Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

MAY 2017 – 

Goro Akechi lives like he is already dead.

And maybe he is– maybe he's passed through that liminal space one too many times to come back correctly. If he happens to feel like a shambling corpse most days, then perhaps that's the price to pay for living. So he fills his tiny apartment with the full breadth of his decaying corpse, lets every ounce of the restless lethargy clogging up his brain seep into the crumpled sheets and clothes littering the floor.

Until, one day, he doesn't.

Until, one day, he gets up like a normal human being at a decent hour. He gets dressed in the last clean outfit he's got, dragging out a wrinkled button-down that had been stuffed deep into a drawer. 

A few days ago, he'd watched a documentary on Chernobyl on his phone. Listened, without really hearing, how the cameras that captured pictures of the great radioactive mass in its heart had to look through mirrors and around corners to see it, or else they'd be destroyed by sheer proximity. He isn't sure whether he feels more like the camera or the Elephant's Foot when he looks into the mirror. 

Either way, he avoids looking for too long. He briefly contemplates whether or not to mess up his hair, but that just makes him think of quiet afternoons and the feel of unfamiliar glasses on his nose. The lack of concealer might just be enough. He takes up a white facemask from the drawer and carefully retreats into anonymity. 

He's not sure what part of him feels like dying today. It was dreams two days ago, and self-respect yesterday. He thinks that he will decide when his walk reaches its end.

It is his mother's birthday, and Goro Akechi steps out of his apartment for the first time in months.

—

He goes south. Even as Tokyo stretches open before him, Goro keeps to side streets and alleyways as he slithers through the city. Just as his legs are starting to get sore, he steps out into a more open plaza at the end of a bridge, still keeping to its edge. The sunset crowns the bay as he begins to cross.

He lets himself drift slowly to the side of the crowd like sand settling along a riverbank. Eventually, he slows to a stop beside the bridge railing, facing forward. He’s tempted to lean on the railing and look out over the bay for a while, but the sun would be in his eyes, so instead he lets the sunlight linger in his peripheral vision. Goro watches people pass him by. A sea of suits. Uniformed schoolchildren with convenience-store snacks. Bachelors in sharp, club-ready outfits.

And then– and then there’s something else flitting through his sight. Goro’s gaze follows the flash of color ahead of him through the evening traffic and accidentally makes direct eye contact with Ann Takamaki. Her heart-shaped novelty sunglasses disappear behind a businessman’s broad shoulders before reappearing, staring at him dead-on. 

He wonders, just for a moment, what he should do. He could walk away– running would draw far too much attention– and get lost in the city. He could climb the railing and jump. But memories surface unbidden in his mind; faint stories he heard from Akira about ‘Ann’s friend’ and whispered rumors around Kosei come together into a more cohesive picture. He’s scarred enough people for one lifetime. Would I do that to her? Goro doesn’t come up with a conclusive answer by the time Ann reaches him.

“Hey,” she says, two arms’ lengths away from him, still using that polite strangers’ voice. “Hey,” she says again, and this time she knows she is not speaking to a stranger.

Goro does not say anything.

“Are you–” and here she pauses, suddenly lost for words. “Are you… who I think you are?”

Goro blinks at her, slowly, then nods. His whole body feels stiff with rigor mortis.

“... Akechi? ” She whispers, barely audible, voice tinged with disbelief. Goro nods again. With the confirmation hanging in the air, shock visibly makes its way through Ann’s shoulders, tracing all the way through her jaw up to her eyes. It recedes quickly, though, replaced with something vaguely approximating relief. Goro can’t quite tell. “Do you want to– do you want to talk somewhere? There’s a really, um, quiet park back the way I came.”

Goro nods for the third time. She turns to leave, and waits until she is beside him– until he is very clearly in her peripheral vision– to start weaving through the crowd in earnest. Goro suddenly identifies the feeling that’s been constricting his lungs since she saw him: paranoia. Anyone else who knows him from the conspiracy, the Thieves, Kosei, the interviews… they could all be within sensory range just as she was. Just as suddenly, he’s grateful for the location she chose. 

The park is more of a small, grassy plaza, looming high against the bay. Shallow bushes do something to shield Ann and Goro from the two smokers further down the path. Ann picks a bench in the corner of the park, quietly sliding into it. Despite the fact that Goro still feels vaguely like he’s staring down the barrels of a firing squad, he finds himself even more grateful. He forgot how sore his legs had gotten. Even so, it wasn’t like that had been much of a surprise after weeks upon weeks of inactivity.

“...So.” Ann kicks her legs a bit. The bench is a little short for her; her sneakers scuff against the ground. “What have you been up to?”

Goro finally allows himself to speak. “Nothing.” Even though he only said one word, he still finds himself disgusted at how gravelly his voice is.

Ann tilts her head to face him. Some of the usual sunshine has bled back into her voice, but she still sounds distinctly older than how Goro remembers her. “Is that… actually nothing, or do you just not wanna tell me?”

“I’ve been lying around my apartment,” he clarifies. “Doing nothing of note.”

“Oh.” She looks out at the last vestiges of sunlight over the bay. “Do you… have a job?”

“No. I stole as much of Shido’s money as I could manage, and I’ve been subsisting off of that.” This answer comes easily, at least.

Ann nods. She’s still got her hair up in pigtails, but there’s a pink streak running through the right-hand one. “Makes sense. I’m guessing you live alone?”

Goro nods, resisting the urge to massage his aching legs. His hands feel utterly rigid underneath his gloves.

“Oh, cool.” Ann quietly takes off her glasses. “So do you–”

“What is the point of this, Takamaki?” The question suddenly spills from Goro like viscera from a wound. His voice is quiet and harried. “You all won . You won the first game, and then we put the world back together after the second idiot god to rule it broke it into pieces. It’s done. What do you care? What is there left to say?”

Ann looks at him for a handful of moments, wide-eyed. “Do I have to say anything?” Goro’s eyebrow quirks, one of the most expressive things he’s done all evening, and she clarifies. “I mean, about all of that. It’s all in the past now. I thought we might as well just… focus on the present.”

“So you’re just going to fill the conversation with empty commentary? Is that it?” Goro folds his arms defensively.

“I forgot how much of a jerk you could be.” Ann’s statement is decidedly neutral. An observation, more than anything else. They sit in silence as the streetlights come on above them.

“You sound like you’re lonely,” she says, eventually, and Goro’s immediate reaction is to ask her if he’s ever been anything but. As if his entire life hasn’t been brined in loneliness, as maudlin a sentiment as it may be. 

She doesn’t speak immediately. “I think,” and here she trails off. “I think you’d feel better if you had someone keeping you company.”

“And what are you going to suggest? Getting a roommate to crash on my couch? Someone who’ll immediately rat me out to the police once I give them my name?” He’d been speaking softly, but he lowers his voice the slightest bit more. “Need I remind you that I am legally missing– and I want to stay that way.”

“I understand,” she says, and to Goro’s surprise he actually believes her. “I really do. So… you could come live with me?”

Goro would face her to properly express his disdain for the idea, but he’s still infused with nebulous dread. “You’re ridiculous.”

“It’s an honest offer! I have– I have a spare bedroom.” Something in her voice hitches, and Goro can’t help but glance over. Her face is pallid with concern. “I live a ways away from everyone else, and they’re all really busy these days, anyway, so you wouldn’t have to worry about them coming by.”

Goro leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The ache along his neck suddenly flares up, and he drops his head down more out of exhaustion than desperation. He hears the rustle of Ann’s jacket beside him and the click-click of her quickly checking her phone. When his back starts getting stiff again, he picks his head up, slowly inclining himself back against the bench. The metal is cool through his thin button-down.

Even with his eyes open, it still feels like he's barely seeing the harsh, late streetlights. Barely seeing anything–

“Tell no one.” Goro looks sidelong at her. His unkempt hair falls into his face, but Ann can still see his eyes– almost red under the streetlights– through the strands. “No gossip, no whispered hints. Nothing is to be said of my presence.”

“I won't. I promise.”

“Swear on it.”

“I swear…” Ann pauses. She briefly glances down at her shoes before meeting Goro’s eyes again. “I swear on the honor of the Phantom Thieves.”

Goro scoffs, even as he gets to his feet. “You're all still playing that stupid game?”

“No, it's just– the first thing I could think of.”

“Honor among thieves, I suppose,” he mutters. “Fine.”

“Do you want to…” She trails off, combing her fingers through her hair. “We could go ahead and get your things right now. It's late, but I can– it's not that far.”

She is uneasy , he thinks. She does not want to leave me alone .

“Worried I'm going to back out, are you?” He is careful and deliberate, turning towards her.

“No! Maybe,” she corrects. “But I hope I'm not forcing you to do anything you don't want to.”

Goro turns in the direction of the bridge. “Let's get this over with,” he says, eventually. He waits to hear the clack of her heels behind him before he begins the long walk home.

--

As he packs his things away, Goro is relieved to find Ann very deliberately directing her attention to her phone. She does not see Goro’s attempt to fit a pile of dirty laundry into his singular suitcase, nor does she see him drag his dented briefcase out from behind his tilted dresser and stuff it into a garbage bag.

Most importantly, she does not see him reach up onto one of his shelves, take down a small urn, and secure it as carefully as he possibly can in a small bag.

There is one thing she sees, though, near the beginning of the ordeal. As Goro takes his gloves off and Ann rests against the doorframe– where she will remain for the rest of the process– he watches her stare at his right hand for several seconds. It wasn’t like he didn’t expect this, but he’s still grateful when she takes out her phone and turns her eyes away.

With the entirety of his being packed into a suitcase, a garbage bag, and a small purse held close to his chest, Goro can’t help but feel unmoored. It occurs to him that he could run. He could bolt as they stepped back over the threshold and lose himself in Tokyo, and no one would ever find him again.

He asks himself: do you want to be found? When he does not get an answer, he asks again.

“You ready?” Ann asks, watching him zone out in the middle of his empty room.

“I think so,” he says, handing the suitcase to Ann.

--

Three days in, Akechi begins his descent into madness.

His daily routine hadn't changed very much, strictly speaking. He got up whenever his limbic system– or was it his endocrine system? It had been a while since biology class– felt like waking him up, sitting around or reading random selections from Ann’s sparse bookshelf in between. Ann certainly woke him up several times, early riser as she is, but he was usually able to slip back into dreamless sleep even after hearing her serenade the morning from the shower. 

Whatever money Ann's been getting from her modeling gigs and/or rich parents can't have been enough. Goro's done science to prove it. His hypothesis: “there is no place in this apartment where I cannot hear Ann belting out American showtunes from the shower”. Statistically significant (p<0.05) evidence finds, as Goro sneaks through the house methodically testing each room, that either that girl has lungs of steel or this horribly overpriced apartment has walls of paper.

He skips two rooms, though. He passes Ann's room right by– Goro doesn't fancy himself a snoop, or at least not anymore– and he also passes by the closed door of the guest room. Ann keeps stuttering her way through explanations about why it hasn't been cleaned out yet. He's tempted to try and reassure her that 'it can't be bad' alongside 'I've lived in worse filth', but that'd probably send her into a fit of cooing sympathy for one reason or another. So the door stays closed for now. Every study has to have a confounding factor or two. Besides, the couch is comfortable enough.

That's exactly where he wakes up three days into their arrangement: all but one pillow on the floor, half-tangled in a blanket, thoroughly confused. His blurry vision grants him the sight of a pale blob in his periphery.

“Sorry! I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to wake you up.” Ann goes through her usual apologies as Goro slings himself vaguely upright. Either she's still in her pajamas, or she’s managing to pull off a particularly low-effort casual-wear look. There’s some sort of design on her tank top, but Goro doesn't particularly care about analyzing the minutiae of Ann’s apparel choice this early in the morning.

“...It's fine.” He maneuvers himself into a sitting position to preserve a fragment of his dignity. “Don't you have work today?”

“I have the day off.” She twirls something candy-colored in her hands. “It's, like, 11 in the morning. I only just got up.”

Goro makes a noncommittal noise. He still feels vaguely like a child sleeping over at another child's house. Like someone might yell at him if he goes rummaging in the fridge or poking through the pantry.

“Oh, hey. Do you wanna play?” Ann crosses the room and holds out the bright object in her hand to Goro, who finally makes an attempt to rub the sleep from his eyes. It's a small game controller; he recognizes that much. “I wanna practice so that I can beat Futaba, but it gets boring playing against the game.”

Goro takes the controller– bright pink– and nods. “I have nothing better to do.” He glances up at Ann just in time to see the last vestiges of tension disappear from her face. As if she'd said something she regretted. “I have to warn you,” he adds, “I don't know what game you're about to rope me into, but I can assure you I won't be very good at it.”

“That's fine! I think you'll get the hang of it quick, anyway.” Ann crosses into the kitchen and half-disappears behind the counter island. “What do you want for breakfast? We have…” She peers into the fridge and wrinkles her nose when it apparently doesn't have what she's looking for. “Eh, I'll go pick something up. Any preferences?”

“...Anything is fine.”

Which was apparently the wrong answer to give, as Ann returns twenty minutes later with two huge cups piled high with fruit and ice cream. Goro gives her as baleful a look as he could muster, which wasn't much, considering he'd just woken up from a half-hearted nap and clearly hadn't moved from the couch.

“This is not breakfast.”

Ann gives him a sheepish look as she flops down in the armchair beside the couch. “Well,” she says, in between a bite of chocolate-drizzled strawberries, “it's got fruit in it!”

“Ice cream is not breakfast, even if it has fruit.” Something occurs to Goro, and he sits up a bit straighter. “Aren't you a professional model? Don't you have a dietitian?”

Ann thoughtfully tries a bit of her ice cream. “Yeah, but this sort of thing is fine for me. Besides, it's not like I eat like this every day.” Goro raises an eyebrow at her, but doesn't say anything further. He turns to the parfait she'd picked out for him. It's fruity as hell, with dense layers of strawberries and cream. Of all the sweet things she could have gotten him, this isn't as bad as it could be– surprisingly mellow, at that.

“I don't know what your favorite kind is, so I just picked one out for you. I hope you don't mind!” There's a bit of cream stuck to Ann's smile. 

Goro hums. “I usually don’t like sweet things, but this is good enough.” Ann, seemingly satisfied by Goro’s answer, keeps her smile up as she plies through the rest of her parfait. Eventually she picks up her controller and goes through the motions of starting up the game.

“You probably haven’t played many video games, have you?” She looks at him sidelong. Goro, with a mouthful of strawberry, can’t help but think back to a few distinct occasions where he brushed up in passing against the world of video games. Waiting at the subway station, greedily eyeing the GameBoy of another kid. Playing around with arcade guns to the tune of a well-deserved victory. Listening patiently to Futaba explain the entire class system of some MMORPG as Akira commits traffic offenses in Mementos.

“Not really,” he concludes. “I never had the money, let alone the time.” He sets his parfait aside and turns over the little controller in his hands. “What kind of game is this?”

Ann patiently explains the rules– it’s a racing game, which seems easy enough to grasp. Even though he fumbles his way through the controls, he manages to get the hang of it by the third race, mutely gritting his teeth against the rising tide of frustration. Ann, by contrast, is skilled enough to chat as she races, sporadically interrupting herself with cries of horror every time she gets hit or sends her kart down a pit.

“Oh, hey, you got it!” Ann grins vaguely in Goro’s direction. “You’re really good for an amateur!”

For once, Goro decides not to let his ego overtake him. The spark of warmth in the back of his chest is good enough without being fanned by boasting. “Thank you,” he says, turning his attention away from Ann and her relentless smile.

–

It takes one week.

Goro is sleepless on the couch. He’d gotten up and paced around earlier in the night to try to work off some of the restless energy lancing through his spine, but ended up snooping around even more than he already had, which had just filled his head up with more unwanted thoughts. The hallway leading from the front door had been peppered with photos of Ann and her family in all the usual milestones: vacations, birthdays, ceremonies, arranged in a clear temporal order. It was easy enough to recognize Ann’s sharp-jawed father and willowy mother. It was harder to find pictures with all three of them present at once. The pictures featuring Ann often had vague, older figures half-cropped out of them, but none of them resembled her parents.

Caretakers . The word suddenly occurs to Goro as the sun slices through the balcony window. He rolls over, casting a glance towards the bedroom hallway. Only a moment later he starts to hear rustling in the direction of Ann’s bedroom.

When she emerges, Ann takes two steps into the hallway and then turns back to face the door of the guest room. She stares, unmoving, for at least a full minute. Even with the press of the city around them, the apartment suddenly feels unbearably quiet.

As if she’s come to the conclusion she wanted, Ann eventually breaks away and pads into the kitchen. She quietly assembles her morning coffee, downs it without sitting down, and gathers up her towel for her shower. Nowhere in the process does she acknowledge Goro. When he finally hears the shower turn on, she does not sing.

He affords her a modicum of privacy and steps out onto the balcony for a little while, watching the dead-gray clouds pass. When he returns, Ann has apparently finished her shower; the smell of her strawberry body wash hangs in the air. There are muffled, indistinct sounds coming from the guest room. Goro consciously ignores them and makes himself a cup of tea. It’s fairly mediocre black tea, made from a box shoved to the back of Ann’s cabinet, but better than nothing.

Goro is perched up on one of the barstools, clutching the bathrobe Ann got for him tighter around his chest when the door to the guest room opens. He turns to see her, unhurried. “Good morning.”

“Morning.” Already anticipation– nervousness, maybe– is clear in Ann’s voice. “Hey, uh…” She trails off. Goro knows it’ll take her a moment to finish her sentence when she’s this worked up. He quietly stockpiles a reserve of patience for her. 

But she speaks eventually. “Do you… wanna move to the guest room now?” Her voice is smaller than usual. It’s far too hesitant for the Ann that Goro knows.

With that in mind, Goro hesitates, too. “If it’s convenient for you. I really don’t mind staying in the living room.” It’s still true. He doesn’t exactly mind getting woken up, since his sleep schedule is already irreparably awful.

“No, it’s fine. I just finished getting it in order.” Ann makes it sound like she’s making arrangements for a funeral. “Please, it’s the least I can do.”

Something suddenly clicks in Goro’s mind. The spaciousness of the apartment, Ann’s uncharacteristic hesitance, the pictures that weren’t taken quite right… He had been under the impression that Ann, flighty young Ann, had moved out and gotten her own place the moment she could. But this place has clearly been lived in for a long time, molded around the same occupant– once occupants plural, now occupant. Decidedly singular.

This place has been Ann’s home since her childhood, and he is about to claim the bedroom that her parents have not used since thirteen photographs ago.

“Very well, then,” because that’s all he can say, and he goes to gather his things up. The suitcase, the pile of laundry beside the couch, the small purse which he has still not opened, all go into his arms.

The room itself is large and gray. A soft-looking silver fleece blanket lies atop the bed, and the wide window, curtains closed, lets in what little sun it can. Dust hangs in the air. Despite how plain it is, it’s undoubtedly the most lavish room Goro has ever stayed in.

Goro resolves, slumping on the bed, that this cannot continue. He has burrowed into Ann’s life– her home , the only home she has ever known– like a parasite. He does not deserve anything more. The room’s got its own bathroom and a queen-sized bed, for fuck’s sake. It isn’t for him .

“Goro?” Ann knocks, gently, as if her voice might have gone unnoticed somehow. “Need any help getting settled?”

“I’ll be alright,” he says, and it feels almost like his voice echoes in the empty room. “But thank you for the offer.”

—

“So,” Ann says one evening over decidedly mediocre yakisoba. “When’s your birthday?”

Goro resists the urge to roll his eyes even as guilt wells at the base of his ribs. The bulk of their conversation over the past week has consisted largely of Ann trying her best to initiate pleasantries and icebreakers in between waking Goro up from depression naps. He didn’t feel too bad about ignoring her at first, but it took a half-dozen terrible, terrible not-quite-conversations for him to realize she’s just being honest-to-god friendly . No ulterior motives, no plastic smiles. He figures he might as well start playing along, even if her feelings do seem to be near-impervious to his omnipresent apathetic pall.

“June 2nd,” he says.

“Whoa, that’s only about a week away, isn’t it?” Ann replies. Goro catches her surprised gaze as he raises his glass to his lips.

“You’d better not be planning a surprise party or anything of that sort.” He notes, a little darkly. He thinks about elaborating but decides against it, letting the implications of his words sink in.

To her credit, Ann doesn’t seem disappointed. If he had to guess, she’s probably seen this sort of callous birthday-related indifference before, perhaps among the other Thieves. “I was just curious. Oh, hey, what do you want from the store this week?”

—

The days dissolve into the summer. It doesn’t feel like anything’s changing, even though Goro can readily see how things have changed. There’s a bookshelf in the guest room that has a few of his favorite books, stolen from the living room shelf. A couple of sweater sleeves hang out of one of the drawers. There’s a tan coat shoved deep in the back of the closet.

He still has not extracted the urn.

—

Goro remembers to make his bed every morning, even though he feels like he doesn’t deserve it.

Chapter Text

JUNE 2017 –

“Surprise!” Ann leans over the back of the couch, her pink-streaked pigtail nearly flopping right into Goro’s mouth, and drops a small gift into Goro’s lap. “I know you didn’t want to have a party, but I couldn’t just let you be on your birthday. Open it!”

Goro looks back at her, one eyebrow raised, before turning his attention to his gift. It’s small and straight-edged, very neatly wrapped. He carefully tears open the wrapping paper as Ann makes her way around the couch. At first, he only reveals a blank blue cover, but turns it over to find that it’s a book of poetry. Ann grins expectantly at him.

“What do you think? You’ve been going through my bookshelf real fast, so I figured you needed something else to keep you busy!” She twirls a bit of her hair idly. “I don’t know what you like, and I figured it’d be way too suspicious if I asked, but I hope you like it!”

“I do. Thank you.” He turns the book over in his hands. “I don’t usually seek out poetry, so this will be quite interesting.”

Ann beams. “I’m glad! Oh, and I know you said you don’t really like sweets, but I could still go get you a cake if you wanted.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ve barely ever done any sort of celebration for my birthdays, I have to admit.”

Ann gasps, and he’s not quite certain whether her surprise is mock or genuine. “ Never? We could do something tonight, then!” Her boundless energy seems to be back in full force as she takes out her phone and begins Googling furiously.

Goro isn’t even sure whether he has clean clothes to wear. “What on earth are you planning?”

“Wanna go for dinner? I can get us a private booth; I know you don’t wanna be out in public.”

“I–” Goro begins, and then stops. He hasn’t actually left Ann’s apartment in almost a month, and the prospect of getting some fresh air is tantalizing. “Alright, just… be discreet about it.”

“Of course, of course!” Ann gives him a thumbs-up as Goro shuffles off to the guest room to find something half-decent to wear. He gently sets the book on the bed and eventually manages to scrounge up an old sweater-vest.

Rifling through his drawers for a pair of slacks, he pushes a black pair aside– the stitching around one ankle had come undone months ago. Underneath is an older, tan pair, and Goro inadvertently brushes his thumb against an old bloodstain along the leg. It’s just a couple of drops, dark against the fabric, but it sets Goro’s heart on edge all the same. Had he worn these before he locked himself away? Had anyone seen it? He shoves it aside and steps back to sit on the bed.

Goro hunches over a bit, nails digging into his thighs. Something vaguely in the shape of self-sabotaging guilt is back over him in full force. He fights it off as best he can and gets up stiffly to go wash his face. He’s still not used to how spacious the bathroom off of the guest room is, and tries not to pay attention to how it still feels like nothing– the towels, the water, the tubes of makeup scattered over the counter, the reflection in the mirror– belongs to him. Despite his unease, he still takes a moment to catch his own eye.

This isn’t as horrible as he’s ever looked, but it’s damn near close. The dark circles under his eyes still haven’t gone away, no matter how many hours he sleeps away. He’s managed to take a couple of showers in this inhospitable bathroom, so his hair isn’t as filthy as usual, but it’s still uncut and spilling over his shoulders like so much splintered wood.

And then– and then he looks deeper. Perhaps it’s just the lighting, but the shape of his nose looks– looks like–

Goro has the sudden urge to crack his knuckles open on the mirror. He’s growing older, he knows, and it shouldn’t surprise him, he knows , but he is beginning to resemble his father. Goro Akechi is nineteen years old and already all cruelties great and small are coming into view, projected onto his face like a sheet of rain through glass.

“Hey, Goro,” Ann calls from the living room, and the sound makes him want to scratch his skin off. “You ready to head out in a few minutes?”

Goro can’t help but mentally reprimand himself. It’s just Ann , he reminds himself. She doesn’t deserve this either .

He closes his eyes and leaves to get dressed.

—

Goro’s disguise is more comprehensive this time. He puts on a facemask, and Ann pauses to inspect him as he shuffles back into the living room.

“You sure you don’t wanna do anything with your hair?” She stands contrapposto, arms crossed. “I could style it for you, if you want– and I promise it won’t take long!”

Goro can’t remember the last time he brushed his hair, apart from running his fingers through it in the shower, which doesn’t really count for hair as thick as his. He nods. Ann takes her post upon the living room couch, gesturing for Goro to follow. They get through half of a terrible, terrible soap opera as Ann gently brushes Goro’s hair, slowly pinning it into a messy bun at the nape of his neck.

“There you are!” She pats him on the head, which would be an obscenely condescending gesture if it were anyone but her. “Shall we go?”

It had rained earlier in the day, and yet everything but the atmosphere seemed to have forgotten it. The air sticks to Goro’s skin like a thin layer of paint. He finds himself keeping to the shade less to conceal himself and more just to keep himself cool. The subway isn’t any better; sweaty evening passengers rush by the two of them as they ride east. The press of eyes around him is profoundly disorienting. Goro almost finds himself shrinking away, but steels himself for the moment, concentrating on peeking over Ann’s shoulder as she delves into Instagram.

Ann guides the two of them with complete confidence. She takes the lead as they cross into the restaurant, a low-lit building along a Shinjuku alleyway. Goro barely registers the trip to their table or the polite words from the waitress. When the waitress disappears back behind the booth’s curtain, Ann leans forward over the table, a bit conspiratorially.

“You doing alright there?” She glances between Goro and the black-and-white pattern over the curtain. “Sorry I just ordered for us both, but I figured you didn’t wanna talk much. Plus, I know what’s good here, trust me!”

Goro nods, not content to remove his mask until the food arrives. “It’s fine.” He thinks for a moment, looking over the metal bowl, divided into two sections, between them. “And thank you for being so considerate.”

Ann gives him a big, bright smile in response, but even that doesn’t immediately dampen the growing tangle of wire at the base of his stomach. Undeterred, Ann launches into a story about Shiho’s latest ordeals as she carves a path through the practice season. Between Ann updating him over dinner and the rare breakfasts they share, he sometimes feels that he knows more about Shiho’s life than he ever wanted to know. Not that he minds– she seems pleasant enough. Or, if he were to rely on Ann’s descriptions as fact, she seems to be the world’s premier volleyball star who’s kind enough to be a nun and pretty enough to be a supermodel. Either way, the story is grounding. He finds himself concentrating well enough to actually look attentive for once, peppering in all the required ‘I see’s and ‘Did she really?’s.

When the waitress arrives, she brings along a plethora of sliced meat and fresh vegetables, arranging them on the table alongside pitchers of shabu-shabu broth. Ann takes it upon herself to start the pot and prepare the broth after saying her requisite thank-yous. It takes a couple of minutes after the waitress leaves for Akechi to finally take his mask off, setting it aside and gently inhaling the steam collecting around them. It’s been a long while since he’s had something that wasn’t middling takeout or snacks Ann retrieved from the 7-11 around the corner. He mentally bookmarks one of the cookbooks he remembers lying unused on the bookshelf. Maybe he can actually do something useful with his time for once.

And it’s good– too good, in fact. It’s making him think of his mother again, and his heart suddenly jumps onto a knife’s edge even as he carefully serves himself another portion of broth. They couldn’t afford anything like this, but the general sensation is the same. Warmth and care and polite company who puts up with all the goddamn sludge he calls an existence.

“What do you think? I chose well, right?” Ann preens a little bit under the dim light, quietly smiling to herself like a pleased cat.

Goro inclines his head gently, slowly. His stomach’s churning too much for him to comfortably eat any more, so he slips his mask back on. Something akin to hunger still mouths at the base of his ribcage, though, between pangs of anxiety. He ignores it.

With impeccable timing the waitress stops by. The short, polite conversation she has with Ann sounds like it’s underwater. Ann almost seems to pick up on what Goro’s feeling better than he does, and she demurely requests the check. 

Goro can almost feel the decaying of his senses in real-time– hearing, sight, touch, balance. Ann leads him gently out once everything’s settled. As they exit out into the Shinjuku alleyway, she taps him on the shoulder.

“You’re, like, really out of it.” She cocks her head. “Do you want to go home?”

A sharp thought lances through Goro’s head– it’s your home, not mine. Suddenly he wants to scream. It’s not my fucking home and you know it.

He doesn’t scream. Instead, Goro watches as Ann holds out a small triangular prism. It takes a moment for him to resolve that it is, in fact, a small container of a single slice of cheesecake, and it has, in fact, been maneuvered gently into his hands.

Ann’s holding one, too. “I got us dessert to go,” she whispers, as if she’s only now become cognizant of her volume.

Goro barely hears her. He’s looking at the hands in front of him. There’s a few forgotten neurons in the back of his head that pipe up with yes, those are your hands, now get moving, troglodyte , but they’re largely overshadowed by static building up around his skull like a cumulonimbus cloud gathering lightning. A moment passes, and then the next, and then the next. The city moves around him like a river of paint.

His tongue feels like it’s congealed to the inside of his mouth. Goro nods, again, only vaguely cognizant of how he must have looked like a discarded bobblehead toy this evening. Ann reaches out like she wants to take his hand. He finally forces himself to pull his head up– it feels like he’s hoisting himself up by the hair with how the night air prickles against his skull– and watches Ann’s bright blue eyes track him. He can’t imagine what she’s seeing right now. The image won’t enter his head no matter how hard he tries to make it make sense.

“Hey,” she says, and her voice suddenly has a newfound weight to it. Some quality he can’t name, echoing in the lamplit dark. Goro gradually realizes how much of the alleyway is tinged with smoke; a thousand workers’ breaks must have seeped their way into the concrete.

“Hey, we have to go.” Ann’s voice still has that careful, gentle weight running through it. “You think you’re up to taking the subway? It’s late, so there won’t be many people.” She’s deliberately speaking slower than usual, and that unfamiliarity grates on Goro’s brain just enough to get him to step forward. She does take his hand after a moment of hesitation, carefully leading him back the way they came. Her hand is warm even through his glove; it feels almost as if she’s not only pulling him along, but down into the earth.

The Shibuya station is closest. Ann pulls Goro along through the valleys that carve themselves between the skyscrapers. Goro starts to feel his senses flow back into him, and they bring faint embarrassment with them. If he weren’t so exhausted, he’d feel a bit more like a begrudging tourist with an overexcited guide. Even so, ‘overexcited guide’ might not be the right descriptor; he can still sense Ann’s tension without seeing her face.

She pulls him into Shibuya Crossing just as the cycle begins. It’s as busy as ever, and a sea of suits and bright raincoats and evening streetwear runs in currents around them. Spines of steel and concrete stretch into the sky. In this moment, Tokyo is organic . It is a living, breathing animal with a thousand thousand eyes, and Goro feels like every single one of them is trained on him.

He tries, with all his focus, to open his Third Eye. It had always been reliable, foolproof; it let others’ perception slide off of him like an oil slick. He calls on whatever fragments of Loki or Robin Hood or anyone remain to hide him or shield him or kill him on the spot. Nothing answers him. The mote of blue flame in the middle of the intersection goes completely unnoticed. Goro calls on every memory he can find to shroud himself somehow, tries to lose himself in the crowd. 

He isn’t lost, and his Third Eye doesn’t open. He’s thoroughly impaled into the minds of everyone there. Goro’s bangs are falling in his face, and his hand is slipping out of Ann’s, and he’s falling and he—

Goro only fully realizes what’s happened a few moments after he’s hit the concrete. The pain shocks some of the panic out of him. He gets to his knees, his breathing ragged yet even. Ann’s kneeling down in front of him, hands on his shoulders. There’s a sympathetic murmur moving around them. Goro finds himself caring far too much about what they could be saying.

“Oh my gosh, are you okay?” Ann’s voice cuts through a significant portion of the remaining haze. Her general cadence is loud and sharp. “Anything broken? Here,” and she pulls Goro to his feet, rushing him out of the intersection and pulling him off to the side.

With the veil over his senses all but lifted, everything feels uncomfortably sharp. The humid night air coats his lungs even through the facemask. Goro finds himself staring up at the windows of the office buildings as Ann leads him along, every reflection made clear to him. She lets go of his hand and whips around once they’re out of the flow of traffic.

“I’m so sorry! Did I pull you over or something?” Ann’s brows furrow with empathy. “Here, can I…” She trails off, reaching out towards Goro’s face. “I wanna check to see if your nose is broken. I’ll be quick, I promise! I don’t even have to pull it down all the way.”

Goro takes a step back, despite himself. He forces himself to speak as he takes inventory of his body. “I’m fine.” He can sense the broad strokes of sensation across his skin, but he just can’t seem to hold onto anything more precise than that. His knees are a little sore, and his nose throbs with pain.

“Are you sure? Your face is all…” Ann grimaces a little bit. Goro tries to figure out whatever the hell his face is doing, but it doesn’t even feel like his face. “Please?” Her voice is so much quieter now. “I wanna make sure that we don’t have to take you to the hospital or–”

“You won’t .” Goro snaps at her, and regret is painted over Ann’s face even before he can finish speaking.

“I’m sorry, I just–” Ann takes a quick, deep breath. The sound grinds on Goro’s nerves. “I won’t, I know. I can do something to treat it at home, just…”

Not my home. The rush of adrenaline continues on. Goro bows his head slightly in answer.

Ann makes a small sound in acknowledgement and, with a surgeon’s precision and speed, pulls down the top part of his mask to look him over. It’s just a second until she puts it back up with a nod, but it feels like– Goro’s not sure how long it feels like, actually. Time feels like it’s moving sideways. He glances off to his side as Ann opens her mouth to speak and someone is staring right at him .

“Well, it doesn’t look broken, that’s for sure.” Ann checks the time on her phone. Goro can’t move. “You might’ve scraped it up a bit, but it isn’t bleeding or anything.” The man across the way is wearing a black suit. “There could be a bit of a bruise later. We can get some ice on it.” He’s walking towards the station, but he’s still keeping his head turned towards them. “I’ve dealt with this sort of thing before– people fall all the time during shoots. Especially when we’re working with heels.”

The man finally, finally turns away as Ann tilts her head at him. She’s still holding onto her slice of cheesecake. Funny, Goro must have dropped his. “Thanks, though. I was kind of worried. You ready to go?”

Goro makes a sound in the back of his throat that she apparently takes for an answer. Ann sets off down into the station; Goro follows on autopilot. It’s bright down there, so much brighter and sharper than the plaza. Drier, too. Everything smells like disinfectant and cheap perfume, and all of it feels like it’s shredding Goro’s senses to pieces. There’s countless eyes moving through the station. Goro meets several of them as his vision darts around. He drops his own gaze to the tiles under the feet and he can still sense their presence.

