Chapter Text
You: Yo, Futaba
Futaba: yooo
You: I need your help with something kinda...
You: sketchy
You: and you’re the only person I can go to
Futaba: dude i am not gonna help you hire another darkweb hitman, i told you i’m out of that business for good
You: Uh
Futaba: Oh wait, that was someone else
Futaba: Proceed!
You: ...
You: I’m gonna pretend that didn’t happen and just go on with my thing
Futaba: Wise man
Futaba: So, how can my naughty little fingers be of use to you today
You: Futaba
Futaba: Yeah, re-read that one just now
Futaba: Shutting up, go ahead
You: Thank god
You: So, with as few follow-up questions as to why I’m asking as possible
You: Would you be able to hack into Goro Akechi’s browsing history and send it to me?
Futaba: Holy shit?
You: Specifically just the shopping sites he goes to, amazon or auction sites, that sort of thing
You: idk how hard it is to sift those out of the rest of the sites he visits though
Futaba: Buddy
Futaba: I’ve gone through dozens of politicians’ browsing history, digging up all the juiciest, nastiest bits in there
Futaba: We used to do that kinda shit all the time back in medjed, getting Dork Detective’s shit is child’s play
Futaba: but, uh
Futaba: that’s a pretty wild ask there, buddy
You: Yeah, this is where the whole ‘as few follow up questions as possible’ part comes in
Futaba: Okay, the fewest possible questions is...
Futaba: ...calculating...
You: jesus christ
Futaba: ...two!
You: this is gonna suck
You: Shoot
Futaba: Thank you, sir!
Futaba: Question One:
Futaba: Why the fuck do you want me to hack this dude?
You: because i’m depressed and an idiot
You: next
Futaba: ...well, you never said you’d give me helpful answers, so I’ll take it!
You: shit, I never said I’d give you any answers, I could have just not said anything...
Futaba: Too late, sucker!
Futaba: Next!
You: goddamnit
You: what’s question two then
Futaba: Seek help!
You: ...that’s... not a question
Futaba: Nope!
Futaba: But yeah bud. get some therapy
Futaba: trust me, hacking some local hottie’s browsing history isn’t a great sign
Futaba: not speaking from experience here, but medjed had a LOT of walking train wrecks in its ranks pulling that kind of shit and it did NOT end well
You: way ahead of you, Futaba
Futaba: whoa, really?
Futaba: like, you’re already looking into therapists?
You: well, no
Futaba: 👀
You: but I tell myself to find a therapist, like
You: ten times a day
You: that’s practically the same thing
Futaba: ...hoo boy
You: Boss?!
You: How’d you get Futaba’s phone?
Futaba: shut up, dumbass
You: 😇
Futaba: ugh, i’ll help you, but i’m totally gonna bug you about this again later
You: as long as you don’t mind me bugging you about the exact same thing,
miss recently-an-agoraphobic-shut-in
Futaba: bruh ive been got therapy
You: Really?
Futaba: yuh
Futaba: there’s a shitton of online shit avaliable these days, it’s not bad
Futaba: its not great, but its not bad
You: huh
Futaba: anyways, go grind some beans for a bit while I hack this nerd’s shopping history, i guess????
Futaba: i’ll text you a link to download the info once i’ve compiled it
You: sweet, thanks futaba!
Futaba: yeah yeah
---
Goro really wished he didn’t live on the fourth god damned floor.
It had been a long and hard enough day already; idiots at school making fun of how studious he was, idiots at the station making fun of how young he was, idiots from Shido’s cavalcade of criminals telling him to go kill other idiot criminals, and worst of all, a text from Shido giving him ‘constructive criticism’ on his latest interview appearance. Goro hadn’t even had time to stop by Leblanc for a cup of coffee and some half-decent company, only getting home now, at almost 8 at fucking night.
He was exhausted, tired, grumpy, and honestly would happily set fire to the whole apartment building if it meant the lower three stories would collapse and he wouldn’t have to climb all these fucking stairs. If he lived past Shido’s downfall, the next apartment he got would be one on the first damn floor, or one in a building with a fucking elevator.
Seriously.
He mounted the final few steps to the fourth floor, and turned the corner out of the stairwell, thanking the stars that his apartment was at least just two rooms down the hall from here-
-and froze. Outside of his apartment was a medium-sized cardboard box, emblazoned with all the dumb labeling and printing that Amazon put on their shipping materials these days. He walked over very carefully to it, getting a look at the box from all angles. It looked... like a normal Amazon box, but...
Well, Goro was very accustomed to living on a tight budget- he hadn’t had to do so for a couple years now, ever since he started getting regular, paid TV appearances and, more importantly, since he figured out how to grind through the lower levels of Mementos and gather up all the yen the Shadows dropped, but still. A youth full of poverty and no parental figures to support him gave Goro a very keen understanding of how to budget out what little cash he had, and habits like that died hard.
All of which was to say that he did not remember ordering anything recently, certainly nothing this sizeable. That left a very small number of options for how this got delivered to his door- and looking at the label, it was indeed addressed specifically to him, not just to his apartment number, but to him specifically, his name and everything written out in black and white.
There were a few possible explanations.
