they were freshmen. He’d almost missed them; they were both exceptionally plain-looking. “Can I help you?” he offered.

“Oh, you, you are Kitagawa-senpai then? The second-year who studies with Madarame-san?” One of the girls, her hair in a neat plait falling over one shoulder, was holding her hands tight to her chest. The other, with a messy bob cut, had her hands folded demurely in front of her.

“Yes,” Yusuke replied, “Madarame-sensei is my mentor. However, if you wished to be introduced to him, I’m afraid I cannot help you.”

“Oh no,” said the girl with the plait in a breathless voice, “it’s not him that we—um, I mean—it’s just that we—”

“You’re only one of the most talented and handsome boys at our school,” said the girl with the bob cut, wincing when she received a sharp elbow to her side. “Uh, sorry, I mean—”

“We’re just very excited t-to meet you! Um, I’m Ohishi Narumi, and this is Iwasaki Kyoko—”

“You can just call me Kyoko-chan, though.”

“We were wondering if, um, if you might be able to give us some tips? On how to do well in school this year?”

“Yeah, or tell us about your art? It’s really amazing how you work with colors, but you usually have such a consistent style, it’s really—”

“—really beautiful!”

Yusuke stared at the two girls—he had already gotten their names mixed up—and said, “Are you twins?”

Bob-cut (Kimiko?) gave him a flat look. “Uh. We look nothing alike.”

“Oh. My apologies. Your behavior seems so synchronized.”

Plait stroked one hand down her braid and shifted from foot to foot. “Well, um, we have been best friends for a while. Maybe it’s that?” She clapped her hands together. “Wow, you’re so perceptive, Kitagawa-senpai. You picked up on that like a psychic!”

“Wow, do you have like a third eye, is that how you make your paintings so great?”

Yusuke mused, “Hmm… no… although, perhaps if I were to make a visit to a psychic, they could help me find—but that’s preposterous.”

“Preposterous?” asked Bob-cut.

“What’s preposterous?” asked Plait. (Natsuki? No… Hifumi? No, that was a shogi player. Oh dear.)

Yusuke shrugged one shoulder lightly. “I may have personally had encounters with supernatural spirits of late. But people who claim to be psychics or shamans usually turn out to be charlatans. Sensei has warned me of that many times.”

“Oooh, advice from Madarame-sensei!” squealed Plait. Yusuke frowned; he never liked it when people adopted his personal honorific for Sensei. It wasn’t as if Sensei was teaching this girl, too.

“Wait, are you like, into the supernatural?” said Bob-cut. She nudged Plait with her shoulder, smiling coyly. “Narumi-chan here is really plugged in to the occult world. You know, she can read your future with these magic dice she inherited from—”

“The occult?” Yusuke asked, surprised.

Plait trembled like a leaf and, oddly, started to go red in the face. “U-U-Uhm, w-well, I’m not very good yet, but… sometimes, I… sometimes I can make connections—”

“Yes?”

“—um, between, between events and—”

“Would you perhaps be able to track down instances of extreme violence?”

The two girls gave each other sidelong looks. The girl with the bob cut reached out to put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. Yusuke smiled disarmingly. “It would be very helpful,” he said. “It’s simply that I’m trying to locate a criminal. Well, the criminal I’m attempting to find may or may not be a criminal, and he is quite devious—but no, that is too complicated. Briefly, I need to find the most evil person in the city, so that I may be there when they are confronted by vigilantes of justice.”

Bob-cut sidled backwards a little. “Um… what?”

Plait smiled, but it was shaky. “That’s funny, Senpai.”

“I’m quite serious, actually.” Yusuke considered. “Perhaps the most evil person would be a bit too overwhelming. I thought perhaps it would be easiest to find a beacon of utmost malevolence with such unreliable skills as the occult provides, but—I’m not sure. Perhaps the black market would do as well. Do you know of anyone trying to get rid of illegal goods? Oh, perhaps an exotic pet store?”

“U-Uhhh…”

“N-No, I don’t think so…”

“Oh. A pity.”

“Senpai, are you feeling okay?”

“Of course I am.” Yusuke glanced at a small knot of female students standing off to one side, many of them wearing surgical masks. “Well, the pollen does give me a headache. Nothing unusual, though.”

“It’s just, um, kinda sounds like you—you’re into some shady stuff.”

“Into…?” Yusuke laughed. “What an odd way of putting it. That may be true… but no, for the moment I’m simply seeking entry into the underbelly of the city. Yes, like Orpheus daring to descend into the underworld in search of his love, that he might with an unbroken heart continue to share his art with the world… Well, I’m sure your occult abilities would be of some help. I would suggest looking for a mass murderer, or possibly a gambler. A yakuza boss! I’m sure they partake in all kinds of crime. Should we find somewhere with more appropriate atmosphere for your ritual?”

Curiously, Plait and Bob-cut seemed to have fallen under the same spell of silence as the teacher’s lounge earlier that morning. Yusuke ignored it, rising to his feet and standing expectantly before the two underclassmen. Perhaps this was the beginning of the ritual itself? He wouldn’t want to interrupt.

Suddenly Bob-cut jerked as if out of a dream and grabbed her friend’s hand. “Actually, ahaha, I just remembered, we uh, we actually have a club meeting we were interested in attending! So, ha, we’ll have to be going now. It was really nice meeting you. Good luck with your… yeah. Okay, come on, Narumi, gotta go to that—that meeting, you know. Bye, Kitagawa-senpai!”

“Kyoko-chan,” Plait whispered, “is he—is he a gangster…?”

“Oh boy, we’re gonna be so late! Just walk, Narumi…”

With frequent backward glances, the two girls walked over to the small group of students nearby, and they all slowly migrated towards the front gate. Several of them turned to stare at Yusuke as they went.

Hmm. Well, that was a shame. Yusuke frowned as he slowly made his way to the edge of campus. It was rather disingenuous of that girl to offer her services as an occult specialist and then so suddenly leave… Sensei would have been appalled by her rudeness.

Yusuke sighed and shouldered his bag. If the day was going to continue in this unsatisfactory vein, at least he could go get some onigiri.

---

The convenience store on Central Street was always busy, but at least they had good service.

“120 yen, please,” chirped the woman behind the counter, her ponytail bobbing behind her brimmed cap. Yusuke balked.

“120? It… I’m sorry, did the price go up?”

The cashier nodded, looking troubled. “Yes, unfortunately, the manufacturer required a price increase… If you would like to look for something else…”

“No, that’s fine.” He’d specifically picked out the ume onigiri because they were tasty and cheap. He imagined that the other flavors wouldn’t be any more forgiving of his wallet. Yusuke painstakingly counted out the exact change and smiled. “But I do appreciate the offer.”

“Sure thing.” The woman’s eyes darted behind him briefly. She lowered her voice and said, “Hey… you’ve got a train pass, right?”

“Hm? Oh. Yes.”

“Oh good. You’ve got enough money to get home?”

Yusuke frowned. “Yes…?”

“Okay.” The woman smiled warmly. “Sorry, I don’t mean to scare you. I’ve been hearing a lot of students are getting hassled in this area. Just wanted to make sure you could get home safe.”

“You’re too kind,” Yusuke said, taking his shopping bag with a small bow. “I appreciate your concern.”

“Thank you for shopping with us!”

Yusuke didn’t even wait to exit the store before tearing into the plastic wrapping. He leaned against the wall outside and stuffed as much of the rice as he could in his mouth. He nearly wept. The faintly sweet, sticky weight of rice… the explosion of tangy salt from the pickled plums… for a moment he wondered if he could paint the sheer rapture one could experience from a single bite of an ume onigiri. He smiled to himself. Of course he could. Perhaps, once he had achieved true artistry with Joker’s help, he could turn his hand to such trivial delights.

Yusuke took another bite as he stared up at the gleaming buildings, dizzily stretching high overhead. They cut the sky into a jagged, uncertain shape, an alien polygon. The clouds drifted over and across the skyscrapers like gauzy scarves. He wondered if anyone had really looked at Tokyo from this perspective before—with the towers all leaning in like housewives ready to gossip, with gravity rendered an incomprehensible number somewhere far beneath. He shook his head. He probably could lie down in the middle of the Crossing and find a beautiful perspective, but he would almost certainly also get trampled. He shoved the remainder of the snack in his mouth so he could hold up his hands in a frame, experimenting with different angles.

“Hey, kiddo. You bored?”

Yusuke glanced around and recoiled slightly when he saw a man looming over him mere inches away from his face. The man wore a loud print shirt and ragged-cuffed jeans, his hair falling in his face in product-slick spikes. “Hey, man, it’s all good. You lookin’ for work?”

Yusuke slid away from the stranger. His breath smelled terrible, like old fish. “No. Thank you.”

“You sure? I heard you in the store, you know. That’s a pretty fancy uniform you’re wearin’. Guy like you cryin’ over 120 yen? Sounds like you’re in a pinch. Hey, I can help you make some easy money.”

“I said no thank you,” Yusuke said, looking down his nose at the stranger. “And I would appreciate it if you and your ilk didn’t eavesdrop on me, in the future. I believe stalking is a punishable offense.”

The stranger’s friendly air dropped like a curtain, and his eyes and mouth twisted into thin, jagged lines as he spat at Yusuke’s feet. “Psh, whatever guy, it’s a public goddamn street,” said the stranger. He shrugged deeper into his ugly shirt and sidled away, down an alley lined with trash bins. Yusuke watched him go warily. Again with being up against wall with some person pestering him. It really was getting out of control, the number of times complete strangers had harassed him in this area—

“I’ve been hearing a lot of students are getting hassled in this area.”

Yusuke blinked, blinked again.

“One of our star pupils…”

And the other night: “C’mon, kid, you look like you could use a little meat on your bones. Whaddaya say, eh? Do a simple job, get some extra cash?”

He bolted off the sidewalk and down the alley. “Hey! Wait!”