He is not only being perceived, but being known , and it fills him with revulsion.

Goro mutters a quick apology to Ann before ducking into the bathroom off the main concourse. He only catches his own eye briefly in the long mirror– god, he looks even worse than he did this morning– before locking himself in the nearest stall.

He leans his head against the stall door. Goro feels slivers of the cool metal between his messy, sweat-slick bangs. His frigid philosophies, all the little tomes stashed away in the room-that-is-not-his, fail him. But that’s a blessing in disguise— Goro is alone, both inside and outside his mind. It’s a relief, to be done with grasping for help. It’s a relief to let himself drown.

He breathes, once, twice, again and again, watching his breath fog in little pulses over the door. It’s only somewhat cool in the station, but the AC’s running hard and fast; the breeze makes him feel shivery in patches along his skin. His button-down is only now coming unstuck from his back. Goro isn’t sure whether the overall sensation is calming or invigorating.

He checks his phone, squinting a bit– he must have turned his brightness up whenever he last used it. There’s a single notification from Ann. He shuffles his mask down over his chin, takes off his glove with his teeth and unlocks his phone with his thumbprint.

< Ann Takamaki

Ann : you okay?

Goro goes over his mental library of excuses. It takes him a bit longer than usual to pick one out.

Goro : I’m fine. Just a sudden migraine, is all.

Ann responds almost immediately, with a quick “aw that sucks” followed up by “should I get meds before home? there’s stores n stuff still open”. Goro writes back in the negative and shoves his phone back in his pocket, putting himself back in order. He decides that the cold was, in fact, invigorating, and that he has just enough energy to get himself home before he crashes. Better to make that decision before some other facet of his mind makes it for him.

He does not meet his gaze in the mirror on the way out. He’s worried he’ll know himself.

–

The ride home is much, much less eventful than the rest of the evening. Goro doesn’t bother to hide his cadaverous exhaustion as he slumps into a seat, listening to the whine of the subway. By the time the two of them shuffle inside the apartment, Goro barely has the energy to unlace his shoes and toss his gloves aside.

Ann mutely watches him shrug his way over to the red, red armchair. “Hey,” she says, in that same heavy-soft tone as earlier. “I’m really sorry for–” 

The doorbell rings, and she bustles off with a murmur of “one moment”. It takes a few seconds before Goro sinks back and drops his gaze to the coffee table. It’s strewn with books and magazines from both of them, stacked up haphazardly. An old bookmark of Goro’s is tucked underneath a fashion magazine. He had gotten it from a school festival years prior, and it’s all done up in Kosei black-and-white, hand-painted by one of the art students.

He picks his head back up when he hears the door click shut. Ann carries a polygonal bag up onto the kitchen island, looking like a guilty child that managed to sneak a treat into the shopping cart.

“What I meant to say was… actually, no, this first.” She draws a box out onto the counter. Goro indelicately slings himself upright and pads across the floor to see it.

“It’s dark chocolate,” Ann explains. “Not too sweet.” Beneath the clear plastic window in the top of the box is a cake, frosted elegantly in deep umber. Goro’s suddenly made aware of the hunger still seething in his bones.

“The bakery a couple blocks from here delivers late, and I know them and their usual stock really well, so…” She still looks a little sheepish even as she retrieves cutlery and plates. “Oh, should I make some tea? That always makes my head feel better.”

Goro shakes his head. “I’m feeling fine now, but thank you.” A lie. His jaw still aches with how hard he’d been clenching it, and the pain seems to be bleeding upward, giving him, ironically, an actual migraine. 

“Well, that’s good.” Ann carefully deconstructs the box and begins the first few cuts. “Your nose looks fine, by the way. There’s, like, a tiny bruise, but if you put a bit of ice on it it should be okay.”

She hands Goro the first slice of cake, and he lumbers back over to the living room. At this hour, and as tired as he is, the armchair is much more comfortable than it has any right to be. He closes his eyes and lingers over the first bite of his cake. It’s surprisingly light, and there’s a hint of coffee flickering through the frosting.

Somewhere in the process Ann had made her way onto the couch, stretching out. It’s more than long enough for her.

“But, um…” She lingers over her slice as well, poking at one of the buttercream rosettes. “I’m sorry about this whole… thing. I think– I was so caught up in celebrating that I wasn’t really paying attention to what you actually wanted . Ugh!” Visibly frustrated, Ann slumps back, dropping her head over the end of the couch. “You know what I did earlier this year? The exact same thing! It’s a wonder Yusuke still talks to me after all of that…”

He wants to say it wasn’t her fault, but he can barely grasp what happened over the course of the evening. Goro can’t find a name or a face or anything to say about it at all. 

He finds something else to say, despite his exhaustion. “From what I remember of Kitagawa… I think he’d put up with almost anything.”

Ann groans. Her plate threatens to slip off of her lap. “I guess. Hey,” she says, picking her head back up. “Next time I do something like that, tell me off for it, okay? Like, go all out.”

“It’s not your fault,” he says as he sits up, and now there’s something foreign in the sudden pulse of energy down his spine, the perfect rigidity of his posture. “I was being… paranoid. Not like that’s a surprise, but even so.”

Ann blinks at him. “I sorta figured, yeah, but–”

Goro shakes his head. “I could have warned you. Or talked about it. But I suppose that’s something I wasn’t paying attention to either.”

Ann returns to the remains of her cake, scraping frosting off her plate with a contemplative air. The surge of energy that came over Goro is gone, and he wants to fall asleep in the armchair more than ever.

The dim light from the kitchen barely reaches Ann. Moonlight and skyglow from the balcony frame her silhouette. She laughs, just once, and Goro can barely see her slight smile. “You know, I think that’s the most words I’ve gotten out of you at one time ever since you moved in.”

He’d roll his eyes if he wasn’t closing them. “One day I’ll dictate my novel to you and then you’ll see.”

Ann’s smile gets just a little bit bigger. “Happy birthday, Goro,” she says, apropos of almost nothing. Goro says almost nothing in response, just summons a sound from the back of his throat.

He drags himself over to his room just as Ann switches on the TV, and stops in the doorway the moment he’s realized he’s just thought of it as his room.  

He’s too exhausted to go to war with his mind, though, and so he lets the feeling wash over him. It recedes quickly, like a tide from an errant moon, but just for a moment, it is warm and careful and he belongs somewhere.

The small blue book rests gently on the nightstand.

—

When Goro wakes up, the apartment is empty.

Cool gray-blue light washes over the living room as he moves outward, slowly encroaching on the empty space. He isn’t sure what time it is. He doesn’t want to know.

Goro washes the sparse scrapes from his hands and knees, but forgets to put ice on his nose. Even so, it heals quickly, and soon he sees unblemished flesh in the mirror.

It’s disappointing. He wishes it had broken.

—

“Change it back,” Goro says, bringing in a basket of his laundry: the one thing he’s done today. He can already see where Ann’s red leggings have gotten mixed in and desperately hopes they haven’t dyed all of his white shirts pink.

Ann, remote in hand, is splayed over the couch like a particularly disheveled Victorian dandy after a session of philosophizing. “To this?” She changes the channel back and the latest Featherman flick flashes over the screen.

Goro sits down beside her and starts folding his (newly pink) shirts. “I’ve heard it’s quite good,” he says, pausing mid-fold to watch Blue Pheasant land a stunning blow on a rubbery foe.

“It is,” Ann grins, “but not when you’ve been hearing about it for three weeks straight. Futaba loves it. Like, literally wouldn’t stop talking about it. I think she got Yusuke into it too.”

“Well, it’s understandable. The costume quality has really gone up in this one, so it seems, and–” Goro cuts himself off before he can make more of a fool of himself. “It’s good. I agree.”

Ann rolls her eyes and nearly topples into the laundry basket. Goro throws a pink shirt at her. 

—

“What do you want from the store?” Ann twirls her set of keys around her finger. Goro doesn’t miss the pocket-knife keychain tracing circles through the air, or the half-dozen little animal charms and pom-poms beside it.

Goro dog-ears another page in the thin cookbook he’d plucked off the shelf. “Nothing in particular,” he says, resigning himself to another evening of snacks passing for dinner. He still doesn’t feel comfortable in the kitchen quite yet. Maybe eventually this thin sense of belonging thrumming in his bones will seep into the rest of the apartment like water damage, warping wood and staining drywall.

He finds that he wants dark chocolate, but decides against asking for it.

—

Goro’s dreams are back. Gunsmoke lives there, and blood does too. Pink fluid splashes with every footstep he takes. Some small piece of the Metaverse has taken up residence in his brain like a tumor. It follows him incessantly as he sleeps, clinging to his clothing like a living sea trying to drown him. His limbs drag through the warped tide. Even here, it feels like the Metaverse is an extension of himself, preventing him from moving the way he wants to move. From owning his own corpse. And there’s nothing to say of–

He doesn’t appear often. When he does, he’s always smiling. Somehow, that’s worse than seeing him with a bullet hole hidden beneath his matted bangs.

Despite everything, Goro sleeps solidly through each and every night, waking long after the sun has risen and bringing the unease with him into each day.

Chapter Text

Goro does what he can, most days. They run long now that Ann’s gigs have picked up, so he fights the stillness however he can. Today his strategy happens to be tidying up his bathroom. It is debatably unsuccessful.

Ann has apparently been using the guest bathroom’s cabinets, drawers, and assorted horizontal surfaces to store her ungodly library of makeup. If he finds yet another unused sample container, he’s going to scream.

He’s managed to categorize them well enough so far based on his limited knowledge. The concealers, he recognizes; he used them nearly every day towards the end of his princehood to hide his ill-looking countenance. The eye makeup is slightly more arcane. He’s still not quite sure how mascara actually works.

Even though these sorts of repetitive tasks are usually soothing, boredom finally takes over him as he places a vial of something inelegantly pink off to the side. Gold light spills over the cluttered counters. A whim comes over him, and he’s suddenly tempted to see if these shades are any good on actual skin– he and Ann have a very similar skin tone, and as little as he knows of makeup, he has standards that this collection of miscellanea isn’t standing up to. He also has a sneaking suspicion that the geometry of the cabinets won’t actually hold it all. Something has to go.

Goro picks up a blush palette. Pinks and tans sit side-by-side in perfect coordination, with an odd shade of lilac off in the corner. He takes up a brush that he found vaguely nearby the blush and pops the palette open. A feeling two steps to the left of guilt comes over him, suddenly conscious of how he’s using Ann’s belongings for some stupid experiment, but then he sees the stacks of well-categorized makeup arranged over the tile floor and decides that she really won’t miss them.

He brushes a streak of lilac over his cheek and it almost doesn’t look awful. The shade does, in fact, compliment his skin tone. He takes up one of the more tasteful pinks, accidentally mixing it with a bit of the lilac still stuck to the brush, and dusts that on beside the first mark. Halfway through, Goro realizes that it would have been easier to try things out on the back of his hand. Even so, there’s something satisfying about the agency of shaping and repainting his face, even if his work is visibly clumsy. The small tremor in his right hand– either a lingering injury or a neurotic tic, he’s never been sure– is shaping his performance a little more than he wants it to. Perhaps he just isn’t used to this kind of freedom.

He takes up an instrument reminiscent of a double-ended highlighter and adds that into the mix. When that mysteriously bronze reagent is adequately applied, Goro checks his phone for texts from Ann, smudging a bit of pink on the case. He looks back up and takes a moment to look over his handiwork. The words oil painting enter his head apropos of nothing. The abstract blend of the brushstrokes over his cheek reminds him of something else on the very tip of his tongue. He stands, holding his breath, for just a moment.

Two seconds in, he decides he’s sick to death of looking at his face and snatches up a washcloth from behind him. He runs it under warm water and scrubs himself furiously. When he looks up, though, most of the bronze remains, and there’s an indistinct red-pink smear over his cheek.

He can’t recall where the makeup remover is. Or how to use it, for that matter. And is it supposed to be a liquid or more of a cream?

Goro takes his phone back up. It opens to his texts with Ann; their last conversation about when she was coming home glows blue in the gold-lit bathroom. “Do you know where the makeup remover is?” He types out, suddenly anxious.

She doesn’t respond right away. He doesn’t exactly expect her to, although Goro isn’t even sure how hectic Ann’s work environment actually is. He busies himself with allocating an imaginary schedule for her in his head, based loosely off his old princely duties: how much time does she spend actually shooting? How much time ticks away discussing minutiae of pose and presence? Does she get breaks? He hopes she does, if only for his own sake.

Leaning his elbows on the one clean part of the counter, his gaze flicks up to his face in the mirror. Goro immediately wishes he hadn’t done that and opens his phone again to give himself something better to look at. Ann’s read his text; he sees the typing notification pop up before his eyes.

“try my bathroom, left of the sink behind the hand soap” she responds, following up immediately with “why do you wanna know? :o”

Goro ignores her second message for now and strides across his bedroom. The other bathroom off the main hallway is tiled in stormy gray and stark white, and its mirror is even larger than the last one. It has also, apparently, been used as a secondary cosmetic storage zone. Goro pushes a ring light to the side to get to the hand soap and accidentally knocks a couple of mascara tubes into the sink.

“Spilled something,” he lies, brushing aside a few bizarrely small, circular washcloths to get to the clear bottle behind them. He vaguely recognizes a few of the terms on the bottle from chemistry class. All the long hours spent studying fail him, though, and he finds himself squinting at the bottle where the directions have partially worn away. “How on earth do I use it?”

“ok ok one moment” pops up just a moment after Goro replies. He pops the cap open and wonders whether he should just smudge it over his face and be done with it when his phone goes off again. 

“had to get away from my manager lol,” Ann says, and Goro scans the myriad bottles across the counter as she types. “if you use one of the towels it’ll stain, so use one of the little pads”

“The circular ones?”

“yea,” she adds. “i’m so curious tho like what did you DO”

“I was trying to clean up some of your mess,” Goro types, teeth clenched, “and I knocked some things over.” He retrieves the cleansing pads from behind an unopened tube of primer and tosses his phone aside. He’d expected the makeup remover to be more of a gel, but it splashes out like water over the pad in his other hand.

Goro leans forward over the counter and looks himself in the eye. For a single, dizzying moment, he has no idea who he’s looking at. He freezes, his hand hovering over his cheek. Somehow he can’t bring himself to look away.

Goro isn’t sure how long he stands dead. When he finally finds it in himself to bring the pad up to his face, it’s almost cold, and the sensation is at once jarring and grounding. His phone goes off, and a handful of notifications light up over the screen. Had he missed something before?

“sorryyyy >.> i keep meaning to get rid of those! i get so much stuff from promotions it’s unreal,” Ann says. Goro stares at that cluster of messages for a few seconds before he has the presence of mind to scroll down. “you can totally have some if you want! i dunno if you’re interested in that kind of stuff, but seriously, go for it!”

He doesn’t have the energy to come up with a plausible response, so he leaves her on read and finishes scrubbing his face without fanfare before tossing all the paraphernalia he’d used off to the side. Goro doesn’t entirely process the journey back to his bathroom, only returning to partial consciousness when he unbuttons his shirt and cool air washes over his chest.

When Ann returns, Goro is sitting in the shower. He hears the front door open and her voice call out, bright and loud even over the static of the shower. He’d be more disappointed about leaving everything unorganized if his head wasn’t in such a haze. His tailbone hurts where it’s pressed against the cold tiles.

Goro vaguely hears her shuffle into his room. The only actual words he parses from her are “I got”, followed only by a tangle of sound. When he finally finds a spark of energy within himself to get up and turn the shower off, he’s suddenly disoriented by the sound of rushing water continuing from outside. 

A rainstorm batters the building. Water washes down the bedroom’s wide window, and Goro watches it go before he closes the curtains and dons his pajamas. Ann must have closed the door behind her; Goro hears muffled noise coming from the kitchen. He decides that he’s not hungry enough to care and slowly shuffles back into bed.

Minutes later, Ann knocks at the door, startling Goro out of whatever liminal space between sleep and insomnia he’d been occupying. “Now that you’re outta the shower, do you wanna come get some dinner? Oh,” she mutters when the door swings open. Goro rolls over to see her concerned face staring down at him.

“You tired? I can leave you be.” She still has her jacket on from outside. Is it really cool enough that she can wear a jacket without dying of heatstroke? Goro isn’t actually sure; he hasn’t been outside in a while.

“I’m fine,” he says, unwilling to explicitly say ‘go away’.

“I’m sorry about all the mess.” Ann leans her weight on one leg, and Goro faintly wonders whether she picked that up from her job. “I kept meaning to get to it, but I never ran out of excuses.”

Goro doesn’t say anything, pressing his face back against the pillow. “Good night!” Ann stage-whispers, and Goro hears the door close after her as his eyes close.

He doesn’t drift off after all. His head feels like it’s full of concrete and smoke, and when he gets up his neck is sore, as if his skull really was full of concrete. The rain begins to peter out as Goro traces a path to the living room. Ann is nowhere to be seen, but there are clear markers of her presence: her purse slung over one of the bar chairs, her jacket on the couch, the remnants of whatever takeout she’d picked out on the kitchen island.

Goro almost scowls as he goes to tidy up, but stops himself when he notices a second, unopened container of yakisoba. There’s a pink sticky note on top of the lid that reads “thanks for the help!” in scribbly handwriting. When he pops the lid open, it’s almost still warm. He sits by himself at the bar, eating slowly, feeling his senses return under the press of gold light and sweet-savory sauce and some space away from himself, at last.

—

JULY 2017 –

Summer rain hangs thick and heavy in the air. The smell of petrichor seeps into the apartment sometimes when Goro finds himself out on the balcony. He’s been out there more frequently as of late; it’s small, and there’s no chair, but he finds himself perfectly content to lean on the railing. They’re a solid four floors up on the corner of the building, giving Goro plenty of room to look out over the street below and the broader city.

Goro doesn’t love Tokyo, and he doesn’t particularly love its component parts, but it’s all he’s ever known and the familiarity is just enough. He never really got to go on school trips– work at the precinct saw to that– and he’s almost afraid of going out into the wilderness somewhere. He knows it’s irrational, but he can’t help but think that the green-black forests lying hundreds of kilometers away are just as organic and alive as Tokyo is, but in a vastly different, much more unsettling way. Convergent evolution on an unimaginably large scale.

Tokyo has always been just enough for him. He has always been just enough for himself. So why can’t he be more? Why can’t he want to be more?

—

“Gooo! Go– yes! ” Ann throws her arms in the air and shrieks with glee. Goro nods in a significantly less animated cheer, moving aside on the couch to give Ann more room to flail about.

“I thought you'd already seen this game.” Goro glances at the date of the broadcast on screen: it took place months ago. He gets the vague sense he’s seen it before too, but he doesn’t trust his memory, as hazy as it’s been lately.

“Well, yeah. But it’s a good one! Did you see that?” She points at the screen right as the camera cuts back to Shiho celebrating with her teammates after her spike earned them a point.

Ann’s joy is only a little infectious, but it’s infectious nonetheless. Goro finds himself smiling alongside her, watching the game play out to the end.

—

Goro sits back against the headboard. The pillow under his spine isn’t in the best spot, but he’s too captivated by the little blue book in his hands to care. Soft yellow light blooms into the room from the lamp on his nightstand. He crosses one leg over another and readjusts again, shuffling downward, just a bit further under the blanket.

Two sounds ring out in quick succession: a thump and an airy gasp. A vestigial bundle of neurons kicks in and gives Goro a shot of adrenaline before he settles himself back down. He knows what hurt sounds like, and this isn’t quite it. The sound was from somewhere behind him– Ann’s room, which he’s only known as a vague pink smudge through a perpetually half-closed door. Goro errs on the side of caution and slowly slings himself out of bed, leaving the book on his covers.

When he opens his door and leans out into the hallway, Ann is already standing just in front of her doorway, squinting at her phone. She startles when she notices him.

“Oh, um.” She glances back at her phone to check the time. “Did I wake you up?”

“No, not really.” He wants to ask if she’s alright, but instead just looks at her, waiting for her to fill the silence.

“Good, that’s– I’m glad.” Ann winds an arm over her torso. “Mind if I hang out for a bit?”

“Not particularly. I was just reading.” When she crosses the hallway and doesn’t turn towards the living room, Goro obliges her and nudges the door to his room open, stepping inside. The room itself has gained flickers of personality in his time there– a small stack of books on the nightstand, an old black coat on the floor where it’s fallen from its hook. Ann sits on the edge of the bed as Goro reclines back up against the headboard.

She runs her fingers through a lock of her hair. “Do you ever have bad dreams?” Her emphasis is on ‘you’, as if it’s already a given that she’s afflicted.

Goro pulls the poetry book out from under his legs in a moment of contemplation, setting it to the side. “Sometimes, but they’re usually quite hazy,” he says, because the best lies have a glimmer of truth to them. His dreams became uncomfortably vivid after last November and, aside from a brief silence in May, have largely stayed that way ever since.

Ann nods, leaning back and resting her head on her hand. She stares ahead in silence for a domino-chain of moments before they all come falling down. “My dream wasn’t about this, but… I was thinking about that time we fought you. On the ship.”

Goro looks at the sliver of visible window. Outside, the city sleeps with its eyes open.

“I remember,” he says, eventually. “The shape of that spell you used. A-gi-dyne ,” he sounds each phoneme out, his voice deliberate and solid.

“I'm sorry,” Ann says, and the hint of genuine distress in her voice tells Goro that it might not just be reflex. “I'm sorry.”

He shakes his head. “Don't be. The burns didn't linger outside of the Metaverse. Strange, how easy it is to shrug off injuries from that place. If I hadn't known better, the flames would have felt real.”

“But... your cognitive self, you were–”

“Shot? Yes. But you're acting like you weren't nearly slashed in half every time a Shadow managed to land a hit on you. Like you hadn't already riddled me with bullets.” He nearly forces himself to smile, but stops before that rattling old grin in the back of his head can overtake him. “I always found it odd, how my injuries changed form each time I exited the Metaverse. If you must know, the burns became bruises, and the gunshot…”

Here he pauses. Ann watches him with sky-wide eyes.

“I don't– entirely remember, actually. I have the scar,” and his hand hovers over his chest, not quite centered on his heart. “But I don't remember the wound at all.”

“...Can I ask how you escaped?” Ann shifts, as if to draw her knees up to her chin, but stops.

“You may.”

Ann huffs out a laugh when Goro doesn’t continue, and there's a bit of amused fondness in her voice when she asks. “How did you escape, then?”

“Left, of course, via my phone.” The actual ordeal was blurry enough, and now with an exhausted mind and body Goro visibly struggles to recall details, let alone relay them. “I was injured, but I still dragged myself home. I was in the depths of lethargy for days. And then…”

And here he stops. His brow furrows with uncertainty. “I... doubted what I saw at the time. Even now I doubt what I remember. The sky…”

Ann nods, barely. “I don't blame you. It was surreal– so much stranger than what we saw in Mementos and Palaces. I think it felt that much worse because it was all just... there, in the real world. The boundaries weren't clear anymore. It felt like... like an alien invasion.”

As far-out as the image is, Goro still understands. “What… happened, in that place? During the ordeal with Maruki, I heard vague allusions to some sort of entity you all had defeated, but no one ever sat me down and explained it to me.”

Ann leans back, resting her head at Goro’s feet, and explains the scaffolding of the gauntlet: the conjunction, Yaldabaoth, the day of reckoning. She lays out the basics and then goes back to fill in details. Her tone is level and careful, but she abruptly goes silent when she reaches some unspecified point.

“And then…” she trails off. Goro watches her hands tighten against the blanket. “It was... something about the public's cognition. They didn't believe we were real anymore, so... we disappeared.” The last two words are on the edge of Goro's hearing, nearly whispered against the humming of the A/C and distant sirens outside.

“That's, um…” Ann says, after a handful of moments. “That's why I woke up. Because, when it happened, we could… feel it, and it was…”

Goro does not meet her gaze, nor does he ask her to elaborate. He feels the presence of a dead god seeping into the room and wills its influence away, if only for Ann’s sake. He never has been, and never will be, an affectionate person, but there’s still a part of his selves that wants to comfort her. Nothing he does, did, will do seems like it will help, though. He files that part of himself away next to the other part of himself that still cares about people and places and things. Goro’s gaze darts between the lights outside, picking out high-rises, radio towers, unknown points of light in the distance. For all he knows, they could be stars.

Something suddenly occurs to Goro, and his skin goes cold with the realization.

“So,” he says, and he watches Ann turn to face him, visibly returning to herself. “You’re saying that… this thing was what granted me my abilities? My key to the Metaverse?” He can’t hide the bitterness seeping into his raspy voice.

“I guess so?” Ann’s voice is quiet and soft. She watches Goro’s face. “I don’t… I don’t really know. Gods and monsters…”

“Did you kill it?” Goro sits up, focusing intently on Ann, suddenly desperate for an answer.

“Yeah.” She says it like it was a baptism of fire and not a triumph against an unimaginable foe. The slightest smile comes over her face. “We’re considering having a yearly party around Christmas to commemorate it.”

He ignores the idea of a deicide-themed party and pictures a half-dozen killing blows instead. None of them feel right. In his head, the entity stands unkillable. “How did it die?”

“Well, I was… I was there,” Ann yawns, and if she weren’t so tired Goro would have an easier time picking up on the conflict in her voice. “Akira shot it. Through its… head. I think. The others remember it better than I do.”

Goro sits silent. Ann fidgets, twirling her fingers together and apart. He’s not sure whether he wants to go stand on the balcony or throw himself off of it. As he stares down at the blanket draped over his legs, something in his head suddenly realigns, like a lens coming into focus. He makes the mistake of looking too closely through it.

Goro, as slowly as the killing blow from a cigarette, begins to laugh.

He hears the rustle of Ann looking his way after full-fledged laughter drains from his throat. His head drops onto his knees as he pulls his legs up towards himself, unsure of quite what to do with his arms. He’s certain he looks like a goddamn gargoyle and he doesn’t care at all.

“I never had a fucking say in anything , did I?” Goro says, running a hand through the tangled hair at the nape of his neck. “My abilities… I had some agency, finally, finally– I could choose who lived and who died! No, no, wait, that wasn’t my choice either, was it?” He sits up, gesturing wildly, hands a moonlit blur. “I thought it was Shido who made the choices about who lived and who died and everything else about who I was, right? But that one thing I thought was special about me– the one thing I could control, the one thing that made me feel free– was all part of some fucking god’s scheme? Every good thing I’ve ever had is all on someone else’s whim! And it’s all– it’s all been taken away.”

Ann is sitting up now. The entire situation feels faraway in the early hours. This is all happening to someone else. Someone who is not Goro Akechi is being too loud in the empty room. Someone who is not Goro Akechi is beginning to cry.

“And it’s dead,” he says. “And it’s dead, and Akira shot it, and it doesn’t matter anymore.” Some faint part of him knows that the Metaverse will come back, that the tide will come in. The rest of his head screams that it will not be for him .

Goro picks his head up. Ann sits at the edge of his bed, legs crossed at the ankles, tentatively shifting closer. She reaches out a hand like she’s approaching a stray cat.

“You’re going to throw me away too, won’t you?” It’s a childish thing to say, but Goro feels like he’s eleven again, unable to cross the threshold into his mother’s room for reasons he can’t explain. “Don’t give me that look. The Thieves will come by too often and the secret will be too much to bear. You’ll quietly nudge me out over the course of a few weeks to lessen the blow, then you’ll let Shiho move into this room and you’ll be happy. Wouldn’t that be so much better than whatever this is?”

Ann closes her mouth and brings her hand back. “You say that as if I’m not happy now.”

“Listening to a madman ramble to himself at four in the goddamn morning? I doubt it.”

She meets his eyes head-on. Her voice wavers with effort. “You don’t deserve that and you never did , you hear me? If you’re happy here, then I promise you I won’t take that away from you. I won’t.”

Goro wipes his face and, of all things, shrugs. “Takes, taken, will take. It’s all the same. It’s all crushed flat.”

In a blaze of motion, Ann rushes forward and coils her arms around him like a vice, crushing his knees to his chest and knocking the blue book off the bed. “Shut up,” she says, and now she’s the one being too loud. Goro’s face is buried in her hair. “Just shut up already. The world can give you nice things sometimes and you need to just shut up and accept what’s happening to you. ”

Summer rains gather in the distance. Goro still doesn’t know what to do with his arms. 

Ann runs warm; her arms are lines of heat over his back, through the thin material of his old t-shirt. She breathes deeply, shuddering, and he can’t help but echo her. When she pulls back, she sniffles loudly and looks down at the book, a little ruefully. Had she been sobbing into Goro’s shoulder? He didn’t hear a thing.

As if suddenly conscious of Goro’s personal space, Ann shuffles back and folds herself against the end of the bed again. A vestige of dawn claws at the horizon.

It feels like minutes on end before Ann speaks again. “Can I tell you something…” She holds her breath, mouth open, for just a moment before exhaling and turning to Goro.

Goro mentally fills in details where she’s given none. “Something personal?”

“No. Well, maybe.” Ann brings her knees a little closer to her chin. She still won’t quite meet Goro’s eyes, glancing around. “It doesn’t feel like the right word for it. Something ‘sensitive’, I guess. It might freak you out.”

Goro scoffs. “As if I haven’t just freaked out in front of you.” He realizes, right after he says it, that he’s managed to acknowledge what’s happening to him. The barest shred of his sense of self still clings to life.

Ann laughs, once, without humor. The overhead fan ruffles a sleeve sticking out of the dresser.

“When I saw you on that bridge, my very first thought was– I thought you were going to kill yourself.” Her nails dig into her knees. “That you were waiting for everyone to leave. Or maybe you were just going to do it right there. I don’t know.”

Goro waits. He listens. The sky lightens outside.

“You don’t have to answer this, but… were you?” She finally looks Goro in the eye. Her gaze is dangerously intense. “Going to…”

“I don’t know.” His response is automatic, defensive. Is he defending Ann or himself? He’s not sure. “I don’t remember.”

Ann makes a small, quiet noise. “That’s not… why I approached you. I mean, I sort of thought about– helping you, or saving you, or something– but it wasn’t just that.”

“I’m not something to be pitied.” Goro interrupts. He meant to say someone , but something as a self-descriptor took up residence in his head and wouldn’t leave until he said it. 

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“You misunderstand.” For the second time tonight, everything realigns through black glass. “I don’t think you’re pitying me.”

Ann looks at him, head tilted sideways against her knees where she’s curled up. Her hair spills over her legs.

“I couldn’t tell you why you’re doing this. It doesn’t make any sense to me. It never did.” Goro closes his eyes. “But I don’t think it’s pity– not anymore. Maybe pity got me across the threshold, but something else is keeping me here.”

“You’re a really bad detective.”

Goro opens his eyes. He can see just a tiny bit of Ann’s smile through her hair. “Seriously,” she continues, “you still don’t get it?”

“What kind of games are you playing with me, Takamaki?”

“I’m not. That’s the point.” She picks her head up and her amused smile fades. The light from the window gives her a warped, cut-off halo around the back of her head. “I get it. I think– I understand you. You tell yourself you’re making a choice, because if you have that little bit of power you have something to hold onto. And when someone makes you see the truth, you have to admit that the people you hate the most have complete power over you, and it all just– it sucks. It fucking sucks. It’s horrible and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Goro consciously lets his mind catch up with his nervous system. He closes his eyes again and holds the memory of Masayoshi Shido in his hands. He lets everything– the bitterness, the rage, the helplessness of it all– wash over him in waves. The tide doesn’t recede until he drops the memory and lets it break upon his spine. 

He opens his eyes. “...It hurts.” But what are you going to do about it? There had always been that voice speaking up inside him, a constant driving force, and he never knew how to answer it. It’s almost comforting to know it’s still there. It hurts, but what will you do to make it better again?

Ann reaches out a hand, and in the haziness of the early morning, Goro takes it. He takes his time letting his gaze roam around the room, finding things to hold onto. The counter in the bathroom is clear now, after Goro took it upon himself to shove all the spare makeup away in a bin somewhere. His fingerprints are on the shower glass. Ann’s pink nail polish is chipped. There is a book on the floor that he knows he will take with him until he dies.

Something about living in this space is still deeply frightening, but the fear’s been papered over with magazines and quiet conversation. He can’t help but feel trapped, knowing what the outside world would do with him if the wrong people ever caught sight of him– but within these four walls he has the tiniest spark of autonomy. It’s just enough for him to keep going.

“Had,” he says, in defiance of himself.

“Huh?” Ann looks up from her phone, setting it aside.

“Had. Had complete power over you. They’re gone now.”

“Oh.” Ann smiles, looking over her shoulder. “I guess you’re right.” She stretches, still holding Goro’s hand, letting their arms flop down to the bed. “Wow, it’s early. Sorry for keeping you up.” She swings their arms back and forth. Goro feels a bit like a ragdoll, being manipulated like this, but he can’t make himself upset about it.

“It’s fine.” I don’t think I was going to sleep anyway . When Ann releases him, she picks up her phone and shuffles in the direction of the kitchen.

“I’m gonna make some coffee, if you want any. Hiyokko ’s on soon, I think. Actually–” She pokes her head back around the door. “If you wanna go back to sleep, I can watch it on my phone instead. I know the TV’s loud from your room.”

Goro resists the urge to roll his eyes. “And miss the next dramatic twist? I’d rather die in my sleep.” He pumps as much sarcasm as he can into his voice. Ann almost manages to look affronted, but bursts into laughter instead.

He ends up watching that morning’s episode with Ann after all, after crawling into the shower and regaining a bit of humanity over tea. It’s kitschy as usual, but he can’t bring himself to walk away. He’s not sure whether Ann is playing up her reactions to make him laugh, but hearing her gasp upon seeing the latest quasi-romantic entanglement the main character’s gotten into is inexplicably worth it.

They both end up dozing off. When Goro wakes up, he finds that they’re slumped almost crown-to-crown, lying in a jagged line across the couch. A handful of Ann’s hair is in his mouth. He spits it out reflexively and stumbles his way upright, watching the sun outside the balcony window.

With the weight of his choice resting gently in his hands, Goro takes the blanket from his room and drapes it over Ann.

—

“Goro! Gorogorogoro!” Ann knocks on Goro’s door a half-dozen times in quick succession as Goro slings on a shirt.

“What is– alright, hold on.” He leaves most of the buttons unbuttoned as he pulls his door open. Ann almost hits him in the face with her phone.

“Look! Shiho has some free time!” She squeals, hopping up and down in little arcs. “Before the season starts! She can come over this way and we can go shopping together and maybe… she can stay with us?”

Goro looks over Ann as she swings her arms back and forth. Ann is excited, certainly, but the core of her expression is open– she won’t be crushed if he refuses. He understands this for what it is to him : a little push, a little step towards re-emerging out into the wide world. Who better to start with than one of Ann’s most trusted friends?

“Alright,” Goro says, and keeps talking before Ann’s victory dance gets too out of hand. “But you have to make it absolutely clear that she can’t say anything about me to anyone else. Understand?”

