Work Text:
When the case files on the death of Suguru Kamoshida first winded up on his desk, Akechi felt convinced that he was being handed another low-reward case that “real” detectives didn’t want to waste their time on. The department didn’t care that he had busted his ass for this internship, that this program only ever accepted twelve students from all around Tokyo each year. All they saw was a trashcan in the shape of an 18-year-old boy.
Still, dutifully and meaninglessly, he draws up a chart of all known facts and all possible suspects.
Kamoshida suffered a violent heart attack, and an unknown substance caused him to foam at the mouth. The day prior, Shiho Suzui had publicly tried to kill herself. Three unknown students had tried to approach Kamoshida, only to be stopped by another student, Ann Takamaki. Twenty-four hours later, Coach Kamoshida was no more.
Ann’s statement is not present in his various case files, meaning the previous team thought her irrelevant. He shuffles through more papers to find out why.
The current guess for cause of death, until the coroner can send any concrete word, is poisoning. Ann Takamaki had been absent from school for the entire day. Logically, there’s no reason to believe she was directly involved. That did not, however, strike the possibility of her being indirectly involved.
He brings his thoughts to Sae, hoping she’ll be able to follow up.
She’s already up to her shoulders in paperwork at her desk when he mentions the case. She gives him a bored once over before lowering her head back to her folders.
“I’m authorizing you to follow this lead on your own. Ms. Takamaki shows no sign of being dangerous, you won’t need any backup. Consider it the first point in your favor when you apply for a real job here.” She doesn’t look back up for confirmation, the dismissal is clear in her tone.
He doesn’t need to be told twice. It’s easy enough to pick up his various papers and inelegantly shove them into his case and take the train to Shujin. It is considerably less easy to convince the principal that he needs to talk to Ann Takamaki.
There’s apprehension in Kobayakawa’s words, a nervous cracking of knuckles as he assures Akechi that simply speaking to the class president will be enough.
“Our community needs time to grieve, Detective Akechi. I hope you understand why it wouldn’t be wise to be so insensitive to our students’ mourning. Kamoshida was a treasured faculty member, among students and parents alike,” he says as he keeps a clammy grip on Akechi’s shoulder, wheeling him into an unadorned meeting room with a girl his age inside.
“Makoto Niijima,” she introduces herself as, unfailingly polite.
“Pleasure. Goro Akechi,” he replies. “May I have a private word with Ms. Niijima, Principal Kobayakawa?”
The older man doesn’t spare him a glance. Instead, he keeps his eyes steady on Makoto. Whatever he sees in her face, it ostensibly satisfies him. He gives a curt nod and leaves the room.
“Niijima-san, is there any relation to Sae Niijima?”
To Makoto’s credit, she doesn’t react. Her posture remains neat, her expression carved into picturesque civility. “Yes. Sis was quite distraught when this occurred, she worries about me at times.”
Akechi thinks of the vague disinterest Sae listened to his report this morning. He decides to allow Makoto the bluff. “Yes, she does. In fact, it was your sister who put me in charge of obtaining Ann Takamaki’s testimony and contacting the three unnamed students who tried to approach Kamoshido the day of Shiho Suzui’s accident.”
The jab works better than expected. Makoto’s eye twitches, and Akechi watches her jaw clench as she tries to recollect herself. “Our student’s privacy is of great importance to the school. Unfortunately, as a representative of the school, I can’t give away that information.”
“I understand, Niijima-san, I do, but the same constraints do not apply to Takamaki-san, do they?”
Makoto looks out to the window to her left. “Even if I wanted to help you, Detective Akechi, I’m saddened to say that you picked an unfortunate time. Fourth period has ended, all of our students are out to lunch. She won’t be in class, so we can’t call her.”
Akechi turns his head to join in the view. The window overlooks the school’s courtyard. As expected, students cluster together over various snacks, and if he squints, over by the vending machines, he can see a streak of long, blonde hair.
“Of course, Niijima-san. I appreciate the effort, nevertheless. I’ll just search his office one more time for clues,” he says in the same even tone Makoto gave him.