When he rounded the corner he found the stranger—and two more scruffy, unkempt men just like him, with bright clothes and cheap jewelry. Yusuke felt his heart leap into his throat, felt his spine go stiff and his hands go cold. Three on one. Not that this was a fight, and if it was, not like he had any chance of winning. If he had an ounce of sense in him he would bow, apologize, and walk straight home right now.

But he had a hunch. He couldn’t just let this go. What if this was his one and only chance to track down Joker?

“Piss off, kid,” said one of the other men. He had a toothpick tucked into the corner of his mouth and a thick armband made of twined black rope around one bicep.

“Nah, wait a sec, Bunta,” said the shady guy from before. “You change your mind, my dude?”

Yusuke swallowed. “Yes,” he said, keeping his voice steady. “The job. What does it entail?”

“Super easy. I give you an envelope and an address. You deliver it for me. Nothin’ easier than a delivery job, right?”

Yusuke bit his lip. He felt the sharp sting like a splash of acid green across his vision. “Why don’t you just mail it through the post?”

The first guy, Bunta, grunted; the man who had approached Yusuke immediately dropped his broad grin for a scowl. “Huh?”

Yusuke backpedaled. “I—I’ll do the job. But why not just take it to a post office?”

The third man spoke up. “It’s a local job. Government’s chargin’ an arm an’ a leg for postage. Fuck that shit, am I right?”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

The three men stayed quiet. Subtly—though not subtly enough for Yusuke’s trained eye to miss it—the two men behind his target shifted their weight, turning to face Yusuke head-on. The suspicion roiled off of them like an oil slick dribbling into a water puddle. In a single heartbeat, several things became very clear to Yusuke: he had successfully located some criminals; he had an opportunity to participate in their business; participating would make him an actual criminal as well, which could lead to no end of trouble; and now they were suspicious of him, so even if he turned them down, he might be in worse trouble still. These weren’t amateur, rude thugs from Shujin. These were grown men who probably wouldn’t care if they had to hurt him.

Yusuke felt the air quiver in his lungs and tried to exhale as quietly and calmly as possible. He’d get nothing out of them if they didn’t trust him. Should he play dumb? Should he show his hand? What would a real criminal do in this situation?

… What would a Phantom Thief do?

Yusuke paused, and for a moment that felt like both a fraction of a second and a multitude of eternities, he felt suspended, falling yet weightless, drowning yet calm. And somewhere in that suspended core of himself, he heard a deep, resonant voice, a voice that he almost recognized from a dream or a nightmare: Very good.

He spread his hands and let his bag fall to the concrete. “All right. I have no intention of turning you in to the police. However, I also have no intention of doing your paltry fringe jobs. I’m here for something bigger.”

“What the fuck?” said Bunta around his toothpick.

Yusuke straightened and folded his arms. He tried to look as confident as possible. “Who’s your leader? I doubt I’ve heard of him, if he’s going for such cheap shots as high schoolers, but he might be worth something to me. Maybe we can do business together.”

“Nice one you picked up, Shigeki,” said the third guy. Yusuke’s target, the one with the poor gel job, twitched and snarled. His eyes were darting around the alley nervously as if looking for an escape route.

Bunta spat out his toothpick, rolled his beefy shoulders. “What the hell, kid. You high on somethin’? Get outta here, we’re not wastin’ time on you.”

“Why not?” Yusuke countered. “I’m probably more dangerous to you free than under a work contract at this point. I have your descriptions and two of your names. If I chose to speak, the police could certainly track you down with those. Even if they don’t, what would the boss have to say about the hassle you caused him? I’m only trying to do business, but it would be a shame if you made things difficult.”

The three men obviously hesitated at that, looking to each other with worried frowns. “Better dealin’ with Boss than some flapjaw loser kid,” said the nameless man, one hand twisted up in a heavy metal chain looped from his pocket to a belt loop on his dirt-encrusted jeans.

“I’m not gonna be the one to tell Boss we let some smartass fish get loose,” Shigeki hissed. “You’re the one who said my name anyway, jackass!”

“So make him take the job,” Bunta grunted, fishing another toothpick out of his pocket. “Keep him on the hook, ain’t no bother.”

Shigeki whined, “But he said he won’t take it!”

“I said make him.” Bunta eyed Yusuke up and down with a stony expression. “You want us to believe a skinny shit like you is some kinda big shot? You’re fuckin’ with me. Shut up and take the envelope, and then we won’t have to go break your mommy and daddy’s legs.”

“Unfortunately for you my parents are not alive,” Yusuke replied. Bitterness crept through his voice like thin, slow-winding vines. “You’ll need better blackmail than that.”

“Blackmail? How about we skip that step and I break your legs. How’s that?”

Yusuke grinned, teeth exposed like a wolf. “You’ll need to do better than that, too.”

The men shifted. They didn’t like what they saw. “Man, fuck this,” Shigeki mumbled, angling away as if ready to leave.

Damn it. He was losing them. What kind of things did gang members talk about? What did they say? “The Ruby in Shinjuku says hello,” he said, infusing his voice with ice.

He really, really hoped that wasn’t an actual title. Or—he really, really hoped it was. Yusuke, feeling somewhat faint, couldn’t decide which he preferred. Bunta seemed unmoved; the other two men looked at each other nervously. The nameless man leaned in to Shigeki and whispered, “Does Boss know—”

“Shut your goddamn mouth,” Bunta growled, and the two smaller men shrank back. An obvious leader, or an obvious bully. How pathetic. The big man scowled at Yusuke and said. “Okay, hotshot, you wanna make plays? What’s your work, then, huh? What’re you doin’ in Boss’s territory?”

Oh. Yusuke tried not to wince. He hadn’t thought they would check that bluff. Perhaps he wasn’t cut out for the criminal life after all. He struggled for a solution, but it didn’t come fast enough. Bunta snorted, spat out his second toothpick, and turned his back. “Fuckin’ dumbass kid. C’mon, we’ve got quotas to hit.”

He was going to lose them. He was going to lose Joker.

Yusuke did the only thing he could think of.

He lunged for Shigeki, fingers snarling in his tacky gel-greased hair, his other hand fisted and flying. His target was weaker than he expected, and the man went down with a pathetic yelp, the both of them tumbling to the ground in a heap. “Help!” Yusuke screamed at the top of his lungs. “Police! Help! Police! I’m being attacked! Poli—”

His voice was cut off as he choked around a rough hand clamped painfully around his throat. His eyes watered, and he flailed in a panic. “Oh you’ve done it now, kid,” growled Bunta, and though Yusuke tried to kick wildly enough to prevent his capture, the other two men still got a grip on his arms and hauled him upright.

Oh, he thought in a very small voice. Oh, that was a terrible idea. Sensei had said before—Sensei had—

Yusuke blinked tears out of his eyes and tried to shake the dizziness from his head. He twisted his arms, but the nameless third man had them in an achingly tight lock behind his back. He tried to drop his body weight to the ground, but all it did was make his shoulders shriek in pain. Shigeki was wiping blood off his face—had Yusuke done that? It was a smear of red dragged from his nose to his chin, vivid and dirty.

Bunta closed one meaty hand around Yusuke’s shoulder and swung into his vision, looking Yusuke up and down. Dazedly, Yusuke noted that he had remarkably clear skin. Weren’t criminals all supposed to be scarred and nasty-looking? How odd. “Okay, pretty little dumbass,” said the beefy guy, “I really don’t want to beat you up, but you know, I have a temper on me. And when things start pissin’ me off—bitchy women, loud-mouth kids—sometimes I lose control. Can’t make any promises with a problem like that. So I want to promise that if you tell me what your game is, I won’t hurt you, but what’s the point of makin’ a promise you can’t keep?”

Yusuke’s blood turned to ice.

Oh. Oh. He really had done it now.

Sensei would be furious.

Joker would—

“No parents, huh? Nobody around to notice you missing? So who put you up to messin’ with Boss’s gang, huh? You can’t be that stupid on your own.”

Yusuke’s throat worked, but it still burned from the earlier choking.

Bunta scowled. His lips pulled back in a menacing grimace. “What, you need a countdown or somethin’? I don’t play like that. Gimme a name, or I’m takin’ a kidney.”

“Hey, he’s just some punk-ass kid, we’ll get in trouble if there’s a body or somethin’.” Shigeki wiped his hands on his jeans. Brown stains smeared down the cloth. Yusuke stared at them, feeling—feeling—

“So we don’t leave a body, shit for brains,” said Bunta, backhanding his companion in the chest. He hit hard enough that the bleeding man coughed and gagged a bit. “Boss’ll be less pissed about some idiot high school boy just got hit too hard than he’ll be about some upstart junkie who’s got dirt on us. You wanna be the one to make the call?”

“Uhh… n-no…”

Bunta turned back to Yusuke, sneering. “Okay, kid, one more shot. Who you workin’ for? Go.”

Yusuke looked up at the man looming over him with his beautiful skin and ugly expression. He looked over at the cringing Shigeki, his bright shirt making his pallid skin appear even more sickly. He looked down at his own shoes, the clean black leather, the pressed lines of his uniform slacks. He looked inward.

He saw red.

Yusuke laughed.

The other man holding him tightened his grip and hissed through his teeth. “What’s with this kid?”

“Don’t care,” said Bunta, and he hauled back with his fist.

That was going to hurt, Yusuke thought, the words landing gentle as cherry blossoms in his head. If only—

—Joker—

Everything happened so quickly that Yusuke had trouble piecing it together afterward. He felt like there was a great shout in his head, the roar of a beast—he saw the fist coming towards him, thick knuckles, Bunta’s black rope armband shifting like a snake around the bulging muscles—he heard a yowl from behind him—and then suddenly everything changed.

The man holding his arms let go suddenly, and the force of his release pushed Yusuke to his knees. He dropped. Bunta overbalanced into the momentum of his punch, tripped over Yusuke with his knees banging into Yusuke’s shoulder, and toppled into the other thug. They both clumsily fell to the ground, rolling a few steps away. Shigeki, still bleeding freely from the nose, stumbled forward towards the chaos—and suddenly shrieked as a ball of black fur flew into his face.

