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The air around him moves as a train rushes by.
It’s headed the exact opposite direction Akechi is going. The rehab center had been further out in the countryside, but this station is much more familiar to him. He’s back home, but...
No, it isn’t home.
Tokyo’s all he’s ever known, but it isn’t home.
They say that home can be a person. There were only two people he’d ever found himself caring about, and one of them he’d found lifeless and bathed in blood on a sunny afternoon long, long ago. It felt like home had died with her. A few years into the foster system, Akechi understood that he wasn’t worthy of a home, or a mother, or life at all. In fact, no one was. But like those around him, he was weak, and he still craved that which he did not deserve - praise, affection. Love. To feel like there would be some dent in someone, anyone else’s world when he was gone.
But that was irrational. Childish. Out of every adult he’d had the misfortune of knowing before the court had deemed him an emancipated minor, not a single one had cared.
He used to watch the other kids at school get picked up by their smiling parents, imagining what it would be like to be in their place. Had his mother loved him? No, of course not. After all, little Goro had ruined her life simply by being born.
He wasn’t worthy of affection, or any positive emotion the human brain could throw together. He’d left nothing but chaos and destruction in his wake since his very first breath.
And it was all because of that man.
His detective skills weren’t all for show. Equipped with a name and a fiery determination, he soon found a purpose to give to his meaningless life. If he was cursed, forbidden from any pleasant human experience at all, then he would drag the one man responsible for it all down to hell with him.
Time passed and Akechi became somehow even more of an undesirable child. He lost himself, though in his opinion, there wasn’t much to lose. But it was all pragmatic, none of it mattered, nothing mattered but bringing Shido to justice.
And when finally he had revenge in his grasp, He just had to go and take it all away.
He’d tricked him.
He’d won, because he was better than Akechi could ever pretend to be.
He not only overcame hardship, but actively fought for the sake of others. Akechi could never quite figure out why - he knew none of his clearly inferior company would do the same for him. In this world fueled by self interest and manipulated by ignorance, Kurusu managed to be the single most infuriating anomaly. He even pretended to care about him . On his weaker days, Akechi found himself almost believing the boy.
He was perfect.
He was rash, overconfident.
He was beautiful.
He was a self-sacrificing idiot.
He was everything Akechi could never be.
And god, he hated him for it. He hated himself for enjoying his company, under the guise of ‘gathering intel’. Kurusu’s existence was a constant reminder that Akechi had let himself become this, this bloodthirsty caricature of a human. And it was too late for him to be anything else.
Everything would be easier if Kurusu wasn’t around to remind him of that.
He’d been so proud of himself in that dark room, staring down at the boy’s beaten body. He’d grinned like the killer he was as he pulled the trigger. It was the best he’d felt in months. He’d won, he was better than him, he was right, he’d been right all along, bonds only made you weak, and Akechi was strong, stronger than anyone else in this pathetic world.
So why had life suddenly seemed so dull?
He could still see it in his mind’s eye - the crowd behind the camera, unimportant, the hosts incoherently rambling, distracting, and the crashing wave of realization that what he’d shot was a cognition. Fury - yes, there was fury, but there was color, too. There was excitement in seeing the world again, even if only through a hazy red.
And yet, when it came down to it - when the cognition peered blankly at Crow’s beaten body, daring him to take the shot - he’d sacrificed himself.
Why?
Because he’d just realized Shido knew it all from the start.
Because he realized that he’d given up so much of himself over the years that he no longer knew if there had ever been a person to begin with.
Because he’d become nothing more than a pawn begging to be used, to be needed.
Because he couldn’t bring himself to look Joker in the eyes and pull the trigger again.
He was dead.
During the entire fever dream that was Maruki’s god-awful reality, Akechi knew his days were counted. He didn’t really care, though. After all, he was fighting alongside Joker, and his life, though short, had a purpose again. Even if that purpose was essentially ensuring his own death. Then again, ‘living’ in that hellhole Maruki thought was so perfect would have been worse than death, in his humble (read: correct) opinion.
He was dead.
And yet, he wasn’t.