On cue, Kobayakawa enters the room again, a wide smile on his face. He looks considerably less obvious than when Akechi first saw him. “Detective Akechi, will you need me to escort you to Kamoshida’s office?”
“Thank you for the offer, Principal Kobayakawa, but my superior has told me where it is. I’ll be fine on my own,” he says sweetly.
Mollified by his demeanor and age, Kobayakawa doesn’t protest.
Once his footsteps are out of earshot, he quickens his pace to get to Ann before she can move.
It turns out he didn’t have to worry so much, Ann had only shifted from standing before the vending machines to sitting on the benches next to it, gazing vacantly at her half-empty soda can. As he approaches, he can tell that the other students around her are trying to keep a wide berth between them.
“Hello, Takamaki-san.” Ann looks up but makes no move to reply. He keeps going, “I’m Detective Akechi. I wanted to talk to you about Kamoshida’s death.”
The conversation is a mixed bag. Ann looks past him, eyes dulled by grief. He gets the names he wanted, the students who tried to approach Kamoshida were Ryuji Sakamoto, Yuuki Mishima, and Akira Kurusu. He gets bits and pieces of Ann’s personal story with Kamoshida. Each detail makes his stomach turn.
By the time the bell signals an end to lunch, Ann has receded into herself. Her legs are folded up in front of her, feet planted firmly on the bench. One hand is nervously tugging at the tips of her hair, the other holds her long-crushed can.
Before he goes, he spares one last glance at her. “Takamaki-san, for what it’s worth, take peace in knowing that Kamoshida will never abuse his power again. The world is a better place.” To this day, he’s not sure what compelled him to say those parting words—words that were highly inappropriate for law enforcement, and yet genuine in his soul—but he’ll never forget the sheer wonder in her blue eyes that he got in response.
By the time he gathers his findings to present to Sae, the coroner’s report comes in. No strange or illicit compounds were found in his system. He simply died of a plain heart attack. The case is swept under the rug before the media can sensationalize it.
He still takes the time to show Sae his collected papers. She raises one eyebrow during his presentation before firmly nodding.
“Good work, Akechi.” Her voice reveals no exceeding amount of affection or praise, but he notices that he is given significantly fewer menial tasks by other workers the next week.
He thinks that’s the end of the case and his association with Shujin, until a sheepish Ann stumbles into the station while he’s on front desk duty. She recounts her story of a stolen purse calmly, perfectly collected.
“I know this might be a weird request, but when they find the guy, could you make sure you’re the one to tell me? I just rather not deal with other officers I don’t know.”
He’s gained enough respect in the office that he can be trusted to lead a case of a stolen purse, so he complies. She writes her number on the paperwork in a loopy scrawl and gives him a final wave as she exits.
Like many of his cases, the process is nearly robotic. Check nearby CCTV, take statements of local shop owners, grab any names mentioned. He tracks down the culprit in three days and brings in Ann to give one final ID.
As he escorts her out, she tosses her pigtails back with a shake of her head and says, “I’m going to have a celebratory dinner after this. How long are you in the station for?”
He answers absentmindedly, “Only for another fifteen minutes, I have an early shift today.”
She gives him a wide grin. “Have dinner with me then? I can wait outside.”
To this day, he’s not sure what drew him to agree, except for the fact that it just felt right. He nods with a practiced smile and walks back in.
They end up in a cheap buffet place, and his first inclination that there wasn’t actually that much money in Ann’s stolen purse is combated by seeing exactly how much she can manage to eat in one sitting.
Akechi is content enough with his singular plate, but Ann finds amusement throughout the whole meal in plopping food onto his plate for him to try. The results are mixed. He ignores some things, tentatively bites into others, greedily finishes the cuts of meats she sparingly relinquishes, picks at the absurd of amount of sweets she chooses to share. When she laughs, she tilts back in her chair, leading to more than one incident of her nearly falling straight onto her back. Akechi keeps a polite smile on for the entirety of the meal, but he accidentally slips more snark into his responses as the clock lurches forward.