Yusuke sat on the ground, his collarbone sore and throbbing from the thug’s knees, throat burning, eyes stinging, and wondered what he was supposed to do next.

Bunta was rolling on the ground, both hands clutched around one knee; the nameless thug had both hands cupped over his head, sitting in a hunched ball against the alley wall. Shigeki was slumped over on the other side of the alley, whimpering as he hid his face from view. And at the mouth of the alley, with tail bristled and eyes glittering, stood a black and white cat. The cat stared him in the eyes and hissed and spat.

“A cat,” Yusuke noted succinctly.

The cat screeched and darted towards him, jumped into his lap, and punched him in the nose.

“Ow!”

“Guh… ngh… hey, you fuckin’ kid…”

Yusuke looked over his shoulder. His previous captor had gotten his legs under him, though he was leaning heavily against the wall. Blood dribbled in rivulets from a gash on his temple and various spots on his hairline. Cat scratches.

Yusuke’s thoughts fluttered and spun like butterflies. Right. Enemies delayed, but not incapacitated. That wasn’t a very good sign. Bunta was still rolling on the ground, but his breath was recovering. Also not good. Yusuke looked back at the cat, then dreamily up at the filmy white clouds scudding over Tokyo. His head was up there, somewhere. “I think I’m in shock,” he told the cat.

The cat yowled and punched him again. That was definitely a punch, Yusuke thought, not a swipe. He shook his head.

“Do you think I should run?” he asked, reaching for his bag and staggering to his feet. The cat neatly leapt off of him and bounded to the alleyway, where a couple pedestrians had already stopped and were fishing for their phones. Yes, definitely run.

He stumbled over one of the thugs and lurched into a jog, heading deeper into the maze of Shibuya’s back alleys.

It felt like hours of pounding through the narrow concrete passages, dodging people with their shopping bags and their briefcases, air scouring his lungs like steel wool, before the fog clouding his mind abated. He puffed to a stop and looked around. Suburban-style houses with their neat walls and clean nameplates surrounded him. A median roundabout with dull green grass and a tree beginning to bloom broke up the vista of concrete.

Yusuke just breathed for a moment. Then he collapsed to the ground.

When he came to it felt like hours had passed, but the street was still quiet and the light was still weak yet steady. His face tickled where something continually brushed against his cheek. He batted at the intrusive tickling.

“Mreowr!”

Yusuke jerked his hand and back and quickly sat up. The cat—the same cat from before—was sitting a few feet away, its tail flicking irritably. It stared at Yusuke, eyes eerily catching the dying light. Behind the white reflective flare, its eyes were a remarkable bright blue. Yusuke stared back at the cat, absently rubbing his cheek. A few moments passed before Yusuke finally said, “Did you… possibly… happen to save my life? Just now?”

The cat shrugged. Yusuke blinked. The cat waved its tail lazily and let out a prolonged yowl, followed by a few short mewls, an odd series of chirping clicks, and a brief hiss.

“Are you talking?” he asked the cat.

The cat stiffened and blinked rapidly. It stood up, took a few steps over to the corner of the nearest house’s fence, and rubbed up against it. Then it flung itself to ground and wriggled back and forth as if scratching an itch, and finally rolled onto its side and furiously began washing one white-socked paw. The cat lifted its head, tongue still protruding, and looked at him through narrowed eyes. “Meow?”

Hm.

Yusuke was pretty sure rabies had been eliminated in Japan, but better safe than sorry. He shook his head and stood, picked up his bag, and followed the street signs towards the nearest train station. If a little black and white shadow followed him, he decided it was better not to notice it.

---

Everything around him was red. Red, red, red. Scarlet, crimson, cardinal, brick, maroon, candy, blood—blood—

Yusuke blinked. His eyes felt dry and still like stones, fixed on the neon red sign blazing in the middle distance. The characters were loopy and thick, advertising something about relaxing body oil. Six other signs crowded around it in clashing violets and greens and golds, a panoply of riotous chaos. Yusuke found comfort in it.

A hand crawled over his shoulder. He failed to flinch.

“Ooooh… you’re new around here, aren’t you? And wearing a uniform! So stylish!”

“And so young,” purred a second voice. Yusuke wondered if he should look away from the neon and maybe do something about the hand on his shoulder. “Were you in school all day, hon? Come here to blow off some steam?”

“Yes,” Yusuke replied. He blinked; tears gathered and welled and did not fall. “I did. Shinjuku is… bright.”

“Damn right it is, sweetie.”

He finally tore his eyes away from the dazzling signs to find equally colorful characters on either side of him: two middle-aged men in bright patterned clothes, eye-catching accessories and heavy makeup. The application of their eyeshadow was expert enough, even if the choice of fuchsia was unfortunate. One of the men fluttered his false eyelashes. “Sooo… what brings you to our neck of the woods? Don’t you know Shinjuku is a dangerous place for hunky boys like you?”

Yusuke smiled. He wondered if it looked like a grimace. “Shinjuku does not frighten me.”

“Oh… no…?” asked the other man breathlessly.

It didn’t, and Yusuke thought maybe it should—that maybe it was alarming how numb he felt since yesterday (had it been yesterday? or last week? or last year?)—but even as the thought appeared in his mind it felt unimportant. Nothing felt important, except the tides of red, washing over him again and again. Red like blood.

“No,” Yusuke mused. “I fought with the yakuza yesterday and emerged victorious without a scratch on me. Well, except from when the cat punched me.”

“Do tell!” giggled the hairier of the two men.

Yusuke’s attention drifted from the fawning men. If the world had been tedious and sepia-toned before he met Joker, it was downright grey now, limp and washed-out like soggy newspaper. He felt wrung out, stretched, like every breath was simultaneously leaden and hollow in his chest. He had come to Shinjuku… for distraction? For inspiration? He had a vague thought that perhaps he might run into Joker here, performing his shadowy night work if he had any, but mostly he was floating on the sea of noise and the color. And in his head… everything was shards, pulsing, misaligned and dulled. Red.

He wondered why that was.

“What’s your name, sweetie?”

Yusuke faded back into the world, on the sidewalk in Shinjuku. The larger of the two beautified men, rouge painted carefully over a notable five o’clock shadow, was smiling at him, hands clapped together like a pleading schoolgirl. Yusuke frowned. “That’s… not really necessary, is it?”

“Oooh, handsome and mysterious!”

“N-No… it’s just that…” Sensei. He didn’t want Sensei to know he had come here.

“That’s okay, cute stuff,” said the other man, tilting his definitively heart-shaped hat at a rakish angle. He winked. “Don’t listen to that nasty old man. He doesn’t know manners at all.”

“Me, not know manners? You’re the one who’s rude! He’s obviously beautiful, not handsome at all! And you think you’re such a flatterer—”

Yusuke sighed as they started squabbling. This wasn’t exactly the kind of noise he had come seeking, although it was distracting in its own way.

The colors drained away. The sound faded. Yusuke felt cold.

Those things he said in that alley… the things he did… had that really been him?

And why did he feel…

Yusuke grimaced, head pounding, stomach churning.

“Are you taking care of yourself?”

Yusuke gazed at a half-dried smear of gum on the sidewalk. He shouldn’t be here. He should be in his atelier, painting. He should be planning another way to find Joker. He should be thinking of a way to ask Sensei’s forgiveness for his recent transgressions. He should be doing his homework. He should be doing anything besides hanging out in his school uniform on a city block in the red-light district, wondering if he was going crazy.

Everything was so red…

“Hey honey? You all right? Hey, he doesn’t look so good… you need a pick-me-up drink—?”

Yusuke shook his head. “What? No, no. My—apologies, I just—”

“Look at him, he really isn’t all here, is he?” muttered the bearded man. “What do they even do to you boys in school now? Go home baby, you look like you need a week of sleep.”

No. That wasn’t what he needed at all. He needed the world to not be so grey. All day he’d been jarred by the horrible juxtaposition, the brilliance behind his eyes shoved up against the drab world in front of them, and he couldn’t justify the two. Not even Shinjuku’s vitality could match the saturation, the vivacity screaming inside of him without relief. He needed the reality outside of him to match the reality inside. He needed—

He couldn’t have been the one to challenge three yakuza members in an alleyway. Not possible. But it had happened.

Yusuke dropped his head into his hand with a soft chuckle. It would help if he could figure out what was real. Then he could see which reality mirrored which.

There was a hand on his shoulder again, nudging him forward down the sidewalk. “Go on, boo,” said the man in the heart-shaped hat. “We’ll be waiting for you some other night!”

“Don’t forget us!” called the other man with a lascivious wink.

Perhaps it was better to go home after all. It didn’t seem like Shinjuku or Shibuya would be any better or worse than anyplace else. He had thought Shinjuku’s volume could drown out whatever was happening inside him, but… well. Perhaps it was all fine after all. Politely, Yusuke bowed to the two men, unaffected by their gleeful tittering, and made his way to the train station. The walk truly did help a little—the whole street smelled wonderfully of sweet oil and hot meat, and people had found ways to put up shops in all the most curious nooks and crannies. A knickknack shop out of what used to be a garage, rolling aluminum door still intact; a salon functioning out of the back of a defunct moving van parked between a massage parlor and a boutique clothing store; a banner swinging from the fire escape of an old factory building, advertising hosts and hostesses of the friendliest mien. Even the more commonplace shops with large glass windows for display were interesting, with the variety of shapes and colors teasing his imagination. Who would have ever thought to find rainbow-colored mannequins here?

Yusuke stopped dead in his tracks.

That—that silhouette! The grace of captured motion, the coiled energy, the impish angles that somehow imparted both indifference and coy interest—how could that have been captured here? It was—it was only a shadow of his true muse, but the likenesses were undeniable. He held up his forefingers and thumbs in a frame, portrait, landscape. It was beautiful either way. Yusuke walked up to the glass window and pressed his hand to it in awe. To find such loveliness here, an unexpected gem in this wasteland of plastic and tarnish. He had to have it.

He ducked into the store.