His memory after the shots rang out in the engine room was vague, but not gone. With a dizzied stance and blurring vision, Akechi had pushed himself off the ground of a wet alleyway. His vision had started to clear. He began feeling the cold hit of the raindrops against his skin. Then, his hearing - at first, a loud ringing, transitioning to the roar of the rain crashing onto the asphalt. Everything was so loud and so… much, it was too much and Akechi needed everything to stop, to be quiet, for the streetlamp to be less bright, for the rain to shut up . He’d covered his ears, squeezed his eyes shut, slid back down the wall of the alleyway and blacked out.
When he woke up again, his senses were mostly back - that included a dull ache he could feel everywhere in his body. Loki had hissed at him, something about getting up and not having enough energy to save you again.
He’d shifted from his place on the ground a bit, trying to get up, and was hit with a stab of immense pain to his lower chest. The ringing was back, the world blurred for a moment before everything steadied again. It was dark out, and he needed help, medical attention, but he couldn’t go to the hospital, not anymore - he’d be recognized instantly, it’d be all over the media. No, he needed to go somewhere remote, somewhere he could somewhat trust.
There was only one place he could think of.
He’d limped to his apartment, carelessly put together a bag, and got on one of the trains that run at night, red scarf shielding him from the cold December air that seeped through the train’s doors.
The rehabilitation center staff hadn’t recognized him, but they still had their files on hand.
“How’s your mother doing, Akechi-kun?” they’d asked. He’d smiled his beautifully empty smile, curtly informed them she had passed away. There were words, imitations of compassion, all variations of the standard politeness that was expected of any upstanding citizen.
They’d agreed to let him stay and work, once he’d recovered. His blood boiled at the thought of scraping by only on the scraps given to him out of sheer pity, but he didn’t have the luxury of acting irrationally in his situation.
As it turns out, it was a ‘medical miracle’ he’d even made it that far - something about his blood pressure, internal bleeding in the abdomen - but the doctors had sorted him out. It took him around 3 months to recover. During that time, he spent every waking moment improving the rehab facilities any way he could. After all, if he intended to do something, he intended to excel in it.
One day, the staff had told him he was in stable condition, good to go . The next day, his bag was packed and he was gone.
So here he is now, standing amongst the usual Shibuya underground crowd, waiting on a train to Yongen-Jaya. He doesn’t have much of a plan anymore. Had everything gone according to his original plan, that rotten excuse for a man would be long dead. Akechi would’ve followed not long after.
But now, everything’s changed. As seems to be the norm for Kurusu, he dances gracefully through life, changing his partner’s lives simply by waltzing by their side, even if only for a few moments.
If he was honest with himself - which he always was - he’d enjoyed some of his time in Maruki’s reality. Sure, the rest of the time it had been a psychological horror, knowing he was somehow both dead and alive, but there was something freeing about finally not having to worry about appearances.
Even if none of it was real, he’d shown that world more of his true self than anyone in his other life had ever seen, and that world had accepted him.
He doesn’t actively want to die anymore. But the commitment to living an entire life, having to build something he was okay with from nothing and after all the things he’d done, well… it sounded exhausting.
You’re wasting time. Focus.
Right. He’ll think about that later.
For now, he’s going to find Joker.
It’s raining in Yongen-Jaya this evening. He didn’t bring an umbrella, but no matter - he didn’t mind his hair getting wet. There was also the advantage of having fewer people to deal with.
The life of the café illuminates the raindrops as they fall. So Leblanc is still open. Akechi won’t walk in just yet, though. He can trust Kurusu to be reasonable about his… being alive, but not the cafe’s owner, nor any of his friends. If he remembers correctly, Sakura heads home at some point in the evening, leaving Kurusu to close up before bed.
He’ll wait until then.
He sits in some alleyway nearby, a poor shelter from the rain but better than nothing, and lets his thoughts wander back to the pros and cons of staying alive. At some point, an alley cat hops onto the bench. It sits at the other end for a while, clearly wary of him. He reaches his hand out tentatively - because he’s got nothing better to do, of course - the cat approaches, gives his hand a few sniffs, and decides to bump its head against his palm, purring.
He sits there, mindlessly petting the stray, thinking of nothing but how soft the ginger fur under the leather of his gloves must be.
Until the cat hops off, jumps over the low wall, disappears into the rain.
Sakura should be gone by now.
Sure enough, Leblanc’s lights are off.