They stay in the warmth of the restaurant until the neon lights of the night overtake the city streets. Under the cold fluorescents that envelope them as they step out, Ann shines brilliantly.
“Let me grab your number,” she says casually as she pulls at her hair to tease it back into order.
The reality of the situation rushes to his mind. “Why do you want to befriend me?” he asks, his voice in the same even tone he uses for superiors.
Ann frowns, and he’s taken aback by how quickly her face morphs into seriousness. “Because you’re the only one who didn’t tell me that I should have mourned Kamoshida.”
Akechi thinks of how the stress of moving back to a group home was always superseded by the relief of leaving another suffocating house. He thinks about the vile, wretched things he wished upon his unknown father in those months where he adjusted to life without his mother.
“No one should be forced to pretend to sympathize with those who have done them wrong,” he says. It’s the truth, in more words than he ever cared to vocalize.
Ann smiles again and fishes her phone out of her pocket. “Number?” she insists on again.
Akechi complies, in a state closer to dreamer than awake.
Their friendship is a gentle thing, nurtured over steaming plates and the rare mid-spring sun upon their cheek.
Ann complains about schoolwork, tests coming up and assignments piling high. Akechi refrains from mentioning the ease with which he completes his own homework, instead opting to commiserate with her by recounting trivial workplace disputes.
“All the superiors are stalled by the red tape they have to cross to advance the case. It’s been creating friction in the office. We know he’s guilty, we just don’t have the papers to nail him.”
Ann nods, face in a casually glum expression that could almost pass of as natural if Akechi hadn’t learned to take careful note of Ann’s moods. “It’s important that the police aren’t given the ability to do whatever they want, whenever they want, but sometimes, it feels like the system only works against the innocent and protects the guilty.”
“Oftentimes, the guilty have more resources to protect their interests,” Akechi says with the same constructed casualness.
Ann turns away and taps her nails, they’ve been painted a deep, indigo blue. “And the innocent are left defenseless.”
Three days later, the serial rapist the office has been trying to take down dies in his sleep. His apartment complex has CCTV cameras, there is no evidence of anyone coming in or out through the front door that night. The coroner’s report confirms their deepest-kept dreams. A spontaneous heart attack. The office erupts into macabre celebration, namely partaking in excessive hand shaking and half the detectives on the case getting extraordinarily drunk the moment they get off shift.
The entire situation is too outlandish to be considered satirical. Akechi keeps the entire case tucked into a corner of his mind, convinced the conclusion hasn’t been fully reached.
When the debut of the Phantom Thieves occurs, on national television with a crying and sniveling Madarame, Akechi examines that corner once more. If he squints and puts some elbow grease into it, the pieces could almost fit, but it’s too soon to tell.
It is by coincidence that he encounters Ann traversing the TV station hallways before his interview. He has some time to spare, so he takes his time walking her back. As they walk, he can hear the faint signs of a conversation slowly grow. Yes, three different voices, and… a cat?
When they turn the corner, he can confirm the three voices. In an uncharacteristic moment of confusion, he lets curiosity get the better of him. “Do you guys have a cat?”
“Ryuji? Cat? Akechi, when did you hear a cat?” Ann is right on his heels, peering over his shoulder at what Akechi now recognizes are classmates.
“Ann? The hell are you doing with this guy,” some bleach blonde punk responds. Akechi’s memory jogs.
Ah. Ryuji Sakamoto. He looks at the other two. The one with glasses he remembers vividly, having been a very early suspect of the Kamoshida case. Akira Kurusu. He takes a guess that the meek person in between is Yuuki Mishima. He narrows his eyes. Akira is holding a suspiciously large bag.
“Ann? Are you hanging out with the police department’s representative?” That would be Maybe-Mishima scrutinizing him. Akechi represses a chill at the pure dislike encased in the boy’s eyes.
He didn’t want to be the representative on the press release for the police’s response to the Thieves, but the matter had been deemed to irrelevant to bother the police chief and simultaneously too important to leave to someone the public would get annoyed with. Akechi, still chubby-cheeked and gaining a reputation for his doe-eyed look that he pulls to get out of trouble for overstepping his boundaries, had been forced into the job. He’s in a garish suit that’s about two sizes too big. He really wishes he was anywhere else.
