Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Weeks before the move, Akira had ordered in bulk an assortment of instant noodle cups. They lie in boxes stacked in the corner of his attic, plastic wrap covering all but one of them. His mother was rather hands-off about the whole affair, but at the very least, she'd been considerate enough to buy him an electric kettle — which sits on the floor, plugged semi-permanently into the wall.

The instant noodles, he tells himself, are only temporary: something to tide him over until he gets a job and can afford better food. They're overly salty, over-seasoned and dreadfully cheap in the noodles' simultaneous mushiness and fragility, but they're warm. There's a weight in his chest that never quite goes away — something that makes him feel inexplicably lethargic, more so than a day of travel would necessitate. The instant noodles touch it, but only barely — enough to chip away at it, but not enough to rid him of the feeling altogether.

It's an odd, semi-permanent feeling that had made him its home minutes, hours, days after the arrest: a heaviness to his limbs, a buzzing static in his mind that simultaneously makes him aware of everything in him and around him, but paradoxically unable to focus on any of it. He knows, logically, that there are words for this feeling and that it's something he should worry about sooner rather than later — but he's in an unfamiliar room that doesn't feel like his own, and his mother hasn't said more than two words to him in months, and the cheap instant noodles, warm as they are, slide uneasily down his throat as his stomach clenches unpleasantly and his already tenuous grasp on his appetite abandons him.

He leaves the noodles half-finished, on the desk instead of the trash on the off chance that his appetite will come back later. It doesn't; the next morning, he throws them away on his way out the door.

When he was still in preschool, Akira's parents divorced. His father was an indistinct blur in his memory, punctuated by lingering, shadowed sensations of a large hand resting on his head and tangling in his curls, and shouting muffled by the closed door to his mother's room. He doesn't remember his father, not really, but he remembers looking at his mother, at the lines in her face and the perpetual furrow in her brow, and knowing, though not understanding why, that this was better than how it was before.

His grandmother moved in with them some months later, a big smile on her face as she hugged his mother and told her that everything was going to be okay. Akira didn't understand it at the time — what it meant that his grandmother was there to take care of him, and how that freed up his mother to work as much as she needed to in order to keep the family finances afloat — but what it meant for Akira was that his grandmother was always there.

She'd walk to his elementary school and wave at him from the school gates, after the last bell rang. Then, Akira would say goodbye to his friends, and walk with her to the grocery store. "What do you want to eat today?" she'd ask. She was a good cook, so he'd give her a different answer every day — but more often than not, it was curry.

In hindsight, he's not sure if his grandmother ever made it a point to follow a recipe — but her curry was special in a way that he didn't have the words to describe. She'd cut the vegetables and meat slowly and rhythmically; between the sounds of the knife hitting the cutting board, the sizzle of oil and the rumbling of boiling water on the stove, the soft whirring of the ceiling fan spinning in lazy circles above him and the cicadas chirping outside, Akira could stay here and watch her for hours.

His grandmother would say that nothing was better than coming home to a hot meal at the end of a long day. It was hard to argue with her logic when his mother would come home after work with a weary sigh, and the perpetual frown in her brow would vanish the second she stepped through the door because the house would smell of onions and ginger and spices and meat. His grandmother would say that his mother worked too hard, that it was sad that she had to do so, but a nice home-cooked meal could bring her back.

Then his grandmother died when he was in middle school. It happened suddenly, silently, as she fell asleep one night and did not wake up the next morning — his mother said that it was the best way for her to go, because she likely didn't feel any pain before passing on. She'd left behind few possessions, and their routines changed little once she was gone — his mother still worked late, because Akira was old enough now to stay home by himself. But his grandmother's absence was still everywhere — when Akira would come home after school to an empty house, absent of all the sights and smells he'd come to associate with home — in the take-out containers stacked in the fridge.

His grandmother left behind no recipes, but one thing that had not changed was that it was still the best thing in the world to come home to a hot meal at the end of a long day. Akira didn't consider himself a good cook by any means, but in the months following his grandmother's passing, he decided to try. He mastered the art of picking out recipes on the internet that were well within his questionable skill level, that he could replicate decently enough that when his mother came home, the perpetual furrow in her brow would ease ever so slightly and her lips would curve upward into the faintest hint of a smile.