“Crystal clear!” Ann gives Goro a full-armed thumbs-up, nearly punching him in the face. “And she can stay in my room too, so there’s no problem there! Oh my gosh, we’ll have to clean…”

Goro just barely remembers the dates on Ann’s calendar, if only because the name of the event had more than a dozen exclamation points. “Isn’t it more than a month away?” 

“I mean, yeah, but we have to get a head start! Wanna help?” Ann traipses off into the living room, and Goro can do nothing but follow.

—

“Shopping time! What should I get?”

“Do you mean the grocery store or clothes shopping?”

“Yes.”

“...Dark chocolate, please. And I don’t need any clothing.”

—

“What are you doing?” Goro staggers into the kitchen with vague plans of making coffee. Ann is sliding around the tiles in socked feet, shimmying to the tune of the upbeat rock song playing from her phone’s tinny speakers.

“Cleaning the kitchen!” Ann does another loop around the island, half-humming, half-muttering lyrics to herself.

Goro resists the urge to cross his arms and click his tongue. “It looks more like you’re having a dance party.”

Ann sticks her tongue out at Goro, putting a clean mug away in one of the cabinets. “You gonna come join me or what?”

“Would I be joining you in cleaning the kitchen or having a dance party?”

“Either!” She slides over in Goro’s direction and grabs each of his wrists, pulling him into the kitchen and carefully manipulating him into a twirl.

“I’m not good at this,” he warns. Undaunted, Ann takes his hands and swings their arms around in an appallingly domestic way.

“You don’t have to be!” Ann twirls herself around using Goro’s hand over her head as a pivot point. With his newly freed hand, Goro tries to take up a dish towel on the island, but misses and slips on his own socked feet, nearly sending the both of them skidding into the counter. It takes him a moment to regain his balance as he pulls his arms back against himself. Ann takes a step back, stifling her giggles.

“Who would’ve thought we were ever Phantom Thieves?” She tosses Goro a dish towel from behind the sink, sliding her way over to a different part of the counter. “You wanna get that half?”

Goro shrugs off his bathrobe onto one of the barstools. “Why not?” He takes up a bottle of spray cleaner and gets to work. By the time he’s worked his way around the entire counter, Ann has barely finished her own segment between the sink and the fridge. It’s not hard to see why.

“Something tells me you’re not devoting your best effort to the task.” Goro is more amused than bitter. The current track is something absurdly fast with too many drums for Goro’s liking; the artist raps high-speed lyrics that Goro can barely understand.

“Come on, come on!” Ann takes Goro’s arms and twirls him around again. Somehow, this time the motion comes together. He lets Ann lead, tracing spirals through the kitchen, deftly avoiding the central island. 

Ann pulls him along faster and faster, almost equaling the pace of the song, nearly stepping on his toes. Goro’s hip bumps the counter; Ann kicks a cabinet door closed. There is too much noise and motion to fit in this kitchen, and the overflow bursts out through Goro’s lungs. He lets out a shout as they finish, following Ann’s jump with considerable delay, losing all his momentum when his socked feet hit the ground. He stands there panting as Ann herself leans back against the counter. She grins over at him, catlike.

“Oh my gosh, your face!” Ann points at Goro. He can feel his cheeks burning with embarrassment and exertion. It’s not just self-consciousness, though– that felt good . He’s really not sure what to do with the odd sensations spiraling through his head. Has he ever spun around like that? Has he ever really danced without a care in the world?

Half of his head understands her laughter for what it is: joy, distilled to its purest form. The other half is convinced he’s back in grade school and is readying to punch or get punched. 

He finds a decent midpoint between the two interpretations and hoofs it out of the kitchen, snatching up his bathrobe on the way. “Sorry, Goro!” Ann calls after him, fondness in her voice. “At least it got clean eventually!”

“And whose fault was that?” Goro calls back, without venom. He gathers up books from his room, preparing to take them out to the living room. He can’t make himself read alone anymore; it’s like some unseen force is pushing him into Ann’s company. It has to be something else– something that he doesn’t understand, something that isn’t himself. The worst part, by far, is that he can’t bring himself to hate it. He walks back out.

—

Ann gets sick, which is understandable, given that she’s been out in the concrete thicket of Tokyo and Goro hasn’t left the apartment since June.

Goro startles out of his daydreaming when he sees her hobble into the kitchen at the hour of ‘three hours after reasonable people get up for work’. “I thought you’d already left,” he says, eyeing how tightly she’s curled her blanket around her. “Don’t you have work today?”

“Yeah… slept through my alarm.” She sniffs, blearily padding across the floor. Goro stops her before she can get to the coffeemaker and presses the back of his hand to her forehead. He’s barely ever done this before– his mother only tested his temperature like this a couple of times– but Ann feels hot to the touch, even warmer than usual. For a split second, he thinks ah, of course she’s burning up inside, but dashes that thought away before it can take root.

“Are you feverish?” He asks, even though he already knows the answer.

Ann blinks, visibly taking stock of herself, then shrugs. “Maybe? I’m probably still good to go in–”

“No, you’re not.” Goro doesn’t touch her, but he does crowd into her space enough to get her to step back. “Call your manager and go lie down.”

Ann sniffs again, shuddering. “Can I have coffee first?”

Goro considers it. Halfway through wondering whether coffee is good for sick people, his mind trips up and grinds to a halt– Ann must be really out of it if she’s ceding control over one of her most persistent morning habits to Goro. It clicks, all at once: if there is anything the two of them have in common, it is a deep-seated, easily-disturbed need for autonomy.

He feels like he’s offending his own sensibilities when he says “no,” herding her towards her room. When she flops back down on the bed and takes up her phone, he turns back around to slip on a facemask and prepare a glass of water.

Ann is mid-conversation with her manager when Goro sets some water beside her. He rummages through the newly-organized medicine cabinet, looking for something that could qualify as medicine, or perhaps an informative pamphlet on how to care for sick people. Goro only learned the very basics of personal healthcare when he fell ill during his prince days, and even then that consisted largely of dosing himself up with antihistamines to keep snottiness away, papering his face over with foundation, and keeping up his plastic smile no matter what.

Foisting a routine like that on Ann doesn’t sit well in Goro’s gut. He checks the ingredients on a bottle of cough syrup as he hears Ann sneeze into her phone. In the end, he decides he really doesn’t have the wherewithal to prescribe Ann much of anything, even if it’s just from their medicine cabinet. He settles for tossing another box of tissues into her room as if he’s throwing enrichment to a tiger in its enclosure. Goro flops down on the red armchair and tries to think.

It was already shaping up to be one of those days where his head kept wandering back to his mother, and all of this is only making it worse. Goro was always told he was a sickly child, but he only remembers fragments of feverish mornings and sleepless nights.

The dominant sensation he finds, trawling through the mist that’s settled over his head, is warmth: a presence beside him, a ratty old blanket over him. A surge of determination washes over his bones– he has to do something for her. Ann has given him her home, and he has given her nothing but polite company– and even that’s a stretch, considering his occasional tendency to sink into a depressive bog for days at a time.

Goro gets up with significant effort and crosses the room to the kitchen. A thin cookbook rests on the counter where it’s been pilfered from the living room shelf. It’s taken it several days to move from the living room to the bar, and another several for it to move from the bar to the island. Based on current projections, in another week or two it might actually be used for cooking .

Goro shatters all statistical expectations and picks up the book. It’s undoubtedly a beginner’s primer– not quite for children, but you’d be forgiven if you gave it to a tween. He flips through, looking for relatively simple recipes.

As he reads through the ingredients for a basic miso soup, he knows he’s found the right one; he can already almost smell it. He hunts through the kitchen and mentally checks off ingredients and materials: pots, a sieve, bonito flakes, green onions. The ingredients missing from his scribbled list are the load-bearing ones. Goro feels his own rigidity and the sunk-cost fallacy grasping at his brain.

He crosses the room and takes up a small notepad from the clutter of the coffee table. With the cookbook balanced on one arm, he paces through the sunbeam from the balcony, writing down a simple list. When that’s finished, he snaps the cookbook shut and shuffles into his room. He is far too conscious of how he dresses; it takes most of an hour for him to go through each article of clothing one by one. The feeling oscillating in the back of his head can’t be vanity. Goro knows that much, especially because he eventually settles on a loose old t-shirt, an unbuttoned button-down over it, and a pair of gray sweatpants. When he looks at himself in the mirror, he sees himself in parts: a pinched brow, a hard-set jaw, an indistinct torso, covered-up long legs. He knows it’s going to be hot out. He doesn’t care.

Goro knocks at Ann’s door. He shoulders it open carefully, wary of her privacy. “Are you on your deathbed?”

Ann takes a moment to respond, watching a video on her phone with glazed eyes. “Prolly not,” she says, “but my nose might be.” She makes a truly disgusting noise into a tissue.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Before Ann can ask Goro where he’s going, he shuts the door and takes up his wallet. He’s faintly surprised that he actually has any cash in there at all– a little under 6,000 yen. Based on the list crumpled in his pocket, it should be enough.

He takes a moment to scratch his nose from beneath his facemask before he grabs Ann’s keys and unlocks the front door. Despite the building’s meager AC, Goro can already feel himself sweating through his shirts as he jogs down the stairwell. He almost trips on a child’s roller skate where it’s been discarded at the bottom of the stairs. 

The sun hits him in the face when he steps onto the street. Dry, oppressive heat sends the usual passersby scuttling towards shade at every turn. Goro stops and watches, thinking for a moment. The usual internal fistfight between Goro’s self-hatred and pride is well underway, but his pride narrowly wins out, and he lets himself preen a little as he thinks back to the route he and Ann took when he first moved in here. He appreciates having a sharp mind and a keen memory, which is exactly why his omnipresent lethargy has been so frustrating. Just moving his limbs has helped kickstart his head back into gear, though. Despite the heat and the terror of being seen, he finds himself refreshed.

Goro turns down an alleyway. The small grocery store Ann pointed out months ago is barely a block away. Thankfully, Goro can keep to the shade with ease. Young mothers trundle past with strollers and bags of groceries; businesspeople hold convenience-store sandwiches as they make their way back to their offices. Goro always found himself admiring this part of the day for its unassuming tranquility. He distinctly remembers taking the train between Kosei and the precinct a few days a week, always at times like these. It was a good break-time; he could always find a space to sit down and think. It says something about his time as the detective prince that the times he appreciated best were the times in-between– times when he didn’t have to be the detective prince.

Something akin to relief still burns gently in his chest as he steps into the grocery store. It’s a relatively small, fluorescent-lit affair, and he takes up a basket and goes through the motions. Miso paste, kombu, a discounted bruised daikon. The effort of tallying up prices and keeping to his budget keeps him from concentrating on the narrow aisles and the people passing by him.

As he stands in front of the tea, trying to pick out something that’s sweet enough for Ann to enjoy but still at least marginally healthy, a young woman with dip-dyed hair accidentally bumps into him. It’s barely a glancing blow, but Goro still instantly tenses up just short of pure fight-or-flight. The woman looks mortified– it’s unclear whether she just wasn’t expecting it or the force of Goro’s gaze has cut her to the quick.

“Ah! I’m so sorry, ma—“ the woman sizes him up, “—sir!” She inclines her head and scuttles off, leaving Goro more confused than offended. He mentally tallies up his general appearance, and even though his self-perception is somewhat slippery right now, he still gets the picture. Long, fluffy hair (he has an accidental use of Ann’s volumizing shampoo to thank for that), an ambiguous outfit, his mother’s eyes— I suppose I could be mistaken for a girl after all.

Goro’s anxiety fizzles out. He finds that he’s not nearly as shaken as he thought he’d be, and returns to the teas with a bit more vigor. The hibiscus blend he picks looks benign enough. He finds himself actually managing to hold onto a shred of confidence as he approaches the checkout.

He’s done his calculations correctly; the cashier hands him a few hundred yen as change. When he steps back out onto the street, he digs his nails into his palm. Goro walks slowly back the way he came. The feeling pulsing against the back of his ribcage quivers, nonspecific. What is this? He sorts through his thoughts like he’s going through moving boxes. Lying in wait in the dusty ‘human connections’ box is exactly what he expected– he has to acknowledge that he does, in fact, care about Ann, if only in a collegial sense. Goro checks the ‘today’s tasks’ box, knowing exactly what he’s going to find: he’s going to despise himself for the next few days if he doesn’t get this recipe right the first time. 

Goro clenches his teeth with frustration. He knew all this. He knows that he’s an insufferable perfectionist, and he knows that Ann’s desperate attempts to befriend him have been making perceptible headway, but there’s still something else running around in his head that he can’t chase down. It’s like the thought belongs to someone else, like it’s its own entity, a living thing in and of itself. What are you?

He elects not to think about it, which is fairly easy since the roller skate captures his attention after he almost trips on it again. He takes a moment to set it beside a couple of flower pots before he ascends. Four flights of stairs are not kind to Goro, and he’s an achy puddle of sweat by the time he unlocks the door. The pile of keychains attached to the keyring make a surprising variety of clinking and clacking sounds as he tosses them onto the table by the door and slips off his shoes. For a single moment, after he gets all of the ingredients out, Goro stares at them with gathering despair. He takes a deep breath, consciously willing his anxiety into anticipation. The transmutation works halfway, and that’s good enough for him.

Goro gets started. He has to be methodical, since he doesn’t have enough experience to improvise and he knows it. There’s something soothing about gathering up all of his equipment and ingredients, checking them off a list: scale, pot, knives, sieve. He slowly chops the green onions into not-quite-even pieces on a barely-used wooden cutting board. He doesn’t trust himself to cut the tofu on his hand like he’s seen in every cooking show he’s ever watched, so he cuts it beside the scallions. The sound of the knife against the board is grounding, solid, bright.

His methods aren’t efficient, but he’s moving forward. It takes him longer than he’d like to admit for him to figure out how to turn on the stove; the black-and-silver beast is considerably fancier than any of the ones he’s lived with before. The pot full of water is just heavy enough to test his waning strength as he sets it atop the burner and waits for it to heat up. He slips the kombu into the pot, careful not to splash, watching it hydrate and soften.

Goro has no idea what constitutes a simmer and he doesn’t care enough to flip to the glossary section of his cookbook, so he eyeballs the stock and tastes it thoroughly. He removes the kombu and adds the bonito flakes when the stock starts bubbling. As his tremor returns with a vengeance, he very nearly burns himself when he strains the bonito flakes back out. Faint steam clouds his eyes; condensation mists his cheeks.

Between the pot of soup, the ingredients scattered over the counter, and the assorted personal clutter in the living room, the scene is straight out of some sort of domestic photoshoot. Goro tries pointedly not to think about it. As far as he’s concerned, stable home lives are magical phenomena that happen to other people. Whatever this is, it still feels unreal and unsubstantial, like papier-mâché plastered over a gaping wound.

He does what he can. Goro adds the tofu, the miso, the wakame; he wonders if he measured it all in the right way. He realizes he doesn’t actually know how to cook daikon about halfway into stirring the broth, so he stashes the poor thing away in the back of the fridge. Somehow, he manages to heed the dire warning to never boil the broth. He gets it just hot enough before he adds the green onions and prepares a bowl.

Goro slips his facemask back on as he goes to knock at Ann’s door, which swings ajar. He almost startles when he notices Ann isn’t on her bed, but he hears a sniffle coming from the other side of the room and pokes his head in to see her slumped slimily into a beanbag. This is the most he’s ever seen of her room– he usually makes a point not to enter, to give her some privacy in her own home. It’s bursting with racks of clothing. Abstract paintings crowd out the rest of the walls; Goro faintly recognizes one of Kitagawa’s myriad artstyles. The room’s shelves and scattered bins suggest its inhabitant has made several solid attempts at organizational systems, none of which have stuck.

“Are you ready to rejoin the land of the living? I’ve made…” Goro has no idea what time it is. He shakes his head. “There’s soup, in any case.”

Ann makes an interested snuffling sound, like an inquisitive truffle pig. “Sounds good. Gimme a min’.”

He lets her rest and prepares a second bowl for himself. The scallions are still bright green against the golden broth. He preemptively tosses a book he’s been meaning to read onto the table by the red recliner– if Ann claims it for herself, she’ll fall asleep instantly – and manages to cradle his bowl on his lap by the time Ann shuffles out to the living room. She gasps when she notices the other bowl on the counter.

“Is that for me?” She asks even as she takes it up, holding a soup spoon in her mouth.

“No, it was for the next-door neighbor I’ve been having an affair with. Yes, it’s for you.” Goro, with some trepidation, takes a sip– it’s not perfect, but it’s good, and it’s somehow made better when he realizes that he’s barely eaten all day. He takes a bolder spoonful now that he’s not afraid he’s going to poison himself.

Ann carefully sits herself down on the couch. “Wow… did you make this from scratch?”

Goro shrugs, despite the lingering ache in his shoulders. “It wasn’t too complicated. To be honest, I’m surprised I didn’t mess it up. I’m not exactly an experienced cook, let alone a good one.”

Ann gratefully inhales the steam as best she can. “I can only smell it a little, but it does smell good.” She takes a sip and partially dissolves into the couch. “S’good,” she says, with obvious, deep appreciation. Goro lets her grab the remote as he sets his own bowl off to the side, content to savor it for just a bit longer.

With his limbs ajar, a bowl of soup beside him, a good book at his other side, and one of the only friends he has ever known only a few feet away, Goro suddenly realizes he’s content . His feet ache, and he knows he’s going to fall asleep soon, but his racing mind is anchored in place for once.

He is fine. This place is fine. There is no seething anger here, and no orders he cannot disobey. The two of them, together, have carved out a place of safety glimmering in the dark.

—

Goro dreams of a grove. Framed by thickets and bushes of exotic flowers, he wanders among the marble paths. Hulking beasts– boars, tigers, lions, bears– amble through the garden with him, giving him pitiful glances. If he tries hard enough, he can hear the crash of the tide, but it’s difficult to tell where it’s coming from, or if it’s coming in or out.

The paths spiral inward; no matter which one he follows, he still finds himself getting closer to the center of the grove. A massive, gnarled tree carves its way into the sky in irregular little fractals. Its canopy covers much of the grove. The animals all seem to be avoiding it, despite the inviting shade and empty space. Goro doesn’t recognize what kind of tree it is, but some part of him is confident it’s a real tree, somewhere out there.

He waits for a scruffy-looking tiger to skulk past him before rounding a corner. The path opens up into the center of the grove, and the thickets and flowers all bleed away as he approaches the tree. Standing beside the tree is a tall figure, at least seven or eight feet tall, floating another half a foot off the ground. Her– and somehow Goro senses her as a her , despite the haziness around every part of her– face softens when she sees him, even though she doesn’t have a face. It’s like a small star, where her head should be. It’s scintillating. She’s holding two unfamiliar, wandlike objects, one in each hand. Thread coils over her loose dress.

“What is this place?” Goro says, and keeps speaking before anyone can stop him. “What is this tree? Who are you?”

She smiles, and when she speaks Goro understands that she’s answering all three questions at once. “You,” she says.

This comparison was so absurd that Goro woke up immediately. He flails out for his phone, blinking his eyes against the light— it’s a couple minutes past four in the morning. Against his better judgement, he types out a few searches, trying against his fading memory to put a word to any part of that scene.

What he finds, in the end, is a single term to hold onto: the woman was holding a distaff, and she was either spinning thread with it or using it as a wand. Perhaps both , a tired part of his brain thinks. There’s magic in creating something from nothing.

It’s better than blood and smoke. He goes back to sleep, shrinking away from the skyglow outside.

Chapter Text

AUGUST 2017 –

Goro is not a detective, but he has a detective’s instincts, and as much as he can permanently sever his ties with the Tokyo police force, he still can’t possibly cut those out of himself.

So he sees– he sees everything. He sees how Ann smiles scrolling through Shiho’s private Instagram, and he sees how she doesn’t miss a single rerun of her games, and he sees how she’s actually trying to clean the house for once. He can’t stop seeing all these things, and he can’t stop putting these scattered details together into a more cohesive picture. Making a case. It’s sickening.

Least of all, he can’t stop the way he feels, seeing all this. It’s getting harder– almost impossible– to feel quite so sorry for himself in the presence of her happiness. He still isn’t sure whether he deserves this or not, but he knows she deserves it, and so he can’t stop any of it from taking a hold of his heart.

One morning Goro wakes up early. He hasn’t quite risen with the sun– the sky is still blue-gray with growing light– but it’s close enough. His loose pajama pants, too big for him, shuffle against the floor as he paces out into the empty living room. The apartment is uncomfortably warm; something with the A/C must be off, he concludes. He shoves some of Ann’s stacked-up books aside to get at the latest novel he’s started– it had been cast aside yesterday in one flurry or another.

Goro only gets a few minutes to enjoy his book in silence before Ann comes bustling through. “You’re up unusually early,” he says, watching her out of the corner of his eye. “Do you work today?”

“Nope, just…” She taps a fingertip against the counter as she waits for the coffeemaker to start up. “I’m just. Y’know.”

Goro looks up fully. Ann is leaning against the counter, a diagonal slant of color against the landlord-white walls. Her expression is bright and unreadable; Goro sets his book down. “Had troubling dreams?”

“I slept fine, actually.”

Goro watches her very carefully, and again his detective’s instincts kick in: she’s not lying, his instincts whisper, you know what it sounds like when she lies, and you know what she does after she’s had a nightmare. He settles for a normal-sounding response. “Well, that’s good.”

It only just now occurs to Goro that Ann’s fluffy bathrobe is identical to his. Did she just pick out the same kind for me?

Somehow it’s that thought that pushes him over the precipice. “Thank you.”

“Huh?” Ann turns to face him.

“I said… thank you. For everything you’ve done.” He glances around the room, and his gaze keeps landing on little memories, like he’s navigating by the stars. A little blind-box figurine Ann picked up for herself but waited to open until she was home, just to show Goro. A dog-eared, water-damaged cookbook. One of Goro’s socks, dropped by the couch after he last did laundry. “I don’t know what I could possibly give you in return that would ever equal any of this.”

Ann smiles– slowly at first, but her face breaks into a grin, like she’s rolling down a hill and picking up speed. “Don’t be stupid! I’m just glad you’re doing better. Really, I am.”

“Are you really?”

“What do you think I am, a liar?” There’s a click in the way her expression suddenly changes. She leans over the counter on her elbows, regarding him. “I’m not. I promise.”

Goro can only meet her eyes for a few seconds before he has to turn away. “Thank you,” he says again. “I don’t think you know how much that means to me.”

“I don’t think I do either.”

At last she turns away, and Goro returns to himself again.

—

“I think it’s fine.”

“Did you finish dusting under the couch cushions? And did you get the balcony?”

“Yes and yes. Ann, it’s fine.”

Goro crosses his arms, a pillar in the middle of the impeccable living room. Ann is trying her best to arrange the various bowls in the kitchen in a way that could pass as artsy. She claps her hands, wringing them. “Okay. Okay. Gosh, I don’t know why I’m so nervous– I mean, it’s been forever since I’ve seen her, but I feel like I should’ve gotten the hang of this by now…”

“Perhaps you’re nervous because you have a missing person in your house.” Goro takes a couple strides over to the kitchen, watching her fuss like a preening bird. “I can’t imagine that’s easy on the mind.”

“What? No, you’re fine. Shiho’s cool, she’ll like you.” Ann waves a hand– Goro could interpret the motion as dismissive, but he chooses not to. “I’m gonna go wait for her taxi out front! You hold down the fort in here.”

Goro gives a half-hearted mock salute. “Aye aye, captain.”

By the time Ann flutters outside, Goro has managed to settle himself into the armchair. He tries his best to quash the quiet fear percolating inside him, which ends up being surprisingly effective– be rational about this, he tells himself. Knowing what you know about Shiho, would she really casually betray the trust of her friend for…

Goro doesn’t actually remember whether there’s still a reward for information on his disappearance. He wonders, faintly, how much the broadcast company and precinct would pony up if it meant the return of their beloved detective prince. What he finds, as he thinks it over, is that he wouldn’t trade any sum for the small warmth of this place.

Goro feels sick. He stands up to get a glass of water right as a clatter echoes from the doorway. There’s the ba-bump of shoes hitting the floor, and that’s all the time Goro has to prepare before Shiho comes striding down the hallway. She looks even stronger and more vibrant in-person, as opposed to the slightly grainy DVR playbacks of her games. When she picks her head up to meet Goro’s eyes, the urge to flee lances through his gut.

“Oh, I know you!” Shiho points, and Goro feels his heart get dunked into liquid nitrogen. He doesn’t have time to brace himself before she cries: “you’re that guy my cousin was always complaining about!”

He blinks, still vaguely mortified. “What?”

“You went to Kosei, right?” Shiho shifts her rolling suitcase to her other hand. “She sat behind you in history class. Apparently you answered most of the questions, and you blocked the board ‘cause you literally never stopped sitting up straight.” She shrugs. “I never really saw any of the detective prince stuff. She complained about that too. I think she hate-followed your Instagram.”

Goro blinks again. The smile he puts on is only slightly plastic. “Well, I’m glad to report that my posture has gotten significantly worse since high school, so you don’t have anything to worry about there.”

She chuckles as she drops her suitcase beside the couch. “Ann told me a bit about your whole situation. I promise I’ll keep everything on the down-low!”

Goro nods. “Thank you for your discretion.”

“I kinda get why you’d wanna avoid the spotlight for a while. I can’t imagine what it’d feel like to deal with, like, real paparazzi hounding you.” Empathy winds through her voice like a cool breeze. “I almost took a gap year after graduating high school because I was so sick of all the attention, but I figured I’d just draw even more attention when I got back, so here I am.” She drops her arms against her sides. “Do we have any plans for dinner?”

“Oh! Well…” Ann comes shuffling into the living room sheepishly, as if she’d been watching the two of them from the hallway. “I got reservations for me and Shiho at this great place over in Kichijoji!”

Shiho grins. “Ahh, I see. We can clearly tell who your favorite is.”

Ann blanches, sputtering a bit. “Well! I didn’t wanna take Goro out considering his whole thing , and we went out once before and that was also kind of a whole thing , and…”

Goro decides to commit to the bit. He puts on his most scandalized, passive-aggressive lament. “Ah, no, that’s just fine . I’ll simply be here, all alone, without a morsel to my name…” He drops onto the couch like he’s been struck with the vapors.

Shiho giggles. “I can’t believe you were keeping the detective prince himself in such deplorable conditions.”

Suddenly the joke is no longer funny. Goro tries not to look too serious as he sits up, but he can’t fully deny whatever wave of bitterness just swept through him. Ann, to her credit, looks genuinely disappointed in herself.

“...It’s fine, in case you can’t tell.” Goro supplies. “It’s for the best. Please, go catch up with your friend.”

Ann stops fidgeting with her hair. “You’re sure? We can still get you something.”

Goro shakes his head. “No need. Besides, I’ve been living off of takeout on your dime for the past few months. I should learn how to cook for myself– no time better than the present, hm?”

He expects Ann to bring up his latest culinary misadventure– a truly mediocre omelet he’d made one morning– but she just nods vaguely. “Oh, Shiho, you can bring your bag over here…”

They bustle in and out of Ann’s room for some time before reemerging completely. Ann’s heels clack on the hardwood, startling Goro awake from where he’d dozed off in the armchair. “We’re heading out.”

“Have fun.” Goro picks up his book from where it’d toppled between his thigh and the chair’s arm. Shiho gives him a polite little wave before they rush out, and just like that the summer thunderstorm is gone, leaving only faint mist and heat in the air.

It takes a few minutes before Goro can heave himself out of the chair. He putters around the kitchen but doesn’t cook anything, electing instead to eat a handful of crackers and get a shower to knock some of the terrible restless energy out of him.

The shower only marginally fulfills its purpose. A bottle of Ann’s body wash has inexplicably made its way into his shower yet again, and Goro uses it anyway only half-absentmindedly. He’s getting used to the overblown, saccharine fruity scents of all her different products, through a combination of patience and theft. Goro’s just finished wrapping a towel around his face when he looks in the mirror.

Maybe it’s the girls rubbing off on him– their determination, their drive, always burning– but this time, he doesn’t turn away. Goro is methodical; he quantifies each feature like it belongs to someone else. His wet hair, still sawdust-colored, spills over his shoulders. He’s breaking out over his jaw– his nonexistent skincare routine is catching up with him. His nose is straight and unblemished. And his eyes– his eyes–

All at once something comes collapsing down inside him. Fear pours through his throat like industrial dust. It’s like there’s something resonating in his bones, like someone struck a tuning fork on his ribs.

Goro hurries out of the bathroom with shame burning over the face plastered to his skull. As he picks up the clothes he was wearing before he showered, he thinks to himself– something is wrong . He knows he can’t keep turning away forever. Do I want to be seen? Do I want to be hidden forever?

He can’t come up with an answer by the time Ann and Shiho get home. A peal of laughter flutters past his door as he lifts himself off of his bed. Goro fires up the coffeemaker and goes through the motions before he lets himself be drawn to the sound, the warmth.

Shiho and Ann are lying around Ann’s room, chatting about something or other. The general cadence of the dialogue seems to be somewhere to the left of gossip– low-stakes, chirpy conversation. Goro watches them through the cracked door for a split second before poking his head in.

“What on earth are you two doing?” He eyes the mess of pillows scattered over the floor. “Should I close the door?”

“Nah, we’re just hanging out.” Shiho opens her mouth as if to say something else, but looks to Ann instead.

“Here, c’mon in! There’s room for you too!” Ann calls out from her perch upon the beanbag, gesturing to the room at large like she’s a queen opening her court to an outsider.

Goro shakes his head. He smiles as he speaks. “I’m fairly sure I’ll just drag the mood down.” What he does not say is talking like a normal young adult feels false every time I try .

“Aw, c’mon, hop in! It’ll be fine!” Ann waves him inside. “We were thinking about doing something else, anyway.”

“Like what?” Goro, giving up under siege, sits down cross-legged on one of the larger pillows.

“Like… sleepover stuff! Watching a movie, makeovers, that sort of thing.”

“I dunno about a movie.” Shiho flops back, trying not to jog her head on the overfilled bookshelf behind her. “Last time you picked the movie, we had to sit through three-quarters of it before you’d admit that it sucked.”

“I wanted to give it a fair chance!”

“Just admit you liked the sexy vampires and go.” Shiho chuckles to herself as Ann sputters through excuses. “Makeovers might be fun, though. As long as we don’t have to take it too seriously.”

“Ooh! And Goro just organized all the makeup, so I know where everything is!” Ann shines her grin in Goro’s direction.

It takes a moment for him to realize why she’s so smug. “Oh no,” he says, with not-entirely-mock horror. “I am not getting in the middle of this.”

“Relax,” Ann says, trying and failing to reach her nightstand from the beanbag. “We’ll start with something simple. Liiike…” She fumbles with the drawer before she falls out of the beanbag and goes shuffling on her knees to pop the drawer open. “Nail polish!”

Shiho claps, and Goro folds his arms. “As long as you’re not going to stick rhinestones to mine. I could never stand those garish looks.”

“Me neither. Ann tried ‘em on me once, and they just kept getting in the way.” Shiho tilts her head, considering the clickety-clack of polish bottles against one another. “Simple’s better when it comes to these sorts of things.”

Ann dumps a veritable pile of polish bottles onto the floor. “Ta daaa! You two pick your favorite colors while I go get the rest of the stuff!” As Ann scrambles off, her socked feet thumping against the rug, Shiho selects a bright blue from the pile. Goro elects for glossy black– it feels fitting, somehow. Shiho silently nods at him, and Goro nods back without really being able to explain why.

Ann drops her armful of paper towels onto the floor. “I always make a mess when I try this, so…” She says, a little guiltily. “Here, Shiho, you do Goro first! I still haven’t decided…”

As Ann pores over the iridescent assortment at hand, Shiho gently takes up Goro’s hand, but stills when she goes to paint primer onto his pinky finger. 

“...What happened to your hand?” Shiho points to Goro’s right hand, where he’s missing a full phalanx of his pinky and a not-insignificant amount of his ring finger. He’d almost forgotten about it— the amputations were clean and healed well, and he never got any phantom limb pain from them.

“It’s a very long and very complicated story. I don’t see the need to bore you with it now.” He gives Ann a meaningful look, and she nods, just barely, in response.

Shiho hesitates before starting to paint his ring finger. “I’m sorry for asking. If it’s a sore subject…” 

Goro shakes his head. “It’s an old wound. Doesn’t matter much to me anymore.”

“Still. I… should have been more considerate.” Shiho does not look up, focused as she is, and the conversation lies dead for some time. Ann finally picks out a warm, iridescent peachy pink. Shiho gets primer on Goro’s left hand. The sun fades.

Ann puts on an online radio station with one hand as Shiho primes her other hand. Goro turns the black bottle over and over in his palm. The bottle is mostly full, but the label’s been mostly scratched off. Black glass stares back at him.

He puts the bottle down and quietly files his nails, trying not to show how much they’d grown or how ragged the edges were where he’d bit them. Eventually Shiho brings up some other small-scale chatting-topic– an idol concert she’d attended– and she and Ann go back and forth as Goro waits for his nails to dry.

He doesn’t tune back into their volleying conversation until he hears “come on, let’s go!” and Ann pulls him to his feet, nearly smudging her own nail polish in the process. She leads him along into the master bathroom, and when he hears the word “makeover” he feels like he has less of a handle on the situation than the complete ignorance he had before.

The bathroom is just barely big enough for three people. Goro bumps shoulders with Shiho as he helps sift through stacks of palettes. “What… are we doing?”

“Makeovers, silly!” Ann brandishes a puffy, stained makeup brush with unflappable enthusiasm. “Here, Shiho, you do me first! I’m thinking… hot pink? But what else…”

Shiho, who looks to be only a fraction as confused as Goro, contemplates for a moment. “Black, maybe?”

“I’m not getting involved in this, am I?” Goro folds his arms and tries not to think about how hard his heart is beating.

“Of course you are!” Ann sings as she shoves a palette into Shiho’s hands and sits down obligingly at the edge of the bathtub. Shiho squeezes beside her, popping the palette open. “It’ll be fun!”

“Will it?” Goro leans back against the sink, back to the mirror. The half-open door is right next to him, but– but some part of him cannot move.

It is, in a way, much like how he felt summoning his Persona for the first time. There is no other answer that his body will accept than to– do what? When Robin Hood had first snapped its way through his psyche, followed shortly by Loki, he had been paralyzed with pain and exhaustion on the floor of a foster home he left four days later, curled up like a dead insect. Now? It’s just fucking makeup , he thinks to himself, what the hell is wrong with you?

His head only goes into its usual monologue of self-hatred for a few moments before Ann’s squealing brings him back to the bathroom, the tiles, the white-yellow lightbulbs above. “Ooh! Add glitter! I think I have some over–”

“I put it over here, in the back corner.” Goro slips the sink cabinet open and extracts a vial of glitter, handing it over to Ann with a strange, thrumming trepidation. “If you spill that and get it all over the bathroom that I just cleaned…”

Ann scoffs. “I’ll live with it.”