“Don’t be like that Mishima.” Ah, at least he was right. “Akechi’s my friend.” She’s starting to walk in front of him to shield him from the other boys. His ego bristles at the gesture.
“Takamaki-san, it’s best to just go back to your classmates. I have to do a rehearsal soon anyways.” He keeps his voice a controlled neutral. Ann looks back at him, and seeing his expression unchanged, gives a frustrated scoff and joins the others.
“Let’s go. You guys are so uncool,” she says in a voice Akechi easily recognizes as deeply upset but not wanting to show it.
He hears Ryuji mutter, “Why do you like that uptight guy more than us,” as they walk down the hall.
The press release goes about as well as it could, considering he’s eighteen and actively hates playing nice. Fielding the public’s questions is the worst part. He knows the general gist of what he should respond with to nearly every question.
“The Phantom Thieves, despite what they may claim, are dangerous. They are playing with dangerous powers. Though they say Madarame was their first victim, there is no real proof of it.” He knows, immediately once he says it, that he shouldn’t have. He spends the next thirty minutes calming the press back down, pointedly not thinking about how his wide-eyed ‘please don’t make me in as much trouble as I should be’ expression is now immortalized on video. It is the worst day of his life. He never wants to do it again.
When he gets back to the station and is told that, unless he was the only person available, he won’t be on press duty again, he breathes a sigh of relief.
It is only when that relief floods him that he reflects on what he said. What would be the crucial difference between Kamoshida and Madarame? Perhaps the Thieves had a rule of not sparing criminals of a sexual nature. Unbidden, he goes back to that corner of his mind, the case stalled by bureaucratic tape. An unexpected heart attack. He had no foaming, but perhaps the Thieves had… refined their technique.
When Kaneshiro confesses and adds the crime of forcing various women into prostitution, Akechi has to reassess his assumption. There’s another piece he’s missing. What is the link between Kamoshida and the serial rapist he mentioned to Ann? He doesn’t like the only thing that comes to mind.
He tries to go back to basics. He spends a week combing through this year’s files. Ever since Kamoshida, there’s been an uptick in cases dropped due to the accused dying unexpectedly. They’ve all been low-level, petty criminals, not as high profile as even Kamoshida. Different crimes as well, extorting the elderly, domestic abuse, one horrid case of a predator that went unnoticed until the police were called for a wellness check, only to find his decomposed body, his bedroom walls covered with sickening photography. The targets were in a similar area, a particularly wealthy neighborhood he’d only explored when a storm hit, and Ann had insisted to wait it out in her apartment.
He’s not sure what to do with the final piece of the puzzle. He wants to inspect it, just a little more, before completing it.
When they have lunch together, Ann is nursing a black coffee.
“No sugar?” The question is a polite way for her to launch into a cry for help.
“I need as much straight caffeine as I can manage. I’ve had a lot on my plate,” she says while rubbing at her temple. There’s a sugary muffin beside her that she bites into furiously after every sip.
He shrugs, “You could’ve gotten a flavored energy drink at that rate.” He pauses, quirks an eyebrow, “Do you want to talk about it?”
She shakes her head vigorously, “I’d rather talk about anything else. What about you?”
He flips a coin in his mind. The outcome does not matter, so much as the significance of the action. “You know how the station gets. It’s infuriating. Lately, we’ve been stuck on this retired politician who threw his money around to cover up how much he liked beating people he thought were beneath his station. Half the shit we have has passed the statute of limitations, the other half is all circumstantial.” Ann’s eyebrow raises just an inch. He knows he’s used too casual of a tone, knows that Ann’s been watching him just as much as he’s watched her.
Now, he watches Ann’s eyes glint in a way he hasn’t seen before. “Politician? Is he a big shot?”
He digs his grave, “I shouldn’t tell you his name, but…”
He watches in detached fascination as the office scrambles to get it together when the coroner’s report comes in.