It was hard to find the energy to keep doing it after the arrest. It was hard to do much of anything at all, except lie in bed and count the hours as they slipped by — but once he gained the presence of mind to do something, the first thing he did was make curry. He hadn't gone grocery shopping in a while, so there wasn't much to work with in the fridge — but he'd managed to pull something together, and it didn't taste the same as his grandmother's but it was still good because it was his.

When his mother walked through the front door that evening, he gave her the biggest smile he could muster. He'd thought that, maybe, things would go back to normal after this — that his mother would smile at him, that they would sit down and eat together like they did every day before and after his grandmother died, that she'd hate him less if he'd only kept up with this one small thing — but the perpetual furrow in her brow didn't fade. She simply pursed her lips, and pushed past him on her way upstairs.

The next day, the leftover curry was exactly as he'd left it in the fridge — his mother hadn't even touched it. With a heavy sigh, Akira spooned it onto a plate and reheated it. It was the same curry but this time, he could pick out all the imperfections: he'd over-salted it, cut the vegetables into too-large chunks, let the meat cook too long. It was nothing like his grandmother's curry, and he felt foolish for even trying to recreate it.

Somehow, they make it to school — and then they're immediately whisked away to the teacher's lounge. Akira keeps his head down at least in a literal sense, despite having spectacularly failed to keep his nose clean on the very first day of school. He hasn't even been in Tokyo for a full week.

Four hours. They'd been stuck for four hours in that strange other world — plus a half hour more spent crouched over a public toilet just a little ways away from the school, because the swirling colors of that other place bleeding sickeningly into reality and the lingering headache from when Arsene had practically forced his way out have left him feeling simultaneously exhausted and sick to his stomach.

—and it's all culminated in Akira landing in trouble on his very first day, all but violating the terms of his probation before it could truly start. Kawakami stares at him and Ryuji with her eyes narrowed, and Akira knows that look — he's intimately familiar with it. It's the look of someone who's never going to believe you, no matter what you tell them or how plausible the truth is. He's been on the receiving end of it enough times that it hardly fazes him anymore, but to see it turned on Ryuji — who'd been ready to die for him in that other world, who'd been so patient as he rubbed Akira's back and said nothing when Akira had been too sick to apologize — makes some ugly combination of guilt and anger swirl unpleasantly along with the residual nausea in his gut.

"I was feeling sick," says Akira. "Sakamoto helped me."

Akira braces himself for the disbelief, the accusations that he's lying or exaggerating the truth so much that it's no longer believable, and desperately wishes for that same rush of power from Arsene that got him through that other world. More than that, though, is how jarring it is that he's just as powerless here as he'd been the day he first landed in this mess. It makes him desperately wish for home — not the cafe, but home — back in time to when his mother would look at him with something other than disgust and disappointment — to when his grandmother would still be there at the school gates, waiting for him — to a plate of curry and rice laid before him, warm and good and putting back together the hideously fragmented pieces of his life.

But Kawakami's eyes soften. "Yeah, you don't look too good," she says. "Do you think you can make it through the rest of today?" He knows, logically, that the answer that's expected of him is yes — but he's so tired, and just the thought of being anywhere but his bed is enough to make his eyes start to sting. "All right," says Kawakami, before he can tell her that he'll suck it up. "I'll call your guardian to come pick you up, then."

He should protest — tell her that he'll be fine — but what comes out instead is a mumbled, "Thank you."

The three of them walk out of the teacher's lounge together, Kawakami's hand on Akira's back and a post-it note stuck to Ryuji's thumb. "Feel better, man," says Ryuji, patting Akira's shoulder twice before they part ways. The school nurse lets Akira sleep until Sojiro gets there, and Akira's sure he's still half-dreaming when he wakes up to Sojiro gently shaking his shoulder — a furrow in his brow, but looking neither disgusted nor disappointed.

Akira sleeps for nearly the rest of the day, until well after it's dark out. He doesn't feel sick anymore, but the exhaustion that's come from everything that happened in the other world has settled in his bones, making it difficult to keep his eyes open even though he's just awake enough that he won't be able to fall back asleep anytime soon.

He's not hungry, hasn't been really hungry in a long time, but he knows that the exhaustion is at least in part due to there being nothing in his stomach. He eyes the boxes of instant noodles stacked against the wall, and thinks, stubbornly, nope. But there's nothing else, and the thought of spending even a little bit of his stipend on something else just for today leaves him feeling faintly ill again. The smells coming from the cafe downstairs, onions and ginger and spices and meat, are almost but not quite the same as what he remembers of home.