He walks to the door, wondering how Kurusu would react to his alive-ness. Hopefully it wouldn’t be violence.
Well, that might be fun, actually.
He twists the doorknob, and - it’s locked?
Surely Kurusu didn’t sleep this early. They had played billiards until much later than this before. No matter. He needs another way in, then. Fine.
The advantage of rain is that there are less people out in the street to watch him. The disadvantage is that the walls and other surfaces become especially hard to scale. Kurusu’s bedroom window wasn’t even that far off the ground, and his free time spent bouldering did give him experience in this field, but slippery surfaces were unforgiving no matter one's skill level.
He manages to crawl up by using the cracks between the bricks as footholds and the drainage pipe to keep his balance. Kurusu’s window slides both ways, so all Akechi had to do was hold onto the roof with one hand and open the window with the other.
He brings some of the rain with him. The landing isn’t rough, but he isn’t a gymnast, either. Kurusu must be shocked -
He’s not here.
There’s a lot that’s not here, actually.
The useless knick-knacks he kept on his shelves - mostly gone, save for a few. The mattress on the milk crates had no sheets. The work desk had nothing left on it.
Except for a plain, white letter.
When he flips it around, he sees his name written in what is unmistakably Kurusu’s handwriting.
He wrote a letter to a dead man?
He takes a seat on what used to be Kurusu's couch. It doesn’t take long for him to rip open the envelope.
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Hey there, detective.
You came looking for me, huh? I’d say I was surprised, but clearly, I left this here for a reason. I’m hoping that the reason isn’t “a coping mechanism for my grief”, because I’m hoping you’re alive, and it would kinda suck if these letters just stayed around collecting dust.
Yeah, you read that right. Letters, plural. I can’t just outright tell you where I am - if you truly do want to find me, I want there to be a bit of a challenge. Fitting for a rival, don’t you think?
But you’re a detective, aren’t you? I’m sure you can figure it out. So, I challenge you, Akechi Goro, to find me.
You’ve picked me out of the crowd before - I’m sure you can do it again.
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Is this… a treasure hunt? What the hell , Kurusu, this isn’t a fucking game.
Still, the fact that he wrote these for him and him only…
God, he was weak. Get a hold of yourself, stay on task.
The rain had calmed down by the time Akechi stood from Kurusu’s couch, having reread the letter until it was burned into his brain. Scaling down from the bedroom window was easier than climbing in had been.
He checks into a cheap hotel near the outskirts of town, settles into his single room. With nothing else to do, he decides to sleep early. He stares up at the grainy texture of the ceiling and thinks.
If there are several letters, then his intention is to somehow lead Goro to the next until he finds the final one - it’ll probably contain a phone number or an address. So, the tip to where the next letter would be is somewhere in what he wrote…
The last sentence. “You’ve picked me out of the crowd before” ... he must be referring to the day they met. Yes, at the TV station - that must be it.
He falls asleep full of anticipation, like a schoolkid the day before a class field trip.
He can’t just waltz onto the TV set - he was supposed to be missing, presumed dead. But Akechi knows how to get around. He’s gotten into places he wasn’t supposed to be time and time again.
Occam’s razor : the principle that if there is a simple explanation to something, it’s probably the right one. No one ever looked too closely at the cleaning staff. Simple, but efficient. Act like you belong and they’ll let you into most anywhere. Of course, there was the issue of getting into the building unsuspected in the first place. Luckily for him, most public establishments have some sort of cleaning staff, including this hotel.
Akechi steps outside his room, locks the door. Finds a supply closet almost immediately, just down the hall. How convenient.
The yellow vest and baseball cap he’d found lying around do the trick, and soon he’s walking around the establishment completely unnoticed. He needs some equipment now, to complete the disguise. A visit to another nearby supply closet and Akechi walks out with a bucket and a mop.
He knows this building well, having exhausted himself at talk show after talk show at least thrice a week. The room is empty - must be too early to be on air. Good. The bucket and mop are forgotten, propped up against the wall near the entrance, and Akechi begins his search around the dark room. He checks the area he thinks Kurusu had sat in, finds nothing. Makes sense ; a letter that obviously in the open would’ve been disposed of immediately. The stage then, maybe…?