“Hellooo~! Welcome to Blooming, are you the next flower to flourish in our garden? How can I—”

“I wish to make a purchase!” Yusuke announced, his arm outstretched toward the window display. “The red one!”

The woman who had spoken stared at him, her bubblegum pink curls waving airily in the blast of the air conditioning. She slowly moved her gaze from Yusuke to the window and back again. “Uh… what?”

“The red one. Whatever the price is, I’ll pay it gladly.”

“That’s cool and all, dude—uh, sir—but what you’re pointing at there is a burnt umber romper. If you want to try it on, though—”

“What? No!” Yusuke scoffed, then marched over to the window display. He brushed his way past the lime green and sky blue mannequins in the back (obviously in inferior viewing positions due to their disproportionate stature and gracelessly posed limbs), gently resting his hands on the torso of the cherry red mannequin. It gleamed in the light like a woman’s glossy lipstick. He yanked off the trimmed blazer and romper, as well as the paisley-patterned socks and the leather booties—“Hey!” the woman shrilled, “Merchandise! Watch it, bud!”—and drew his prize back into the store with him, defrocked and all the better for it.

“This,” he said, hugging the mannequin to him. Its smooth plastic was lighter than he had expected; he could easily heft it under one arm. He fished in his bag for his wallet and extracted all the bills he could find. “Here. I hope that will be enough.”

“Wait, whoa, that isn’t for sale, my manager would—” The pink-haired girl goggled at him while waving her hands in feverish protest. Then she abruptly sighed, planting her hands on her hips. “Oh forget it, we have like twelve of them in the back. Creepy things. My mother said I’d run into all types in Shinjuku, but hell, you are some kinda pervert.” She snatched the bills out of his hand. “Okay, sucker, have a nice night.” She pasted on a bright grin. “And remember to visit our garden again~!”

Yusuke smiled. Victory tasted like air conditioning and cheap floor cleaner.

---

Unfortunately, he really hadn’t thought this through at all.

“I really didn’t think this through at all,” Yusuke said mournfully to his companion, gazing down at the ticket gate while tired commuters streamed past him. He watched the green arrow flash with every passing body, like a series of falling stars. His companion said nothing, and their jaunty posture did not change.

“There’s no need to mock,” Yusuke muttered. The mannequin didn’t respond.

Yusuke sighed and hauled the mannequin against the flow of traffic, making his way slowly and with much apologizing to the far wall. Beyond the gates people lined up behind the yellow stripes on the ground, eager to return home, weighed down with their bags and their troubles. He watched the rail pass computers with a pensive frown. It wouldn’t do him any good to try to get to one—after all, his wallet was empty now.

Yusuke gazed up into the cherry-hued face of his newest acquisition. It was out of the question, going back to the shop girl with the candy-floss hair and asking for some of his money back. This piece was too important; the liquid grace of the limbs, arrested in motion, the light sliding bright and slick along the carmine curves… no, much too important. It was probably worth more than what the girl had accepted, but, well. There was no accounting for taste.

Sensei would be furious that he had once again ended up in the train station without any means of purchasing a ticket. Perhaps it was just as well that Yusuke couldn’t go home tonight.

As he stared at the mannequin, observing the faint reflection gleaming within its plastic skin, his vision swam and the floor seemed to pitch beneath his feet. He winced, falling into the mannequin. His stomach heaved and lurched like the floor. He felt sweat prickle through his skin at his hairline, under his jaw, between his shoulder blades like wings itching to burst free from his bones. He shuddered and slid to the grubby floor, sinking into the unforgiving shins of his hollow companion. He tilted his head back against the wall, eyes closed, and gulped down the filtered subterranean air.

He was just feeling worse and worse as time passed. Jittery and high yesterday evening, after the incident outside the convenience store; foggy-headed and stabbed with ruby-tinted splinters of pain today, all through school and here to the red-light district. He couldn’t even really remember how he’d gotten here. And now he was collapsed off to the side of a busy station, a nobody, a bit of the night’s flotsam here and gone, drifting into the shadows. Maybe this way he would find Joker…

Yusuke smiled, faintly chuckled to himself. Yes, he could melt into the dark and find Joker by looking for those vibrant gloves. Those—

Those red—

His eyes snapped open.

Those gloves, like a paper lantern drifting before him and lighting the path, like a flower slowly opening and spilling slow-moving fire from its core, like drops of the sun raining down—

Dreamlike, still swallowing to keep his rebelling stomach from entirely jumping ship, Yusuke rooted through his bag. Sketchbook, red pencil. Flip the cover—a habitual gesture, normally so precise and simple, but this time it took him two more tries to get his unresponsive fingers to move—grip the pencil. Deep breath.

He didn’t look at the paper at all; his gaze was focused on something that wasn’t in the world around him, intently looking through the shuffle of ankles and shoes, the floor, the tiny textural details of tile and grout, the empty void beneath. The chatter and noise of the station faded into white sound, blank and smooth and soft like falling snow. The hands were familiar enough now from too many fragments of dreams, the creases and seams of leather, the crook of the fingers and the tapers of the tips. And then the fingertips, the knuckles, the palms, all unraveled into ribbons, the illusion of weight and mass in two dimensions shattered and dispersed like the seeds of a dandelion, drifting into streams of red, feathers, sparks, intertwining on the page. He sketched the lines, forming an image and then dissolving it with the same color. Just red. He didn’t need to see it on the page when it was floating in his head like smoke, but he could feel it—slowly, gently, emptying out of his head, dripping out of him like blood. He could almost swear he felt his heartbeat dropping, dropping, sinking into cold dark water.

Slowly, like a wind-up doll clicking into stillness, his hand went motionless and fell to his side, the pencil loose in his grip.

Would Joker appear now? Without warning, a thief in the night, a phantom passing through walls as though they were mere vapor? If Yusuke reached out to touch him, would he dissolve?

What do you think justice looks like?

How are you feeling?

Are you wounded?

His throat burned. He blinked, slowly, and he felt heat trace lines down his cheeks. He lifted his hand and brushed at the warmth and was surprised when his fingers came away wet.

“Kitagawa-san?”

Yusuke looked up, fingers damp with his own tears and lips parted in shock, feeling torn open and sewn shut and aching from both, and he didn’t dare to let himself form the thought but he felt his heart skip in anticipation, it couldn’t be, it couldn’t be—

And it wasn’t. There was no shrouding coat, no mysterious mask, no sly smile. Instead, looking far too casual and composed for a high school student in the red-light district’s station late at night, there was Kurusu. He looked just as surprised to see Yusuke as Yusuke felt. His eyes were wide behind his pristine glasses and messy fringe. Slung over his shoulder was a large tote bag, even bigger than his school bag, and it looked like it was moving, shifting against Kurusu’s shoulder and bulging out in places before morphing back to a regular shape. Yusuke felt his stomach recoil and quickly turned his head away, eyes slammed shut like bulkheads. “Please no,” he moaned, feeling the red wash seeping back in, thumping behind his eyelids like the blood pumping thick through his veins.

“Kitagawa-san—are you feeling all right?”

How are you feeling?

“Perfectly fine,” Yusuke replied, bitingly polite, “thank you. Please enjoy your evening.”

“Uh… yeah. Sure.” After a moment, Yusuke heard his footsteps fade into the general din.

He could already tell a headache was coming. His earlier bubble of calm was completely burst. Yusuke slumped back into the wall, leaned heavily against the legs of the mannequin and felt the hard shell of its limbs bend slightly beneath his weight. He would swear he could feel the grit from commuters’ heels flying up at him, stinging his face. He felt so tired.

And red.

He felt the gaze on his skin like an itch. He wasn’t surprised at all when he opened his eyes and found Kurusu, hovering to the side of the ticket gate, looking back at Yusuke with an inscrutable expression. Their eyes met. Kurusu shifted in place, then began walking back to Yusuke.

That was—unacceptable. The last thing, the very last thing he needed right now, was to be badgered and harassed by this brute, to hear his sensei be shamed and victimized on top of everything else that hadn’t gone right this week. Even less than that did he need to be baffled by any more of Kurusu’s unpredictable and discomfiting moods.

Kurusu approached, and Yusuke scowled.

“You should go,” said Yusuke brusquely.

At the same time, Kurusu said, “It’s always red.”

Yusuke’s breath whooped and caught in his chest. He stared, shoulders tense, throat aching. Did he know? A cramp that had developed in his back was burning its way into his awareness but still he stared, waiting. It felt like a moment that stumbled into being beautiful, like a funhouse mirror, something mundane that suddenly became foreign and fascinating and tasted like candied apples. Did he know? Yusuke waited for the glass to break. They couldn’t both hang from this precipice forever.

“Isn’t it?” Kurusu asked softly. He gestured to the sketchbook still lying open on Yusuke’s lap. “I remember the sketch. It’s always red with you. Funny, I kind of imagined you as a blue person.”

There it was.

The station solidified. Yusuke snorted. “A blue person?”

“Yeah. You know, cool, calm, soothing.” He shrugged. “Blue.”

Yusuke stared him down with his best unimpressed look. It seemed to have some effect; Kurusu lifted a hand to his fringe, pushing it out of his eyes and only succeeding in rumpling it further. He shuffled his weight around and awkwardly cleared his throat before finally saying, “I—I’m sorry, you seem like you want to be alone right now. But I’m just not the kind of guy who leaves someone sitting on the ground in the subway. Not unless they, you know. Live there.”

Yusuke coolly raised one eyebrow. “Who said I wanted to be alone?” he asked archly. This ruffian ought to know better than to assume he knew Yusuke’s thoughts.

Kurusu blinked, then blinked again. Cautiously, his eyes watching Yusuke as if waiting for an attack, he stepped around the mannequin and sank to the ground, dropping his bag on the floor beside him. He settled in, glancing up at the mannequin posed coquettishly above them.

Yusuke gave him a withering look. “That wasn’t meant to be an invitation.”

Kurusu just smiled, sheepish. He shrugged a little and tapped the mannequin’s leg. “Well, I kind of thought this guy might not be the greatest conversationalist.”