He wonders if Sojiro will let him try some of the curry that Leblanc is known for. He knows without even having to ask that the answer will be no — because Sojiro has already gone out of his way for him today, by driving to the school in the middle of the day to pick him up, and will no doubt still be annoyed because Akira is already imposing on him and should be more than capable of taking care of himself. So he eyes the kettle on the floor, and swallows a grimace as he mentally prepares himself for another night of half-eaten instant noodles. He closes his eyes as they begin to sting, because he's too old to be tearing up at thoughts of his grandmother.

He misses the footsteps, louder and louder the closer they get to the attic. When he opens his eyes again, swallowing down a sob that very nearly bubbles to the surface, it's to a Sojiro who still has a furrow in his brow, but still looks neither disgusted nor disappointed. There's a tray tucked in his arm, and Akira can't see what's on it, but there's steam swirling upward and the smell of onions and ginger and spices and meat. "How's your stomach doing?" Sojiro asks.

"Better," Akira answers.

Sojiro clears his throat awkwardly, and sets the tray down on Akira's lap. "If you're up to it... well, you haven't eaten all day." Akira winces, because sometimes he forgets to eat and sometimes he's too anxious to eat, and today had been one of the worst days for the two to overlap. "And kids like you shouldn't be eating that instant crap all the time."

Akira reaches over to grab his school bag from where he'd dropped it before collapsing into bed earlier, and fishes for his wallet. "How much?"

"Oh..." says Sojiro, his eyes widening slightly. "Don't... don't worry about it." It's so unexpectedly nice of him that Akira can't help but stare at the curry for a long moment and wonder what he'll have to do in return. Sojiro clears his throat again, and reaches for the water bottle on the floor. "I'll fill this up for you," he says, before heading downstairs.

Akira tries a bite. It's not the same as his grandmother's — there's onions and ginger and garlic and potatoes, but the meat's texture is different. There's tomato, but it tastes different than the tomato paste she'd use. Curry powder, soy sauce, and garam masala, but something else that he can't quite pinpoint — but it's good. 

This time, he's powerless to stop the tears. He doesn't know what he's crying for, but he does know that he's a long, long way from home — and that home as he remembers it is something he'll never get back. The proof is in the curry: so similar, yet so different to his grandmother's.

Eventually, Sojiro comes back upstairs. Akira knows that he should feel embarrassed, because he's old enough to take care of himself and Sojiro has already made it abundantly clear that he has no intentions of doing so for him — that he should apologize, because it's so dreadfully childish of him to have a meltdown over curry, of all things. But the tears don't stop, and he chokes on a sob, and he's still breaking down in front of someone who, at the end of the day, is more of a landlord than a parent.

—but then Sojiro sets his water bottle down on the floor, and rubs Akira's back. "Take it easy, kid," he mutters, before heading back downstairs and leaving him to his frayed and uncontrollable emotions.

It takes a while for him to stop sobbing, for his breathing to even out and the tears to dry — but when he does, Akira takes another bite of the curry. It's no longer steaming hot, but it's still blissfully warm. The comforting weight of food in his stomach takes the edge off the exhaustion that's settled in his bones, and he wonders what tomorrow will bring — if, maybe, Ryuji will want to go back to that other world after school.

They don't speak of the incident again — but some weeks later, Sojiro lets him behind the cafe's counter and tosses him an apron. "Help me out here a few nights a week," he says, "and you can have all the curry you want." And somewhere between rattling off names for different kinds of beans, he slides Akira a plate of curry and rice.

It's not the same as his grandmother's — but that's okay.

Chapter Text

Crepes, Akira learns within two weeks of knowing Ann, aren't all that different from pancakes, in theory. The ingredients are the same: butter, eggs, milk, flour, salt, sugar, oil. The difference is in the consistency of the batter — perhaps, he wonders, in the blenders whirring on the countertop behind the register.

The place Ann takes him to is within walking distance of the school. The blenders spin, and spin, and spin as batter swirls within them and he watches, mesmerized, as it falls from the cup in the chef's hand onto a round stovetop and the chef uses some kind of wooden stick to spread it into a perfect circle. The chef moves to the next crepe, digging his spatula into it and flipping over its contents in one smooth motion as the white that had been swirling in the blenders just moments ago turns golden, all but folding to his will.