There’s no letter immediately visible. He checks underneath the couch he knew too well (it had always been so uncomfortable...) - nothing. Between the cushions, then? Ah - that’s it.
Akechi pulls out another plain white letter with a quick rush of satisfaction. He opts to sit on the floor, opens the envelope.
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You’re annoyed at me, aren’t you?
I can already sense it through the future. You’re gonna go looking for these and think ‘what the hell, I’m not fucking 2, why are you sending me on a fucking treasure hunt’’. And yeah, but you’re the one continuing the treasure hunt, aren’t you?
It’s a good thing this is a letter - you’ve already tried to murder me once, but I’m sure this would warrant a second run in your eyes.
Anyway, you did it, you figured out the first clue, how clever of you. Isn’t this just going swimmingly?
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Akechi winces at the third line - which is stupid, because he did want him dead. He made that choice and he doesn’t regret it.
Doesn’t he?
Okay, this isn’t the time for this, get back on task.
He has to reread the letter to remember the rest of its contents, but the clue is easy enough to find once he does.
‘“Isn’t this just going swimmingly’… really, Kurusu?” he mutters to no one.
An extremely disgruntled Akechi steps off the train at Yongen-Jaya station. The sun shines bright overhead despite the biting cold of the air - yesterday's rain had cleared the skies. He’d spent the entire rest of the morning searching the entirety of the aquarium as thoroughly yet unsuspectingly as he could. There were no letters between the description placards and the wall, nor in the gaps from one glass container to the other. He spent almost four hours wandering there like an idiot until he realized that they’d been to another place with water - the bathhouse.
Which is right next to Leblanc, where he’d started.
God fucking damnit.
The side alley is empty as ever, something he could appreciate. Now, to search for this stupid letter…
He eventually finds it on top of the forgotten vending machine full of long-expired sodas.
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I wonder if you went to the bathhouse or the aquarium first - a question to ask when you come find me, I guess.
Bet you’re annoyed at how obvious that clue was. And yeah, but to be fair, there were 2 possible options. If you came to the bathhouse first, then, good on you, you won’t have to spend money on the 5000 yen aquarium visit fare.
Oh, and I’m only a little sorry for placing the first and third letters within walking distance of each other.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Tsk. What an asshole.
There’s a line furiously scribbled out - was that going to be the clue? He squints at it hard, like that’ll make whatever was underneath legible. It doesn’t. Underneath the neatly written text, there are pencil scratches.
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Being near the bathhouse reminds me of that day in January you pulled me aside, walked me to the laundromat.
You know, secretly, I was happy that we were the only ones aware of Maruki’s reality. It was us against the world, even if just for a bit. I had you all to myself. I could explore you for who you were.
Of course, our time was cut short. A running theme in our fates, it seems. Prisoners, doomed.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Fighting by Akira’s side, just with Akira, it had been… well, he’d never felt anything like it before. There was something meditative about fighting, letting all his usual thoughts be drowned out by pure survival instincts and bloodlust .
A part of him had been disappointed when his friends did show up in the end. Logically, he knew that this greatly increased their chances of success, but Akechi knows better than to pretend to be a purely logical person.
Stop getting distracted.
Yeah, okay.
Every clue so far was in the last sentence - given that the last neat sentence has been vandalized beyond repair, Kurusu must’ve left it in the last-minute pencil bit.
The last sentence, ‘prisoners, doomed’...
...ah.
Akechi is extremely grateful for the cold weather keeping people inside. He’s standing in the perimeters of the diet building with only a scarf to shield his identity from the world. God, he hates it here. Surely, Kurusu can’t have left it in the room itself… where, then?
He walks past the guards unflinchingly to glance at the gate, tries to find an unnatural touch of white. There is none. So where…?
The place from where they entered the palace. Of course.
Obvious. Good thing he wasn’t a real detective. Or a real anything.
STOP GETTING DISTRACTED.
YOU’RE THE ONE DISTRACTING ME!
He tries to ignore Loki’s bitching, tries to remember where he’d left his train of thought.
Right, their entrance point.
The trees haven’t grown their leaves back yet, but there are a few buds at the end of the branches. There are maybe a dozen potted trees in front of the gate, but Akechi remembers the one they used to stand around. He finds the letter in the crevice between the concrete rim of the container and the dirt. Dusts off the white card, opens it.