“You do definitely have a real sparkle about you,” Shiho says, carefully unscrewing the top of the vial. “There’s nothing wrong with spreading that around in your own bathroom.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just as long as you don’t get any on me, we’ll be fine.”

Shiho finishes Ann’s look with no glitter catastrophes. She manages to skillfully accent the nightmare-pink with unsubtle black eyeliner– and yet, somehow, it works . Goro would be in a mood to congratulate her if he didn’t feel so much like a non-glitter catastrophe.

“Ok, who’s next?” Ann calls out, but she almost immediately answers her own question by taking up a palette and brush from the counter. “I guess it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t do you next, huh?”

She gives Shiho a waggle of her eyebrows, and Shiho laughs, bell-like in the echoic confines of the bathroom. “I guess so. But no glitter!”

“You’re no fun,” Ann says without vitriol as she passes the vial back to Goro. He stashes it away in the cabinet, right where it belongs. It’s almost satisfying enough to knock some sense back into his head– almost. Still his ribcage trills, still his hair stands on end.

Ann is quick and deft and, for once in her life, subtle. She dusts Shiho’s eyelids with cornflower blue, and right when Goro thinks the look is getting monolithic she adds in just a hint of gold. Goro finds himself focusing in on her body language, though, bereft of anything productive to do with his brainpower: he sees a painter’s finesse at her fingertips, an exacting eye for colors and their combinations, the carefree smile of a lover. The joy of creation.

For the first time in a very long time Goro finds himself wishing, even if he does not know what he is wishing for.

“Perfect!” Ann pulls Shiho up and herds her over to the mirror. Her eyes light up when she sees Ann’s handiwork.

“That’s wonderful! The gold is so pretty…” She smiles at Goro, all honesty and tempered-ice-blue. “Want me to do yours?”

Goro blinks at her, and before he opens his mouth to speak Shiho interrupts him. “If you’re really uncomfortable, we don’t have to go through with it. We’re just joking around.”

Goro silently, obediently, sits himself down atop the bathtub rim, quietly wondering what gave him away. “Do your worst.”

Ann grins, but hands the palette over to Shiho, turning on a ring light and pulling it over. “You’re in good hands, I promise!”

Shiho crouches down, brush in hand. Goro closes his eyes as she begins to work. The little fwip-fwip-fwips of the brush over his face are faintly familiar– and again he’s reminded of after-school afternoons spent in the studios, getting dolled up for interviews. And again that word choice haunts him: ‘dolled up’. Like he is a doll, being posed and shuffled along by the gods’ hands. Like someone’s colored on his face with a marker and he has to live with the scribbles blackening his name.

“Alright,” Shiho murmurs, “there you go!” 

Goro keeps his eyes closed. A hand– maybe Shiho’s, maybe Ann’s– brushes over his, leading him to stand and shepherding him vaguely in the direction of the mirror. Goro breathes. He feels like he’s slept and dreamed and when he opens his eyes it will be a new day. He doesn’t know whether to regard that day with dread or not.

Goro opens his eyes. 

It's a fairly subtle look; at least it is compared to Ann's hot pink ensemble. There's lavender and violet dusted over his eyes, and the slightest hint of blush over his cheeks. He's genuinely surprised they made that shade of purple work with his skin— if anything, it complements it. He had expected to feel vaguely embarrassed, but something pleasant settles between his ribs instead. It’s nice , he muses, to feel this pretty . He hasn’t felt pretty in— forever, really; even getting decorated for interviews always felt more like a trying ordeal. 

A sentiment strikes him out of nowhere like a stab wound. Something about the way they’ve contoured his face suddenly reminds him of his mother. 

If his mind wasn’t suddenly flooded with emotion, it’d be easy to write off. Of course he looks like her, that’s just lucky genetics. (Because if he didn’t look like her, then he would look like–) If his mother really wasn’t so far away, then maybe he’s actually worthy of kindness that’s never going to be given to him. God knows she was. But it’s so idiotic to get worked up about some goddamn face paint, just a couple of kids playing with his face, he’s suddenly wearing a new face and it feels like his heart’s been set free—

“Oh, uh,” Ann says, when she notices Akechi begin to cry. “Are you okay?”

Akechi doesn’t answer. Something coils tight behind his ribs.

“Jeez, was it that bad?” Shiho mutters. Ann gives her a rueful look that Akechi barely notices. He feels like a freshly sliced apple; he feels like a peeled nectarine. He feels like something mealy-sticky-sweet is spilling out of his face, dyed violet with zinc and silica. 

Akechi, deafened to the world, wipes his face and stumbles out of the bathroom. Again it feels as though a living thing is burrowing through his mind, like he can feel the prickle of its teeth against the inside of his throat. He washes his face more thoroughly in his own bathroom, distantly cognizant of Ann and Shiho’s murmuring. His towel is stained with purple and black and pink by the time he tosses it aside.

He shuffles out into his room with leaden limbs, only to realize he hasn’t closed his door– and that Shiho and Ann, over in the living room, are looking right at him. Unable to fully turn away, Goro trods out into the great frontier of the main apartment. He gives the two of them a look of acknowledgement before he makes his way into the kitchen.

Goro barely manages to start preparing tea before his head starts back up again. When the lethargy recedes he’s left with confusion– should he apologize for something like that? He should just fuck off back to his room, right? He’s already ruined their fun once; it needn’t happen again. Goro turns around, leaning over the island just in time for Ann to turn on the television. She looks up at him, face unreadable and open at the same time.

“Do you… wanna watch a movie with us?” She gestures to the screen. “There’s some good stuff I wanna show you and Shiho.”

Goro blinks. “Oh. Sure.” The confusion doesn’t entirely recede as he prepares two more cups of tea, ferrying them all over to the living room before he slides onto the other side of the couch. Shiho, sitting cross-legged on the floor, holds her cup (a discounted blue mug with the sticker still on it) in both hands. Goro lets his opinions and thoughts slide away from him as Ann starts explaining the premise of whatever low-budget fantasy she’s landed on tonight.

All things fall away in the light-bathed living room.

—

Goro wakes up late. He’d shuffled himself off to bed after the movie had ended, and he awakens tangled in his covers, as if he’d thrashed half through the night. When he drags himself out of his room there is no noise anywhere– even the A/C is woefully quiet. He maneuvers himself just out of range of the balcony sunbeam as he chomps at his meager breakfast of crackers.

By the time Ann and Shiho return Goro is back in his room, rereading a dry historical fantasy. He isn’t sure whether he should get to his feet when he hears the first ga-thump of shoes by the door, but there’s a finality to Shiho’s stride that makes him stand when he sees her.

“I’m just here to pack up my stuff,” she says from the hallway. “My flight isn’t until this evening, but I still have to catch a taxi and everything…”

Goro nods in acknowledgement. When she disappears back into Ann’s room he quietly slides his way out to the living room, hoping that he’s presentable enough for a proper goodbye. Ann fiddles around in the kitchen for some time. Goro observes her doing a lot of nothing: looking in cabinets, picking things up, putting them down. As if she can’t bear to see Shiho leave.

The sound of Shiho’s suitcase wheels against the hardwood almost takes Goro all the way back to May. His own suitcase is gathering dust in his closet, perhaps still weary from its work taking almost the entirety of Goro’s being from Arakawa to this ocean of white. For a moment, Shiho looks just as lost as he is here.

Then she smiles at Goro, and the cold confusion fades. “I had a really nice time here. Thank you for… for being so gracious.”

Goro shakes his head. “It was nothing, really. I hope I wasn’t too much of a drag on your fun.”

“Not at all! It was nice to meet you, really. And…” Shiho holds out a hand. In Goro’s peripheral vision he sees Ann track her movements. “Your secret is safe with me. I promise.”

There is a vast and unknowable gravity behind her voice. Goro gently shakes her hand. “Thank you– and I truly mean that.”

Shiho grins. “Next time we’ll have to plan more things with all three of us! Right, Ann?”

Ann, clutching an empty coffee mug at the kitchen island, nods absentmindedly. “Oh, sure! Sure, yeah, we can do something like that.”

Goro mentally bookmarks Ann’s pinched expression for further study. Ann sees Shiho out the door and beyond the threshold and does not return for twenty minutes. When she does find her way back into the living room, Goro does her a favor and looks away from her tear-stained face.

If others’ eyes are weapons, then so too are his.

—

SEPTEMBER 2017 –

Goro knows every floorboard in the apartment by heart. He knows where to step when he is overcome by bouts of late-night pacing, unwilling to get back in bed but even less willing to wake Ann.

His dreams are hazy and hued with violet. He has very few of them now. It is as if whatever entity that’s been following him has eaten enough of his soul as it can stand and has moved on to a dessert course of dreams. For reasons he can’t explain, he thinks they might taste sweet.

—

“Where’s the clear tape?”

“Kitchen drawer next to the sink. What did ya do?”

“I ripped a page in this book. Left or right drawer?”

“Right. Which book?”

“The Hasegawa cookbook. I must have gotten too excited reading about chocolate castella cake.”

“Akechi! Spoilers! ”

—

OCTOBER 2017 –

The skies are gray and monolithic. The buildings are the same; as above, so below. Goro closes his eyes against the changing of the few leaves he can see. He closes his eyes against everything– against quiet nighttimes spent awake and alone, against Ann in the kitchen, against the flood of images pouring through the living room.

Goro sleeps, long and quiet. He dreams of static. When he wakes he remembers nothing.

—

Goro actually gets used to Ann’s horrible TV dramas. His mornings feel incomplete without them, even when his ‘morning’ begins at 3 AM. He watches them without truly absorbing their strange harvests of interpersonal dynamics.

So when Goro hears the sobbing of one lovestruck girl echoed, he knows something is off. He rises slowly and ponderously from the couch, tilting his head to triangulate the noise. Some part of him already knew it was coming from Ann’s room.

He walks silently into the hall. Ann’s bedroom door is open by just a sliver. If he focuses just right he can see her in a mass of shadows over her bed, shuddering with sobs. Her phone is on, lying on the bedspread as if it’s slipped out of her hand, illuminating the room in blue-white.

Goro stands there until her phone goes dark. He hears Ann shift and squirm, her voice tapering off into quiet hiccups. The TV plays on and on behind him, signifying nothing.

He looks away. He walks away. There’s nothing else he can do.

—

Time bends to a breaking point. Goro is vaguely cognizant of Ann hopping back into the apartment one day in a be-glittered Halloween costume– a witch, a cat, it doesn’t matter. He knows what tomorrow will be.

—

NOVEMBER 2017 –

There is no guidance. There never was.

Goro doesn’t know what to do with November. He figured he wouldn’t have to be alive for the next November after the hunt and the dark and the awful, burning light. Now that he’s here he finds himself floating free, looking for scaffolding to hold onto.

He doesn’t have much. Aside from a small handful of be-masked grocery trips that he can count on one hand, Goro hasn’t left the apartment for months, and he’s not sure whether he should start now. Guilt chains him to his bed and the sofa and the floor of the shower. 

And for a time, everything is normal on earth.

—

Goro knows something is wrong when he sees how quickly Ann throws her coat on. The little plastic charms on her zipper rattle and clack. She types out a swift text before swooping through the hallway, slipping on her shoes.

“I’m heading out,” she says, voice pained. “I might not be back until tomorrow evening.”

At this Goro rises slowly from the couch, watching Ann sling her purse over her shoulder. “You’re… staying over somewhere?”

“Yeah. With Akira. He’s not– doing so well.”

All of the air leaves the apartment instantly. Ann finishes putting on her shoes before the impact hits her. “Shit,” she says, and her head snaps up to regard Goro with bright, shameful eyes. “I– I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it. You didn’t have to–”

“It’s fine,” Goro lies, putting on a well-worn plastic smile. “Attend to his wellbeing for as long as you need. I’ll be alright here.”

Ann’s brow furrows, but she nods and says nothing more. She steps through the doorway. When she closes the door only silence remains.

—

Goro lies dead in the apartment for some time.

He does not feel like being alive until hours have tracked through the living room like a dog with dirty paws. When he rises, he does so just long enough to shove a few crackers and a chocolate cookie down his throat before giving up and retreating to his room.

The engine . He can still hear the thrum of the engine. The dim lighting had accentuated the still-present bruises on Akira’s face, even before Goro had added a few. In the present he collapses onto his bed and sinks into the past, wondering about the feeling of cool metal beneath his legs.

He remembers the pierce of the shot through his chest. He has to remember it– he can’t get rid of the memory until the starburst scar on his chest finally fades away. Goro sinks into a daydream of what would have actually happened if he had let himself bleed out there, against the door, and he finds the answer he comes to unsatisfactory. They would have found a way. He can easily see the Thieves punching through the door or laser-cutting a circular hole through it like a bad spy movie, because if there’s anything the Thieves are known for, it’s a kind of bright and terrible drama.

Goro does not realize he’s drifted off until the buzz of his phone wakes him. He blindly grabs out for it in the sea of his bedsheets, and when he turns his eyes to the screen he expects to see some sort of update from Ann. When his eyes focus fully and he reads Akira’s name his heart nearly stops.

He unlocks his phone and scrambles to turn his read receipts off. He’d had them on before mostly to mess with Akira, and he hopes against hope that whatever godly corpse might still be out there hasn’t decided to punish him for it. 

Goro’s body is deathly cold. He curls up into himself as he opens his messages.

Akira Kurusu

hey

i don’t know where you are

but i want you to know something

Akira is still typing.

i kept your promise. i don’t know how i’d break it at this point but i’ve kept it

i hope you’re okay

and i know futaba can probably read this and i don’t care

if she calls me an idiot for texting a dead man then hey i’m a fucking idiot

but

i don’t know

i dont know

Goro’s teeth feel like they’re about to shatter. He may have started crying a few minutes ago; he isn’t sure.

people have stopped caring about you. they don’t talk about the detective prince very much anymore

i guess it’s still an open missing persons case in the police records cause they don’t trash those after. what, seven years?

seven years

that’s your deadline

to fulfill your end of the promise

it’s not just me. it’s not just me left from all this

Goro stares at the clock. He watches it turn from 2:43 to 2:44 before he looks at what Akira says next.

i hope

i mean i hope for a lot of things

but i hope you’re doing well

and i hope you’re asleep. or maybe not

you could have fucked off halfway across the world and now you’re awake bright and early in fuck i dont know europe or something

so i hope you’re asleep if you need to be and you’re awake if you don’t

that’s what i hope for you, he says. i hope everything is as it should be with you

Goro turns off his phone. It buzzes only two more times before he can make himself close his eyes. Bright red blood stains the inside of his eyelids– the perfect blend of fresh blood and Metaverse-pink.

When distant autumn thunder wakes him, something small and whispering inside Goro tells him to check his phone. He opens it to read three final messages from Akira.

i have to sleep

even though i don’t want to

good night

—

Ann calls Goro before she returns the following afternoon, asking whether he can make do with leftover pastries or groceries. “Leftovers are fine,” he rumbles. His throat burns with exertion, dehydration, hope .

—

Everything is normal on earth again, except for the fact that Goro feels like his organs are on fire, one of those forever-burning fires that gets set over a petroleum reservoir by accident and burns out in the desert until the end of time. He feels like hydrocarbons more than something radioactive, now– something slick and poisonous until it is meant to be useful, and even then he still knows he’s killing anyone who ever got close enough to take him into their lungs. Gradual accumulation; cancerous ignition. A promise written in microplastics. 

—

“Hey– oh, sorry! I thought you were awake.”

Goro rolls over, glancing over at Ann poking her head in through his doorway. This has happened before and it will happen again. “‘S fine. What is it?”

“No no, I’ll wait for you to get up first. Here…” She shuffles away, half-closing the door behind her. Goro lets his eyes droop closed as he listens to the faint bustle and whirr of Ann’s fancy new coffeemaker. Right before Goro can actually drift off to sleep, Ann comes back in and sets a cup of coffee on his nightstand. Only now does Goro notice how much excitement is packed into Ann; she’s practically bursting at the seams with suppressed smiles and movement.

When she holds up her phone, full-armed, she nearly smacks Goro in the face with it. The assemblage of text is unintelligible, but Ann clarifies quickly. “I got an international gig!” She squeals. “Over in Europe– Spain, to be precise. My Spanish is pretty good, but I’ll have to brush up… oh, it’s all so exciting!”

Goro gives her the barest equivalent of a thumbs up. He feels vaguely like someone’s playing his vertebrae like a drum set, or perhaps a marimba. “That’s great.”

“Oh, but… I’ll be away for a couple weeks.” Ann bends down to more easily look Goro in the eye. “Is there anything you’ll need? Should I go grocery shopping beforehand? And– I mean, are you gonna be okay here all on your own?”

Bile rises in the back of Goro’s throat. I’m not a fucking child is his first thought, and his second thought is sometimes I do feel like a child, and an incompetent one at that , and his third thought is good fucking god just let me go back to bed already .

He compromises. “Probably. Talk about it later.”

“Ok!” Ann springs back up, going to shut the door. “Good night!”

Goro says nothing in return, shifting and squirming and cracking his back. When he settles back down it takes him minutes to find a comfortable position, nestling against the covers, closing his eyes as the city goes bright again.

—

Again the suitcase wheels rattle over the hardwood; again Goro feels like part of him is stuck in May. Ann pours herself one last latte into her travel mug and smooths down her coat. She slips on one glove and then stops when she sees Goro milling about in the living room.

If Goro had a more optimistic mind, he’d characterize her smile as fond . She opens her arms to him and envelops him in a hug. “I’m gonna miss you, okay?”

“You will?” He places his hands faintly over her shoulders.

“I will.” She echoes. “I promise.”

When she pulls away, she waves goodbye and steps over the threshold, and it is as if both the gate and its guardian have disappeared into the sky.

—

DECEMBER 2017 –

Goro moves about the apartment alone like a frightened deer: in great bursts of energy, interspersed with very long periods of standing completely still.

He re-rereads his beloved poetry book and muses, for a while, about becoming one of those Romantic (capital-R) poets who wander the streets at 3AM and die at 25. Daydreams like this one wash over his waking life in vast tides where he can retreat into fantasy– as a hero, as a prince, as a Thief once more. Goro hasn’t daydreamed this deeply since he was a boy. It’s sickening.

Until Goro comes back to reality staring at the photographs in the hall. He traces their path once more, imagining the vast and lonely path of Ann’s life: graduations, birthdays, vacations.

Birthdays. Birthdays. All of the pictures that appear birthdaylike are framed by autumn leaves, and one is clearly dated November 12th, 2013 . Goro’s heart sinks as his mind trawls back out to Shibuya and collects up the debris of his memories. Dark chocolate. Faint bruises. The smell of fresh broth.

Had Akira’s distress overwhelmed her that badly, or did she just not want to shove Goro down the gauntlet of downtown Tokyo again? Or perhaps the Thieves had tossed her unto their own gauntlet of unending cheer? They probably had, knowing their tendency to overdo just about everything.

Goro throws himself upon the living room couch once more and tries not to think about it. He immediately fails as he tries to remember Ann’s face through the daze of November. She had certainly seemed down , but those squalls could have just as easily been about Akira or Shiho.

He huffs as he opens his dog-eared cookbook. If he’s going to be frustrated with himself, he might as well be productive about it.

—

Goro spends a day tethered to the washer and dryer as he works through his unwashed laundry, and another day alternatively folding it and dozing off in front of DVR recordings of Ann’s favorite episodes. On the third day he throws on a long black coat– one of Ann’s, he can’t find his– and slowly trundles about the apartment, gathering up a list and an assemblage of adequate winter clothing.

He finds one black leather glove. The other glove is missing. Goro tries not to think about it.

He decides to live with cold hands for the rest of his life as he collects up the cash that Ann had left for him. The handful of bills and coins are resting in a hand-painted ceramic dish by the door (Kitagawa’s handiwork, surely). It’s a haphazard arrangement, but it still adds up to something worthwhile as he nudges his way out of the doorway.

A frost-wreathed Tokyo greets him. Clouds whirl across the sky, dancing with the wind and the air pollution. The child’s rollerskate is still in the flowerpot at the bottom of the stairs. Goro wonders whether the child has outgrown it or not, or whether the child’s family has moved out. He lets the mystery lie as he steps out onto the street.

The coat is long enough to flap around his knees as the cold wind twines around the subway platform. He holds it close around him like a phantom hug, and something warm alights in his chest. He doesn’t even feel quite so bad when he has to cram himself between a schoolgirl (who is loudly texting) and a businesswoman (who is on a phone call about stocks). 

The store is a hive in the early evening. Goro picks his way through cake flour and produce, counting his coins as he goes. If he stands with his back to the aisles he can pretend no one is there. He swipes up an odd little smoothie for himself as he goes, sipping it in a back-alley before he makes his way back to the train station.

Everything today feels smooth– not an unsteady, ice-slick smoothness, but genuinely warm and right. A gentle flow; a small caress. The serenity of the day does not recede until well after Goro gets back inside and unpacks his ingredients, finally shrugging off his coat. He leaves it on Ann’s spot upon the couch, and if the oven weren’t already preheating he’d want to put it right back on again.

A method keeps Goro tied down to earth. One bowl after another after another; ingredients out and away and out again. The whisk in his hand is almost familiar.

But November still isn’t far away, and Akira’s face keeps entering Goro’s head against his will. He imagines juxtapositions: a bullet hole in his forehead oozing onto the pool table as he lines up a shot. His eyes wide with fear as the Thieves surprise him with a party. He was legally dead, too, once. Goro imagines him crawling into his grave like he’s getting ready for bed.

The smell of grave dirt nearly overwhelms the sound of the oven timer.

—

Ann makes a truly tremendous amount of noise as she stumbles into the house, dragging her suitcase over the threshold. “Uuuugh, I'm gonna nap for a thousand years.”

“Well, hello to you too, soon-to-be Sleeping Beauty.” Goro steps out into the hallway, just enough to be seen.

Ann gasps, instantly gaining a bit of energy. “You think I'm beautiful? ” She places a hand over her mouth in mock surprise.

“Don't let it get to your head.” Today has been a better day for him so far, but the static is still looming at the edge of Goro's mind. He retreats back into the kitchen, and after Ann unceremoniously drags her suitcase into the living room, she follows.

If she's noticed the way Goro is standing nervously by the island counter, waiting for her to notice the cake behind him, she hasn't shown it. “Whatcha been up to?”

“Oh, this and that. Tidied up. Did some... cooking.” He leans, ever more nonchalantly, on the counter. He’s certain he looks visibly uncomfortable at this point, but he can't bring himself to care.

Ann, jetlagged as she is, finally gasps and shuffles over to the counter, half-elbowing Akechi out of the way. “Is this a cake? Did you make this?!”

“Yes, I did make it, but I'm afraid it's a cardboard cylinder cleverly disguised as a cake.” He rolls his eyes, and the smile that graces his face is only a tiny bit nervous. “Why don't you cut a slice and find out?”

Ann beams at him. “Oh my gosh, this is exactly what I needed!” She bustles through the cabinets, ungracefully hunting down silverware. “The flight was so long, and then it got delayed, and I couldn't even get a nap in…”

“I know,” he reminds her. “You paid for the in-flight wifi just to text me the play-by-play.” He can't sound too exhausted– all the nosy accounts of the passengers around her had helped to keep him grounded that morning. People-watching by proxy.

Cake knife in hand, Ann closes in on the cake like a huntress. She pauses, though, glancing back to Akechi. “Seriously, though, you really made this for me?”

He shrugs. “I needed something to do, but if you enjoy it, that’ll make it that much more worthwhile.” As Akechi watches her cut into the cake with considerable restraint, he finds, with a dizzying sense of realization, that he desperately, desperately wants Ann to give him a hug right now. He does absolutely nothing about that urge and instead steps back.

Ann sets a slice of cake onto her plate, nearly bouncing with excitement. The layers are a bit uneven, and Akechi can already see a few places along the outside where he could have spread the frosting with more care, but what's done is done. He follows her around the island, keeping her at arm's length– but no further– as she settles herself onto one of the barstools. Akechi's almost ashamed to admit how tense his shoulders get as he watches her take a bite.

Her face, smudged makeup and all, lights up. “Oh my god, this is good!” Up until now, she's done a startlingly good job of not eating the entire slice in one go, but that track record seems to be all but demolished as Akechi turns around to start a pot of coffee. He lets a vague, quiet sense of pride bloom just a little in his head.

“Seriously, Goro, this is the best.” He glances back to her, not entirely surprised that her plate is clean. “What kind of recipe did you follow?”

“I just looked one up.” He watches the coffeemaker as Ann gets up to cut herself another slice. Akechi’s ribcage bursts open. “Have you ever felt like some fundamental aspect of your identity has changed, but you don't know what the change is or why it happened?”

He hears Ann pause mid-cut. “That's... quite the question. Is that, like… hypothetical, or…?”

“I don’t know.” Akechi leans forward against the counter, grappling with the sudden urge to hide beneath it.

Ann taps her fork against her lip. “Sounds like the same sort of feelings you’d get awakening a Persona. I mean, I guess that’s less subtle than what you’re talking about, but…”

“I suppose so.” Akechi slides onto a barstool, holding his head in his hand. “I can’t… get a handle on it.”

Ann sits one stool away, resting her head on her hand, too. “A lot has changed. It only makes sense that you’ve changed with it, right?”

“All that change was back in May . Everything since then has been…” He waves a hand, as if to indicate the general dishevelment of his being.

“Not true! You learned how to make this.” She points to the cake, now with a substantial fraction devoured. “And you hung out with me more. And there was– I mean, I hope this isn’t a sore spot, but there was that thing during the sleepover.”

Goro blinks at her, and Ann sits up when she clarifies. “I felt like something changed there. I couldn’t tell you what, but it was a change.”

“You think so,” he says, steely and even.

“Yeah, I think so,” she echoes. What she says next is emphatically not an echo of any of Goro’s conscious thoughts. “Could be a gender thing.”

Goro’s train of thought leaves the station without him. He blinks upon the platform, watching the sky. “What?”

“Yeah, like…” Ann begins talking in English. “Futaba was talking about it a little while ago.” Goro’s English is fine, but his neck still goes tense with the whiplash. Clouds go by overhead. He wonders why she made the switch until she keeps talking: it’s all context, all pronoun and noun intermingled with meaning. Semiotics in motion. “How they view themself, and how all those parts fit together. It’s interesting. Akira, too.”

Goro hums. He has no reference for what Futaba and Akira might look like now. For all he knows, they might have shaved their heads together and dyed the resulting peach-fuzz shades of neon. He decides not to think about it. “Happy birthday, by the way.”

“Don’t go changing the subject on me.” Ann gives him a smile in profile, bright and wonderful and absolutely terrifying. “I really do think you should think about it.”

Goro taps his fingertips against the counter. Ann’s fork quietly scrapes her plate. Another train pulls up to the station.

“If you’re not going to finish this up in one go,” Goro murmurs, “come help me clean this up.” He stands and Ann follows him, quietly wrapping up the remaining cake before dragging her suitcase back to her room. Everything is as it should be, except Ann’s sending off sparks and setting his heart on fire again– but it isn’t petrochemical anymore. The smoke smells too sweet.

—

Goro wakes early that night, not from a nightmare or a dream but from something entirely different that leaves his mind immediately, leaving no trace of its presence. He feels the shadow of a tree-canopy overhead as he makes his way out of his room.

Everything in the apartment catches the moonlight and the skyglow, lit up only at the edges. If the apartment’s heater hadn’t been working overtime, it’d feel like the whole place was filigreed with frost. 

Goro extracts a glass from the cabinet and fills it with water, setting it on the kitchen island. The glass catches the light even more than the granite and hardwood and countless life-trinkets all scattered around. He opens the refrigerator and is halfway tempted to cut herself a slice of cake when–

Everything stops dead.

Akechi feels like a grain of wheat that has just realized what flour is. Light from the refrigerator washes over the counter. She closes the door and turns so abruptly that she knocks her glass to the floor, where it shatters in a vast cone of shrapnel.

Akechi stands stock-still until Ann shuffles out of her bedroom, blinking against the light pollution. 

“Is everything okay?” Ann rubs her eyes, clutching her fluffy bathrobe close.

Akechi gestures faintly to the glass. “It’s broken.”

“It’s okay,” Ann murmurs, opening the hall closet to search for the dustpan. “It doesn’t look that bad. We’ll put it back together.”

Akechi watches the shards of glass shining over the puddle of water. As if they’re floating on the surface of a wine-dark sea.

“Ann,” they say, speaking out into the night. “Ann, there’s something I have to tell you.”

Chapter Text

Akechi’s self-concept is not entirely unlike a spilled box of Legos. There’s something that can be built out of it, lurking somewhere in that disorganized mass– but they have to tidy it up to find it, and all preferably without stepping on any sharp edges.

Their newly-refined routine sets most of those edges aside, though. They clean: the living room, the kitchen, both bathrooms, their bedroom. They do fiddly little tasks than Ann has never thought to do, like dusting the uppermost knick-knack shelves in the living room. They read and read and read. Their phone has remained powered off since November. Futaba’s– wrath, sorrow, ineffable mischief, whatever– is terribly anxiety-inducing. Despite everything, including their very newfound similarities, Akechi has never understood them, and with a year’s distance between the two of them now they feel like Futaba is probably even more of an enigma. But the idea of Akira knowing anything at all about Akechi now sets their heart–and their brain, and also the rest of their body– on fire.

So: they clean. They scrub everything clean except their own head. Those tangles are for later.

“Wow,” Ann says, regarding the sparkling kitchen from the hallway. “The place probably hasn’t looked this good since it was sold.”

“I’ve got nothing else to do,” Akechi says from their spot upon the living room couch. “It’s my way of paying rent.”

“Are you seriously on about the rent thing again? It really doesn’t matter. Like, I’m glad you haven’t turned the place into a pigsty a la whatever Akira’s roommate is doing, but you don’t have to go that far.”

“Akira has a roommate?” For a second, Akechi tries to entertain the thought of cramming a second person into Akira’s shitty attic. They’d only ever been up there a few times for Thief meetings, but the smell of it– dust and coffee beans and Akira’s cheap spray deodorant– has been ingrained into their head ever since. Logic only catches up with them moments later. “Hasn’t he still got a year of high school left?”

“Yeah, but… Lemme explain.” Ann leans back against the bar. “The story goes like… Akira got out of juvie, he went home, his parents sucked, so he took all the fuckloads of cash he saved from thieving and rented an apartment with it, and he’s gonna stay there until he graduates and comes back here to work at Leblanc full-time.”

“Can Sojiro-san even pay him full-time?” Akechi murmurs. “As always, I feel as though I can barely understand him.”

“You’re telling me.” Ann sips an unseasonal-looking lemonade-esque drink. Its ice cubes clink against the metal tumbler she’s got clasped uneasily in both hands. “We were all confused. The apartment he rented isn’t even in Tokyo– it’s in his hometown, all the way in the middle of nowhere. The way he described it, I’m surprised there are apartment buildings to begin with.” She shifts from foot to foot. “I think there’s some legal stuff involved. Or… or he wanted to be close to his parents one more time before he left them for good. I don’t know, and he sure isn’t telling us.”

Part of Akechi feels utterly vindicated that there are some things that Akira will not tell the Thieves, because that might mean there are secrets meant just for the two of them. Another part of Akechi feels pity for him in a way that seems to rip out the bottom of their heart and send all their blood cascading down through their insides, like a ruptured grocery bag.

The visible part of Akechi isn’t sure how much they’re supposed to care. “If there’s anything I know about him,” they say, “he’s a bit of a sentimental fool.”

“Maybe that’s it,” Ann muses, tracing a fingertip over the spotless countertop. “Something like that.”

—

Christmas comes and, somehow, goes.

Akechi has absolutely no idea of what to get Ann and even less energy to haul themself out of the apartment, so they settle for making an unsubtle grocery request for cocoa powder and strawberries to bake her a chocolate-strawberry cake. It feels a little disingenuous to bake her a cake for a present–and on her dime, too– but what else can they do?

The two of them celebrate their Christmas a morning early, since Akechi is well aware of the Thieves’ strange little plans. “Are you actually going to go ahead with the deicide party?” They ask, one morning over coffee.

“Yeah. I know it’s kind of… grim, I guess.” Ann smiles, closing her eyes. “But it’s nice to get time to spend with everyone. Akira’s finally coming back home—he’s not tethered to his parents for the holidays, and I think there’s actually plans for Sojiro-san to adopt him eventually.”

Several thoughts flicker through Akechi’s head in quick succession: rage that Akira had the audacity to be born with decent parents and is throwing them away for the first old man that stuffed him in his attic, sympathy that even though he has two parents they’re both shitty enough that he really doesn’t want to have them, fear that he is now closer to Akechi (and, by virtue of being who he is, will discover them immediately), and a vague sense of dread that Akira and Futaba are about to be real siblings . Their pranks will live in infamy.

Akechi tunes back in while Ann is mid-sentence. “–has some sort of part-time gig with a weird schedule, but he’s gonna do his best to show up. Good that it’s him, though; if he was as time-blind as Yusuke he’d never show up.”

Akechi does their best to put two and two together. “Sakamoto?”

“Yup,” Ann says, apparently nonplussed by Akechi’s spaciness. “He wants to save up a bit before going to college. It’s not like he needs the tuition money–I mean, Haru-chan has basically offered him a full ride for anywhere he wants to go, and it’ll only be a drop in her bucket. No idea whether he’s gonna take it, though. Anyway, he mostly wants to give his mom a bit of financial leeway before he heads off to college.”

“What’s he studying for?”

“Physical therapy. He says he got real inspired going to his own PT sessions. I think it’s really good for him–we’re all really proud.”

Genuine warmth blooms in Ann’s voice, and Akechi can’t help but feel a little proud too. What little they remember of Ryuji is all swear words and staggered gait, and knowing that he’s doing better is motivating, somehow. It’s a little uncharitable, but they still find themself thinking if he can pull himself together, so can I.

Akechi does let the pride go to their head when they finish their Christmas-Eve-morning cake and present it to Ann with a flourish. They’ve sprinkled powdered sugar on the strawberries crowning the cake for an extra wintry flair, and the chocolate icing itself is, in their discerning opinion, just the right texture. Ann’s overjoyed smile and accompanying squeal dissipates any worries they’d had about how weird of a present this is, and she savors a slice as she pulls out a slightly lumpy, vaguely rectangular gift.

“Go on!” She grins. Powdered sugar dusts her lips, sticking to her lip gloss. “Hopefully I made the right choice!”

The wrapping paper itself is both shiny and polka-dotted, adorned with a tasteful pink bow. On a vibe scale, it registers as extremely Ann Takamaki. Akechi gently undoes the bow before, on impulse, ripping the paper down the side with their nails. A few books, standing up on their backs, clatter to the counter– looks like the gift had gotten turned around while it was being wrapped.

There are four books in a neat little pile: a poetry book from the same author as June’s gift, a Featherman insider’s guide, a manga volume with an impressionistic artstyle, and a book with no title or words on it whatsoever.