“Obviously I did not acquire this for companionship.”

“Really?” Kurusu’s smile deepened. Infuriating man. “Then what?”

“Art,” Yusuke said simply. “Why are you here?”

“Oh, I needed to talk to somebody. Turns out she’s at work non-stop and the only place she hangs out in her free time is this weird bar. There was a lot of pink.”

“I meant why are you here. On this floor. In my proximity.”

“Like I said,” Kurusu said lightly, “I don’t just leave people alone like this.”

“Like what?” Yusuke demanded, prickled.

“Sad,” replied Kurusu, still gazing at Yusuke, his voice and face as neutral and confounding as a locked box. Yusuke bit his lip and let his head fall back to the wall again. They stayed that way, silent but contained in the same composition, stillness in contrast with the rest of the station moving quickly as people filtered out into the night.

“I’m not sad,” Yusuke said finally. “I’m… I’m looking for someone.”

“Really?” Kurusu blinked. “Like a hostess?”

“What? No!”

“I wouldn’t judge. Just saying.”

“It’s not a hostess.” Yusuke snorted, fingers idly plucking at the edge of his sketchbook. “You wouldn’t have met him.”

“Maybe. I am new to Tokyo, after all.”

New to Tokyo? Yusuke slid a sidelong look at the other boy. Kurusu’s eyes had wandered to the ticket gates, watching the commuters come and go. His brow was quirked and lips pursed in thought; his hands lay remarkably still in his lap. In this moment he did not look—somehow he did not look like the threatening, unruly youth Yusuke took him for earlier. Perhaps this new information had changed Kurusu somewhat, altered the palette with which he was drawn.

But Yusuke remembered the fleeting impression of a looming, jagged shadow rising in this boy’s wake in the dingy school hallway, and he wondered.

Struggling for the right balance between polite and curt, Yusuke murmured, “You really shouldn’t stay. I don’t expect to leave anytime soon.”

“The last trains will be leaving in a couple hours, though. Your friend’s going to keep you waiting that long?”

“I don’t really believe he’ll be here,” Yusuke demurred, “but I’m waiting for him nevertheless.” He frowned. Kurusu’s even-handed, conversational tone was disarming. He hadn’t meant to say that much about Joker. Perhaps he was ill, to be so unguarded. He made a show of stowing his drawing materials in his bag to cover his embarrassment.

Sounding a little too blasé, Kurusu asked, “Kind of a weird relationship then, huh?”

Yusuke’s glare sliced into Kurusu like a keen blade. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. After all, apparently you think I’m some sort of sycophant, pledging my brush to an abusive plagiarist.”

Kurusu shook his head, still looking unperturbed. “That’s not what we—what I meant. Ryuji and Ann have good intentions; they really do just want to help.”

“So you’ve said.”

“We haven’t bothered you since then.”

“That’s irrelevant. You did enough damage, though your visits were brief.”

The fluorescent lights flickered and glanced off of Kurusu’s glasses as his head tilted, revealing one eye watching Yusuke keenly. His gaze dropped just beneath Yusuke’s—to his collar. Feeling a flush of heat, Yusuke lifted a hand toward his neck, confused. “Damage?” asked Kurusu with an edge in his voice.

Oh. The other day, in the alley. There must have been bruises from—what happened. Yusuke sealed his lips tight, cursing himself. He hadn’t realized there were marks. Still, he didn’t owe Kurusu an explanation, and he didn’t want to make things worse. He stayed silent.

“… Did he hurt you, Kitagawa-san?”

He did not want to do this.

Abruptly, Yusuke shot to his feet. He hauled up his messenger bag in one hand, curled his other arm around the mannequin, and stalked off toward the stairs.

“Hey, wait! Kitagawa-san! Hang on—ow—”

Yusuke decided not to regret slamming his bag into Kurusu’s arm as he swung around to face his pursuer. He felt the adrenaline singing high and bright in his veins, beating hot, beating red, just like the alley—“Stop it. Leave me be.”

“What happened, Kitagawa-san?”

“Nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing.”

“If I say it’s nothing, then it is.”

“You’re hurt.”

“I’m fine!” Kurusu jumped a little, startled by Yusuke’s raised voice, and backed away a step. Yusuke took a deep, shuddering breath, one hand clenched at his breastbone. It wouldn’t do to make a scene. With effort, he lowered his voice and continued, “If you must continue in your overly perceptive manner, perhaps you would also care to note that I bear no other marks besides these, which were not Sensei’s doing. I am not begging anyone for assistance, and the only person who continues to cause me any irritation whatsoever is you and your little gang. Sensei is not—” The crunch and smash of the phone detonated within his skull. “—any of your business. Nor am I.” Wearily, Yusuke rubbed at his forehead with one hand. His eyes felt full of sand. “Why are you so persistent? You have no reason to get involved at all.”

Kurusu didn’t have a smart comeback. He just stood in front of Yusuke, a portrait in neutrals, a pool of quiet in the ripples of the city. Water themes, Yusuke thought distantly, then shook his head. He just wanted to lie down. They were outside the station now, the spring night air cool on the back of his neck, the dully illuminated sky covering them like an overturned bowl. Yusuke blinked up into it for a moment, then looked around for a decent spot to hide away. Nothing much to choose from—just flat open concrete. He trundled over to a metal handrail cordoning off the entrance to a shopping mart and leaned against it, clutching the mannequin to his side like a child with a beloved toy.

Kurusu wandered over and leaned against the rail on Yusuke’s other side. Yusuke ignored him. He was too tired for anything else. It was louder up here, brighter, like a texture he could feel under his skin.

“Have you heard about what’s happening at my school?” Kurusu asked abruptly. He waited for Yusuke to respond, then forged ahead, voice low and muted. “Physical abuse. Sexual abuse. Intimidation, extortion. The teacher who did all those things targeted my friends. Especially Ann. Her friend jumped off the school roof trying to kill herself because of that teacher.” Kurusu took a slow breath, then released it in a long sigh. Yusuke stared at the curb with eyes pinned wide, feeling chilled, paralyzed by the intensity in Kurusu’s voice. “I didn’t really figure out what was going on until Ann told me. But I could tell something was wrong even before that. Because even though she tried to smile and act normal, she was still sad.”

Silence fell, dense and poignant. Sewn somewhere into the folds of it Yusuke could swear he heard the whispered words: She was sad like you.

Yusuke took in air gently, tentatively, as if the thick silence could smother him from the inside. “I’m sorry,” he breathed. His voice cracked. He could see it: the beautiful girl with the beautiful flaxen hair, eyes crystalline with tears, trembling and frightened and alone; the teacher, the menacingly muscled man from the television report, leering at her, grasping hands reaching out and coiling into her hair. He could imagine. Of course he could. “I truly am sorry for your friend.”

Kurusu folded his arms, looking away. “So that’s why. Same kind of story for Ryuji. Same for me.”

“But they’re your friends,” Yusuke protested. “You don’t know me at all.”

The look Kurusu pinned him with jolted through his body like an electric current, hot and painful and energizing all at once. He had no idea what it meant. “No, I don’t. But I think I’d like to.”

His heart was pounding—yet the relentless hammer of red waves behind his eyes had receded, faded into background noise. “Th-There’s nothing to worry about,” Yusuke stammered, lips feeling stung and swollen. “Sensei. He—there’s nothing.”

“Who hurt you?”

“A member of the yakuza.” Yusuke paused, thinking. Technically they had never said they worked for a yakuza boss. “Probably. I’m not sure.”

Kurusu gazed at him wordlessly for a moment. Then: “Who are you waiting for?”

Still dizzy from the shocking look Kurusu had given him, Yusuke shook his head and quietly said, “A ghost. Or maybe a phantom. It doesn’t matter; I’m sure wherever he is, he is doing something much grander and more meaningful than the favor I would have asked of him.”

“Favor?”

“I suppose it was more like a request. It… is simple folly really. But I put a great deal of effort into finding him the last few days. The frustration has been distracting me from my work. Or… that has been a part of it.” Embarrassed, Yusuke flushed. “I’m sure it sounds ridiculous.”

“Hmm. Well, I mean, I’m not an artist but I’m never able to get anything done when I’m tired. Why don’t you just go home and try again tomorrow?”

“Oh, I can’t go to the atelier. I spent all my money before I could get a ticket,” Yusuke explained. He didn’t think anything of it until he felt the weight of Kurusu’s stare, no longer enigmatic but completely open in its shock and confusion.

“You what?” Kurusu yelped. “How? Isn’t that like rule one of city living, always have your rail pass?”

“My rail pass doesn’t typically cover the route to Shinjuku,” Yusuke replied a little testily.

Kurusu was starting to grin, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Okay, wait, what did you spend it on?” He gasped, face alight with excitement. “No—wait—” He leaned forward to look across Yusuke at the mannequin. “That?”

Yusuke looked fondly on his prize. “It was well worth the trouble. It will make a remarkable figure study later. An excellent practice model.”

He heard a choking sound: Kurusu, unsuccessfully swallowing giggles. Then Kurusu shoved off of the handrail and crossed to the mannequin. It was posed in a provocative stance, one hand saucily cocked on its hip, the other held a little out and away from the torso. It was definitely not posed for handshakes, but Kurusu gripped its free hand and pantomimed a shake anyway. The mannequin shuddered all over with the motion and the whole display looked cartoonish. Yusuke held a hand to his face to smother his laughter. “You, sir—madam—radiant one,” Kurusu dramatically looked the mannequin up and down, an attempt at rakishness utterly canceled out by his large glasses and riotous hair, “are the most costly night companion I have ever seen. Your value lies not only in yen but in emotional currency. Or something.” Kurusu glanced at Yusuke with a small, lopsided smile. “Think they’ll need a ticket too?”

“What?”

“For the train.”

Yusuke’s brow quirked; he found himself, only a little reluctantly, reflecting Kurusu’s smile. “What ticket?” Yusuke asked, bemused. “I told you—”

“Oh, shut up, Kitagawa-san,” Kurusu chuckled, “I’m taking you home.”