This letter seems longer than the rest.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I hated you, you know.
For what you did. For how you lied. How you didn’t hesitate when you pulled the trigger. I had my suspicions, of course, but when we realized it was you without a doubt, I couldn’t bring myself to look at you without - without - hating you.
But you were all I could think about. Memories of you would crawl into my head, burrow through my skull and eat away at my brain until you were all that was left. I hated you with the same intensity your voice held the day you told me the same.
And then, the engine room. You were completely gone, or so it seemed. You were murderous and you were suicidal and you were terrifying. Words didn’t get through to you. But somehow, somehow, despite it all, when it came down to it, you traded your life for ours.
And then the wall came down and you were gone, gone forever and at that moment I realized I would never get the chance to solve the enigma that you are. I was furious, at you, at the world, at myself. I guess it was just a way of deflecting in the end, one of those stages of grief.
You were still all I could think about, even more once you were gone, because at the very moment you sacrificed your life for ours, you made it impossible for me to dismiss all my thoughts of you as hatred. I realized I didn’t hate you, and Goro, that hurt so much more. Because you were the most important person in my life and then you were gone, and I knew I’d never find out who you really were.
I would’ve given anything to have more time with you, to understand you. But time runs short, the music grows quiet, the coffee goes cold. That’s just how it is.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Akechi leans on the concrete square protecting the tree and its dirt from the world and rereads the letter over and over until he’s convinced he has it memorized.
Does it hurt to read that?
No.
What he’s feeling, it’s closer to… satisfaction.
The unbreakable, unreadable Akira Kurusu has shown him a part of his true self. Written it down on this letter.
Showing each other parts of themselves no one else has seen. Observing the other, and for each answer found, 3 new questions to follow.
There was something immensely satisfying about having been hated by him. Goro was more equipped to deal with that emotion. But also, it was proof that Kurusu wasn’t an emotionless saint. Akechi much preferred this feeling, of equality, of proper rivalry.
He couldn’t help but disagree with Kurusu on one matter - he hadn’t traded his life for them. He’d traded his life for him. His merry band of thieves just happened to be there. Maybe he’ll tell him as much, if Kurusu was being truthful when he said he wanted Akechi to find him.
The sky starts to turn pink - must be approaching evening. Akechi realizes he hasn’t had anything to eat all day. He’ll stop for a microwavable meal on his way back to the hotel.
The sun hasn’t come up yet when he wakes the next morning. He’d fallen asleep quite quickly - the day must’ve been more exhausting than he expected. Of course, he’s had much more action-packed, exhausting days, but spending those months at the rehab center must’ve dulled his senses. Akechi knows, logically, that this is probably a good thing, but it doesn’t feel like it.
“ I would’ve given anything to have more time with you, to understand you. But time runs short, the music grows quiet, the coffee goes cold. That’s just how it is.”
The interesting part is that second sentence - time runs short, music grows quiet, coffee goes cold. Time runs short is a common saying, and Akechi can’t think of any outstanding memories with Kurusu based around time. The music grows quiet… is he talking about Jazz Jin? That could be it, but apart from being poetic and synchronous to the rest of the sentence, he doesn’t have any memories with him where music was more than background noise. The coffee goes cold. He started at Leblanc, so that can’t be it - but that’s not the only café they’d been to. But once again, he can’t think of any specific memory with Kurusu where cold coffee was mentioned.
Wait. No, he can.
Messy hair and glasses that didn’t belong to him - an all-too-familiar café in Kichijoji - a crowd of fans that had started to form and soon after dissipated. After the whole ordeal, they had to order two new cups. The coffee had gone cold.
“One house blend, please.”
The waitress nods at him before walking off, leaving him alone at his table. There are a few people around, some using their breakfast as an opportunity to work, others having a quiet morning in small groups. No one seems to recognize him, which is nice. He’s put his hair up and he’s got his usual red scarf. Low effort, high efficiency.
He can’t remember exactly which table they’d sat at during that one visit, but surely that didn’t matter. After all, if the card was left in an open space, it could’ve been taken by a customer, or one of the employees.