Ann eyes the small mountain of fruit and cream in that crepe, and tells the cashier, "I'll have that one." She orders Akira a crepe filled with strawberries and chocolate hazelnut spread, and the two of them plop down at a table by the window. Ann prods the edge of a strawberry with her plastic fork, and smiles wistfully. "Shiho used to love this place."

Akira should ask her about it — ask if she's doing okay, after everything. It's a stupid question, though; of course she's not okay. It's a familiar sense of wrongness — the same as what comes with Ann talking about her friend in the past tense.

But then she launches into an explanation of an upcoming modeling shoot, smiling as if nothing is wrong, and the moment passes.

Akira tries a bite of his crepe. It's... too sweet.

After Kamoshida confesses, people look at Ann differently. Now she's no longer Kamoshida's girl, but his victim. It's a point that's contested: her abuse is not so obvious, since she doesn't bear the same bruises and scabs as the people on the volleyball team. It leaves her in a strange sort of limbo where no one knows what to think of her anymore.

It's as if Kamoshida is still here — still looming over their shoulders, threatening to destroy everything if he doesn't get his way. Akira sees it in Ann's acrylic nails, painted red as Panther's suit; Kamoshida, she'd said, had never liked it when she wore her nails long, and preferred simpler French manicures. He sees it in the cancelled volleyball practices, the way Mishima still can't quite look him in the eye despite how the bruises on his face fade from black and blue, to vaguely yellowish, to nothing at all. He sees it in his own reputation — still in tatters because no one's stopped to think that this, too, is another thing that Kamoshida had made up in his mad grab for power. He sees it in the teachers still yelling at Ryuji as if he's always been, will always be the school's worst problem student.

He sees it in the way two third-years at the end of the hall whisper, just loudly enough for him to hear, "Maybe she's just doing it for the attention.

Ryuji spins on his heel, and it's only Ann's fingers curled tightly around his bicep that stop him from knocking the two third-years down where they stand. "What was that?" he shouts.

"Ryuji—" Ann starts.

"Just fuckin' try it!"

"Ryuji!"

Akira links his arm with Ryuji's, and yanks him into the next corridor before the third-years can flag down a teacher. His heart thuds painfully in his chest, as it did that last day in Kamoshida's Palace, but there's no end goal to temper it — nowhere for the anxiety to go but downward, into the sweat collecting in his palms and the consequent nausea that's starting to pool in his gut. "That was dumb," Morgana chastises Ryuji, or maybe him, but Akira pays it no mind as he forces himself to breathe.

Ryuji wrenches his arm out of Akira's grasp, and glares at the floor. "Sorry," Akira whispers.

"The hell are you apologizing for?" Ryuji snaps. Akira tries not to flinch, but doesn't succeed all the way — he knows that Ryuji's anger is only residual and that he doesn't mean anything by it, but loud, angry voices directed at him are something Akira hasn't been able to handle well as of late.

Ann smiles, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. "I'm the one who should be apologizing here," she says, though that's not quite right either. None of them should have to apologize — and yet here they are, still at the mercy of Shujin and its student body — as if nothing has changed even though they know, logically, that everything has.

"Children these days..." says the commenter on the news, a man in a black suit with his hair slicked back. "... they take everything so personally."

"There's no need to see everything as a personal offense," says another commentator, an older woman with her greying hair twisted into a bun. "I mean, just look at Junko Kashihara. It's downright disrespectful to suggest that her entire marriage — her family — is wrong."

The third commentator, a boy with brown hair that comes down to his shoulders, chuckles. "Now, now," he says, "let's not discount what this teacher has actually confessed to. To my knowledge, Junko Kashihara's husband did not make a habit of abusing his students."

"But that's the question, isn't it?" says the first commentator. "Is it inherently abusive for teachers to engage in such relationships with their students?"

"Well clearly," says the second commentator, "that girl Mr. Kamoshida dated seemed to have no problem whatsoever—"

—the batter burns, sticking to the bottom of the pan.

The scent of it is cloying, filling the cafe's kitchen far too quickly, and Akira mutters a string of curses under his breath as he takes the pan off the fire. He digs his spatula into it, scraping it across the bottom of the pan as what was supposed to be a crepe comes out in ribbons and pieces.