---

“Chocolate or strawberry?”

Yusuke stared at the paper-wrapped confections hovering in his vision, completely nonplussed. “I beg your pardon?”

“Here. It’s gonna melt.”

Yusuke doubted that. Still, he reached out and took the chocolate crepe. It was actually somewhat daunting, piled with three generous scoops of ice cream and coated in black and white shavings. Chocolate and… coconut…? An interesting choice with the chunks of melon pushed unceremoniously into one curve of the wrapping. The black and white was a classic color scheme, but with the gentle green introduced to a palette that was not analogous the harmony was somewhat—

“Meowwww!”

Yusuke startled out of his contemplation, looking around for the source of the sound. He didn’t have to look far: Kurusu was seated on the thick concrete planter beside him, and poking its head out of his tote bag, contentedly lapping at the strawberry crepe Kurusu held out for it, was a black and white cat. A black and white cat with bright blue eyes.

How odd. Did Kurusu carry a cat with him everywhere? That was actually kind of sweet (and yet another confusing puzzle piece that did not fit in the image of an aggressive young brute.)

Yusuke gazed down into his now slightly gooey crepe. How had he ended up here? Well, he knew—a surreal conversation in the cradle of the lights of Shinjuku, an uncomfortable period in the station when all of Yusuke’s protests were railroaded by Kurusu’s silent cheshire grins, an even more uncomfortable period on the train ride where the silence fell heavy and stifling. Yusuke had simply focused on balancing himself and the mannequin without falling into anyone. And then Kurusu had looped his arm through the mannequin’s and marched off down the high street, with Yusuke unenthusiastically dragged in tow. Now he had a crepe in his hand and was sitting next to a cat that was being fed ice cream by a thug who maybe was not a thug and actually wasn’t quite anything Yusuke knew how to handle anymore.

At least the crepe was tasty. Yusuke would never turn down a gift of food. It was poor manners, and also he was hungry. Almost as hungry as the cat.

Wait—

“Is that your cat?” Yusuke asked.

Kurusu glanced at him over the frames of his glasses. “His name’s Morgana, and he isn’t really a cat.”

Yusuke mulled over that one for a moment. He had often been told that he was out of touch with regular social behavior, but he knew his visual observations were without peer. That was definitely a cat. Perhaps Kurusu was joking? Hmm. “Whether or not he is feline, I believe he saved my life the other day.”

Kurusu and Morgana both stiffened. The cat’s tail puffed out like a feather duster. Yusuke gazed off into the distance, slowly recalling, “Actually, that cat did behave very strangely. I wouldn’t be surprised if it truly was not a cat, but some sort of spirit guide donning the shape of—”

“Nope, he’s definitely a cat,” Kurusu said. Morgana had disappeared into the depths of the tote bag. “Uh, doing cat things. You know. Eating bugs. Catching… mice.”

“I haven’t seen mice in the city.”

“Well, you don’t hang out in all the cool cat spots.”

“I suppose.”

Yusuke gazed at the passing cars, wondering where the cool cat spots were. Cats were notoriously crafty and evasive. Perhaps he could learn some new insights into Joker’s character…

 “What were you working on?”

Yusuke glanced at Kurusu, mouth poised over half a scoop of ice cream. “Ah?”

“In the station. You had your sketchbook out when I walked by. Were you making something for your friend?”

“Oh. No.” Yusuke took his mouthful of ice cream and thoughtfully savored its chill. “Those were thoughtless scribbles—nothing of worth. I would never presume to gift others with art unless it were true art, worthy of attention. But the sort of art that is meant to be gifted to another, if such a thing exists, is far beyond the scope of my current abilities. I would never make such an insult as to offer anyone such paltry attempts at grasping pure beauty.”

Kurusu watched him for a moment, quietly taking small bites of his crepe. He avoided the wedges of pineapple. “What’s true art?”

“I mean no offense, but I hardly think you would understand,” Yusuke scoffed.

They fell silent. Yusuke’s crepe was almost gone; he shamefully could have eaten three more, but one would be perfectly sufficient. The whirr of tires and growl of engines thankfully muffled any rumbles of his stomach that could have been overheard.

“Pointillism.”

Yusuke’s head jerked around. “What?”

Kurusu was thoughtfully gazing into the distance, one hand peeling the wrapper of his crepe into tiny ribbons. “Pointillism,” he said again. “Like Nakamura Tsune’s portrait of the Russian Yaroshenko.”

Yusuke stared at him. “… What?”

“Impressed?” Kurusu asked, eyes tilted in a subtly smug smile.

“Nakamura’s Portrait of Eroshenko is done in the Impressionist style. Or rather, an impression of Impressionist style. Tsune was inspired by Renoir, and he used similar shadowing and softened lines, but the color palette is completely different. The brushstrokes are visible and layered, varied in length and direction—nothing like pointillism at all. Pointillism was a Neo-Impressionist style and didn’t come about until—” Yusuke cut himself off, watching Kurusu warily. The other boy didn’t seem at all perturbed, calmly finishing off his dessert and still staring off into the distance. Yusuke bristled. “Are you mocking me?”

That got his attention. Kurusu’s eyes abruptly sought Yusuke’s, wide and startled. He seemed genuinely shocked. “Why would I?”

“You obviously don’t understand art. Why would you make such an… amateurish claim, except to bait me into responding?”

“Baiting is kind of strong.”

“What else could it be?”

Kurusu blinked languidly. “I… like hearing you talk. That’s all.”

Yusuke’s mouth dropped open, ready for a heated retort, but the words weren’t there, and suddenly Yusuke realized that he felt—better. Not ragged and washed out as he had been all day; not feverish, as he had been while seeking Joker; not dulled and listless, like weeks ago. It was almost as if… as if he felt normal. Whatever that meant. It reminded him of a moment many years ago when he was younger. He had stolen into the advanced workrooms of the atelier and played with the traditional paints using his hands; when Sensei had rushed into the room and breathlessly hauled him up to the sink to scrub him clean, Yusuke had felt chagrined for upsetting his teacher. And yet, braced against the metal sink with his sensei’s chest warm against his back, his large hands, gnarled with age even then, cupping Yusuke’s as he thoroughly washed paint from Yusuke’s skin… he had felt at peace. At home.

The cool breeze washed over Yusuke’s hot cheeks and chilled his fingertips, clenched around the paper from the crepe. And here he was, sitting in a plaza in Shibuya, like any other student spending time with a friend. Like someone who belonged.

Except that Kurusu wasn’t a friend, he was a threat to Sensei. But—he had been so kind to Yusuke, unexpectedly, accepting no payment in return. He had explained his reasoning for the encounters outside the atelier. That didn’t excuse his horrendous behavior, but it still meant something, surely. And he was so… strange. Not like Yusuke had thought. He was forced to consider the fact that if Kurusu was in fact a thug, he was the most unconventional one Yusuke had ever heard of. And the most compassionate. Which meant… he wasn’t really an enemy either.

Staring at Kurusu, drinking in the play of light over his nose and cheekbones, Yusuke murmured, “You’re incredibly odd, if that is indeed how you feel.”

“I’ve heard worse,” Kurusu shot back with a straight face. Yusuke can’t really say he’s surprised.

“I suspect you have,” Yusuke replied, and honestly regretted that it could be true.

Kurusu reached out and took Yusuke’s crepe wrapper, balling it up with his own. He took aim for a nearby trash can and lobbed the paper overhand. It missed. Yusuke bit down a smile while Kurusu sighed, sauntered over to properly throw the trash away, and then turned with his hands shoved in his pockets. The lights of the city bounced over his lenses like twin kaleidoscopes. “So,” he said, “I’m odd, I’m an art idiot, and I like hearing you talk. Don’t you think you should take pity on me and teach me something about real art?” At Yusuke’s bemused expression, Kurusu nodded at his bag.

“Oh. Why do you—” —care so much? Yusuke choked the words down. Kurusu hadn’t said he cared. He was just curious. It wasn’t so different from his classmates looking over his shoulder, and he’d been enduring that for some time. “All right.” He leaned down and withdrew the sketchbook, flipped it to the page with Joker’s gloves dissolving into crimson ribbons. A pair of disembodied gloves wouldn’t have meaning for Kurusu, and so Yusuke felt no discomfort as he handed the sketchbook over for Kurusu’s viewing. Joker was still a secret safely kept. Kurusu accepted the book as if Yusuke were handing over a live kitten, delicate and gentle and undeniably excited. He perched on the edge of planter beside Yusuke, sketchbook held in both hands.

“Wow,” he breathed. Then he fell silent, eyes darting back and forth over the page intently. Yusuke waited, feeling tension balling up behind his ribs like a coiled spring.

“There’s nothing there,” Yusuke eventually sighed, brushing his hair from his eyes. “It—I wasn’t thinking. No expression.”

“If this is you with no expression, then I think your ‘true art’ might make me cry.”

Yusuke shot his companion a narrow look. “What does that mean?”

“Kitagawa-san… this is—beautiful. I mean really, really beautiful.” Kurusu bit his lip, fingering the corner of the page. “I don’t even—I mean, where did the idea come from?”

“A memory,” Yusuke murmured.

“Was it a happy one?”

Yusuke weighed the question thoughtfully, looking down at the unraveling hands, leather turned to color turned to air. “I don’t know. An important one.”

Kurusu simply nodded. He made as if to turn the page, but he seemed to feel Yusuke tense beside him—he glanced at him over the rims of his glasses, then closed the sketchbook and handed it back. “Here. You can show me the others some other time.”

“Some other…?”

Kurusu smiled. That shy dimple came forth again, a dab of shadow at the side of his mouth. “Well, I kinda thought—I mean. If you want to?”

The cracking upward inflection drew a smile onto Yusuke’s face. He stroked the cover of the sketchbook. No one had asked to look at his drawings in… a while. Other than Sensei, of course. It was—heartening.