He’s lost in his thoughts, trying to think like Kurusu, but not getting any closer to narrowing it down. He notices a cup of coffee in his peripheral vision - how long has that been there? He takes a sip - it’s still a little warm. The people from earlier are gone too, he notices, save for the woman still typing away at her laptop.
Then he notices something else out of the corner of his eye.
Behind the placard displaying the cafe’s name propped up out on the main street.
Well played, Kurusu.
There’s no subtle way to crouch next to a fairly large cardboard sign and reach behind it, so Akechi opts for speed instead. He gets a few looks between the time he leaves his table and when he reaches to detach a letter taped to the back of the café sign, but luckily none of those looks came from employees.
Akechi sips at his lukewarm coffee as he reads the next letter, feeling smug.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
And then, Maruki’s reality. You certainly weren’t a fan, huh?
I’m hoping you weren’t just a cognition, just like I’m hoping these letters will be more than a waste of paper. But if you weren’t - and I truly believe you weren’t, I mean, I’m not writing these for nothing - then you have the proof then and there. My greatest wish was to have you back, to be able to spend more time with you, to have a chance at understanding you and maybe at understanding why I wanted to know you so badly in the first place.
I don’t think that you were really being yourself in January, and I don’t blame you. Maybe you don’t know who you are, either. If you’re reading these, and if you count on finding me, then I can’t wait to meet you. Whether or not you’ll be meeting yourself, too.
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There’s something on the back, more pencil scratches.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Almost forgot to give you your next clue. Go where you feel most at home.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Well that’s certainly a bold assumption. So, Kurusu thinks he knows where he feels most at home?
You brought him there.
Brought him where -
Oh.
Well, that doesn’t open until evening. He better find some way to occupy himself until then.
____________________________________________________________________________
In some strange bout of nostalgia, Akechi chooses to waste his time at Penguin Sniper. Between rounds of solo darts, he reads the letters over and over.
He can’t help but think it was ridiculous of Kurusu to write letters to a dead man. He wasn’t dead, of course, but with the information he had in Maruki’s reality, there had been no other explanation. To believe that he would not only survive, but actively look for him, it was - it was stupid. To think Kurusu would waste his time thinking of him even then…
To think Kurusu had cared about him, even in death, when no one had spared him a second thought since his mother died.
Well, unless it was for the famed detective prince .
Kurusu had called him an enigma in those letters - but really, the enigma was the boy himself. Maybe he still didn’t understand what he really was?
Well, he almost admitted as much, didn’t he? He’d also theorized that maybe Akechi didn’t know himself, either. But that’s ridiculous.
Is it?
It doesn’t matter.
What matters is that evening has come and it’s high time for him to head to the place he ‘ feels most at home’ . If Kurusu got it right.
____________________________________________________________________________
He reaches the end of the stairs and is greeted by the warmth of Jazz Jin. Muhen recognizes him immediately.
“Akechi - !”
Akechi turns to him and smiles. It probably doesn’t look too friendly, but ironically enough, it’s probably the most genuine one Muhen’s ever seen.
“Heh, it’s really you... What took you so long, man? I thought you were dead or something!”
I should be.
“Good to see you again, Muhen.”
With a concluding nod, Akechi heads out to the tables. There’s no singer in tonight, so it’s fairly empty. He sets his sight on a table near the corner, and -
“Hey, Akechi! C’mere a sec.”
He decides to comply, though he isn’t doing that great of a job at hiding his irritation. Muhen is behind the entrance’s counter, reaching for something. As he gets off his knees, he holds out his hand to Akechi.
“That friend of yours - you brought him in one time - he dropped something off with me. Said to give it to you, and I quote, “ if - no, when ” you came back. Gotta say, that ‘ if’ scared me, man. I was all worried you’d found some new bar, lost your taste for jazz. Anyway, there’s that.”
The leather of his gloves feels especially tight as he takes the letter from his outstretched hand.
“You have a weird taste in people, man. I mean, that’s the only other person I’ve seen you with, but he’s certainly a character. So straightforward...”
He mutters some thanks vaguely in Muhen’s direction. Heads for the table he’d found earlier. That was probably rude, but he can’t bring himself to care.
He takes a seat, wastes no time opening the letter.
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XXXXX STREET, #XX
INABA, NAGANO
736-0012
Don’t keep me waiting, detective.
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