Ann launches into explanations that frame Akechi’s inspections nicely. “Ok, ok, so the author of that book you really liked just released a new book, and I just had to get it for you. Ooh! And that one’s from a queer mangaka– I know you’re not a huge manga fan… or, I mean, I don’t know that. I’m about to find out, I guess! But I’ve heard really good things about it, so I thought you might like it.”

Akechi turns the Featherman guide over, trying not to show their excitement. They’re only moderately successful; this guide is about the very newest seasons, and considering Akechi has forsaken the Internet almost entirely, their hunger for Featherman information knows no bounds. 

“Hehe, I knew you’d go for that one!” Ann grins, catlike. “That last one, though…” She waits until Akechi picks it up to continue. “It’s a journal! I thought that could be helpful for, like, sorting your thoughts out and stuff. I know I really like keeping a diary, so…”

Akechi only vaguely feels themself tearing up. The sensations passing over them are nebulous, but they grab onto a few noticeable fragments like they’re retrieving spacecraft debris from an asteroid field. These gifts tell Akechi that Ann understands them, that she’s been listening and they–

“I… really don’t know what to say,” they murmur, completely truthful. There’s a warble in their voice that they can’t really paper over. “Surely this is worth at least a couple more cakes?”

Ann’s smile could melt glass. “Only if you wanna make more. And besides–”

“I don’t get it,” Akechi says suddenly. “I don’t get it at all. You’ve harbored me here for no reason at all, with very few benefits– and the cleaning and the baking are both incidental, so those don’t count– and I’ve given you very little in return besides front-row seats to an ongoing personal crisis. Why… go to all this trouble? Why do you care? I know this can be the sort of thing where asking about it makes it go away,” they hiss, “but god damn it all, I want to know.”

Ann just looks at Akechi for a few long moments.

When she finally speaks, she does so with both complete conviction and hearthlike warmth. “When I first saw you in the engine room, I felt like… I got it. I felt bad for you, yeah, and I felt scared that you were gonna kill us– I mean, I was only scared for a little bit until Akira knocked you down that first time, and then the fight all just flowed from there– but I felt like I understood you. You felt so trapped, and every time you tried to struggle things just got worse, like quicksand in a stupid movie…

“But any one of us could have been you– could have been the Black Mask. You were just the one pushed the hardest. And I…”

She pauses, resting her head on her hand. “I feel like– look, when I faced Kamoshida, I nearly killed him myself,” she whispers. “And believe me, I know he deserved to die. If you gave me a gun and put me in front of him right now, I’d probably kill him. The only reason I let him live was because he’d be put through a worse hell getting the shit beat out of him in prison for the rest of his miserable, stupid goddamn life.” She smirks, and to Akechi’s horror they do see an echo of their own mad Metaverse look in her, all blood-slick teeth and fire breaking on magenta shores. “Maybe I’d just shoot him in the leg. Yeah, that’s probably it– taste of his own medicine, huh? Sorry,” she interrupts herself, laughing just a bit. “I know that’s… a lot. But my point is, I– I saw myself in you. 

“It’s selfish, right? Like, if you were nothing like me I might have kicked you out, sure. Or maybe not. And if you did all that shit with no remorse and no sob story I might’ve just punched you when I spotted you on the bridge. Or maybe not. But…”

Ann fixes Akechi under her gaze, and they are reminded, in full force, that she has slain gods. “But you’re human,” she says, murmuring. “But you care , and we didn’t have to hop into your head and rewire your brain to make you understand the consequences of your actions. And we were all just stupid kids playing our game– we still are, trying to play at being adults, and…”

She huffs out a breath, and again Akechi sees themself in her: the warble in her voice, the wet sheen to her eyes. “You want to know why I went to all that trouble, right? Because if I was constantly being put under a microscope and rotting in a body that I hate & that others love and full of all this rage with nowhere to put it and alone in the middle of all of that– that’s what I would want. A place like this. A place that’s– that’s good enough–”

Ann sputters into tears as she mutters “oh, fuck it” and dashes around the bar to envelop Akechi in a hug. Their own grateful tears drip onto her hair.

On this day one year ago, the Phantom Thieves did not exist. On this day one year ago, ––– Akechi did not exist.

“I’m glad it was you,” they say, and it feels like their body has been re-assembled from spare parts and miraculously runs perfectly. Everything moves smoothly: her hand over the back of their head, the swaying of their stance. “I’m glad it was you that found me.”

“Yeah,” Ann sniffs, pulling back a little. “Yeah, me too.” Her smile is wobbly, but no less insincere for it. “Were… were the books a good choice?”

Akechi lets out a laugh. “You hit the bullseye, so to speak. I hate to tell you this, but I’ll probably be devouring them all before the year is out.”

Ann laces her hands over Akechi’s back, rocking them both from side to side in something that’s about one-tenths of the way to a dance. “Hey, at least they’ll get used. And I think I’ll be finishing up your gift in, oh… the next hour or so?”

Akechi snorts ungracefully, which is enough to drive the last of their tears– and, consequently, their uncertainty– away. “I don’t think even your stomach could handle that.”

“Oh, you of little faith!” Ann dives back in for one last squeeze before she steps away, and with a quick apology she slips off to go wash her face.

Akechi takes up Ann’s fork and spears one of the glossy strawberries off the top of the cake. There are dishes that need washing, books that need reading, and a body that needs discovering, and in the midst of all these needs Akechi has never felt so alive.

—

Akechi finishes all of the books (except, of course, the journal) in two days. The poetry book nearly makes them cry; the Featherman treatise nearly gives them heart palpitations with excitement. The manga, though– she reads it once to absorb it, a second time to understand it, and a third time to plumb its depths for everything she can. 

Something quiet and falling, not unlike the snow outside, collects within them: slowly, cumulatively.

—

Ann leaves for the Thieves’ New Year’s party (because “of course we’re having another one, what do you expect”) dressed in an ensemble so delightful– so full of color and life and love and little jingling accessories– that it encourages Akechi to put on a nice sweater for once. They aren’t exactly sure what they’re celebrating, but something is resonating within her with the same rare and delightful tremor that she gets before any good celebration. She stands out on the balcony, listening to the chill. Something is coming, something is coming.

Akechi had never put much stock in celebrating the New Year. Their mother could never afford osechi to ring in the new year, although she tried to make her own. Akechi had fixed that picture of her in their mind as they had gone shopping just a few days ago: mother, standing over the stove, half there and half trapped somewhere else. They wonder whether they could have found their mother’s heart in the Metaverse, if they had tried hard enough, if their awakening had come sooner. They wonder, they wonder, they wonder.

Today, as the night and the cold draw closer, Akechi lets that wonder slip through their fingers and holds onto the concrete image instead. They stride into the kitchen and lay out their ingredients: buckwheat soba, broth and brothlike components, scallions, pre-made tempura shrimp (because Akechi isn’t that much of a masochist). There’s only enough for one; Ann insisted she’d be fine with the Thieves. “Boss himself is making our soba!” She had bragged, making sure to follow up with “but I’m sure yours will be just as good!”

Akechi pictures the image they’re projecting, standing in front of the stove and managing the broth. Are they standing straight enough? Does their hair obscure their face? Do they look driven enough, warm enough, diligent enough? They used to worry so much about their image– and for what? They always asked themself. And for fucking what? What does it matter when someone– if only one person– already sees you for who you are?

Ann worries about her image too, Akechi is certain, and not just in superficiality and gleaming uncertainty– the world would eat her alive if she slipped up for even a minute. Akira worried, but he worried by not worrying, in that infuriatingly self-assured way. 

Awash in a strange, unique worry of their very own, Akechi finishes the dish in minutes, almost impressed enough with their burgeoning cooking ability to break out of their latest trance. They rest their bowl on their lap upon the couch, think for a moment, and then impulsively take it out to the balcony. It’s cold as hell and there’s nothing to set the bowl on, but they know this is better, somehow. Steam dissipates into the vast air. Power lines reach towards the sky.

Akechi feels a part of themself coming back to them as they eat. They feel just an ounce more human with all this warmth inside them, and they only drag themself back inside when the outside air is cold enough to make their nose sting.

The wall clock in the kitchen reads 23:37. They always did prefer their dinner late.

Akechi, with nothing else in mind to do, sits upon the red armchair. They sink into it with a kind of blankness overtaking them– but a blank wall reflects whatever is placed near it, and their surroundings begin to reflect onto their senses. The drywall is stark white. (Ann has always wanted to paint it, but her landlord doesn’t like the idea of a pink living room.) The scent of broth drifts through the air. (Akechi has dishes to do.) The apartment is cold. (Just like it has been every time Ann leaves.)

The clock ticks. (It is 23:59.)

Akechi closes her eyes–

JANUARY 2018 –

–and everything falls into place.

—

Akechi dreams of blue fire that burns without heat. She dreams of wishes made and wishes lost, and magic wishes granted by a wand, spun out of thin air. Wool fed into the distaff. The spindle turns and turns.

When she wakes, midday, Ann is home. Akechi blearily makes her way out to the kitchen where Ann is stuffing takeout containers into the fridge– leftover treats that she’s been bestowed with. 

“Morning, sleepyhead,” Ann calls, but she only seems seconds away from sleep herself. She yawns and staggers out to the living room, collapsing into the chair. “How was your night?”

“Uneventful,” Akechi lies. “Have you gotten your wish yet?”

Ann puffs out a hissy little pssh . “If I talk about it, then it won’t happen.”

“That’s only if you tell me what it is.” Akechi leans over the back of the armchair, regarding Ann’s splayed limbs with something between disdain and fondness, heavily weighted towards fondness. “I’m just wondering if it’s happened yet.”

Ann squirms around, rolling herself onto her side to get comfortable. “It’ll take time,” she half-whispers.

Akechi thinks she knows, in all her detective’s folly, what Ann’s wish is. She says nothing. Wishes should go unsaid .

“Has your wish come true?” Ann’s voice is small and tentative.

Akechi leans against the chair and watches Ann drift off under the noonday sun. “It will,” she says, and for the first time in a very long time Akechi believes in the power of her wish.

—

“By the way,” Akechi clarifies as she hands Ann her travel mug of coffee approximately thirty seconds after she was supposed to leave that morning, “I’m a woman.”

“That’s great!” Ann calls over the rustling of her nylon jacket. She frantically digs through the bowl beside the door for her keys. “Oh, Akechi, that’s wonderful, really, I just–”

“–it’s fine, really–”

“–I wish I could take a moment to appreciate–”

“–don’t make yourself even later on account of my ego–”

Ann finds her keys and shoves them in her pocket, juggling her purse and mug as she tries to slip on her shoes. When she finally manages to get each article paired with its proper limb, she takes a deep breath, visibly steadying herself before she swoops over the threshold and captures Akechi in a hug.

“I’m really proud of you,” she whispers into Akechi’s be-sweatered shoulder. Akechi does actually close her arms around Ann’s shoulders, despite everything. They remain there for a moment before Ann rushes out the door in a flash. “I’ll be back home this evening!” She calls, waving goodbye.

Akechi reacts just quickly enough to wave back before the door shuts.

—

When the sky decides to open up with snow for a few days on end, Ann ends up free from work & school and trapped in the apartment just like Akechi has been for all this time. Akechi only ever gets to experience Ann’s presence for full days on her rare homebody days off, which are even rarer than her actual days off since she’s always out doing something with various permutations of Thieves.

It is, she has to begrudgingly admit, nice . The two of them confer on what to do about breakfasts and lunches and dinners, on what takeout places are still open and what dishes are actually within their combined abilities, and they even deliberately allot time to spend together. Akechi has never quite known what to do with friendship– her situation with Akira has never felt like a model example– but cooking shoulder-to-shoulder seems like a good start.

Between the two of them, they actually manage to make some halfway decent udon. Ann chats idly as she works, moving to more purposeful topics once they assemble their bowls and move to the rarely-used kitchen table.

“So when the volleyball season ends in April, we were all gonna have a party with Shiho to celebrate, buu-uut …” Ann ungracefully slurps up a few noodles before she continues. “After the party, I was thinking about inviting her back here for another sleepover so that she doesn’t have to deal with a hotel or anything like that, but, I mean… would you be okay with that?”

The only pulse of anxiety Akechi feels at the prospect of Shiho coming by again is just at the awkwardness of having to reintroduce herself, and at whatever lingering tension might have remained after the makeup incident–and the sudden realization of oh, shit, that was what that was all about hits Akechi like a truck. That, then, is another matter to work through: yes, hello, Akechi imagines herself saying to Shiho upon reintroduction, you accidentally instigated a gender identity crisis that I couldn’t figure out until very recently, and that’s great and all but when are you going to get together with my friend? She’s very broken up about it– poor choice of words, I know.

Despite this deluge of topics to break ground on, Akechi can’t bring herself to be that nervous about it, all things considered. “That sounds fine,” she says, thoughtfully chewing a mildly undercooked bit of bok choy. “I look forward to seeing her again.”

Presumably some of those topics must have entered Ann’s mind too, because she smiles knowingly and glances out the window to watch the snow. “I still haven’t told her about– everything that’s happened since then, really. I don’t think she’ll mind, but it is kind of funny that… I mean, not funny , but–”

“No, I understand. The whole thing is… amusing, I suppose, in retrospect.” Akechi watches the snow with her, vaguely aware of Ann unsubtly sneaking glances back at her.

“Hey,” Ann says, a little tentative. “Have you been thinking about changing your name?”

Akechi grimaces. “Somewhat. I would like to keep my surname intact, but Goro is just so…” Masculine by default , she wants to say.

Ann nods, though, clearly getting the picture. “I could get you a bunch of baby name books,” she says, grinning.

Akechi very nearly rolls her eyes, but then she realizes that that’s actually a half-decent idea. “Be my guest,” she says noncommittally, drinking the last of her broth.

Ann is still smiling at her across the table when she finishes. The dyed streak in her hair has nearly grown out, worn down to a little blip of pink right at the end. “Are you going to get that redyed?” Akechi asks, pointing to where it used to be.

“I haven’t decided yet,” she murmurs, dropping her head onto her hand. “Gosh, that was good. We did a pretty nice job, didn’t we?”

“I suppose we did,” Akechi says, turning to watch the snow drift down.

—

FEBRUARY 2018 –

One afternoon, Ann comes traipsing back into the apartment with an armful of books and determination glimmering in her eyes, and Akechi isn’t sure whether to be excited or afraid. Both of those emotional paths remain untrod, though, as Ann drops a stack of the aforementioned baby name books onto the living room table. “I stopped by the secondhand store,” she says, immediately turning to make her way into the kitchen for tea and/or coffee. “You want anything to drink?”

“Something hot,” Akechi says, and that’s how her afternoon ends up the way it does: with the two of them sprawled over the comfiest parts of the living rooms, one mug of too-chocolatey mocha each, throwing names and spellings at each other.

“Are you more of a ‘Kaori’ or a ‘Keiko’?” Ann lazily lets an arm slide off the armchair, fingers brushing the rug.

“Neither, I think.” Akechi yawns. “How old is that one you have, anyway?”

Ann flips to the front. “1989, damn. I should’ve gotten one from the sixties so you could sound like a grandma,” she snickers.

Akechi rolls her eyes, but doesn’t dispute it. She’s not sure exactly what she wants her name to sound like– melodic, sharp, delicate, dangerous? She’s not even sure how she’d get a name to sound dangerous in the first place. Toss in the kanji for ‘knife’?

She leans back against the couch’s armrest as she continues skimming over the surface of the text. Akechi’s gone through two books already, unimpressed with the first one’s typeset and less impressed with the second one’s incessant parenting tips. She takes a long swig from her mug and makes both a face at the sweetness and a mental reminder to ask Ann for less chocolate next time.

Ann, who has been remarkably patient with how thoroughly Akechi’s been shooting down her suggestions, hums a tune to herself. She pauses for a moment, though, abruptly enough that she leaves a heavy silence in her wake. The sound of her turning a page is unimaginably loud. “Oh,” she says, holding the book out to Akechi. “What about this one?”

It takes a moment for Akechi to pick out exactly what name she’s pointing at. When she does process it, though, her heart sinks– and then rises, in an odd, contradictory way. “Funny that you chose that one,” she says, a bit of frost etching through her voice. “That was my mother’s name.”

“Oh,” Ann says, taking the book back, as if she’s ashamed of herself. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to–”

“No, it’s a good choice.” Akechi means it, and she sounds out syllables one after the other. One-two-three. One-two, one-two. “It’s… interesting. Show me the other kanji for it again?”

Ann sheepishly passes her book over, and Akechi weighs each potential spelling with care as if she’s testing their souls for Underworld passage. She mentally cuts one kanji out and puts it next to another, superimposing their meanings in her head.

“It’s good,” she says, heart singing. “It’s very good.”

“You think so?” Ann raises her eyebrows, redraping herself over the armchair.

“I do,” Akechi says, lying back and closing her eyes. Mother , she says to the backs of her eyelids. Mother, this is for you.

—

Akechi Miyuki died on September 19th, 2010.

Akechi Miyu lives on February 2nd, 2018.

—

Miyu has had very little conviction to use her new journal until now. She clicks a fresh pen and tries writing out the new kanji of her name, and although the emotion welling in her fingertips feels like it isn’t supposed to fit here, she nonetheless feels the satisfaction of a job well done. Like she’s artisanally crafted her name. Which is somewhat true; she selected the kanji with a mind to meaning, knowing full well it’s an odd spelling.

‘ Binding truth ’. The truth is here, in her heart and bones and marrow, and it sings to her.

She writes it a few times in neat little lines, and then turns the page and begins writing something else entirely. It starts out as a tentative shopping list, quickly scribbled out when she remembers Ann already volunteered to do the shopping this week. Miyu mentally prepares herself for a week of chowing through the various little cakes Ann has a habit of picking up. The list, then, becomes something completely different: an actual journal entry.

Today is February 3rd , she writes. Last year, today was the day of awakening.

She stops. In all technicality, it wasn’t– whatever time fuckery Maruki and the rest of the gods felt like doing must have rolled that day back. But if she tries hard enough, she can remember the quiet, insurmountable force of Akira’s voice and the grain of Leblanc’s wood paneling, because she couldn’t force herself to look into Akira’s eyes.

Akira , she writes, and her pen nearly blots a dot onto the page because she can’t make herself write anything else. Akira’s name sits there alone, waiting for her on the page. The blankness listens for an answer.

Miyu abruptly realizes she feels fucking stupid. Here she is, writing in her diary like a silly teenage girl– and a freshly minted girl at that. She had never had the time to keep a journal or diary, and now the blank pages covered in her own scrawl feel unduly intimidating. She’s taken notes out the ass for high school, certainly, but translating her feelings to text is almost as daunting as saying them out loud, to say nothing of identifying them in the first place.

She starts simple. I am a woman, she writes, and Akira does not know this because he thinks I’m dead.

Miyu writes ‘dead’ before she can correct herself. Or missing , she appends, because he’s a sentimental fool who loves to believe in ghosts. The image of Akira enters her head unbidden, and again Miyu feels like she should be lying on her stomach and kicking her feet like she’s writing about a teenager crush and not– and not–

Akira is my rival , she chisels down, trying to codify the label into law. He and I are locked in a battle of ideals and wits, that will only be resolved when –

Here she stops completely, closing the journal and her eyes as she rests upon the bed. All the endings she’d tried to form in the past were bloody and vaguely homoerotic, and now she can’t seem to picture any painting of the future that makes sense. Her and Akira, crammed into the Leblanc loft. Her and Akira, bleeding out in a reborn Metaverse, possibly at each other’s hands. Her and Akira, in an inexplicably American two-story home with two dogs and three cats.

Miyu’s heart goes cold when she tries to think of what her ‘perfect’ ending would be. The last time anyone had tried to give her perfection, she had watched Akira punch his therapist into submission. Still, she asks: what is my perfection?

Without an answer, Miyu rolls over onto her side and sleeps, buoyed against the silence of the snow outside.

—

February is, as always, short and grim and cold as all hell. Miyu nearly joins Ann for a grocery run but decides against it the moment she steps outside and immediately feels like she’s in a Jack London story. She turns tail and retreats to the couch, dozing off under the press of patterned blankets.

When she wakes and notices the new winter jacket sitting on her bed, coat freshly fluffed, Miyu cannot help but feel warm even without putting it on.

—

MARCH 2018 –

Miyu really did assume that she would be dead by this time last year.

Her assumption is made all the more apparent by the feeling of aimlessness sitting in her head that hatched last March and has only grown in size since. She used to be worried it’d eat up important parts of her brain, but now it feels more idle, like it really is just sitting there. Fitting, she supposes.

She thinks, though, in the early mornings she spends sitting at the counter after Ann leaves. She thinks through futures and dreams and all kinds of images bursting through her head.

There’s a pivotal, central image there, slowly sharpening, and although she cannot see it she knows what it contains. Who it contains. She keeps herself warm as if to preserve her vision– as if it will melt away from moment to moment.

—

Miyu has prepared herself for this day for weeks now. She takes the time to compose herself as best she can before she enters the living room. Ann is scrolling idly on her phone upon the armchair: good. Better to interrupt her like this.

“Ann,” Miyu says, and that’s enough to draw her attention away from the cat video on her feed. 

“What’s up?” Ann twists around to face her, now sprawled on her stomach over the armchair. Her legs kick with curiosity.

“I would like,” she begins, and already she notices Ann’s attention go laser-focused on her. Has she picked up telepathy recently? “To go,” she continues, unable to barrel immediately into the end of all things. She has to end it, though, and she lets her conviction carry her through this fiery gauntlet. “ Clothes shopping with you. ”

For a moment, Ann doesn’t say anything at all, eyes wide. In the next moment, Ann defies the laws of physics and goes instantly from lounging to bouncing with more excitement than Miyu has ever seen, squealing at frequencies liable to break glass.

“Oh my gosh! Ohmygosh ! I was thinking about it, but I wanted to wait until you wanted to– oh my gosh, I know just what to do!” Ann bounds off to her room in a supernatural flurry of motion. Miyu, for her part, sighs with relief; she had been expecting a response that would have torn the living room apart with the sheer force of Ann’s excitement.

Thankfully, the living room is intact, so when Ann drops a stack of magazines onto the coffee table, flanked by a notepad, pen, paper map of downtown Tokyo, and phone, the geometry of the room holds steady.

“What on earth have you gathered all that up for?” Miyu asks, arms folded.

Ann grins, sharklike. “ Research, ” she says, and suddenly Miyu knows exactly how the beleaguered horror-movie assistant must feel when her latest mad scientist internship boss has told her what her latest project will be. Awe, tempered with uncertain horror.

That, too, was also about what Miyu expected. She watches Ann launch into her realm of perfect expertise as she goes to make a cup of coffee. In the time it takes her to make it, take it back to her room, finish it over a middling fantasy novel, spend another quarter of an hour mentally critiquing the plot, and return to the living room, Ann has filled multiple pages of notes and shows no signs of stopping.

Miyu almost feels reluctant to interrupt her; it’s like watching the aforementioned mad scientist over a stereotypical set of brightly-colored beakers. “If this will take more than a week, I’m not going.”

“No, no, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of trips spread out over a few sessions. If we’re efficient.” Ann tucks her pen back behind her ear as she sorts through stacks of coupons and magazine trimmings. Miyu feels like she’s in the presence of a young wizard poring over myriad tomes, or an intrepid superheroine typing on their fancy high-tech big-screen, like the one featured briefly in Phoenix Ranger Featherman R season 5 episode 12–

“Do you have any preferences?” Ann suddenly interjects into Miyu’s inner monologue. “Styles, articles… anything, really!”

Miyu considers this for a long moment. Picturing anything on her body is difficult right now, although picturing her body itself feels like less of a drag than it used to be (except, of course, when it feels worse). She focuses, then, on ruling-out.

“Neutral tones,” she says, a little tentatively. “Something… not too formal, not too casual. Bright colors strain my eyes. And trendy things are tiring to keep up with, no offense, so something– something timeless would be perfect.”

“None taken.” Ann nods, briefly scratching notes down onto a notepad. “But that’s also, like, nothing. Give me something to work with, like… are you looking for skirts, dresses, jackets? And what length of skirt, too? Even something as simple as that can tell you a lot about the person wearing it!”

Miyu nearly rolls her eyes. “Well, aren’t you supposed to be the expert? Why don’t you make a judgment– diagnose me, if you will.” She sweeps her arms out, bowing just a little bit in a gesture full of flair.

“I am the expert, but that’s not the point.” Ann folds her arms, leaning back. “If we go into this without any idea of your preferences and I just throw random stuff at you to try on, you’re gonna get frustrated really fast and it won’t be any fun for anyone. If you really want me to make a judgment, then I can, but you have to accept that I could be wrong.”

What Miyu does not say is that she genuinely has no idea what her new wardrobe will look like. She course-corrects as best she can. “Alright, then. What’s your first impression?”

Ann leans back even further, sinking into the couch as she taps the end of her pen on her bottom lip. She thinks for moments upon moments, deep in thought: a modern philosopher at work. 

“Well,” she begins, just as Miyu’s legs are about to get stiff from standing still on the hardwood for so long. “You’re uppity about your looks, but not that fastidious. When you have the energy for it, you’re really careful and orderly about how you dress, but we also want to make it easier for you to feel your best when you don’t have that energy. If you don’t mind me taking some cues from both your current and previous styles–”

“–‘current style’ is a bit of a stretch, considering I do lounge around your apartment in cheap t-shirts and pajama pants all day.”

Ann brushes past the interruption. “You value consistent clothes: something that you can just slip on and go about your day in that doesn’t constrict your movement or have any weird textures, but that still looks sharp and impressive. That’s not a bad look to chase, really. That might look like sweaters, simple cotton button-downs, long skirts…”

Ann suddenly rises from the couch, gesturing pointedly with her pen. “The other thing to consider is your body type, right? You’re really tall, so I’d honestly advocate leaning into that. Short skirts are gonna be a… problem for you, considering the average height here, so I’d go for something longer.” She circles Miyu like a sculptor examining a block of marble. “It’ll be tough to find a mid-length skirt that doesn’t look awkward on you proportionally, though– it’s tough enough for me, and I’m only 168cm. You could treat a midi skirt like it’s high-waisted, though, and pair that with a nice blouse… yeah, yeah, I’m seeing something!”

Ann takes a step back, and Miyu almost laughs when she sees her do the classic Kitagawa finger-frame. “Wear a skirt high to accentuate your waist, throw on a pair of leggings, accessorize with a nice ribbon tie… oh!” She claps her hands excitedly. “I almost forgot: your hair!”

Miyu sighs. She’d forgotten, too, and somehow she’s even less certain about what to do with that than the rest of her– not to mention she hasn’t been taking very good care of it, so it still looks a bit more raggedy than she’d like. “One step at a time, please?”

“Sorry, sorry.” Ann bites the end of her thumb, presumably in an attempt to quell her nervousness. “It’s just… interesting, is all. To plan out someone’s style when they’re delving into completely new territory…”

Perhaps it’s just her phrasing, but some of her excitement is finally reflecting back onto Miyu. She deflects, a little reflexively, as best she can. “Don’t you do that fairly often? I mean, I’d imagine you get to consult with other models who’ve been contracted to wear new fashions or delve into new subcultures all the time.”

“Oh, sure, but I mean…” She grins, warm and– and there’s a flicker of understanding there, too, in the flash of her teeth. “But how often do I get to work with someone who’s rediscovering themselves so… so completely? It’s really special.”

Miyu catches the implication hidden in the middle of Ann’s words like it’s the caramel at the center of a truffle. Also like caramel, it’s a bit too sweet for her and it makes her heart stutter. She changes the subject as nimbly as she can manage. “It probably won’t feel quite so special when we’re neck-deep in clothing racks. I can be… what was it Akira called me that one time, in Mementos? Persnickety. ” She can’t help but chuckle at the memory, and at her own indignation she’d felt coursing through her Loki-aggravated veins.

That reminds her: how is Loki doing , she wonders. Both of her Personae (she refuses to use the other pluralization that Akira tossed around) haven’t spoken to her since last year. At first, she had attributed it to the wholesale collapse of the Metaverse that she’d heard about post-hoc, but now that explanation doesn’t feel quite right.

Perhaps the sensation that catches her the most off guard is that she feels fine without them. As she had been tossed through the foster system, those two had been her only companions for so many long evenings– practically imaginary friends, if they hadn’t been so very real . It had always been a comfort to know they rested in the back of her head. Even so, she hasn’t thought of them in… weeks, months? Under the vast pall that filled the apartment some months ago it’d been hard to tell if the Metaverse was truly dead or if they were just silent as a reflection of her own mind, but now it feels like all her senses have been sharpened anew and she still can’t hear them.

It has been a long time since Miyu was comfortable with silence.

Ann breaks through Miyu’s trance by waving her off, her smile persisting. “It’ll be fine! It’d be harder to work with you if you had no standards, anyway. And I actually know a good bit about altering clothes, so if you find something that just barely fits I can fix it up for you lickety-split.”

Miyu tilts her head curiously. “You do, do you?”

“Yep! I have a sewing machine stashed away in my room. Here’s a secret: basically nothing fits anyone straight off the rack.” Ann crosses back to her pile of notes, gesturing as she goes. “Anyone who’s anyone usually gets their clothes altered, and they’re always altered for us for photoshoots. And besides…”

She smiles, but there’s an odd sadness hidden behind her eyes, resting somewhere just behind her optic nerve. “It was actually Akira who taught me the basics about mending clothes. Back when he first got here, he barely had any cash and he was always getting into trouble and Boss didn’t have the brain-space to care about him yet and– you get the gist. He taught me a few tips after we first got back from Mementos, and the whole idea kind of… stuck with me. Before that I hadn’t thought that much about… about preserving the clothes I wore, y’know? I knew so much about the ins and outs of fashion, and yet I didn’t know the first thing about actually taking care of it.”

Ann trails off, looking absentmindedly down at her notes. Miyu catches yet another implication she’s hidden in the space between her words: and I wish my parents taught me more. She cradles this finding close, allowing herself– only briefly– to share Ann’s wish.

The moment passes, as all moments do. “Sorry,” Ann says, “I kinda rambled there. Point is, I’ll help make things work for you. You have only to say the word.”

Miyu smirks. “Living in your apartment rent-free, eating off your dime, and now forcing you to slave over a sewing machine for me… my goodness, when will my reign of terror end?”

Ann giggles, slumping herself melodramatically over the couch. “When my noble princess comes to save me, of course!”

Miyu actually finds herself laughing, even if her inner detective is going wild with the confirmation. I knew she and the Suzui girl had something going on , it wails, and Miyu shuts it up by swiping up Ann’s phone from the table, another idea brewing uneasily in her head. “Mind if I borrow this? I want to head around the corner and pick up some drinks, and I’d like to check if that café is still open first.”

“Really? I mean, yeah, sure!” Ann walks her surprise back immediately as she holds out her thumb to unlock it. “Get me an iced latte with… ooh, lavender syrup if they’ve got it!”

Miyu rolls her eyes only a quarter-turn, trying not to let her secondhand anxiety get the best of her seeing Ann’s hundreds of unread emails and other assorted notifications as she checks the café’s hours. “Got it.” She hands Ann her phone back as she strides back to her room, ready to get dressed.

Perhaps Ann is rubbing off on her yet again, but she finds herself paying much greater attention to her outfit than usual: black slacks, black turtleneck, black coat. If she’s going to brave the concrete wilderness, she’s at least going to look sharp while she dies of an eye-contact-induced heart attack.

Braids , she thinks, as she sidles out the door. Long braids dyed black– that’s what I’ll do .

—

Miyu still mopes about the apartment in a depressive, passive pall sometimes, because she’s still the same detective-esque husk she used to be. 

She does keep her phone on from time to time, now, if only because the apartment doesn’t have a landline and Ann’s relays of information give Miyu touchpoints for her day. So when her phone buzzes a few times in a row as she’s working through a novel in the living room, she can’t help but take a look.

< Ann Takamaki

heyyyy hey hey hey

pick up!!!!!!! pick up pleeease

Miyu raises an eyebrow. Ann is rarely this urgent, even when she’s two places away from the front of a crepe shop’s line and trying to get an answer about what Miyu wants. She types out a quick reply.

< You

What is it?

< Ann Takamaki

uhhhh ok we have a problem

i mean i don’t think it’s that big of a problem

but i don’t know what to do!!

< You

Spit it out already. Is something on fire?

< Ann Takamaki

no! it’s just uh!

see me and akira were hanging out today cause haru bought him a train ticket to come see us and he has a free weekend

It occurs to Miyu that it is, in fact, Saturday. She’s barely kept track of the days of the week at all since she moved in– Ann’s work schedule is variable enough that Miyu can’t track the days by it, and so little of her day-to-day life changes from week to week that she can float along, timeless, in the endless expanse of the apartment.

She blinks. Ann’s sent a few more texts in swift succession.

and so we were hanging out and hitting this new place– i’ll get you something from there next time, btw

and he asked if he could come over cause he left something over here one time? like a book or something??

and i just said yeah before i remembered you don’t wanna see him yet??

Miyu’s bones turn to gelatin.

< You

Will he take no for an answer?

< Ann Takamaki

probably not?? i’m hiding in the bathroom at the station now btw

so i don’t have long to wait…..

Miyu pinches the bridge of her nose and groans, trying to invoke whatever horrible gods are still alive. She goes over her options: if Ann lies, she’s going to screw it up, because despite her new acting classes she is still a horrendous liar. If Akira actually goes to their apartment and sees Miyu, she’s going to throw herself out of a window.

There is one fallback, though, that flits through Miyu’s mind like a diving bird of prey. Miyu returns to her phone.

< You

Here’s what you’re going to do.

You’re going to tell him that you have one request: your roommate works nights, so she’s resting in her room and is not to be disturbed.

Phrase it exactly like that.

< Ann Takamaki

ok ok i gotcha

phew ok i was worried you were going to be mad

cause like i can’t just brush him off like you can

Miyu texts her absolutely nothing and tosses her phone onto the couch. She stands, catching her breath for approximately five seconds before the realization fully hits her. Holy shit. Her limbic system kicks her ass into high gear as she scans the room, looking for anything that could tell Akira who really lives here. She snatches her phone back up, tearing through the living room in hopes of finding all the fragments of her identity she’s left scattered about. Her books, her rarely-used wallet, her half-folded laundry on the couch– everything gets shoved into her room like she’s a teenager trying to clean up before company comes.

She feels a little bit like a teenager, anyway, with how wild her emotions have been lately. Part of her almost wants to start crying and she has absolutely no idea why. Miyu redirects that indistinct, shaky emotion into making an extremely swift cup of tea and retreating to her room for good. She locks the door and steps over the pile of laundry she just tossed inside, setting her tea down upon her nightstand and sprawling out on the bed.

Miyu has almost resolved to try and actually sleep through the whole ordeal when she hears the assorted sounds of the front door opening and shoes being discarded. Damn thin walls . She takes a sip of her tea to try and calm her nerves and burns the hell out of her tongue, which puts her in an even worse mood. Once she’s done wiping the last of the burning tea off of her shirt where she’d spilled it, she manages to catch a few stray words from Ann.