Kurusu shifted beside him. “Maybe tomorrow? It’s a Sunday, so…”

And suddenly the ground opened up and swallowed Yusuke whole. He couldn’t breathe. His heart was pierced with ice. It’s a Sunday. The buildings around tilted and slid to one side, the planter melted like so much hot wax. The sky caved in, and the city burned. It’s a Sunday.

“Kurusu-san,” he whispered, trying to find his voice and keep his breath steady but mostly failing, “pardon me for asking, but would you happen to know the date?”

Kurusu seemed to hesitate for a moment, examining Yusuke closely. “Today? It’s May twenty-first. Why?”

“Oh no,” Yusuke groaned. He sank in on himself; his sketchbook almost fell out of his suddenly numb hands. “Oh…”

“Kitagawa-san?”

“Forgive me,” Yusuke muttered, hands rising to massage his head (and hide his eyes—he felt so ashamed—). “I had forgotten—but how could I—I was selfish, caught up in my own silly—I hadn’t realized—”

“Kitagawa-san. Breathe.” Pressure on his shoulder, a weight that his body struggled against instinctually. Air in. Air out. Breathe. “What did you forget?”

“Sensei’s exhibition opens tomorrow.” Kurusu’s hand was the weight on his shoulder. It rolled in closer to his neck, rubbed out, a slow, soothing rhythm. At a better moment Yusuke would have been taken aback by the personal intimacy, but right now his mind was a tumult of tasks and times and half-formed apologies. “I was supposed to—I’m supposed to help with the managing. And…”

He swallowed the words.

Kurusu’s hand didn’t stop moving. “You have time.”

“No.” Yusuke stumbled to his feet, gripping his sketchbook like a lifeline. “I must return to the atelier. Sensei needs me. I must go.” But his feet were anchored to the ground. Yusuke looked down the street, down the path to the workshop that was so well-known, but his muscles were locked and unresponsive. He scowled and focused. Sensei needed him. It was his duty to be there—no, it was his pleasure—and it would be like all the other exhibitions that had gone so well, and Sensei would praise him for his hard work and dedication, and there would be people visiting the atelier to see—to see—

“Kitagawa-san,” Kurusu murmured. He was just there, at the corner of Yusuke’s eye, peering up at Yusuke. He looked worried. “You don’t have to go back if you don’t want to.”

Go back. Not go home.

Yusuke’s jaw clenched.

“I’m tired,” he bit out. The words clunked like ice cubes breaking against the pavement. “It—It’s all right. Sensei is never unreasonable. He is… I have disappointed him lately, been distracted. But he hasn’t hurt me. It is not abuse. It’s just that—there will be so much work. And—I’m tired.” He paused. It didn’t sound right. “I am not complaining. It is just…”

But nothing he was saying felt appropriate. Whether it was the lingering bedazzlement of Shinjuku, or the heavy sweetness of chocolate ice cream freezing his tongue, or the continuation of that cursed encounter from the other day (he could feel the shards of red creeping back in)—whatever it was, Yusuke felt himself wavering, his explanations for his agitation flimsy, making the back of his neck burn with shame. There was no reason to be ashamed here, in front of Kurusu, and yet—“I’m sorry,” he murmured, a poor close to his weak and uninvited arguments. He looked away, wincing. If his goal had been to further convince Kurusu of his sensei’s innocence, to protect him, then Yusuke had probably just failed miserably.

He waited, expecting to hear sharp words of judgment. Instead he felt cool plastic under his hand. His head swiveled, and he almost knocked his nose into the shoulder of the mannequin. Kurusu watched him, as cool and unruffled as the mannequin, from the other side of the flame-red arms. “You’ll need this,” Kurusu said. “It would be a shame to leave them behind after fate brought you together.”

Yusuke could not bring himself to laugh—only a puff of air, more gasp than laugh, escaped his lips. He shouldn’t be so discombobulated here in public. He tightened his grip on the mannequin. “Apologies,” he said, more strength in his voice this time. “How thoughtless of me.”

He tucked his sketchbook into his bag once more, smoothed one hand down his shirtfront to remove wrinkles (imagined or real he couldn’t say), and bowed to Kurusu. “My thanks for the evening,” he said, “and the train ticket, of course. And the crepe. I am still willing to pay—”

“Come stay with me,” Kurusu blurted, and immediately jerked backwards a step, wearing the clearest expression Yusuke had yet seen on him. It was pure, unadulterated panic. Kurusu coughed, his face coloring, then straightened his shoulders and adjusted his glasses. Somewhere in the direction of his duffel bag, on the planter behind Yusuke, came a muffled, howling meow.

“Erm, that—isn’t necessary, truly—”

“It isn’t much,” Kurusu said, visibly struggling to collect himself. “And it isn’t my place at all, really. I’m staying at a place called Café Leblanc, in Yongen-jaya, while I’m in Tokyo. Er, in the attic. But it’s a large room, and I have a sofa, and…” He rammed his hands into his pockets as if he had a vendetta against them. “I’m not saying something about you or Madarame-sensei. Just—if you don’t want to go, you don’t have to.”

Yusuke followed the tense line of Kurusu’s shoulders up to the messy hair, down to the balled fists he could see outlined through the thin material of his jacket. He smiled.

Kurusu had, completely unexpectedly and perhaps without even knowing what he’d done, addressed Sensei respectfully. Madarame-sensei; a title Yusuke normally loathed in other people’s mouths. This time he was not alarmed. In fact, quite the opposite.

He had learned something tonight after all, and even if it didn’t bring him anywhere close to Joker—even if it had distracted him completely from his quest—somehow it still felt worth it.

Eased, Yusuke shook his head. “I am grateful, but no. Thank you. I have taken too much from you already.”

“It’s no trouble—”

“And Sensei needs my help,” he added. “What kind of student would I be if I neglected my sensei?”

Kurusu relaxed a little, but he let out a sharp sigh and dragged one hand through his hair. He watched Yusuke silently for a moment, then said, “Would you let me walk you home?”

Yusuke snorted. “Do you think me so delicate that I require a bodyguard?”

“No,” Kurusu said with a half-smile, “I know you can handle yourself. You’re strong. And sassy.”

“Sassy?”

“And in denial.”

Yusuke took a closer look at Kurusu. True, he had relaxed, but his eyes were pinched with worry, and his hands fidgeted behind their cloth screens. The wind ruffled past them once more, tossing hair into Kurusu’s eyes. He didn’t even flinch, so intense was his gaze upon Yusuke.

… Had anyone ever looked at him like that before? As if—as if he were the work of art?

He shook the unsettling thought from his head. It was kind, if irritating, for the other boy to show such baffling concern. Yusuke may as well humor him. “If it would comfort you,” Yusuke offered, and began the walk home down the familiar streets. Kurusu walked behind him, a quiet, constant shadow. Yusuke’s neck prickled with the same alarm he had felt in the halls at Shujin.

“So,” Kurusu suddenly said over Yusuke’s shoulder, his tone bright and light-hearted, “when exactly did pointillism come about? Kamakura era, right?”

Yusuke groaned, and if it was really more of a laugh, well… there was no one to tell the difference.

---

He had not expected Sensei to be awake.

Yusuke hesitated at the street corner, gazing wide-eyed at the stooped shoulders that paced back and forth in silhouette within the frames of the living room’s windows. The blinds had been pulled aside; warm light spilled out onto the street from within. Yusuke watched Sensei pace back and forth, back and forth. He felt as though all the liquid in his body had evaporated and left him cold, solid, inert.

Sensei…

He felt the prick of tears behind his eyes. He had left Sensei alone in a trying time—abandoned him, as Yusuke could have been abandoned were it not for Sensei’s efforts. He had worried his teacher. He had disappointed his—his—

“Kitagawa-san… are you all right?”

Kurusu rested a gentle hand against Yusuke’s shoulder blade. It almost made him smile.

“I’m fine. I’ve returned to where I belong.”

Perhaps Sensei might even be glad to see him. Amused by his unexpected cargo. Although…

Yusuke shot a stealthy glance at his companion. Unclear as Kurusu’s true intentions might be, and compassionate as he had been, none of that would matter if Yusuke appeared on the doorstep after a prolonged absence with a tagalong. Sensei valued his privacy highly, and this late at night, visitors would be especially unwelcome. But he did not want to appear rude; he was truly grateful for Kurusu’s kindness. The walk back to the atelier had been blessedly simple, a quiet as thick and golden and undisturbed as the yolk within an egg. The red stabbing shards had receded into a memory so hazy it could have been a half-forgotten nightmare. He had let his feet find the way home while his mind wandered to red wings, black coattails, gemlike blue eyes with catlike pupils—and Kurusu had said nothing, only walked softly in Yusuke’s shadow.

It took him a moment to realize Kurusu was staring back at him, and Yusuke looked away with a hint of a wince. Staring at people was inappropriate, he’d been lectured on that point too many times to count—

“Should I go?” Kurusu asked gently.

Yusuke tried not to let the relief show. That also would have been inappropriate. “I’m grateful for your escort,” he said, “but… Sensei would not be expecting guests this late…”

“Yeah.”

Kurusu shifted his weight, eyes lowered. He made no move to leave. Neither did Yusuke.

“I had fun,” Kurusu said, voice soft like robin’s egg blue. “Tonight.”

Yusuke hummed.

“Er, except for the part where you were sitting all alone on the station floor. Uh. Not that—uh—”

“Thank you,” Yusuke interrupted, “for tonight. I truly am grateful. If you would please inform me, should you discover a suitable way for me to repay you—”

“No, that’s—you don’t have to worry about it.” Kurusu gave him a fraction of a smile and a bow, then turned on his heel. He didn’t make it two steps before turning around again. “Actually—I did think of something just now.”

Yusuke waited. Kurusu nodded to Yusuke’s bag.

“Let me see more of your sketchbook?”

He felt the color seep into his cheeks like a stain soaking into carpet. “What—is that really—I don’t see how that is adequate compensation—”

“It’s what I want,” Kurusu said firmly. His smile tugged wider. “I’ll take nothing less.”

