Work Text:
“Yes! One more win for Oracle!”
The screen of Ren’s CRT TV blinks with a victory image, showing a pixelated warrior celebrating as a dejected knight lies on the floor, defeated. Beside him, Futaba grins, letting go of her controller to flash a peace sign at him.
“One more round?” Ren asks. He’s got no chance of winning, but seeing Futaba having this much fun makes it easy to keep pressing the ‘rematch’ option.
But Futaba only hums, fiddling with the controller in her hands. “We’ve been playing this one for a while, though. Retro games are fine and all, but…”
“You want to play something else?”
Futaba purses her lips. “Not many other options. All the good multiplayer games are on PC, but you don’t have one.”
“I’ve got a laptop.”
Immediately, Futaba’s attention returns to him, rapt with interest. “Ooh, really? Can I see?”
Ren recalls his laptop - he’d bought it with Morgana a month or so ago and had spent an evening fixing it with some tools he bought in Akihabara. It’s not anywhere near as sophisticated as Futaba’s complex home setup, but he figures there’s no harm in letting her have a look at it. He heads over to his work bench and pulls out the second-hand laptop, then passes it to Futaba. She lets out a grunt when its weight falls into her hands.
“Holy crap, this thing’s a monster,” she says. She carries it from her seat by the TV so she can instead lie down on the sofa with it in front of her. It’s a little odd, seeing her pull her usual safe room pose with an age-old laptop instead of the custom one she totes around.
“It’s refurbished,” Ren says.
“Yeah, obviously,” Futaba says, tapping the power button. “Do they even make this model anymore?”
Silence falls as they wait for the laptop to awaken. The last vestiges of summer have since passed the baton to autumn’s slight chill, leaving the stool by the workbench caught in a draught. Ren moves to sit there regardless, facing both Futaba and the back of his old laptop.
They wait a few minutes in silence for the laptop to boot up, the only sound being the machine whirring to life. Eventually, Futaba pulls out her phone and starts showing Ren some social media posts she’s saved. They get distracted enough that they both jump when the laptop suddenly blares with jazzy music and error sounds.
Futaba grimaces at the screen, putting her phone aside to assess the situation. “Geez, whoever had this before you clearly didn’t care about viruses.”
She taps at the computer for a few minutes, growing steadily more upset as her clicking intensifies.
“God, this OS is so slow! Annoying things keep popping up too - how can you stand using this thing?!”
She punctuates her complaint by slamming the heavy lid shut, moving to sit up at the other end of the sofa.
“It’s that bad?” Ren says.
“You can’t call that a computer,” Futaba says. “That’s an offense to technology! You can’t do anything on a machine like that!”
The words feel a little harsh - Ren has managed to buy some useful stuff for the Thieves on Tanaka’s Shady Commodities, after all - but the truth can’t be denied. Picking up the laptop to return it to his desk, Ren frowns at the heat emanating from the bottom of it.
“My phone works for most stuff,” Ren says after putting the laptop away.
Futaba shakes her head vehemently. “You clearly bought that thing ‘cause you wanted a computer. That must mean your phone’s not enough. Besides, that doesn’t solve your problem of not being able to play PC games.”
Leaning forward so his elbows are on his knees, Ren clasps his hands together. “So, what do you suggest, tech guru?”
“Well…” Futaba moves into her signature crouching position, a mischievous grin overtaking her lips. Now this is the full Alibaba smile - the one that could precede any number of technological heists. Something about it makes Ren’s own lips quirk upward in response. “Do you remember those magazines we read a few weeks ago?”
He does - they’d been full of useful information on PCs, to the point where just by reading them he felt like he would be able to tinker with technology more deftly. Now he thinks about it, he’d bought the laptop not too long after that, hadn’t he…?
Futaba continues. “You mentioned you were interested in building a PC.”
“I did,” Ren says, the conversation coming back to him now. “Are you suggesting…?”
“It’ll be easy!” Futaba says. “I know all the best parts to get, and we can probably find everything in Akihabara!”
To be fair, she’s not wrong - Ren’s been around the electronics shops in Akihabara often enough to have seen the slew of computer parts stocked there. By himself he’d struggle to choose the best components, but a master hacker like Futaba would be a perfect guide in this new endeavour. It might also be nice to buy something for himself, since he’s spent so much on Metaverse supplies lately.
But money is still a problem. Those supplies are as essential as they are expensive. To spend a large portion of their funds on a custom PC might be foolish, especially when anything could happen in the Metaverse. What happens if their armour isn’t strong enough, or if their weapons fail them in battle? Will the medicine he has left over from past visits to Takemi and the local vending machines tide them over until their next Mementos cash trip?
Futaba eventually makes the decision for him; she stands up from the couch and puts her hands on her hips.
“C’mon Ren, it’ll be fun!”