“His heart was frail, it was only a matter of time,” Sae says, voice indicating she only half cares about the case. “He was a dead-end anyway. We never would have gotten enough on him.” There it is, Sae’s increasing push to indict every case as soon as possible.
“I bet it was those Phantom Thieves, feels like the type of case they’d want to take from us,” comes an officer’s voice. Akechi tries his best to not roll his eyes.
He’s left with the task of gathering all their evidence into one final report to collect dust in a cabinet. He tucks his mental folder on the case neatly into his growing collection.
For all intents and purposes, finding out about Ann doesn’t change much of anything. He’s not sure how she does it, but he’s always known the why. Now, he keeps a careful tab of suspects. Cases he’s not on, cases he only hears about in whispers, cases that cover a wide area, sometimes in Tokyo, sometimes not. Random, low-profile, things that won’t draw attention if spaced out enough.
He takes note of the days when Ann is more tired than usual, even when he hasn’t discussed a case the office is stuck on.
“You can’t keep burning the candles on both ends, Ann,” he says faux-wisely as he takes a sip of water. They’re taking up a coffee shop table with their various assignments. Akechi is pointedly ignoring his own work by scrolling endlessly on his laptop while typing randomly to give the illusion of productivity. It’s a time-old trick he picked up through his internship.
She smiles ruefully, “I guess I get distracted.”
“It’s always best to stick to the most important tasks.” It’s best to keep suspicion off of Ann, off the concept of someone like Ann. The Thieves increasing popularity and activity help, but the progress begins to unwind when Ann gets caught up in specific targets and starts to give the station possible identifiers and motivation. He’s with her now, even if he’s kept in the dark. He has to keep the both of them safe.
“I’ll try to remember that,” she says quietly.
He’s glad, that he got that message out because a week late CEO Okumura dies on national television and the office doubles down their search for the Phantom Thieves.
There’s a lot going on in the office, and even when there’s a lot going on, he meets with Ann. One day, she’s sitting outside of the office waiting for him to come out.
“Do you wanna go out somewhere?” She’s twisting her foot back and forth in an effort to not look nervous.
“You have a place in mind, already?” His tone lets her know that he is giving her a polite way to drag her around.
She takes a breath, prepares herself. “I want you to see Shiho.”
He looks at her, searches her expression for hesitation or regret, and then just to make sure, “Are you sure?”
“Yes. She’s going to be dismissed soon. She might leave.” Ann’s voice is too careful of a neutral. He plays along.
“Of course, lead the way.”
Which is exactly how he ends up in the too-bright, artificial light of the hospital. He tries his absolute best to not think of his mother, body still but taken on a gurney no matter.
It helps, to see Shiho Suzui, sitting up on her hospital bed. Though her skin is pale from her stay at the hospital, her cheeks turn rosy when Ann enters the room.
“Hi Shiho, it’s nice to see you again. This is my friend Akechi.”
It is only then that Shiho looks past Ann’s pigtails to get a good look at Akechi, still in his work attire but trying to dress it down with a zip-up sweater. She gives a polite smile.
“Thank you for being a friend to Ann.” She seems to stare into his soul for a moment before continuing, “And thank you, for the way you treated the Kamoshido case. Both me and Ann had too many bad experiences with detectives that thought they knew the whole story.”
For a moment, he’s transported back to an LED-filled night, right outside a cheap buffet place, and Ann’s somber face.
He softens, “I know what it’s like to be on the other side.” He’s never admitted it before to Ann, but he has. He thinks of the times he’s tried to stand up for himself, to tell others. He’s glad that he’s given some peace to someone, at the very least.
Both girls give a soft sigh. Ann urges him to walk up to Shiho’s bedside and pulls up a chair for him. When he sits, she sits right on the edge of Shiho’s bed, careful to not sit on Shiho’s legs, only barely visible under the layers of blankets. He can tell, right away, that they’re not hospital-provided blankets, those were blankets given to Shiho. Some look practical, probably from her parents, but there’s a pink oversized blanket that Akechi recognized from the singular visit to Ann’s place. It had been thrown haphazardly across her couch.