Yusuke found himself fairly caught between affront and politesse. With a stiff nod he replied, “Very well. You may choose the time.”

This time it wasn’t a trick of the shadows—Kurusu’s smile was a full-bodied smirk, and his bow unexpectedly languid and deep. “I look forward to it,” he said. And without a backward glance, he walked off, around the corner and out of sight.

Yusuke took a moment to press his fingertips to his temples and put a lid on his simmering indignation. To ask to see an artist’s sketchbook… it was akin to asking a woman if he could watch her bathe…! The absolute nerve—but somehow he felt unsurprised. Maybe Kurusu truly was a thug after all—

Mouth in a thin line, Yusuke shook his head and walked toward the atelier. He was heartily tired of trying to parse out Kurusu’s intentions. He was never any good at that kind of social intuition anyway, as Sensei had reminded him many times. Besides, it didn’t truly matter. Kurusu was just a schoolboy… and Yusuke had more important things to think about.

When Yusuke approached the front step he hadn’t even gotten his key into his hand when the door was flung open and bright light washed over him. “Yusuke!” Sensei exclaimed. He almost seemed shriveled in his robes, clinging to the doorframe. “Yusuke… my boy. Welcome home.”

Yusuke felt the warmth well up in his chest like a thunderhead, all heat lightning and gentle rain. “I’m home, Sensei.” He bowed formally. “I apologize for my absence. I hope I have not caused you trouble.”

“Come inside,” Sensei murmured, beckoning with one hand. Did his fingers tremble slightly? Were his cheeks truly sunken, or was that simply the lighting? “Please.”

Yusuke stepped inside and removed his shoes as Sensei went into the other room to prepare tea. He placed the mannequin as unobtrusively as possible in a corner of the foyer; he would move it to his room later. The bitter, sharp smells of paint and lacquer wafted to his nose, familiar in their sting. When he entered the common room and took his seat on the floor near the table, the gentler scents of green tea and cooked rice mellowed the lingering odor of paints. He imagined he could even smell the polish on the table, the stuffing in the worn cushion upon which he sat. Sensei gestured to a plate of simple onigiri on the table. “You must be hungry,” Sensei observed. “Please eat something. You’ve had me worried sick about you—those cafeteria meals are full of unnecessary toxins. And where have you slept? I admit I have been busy through the nights for some time now, but I am present enough to know when my favorite pupil goes missing. Why, I was preparing to call the police just before you returned! What were you thinking? Where have you been?”

Yusuke paused, his hand hovering over an onigiri. “I…”

I’ve been looking for a vigilante.

I’ve been fighting gangs.

I’ve been having a series of inappropriate rendezvous in back alleys.

I’ve been chasing my muse.

“I’ve been at school,” Yusuke said finally. “I was working through my new series. I’m afraid I lost track of time.” He pushed back from the table to bow low before his teacher. “My deepest apologies, Sensei. I know I have failed you.”

“Nonsense, my boy.” Yusuke felt Sensei’s hand alight on his back for a moment, then lift away. It hadn’t trembled at all. “You weren’t necessary to the proceedings at the exhibit. Besides, it would have been irresponsible of me to take you away from your studies. I only like to have you there so that you may be exposed to the process—and understand how little the clumsy fools they hire to arrange these things understand about balance. You are a great help to me in that regard.” Sensei chuckled faintly. “You may rise.”

Yusuke straightened and once more reached for the onigiri. “Nevertheless, I am sorry. If there’s anything I can do to—”

“Well, we can discuss that. In a moment. Now… tell me how your work has been progressing.”

The time passed slowly as the steam from the tea faded and the scattered grains of remaining rice dried on the plate. Yusuke talked about color and line, shading and form, about tidbits of advice his teachers at school offered. He talked about the girls who were not twins and their baffling conversation about the paranormal. He talked about stopping at the convenience store and indignantly reported their pricing changes; Sensei laughed and reminded him to be humble, to understand that money did not require his attention. Yusuke relaxed into the long, soft pauses between tales, into the well-remembered scents and comforting colors, the worn and threadbare objects that furnished his home. It was not impressive to many—but that just proved how few people could find the beauty lying beneath the surface, how rare and precious a gift it was.

Madarame nodded sagely, hands tucked into his sleeves. “Very interesting… and what of your newest project? Have you a new interest in figure study?”

Yusuke frowned and shook his head a little, bemused.

His sensei’s eyes twinkled and creased in silent laughter. “I mean, of course, your model? The bright red one that matches your new style.”

“Oh!” Yusuke flushed a little. “It’s… I had not quite decided what to use it for, ah…”

“Where did you acquire such an eye-catching piece?”

Yusuke felt his heart suddenly quicken, a chilly sweat gathering in the dip of his spine. If he answered honestly, his sensei would want to know what he was doing in Shinjuku… which would require an explanation of the fight… which would lead to Joker.

Yusuke had always told Sensei everything; there were no secrets between them. The trust that was the foundation of their bond fueled Yusuke’s wellspring of creativity, provided him shelter from the cruelties of the world outside, and gave him time and space and experience to come into his own. He had never had any reason to hide from Sensei; Sensei was all there was.

Now he had a reason, and Yusuke did not hesitate.

“Downtown Shibuya,” he answered easily enough. “I found it—in a trash bin behind a clothing boutique. Its condition is remarkable, considering, but I did have to—”

“Yusuke.”

Silence.

“Yusuke. Are you telling the truth?”

His mouth went dry. Yusuke looked up into Sensei’s face and met his gaze without flinching. “Of course, Sensei.”

“I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Why wouldn’t you? We aren’t friends, right, Yusuke?”

The moment grew tense, pulled taut as a wire, before Sensei’s shoulders rounded and his posture drooped. “Oh, Yusuke. All right, no cause for alarm. I believe you. Only… one of my associates called me during the prep for the exhibit tonight and—well. He seemed convinced that he had spotted you in Shinjuku.”

“Shinjuku?” Yusuke asked. The chill in his spine spread. “How absurd. That is—a garish and filthy nest of cheap distractions. How could I possibly find true beauty in such a scene?”

“Yes, I thought not,” Sensei mused, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “It seemed… uncharacteristic for you. But as you well know, Shinjuku is a dangerous place for youths like you. I only wanted to know because I am concerned for you. Staying out late at night… refusing to come back to the atelier… you’re putting yourself at risk, Yusuke, and I can’t think why.”

“I am very sorry to have worried you, Sensei.”

“No, it is no trouble… the trouble is what might happen to you, boy, with no one to supervise you. You can be so careless—so distressing to others—I worry that you might someday cause a scene.”

His heart stuttered. “I would never do anything to embarrass you, Sensei, I swear it!”

“I know, I know… I meant trouble for yourself, not for me. Though they could be considered one and the same. Now the danger is so much greater… the demands of the exhibition have me so busy, and I have no way to watch over you except to rely on the staff at your school. And of course they would only notify me if something dire happened!” Sensei sighed deeply, chin tucked into his chest. He looked at Yusuke with bright eyes. “I was devastated, not knowing where you were, what you were up to. I regret what happened to your phone. So…” Sensei shifted on the low sofa, then withdrew something from his sleeve. “Consider this a humble man’s request.”

Madarame leaned forward and, with a soft click, placed a gleaming new cell phone on the table. It was obviously expensive, a sleek, shiny thing with few buttons and a cool grey shell. Yusuke stared at it without moving; a featureless silhouette stared back at him from within the well of the black screen.

“It’s already configured for your preferences,” said Madarame, “and with all the same apps you used to have. Will it suffice?”

“Suffice?” Yusuke lifted his eyes to his teacher’s. “Request…?”

Madarame bowed slightly. “I took the liberty of having someone set up a location tracker. If you stray far from the pre-programmed paths, I will know. It’s just a precaution—you know how easily you get lost without a guide. It won’t interfere with your travels to and from school… and there are reminder alarms regarding curfew as well. Much less irritating than the alarms on your last phone, I might add. If you get carried away with your work at school, well, that’s understandable… but too many nights in the student lounge and it will be bad for both of us, you understand.” A wistful expression swept over Madarame’s face, like curtains wavering in a breeze. “It’s for your protection, Yusuke. So that I can make sure you’re well. Surely that’s all right?”

Yusuke slowly reached out and closed his hand over the blank face of the phone. He imagined his fingerprints being smudged into the screen. He nodded, and solemnly met Sensei’s gaze. “Of course. Thank you, Sensei.”

The old man beamed; it was a restrained, weary smile, but earnest nonetheless. “Good boy. Now… about the exhibit… you will be able to attend tomorrow? The opening ceremony will be quite splendid, I’m told; and there will be many distinguished guests whose opinions you could benefit from…”

“Maybe tomorrow? It’s a Sunday, so…”

Yusuke nodded again. The metal case of the phone was cold against his palms. “Absolutely, Sensei. Shall I be directing staff or guests with specific tasks, or…?”

“No, no, merely there to soak in the magnificence,” Sensei chuckled. He stroked his goatee thoughtfully. “Perhaps I should invite some of your school friends… or teachers…? I’m sure a few passes could be obtained.”

“I imagine they would like that.”

“Hmm. And—of course I will not require you to be at the exhibit every day. So selfish, to steal you away from your canvas! But I would appreciate it if you were there for the day of the reveal.”

Ice washed down Yusuke’s spine and spread through his limbs, frosted the tips of his fingers and toes. He would have sworn he could see his breath steam in the air around him.

Sensei’s eyes looked on him with kindness, the wrinkles at the corners soft and gentle. “Two weeks, Yusuke. Will that be enough time for your arrangements? I’ve seen such promising things from you already, with this bold new approach you’ve taken. Will you be ready with something new for your sensei?”

Snow flowed through his blood, seeped into his skin, permeated his organs. His eyes could not blink, frozen in place. His bones were glaciers, his breath cold mist, his nails icicle daggers.

Sensei looked so small in his robes. “Will you help me, my boy? One last time.”

One last time.

It was always one last time.

Yusuke shivered. He saw red.

“Of course, Sensei.”