Sojiro shoves his way into the kitchen, and takes them from him in one swift motion, scraping the remnants of the batter into the plate Akira had kept to the side for this exact purpose. "Next time," he says, "use a non-stick pan."

Junko Kashihara, née Kurosu. Married her high school social studies teacher. Had a kid with him. Still happily married to him, decades later. Husband and son comfortably out of the public eye despite her career in the entertainment industry, save for one picture from a decade or two back of a boy the splitting image of her.

Akira thinks of Ann and wonders if, in some years' time, she would have been married to Kamoshida too, if the coach were to have his way — but then he thinks back to that one news interview, "to my knowledge, Junko Kashihara's husband did not make a habit of abusing his students—"

—but it doesn't matter, does it? Her husband was still a teacher, still had power over her that even their apparent love for each other couldn't touch. It didn't matter that he waited until after she'd graduated, that she had been the one to initiate the relationship and not him, that their son owed his entire existence to the fact that a teacher had dated and married one of his students; Junko Kashihara's husband still reciprocated, and he still had the means to utterly ruin her, should she anger him.

Just as Kamoshida had threatened to do to Shiho, should Ann refuse him. Just as he succeeded in doing to Ryuji, because he dared to challenge him.

(Just as he very nearly did to Akira, too.)

—and they find themselves in Ann's apartment, one Saturday evening. Ann lies sprawled on the couch, makeup scrubbed so thoroughly off her face that she looks exhausted. Ryuji's sleeping over; Akira's going home in a few hours because a spontaneous sleepover like this is not something he can ask of Sojiro just yet. The t-shirt and sweatpants that Ann had let him borrow are a great deal more comfortable than his school uniform, and it makes it that much easier to whisk batter in a mixing bowl.

Two cups of flour, two teaspoons of sugar, and a pinch of salt. Three eggs, one and a half cups of milk, and a quarter stick of unsalted butter. Heat oil in a non-stick pan over medium heat, add a small amount of batter, and swirl to spread it all over the pan. (Maybe it'll taste better if he coats the pan with butter instead of oil.)

"—and who's to say that he wasn't put up to this?" says a commentator on the news.

The same boy as before, with shoulder-length brown hair and a positively sparkling smile, chuckles. "Well, that's the million-yen question, isn't it? Was the confession genuine? Or was he extorted? Either way, word at my school is that Shujin is far better off with him gone."

"Tokyo Shimbun reports that a student attempted suicide not two weeks before Suguru Kamoshida's confession. Allegedly, this tragic incident occurred as a direct result of Kamoshida's actions."

"But to implicate him on the basis of just one student's mental health is—"

Ryuji lets out a groan that's halfway to a scream, catching in his throat and making his voice crack. He's also in a t-shirt and sweatpants borrowed from Ann, and somehow manages to look comfortable even as he twists his body to bury his face into a pillow. "Why are we watching this?" he grumbles. "Turn it off!"

—but Ann continues to lie there on the couch, curled onto her side with her eyes fixed on the screen. The commentators prattle on, and on, and on, and though they never mention any of the students' names, it's obvious who they're talking about all the same. Ryuji lunges for the remote, and the screen flickers to Red Falcon striking a pose as the rest of the Featherman Rangers assemble behind him. Ann blinks, heavily, and shakes her head a bit before saying, "... sorry, what?"

Ryuji gives her a look then — and oh, how Akira wishes he'd come to Tokyo sooner, if only for a chance at ending this earlier, before Ann and Ryuji and Shiho could be hurt this badly.

—but for now, all he has is a crepe. The cream is from a can, not fresh, and likewise, the fruit is little more than a small handful of strawberry pieces swimming in jelly. "Did you make this?" Ann asks, her eyes going a bit wide.

It could be better. If he had one of those sticks that the chefs at the crepe stand had been using, it would be rounder. Maybe if he melted some chocolate and drizzled it on, the puddles of strawberry jelly and misshapen blobs of cream would look a little less sad.

—but Ann smiles all the same, and tucks in. "So good!" she gushes, and he can't quite tell if she's exaggerating to spare his ego, or if she really thinks it's that good — but either way, it doesn't matter.

"Me too?" Ryuji asks.

It's not perfect, but it's a start. "Coming right up," says Akira, smiling. He can't undo what Kamoshida did to them, but this — sticking with Ryuji no matter what the teachers say against him, making Ann one of her favorite foods, simply spending his days with them despite everything — this, he can do.