He spends the sunny Saturday afternoon in an uncomfortable hospital chair, quipping at Ann and Shiho alike.
While they walk back to the subway, he tosses a look to Ann. “Have you told her?”
She knows what he means right away. “I told you, she’s leaving.”
“I’m not an expert on the subject, we both know, but you could make it work.” He shrugs to cover up his serious tone. It doesn’t fool Ann.
She stops walking and fully turns to him. There’s a complicated expression on her face. Grief and fury, and there, always present when she talks about Shiho, adoration. “Everything that I’ve done. It’s for Shiho. For me. For people like us.” He can tell, easily, by the way that she leans towards him, that he is included in her statement. “I can’t just let things go when I know I can do something about it, but now that I’ve done it, do I even deserve Shiho? Would she want me, if she knew?” There’s a sheen to her eyes, he hasn’t seen it before, but he knows what it means.
As he often does with Ann, he lets instinct take over and wraps her in a hug. “Takamaki-san, you deserve the world, but the truth is, even if you had the world, it would give nothing back to you, if it was yours.”
She sniffles into his shoulder. “Call me Ann.”
“What?” It is more of a question of reason than a request to repeat.
“When we met Ryuji at the press release, I called you my friend and you called me Takamaki-san. He still makes fun of you for it when I talk to him. You’re risking everything you built, and you still call me Takamaki-san. Call me Ann. Please.”
He feels a pinch in his chest at the emotion begging to be released. At the same time, he feels the burning pressure on his back. He knows what is expected of him in return. If the world will give Ann nothing, he can give her this. “You can call me Goro.”
She can tell he said it through gritted teeth and laughs, muffled by his sweater. “We’ll get you used to it,” she says, placatingly rubbing his back like he was the one that needed comfort.
There’s an almost dangerous silence from the Thieves. The office calms down, and Akechi complains less about work to Ann, who takes the break in stride.
It, of course, doesn’t last very long. Sae is threatened by the Thieves and creates her own team to handle the situation.
He had approached Sae, in a casual way to cover up his nerves, and asked about being a part of said team. She had sized him up before bluntly telling him that he would be more useful on a team with an active case, that she had the Thieves practically cornered. He does a valiant job of not letting his disappointment show.
Despite her confidence in herself, the office goes into overdrive to maintain the police department’s reputation. They split into teams of cases to win public favor. Decades-long cold cases, high profile cases that have had their trial dates pushed and extended, an entire unit dedicated to donating supplies to schools in need. It’s a rather sickening show of what can only be accomplished when job security is threatened.
There’s a renewed interest in their corruption division. The whisperings of the cases they’re taking on float all the way down to the break room where Akechi nibbles on a muffin and pretends to scroll on his phone. He takes mental notes on names, only a bare few ringing a bell.
Slowly, but surely, he creates a profile for each of the names. Retired politicians, retired CEOs, retired government officials. Akechi is not enough of a fool to think this means that the current administration is without blame.
He starts again with a list of names and tediously combs through public records of their financial accounts. He is no private detective, and his resources as a civilian are limited, but he’s always been crafty. There are standard donations to businesses on the rise, well-known charities, scientific research. There’s one consistent, sizeable donation to a foundation that researches the science of cognition. It sounds nearly fake, and Akechi is just almost convinced that it’s a money-laundering scheme until he stumbles on an old press photo.
The picture is the horrible, grainy quality he’s come to expect when researching a politician’s past. Masayoshi Shido stands in front of the research team he’s just donated to, his obnoxious novelty check in one hand. The other hand is holding onto the shoulder of a woman with familiar, brown hair. Her smile, Akechi can now recall from many of his memories, the smile of his mother whenever she felt the weight of the world on her shoulders. It was the smile she gave him whenever she looked at him and remembered his father, a mechanical thing, only held up by two tense strings, ready to snap at a moment’s notice.
He had, of course, always remembered the shiny diploma hidden within the deep corners of their closet, the one his mother hated to look at. She had only talked about it once, half a bottle of wine deep into the night and laying on the couch, about her job before.