Option one: one of his neighbors, or his landlady, perhaps, had a sudden stroke of charity, or perhaps a sudden stroke in general, and had ordered him something without telling him. This was extremely unlikely, as he hadn’t said a word to any of his neighbors since he moved in, an abundance of caution for anyone potentially recognizing him and just general misanthropy driving him to avoid them at all costs. His landlady was an even more unlikely candidate- she wasn’t cruel or money-grubbing or anything, but she was quite possibly the most technically illiterate person he had ever encountered. She required each month’s rent to be paid in cash to her directly, and he had seen her stuff the piles of yen into a literal locked chest in the back of her offices, claiming to ‘not trust those banks with their fancy spreadsheets and pagers and three-piece suits. The idea of that woman even knowing what Amazon was was laughable. So, anyone who knew him from the building itself, quite unlikely.
Option two: somehow, despite his extensive, excruciating efforts, his address had leaked online, and this was the first of what would be an avalanche of stupid, vapid ‘gifts’ from his stupid, vapid fanbase. This was unlikely for two reasons- first, he had an alert set on his phone for any spikes in activity involving the words ‘goro akechi’ and ‘address,’ and the only alerts he’d gotten about that in the past several months were the usual random forum threads of people asking about it, and second, the number of his fans had declined quite dramatically in recent months, in direct proportion to the rise of the Phantom Thieves’ popularity. So, fans somehow sending him a gift, very unlikely.
Option three: during one of the nights where Goro couldn’t get to sleep, and stayed up until the asscrack of dawn, scrolling through whatever webpages he could find that caught his interest enough to distract him from the ever-present horror of life, he impulse-bought something for himself and then completely forgot he had done so. Depressingly, that was entirely possible, as Goro was a humiliating mess in his private life on the best of days, but a quick check through his account’s order history on Amazon put the kibosh on that theory right quickly.
Which just left him option four.
Option four: Goro Akechi had a stalker.
He sighed at the inevitable-feeling conclusion, and shook his head rapidly, shaking himself out of the various thoughts he had gotten lost in for some embarrassingly unknown number of minutes just there. Not really having much reason to leave it where it was, Goro bent down and scooped the package up- it was surprisingly light- and fiddled with the lock on his door until it swung open, then shut again as he went inside and kicked it closed.
Goro made his way to the living room and placed the box down delicately on his coffee table, leaving it there while he stowed away all the things he usually stowed away when he got home- briefcase, homework from inside the briefcase, shoes, jacket, gloves, belt- he even decided to trade his button-up and slacks for something more comfortable, some random pair of sweats and an old t-shirt he used when he went rock climbing. That done, he made his way to the kitchen, pulled a frozen pack of chicken yakisoba out of the freezer, and tossed it in the microwave.
After nabbing a glass of water, Goro ran out of shit to do to keep his mind from obsessing over the package, and with a noisy, admittedly somewhat whiny sigh, he went back over to the couch and plopped down. He might as well open it- the thing was clearly all official Amazon packaging, it was very unlikely that someone had somehow fabricated it to look like Amazon packaging and stuffed some sort of poison or something in there, so it was probably fine, and even if it wasn’t, who really cared.
A few minutes of noisy tape-peeling and cardboard-tearing later, and the package was open, leaving Goro face to face with...
...he took it out delicately, carefully, the way one would handle something precious and fragile. It wasn’t fragile, and it was probably only precious to Goro and a few dozen people like him across the globe, but, well... how else could Goro be expected to react?
For months now, he had been trying to find an affordable version of the Feather Black figma they had released at the last WonFes, all to no avail. It was the first piece of high-quality, official Feather Black merch the Featherman team had released in decades, and had sold out barely minutes after it had gone on sale, Goro’s dumb, pathetic internet speed just barely too laggy for him to make it into the queue in time. These days, every re-sale of the figma out there went for fifty thousand yen, at minumum, and Goro had a lot of cash from his trips to Mementos, but not that much to just throw around at a shiny new figma.
And yet, here it was, in mint condition, sent right to his doorstep with no note, no sign of who sent it, nothing.
Goro made a noise of surprise as his vision suddenly blurred and went murky, only realizing a second or two later that he was crying. He put the figma back in the bubble-wrap-filled box delicately before clawing around for some tissues, swearing at himself for being so stupid and weak.... though he was self-aware enough to understand where he was coming from. Nobody, literally nobody in the world had ever just... given him something this nice, and certainly nobody had ever given him anything nice without several razor-sharp strings attached. Shido had provided the down payment on this apartment, various TV execs under Shido’s thumb had given Goro gift baskets and bottles of champagne with a wink and a finger to their lips, fans had given him boxes of sweets and made horrible little shrines to him, all of them, every last thing given with the clear expectation and understanding that Goro would continue dancing like the sweet, sharp, clever little puppet they all saw him as.
This... this kind of sheer, unexpected, seemingly unconditional kindness was so, so totally foreign to Goro. It was wonderful and truly horrible all at the same time.
The microwave dinged loudly, startling him out of his reverie, and Goro hurriedly wiped the rest of the mess off of his face and went to finish preparing his food. He’d deal with all of this later, he really couldn’t handle it right now. For now, he’d plate his food, put on an episode of the season of Featherman he had been rewat- well, no, that’d probably start the waterworks all over again. He’d plate his food, put on an episode of some dumb shounen anime, eat, do his homework, and sleep.
And tomorrow, he’d get to work finding out who exactly sent him this, and more importantly, almost more importantly than any other investigation he had done since arriving in Tokyo, why.