He meets her brown eyes, bright and lively as opposed to the lifelessness they’d held only months ago, and any refusal dies on his tongue.
“Alright,” he says, standing up. “Lead the way.”
With a cheer, Futaba rushes down the stairs. A smile pulls at his lips as Ren picks up his bag and follows her.
Navigating the crowds of Akihabara is often a nightmarish task. Though Tokyo by nature is a densely populated beast, it’s more obvious that its streets are crowded when Ren has someone alongside him to worry about. Whether it’s making sure Morgana doesn’t get jostled around in his bag, or keeping track of his other friends when something inevitably catches their eye and leads to them getting separated, Ren’s learned to find the shallow openings and slip through them, routing the best path with the least resistance.
In particular, Futaba needs someone keeping an eye on her. Though they’ve come to Akihabara together a couple of times now, each time they’ve somehow gotten separated in situations leading to worry and stress, especially on Futaba’s part. She walks into situations with her jaw clenched and her determination fuelling her, adamant on ticking off another point on her promise list. But going to Akihabara isn’t the same as completing an RPG sidequest, no matter how much Futaba might envision them as the same kind of thing. Games don’t have real life consequences - bumping into the wrong stranger in a busy city street does.
Today, her excitement seems to be masking her nerves - if Arahabaki hadn’t been buzzing in the back of his mind, Ren might not have noticed her stiffen up once they get off the train at the station. Rather than dawdling in the crowds, Futaba leads Ren to the nearby electronics shop, where she races over to a wall filled with complicated-looking computer parts. Ren recognises a few of them from the magazines they’ve read together, but for the most part he can only stand by uselessly; his knowledge is far outstripped by the scrutiny Futaba analyses each product with. Is this what she looks like inside Necronomicon when scanning the floors in Palaces and Mementos…?
“We gotta get the best specs,” Futaba says as she picks up a box. “RAM, CPU, storage space, the works. Your crappy laptop is gonna be a level 1 tutorial enemy compared to the boss we’re building.”
As she continues to ramble about all of the cool parts they’re going to put in this home-built PC, Ren can’t help but smile. Futaba always shines brightest when she’s talking about something she loves; her enthusiasm when she’d explained her Featherman figurines to Yusuke in August made that clear.
Now that he thinks back on it, he’s seen her like this a few times since the summer. She’d talked like this about the scenery and attributes of Okumura’s space station Palace, and her attention had been just as fixated during that cult movie about ninjas they’d seen together at the Yongen cinema. Not to mention the brightness in her eyes - it rivals the look she’d had when she first talked about the promise lists she’d shared with her mother. She’s bloomed so much from the shut-in girl who’d barely reached out to them, the Pharaoh of her own tomb who longed for the light of day. She dismantled that tomb with her own inner strength, and now Futaba is a beacon of vitality. Her electric energy radiates from her in waves, enveloping Ren until he’s caught up in it too.
“So, whaddaya think?” Futaba says, turning to him and effectively breaking his reverie.
Ren scratches the back of his head, trying to play off his distraction. “I’ll defer to your judgement. You’re the tech pro, after all.”
Futaba pouts, raising a suspicious eyebrow. “Were you even listening?”
With a laugh, Ren raises his hands. “Guilty as charged. Sorry, I got distracted.”
“Did I talk too much?” Futaba says, her expression falling into a genuinely concerned frown. “I sometimes go kind of overboard…”
“No, that’s not it,” Ren says, immediately cutting off that line of thought before he can accidentally upset her any more than he already has. “I like listening to you talk.”
It takes Futaba a moment to process his words. In that time, Ren realises that maybe that came out a little less subtly than he’d intended it to. He tries to play it off by defaulting to his usual hands-in-pockets posture, acting the cool guy even as worry fills his mind.
Splotches of pink burn through onto Futaba’s cheeks, very visible thanks to her pale skin.
“H-huh? R-really…?”
Ren smiles at her in what he hopes is a reassuring way. “Yeah, really.”
Futaba glances away for a second, a shy smile joining the flush on her cheeks. “T-thanks.”
For a moment, Ren’s breath catches in his throat. He tries to play it off with a cough, pushing aside the feelings brimming under his skin for later consideration.
“Anyway, which one do you think is best? You’re the one guiding me, here.”
Upon Ren’s question, Futaba turns back to the shelf and picks up one of the products. As she tells Ren about it, he tries to actually listen this time - he is genuinely interested in what she has to say, after all.
After that, they circle the aisles of the electronics shop, picking up every part Futaba deems necessary for their home-built PC. Surprisingly, Ren manages to follow most of her explanations - the PC magazine had covered a lot of it, and other things she mentions are just common sense. Though he tries not to let himself get distracted by the warm feelings simmering in his chest, it’s difficult not to when she tugs on his sleeve to get his attention, or when she pouts in her attempt to persuade him to buy an RBG keyboard rather than the cheaper, plainer option available.