“It was nice, Goro,” she had whispered, fingers running through his hair as he laid on her stomach. “But then, your father found out about you, and well, I spent the rest of my pregnancy draining my savings,” and she had drifted off from there, going back to her more normal ramblings of what they needed from the grocery, of what her clients owed her.
He had always thought that his father was her old employer, but now…
He takes a breath, tries to clear his mind. He looks back down at the photo, at its caption. It was taken in October, the year before he was born. Seven months before he was born. The caption says Shido had been visiting the facility for nine weeks and would be continuing to visit for another month. Akechi thinks he might be sick.
The nausea stays with him, even as he clears his browsing data and powers down his laptop. Even as he meets with Ann in the park.
She bumps her shoulder against his, “Do you feel alright?”
He comes back to consciousness. There’s a soft-serve ice cream that is slowly making its way to melting onto his fingertips. He blinks at her, and on impulse, he says, “I found out who my father is.”
Ann doesn’t drop the cup in her hand, but it’s a close thing. “Oh, Goro… You’ve never talked about him, is this something good, something bad?”
The nausea is beginning to leave him, it is now replaced by a burning sensation within his chest. “My father is running to be the Prime Minister. He gives more yen in donations a year than I’ve ever seen in my life. My mother killed herself because she couldn’t bear doing sex work to keep us afloat, and my father hosts galas for his biggest donors.”
He can vaguely register that he’s gripped his ice cream hard enough to break the cone, the thin, decorative napkin around it being tested to its limits to keep his hands clean. He doesn’t move or uncurl his fist. Ann doesn’t say anything, just releases a low, pitiful whine that Akechi can tell is her best attempt to not start crying.
She hugs him, tight and fierce, and the tip of his ice cream is brushing against the sleeve of her jacket, and neither of them says anything for a long moment.
“You’ll be okay. It’s gonna be alright. We can fix this,” she mumbles into the hug, soft and determined. Akechi, trying his best to keep the fragments of psyche together with scotch tape, doesn’t have the sense to ask what will be fixed.
Sae’s deadline passes. The Thieves have suffered from shame for not getting a public confession, the police department has suffered from shame for not finding them when they threatened one of their own. Nothing in the office changes except her new habit of patting Akechi on the back, sometimes far too forcefully. There’s an uneasy environment in the department, but he takes little note of it, too concerned with just trying to get through his own day. He’s far less eager to listen in on gossip, but he still sees Ann.
Ann doesn’t seem to mind or notice the lack of new tasks. She busies herself throughout their lunches with keeping his spirits up to mixed results. The days bleed together into a mild existence.
It is not until the Thieves announce that their next target is Masayoshi Shido that Akechi starts to pay attention again.
Ann becomes harder to get a hold of, their frequent lunches turning to once in a blue moon. As the deadline approaches, he gets anxious and restless. He wants Shido to lose everything, his reputation, his fame, but he knows the Thieves are making a statement, that they want Shido to be made a more public confession than Okumura’s botched one, and he’s terrified that when Shido lets out all of his secrets like a rushing fountain, Akechi’s name, his existence, will be broadcasted for all of Japan to scrutinize. He’s terrified that people will look at him and only see a bastard, a child tossed aside, something he hasn’t been since he desperately clawed his way to emancipation at fifteen.
There’s a simultaneous relief and humiliation that occurs when Shido confesses, and there is only a passing mention of using his power to get a woman he slept with fired. The world feels like it’s freezing and burning like everything has stopped and everything will keep going. He has a headache. He needs a moment. He needs Ann.
He calls, a rare thing from him, and when it goes to voicemail, he leaves a message and hopes his nerves aren’t apparent over the phone. He sends a message, a simple “Can we meet up?” and begins to grasp at his sanity to prevent it from spinning wildly out of control.
When he’s back at his apartment, small enough to get cramped with the few belongings he had accumulated over the years, there is still no response. He sends another text, ignoring the nerves in his body telling him he’s overreacting. Ann is always on her phone, she never takes more than an hour to respond. He keeps his ringer on and falls into a fitful sleep.
