Chapter Text
The rain begins when he is about to leave, and it’s coming down hard. Cats and dogs, as the English saying goes. He doesn’t know yet how the saying comes to be. Why cats and dogs? What about the rain has inspired people to think about pets? Where does the cat’s part begin, and where does the dog’s end? He stands pondering alone below an awning of a Shibuya store.
Shibuya. He has never really liked this place.
Dirty. Shabby. Hints of flattened cigarettes and litters everywhere on the ashpalt. You could hardly find something like this anywhere else in Greater Tokyo area. Not even in Shinjuku. Not even, in Kabuki-cho. That is saying something, and what it’s saying isn’t good.
Shibuya is popular with tourists and foreigners. That must be why. Everything happens in Shibuya. Halloween parties, Christmas events, New Year parties. And all the gaijin are there for it. Every time he passes the Hachiko statue, tourists line up to take a picture with it. Imagine. Lining up to take pictures with a statue of a dog.
He sighs. Leans back and watches the water drops fall from the edge of an awning. Curses the fact that he left his umbrella at work, but also can’t make a run for the train station. His face is widely known now, he doesn’t want anyone snapping pictures of him
drenched in rain, leather gloves and all. Soaked through like a cat that falls into a river. He can’t have that. He’s got an image to keep, a good appearance to uphold. Charming smile, hair that’s never once out of place while he’s on tv. He wants to keep his image that way.
It is important after all, to look perfect, or they wouldn’t want him on tv anymore. He doubts anyone takes him seriously as a detective. It’s definitely his looks. His youth. It’s the novelty of someone so young working with the police. The real Kudo Shinichi. Nobody would pay attention to just any old detective.
Youth shall not be wasted on him.
He glances to his side and catches sight of Shido’s face on a newspaper in a newspaper stand. Feels, then, a slight bitterness in his mouth. Shido’s face has been everywhere these days. His name has been mentioned in the news. Even out of the eye of public, Shido has been everywhere. Thanks, no doubt, to his hard work.
A faint pulse at the center of his chest. Inside him, Loki is reacting.
Shido Masayoshi. Hard to tell what his mother has seen in him, all those years ago. Was Shido better than he is now? Was he gentle to her? There are questions he wishes he could ask his mother.
But she has died. In a hospital bed, without even waiting for him coming home from school. He hurried home one day only to find that she had died thirty minutes before his school ended, her face already covered with a white sheet.
When he left the room, the light was turned off with a click and that’s how he imagines his mother has died: like a light going out. She was cremated afterwards. Quick. Efficient. A quiet end for a pitiful woman. Ashes to ashes. Dust to women ruined by love.
But she only had herself to blame. His mother had fallen in love and she had gone out on a limb for that love. You never go out on a limb for love. For any kind of love. Let yourself go a little reckless, but not too reckless. Be a little crazy and love drunk, but just so. Never go all out, especially for a man like Shido.
A boy steps under the awning to join and interrupts him mid-thought,
bumps into his shoulder gently, before moving away to give space between them. He hears the word ‘sorry’ muttered, in a voice he’s heard before.
And Akechi Goro looks up
to see Kurusu Akira standing next to him, hair and clothes damp from the rain. Drops of water on his glasses, cling to the tips of his curls but he doesn’t seem to mind. His expression is sure, gentle, unbothered by the rain.
A black cat pokes his head out of the small opening of his school bag and says, “What are you gonna do now, Akira? It’s raining so hard. Why did you give your umbrella to that Nijima senpai? You know she’s been following us around, right? She must be scheming something.”
Without looking at the cat, Kurusu Akira just smiles. “It’s fine, Morgana.” He says with a quiet voice, almost a whisper. “It’s just rain. It’s no big deal.”
“To you.” Morgana says, sounding annoyed. “Do you know how much time I spend on licking my fur? And don’t get me wrong, I don’t wanna be doing that, but I’m a cat you know! It’s gross when I don’t lick my fur and rain is just going to mess it up!”
“Do you want me to give you a bath after this?”
“I’m not an actual cat!”
Kurusu Akira chuckles. “Here.” He zips his bag close until there is only a very small opening on top of it, ignoring the cat’s protest. “I promise it’ll be quick.”
And then he steps out to the rain with a huge grin on his face. The rain wastes no time in soaking him through; his hair, his school blazer, his pants… but there is no hesitation. Kurusu Akira dashes quick in front of him, runs fast to the direction of the station and disappears in the distance before he even knows it.
(Later that night, he would doze off with Morgana on his lap, sitting in the coin laundry, waiting for his uniform to dry.)
Alone now, he keeps standing under the awning in silence, gaze fixed to where the boy has gone without noticing him even once.
Kurusu Akira doesn’t know him. But he knows who Kurusu Akira is.
He has seen the boy before, in all his Phantom Thieves glory. The Phantom Thieves’ leader. Clad in all black get up and blood red gloves, eyes obscured by a phantom mask, standing in Madarame’s museum of mind. Seen from afar, he couldn’t tell Kurusu Akira’s expression beneath his mask, could not tell what kind of person he was.
So just then he made sure to catch everything and commit it to his memory. Every gesture. All of his subtleties.
(It’s the detective in him, he reasons. It’s all detective’s work.)
Kurusu Akira’s quietness. Then, his surprisingly cocky grin. A show of great confidence. The absence of his fear of rain. Of anything, it seems. How free Kurusu Akira has looked running like that, as if nothing in this world chains him down.
Without his mask, Akechi could see it all so clearly.
He feels what he thinks as an instant distaste.
They will meet soon. He has made sure of that. They have the same powers, and it is only a matter of time until their paths cross.
And when that time comes, he’ll get rid of him. The cocky boy, running around Palaces with his little friends like he owns them, not knowing that the space has long been occupied.
That the Metaverse is not big enough for the two of them.
But even these thoughts can’t make him tear his eyes away from the direction where the boy has gone, as if just by staring he could will the boy to once again materialize in the middle of the drenched streets.
Because deep in his chest, something has leapt in and landed itself right there: somewhere inside his ribs, nestled there along with the inferno that has been weighing on his gut for as long as he’s lived.