Soon they end up in the queue to purchase their haul, sharing the burden of the computer parts between the two of them. Ren winces when he sees the total cost steadily climbing up with each item the cashier scans, his wallet already feeling far too light. But this will be worth it; not only has this been a fun day out, but this PC will probably be useful for him in the future, too. Futaba wasn’t wrong when she said he must have wanted a PC, after all.
Then again, Ren suspects he’d have accepted even if he hadn’t needed a PC, just to see Futaba happy. When Futaba talks about the process of building a computer on the train home; when her walking is interrupted by a skip of excitement as they head through the streets of Yongen; when she nerds out over one of the parts she’s chosen for him as they put the pieces together in the Leblanc attic; it’s all Ren can do not to promise her everything in the world there and then. If he’d had any worries about her wellbeing after her Palace, it’s all chased away by her smile and the static charge it sends racing through his skin. He could solo that Pyramid in one go if it meant she’d never have to feel like that again.
As he catches himself thinking these things, he glances away. Luckily, Futaba is preoccupied with their purchases; Ren worries his feelings are clear on his face. In a single afternoon, she’s shattered the poker face he’s perfected over years of trying not to take words too much to heart.
When Ren looks back and Futaba beams at him, though, he can’t help but feel that’s maybe not such a bad thing.
The PC is everything Futaba promised and more.
It takes them just over 45 minutes to put the components together, and a while longer to power up the new PC and install the operating system Futaba recommended to him. Even then, it’s almost silent as the home screen welcomes them, loading the start-up menus instantly. No annoying popups, no lap-burning heat, and best of all it’s strong enough that Ren has no fear of it crashing or breaking after more than five minutes of usage. Futaba even goes the extra step and downloads some PC games for him. They make plans to play some of them together later, since Futaba can join him from the comfort of her own room.
The sun outside has already dipped beneath the horizon as Futaba sits at Ren’s makeshift computer desk, which is just an old cafe table he hadn’t gotten rid of when he’d cleaned the attic in the spring, placed cautiously beside his plant. Futaba had suggested using the work bench, but Morgana would probably have a fit if he saw Ren couldn’t use it to make infiltration tools anymore.
Ren watches from his standing spot behind Futaba as she configures a few final touches on his PC, her focus fully on her work. His own eyes are less focused, wandering often from the glowing screen to the girl illuminated by it. Her long hair tumbles down her back, a little mussed-up by the breeze outside from earlier. It looks like it would feel nice to touch, to run his hand through, feeling the fine strands slip like silk through his fingers. From here he can smell a hint of her shampoo, a sweet citrus scent that makes him want to pull her close and breathe. It would be so easy to wrap his arms around her shoulders, to feel her warmth against him, to press a kiss to the crown of her head, where that stray strand always defies the otherwise straight descent of her hair.
But then Ren blinks, and he’s standing immobile behind her, her focus fully on the computer screen.
Right, he’s getting ahead of himself.
Ren subtly pinches the skin on his arm, forcing himself back into reality. He’s known his feelings for Futaba have been growing stronger since their trip to the beach, but two months still feels too soon to tell Futaba about them. She’s still trying her best to fulfil her promises and get used to being around people again. There’s no way Ren can throw that off-balance by trying to push their relationship forward too quickly.
(Even though holding back had been so difficult when she’d asked him to pat her head recently, or when she sat so close to him on the train ride today. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but her nervous stuttering and pink flushes give Ren a shred of hope that she could maybe feel the same, one day.)
Futaba turns around to face him. “That’s everything set up!”
“Thanks, Futaba,” Ren says, shaking off the remnants of his daydreams. “You’re a huge help.”
She grins, then pushes herself out of her chair. “Quest complete! Welp, I’m gonna head back home. Message me when you wanna play, okay?”
As Futaba waits for his response, Ren lets his expression melt into a softer smile. He pushes his hands further into his pockets, trying to stifle his desire to pull her close. “I can’t wait.”
For a moment, he could swear Futaba’s cheeks turn pink at his words.
“Y-yeah!” A little stutter finds its way into her response. “W-well, I’m gonna make like a bee and- y’know what, never mind. S-see ya!”
And with that, Futaba races down the stairs, a distant chime signalling her exit from Leblanc. Ren walks over to his window, barely catching sight of Futaba as she quickly strides down the street and out of sight.
Once she’s gone, he flops onto his bed, letting an arm fall over his eyes. Man, is he screwed. He’s fallen further than he’d thought.
And yet, thinking about the heat in Futaba’s cheeks and the chance to hear her voice again later, a grin spreads across his lips.
One day, he’ll tell her how he feels. He just knows it’ll be worth the wait.
(And in time, he will hold her close in the intimacy of her room, with the right not to leave each other burning in their hearts, and he’ll know it absolutely was.)