In the morning, there’s no response.
Nor is there one the next day.
There is no response to Akechi’s furious rants about being ignored.
There is no response to Akechi’s shockingly vulnerable pleading. Ann would have killed to see him so emotional.
It’s a routine. He wakes up, send some idiotic message fueled by whatever emotion he felt upon waking up. Recently, the numbness within him has led him to send some concerning messages. He is ignored. The rest of the day passes him by until the darkness of sleep takes him once more.
He’s had an awful headache the entire day, but that isn’t new. He’s had a headache most days the past three weeks. He’s been yelled at by his supervisor, which hasn’t happened since his second week as an intern, and his black coffee was unceremoniously dumped when a stranger bumped into him on the subway. Akechi is more than ready to unlock his dark apartment and wallow in self-pity for the night.
When he feels arms wrap around him to trap him, he’s caught between letting this happen out of morbid curiosity and letting out his frustration of the day on his attacker. He turns his head to at least begin a struggle when he sees a flash of blonde pigtails. He freezes.
“Ann.” His voice is deceptively calm. “Ann. What the fuck.”
Ann has the decency to unwrap her arms from him. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disappear, it just happened. I had to.”
He turns around to face her and says the only thing that comes to mind, “Did you go after my father?”
“Yes.” There is no regret in her voice, and her eyes show the same steely determination that her voice held in the park.
“Why?” He grabs her shoulders, barely restraining himself from shaking her. “Do you know how dangerous that was? You could have died! I thought you did!”
She tries to fight his grasp, but he can see the signs of exhaustion in her. “I thought you wanted me to!”
“What? Because I told you his name? No! I didn’t want justice or revenge, I wanted a friend, I wanted someone to tell me that he was a horrible piece of shit, and I don’t need to center my life around him now that I’ve found him. I needed you as Ann.” There are no tears in his eyes because he has far outgrown the urge to cry, but his voice hitches and rasps as his fury grows.
There is small moment, where Ann looks more lost than angry before frustration overtakes her face. “Everything we have done has been through code, through hints and expressions. We never say what we mean! I thought I knew how to read you, but apparently, I never did.”
Akechi fights the urge to scream. “I don’t care about any of that, listen to me Ann. Enough with the code and the messages. I care about you, about your safety. I care about keeping you alive. That is what I always cared about. Giving you names was to make you harder to trace, to protect you.”
Ann doesn’t say anything, but her mouth does open in surprise as the pieces begin to connect. This time, when she moves to shake out of Akechi’s grasp, he lets her, and she walks right up to him and hugs him. Her chin is hooked over his shoulder, and he’s getting breaths filled with hair, but he doesn’t care. He focuses on the warmth of her arms around him, the rise of her shoulders as she breathes. She’s here. Finally.
“If it makes you feel better, the thing I used for all of this is gone forever. Even if we wanted to keep this going, we couldn’t,” she says, voice small, filled with equal measures of grief and relief. He doesn’t say anything back, just holds her tighter to show his own relief. “Would you like to know? How I did it? Solve the one case the department will never be able to?”
Perhaps, in a different world, Akechi would jump at the chance, to have something over the people who belittle him, to feel more important than them. But in the here and now, he only cares about Ann, real and alive right in front of him. Not the cold body of a righteous do-gooder who got too close to corruption, like he’s seen so many times in the department. Not another person that he had loved, and they had loved him in return so fiercely that they walked straight into their death for him.
“No, I’m fine with not knowing,” he replies. His voice is just as soft, calmed now that things have seemed to settle.
“Okay.” She sighs and disentangles from him. “Okay, let’s go back to being teenagers, Goro. Let’s figure out how to be friends, and not just conspirators.”
He stills, thinking carefully of his next words. “I’d like that, Ann-chan.”
Ann throws her head back laughing at how clearly uncomfortable he is with the overly familiar address. Akechi can feel a tiny smile grace his lips. They’ll be alright. He always is when he’s with Ann.