“–so sorry for the mess,” she says, and Miyu is downright livid with indignation because she just cleaned the place, dammit. Ann says something else too indistinct to make out (the ol’ detective instincts kick in to tell Miyu she’s probably in the kitchen) until her speech suddenly sharpens around the words “roommate” and “night shift”.

Miyu sighs as quietly as she can manage. If Ann truly internalized the message, it’s now or never. Akira’s (infuriatingly quiet, smooth) voice doesn’t manage to go the distance, though, so Miyu can only assume he’s not immediately bringing out his one-man-band ensemble.

Part of Miyu is perfectly content with lying upon the bed and pretending to be a deadened night-shift worker. Another part of her (the detective, the nosy busybody, Akira’s rival) is bursting at the seams to listen.

Unfortunately for her, the latter part has claws, and it digs them directly into her guts before she gets up and quietly crawls across the room, listening at the door. She almost immediately catches Ann’s excited squeal pointing out a new piece of living room decor: “my mom sent me this statuette for my birthday from Portugal, isn’t it sweet?”

Ann’s excited pseudo-tour of the home continues until a phone ringtone goes off. It’s Akira’s– Miyu knows Ann’s ringtone like the back of her hand at this point, considering how many times she’s heard it go off across the apartment. 

“Hey, Boss,” Akira says, clear as a bell, and the sound of his voice rends Miyu’s heart to its sinewy, bloody core. Something– a volatile mixture of recognition and nostalgia and bitterness and warmth– wells up from within her, threatening to burst out of all the little cracks in her bones. Akira keeps talking, and it’s stupid, domestic stuff: he’s getting groceries for Leblanc, because he’s still Sojiro’s errand boy even on what is ostensibly his weekend vacation, and it sickens Miyu.

He hangs up with a curt “see you”. Miyu isn’t sure what she expected next, but it isn’t Ann’s little “oh!” and a shuffle of noise.

“Did this fall out of your pocket?” She says. Miyu feels the woodgrain of the door against her cheek. “Do you have the other one in there?”

“ Oh ,” Akira says, and the tone of it makes Miyu’s heart drop. Akira is practiced more than anything else, the pure embodiment of cool-smooth-suave-slick, and hearing him so thoroughly surprised strikes ice down her spine. “It’s– it’s kind of a long story,” he murmurs. If Miyu wasn’t listening so carefully to pick up all the fragments of his voice and put them back together into something resembling Akira, she might not have heard him at all.

“Akechi and I, we had this– thing.” Akira pauses. Miyu is simultaneously frustrated beyond belief and utterly vindicated that Akira does not have a name for us, either . “Way before Sae’s Palace, we dueled together. It was nice,” he says, and he almost sounds fond. Miyu can imagine him fidgeting with his hair in the way that he does from time to time. 

“We didn’t really… I mean, I think I won, but we weren’t fighting to the death or to get a knockout or anything. I was barely sure of what we were doing until we started.” Liar. Miyu’s bones burn. He knew what he was doing the whole time– why else would he look so self-assured all the time?

Still Akira charges on. “Long story short, he challenged me afterwards, like… like in an old Western movie. Tossed his glove at me and everything.” 

Miyu goes abruptly, completely still. It isn’t even the shock of hearing Akira misgender her that paralyzes her– and honestly, that development is so new it still feels delightfully unfamiliar when Ann offhandedly refers to her as a girl. She knew it was coming from the moment she heard her own name. In this moment her anxiety has only one source: Ann, wonderful, bright spirit that she is, who is probably sweating in her boots and looking suspicious as all hell right now trying not to correct him.

Miyu chews on her nails like she’s an anxious preteen again. There’s a few silent moments where it sounds like Akira might be deep in contemplation. If Ann says something, it isn’t audible, and Akira continues on to Miyu’s undue relief.

“He said it was– like a promise, really.” His voice is feather-soft, whisper-light. If Miyu weren’t currently melting out of her skin and leaving an overactive nervous system behind, she’d feel flattered. “So I’ve kept it. Since then. Keeping my promise safe, so that–”

Akira abruptly goes silent, and again it grates on Miyu’s brain, scraping unkindly against all the memories she has of him. “So that what?” Ann whispers. Her voice is higher-pitched than normal– she’s probably quaking with nerves just like Miyu is.

There’s a shuffle of fabric before Akira speaks. “So that when he returns,” he says, with absolute, complete conviction, “I can fulfill my end of the deal.”

“A– deal?” Ann’s nosiness knows no bounds, apparently.

By Miyu’s guess, Akira almost certainly shrugs here. “It’s not the best way to phrase it. I don’t know… quite what else to call it. But it’s important.” Another pause, another shuffle. “Sorry. I know that sounded kind of stupid, right?”

“N-no, not really.” Ann’s voice quavers. Miyu’s legs are beginning to get sore, scrunched up as she is on the carpet. She does her best to adjust silently.

“I’m tempted to ask your thoughts about something,” Akira says, “but it’s kind of a stupid question, like I said.” The silence thickens in the room and begins to seep under the door to Miyu’s bedroom.

Miyu knows exactly what he’s going to ask before he asks it and, if she had possessed any kind of stake in the discussion, would have rehearsed an answer in the span of moments. Akira sighs before he speaks. “Ann… do you think Akechi is still alive?”

Miyu offers no prayers to buoy Ann Takamaki’s response to this question across the sea of lies she’s flooded the apartment with. “Well,” Ann says, voice unusually deliberate and heavy. “I know we… we saw what happened, and we know what happened with Doc and our time in the fake world, but…” 

She pauses, and Miyu almost feels the urge to cross her fingers. “But there’s still so much about the Metaverse we don’t understand. It could have– given Akechi a moment, I guess. I really don’t know.”

Again, Miyu is left drifting through silence. She slumps back a little, hoping that her sigh stops at the door.

“I think so too,” Akira says, suddenly loud against the silence. Akira only ever raises his voice when he’s trying too hard to make a point. “I think there– there has to have been a moment. Some fragment of hope. There has to be.”

Miyu nearly feels herself tear up, suffused with the energy and force of his conviction. Around Ann, she has certainly learned a little bit more about feeling wanted, but to know that Akira simply wanted her to live – that he didn’t even care about all the venom she spat at him– plucks directly at her heartstrings, playing a song that she has not heard since she lived with her mother.

To be wanted , she thinks, to be wanted.

“Oh, uh,” Akira says, apropos of nothing. “Don’t tell the other Thieves about that, right? They’ll probably make fun of me for it.” He laughs quietly, and Miyu has no idea how much actual mirth is contained within it.

“Of course.” Ann’s voice rings a little clearer now– less jittery, less tense. “You know I’m good at keeping secrets.”

…and now Miyu wants to smack her upside the head. Her unsubtlety is charming most of the time, but here it just sets Miyu’s nerves on edge.

Miyu desperately wishes she could read Akira’s body language right now– he always was an open book under her eyes. For now, she has to be content with what she can glean from his voice, which is very little. “Yeah, of course. Sojiro is expecting me back– I should go.”

Their voices start to go quiet as they move out into the hallway. “Sure, sure. Does Boss really have you running errands on your vacation?”

“Yeah, but I don’t mind–”

Akira’s voice dissipates into nothingness, and Miyu allows herself to slump back over the freshly-vacuumed carpet. Her knees protest at her for being crouched for so long and her back isn’t happy with these working conditions either, but she couldn’t give less of a shit. Akira, she thinks. Akira kept the stupid goddamn glove. Bastard.

She grimaces as she recounts the outcome of her duel. It was an impulsive challenge, almost downright stupid– if they hadn’t figured her aims out from the very beginning, Akira almost certainly would have figured it out just from her conviction there. But that makes him all the more foolish for accepting, doesn’t it? His answer worms its way through her head, burrowing and writhing. A promise, unknowingly kept.

Miyu distantly hears the door shut and the pitter-patter of Ann’s socked feet over the hardwood. She pauses at her door before knocking gently, and Miyu calls out a tired little “come in” from her position upon the floor.

When Ann opens the door, she immediately slumps against the doorframe as if her strings have been cut. “Phew. That… could have gone worse, I guess.”

Miyu shrugs as best she can, picking her head up a bit to see Ann better. Her neck immediately dislikes this turn of events. “It could have gone better. I’m surprised he didn’t take it upon himself to investigate.”

Ann rolls her eyes, not unkindly. “You’re– eh, you used to be the detective, not him. He’s smart and all, but he’s not nosy. Besides, I think he’s got enough on his plate to worry about that he doesn’t care about my… ‘roommate’.”

The words slip out before Akechi can stop them. “But he cares about me.”

Ann looks up to the sky. “He does. He really does.” Her hair is down today, and it shifts over her shoulders when she turns to face Miyu. “You know, he’ll probably be overjoyed to see you again. When you feel like you’re ready.”

Miyu just gives Ann a noncommittal “mhm” to play with. She drops her head down, but even from there she can see Ann’s fond smile.

“Anyway, I’m just glad he thought my answer was legit. I spent a while rehearsing it to myself in the bathroom at the station before we headed out.”

Miyu groans. “Please tell me he couldn’t hear you doing that.”

“Nah, he went off to get a soda and met me closer to the platform afterwards. I’m kind of surprised he’s gotten that good at navigating the subway– I mean, he only spent a year with us after a whole life of living in the middle of nowhere.”

Miyu recognizes the out for what it is. “You said it yourself: he’s clever.”

“He is.” She chuckles. “He can also be pretty stupid from time to time. Remind me to tell you the story about him and Ryuji and the ducks at the park.”

Miyu starts the lengthy process of rising from the floor. “Oh, well, if that story involved Ryuji then I suppose we know why he was being so stupid.”

Ann fondly punches her in the shoulder as she gets to her feet. “Nah, it was totally all Akira’s idea. I think he’s dumber than you give him credit for– and the other way around is true, too. Ryuji can be lightning-quick with his brain when he wants to be.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” Miyu lets her admission stand– that she is, on some level, planning to see Ryuji again– as she goes to tidy her bed and wrap a blanket around her shoulders in the process. “Could you go turn the heat up? It’s freezing in here.”

“Alright, I gotcha.” As Ann leaves her be, Miyu sits back down on her bed, suddenly drained of motivation. Her blanket half-slips from her shoulders as she reclines back, poised awkwardly against the window. She’d moved the bed from the center of the room a few months ago, dragging it unceremoniously over the carpet and nearly slipping a disc in the process. The room is cavernously open now; it feels like even her thoughts are echoing here.

I can’t brush him off like you can . Miyu turns those words over in her mind again and again, and again and again they stick to her brain like a burr she’s picked up on a trail somewhere. She wonders whether she really had been quite so hostile to Akira, even in the midst of the conspiracy business– and again she’s faced with the unenviable task of picking her true feelings out of the haystack of false premises she’s built for herself.

She needs to find the needle, of course, but another question comes to mind, birthed from the aether anew. Once she finds that needle, where will the thread come from?

—

Ann’s itinerary is almost as precise as Miyu thought it might be. She’s marked out rough outlines of how much time each store might take, modified by size and likelihood of having something that actually matches Miyu’s tastes, with further allotments for lunches and wiggle-room. “This is terribly impressive,” she says, leafing through the pages of style guides Ann’s stapled together. “I was never given schedules quite this detailed, even with the most exacting PR micromanagers known to humanity.”

“Detail doesn’t count for anything if you don’t have the expertise to see it through.” Ann emerges from her room dressed in a surprisingly neutral ensemble: black jeans, white t-shirt, black cardigan. The only pop of color is from the strawberry clip in her hair.

“I’m surprised you aren’t going with something more… fashionable. Fitting an aspiring fashion designer, I mean.” Miyu eyes her outfit, unsure whether to feel flattered that Ann’s wearing something similar to what she picked out for herself.

Ann ruffles Miyu’s hair. “Silly, you said it yourself—this kind of look is timeless! Besides, I didn’t want to draw too much attention to you, since I figured you’d be nervous out and about.”

Ann’s observation is extremely correct, eminently thoughtful, and somewhat offputting. Miyu switches tracks. “Do you have everything?”

“Yup! Wallet, phone, subway card, map… and you have my wonderful resources!”

Miyu gently tucks her sheaf of notes in her pocket, and with that they set off on their trek, intrepid huntresses that they are. Tokyo hasn’t quite let go of winter yet, so Ann ends up shivery and jittery as Miyu chastises her for not bringing a coat. Miyu makes an attempt to sling her coat over Ann’s shoulders, if only to quiet her whining, but surprisingly enough her shoulders are too broad for it to fit properly, and as she pulls it back on she lets a few thoughts bounce together in her head. None of them come to any fruition in particular.

The first store (Ann has, apparently, specified the order of the stores for some arcane reason) is making a point of offering neutral basics, to be supplemented by accessories and accent pieces from other stores. Miyu wonders whether they’ve got some kind of racket with the other, more colorful stores down the lane. Between the two of them, they pick out a fine pile of skirts for Miyu to shunt into the dressing room.

The door closes, and Miyu regards the long mirror like she’s staring down an old enemy: an orc, perhaps, or a scarred dragon intent on burning her to ashes. Even so, every possibility she imagines is just boring ; all these anxieties have been rattling in her head for much too long, and now she just feels… immature, going over trodden ground again and again.

She allows herself a moment of petulance and sticks her tongue out at the mirror before she goes to try things on. The first two skirts outright don’t fit, and the third one’s waistband is too loose to sit upon her waist properly, but the fourth slots itself around her waist in a way that actually invites looking and thinking about it for more than five seconds.

Miyu considers, mostly with her head and sort of with her heart, the swish of the brown material about her legs. It’s a maxi-length posing as a midi-length, just like Ann had recommended, and Miyu’s confidence in her enjoys a surge as she realizes well, shit, she was right .

Beyond that, though, Miyu wasn’t sure what she expected: a revelation? Religious ecstasy? Frustration at the concept of modern fashion in general? Despite all those expectations, what she gets is something that keeps slipping away from her the more she tries to think about it. It feels right, certainly, but something else is ringing in the back of her head…

There’s one more skirt to try on, and she reluctantly takes the nice one off to recoil at the texture of the last candidate. She almost feels the urge to wipe her hands off on something else to get rid of the– the resonance of it, the way the sensation sticks to her skin. Miyu settles for donning her slacks again and exiting the dressing room, immediately half-tossing the offending skirt at Ann, who is waiting patiently outside.

“Didn’t like this one?” She gathers it up and places it onto the refolding rack, shoulder-to-shoulder with Miyu as she also replaces the rest of the unsatisfactory skirts.

“If you get me something with a texture like that again, I’m renouncing gender and fashion as a whole. This one was nice, though.”

As Ann giggles, the thought from earlier clicks , near-audibly, in Miyu’s head. “Can we put together an outfit with something… sheer, perhaps? And another one with a loose white dress.”

“Ooh, definitely! Sheer shawls are all the rage nowadays.” Ann sways from heel to heel in a strange little motion. “And I’m guessing you’d want a dress with a nice, flowy texture?”

“Precisely.” Miyu imagines herself draped in silks, wand in hand, and then wonders where the hell did that image come from? She mentally bookmarks it for later study, trying to fix herself to the skirt in her arms and the faint joy contained within it.

“The third store on the list will probably have something like that, and that’ll be the last one we hit for today– after lunch, of course! My treat,” she says, as if Miyu even has the ability to pay for herself. (Her accounts have plenty of cash squirreled away from her various dealings, of course, but actually spending it– and potentially giving off identity-related cues– has proven to be paranoia-inducing.)

The second store on the agenda is packed full of accessories and baubles, and Miyu picks up a few professional-looking hairpins and ribbon ties before they stop for lunch at a street food joint a street over. Ann trades a bit of croquette for one of Miyu’s takoyaki. 

As Miyu leans back upon the bench, watching the clouds, she can’t help but muse on how the city still feels so very alive – but leagues more benign than it used to be. It used to feel more like some eldritch beast, watching her with thousands of eyes and looking for her with thousands of tendrils, but now? Now it just feels like a stray cat rubbing at her legs. The more she thinks about it, the more Tokyo feels like it’s less of an incomprehensible beast and more of a tripping hazard.

Miyu has lived in Tokyo for all of her life, but only now has she begun to understand it. She’s lived in her body for all of her life, too, but only now has she begun to shape it. Freshly-glazed clay, images shifting in black…

Ann rises, dispelling images of shattered pottery and cat fur on her slacks from Miyu’s head. “Come on! I wanna hit the last store before the rush hits.”

Miyu takes her hand and gets to her feet, belly full of light.

—

There are only two full outfits and a handful of accessories in Miyu’s possession by the time they get home, but Miyu still finds herself perfectly content, if exhausted. She sets her shopping bags by her dresser and changes into her pajamas. Even though they’re exactly the same as they used to be, they still feels different today, as if she’s finally fixed a frame that had been subtly crooked before. The image in the mirror has changed, even if nothing has happened to it. Black glass ground anew by the glazier.

—

“Ok, I’m off to w– oh!”

Miyu watches Ann practically screech to a stop as she emerges from her room, clad in the outfit the two of them had so meticulously put together. Her wine-red blouse has tucked itself nicely into her black skirt, and Miyu had managed to put her leggings on with minimal fuss. Black hairpins gently hold Miyu’s hair back on one side, still letting her bangs fall into her face (Ann’s recommendation).

Ann gasps and grins, tapping out an excited little dance. “That works perfectly! I figured it would, but you never let me see until now and– oh, that’s awesome!”

Miyu breathes, then smiles politely, resting her hands in her pockets. When Ann has finished with her congratulations and left for work, Miyu lets herself pace across the apartment– but she isn’t so much pacing as she is gliding on socked tiptoes, doing strange, spiraling motions in paths that go nowhere. Her loose hair skims over her shoulder blades.

When her path leads her to her room, she takes up the singular leather glove from its precious space within her topmost drawer, grinning brilliantly as she slips it onto her hand. The leather shines in the new daylight.

And for the first time, it fits perfectly.

Chapter Text

APRIL 2018 –

There is, in fact, more than one trans-friendly back-alley doctor in Tokyo who’s willing to accept total confidentiality and payment in cash.

Miyu certainly recalls Akira’s stories of whatever endearingly goth doctor he’d scraped up off the streets, but only in passing, and anyway she’d much prefer not to get her hormones from Akira’s father’s doorstep– if he even calls Sojiro his father. Which, according to recent news from Ann, he does, and that realization is absolutely not like a hammer dropped on Miyu’s head for no discernible reason. She tries not to think about it and fails early and often.

This doctor is pointedly not goth. He’s startlingly professional, considering his surroundings– “back-alley” sure is right, considering the door to his practice has less than a meter of clearance in front of it– and Miyu finds herself impressed by both his demeanor and his wholehearted commitment to privacy.

So when she shoulders her way out into the alley with a bottle of pills in her skirt pocket, Miyu still has shocked delight trilling through her head like a songbird. She pulls out her phone and texts Ann a quick “ Appointment done, need anything? ” before making her way out into the city, mask slipped over her face. It feels less like armor, nowadays, with her hair spilling well over her shoulders and her eyes less shadowed. Every day she feels a little bit less like the detective prince, and although she knows that burnt-plastic memory won’t ever completely go away, it’s almost comforting comparing her daily life now to the sludge pit that once was.

She strides through the city; she is blood in its veins. Somehow all its little details stick out even more now, endearing in its grime and advertising. She passes a child holding onto a backpack with one broken strap and an old woman walking an aged dog and a man who trips and drops his cellphone. These people would have once been shadows, but under the patchy, cloudy sunshine they are now stories. They always have been– now she just has the presence of mind to see them that way.

This must be how Akira sees this city , she imagines. He had always moved through it with this curious grace, quick-footed and big-hearted, and she had wondered for all those months– how does he do it? She had always felt vaguely like he was holding out his already-bitten hand to a dog with foaming jaws. Any teenager would be that stupid if they had just been given demon-god-mind-magic at the height of second-puberty, sure, but there was always something else there, just out of focus. A kind of love, maybe. A second sight.

Through his clear, blank glasses– not tinted, not even prescription– he saw the wonder. Or maybe I’m just finally losing it, Miyu thinks to herself, a little sardonically. Even so, her heart is still hammering with an odd mishmash of joys by the time she gets to the platform.

Her phone buzzes. She checks the reply: “a pony,” Ann says, “and an ice cream soda! jk jk that’d melt before you got here, i’m all good :)”

“Shetland or Welsh?” Miyu replies, hopping onto the subway and mentally resolving to pick up a tub of vanilla ice cream and a bottle of soda. She’s in the mood for something saccharine– a rarity, with her, but today is a whole day of rarities. A jewel-box of kept promises.

The leather of her glove squeaks as she clenches her fist.

—

Miyu wonders, after the third rerun of Shiho’s seasonal best, whether there’s a surgical technique to remove all traces of detective instincts from her head.

Ann is a neon goddamn sign, lit up in pink and rouge and fresh-blood red. Miyu’s resorted to leaving her clean laundry unfolded specifically to fold it during their game-watching time because the atmosphere is stifling without it. One time Miyu caught Ann biting her lip watching Shiho land a spike; Miyu considers it an act of mercy that she’s never mentioned this.

Still: there’s something else there. It’s like there’s another layer to this mass of sugar-sweet pining that Miyu can’t see, like she’s stuck with three spatial dimensions and Ann seems to be playing with at least five. The fact that Miyu cannot bring a single real-world positive example of a romantic relationship to her mind can’t be helping either.

What she does about this is absolutely nothing. She knows– oh, she knows, Ann’s reminded her so many times she can’t possibly forget– that they’re due for another sleepover at the end of the month, and it’s likely going to be either far more or far less communal than the last one, whatever that was. Miyu treats this time like a necessary evil– a prelude to whatever Ann feels like doing with Shiho, which is none of Miyu’s business.

It still isn’t Miyu’s business when she finally snaps and asks “am I going to have to clean lipstick stains off the television later?”

Ann almost startles. A commercial break has just started, but she’s trimmed most of them out of this DVR recording so they only get to see a few seconds of an ad for a new cookie flavor before it switches back to the game at hand. “No!” She says, and her slightly indignant reply is a few seconds too late to carry any impact. “I’m just… y’know. Being supportive, is all.”

“Right, right. And does that happen to be related to how we’ve seen this particular game no less than three times?”

Ann folds her arms, blushing furiously. “It’s a good one!”

“You know exactly how it ends.” Miyu gives her a dubious look from over top of the faded t-shirt in her hands. “You could practically rattle off every play she makes.”

“And you could probably recite the Featherman R movie word-for-word!”

Miyu raises her eyebrows in concession. She knows it’s a distraction tactic and decides to let it work on her, because this whole situation is, as she knows, none of her business. When she returns to the shirt, she finds a small hole in the t-shirt’s back and only picks at it for a moment before folding it.

—

Miyu emerges, bleary from a night of scattered sleep- one-more-chapter -sleep right into Ann chatting upon the couch. She gives Miyu a little wave before going back to the phone call at hand. “My roommate says hi,” she says, despite the fact that Miyu is still too groggy to say anything at all.

Miyu would start making her way to the kitchen if it weren’t for her implacable curiosity (read: nosiness), so she stands in the threshold trying to get a few bits and pieces of humanity back before facing breakfast.

“She’s cool,” Ann says, “you’ll have to meet her someday.” Her expression is pinched and unreadable, and it makes Miyu wake up by sheer virtue of out-of-placeness. “Where’s your next job?”

Miyu thinks she’s gathered enough pieces of this puzzle for the time being. She finally plods into the kitchen and puts something together (eggs, coffee, sugar-and-milk), listening vaguely to Ann’s chatting all the while. By the time she turns the stovetop off, Ann has hung up and hung herself over the end of the couch, stretching upside-downedly.

“Sorry about that,” Ann says, tilting her head to regard Miyu just a bit more upright. “I was just talking with my parents.”

Miyu barely remembered she had parents. The feeling that overtakes her is grim and bold: anger-by-proxy. “I see. My apologies for not actually saying hi.”

“It’s ok.” Ann turns herself upright and slumps back over the armrest, untangling her hair with her fingers. “I don’t get to talk with them much. ‘Cause of the timezones and all,” she says, as if she has to justify herself or them or both. “So I haven’t told them anything about you. I mean, I mentioned that I had a roommate a few months ago, but literally nothing identifiable about you.”

Miyu nods. “Thank you for that.” Something occurs to her that, eleven months ago, she would not have considered. “I’m sorry I didn’t make anything for you– I didn’t want to interrupt.”

Ann smiles, and all at once it feels like warmth has returned to her. “It’s fine,” she says, as if Miyu has granted her some fine gift. “But thank you for offering.”

Miyu turns away to her breakfast as she turns the encounter over and over in her head. Anything withheld for long enough is a fine gift indeed.

—

Ann’s work schedule has not managed to get any more predictable in all this time. Some days Miyu wakes up to music and light and the sound of the washing machine; some days she wakes to text messages and sticky notes in the kitchen. Today is a day of sticky notes, though in reality there’s just one: off to work, see you! upon the bar counter, with a scribbly little cat face drawn in beside the message at large.

Miyu resolves, all at once, to do something goddamn productive. She surveys the fridge, the freezer, and the cabinets, and cobbles together a little list to shove into her coat pocket. It’s actually appropriate for the weather this time– windswept as the city has been, it’s stayed fairly cool through spring. She throws on an appropriate skirt, heavy enough to protect her legs even without the kneesocks she’s tugged on.

She rifles through the bathroom cabinets, too, trying to figure out if she needs to tack an appendix onto her grocery list for deodorant and hair products. When she closes the cabinet door and looks at herself in the mirror she pointedly does not pause, because she doesn’t really need to go full visual-calculus on herself and her outfit today: she can just let it be. Some days Miyu isn’t sure whether her ego is made of steel or tissue paper, and she might as well encourage it to stay somewhere in the middle.

The outside world has whirled on without her as usual. In past years, the spring colors had usually helped her drag herself out of a winter-induced coma, but this time she doesn’t necessarily feel more energetic so much as she feels more solid, more real. She has a presence, now; it’s been carefully manufactured just like the last few masks, but this time its primary origin is joy, discovery. The weight of all the world’s expectations for her is still there— now she’s just dealing with a different set. It still feels lighter overall, though, and rounding the corner to the grocery store she’s suddenly struck with the weight and power of her ability to decide .

I chose this , she reminds herself. My attire, my gestures, my words, my body—they’re mine to control!

The rush of total, utter freedom hits her as the automatic door slides open. Miyu feels like crying; she feels like bursting out in laughter. She cuts herself a deal and grins, full-toothed, under her facemask, and she’s sure it must be showing through her eyes but she doesn’t care. As she goes to examine the produce section she asks herself two questions in quick succession: why is it all hitting me now , and catching up right alongside the last one, is this what I wanted?

With a mildly wilted cabbage in her hand, she settles upon one answer that is surprisingly adequate for both questions. What does it matter? I’m happy now.

It takes a full minute and a change of scenery to the dry goods section for Miyu to suddenly feel like she’s been hit by a truck. For the first time in a very, very long time—without having to twist herself into a mold of someone else’s desires, and without having to fight against a tide of boiling resentment—she feels happy.

Miyu stands; she breathes. She isn’t quite blocking the aisle, but it’s a near thing, and she semi-consciously steps closer to the shelf just in case someone comes by.

In lieu of going to go cry in the grocery store bathroom Miyu swallows heavily and goes to look for cookies. She’s taken to snacking lately—it’s one part Ann’s influence and one part the fact that she’s quietly given herself permission to eat whatever the hell she wants in recent months. The prevailing mood helps her say fuck it and grab a bag of something coated in dark chocolate to toss into her basket.

She turns to go look for body wash when she nearly collides with another girl. Miyu moves aside as quickly as she can, almost jostling the shelf behind her. The girl steps back and blurts out a quick apology. “Oh, sorry, miss!”

Miyu nods in acknowledgement as they both hustle their way past one another. It’s not the same girl as the trip months ago– her hair is completely different, and she looks a few years older– but the fluorescence above and tiles below and wash of color all around her still gives Miyu a rush of déjà vu. It’s enough to shock her back into functioning properly for the rest of the trip, and she thankfully doesn’t have to add another epiphany to the pile until she gets home.

She gets about halfway through putting groceries away when the nebulous mass of emotions she was putting off comes knocking at the door. The packet of cookies in her hand crinkles as her grip tightens around it. Miyu barely manages to put it away properly before she has to latch her grip onto the counter, head bowed over it.

Rough, warbling laughter overtakes her; it feels like an echo of what once was. Metaverse-borne fury bubbles to the surface of her psyche, omnidirectional and marbled with contamination from other emotions, other memories. For a moment she wonders why all this simple, rare happiness has dredged this tangle of barbed wire up, until– until something clicks.

It only took this much effort for her to reshatter into a new person because she had been denied help for so long. How would things have gone if someone had asked the right questions, or if someone was there to listen just a moment longer? 

Her fury turns inward with the realization that she was as much the architect of her own downfall as others were. Miyu had taken scissors to every thread that tied her to anyone else, and the ones she didn’t cut snapped all on their own. And then all her rage turns outward again– how could she have known what she was meant to do? 

I was barely thirteen, she thinks. I was barely thirteen and a man put a gun in my hand.

She’s teary, now, wavering on the edge of something indistinct, monolithic. It’s too much for her to take right now. She wipes her face and straightens her back, stretching her neck to get the soreness out. Her muscles are still tense; her blood is still flowing. She is still alive.

There are still a few forlorn groceries on the counter, and she puts each one away slowly and tentatively, like something is hiding in the shadows of the pantry and she doesn’t want to disturb it. She makes her way out to the balcony with short little steps, listening to the world whirl around her. The wind is high and howling today, whipping up against the side of the building. Miyu holds onto the railing and lets herself bend into the wind.

She suddenly wishes Robin Hood and Loki weren’t so silent lately. There’s a grim sort of satisfaction brewing in her forebrain, thinking about what they might think of her now. Come on out, she calls within her mind, come and see what’s become of your wielder!

Nothing happens. If she does sense anything, it’s glacial and distant, like a whale-call just barely out of hearing range. It figures that the fragments of a destroyed Metaverse aren’t exactly talkative– or they might not be alive at all, anymore.

Miyu’s mind latches onto what little she knows about the Metaverse and cognitive psience. She’s well aware that chasing after this intellectual task is just evading the rage and the sorrow and the burning-up inside, but she chases it anyway. A great change in the Persona-wielder , she muses, can surely precipitate a change in the Persona, whether that’s a small change or a full restructuring. She doesn’t recall ever seeing it happen, but she knows it should be possible, especially with wild-card variability on her side. So why haven’t I felt anything?

The thought is uncharitable to herself– she’s just spent a couple of hours feeling all over the place– so she refines it. Does Robin Hood still even fit me? She asks herself. Thinking after Loki is more of an afterthought; she imagines that the sort of rage and hate it embodies is more neutral than Robin Hood’s Saturday-morning cartoon costuming.

Years and years ago, on days when she had been lying in bed alone, waiting for the latest foster parent to get home, she had tried to imagine Robin Hood and Loki in entire environments in her mind. She would give them meadows to walk through and mountains to fly over and explore, and great volcanic caverns to fight nonspecific enemies in. Sometimes it came easily; sometimes the daydream was so vivid it felt real. Sometimes she just felt like a fool. Sometimes her imagination felt like it was being pulled along by an entirely different force– like Robin Hood and Loki were conjuring up a place all their own, and she just had to lead them along it.

She wonders where they’ve run off to now.

—

“I already dusted,” Miyu says, the moment Ann walks in the room. “The living room, kitchen, dining room, and bathrooms. And my room, just in case. That includes picking up all the knicknacks and dusting underneath them, too– I didn’t half-ass it. And,” she adds, when Ann opens her mouth, “I vacuumed afterwards. To get the last of it.”

Ann lets out a sigh that must have used up her entire lung capacity. “Thank you, seriously. Shiho told me she’s been struggling with her dust allergy recently, so you have no idea how helpful this is.”

“I’m well aware.” She’d already made some predictions about what tidying the house for Shiho would entail– namely, a full-on deep-clean– but when she overheard a (very loud) call between Ann and Shiho she knew exactly what needed to be done. The whole ordeal was, surprisingly enough, not that much of an ordeal, aside from the fact that Miyu’s sinuses are trying to take her down with them.

Ann flutters into the kitchen for uncertain purposes. She seems only marginally less frazzled than she was before the last sleepover, but there’s a different tone to her buzzing about the apartment– her fretting is heavier, deeper than usual. Miyu has no idea how to ask about it, so she doesn’t.

They continue last-minute preparations and tidying in tense silence. Eventually, Miyu distantly hears Ann’s ringtone and watches her dash for it down the hall. When she comes back out from her room she’s throwing on her jacket and sliding into her boots. “I’ll be back in a bit,” she calls, and Miyu flashes her a thumbs up in response. She hopes Ann will achieve whatever she’s trying to do, if only so it’ll dispel some of the uneasiness floating in the air.

Almost half an hour passes before Shiho and Ann come trundling inside, and Miyu can’t help but lean around the corner to take a peek at their faces just to read the room more effectively. They’re both grinning, and Ann looks like she’s been happy-crying, but all seems to be as well as can be expected. 

She steps out from around the corner to welcome Shiho inside. Miyu was more conscious than usual of what she wore today, so: a plain black skirt and sweater it is. Her hair is even well-brushed– something she only manages to do one day in four.

“Hey,” Shiho says, and rolls her suitcase to a stop in the entrance hallway. She smiles when she looks at Miyu, but it’s a different smile than the one she had on a few moments ago– knowing, playful. “You know… I can’t put my finger on it, but I feel like something is a bit different about you since I last saw you.”

She stifles a giggle, and Miyu can’t help but pick up her contagious smile. “Really? I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about.”

“Ooh, it’s right on the tip of my tongue!” Shiho looks her over with an intensely contemplative air; Miyu can envision her holding a magnifying glass up like a bespectacled detective of yore. “Is it… new contact lenses?”

“Actually, I was wearing contact lenses before and took them out just recently.”

“I should have noticed!” Shiho snaps her fingers, as if to chide herself. If she hadn’t gotten into character so thoroughly, Miyu would have imagined her seconds away from laughing. “Surely there’s something else I’m missing…”

Ann laughs and wraps her arms around Shiho from behind. “It’s her new haircut, of course!”

Shiho finally bursts into giggles and squeezes Ann back before stepping forward to greet Miyu properly. “Jokes aside, it’s been a while. I’m glad to see you– really, I am.” She takes Miyu’s hands gently in her own, and although Miyu was mentally preparing herself for a hug, this gesture is somehow even more tender. “Ann filled me in on some of what happened in the meantime,” she says, “but without any details or nothing, so you’ll have to tell me any fun stories yourself!”

Miyu can’t say she has any ‘fun stories’ to tell about her transition and the surrounding accouterments– except perhaps the time she and Ann went shopping and were nearly attacked by an extremely bold pigeon. “Maybe later. You should have time to settle in.” She steps back, and it takes her a moment to remember herself. “And it’s good to see you too.”

Shiho’s smile is bright and layered, like a freshly bloomed zinnia. She rolls her suitcase along and follows Ann into her room once more. Miyu would have a sense of deja vu coming over her, if not for her next actions deviating considerably from the previous course: she enters the kitchen and prepares to cook.

Ann picked up an apron at the secondhand store the other day (“It’s weird that we didn’t have one already,” she had said, to which Miyu had just barely avoided replying “no shit, Sherlock, we barely cook”). There’s an embroidered little ducky on the front, and while it doesn’t exactly suit Miyu, she’s not going to complain. She ties back her hair in a high, somewhat messy ponytail as she goes hunting through the pantry and cupboards. She had squirreled away every ingredient she needed after overhearing that Ann hadn’t gotten them reservations anywhere, taking great care to hide everything away lest she spoil the surprise.

It’s not like she was planning on keeping the surprise for long, anyway– the second those two walk back out, they’ll see the kitchen (and its occupant, and its occupant’s procedures) right away, so Miyu figures there’s no use trying to hide it. She’s starting with dessert: a roll cake, which is unusually ambitious for her, but she figures if she fucks it up they’ll at least think it’s funny. Besides, Ann will eat the cake regardless of what shape it’s in.

What little arm strength Miyu has helps carry her through mixing the batter and frosting. Miyu hasn’t exactly focused on exercise much in her time here; she misses bouldering and only somewhat misses the Metaverse, and between those two lost habits she hasn’t had much to throw herself into. Room-bound push-ups seem to be in order, if only to keep herself from getting too weak. She imagines a few disparate, semi-abstract images of herself: lithe and graceful, muscular and solid, soft and fluid. It isn’t so much that none of them fit her; it’s that all of them could fit her, in different futures. She has no idea which one is going to come to pass.

Miyu concludes that all those images are fine women to end up as, right as she starts thinking about bribing Ann to get a stand mixer. Her arm is starting to go sore, and she swaps to another part of the prep as fluidly as she can manage. She manages to get both recipes– dessert and dinner– running somewhat in tandem, and by the time the cake is out of the oven and the chicken is simmering on the stove, Ann and Shiho still haven’t emerged.

Those girls , she thinks to herself, decidedly not thinking about whatever they’re getting up to together, which is emphatically not gossiping about Miyu. They wouldn’t. She knows this. Her subconscious hasn’t gotten the memo, though, and continues poking her with the old pitchforks of self-consciousness and paranoia as she cracks some eggs. The first two servings of oyakodon actually manage to come together half-decently, even though Miyu almost overcooked the eggs and did overcook the onions. Every recipe she’d read said not to push the serving size in a single pan, so she assembles two bowls for Ann and Shiho and figures she’ll make her own serving later, when her stomach isn’t churning quite so much.

The cake has already been rolled up into a neat little spiral, but Miyu hasn’t had the bravery to unwrap it until now. She carefully pulls the paper off and decides not to move it from its designated cutting board for fear that the transition would crumble it. Miyu settles for a few dollops of whipped cream on top in the way of decoration– nothing else is needed, since she’s largely considered powdered sugar a bane on desserts everywhere ever since she accidentally inhaled some during an ad photoshoot. She’d almost paired it with some strawberries, since sheer proximity to Ann seems to have given her a weakness to strawberries and chocolate together, but the ones at the store were too expensive and making a trip to a second store just for the chance of finding cheaper ones seemed like torture.

Miyu leans over the counter for just a moment before she has to admit to herself that she is, in fact, lonely, and perhaps also a bit frustrated. The part of her that’s ready to devour whatever positive words Ann and Shiho have for her is at war with the part of her that can’t stand drawing them out of whatever little space they occupy– the part that insists they really should have their own little bubble together, free of pollutants like her. She takes up a third part as a weapon, the one that says oh for gods’ sakes it’s getting fucking cold , and beats her mental interlopers off with it as she leaves the kitchen.

Ann’s door is cracked; the room is dark inside. Miyu hasn’t heard conversation from them in some time, so she figured they’d been watching videos or taking a nap. She steps forward and opens her mouth to call them out–

–a thin slice of dim light cuts through the room. They’re both kneeling on the carpet. Neither of them are fully facing the door, but Ann’s face is in three-quarters view to Miyu and she can see her eyes are almost closed as she leans in towards Shiho–

Miyu’s Third Eye snaps open as she becomes a specter, moving like smoke back into the illuminated belly of the apartment. The sensation of it all is deep and familiar, washing over her in waves, and she remembers all at once how invigorating it felt to become no one, to become nowhere. Sometimes, for entire evenings after school and work and ‘work’ she would find a very busy street and open her Third Eye and keep it open, watching herself go unwatched. She told herself it was practice for Metaverse activities; she told herself it was just an odd little habit, and everyone’s got those, don’t they? Doesn’t everyone want to hide away?

Miyu does not close her Third Eye until she is in the furthest corner of the kitchen, breathing as deeply as she can manage through the rush of possibility and poison-tinted nostalgia. It takes several seconds for any sort of bodily sensation to return to her, as if she has to go pick them back up after her Third Eye burned them out of her: touch, hearing, smell. Her hands are on the counter. She hears the drone of the oven fan winding down. She is still alive.

It takes her a few more long moments to properly catalog the furious blush over her face. Whatever anxiety that’s lancing through her has no definite source, and she tries in vain to chase it down. She daydreams herself running over fields like a hunting-dog, chasing down a– chasing down–

All of her worries drain away when an epiphany sparks to life within her. “They aren’t gone,” she whispers to herself, alone in the kitchen and the vast landscapes in her head. Miyu knows precious little about her Third Eye, but she does know it’s a Metaverse ability, which means– they live! They live on!

With a burst of sudden, frantic energy she fixes images of her Personae in her mind, rotates them like little figurines, tries to bring them to life– nothing. There is only silence where her own thoughts do not tread.

A phrase comes to mind as the oven fan finally shuts itself off. She’d heard Akira say it a few times, like an incantation. Like a promise to his mask. If I am thou , she posits, and thou art I, then where are you? And where am I?

A sigh escapes her as coherent thought returns in full to her head. She is standing in the kitchen, waiting for two lovestruck girls to come to dinner. There is nothing wrong with her.

In the end, Miyu passive-aggressively waits and reads in the living room. She does not cook her own portion because she’s afraid she’ll make too much noise and startle them out of their reverie, so she has a cup of tea that barely keeps her from hunger. To her surprise, she finishes her cup right as Ann and Shiho emerge, looking less ruffled than Miyu had expected.

“There’s dinner in the kitchen,” she says, not concentrating at all on their interlocked hands and bashful smiles.

Shiho gasps. “Wait, really? You should have told us– I mean, thanks!”

Miyu buries her nose in her book and says absolutely nothing at all. The two of them eat with so much joy and gratitude Miyu can’t help but be forcibly dragged out of her sour mood, and she cooks her serving listening to them joke and laugh with her like it’s natural. Like she can be a good friend to someone, someday.

When all is said and done and they pull her into the living room to watch a movie they’d picked out, it feels like the most natural thing in the world. They remember to change into their pajamas about thirty minutes into a flick so bad it’s hilarious, and each of them ducks away and reemerges one by one, taking turns. Miyu can’t help but find Shiho’s kitty-patterned pajamas deeply amusing, and she herself briefly mourns not having any nicer pajamas– but her white gown passes as a nightgown. The way it shifts as she moves feels like liquid heaven, bottled and distilled just for her.

As she sits on the couch, bundled up in a blanket as Ann hands her a plate with a slice of well-made roll cake on it, Miyu suddenly feels like crying. She does cry, just slightly, and only because the other two are sitting on the floor in front of her, facing away. She thinks that this would have righted her entire life if she’d had this experience, just once, at age thirteen.

The monolith embedded in her brain is back. She pushes the accompanying rage back down, though– this is not the place for it. The girls laughing in front of her, popping sweets into each others’ mouths, don’t deserve this. The girl sitting on the couch doesn’t deserve this.

Miyu, with old sorrow, lets herself enjoy what is here.

—

Miyu wakes up early enough that she only sees skyglow outside. Her body jolts into awareness faster than she’s prepared for, and she rolls and re-rolls over only to discover that she is not, in fact, getting back to sleep. When she rises she’s pleasantly surprised by the gown draped over her– part of her surely expected the usual nondescript sweatpants and t-shirt. 

She strides her way out to the kitchen and decides she’s not through with being productive just yet. There is a surprising variety of cookware in the apartment– she imagines they were bought or left by the previous caretakers– and she considers it a fine omen when she retrieves a perfectly-shaped pan. She sets it on the burner as quietly as she can manage, cracking eggs under the dawn-blue light.

Miyu has just failed her first attempt at omurice when Shiho emerges, quiet as a mouse. She doesn’t startle when she sees her, but it’s a near thing, and she somewhat carelessly upends the misshapen omelet onto a portion of rice. “Good morning.”

“Morning.” Shiho stretches her hands above her head. In all the times that Miyu has seen her, she has never seen Shiho with her hair down. It shines and flows, even all tousled in the early morning, and it’s clear she takes good care of it. 

“I’m making,” Miyu pauses, cracking a couple more eggs. “An attempt at breakfast.”

Shiho chuckles and pads into the kitchen proper, poking around the fridge. “I believe there’s juice,” Miyu says, gesturing vaguely to the fridge door, “and water, of course. We also have the things to make tea or coffee if you so wish.”

“Thanks, but I think I can just get myself some water for now.” She smiles, just slightly, as she shuts the fridge door. “To be honest, I think I just looked in the fridge to be nosy.”

Miyu considers this as she begins the great effort to make decent eggs, watching them carefully as they swirl about the pan. “That is where we keep all of our very darkest secrets.”

“Ooh, you think I’ll find a severed head or something?” She pops the fridge door back open, peering in.

“Check behind the ketchup.”

“Hmm, no, this is just a daikon.” Shiho closes the fridge and scoots past Miyu, opening cabinets. “I guess I’ll go looking for secrets somewhere else. Where are the glasses?”

“In the cabinet to your right, next to the jars of eyeballs.”

Shiho opens the cabinet and her face visibly falls. “Aww, no eyeballs?”

Miyu concentrates very hard on trying to flip the eggs properly. “They were– out of stock,” she grits, flicking the pan in an approximation of the correct motion. “At the store.”

“Huh. Guess you’ll have to stock up soon.” When Shiho finishes getting her water, she stands beside Miyu at a comfortable distance– not quite arm’s length, but not quite close, either. Miyu can just barely see her in her peripheral vision.

“I’ll have the lumpy one,” Miyu says, “and you and Ann can have the nicer ones– oh, you’re kidding me.” In the last moment, her execution of the latest omelet has fallen short, flopping to the side of the portion of rice she’s laid out.

Shiho laughs, graciously. “I can have that one. It’s fine, really; I’m used to rushing through breakfast before my morning run, so anything I can get that’s hot and ready is an upgrade to my usual routine.”

Miyu gives her a mildly perturbed look as she prepares for round three. “You’re a guest. Regardless of your expectations or experiences, you should be treated properly here.”

“You say that like I should be receiving a four-star chef’s take on omurice.”

“Five-star, if Ann had her way.”

That drags a full-bodied snort out of Shiho, and she goes to take a sip of water before she thinks better of it. Miyu listens to her make little amused noises before she starts cracking the last of their eggs and mentally beating off her perfectionism with a stick. There is a phase in the cooking where she doesn’t have to do anything particularly complicated– just waiting– and she uses the opportunity to say something.

“She loves you very much, you know.”

Shiho’s laughter peters out, slow and gentle, as she looks up at Miyu. She isn’t that much shorter than her, but it’s enough to make it such that Miyu has to look down slightly to properly catch her eye. “Forgive me,” Miyu says, “if I’m… spoiling things somewhat by saying so. If she hasn’t told you yet. But it’s true.”

Shiho is looking at her, and although Miyu isn’t fully willing to take her eyes off the eggs long enough to see her, she does get a brief glimpse of Shiho’s wide, unreadable gaze. “I have something,” she says, “that I’d like to talk to you about.”

“Do you want my permission for her hand or something?”

“It’s not really related to that,” she says, and her tone is serious enough that Miyu feels a shot’s worth of shame through her for making light of it. Shiho stands beside Miyu for some time, watching her work to shape the last portion.

“I– how do you move past it?”

Miyu does not ask what Shiho means by this. Part of her knows already. She manages to plate the third portion half-decently– enough that she can fight off her perfectionism for just a moment longer– before she stands at the counter, regarding breakfast with more trepidation than she imagined was possible.

“I’m not sure,” she says, and she’s telling the truth. “I don’t think I have, truthfully. Moved past it, I mean.”

Shiho isn’t looking at Miyu either. “It looks like you have.”

“I’ve taken steps. I’m not… past it yet, though.” She looks at Shiho out of the corner of her eye, right as an image occurs to her. “It feels like… the difference between being in a thicket and a clearing. You’re in the forest either way.”

They stand together for some time, both facing the counter. Toy soldiers in a line. Miyu feels like crying; she feels like giving Shiho a hug. She does neither of these things.

“You know,” Shiho says, “it might be my imagination, but your voice sounded… different, just then.”

Miyu snaps out of whatever daydream she’d been mired in and begins setting their places at the bar. “Did it?”

“Yeah. I can’t really say how, though.”

“Well. Despite what Ann might have told you,” Miyu says, modulating her tone to telegraph an oncoming joke, “I don’t listen to the sound of my voice that keenly, so I’m not sure either. Hopefully it’s for the better, though,” she adds, as a murmured afterthought.

“I hope so too.” Shiho says it so quietly Miyu almost doesn’t hear her. When Miyu turns around to face her, Shiho isn’t smiling, but it feels like she is. 

“I hope,” Miyu says, faltering. Instinctual self-hatred rises in her chest when she still can’t figure out what to say moments later. She takes another breath in. “I hope the future is good to you,” she says, feeling the morning sun on her back. 

Shiho’s smile is just as genuine as the ones she gives to Ann. “I hope so too,” she repeats, and she steps forward as if to give Miyu a hug when there’s a rustle from the hallway. Ann shuffles out in her pink pajamas, managing not to look too silly with her hair all mussed up and her shirt hanging off one shoulder.

“Good morning,” Shiho calls, and again she takes Miyu’s hands in her own, somewhat excitedly. “Miyu made breakfast for us!”

It takes a moment for Ann to properly boggle at the notion. “Wh– again?!”

Miyu shrugs. “I didn’t have anything better to do. And besides, you two should be relaxing.” She finishes setting their places, as if to make a point. “Sit down.”

“Jus’ a minute.” Ann flops her way into the bathroom off the hall while Shiho obligingly sits herself down in front of one of the botched omelets. Miyu immediately swaps it with a nicer one; Shiho giggles, chime-like.

When Ann returns, Miyu and Shiho are chatting about the season results over tea. The conversation is so inoffensive that it’s almost refreshing to Miyu, and Shiho’s wit and care are such that it doesn’t feel like she’s just going through the motions. She wasn’t expecting to find life here, in a conversation so banal she’s sure Shiho has had it several times. 

Ann sits herself down and cozies up shoulder-to-shoulder with Shiho. “Thank you again! This looks really good…”

“You’re just saying that because you’re hungry.” Miyu takes a bite of her own portion and finds that it is, improbably, half-decent. “I’m afraid I don’t have any other bright ideas in mind, so you’re going to have to fend for yourselves for the rest of your trip.”

Shiho gasps, and with almost-genuine disappointment in her eyes, turns to face Ann. “I’m so sorry, Ann– I forgot my spear, so we won’t be able to hunt anything …”

Ann nearly snorts water up her nose. She’s laughing too hard to actually join in on the joke, but Miyu can tell she wants to. Shiho pats her on the back as she regains her breath.

“For real, though,” Shiho says, “we don’t have any plans either. We might wander around or just hang around here.” There’s a faint mole, nearly imperceptible, just beneath her right eye that Miyu has only noticed now. It follows the contour of her smile. “We’ll be sure to let you know if there’s anything fun you can join in on!” 

Miyu’s own smile comes to her freely. “By all means.”

—

Miyu focuses on folding her laundry while she leaves the other two to their own devices, and actually manages to put herself in some sort of order. After a morning and afternoon of productivity she finds herself missing the arcade– wanting to goof off wholeheartedly, without half-assing it. She’s about to ask Ann and Shiho what their plans are when they both come out into the main hall. Again Shiho’s suitcase wheels rumble against the hardwood; again Miyu’s mind goes back in time a year. A year , she thinks to herself, train of thought thoroughly derailed. A year, already…

“I’m sorry I can’t stay for longer.” Shiho’s eyes are teary as she goes to embrace Ann, nestling her head in the crook of her neck. Miyu feels the urge to look away. This moment is not for her.

When Shiho pulls away and turns, she regards Miyu with unabashed warmth. “Thank you so much for all of this. And good luck on the–” she pauses briefly– “girl!” 

A stilted almost-laugh escapes from Miyu, fluttering into the hall. She eventually manages to choke out “thank you for the well-wishes” before stepping aside to let the two of them pass. Shiho waves goodbye as Ann follows her out, right on her heels.

Miyu stands in the hallway for some time, wondering why she feels vaguely like she’s been lit on fire. It isn’t petrochemical anymore, not by a long shot– it’s confined to a fireplace, local firewood burning gently. Something not unlike a hearth; something not unlike a home. Miyu thinks she could learn to come home to this feeling, someday.

—

The rest of the day feels hollow without a keystone to focus it around. Miyu putters around and mills about and does an assortment of nothings, eventually culminating in dozing on the couch, book in hand that she was only making a token attempt at reading.

When she comes back to full consciousness, she immediately spots Ann at the bar, reading from a little book of her own. She doesn’t recognize it; Ann must have gotten it from someone else.

A thought occurs to her, and she sits upright before she speaks it into being.

“I’m very happy for you, you know.”

“Happy for– oh!” Ann looks up from her book in some sort of startle. “Was it that obvious?”

Miyu thinks back to game reruns and long phone calls and tears in the night, all overheard. None of these moments– these memories– were for her, and she feels some sort of relief at being able to give them away now. 

“You have no idea,” she says, closing her eyes.

—

MAY 2018 –

Miyu’s phone is still dead as all hell, so she only realizes the date when she steps out to the living room and sees it in the corner of the news channel. She can’t stop herself from exclaiming a little “oh,” which is enough to catch Ann’s attention from where she’s packing her lunch in the kitchen.

“Good morning,” she calls, sounding half-asleep herself. “Everything okay? You look kinda surprised.”

“It’s been a year,” Miyu murmurs, “hasn’t it?”

Ann gasps, suddenly bursting into full awareness. “Oh my gosh, it has! Do you want to,” she pauses, concentrating on pouring her coffee into a travel mug. “Celebrate, or something?”

Miyu considers the sorts of things one does for a typical celebration– food, friends, special treats and gifts– and finds that none of them fit quite right. “I can’t say there’s much I’m thinking of.”

“How about I pick up something nice for us on the way home, then? You pick!”

Miyu, indecisive, ends up shooing Ann off to work and charging her phone to text Ann her preferences an hour later. She only has one notification, but it’s from December: Ann sent her a picture of a fluffy stray cat she encountered before she realized Miyu’s phone was off. She does not open her messages with Akira. She does not look at the last message he sent, and she does not allow that message to occupy her thoughts until Ann returns home with peppery pork and more sides than Miyu asked for.

It’s more than enough to share, though, and Ann regales Miyu of the latest updates from around the city as they pick their way through their feast. Ryuji is still working his way through PT and improving slowly, but surely. Haru has moved in with Makoto as the former works her way through a business degree and the latter trudges through law school. Morgana visited the vet the other day and complained about it the entire time, despite the fact that he wasn’t even getting a shot. (He almost walked right on over to the vet himself before he remembered he actually had to go with Akira, since most vets want to talk to the human instead of just accepting feline word-of-mouth.)

In past months, Miyu would have regarded all these events with some combination of envy and bitterness, but here she finds herself awash in genuine warmth. Perhaps it’s the fine meal; perhaps it’s the fine company. Whatever the case may be, she’s grounded enough to ask questions and nod her assent as Ann continues her tales. 

They cap off the evening with– what else– a moderately rowdy game. Ann sneakily pulls a small cake out of the fridge when they start winding down, and they talk about everything and nothing out on the balcony as they work through it. It’s humid, but not excessively so, and windy enough to offset what little heat remains at the end of the day. When Miyu shivers, Ann slides her cardigan over her shoulders. There is joy here, waiting, breathing alongside them. It’s hiding in the frosting and the sweep of Miyu’s skirt about her legs and Ann’s smile, and Miyu is honored to have ever found it at all.

—

There is a small purse hiding in Miyu’s closet.

Miyu stands on the balcony with Ann’s cardigan about her shoulders for some time after Ann leaves to get to bed. She sweeps into her room, shaking off the excitement, and all of her energy drains away when she looks to the closet door. It’s replaced by something else, though– some strange solution whispering through her veins– and she lets it take its course as she approaches. She kneels in front of the door, carefully sliding it open. The skyglow almost doesn’t illuminate the purse slumped in the corner.

Miyu reaches for it and hesitates, her hands suspended in midair over the threshold. She has no plan for this; no one has given her a script. When she finally reaches out she does so slowly, haltingly, suffused in dread that she’s already committed some sort of mistake.

She raises another hand, just as slowly, to hold the side of the bag stable as she unzips it. Reaching inside takes another abyss of preparation. Her fingertips brush the cool, ceramic surface of the object inside, unadorned and unbroken. 

Miyu knows she’s not a good daughter because she did not think of her mother here, adrift in the new home she’s found for them. She withdraws the urn with more care than she has ever treated another person before. It takes nearly a minute for her to lift it out of the bag and set it down on the carpet in front of her.

She runs a fingertip down its side before she draws back, and kneeling to face it almost feels familiar. Miyu holds a memory of herself, age six or seven, quietly kneeling to the side of her mother’s bed, watching her sleep, waiting for her to wake up. She did this often before some part of her grew embarrassed about it. Sometimes she would doze off there, and she herself would eventually wake up to her mother’s hand on her head, ruffling her hair.

For a moment– and only a moment– she thinks that if she closes her eyes, her mother might be there when she wakes up.

And for once, this thought doesn’t bring any shame in its wake. She doesn’t feel the need to chastise herself for wanting something different– for wanting things to be better. Things are better here, in this place of light pollution and late-night showers and a girl whose soul still burns with an unquenchable flame. Miyu wishes she could share it.

She realizes that she can.

It is shortly past midnight. Miyu methodically opens the door to her room and traces a path out, inspecting the living room in turn. There is a small gap on one of the furthest shelves, and she rearranges to widen that space as much as she can. It doesn’t feel like enough; it won’t ever be enough to contain the breadth of a person. This is the best she can do.

Miyu returns to her room and kneels in front of the urn once again. She holds it with both hands, not quite willing to hold it outstretched away from herself or cradle it close to her chest like she wants to. Each step she takes is measured out like a slow heartbeat. 

Arrhythmia has set in by the time she approaches the shelf– the altar. She draws closer, more swift than she intended, and nearly strikes the edge of the shelf with the urn. Here is where she stops: with her mistake hanging in midair, burning quietly. Faint synthetic moonlight jabs at her feet from the balcony. Wind howls outside. Nothing is sacred here anymore.

Miyu lifts the urn, millimeter by millimeter, until she’s able to rest it upon its very own home. She slides it back just slightly, enough that it isn’t vulnerable to the energy of the household but it can still look out over the ledge. When she brings her arms back down Miyu is suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. As if she was actually carrying a body. As if she has any right to deserve this tiredness.

“Happy birthday,” she whispers to her mother, and then she can’t stop herself when she says “I’m sorry.”

There is nothing left to say. Miyu turns away to go to sleep.

—

Miyu is reclining on the couch and reading a yellowed paperback mystery Ann had gotten from the library when she suddenly feels an ominous presence manifest behind her. She tilts her head back to see Ann standing over her with an unreadable expression. She feels vaguely as though Ann is in the process of telling a joke that Miyu has been left out of, and she has no idea if she’s ever going to be let in on it.

Ann, playing whatever part she’s playing, folds her arms in mock seriousness, stance wide and all-imposing as she casts Miyu in shadow. “You’re not getting out of this again– what do you want for your birthday?”

Miyu doesn’t ask for things. She has a small collection of guilty memories in which she’d asked her mother for something– usually stupid things, like trendy toys and games– and she’d been refused every time. The moment she was old enough to realize why her mother stood aimless in the kitchen, quietly despairing over armfuls of bills and toy catalogs, she stopped asking. Shortly after that, there was no one to ask.

Miyu thinks for a moment.

“Give me twenty minutes,” she says, which she immediately uses to shut herself in her room and lie down on her bed because she cannot handle being looked at right now. She thinks about what she wants, which quickly turns into her thinking about Thiefish faces and scrutinizing eyes. She thinks about silly jokes and long evenings spent alone and trying on new clothes. She thinks about dark chocolate dissolving on her tongue.

What Miyu wants only comes to her in vague images that bring shame in their wake. Again the monolith pierces through her head; again there’s something on the tip of her tongue that she can’t quite bring to life just yet. She is, frankly, more a little annoyed that a lifetime of learned shame and total disdain has taken time to untangle. Go fucking figure.

Miyu would end up dozing off if not for the lick of embarrassed, angry heat lodging itself in her spine, so she rises, washes her face, and heads back out. Ann, nonplussed, is upon the couch. She gives Miyu a patient little smile when she sees her.

Miyu takes a deep breath. “Go nuts,” she says, resigning herself to her fate. 

Ann’s grin is equal parts bright and foreboding. Miyu retreats to the kitchen as she hears a whirlwind of typing start up from Ann’s laptop. She prays, if only for Ann’s sake, that it won’t involve a pony.

—

The grove visits Miyu once more.

She’s higher than she was last time, though, up on a grassy hill. From here she can see that this place is an island: beyond the cliffs are an endless prismatic sea. If she looks hard enough she can see colossal serpentine forms rising from it like prominences upon the sun.

She gets up and is suddenly at the bottom of the hill. The transposition doesn’t disturb her, though, and she continues along the path, wary of the thickets and brambles alongside her. The wind is blowing in from the bay. If there were ships there, they wouldn’t be able to leave. Animals and non-animals alike cross the paths in front of Miyu as she approaches the great tree.

The woman is no longer beside the tree, but even her lack of presence is a presence in and of itself. Miyu feels the urge to go looking for her in the twining forest, but her gut stops her in her tracks. There are beasts in these woods , she thinks, and I am no longer one of them.  

She keeps to the shore, instead, tracking her way down the rocks and brush to a great bay. The star-woman from before is kneeling upon the shore, and somehow Miyu can tell she is looking down.

There are two bodies on the sand.

The first is a bald man. He is wearing a fine business suit and there is a knife still clutched in his hand. The second is a girl with brown hair clustered about her shoulders. She is, at most, fourteen. Both are face-down as if in prayer, as if in contemplation, as if inspecting the blood that has soaked into the sand beneath them.

The wind is blowing out, here. Miyu feels it trace around her dress.

She steps forward and regards the girl for a moment before she winds her arms around her, cradling her like she’s just taking her to bed. The girl is not heavy; she is very thin. Miyu walks past the star-woman without looking at her and steps into the sea-foam. The wind and the sea speak gently to one another, unheeding of what has happened.

Miyu walks until the edge of her dress is soaked with wine-dark water. She lays the girl down in the water and watches her disappear, watches the wound in her neck bleed out into the sea. In only moments there is nothing left of her but a faint stain somewhere out in the bay.

Miyu goes to walk away– but the star-woman is there just behind her, swaying gently just above the waves. She raises her arm and points out to the horizon, the sea that the birds are circling over. Miyu turns and sees the rest of the bodies there 

floating there

dozens or hundreds of them

some dead by his hand some dead by her hand some dead by no hands at all

(she’s been here before)

and they are all of them unfinished forever.

—

Miyu wakes with a shudder so powerful she feels like someone is choking her.

She gasps and sobs for breath, open-mouthed, clawing at her chest, at her face. Nothing grounds her– she doesn’t know where she is. Her legs are caught in the blanket and she flails them wildly, kicking like a snared deer. 

Miyu writhes until her fear begins to drip away. Her senses come back to her, one by one, as she feels her cold, wet fingertips against her own face. I am not in Arakawa. I am not in Aulis. There is only one of me left.  

She has regained control of her breath when there is a hesitant knock at her door. Miyu is suddenly intensely self-conscious as she realizes how her face is stained with tears and sweat. The sheer presence of it makes her come back to herself: to the bed, to the room, to the apartment, to the city. She does not speak. She’s not sure if she can.

Miyu rises and walks to the door, because there is nothing else she can do. When she opens it Ann is standing there, blue eyes reflecting the skyglow from the bedroom window. She doesn’t say anything at all.

Miyu has thought at length about killing herself, mostly in years past. What she did not realize is that she has done so already. There is a dead boy somewhere in this apartment– or perhaps somewhere all the way back in Mementos– that she should have buried gently.

She falls into Ann’s arms and allows herself one moment, between this world and the next, to grieve for him.

—

The sun burns high over the bay.

It didn’t feel right for Miyu to drag herself back to sleep after she’d shooed Ann back to her own bed, so she watched the sunrise for some time from the apartment before she got herself a small snack– one of the fridge pastries Ann keeps around for lunches– and went out on a walk. She finishes it as she reaches the bottom of the stairs, tugging her facemask up right as she steps around the flowerpot. The child’s rollerskate is gone. She hopes it’s found its match once again.

Her path tracks around the worst of the morning traffic, down side streets and between towering buildings where the sun does not reach. She’s not quite sure what she’s looking for until she finds it: a small park with a view of the dark bay waters. It isn’t the same park as the one Ann first tied their strings together in– that one is across town– but it’s close enough, and it’s enough to give Miyu a rush of deep, powerful deja vu when she sits down on the metal bench.

The inland sea comes to life as the wind picks up. Miyu closes her eyes against the glimmers of sunlight over the water. She thinks to herself, with some trepidation: why am I still here?

The eminently practical answer that comes to her first is because someone else is paying my rent, of course. The second answer that barrels through her mental door cries because I’ve never known anywhere else , and it gives her pause. She doesn’t have any real fondness to remember Tokyo by, nor does she have that much hatred for it– not now, not that she’s starting to eke out something approaching a normal life. Miyu imagines, in vague, patchy concepts, what it might be like to move to a smaller city, or even delve deep into the countryside. She thinks about side roads framed by trees and gullies that swell with the summer rains and getting to see the stars after a lifetime of seeing them drowned out. 

She allows herself to sink into pastoral daydreaming until she’s suddenly beaned on the back of the head by an object she identifies, several seconds later, as a ball, which has bounced off the bench and onto the path in front of her. Collecting herself isn’t hard– it wasn’t launched that fast– and she rises to go pick the ball up a bit before she notices the young boy jogging towards her.

“Here,” she says, only following it up a moment later with “is this yours?” She holds the ball out to the boy, who wordlessly takes it as a woman follows in his footsteps.

The woman is a little out of breath when she catches up to him– enough that when she calls his name, Miyu doesn’t really hear her. The boy bites his thumb as he wraps an arm around the ball; Miyu’s not sure whether he’s actually listening to her. “You have to be more careful next time, okay?” She says, gesturing to Miyu. “Well, go on, apologize to the nice lady!”

The boy continues gnawing at his thumb, otherwise still. Miyu waves the both of them off. “It’s quite alright– I’m not hurt.”

“Still,” the woman retorts, “he shouldn’t have been so reckless. Although I guess this is a bit better than launching it through someone’s window…” She stretches her neck before she extends a hand to the boy. “Our apologies. Come along now…”

As the woman leads the boy away, the boy turns back and says “bye” and nothing more. He is so quiet that Miyu almost doesn’t hear him over the sounds of traffic and distant sirens. 

Miyu, already standing, needs to move or else she feels like she’s going to sink into the ground. She starts the winding walk back home, plotting a path that will pass by a convenience store before she gets there. The coins in her pocket have to be good for at least two treats, she wagers. Over the entire trip it feels like the wind accompanies her– like the city moves with her. Blood in its veins. Blood in the sea . 

She is still alive.

Chapter Text

JUNE 2018 –

Miyu wakes on the second with something not entirely unlike apprehension blooming in her head. 

She knows she’s meant to expect something from Ann, but she can’t possibly predict it– she barely knows what to expect from herself on birthdays anymore. In the years she spent alone, she only ever decided to celebrate her birthday once at 15, picking up a little cake on her way home from school and eating it the minute she got it, almost fast enough to make her sick. Even when her mother was there their celebrations varied widely, from nights spent together by sweet-borne candlelight to nights spent alone in a bone-deep bath-soak.

So when she rises and is immediately met at her bedroom door by the most disheveled Ann she’s ever seen– complete with a well-worn paint-stained shirt, flour residue coming off her hands in a cloud, and her hair mostly stuffed into a ball cap– Miyu can firmly say that she didn’t expect this.

“Wait,” Ann says, barring her path like a belligerent video game enemy. “I’m not done yet, so you can’t come out!”

“I already did that,” Miyu mutters, but Ann is too far along the warpath to get the joke.

“If you want something I can bring it to you,” she adds in a rush, “but otherwise you gotta just… hang out. In there. Until I’m done.”

Miyu blinks at her. “Sure?” she says, still waiting to catch up with the point of it all. “How long am I to remain confined?”

“Um.” Ann slaps a flour-y handprint onto her gym shorts as she looks for her phone. She manages to spend twenty seconds not finding it, and when she picks her head back up she has pure determination written onto her face. “About an hour,” she says, like a soldier reporting a piece of information to her commander, straight-backed and tense. “Or maybe two.”

Miyu nods gracefully, and only at the last second thinks to add something kind. “I’m looking forward to it,” she says, and Ann’s mock salute makes her chuckle as she closes the door and goes to get a shower. 

The morning takes on a languid, lazy tune, and she stands in the shower and lets the water wash down her spine for minutes on end before she starts the process of washing her hair. She has enough of it now that when it’s soaking wet, she can feel its weight pulling her head downward, tethering her to the earth. She is gentle when she takes care of herself, now– gentle when she presses her fingertips to her scalp and combs through the strands. It’s not a gentleness bound up in femininity, necessarily; it’s just that she regards herself as more of a sovereign creature than a lost toy.

She lets herself lounge upon her bed, towel-wreathed and with a book she’s only half-paying attention to, until she’s sufficiently dry enough to throw on a pajama set she’d half-stolen from Ann a month ago. The half she’d stolen are the bottoms, soft with age and patterned with cats. It’s silly– but today is a silly day, isn’t it? Miyu feels that thrumming energy gathering in her fingertips, under her tongue. She hasn’t been truly excited for anything in a long, long time.

Miyu cracks her door open and calls out from the doorframe. “Are the swinging blades and spike pits still active, or may I come through?”

There’s a thud from the kitchen, vaguely like the oven door closing, and Ann rounds the corner to see Miyu leaning lackadaisically against her doorframe like a cowgirl. Ann herself is still festooned in flour and other ambiguous powders. “You can come on out, but I might have to shoo you away again when I take it out of the oven.”

Miyu sidles out and only considers the kitchen in her peripheral vision as she rounds into the living room. It seems only moderately chaos-addled– a far cry from the devastation she’d imagined at first. “Should I have any idea of what lurks there?”

It’s a veiled way of asking whether Ann’s pulled something Miyu said long ago into a gift or come up with something entirely new. Ann goes to wash her hands and calls back to her. “I mean, it’ll be edible, and hopefully good! That’s all you’re getting, though.”

Miyu can hear her smile, distinct and bright– she’s got the details on lockdown, clearly, and she’s smug about it in the way only a Takamaki can be. “I hope so too,” Miyu replies, “on both counts.”

Miyu ends up dozing off on the couch deeply enough that Ann is comfortable removing the grand mystery from the oven in her presence, and she ends up waking to an uncomfortably hot living room and the smell of cinnamon and cloves. 

Ann’s swearing is only somewhat audible from Miyu’s spot upon the couch. She hears a series of ominous clanks and rushing water, and decides not to sit up for fear of spotting what concoction could be taking shape in their kitchen. She theorizes, though– picks through details like she’s looking for a hidden sequence. Hears the drawer beside the sink open (for a spatula, probably). Listens to the scuff of Ann’s house slippers as she crosses the kitchen and back again (retrieving something from the counter, most likely). Hearkens to a very clear “oh, fuck you” from Ann (swearing vengeance on whatever culinary implement has injured her this time).

Picking through a mystery this banal calms Miyu back to sleep, or something more like half-sleep, drifting and fidgeting. When her eyes next flutter open, the first thing she sees is Ann collapsed on the other side of the couch, head leaned back over the armrest and legs just barely sprawling into Miyu’s space. It is at once a gesture both considerate and affectionate. Miyu moves her legs just enough for her to get a singular contact point somewhere along Ann’s calf, and its warmth lulls her back to sleep.

They only both end up waking a half-hour later, when Ann’s own fidgeting flops her legs half-off the couch and startles her awake. An old instinct grabs Miyu by the throat and startles her awake in turn, and she only recognizes what it’s telling her long after its message is no longer useful– someone’s back, it says, someone’s here. Someone’s watching you.

The one watching Miyu is barely conscious, though, and not worth getting her hackles up about. It takes her a solid several seconds to un-hackle herself, though, issuing yet another reminder to herself that this is a normal apartment for normal girls and it is not, in fact, liable to be besieged by strange men or fathers of any kind, benign or malignant. 

The sudden burst of paranoia gives Miyu pause. She hasn’t thought about Shido in weeks, and it’s felt like an achievement, like she’s cut through a few more strands of the coiled rope that ties her to the before-times. Is her restlessness poisoning her again?

Whatever the case, Ann rises regardless, stretching and combing out her hair with her fingertips. She looks absentminded. In her less charitable moments, early on, Miyu would have taken that absentmindedness as nothing more than sheer absence. It wasn’t a kind judgment to make, and Miyu herself wasn’t exempt from it– not when her own mind so regularly plunged into the abyss– but now Miyu knows Ann to be a deeply thoughtful person, especially when she lets herself be unmoored from all the expectations laid on her shoulders. Miyu watches her drift.

When Ann has gotten the worst of the tangles out of her hair (and her mind, possibly), she looks down at Miyu. “You awake yet?” she stage-whispers, a faint smile lingering only at the corners of her lips.

“As awake as I’m going to get.” Miyu creaks to her feet and follows Ann into the kitchen, where she’s greeted by a fine tableau: a small cake wreathed in white frosting, a perfect portion for two.

Ann introduces the piece with a little “ta-da!” and a somewhat sedated flourish. Miyu examines the cake patiently while Ann bustles about the kitchen to find all the necessary implements. It only occurs to her that she should have said something about it after Ann sets a plate in front of her. “Thank you,” Miyu says, but she cuts herself off when she notices the green-glass bottle and glass flutes in Ann’s other hand.

Ann’s smile is just a little bit too quick. “It’s just sparkling cider,” she clarifies, “‘cause even though you can legally drink now, I’m still not old enough to buy, so I– figured we could still look all mature n’ stuff.”

The thought of drinking hadn’t even occurred to Miyu, and it puts a pit in her stomach that has no definite origin nor end. Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with her friend offering her a treat, and she gently quashes it down before she gratefully inclines her head. “That’s very thoughtful, thank you.”

Ann pours two flutes and sets one in front of Miyu. Her purple nail polish looks almost black against the golden hues of the cider and the late-evening sun. “I mean,” she says, crossing one arm in front of herself, “I wouldn’t have gotten you alcohol anyway if I could’ve. Not without asking first. It seems– rude. To gift it to you.”

There’s a fistful of unspoken sentiments haunting Ann’s voice. Miyu, for once, chooses not to ignore them. “It’s poisonous stuff, isn’t it? Not worth bringing into the apartment, in my opinion.”

The truth of the matter is far more multifaceted: that Miyu does, if only slightly, feel drawn to it, especially now that it’s legally possible for her to get some; that Miyu has considered submerging herself in alcohol in the past, if only for the novelty of feeling something other than hate; that the thought of being so thoroughly out-of-control makes her want to scratch her face off; that she cannot forget the omnipresent whiskey bottles in Shido’s office.

The uneasy tap of Ann’s fingernail against her flute seems to be a cue that her fears, her worries, her desires are all just as complex. “I think so too, yeah,” she murmurs, watching the bubbles play in the light. “I mean, my mom has promised to send me some sort of super-fancy wine– like, her favorite kind or something– once I turn twenty, so. If you’re feeling up to it you can help me polish it off. No pressure, though.”

Her last addition has enough emphasis to drive the subject into the ground. Miyu deflects. “Do tell me more about the cake, though.”

Ann’s face lights up. “Oh! Well, it’s kind of a… spice cake, I guess! I forget the specific name of it, but my dad was talking about it a while ago, and I thought I’d try making something new. I don’t know whether I was supposed to add frosting or not, but I was already–”

“Ann, if you and I spent our lives doing only what we were supposed to do, you’d be married off to a businessman and I’d be dead. Don’t worry yourself about the goddamn frosting.” 

Miyu’s own vehemence thoroughly surprises herself, and she leans back on her barstool in embarrassment as Ann recovers her wits. Ann has always been quick to get back on her feet, though, and she raises her glass to catch the light.

“Cheers,” she says, grinning with a lifetime’s worth of exuberance, “to never doing a single thing we were supposed to do!”

Miyu doesn’t know how to correct her, so she doesn’t. She delicately taps her glass against Ann’s and lets the nighttime dissolve in it.

—

Miyu is not a creature of impulse– not anymore, anyway. She likes to think that when she decides to do something, it’s after a proper measure of due consideration, and then she can properly fulfill whatever obligation she’s just tied herself to.

This is what she wants to happen. At the moment, she’s about as far from this perfectly balanced state as she can get, dashing across town because Ann just so happened to forget her wallet at home. Her skirt– an impulsive choice, and much too long for the endeavor– whips about her ankles as she blazes down the sidewalk. She’s already sweated through her jacket, and probably shouldn’t have worn one in the first place, but if she focuses too hard on shouldn’ts she’s going to end up thinking about how a certain someone shouldn’t have left without checking her bag–

Miyu rounds a corner and half-collides with someone, managing to drop Ann’s wallet and her own water bottle in one fell swoop. There’s a small scattering of papers about, probably from the older man she bumped into: he’s almost a full head shorter than her, and he apologizes even as he fails to reach down and get his things. Miyu silently sweeps up most of the papers, slipping Ann’s wallet into her pocket and balancing her water bottle in the crook of her elbow. It’s only when she straightens up and hands them over that the man suddenly startles to attention, blinking up at her.

“Oh my,” he says, and there’s a grandfatherly bent to his voice that Miyu manages to recognize despite the fact that she’s never met either of her grandfathers. “Aren’t you… you wouldn’t happen to be our detective, would you?”

Miyu feels herself go ice cold despite the June sun crashing down around her. She knows she’s going wide-eyed and still like a frightened deer, and yet she can’t bring herself to put her mask back on and cover it all up. “I’m… not sure who you mean,” she grits.

“No, no, I’d recognize those eyes anywhere! Please, come sit and talk– I’ve got some free time.” He’s still smiling. It isn’t a complacent smile, nor is it cajoling. It’s just there. The man gestures to a bench in front of a government building a little ways away, and Miyu, as if digging through swampland, slowly goes to follow him.

The man sits down, shuffling his papers and putting some back into the leather messenger bag at his side. It reminds Miyu vaguely of Akira’s bag– the sort of omnipresent object that evolves with its user. This isn’t the reason why she sits beside him, but it might be one of them in another world. There is sun-warmed concrete beneath her feet. Miyu watches a truck rumble down the street in front of them and wait at the next light to turn left.

“To whom do I owe the pleasure?” She tries not to grit her teeth when he speaks and fails, partially because she hasn’t managed to unclench her jaw yet.

The man also seems to be letting his gaze wander over the street, no less amused than he was before. “Please, call me Oshiro. Just Oshiro is fine; you’ve probably got just as much wisdom under your belt as I do– it seems as though you’ve had a remarkably interesting life and I’ve had a remarkably boring one, all things considered.” He chuckles to himself.

Miyu trawls her brain for the memory: Oshiro, Oshiro… Nothing comes to mind beyond faceless clerks at the police department and smudged features in her periphery when she took the elevator up to Shido’s office. Part of her feels guilty for looking down on them so pointedly. Part of her doesn’t feel any guilt at all, for all their complacency and foot-dragging hypocrisy. Another, more nascent part of her drags her guilt right back into her mind, since she still hasn’t delivered Ann her wallet yet.

“Oh, it’s quite all right.” Oshiro interrupts the quiet; Miyu isn’t sure how long she was silent for, but it was clearly longer than he could tolerate. “I don’t believe we ever really spoke. Ah, what I wouldn’t give for something refreshing right now,” he says, turning his face to the sun.

Miyu looks at him sidelong. She barely knows how to handle daily life most days, and this man has just let a zoo loose in her mental living room. She focuses herself on containment and scrubbing out pawprints from the walls. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t see what your point is here.”

Oshiro purses his lips in thought. It’s the sort of gesture that makes Miyu think he must have been a smoker at one time– years ago, probably. “I suppose it’s just curiosity. I see you’ve done well for yourself, though, and that’s good. It’s, ah… good to see someone else managed to get out of his claws safe and sound.”

Miyu’s left hand unclenches by half a centimeter. There’s an empty part of her chest where some of her worry has left, and curiosity scuttles in to replace it. “...Have you been keeping tabs on the other conspiracy members?”

“No, for the most part. The ones who arrived willingly… no, I don’t know much about them.” Oshiro’s face shows only a quick flicker of anything besides contentment. “I was a buyout, you see. One of the old man’s shells snapped up the company I worked at and threw me into the machine he was trying to build. I had to make the rent for my wife and son, so. There I was.”

Miyu taps her heel twice on the ground. “There you were.”

Oshiro barrels on. “Oh, I hated every minute, mind you! I knew what we were working towards, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to leave. I even considered sabotaging it– changing some numbers here and there, ‘losing’ paperwork. Couldn’t much bring myself to do that either. Now, you young ones, you’re all so much less cowardly than old folks like me. You managed it where we couldn’t.” Oshiro’s smile has a hint of mischief lingering in it– Thievish mischief. Miyu pointedly does not think about the lingering impact of the Phantom Thieves on faces like his. He continues. “Then there were the rumors of some sort of reprisal against workers who left. The ones who ‘betrayed’ the operation…”

Miyu’s stomach goes cold. Those ones weren’t her responsibility, but she heard the orders go down all the same. “I don’t blame you for not leaving. Those rumors were true.”

Oshiro’s shudder looks like it would go better at the end of a scary story told to a child, not a recounting of a contract-killing spree. Despite the weight of the memories– and Miyu can sense it, she can see it in his back, in the grey faces she saw passing her years ago– he still seems to be holding onto some whimsy, somewhere in there. Miyu faintly wonders why he hasn’t let it go yet.

“Well, that’s an even bigger reason for me to be happy you’ve gotten out safe,” Oshiro adds, as the breeze starts up again.

Something occurs to Miyu. She takes the phrase that pops into her head and prunes it down to its smallest intelligible part. “I wasn’t aware anyone was so concerned about me.”

Oshiro leans the back of his neck against the bench. It’s a strangely puerile gesture; it reminds Miyu of one of the boys in her middle-school homeroom class. “Concerned– yes, we were concerned, I think. For the most part, though, I think we pitied you. The staff, the unwilling ones. We pitied you.”

Miyu stares at Oshiro. He keeps murmuring on. “Someone so young, drawn up into all of this, not of your own volition… it was a difficult thing to accept, especially with the image you presented. Clearly it wasn’t accurate,” he says, nodding in her direction. “But that’s all in the past now, and you’re– well. Better, I hope.”

Miyu’s lungs are starting to burn from where she’s been holding her breath. “You… you’re remarkably…”

“Oh, I’m a lot of things, I know!” Oshiro’s fond smile has returned, in spite of the shock Miyu’s certain she’s still wearing. “One of those things is… well, not quite late yet, but getting there. I’m due to meet my son for lunch. I know you were in a hurry as well, so I’ll get out of your hair.” He gently levers himself to his feet with a grunt, stretching tall. “Thank you for chatting,” he says. “Truly, it’s an honor.”

Miyu practically leaps to her feet. “I don’t– I don’t know what about me is worth honoring.”

Oshiro’s careworn features look no less serious and no less full of levity than they did a few moments ago. “It’s quite like I’ve told you already. You and me, we’ve survived. That’s got to be worth something, isn’t it?”

He half-turns to leave, but stops, as if remembering something. “I am quite glad I ran into you again. It really is a relief to see you well.”

Again . Miyu casts her mind back, and back, and– “Shibuya,” she exclaims. “You saw me in Shibuya.”

“Ah, yes! I recall I didn’t much want to bother you and your lady friend,” he says, clapping his hands together. His leather bag jitters with the motion. “That explains that. You know, I doubted myself for months, thinking is that really our detective… ”

“I’m not a detective,” Miyu says. This, at least, she can say with her shoulders back and her head held high. “Not anymore.”

“You’re not,” Oshiro says, and it is very clearly not a question. He nods. “Well, that’s good.”

Boldness infects Miyu, like a drop of color in a glass of water. She lets it spread until it reaches her voice. “I’m not a prince, either.”

Oshiro nods again. “You know, I didn’t think you were.”

With that, he turns to leave, and before Miyu can call him back he’s waving over his shoulder and slowly walking off into the crowd.

Miyu still feels her eyes heavy with tears. She turns away from the blazing sun and lets her legs carry her off into the wilderness, along and along and– and fucking away from where she was supposed to deliver Ann her wallet. Miyu’s rage nearly eclipses whatever else might be brimming within her. The force of it shoves her into a narrow gap between a residential building and another building so old and short and squat it could be a grandfather. She heaves a few breaths out like she’s vomiting, heavy and acid-tinged.

Miyu has always hated being pitied, and she imagined she would keep on hating it after the conspiracy wound down, and yet– and yet it grabs at her heart. A selfish child grabbing for a toy. She chose involvement, at the end of the day, and it was a choice and it was her choice and she had a say in what happened to her and no one was there to care about her so it didn’t matter what happened to her and no one was there to tell her not to pick up the gun and no one was there to tell her she was doing the right thing and no one was and no one was–

“Uh, hey,” a voice says, high-pitched but not small. “Are you okay?” 

When Miyu looks up, there are two girls standing well past arms’ length away from her. They look to be about Miyu’s age, give or take a few years. One of them is fidgeting with a lock of her long hair. Miyu feels her psyche put itself back together again by the sheer force of social cohesion.

“I’m fine,” Miyu grits, forcing a smile and sniffling, largely for dramatic effect. “Allergies. Left my, ah– inhaler at home, as well.”

The girl closest to Miyu mumbles something and hesitantly turns to keep walking. Her and her friend both linger for a moment before moving along, their chatting slowly stirring back up again.

Miyu’s legs ache from crouching for– minutes? Moments? An hour or so? She runs a hand through her hair; the sweat-sticky parts laid over her spine are hot, sun-warmed. Miyu rises and opens her phone to check Ann’s shooting location, and she can’t stop being aware of how she’s faded back into being a setpiece on the street again: a girl checking her directions. A girl tired from the heat. A girl who has a task to do.

Miyu’s feet hurt by the time she reaches the address Ann pointed out: they’re in a park, and Miyu spots all the assorted equipment and personnel from almost a block away. Ann answers her phone call swiftly enough, and when she comes rushing over in a blaze of pink & teal Miyu just wordlessly holds out her wallet.

“Oh my gosh, thank you so much! ” Ann goes through a few other assorted thank-yous and apologies before she seems to get the hint, and she cuts herself off, holding out her arms.

It takes Miyu a moment to realize she’s going in for a hug. She waves her off. “I’m sweaty,” she says. “It’s goddamn hot out, and I don’t want to mess up your–”

Ann hugs her anyway. Miyu has half a mind to shove her away, and yet– and yet this doesn’t feel like pity. The genuine appreciation in the lengths of Ann’s arms is simple stuff, easy for Miyu to understand. Accepting it has always been a war.

She lets Ann win this battle, sinking damply into her embrace.

—

JULY 2018 –

They’re on the couch sharing a heat-addled evening together when Ann first brings it up. 

“So,” she says, before wriggling into a slightly more comfortable position and surreptitiously stealing a bit of the box fan’s breeze. “How’s everything going?”

In all her previous experiences of being asked that question, Miyu had scripted a response well in advance that covered all the usual niceties. It’s going quite well, although I’m staying busy– work is never done! How about you? The script has long since faded with age, but even now she feels the pull to snap back into form. She doesn’t, though– at least partially because it no longer applies to her, and partially because half of her brain has been turned to soup from the heat wave. “Fine,” she says, “although I’m honestly not sure what you have to ask about.”

It visibly takes Ann a moment to work through Miyu’s evasive phrasing. “Well, yeah,” she concedes, “but I guess I was sorta asking about transition stuff.”

Miyu considers it for a moment. “It’s going well,” she says, before she can think too deeply about it. “I think I’ve got a handle on things.”

“Cool.” Ann seems about as checked out as Miyu is, slowly going boneless in front of the box fan. Miyu wonders how much of her concentration it’s taking to pose the conversation in the first place. Another minute drags on as they both half-watch whatever medical-procedural show Ann’s picked out. Miyu’s not sure she could be trusted to correctly name any of the characters.

“Oh yeah,” Ann says, as if her head has caught up with the conversation at hand. “Have you ever thought about, like… facial surgery?”

The back of Miyu’s neck prickles with defensiveness. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious, I guess.” Ann sniffs. If there is any veiled hostility in her tone or countenance, Miyu can’t find it. “Figured it could help you out with like… identity stuff.”

Miyu reads between the lines and digs Ann’s point out from her general lethargy. “Oh, it would certainly be convenient for me,” she concedes, looking out to the balcony so that she doesn’t have to focus on the lead actress’s horrific hairdo. “I could stay missing, in a sense.”

She goes to continue rambling, but Ann suddenly sits up, covering her mouth. Miyu does not ask her what’s wrong; she doesn’t feel like scripting anything right now.

“Oh my gosh,” Ann says, reaching for her phone and scrolling through something. “I just remembered, I–” She cuts herself off, intensely focused. 

Miyu watches her until she can’t stand the suspense any longer. “What are you getting yourself worked up over?” She asks. “Need to go cancel our joint plastic surgery appointment?”

Ann waves her off, her eyes not leaving her phone. It takes her a few more moments until she finds what she’s looking for, as evidenced by all the exhaustion leaving her body at once. “I remembered something,” she says, still reading through the mystical something she’s found. “A conversation I had with Futaba a while ago… we were talking about the Metaverse, and they had something to say about you.”

Miyu raises an eyebrow as Ann continues reading. “You don’t need to relay every insult they have for me.”

“No, no, it wasn’t that.” Ann sets her phone down and smooths her hair back in frustration, trying desperately to get it out of her way. “It was– ugh, I’m trying to remember what they said, but it was…” She stops just short of biting her nails.

When she deliberates a moment longer, Miyu tries coming up with something reassuring to say. “All Metaverse science is vague and poorly-explained. If you’re relaying it with any skill you’ll sound just the same.”

Ann laughs, just once, but it’s enough to dispel some of her exasperation. “It’s… they were talking about some of the widespread cognitive changes that had overwritten everyone’s memories and time and all that. There was a wave from the whole thing with Maruki, and another wave from the whole thing with Yaldabaoth, and in one of those waves– they’re not sure which– there were changes relating to you.”

Miyu feels terribly cold. Ann continues on.

“They were kind of suspicious why there wasn’t more coverage about you going missing. Even though you kind of fell off, no offense–”

“–none taken, I really did–”

“–there wasn’t nearly enough attention going around about you. Oh, and I remember something in particular they said: ‘at least all the unsolved-mysteries true-crime kinda people should have had something to play with, but nope, sorry, nothing.’” Ann pauses to drink the rest of her water. Miyu concludes that Ann’s impression of Futaba is decently accurate, but could use some work on the intonation side of things. 

“So,” Miyu says, and she thinks she might be interrupting out of turn but she really isn’t sure. She has to get the words out, though. “You think, or they think… there might have been some sort of collective-consciousness change to, what, take me out of the public sphere?”

“Maybe?” Ann’s uncertainty is palpable. “It’s not total– I mean, if it was, nobody would remember you at all. It probably just kind of… smoothed everything out for everyone that didn’t know you really well. I know I remember everything, at least, and the other Thieves do, too.”

Miyu considers this. There’s a creeping horror at the edge of her psyche– the idea that some being, somewhere, could just snap their fingers and she’d be surgically removed from existence– but it’s tempered by realization. “What you’re saying,” she says, “is that I won’t be recognized anymore.”

“Maybe?” Ann repeats. “It’s not like I can give a 100% guarantee, since we can’t get into the Metaverse and check, but it’ll probably be… better for you, I think.”

Skepticism mars Miyu’s relief. It all sounds plausible, but the Metaverse is a fickle, untamed domain that she can’t possibly hope to understand. She misses it. She despises it. Part of her doesn’t feel anything at all.

“Well,” she says, “shall we perform an experiment?” Miyu peels herself off the couch and rises. “I would enjoy some ice cream right about now, and we might as well see how a trip goes.”

Ann smiles as she slowly wavers onto her feet. “And you told me you didn’t have a sweet tooth.”

“I don’t,” Miyu lies. “If I don’t get something cold in the next ten minutes, I’m going to lose my mind, that’s all.”

Ann’s smile breaks into a grin. “Sure you do. That’s why you asked for ice cream instead of a refrigerated can of black coffee, didn’t you?”

Miyu bites back a smile of her own. “Of course,” she grits, unaware until now that detective instincts must be contagious. Ann is still amused as Miyu rejoins her at the door after dressing in the most cooling outfit she was able to withstand: a knee-length skirt and simple blouse. She wishes the sleeves were longer so that she could tug at the edges.

“You ready?” Ann asks, watching her zone out in the hallway.

“I think so,” Miyu says, stepping over the threshold. 

—

Miyu goes out in public without a mask and the world does not end.

She isn’t recognized, though she considers that par for the course at this point, and she isn’t hounded for press photos or autographs. The silence around her is welcome– or, at least, as close to silence as she can get on a mid-afternoon walk through city streets. Ann is at her side in a slightly asymmetrical stroll. Miyu thinks she might need new shoes soon; her sneakers’ soles feel like they’re on the verge of coming undone.

They pop into the convenience store and pick one freezy treat each, and Ann surreptitiously grabs a handful of other treats and foodstuffs– “for dinner,” she says, and while Miyu doubts that claim she lets her shove them onto the counter anyway. Miyu wants to wait until they get home to eat her soft-serve– she’s barely ever been comfortable eating in front of others– but it starts melting soon enough that she starts snarfing it down mid-way. Everything is fine on earth: not normal, but fine, and that’s always what she’s wanted.

—

On one sweltering morning in particular, Miyu is standing in the geometric center of the apartment, half-conscious, when a thought hijacks her brain and upends the table where her more diligent neurons were starting to lay out a nice little sequence of steps that she could have followed to make breakfast. The thought in the geometric center of her brain stands breathless and quietly snarling until she appends words to it. What do any of them even look like now?

She cobbles together hypothetical pictures of future Thieves in her mind. Shards of photographs make and remake themselves underneath her fingertips. She vaguely remembers Ann talking about Kitagawa dyeing part or all of his hair, and Akira letting his grow longer before cutting it short, but beyond that sparse description she’s left with nothing but scraps to work with.

What she remembers of the Thieves is smudged and indistinct, like an impressionistic painting: a wash of color, a veneer of joy. It wasn’t just joy, she knows that– but that’s all she sees in the rearview mirror.

It has been a long time since Miyu has ever felt drawn to them. They have a habit of doing that, those Charybdean little monsters, and according to Ann they’ve apparently had a couple of old men and some fortune-teller stuck in their whirlpool for years at this point, among others. Miyu feels as though the bulk of her brain must have melted from the heat if she’s thinking about joining them.

Still. She finds herself shaping images in her mind as she trudges through breakfast-like motions. Miyu knows none of them can enter the Metaverse anymore, but she tries thinking through Phantom Thief costuming updates anyway, wondering whether Kitagawa’s would get sleeker or whether he’d stitch more metaphysical bells and whistles onto his already-bizarre outfit. She’s already heard plenty of ideas about Ann’s costume from Ann herself, who has proposed seam-ripping the sleeves off her suit and adding a jacket, among other changes.

Miyu’s thoughts naturally slip to her own Metaverse garb. They come to very little fruition, and even the image of herself dragged out of past exploits feels hazy and indistinct. The memory of Crow is doomed to the same fate as the memory of the Thieves, it seems– just a blur of color and nothing more.

Something else will replace Crow. Miyu is certain even in the midst of her wandering thoughts and brewing headache: something else is coming. She casts it out of her mind for now as she murmurs her way back to her room and the comfort of the box fan waiting there.

—

Ann sloshes a fair quarter-bucket of water out into the hallway. Miyu looks up from the puddle to see Ann looking akin to if a drowned rat grew a mane and swathed itself in a bedsheet. “Did you move the black raspberry body wash to the other bathroom?”

Miyu looks back at her book on reflex for a moment before turning back to Ann and actually making an effort to scour her mind. “I have no idea,” she concludes, re-burying her nose in her book, but only enough for her to still be able to see Ann splatter her way back into the bathroom and then across the hallway, hunting ruthlessly.

“Are you sure? ” Ann shouts from Miyu’s bathroom. Miyu shrinks away from the Lovecraftian horror of wet spots on her bedroom carpet and tries to tune back in to whatever the words in front of her are doing. A handful of moments later Ann arrives triumphant– and no less soaked– in the living room, towel-wreathed and clutching the offending bottle. “I found it,” she says casually, as if she hasn’t made half of Miyu’s room into a swamp in the process.

“So you did,” Miyu says, stonelike. When Ann traipses back into the bathroom Miyu lets herself be amused, gracious in her obliviousness. Part of her almost forgets that Ann is the queen of this domain and she can slosh as much water around the place as she wants, so long as she doesn’t start flooding their downstairs neighbors. Part of her has almost forgotten that it was never Ann’s place to begin with– just her parents’.

When Ann steps out of the bathroom about an hour later, robed and with her hair wrapped up in a towelly updo, Miyu can’t help but pose a question to her. “Do your parents ever come to visit?”

Ann stills, phone in hand. Her brow furrows immediately. “I– sometimes they try to? Their schedules are pretty busy, so… not often?”

“Not once in the year-and-change I’ve been here, at least.”

“Look, it’s…” Ann’s posture is defensive, and yet the rest of her radiates unease. “I know it’s kind of weird, but they’ve got property in a few other places they can stay at, and they kind of have to be traveling constantly, so. It’s just kind of how things are, I guess.”

Miyu knows full well Ann is talking more to herself than to her. “Is it how you want things to be?”

Ann shrugs. “Does it matter? It’s how things are , and I’m just gonna have to deal with it. I like being left alone, anyway, so it’s probably for the better. Plus,” she adds, her tone growing pointed, “it’s the only way I could have taken you in.”

“Touché.” It’s all Miyu can do to acknowledge that their absence has left a hole that she’s curled up in. The situation still irks Miyu for the same reason what little she’s heard about Akira’s parents gets her fuming. Both of them were lucky enough to get parents, and yet they’ve just been set aside, outside whatever life they could have occupied. Miyu resists the urge to bite her knuckle or grind her teeth out of frustration. In the end, there’s nothing she can do about selfish adults– not anymore.

Except, of course, to be better. “My apologies. It just came to mind, is all.” She closes her book and lays it upon her lap. “Would you like to… to go and see a movie sometime?”

If Ann has caught on to Miyu’s social-engineering maneuver, she doesn’t show it, perking up visibly. “Sure! There’ve been some on my radar– lemme see which ones you would like too…”

Miyu lets the afternoon pass in a flurry, lets herself drift along with it. She imagines that if she’s going to be living in a cavity, she might as well fill it up as best she can, with the breadth of a full life. For both their sakes.

—

AUGUST 2018 –

Miyu is standing in the kitchen, trying to decide what she wants for lunch after opening and closing the fridge three times, when she realizes she does not want to die.

It isn’t so much a realization of presence as it is a realization of absence: she’s not looking at something new in the metaphorical living-room of her mind, she’s looking at the bright spot on the wallpaper where a picture used to be. There is nothing to be said about something that isn’t there, so she says nothing at all, grabbing a glass out of the cabinet and sloshing some ice into it. She fills it from a bottle of tea that Ann impulsively picked up on the way home the other day.

The fridge is brushed steel; she looks into her blurry reflection. She asks herself why now? and comes to no answer at all– it doesn’t make sense. She can’t point to any one thing she’s living for except for a nebula of possibilities somewhere in the future, the sorts of possibilities that are so indistinct they don’t have any words ascribed to them yet. All she can think of is that she is here and wants to continue being here, and the feeling is so foreign she almost imagines it belongs to someone else at first.

She thinks she should be happier. She thinks she should be afraid– that the pull will come back soon, that the millstone will be hung around her neck once more. She doesn’t know a single thing about what this is truly meant to feel like.

What Miyu does know is that it is now . She knows that she is warm in the indirect sunlight, and that she is lonely, and that she is not going to keep standing here until the end of time. She drinks some of her tea and moves to turn the air conditioning up, unclipping the controllers from Ann’s console as she goes. It’s as close of an invitation as she can muster, knocking on Ann’s door and waiting for an answer.

—

“Would you like to see something interesting?”

Miyu isn’t exactly sure why she’s asking Ann this on a sweltering Tuesday, but Ann obliges her anyway. “Yeah, sure,” she says, swaying her glass around in a nice little spiral. Miyu can hear the ice inside clink, chime-like. “Is it funny interesting or weird interesting?”

“I strongly suspect it’s both, actually.” Miyu steps out into the more open part of the apartment– the ambiguous space right in its center– and, after a moment of concentration, opens her Third Eye.

“Whoa. That’s…” Ann visibly tries to keep looking at Miyu, but Miyu can clearly see the way her eyes go unfocused and slide off her. “Freaky.”

Miyu closes her Eye and watches Ann snap back into focusing on her. “It’s a wild-card thing, I gather. I’m honestly surprised I’m still able to do it.”

“Yeah, me too, considering– I mean, I guess we didn’t destroy the Metaverse, exactly, but it’s gone. For us.” She tacks on the last part as an afterthought, and immediately Miyu notes the distant regret over her face.

“It’s not that useful,” Miyu says, mostly to bring Ann out of her reverie. “And it gives me a headache if I use it for too long.” She’s already started to feel the beginnings of one brewing in her forebrain, and she strides back into the kitchen to hunt down some water to correct it.

“I bet you could find uses, though.” Ann follows her just enough to maintain the conversation. “Like… sneaking ahead of someone in a long line? Getting into someone’s secret hideout? A jewel heist?”

“You’ve been watching too many action movies.” Miyu downs half a glass of water before another thought occurs to her. “It’s awfully rich of you to suggest I go do some thieving, anyway.”

Ann sticks her tongue out at Miyu. “You’re still a Thief, too! Once a Thief, always a Thief.”

This bestows a smile upon Miyu, albeit a begrudging one. “I suppose I am.”

“Just don’t use that to sneak around the apartment too much, alright?” Ann folds her arms over the bar. “I don’t wanna bump into you early in the morning cause you went all invisibility-mode on me!”

“I promise I won’t,” Miyu says, and she means it. There’s nothing for her to hide from anymore.

—

“Ok, how about this one?”

Miyu pinches the bridge of her nose. “It looks exactly the same as the last one you showed me.”

“Nuh uh! The lighting is slightly different– see?” Ann swipes back to the previous picture. “Are you sure this one’s color grading is better?”

“I don’t think she’ll care. ” It takes all of Miyu’s patience for her not to grab Ann’s phone and just send something along. “In fact, I imagine she’ll enjoy whatever you send her.”

Ann looks affronted, flopping back onto her beanbag. “But it–”

“You could just send her all of them.” Miyu kicks her legs a bit from where she’s perched up on Ann’s bed. “I think she’ll get a laugh out of it.”

Ann taps away for a few moments and then drops her head and her phone, almost folding in two. She mutters something lovesick and strained, and Miyu doesn’t try too hard to listen for it– those are words for someone else.

Miyu is the first to notice the reply half an hour later, when they’re both doing dishes in the kitchen. She sees Ann’s phone screen light up and peeks over to read a message that begins with “ wow one million Anns for me!!! ” and trails off into more heart emojis than Miyu knew existed. Miyu quietly taps Ann on the arm and finds something to do on the other side of the kitchen so she doesn’t have to deal with the ultrasonic sounds Ann is making.

When Miyu returns to her former spot, now occupied by a particularly bouncy Ann, she does not say anything about having told her so. She does, however, think it to herself at a moderate volume. It’s enough smugness for one day.

—

SEPTEMBER 2018 –

They’re in the middle of an ill-fated kart race when Ann posits a question to Miyu. “Have you ever thought about having kids?”

Miyu breaks into a scoffing sort of laughter as she falls into a pit. “I think you’ve picked the wrong person to ask. ‘My goodness, least mentally stable person I know, what do you think about having kids?’”

Ann only laughs along for a moment before she catches herself. “It just occurred to me, is all. And you’re fine .”

Miyu rolls her eyes. “I prefer your honesty to your pity.”

“You’re genuinely one of the most stable people I know. Like, you’ve basically been stuck here dodging a missing persons case for over a year and you haven’t gone totally bonkers– and you had a massive personal epiphany in the process! I’m just saying, I know I’d have gone stir-crazy around week 4 of all that. More like week 2, really.”

Miyu considers this as she earns a solid 6th place photo finish. She hasn’t really thought about her time here as hiding , but the more she thinks about it the more she craves something more– not leaving, necessarily, but deepening her life as she lives it now.

“I got over it,” she says, unceremoniously. Her voice dampens itself as she moves into an admission of sorts. “If I’m being completely honest… I feel like I’m using this time to catch up on all the things I didn’t get growing up. Learning household duties. Reading for fun. Having a friend.”

Her last utterance is almost whispered, but Ann hears it, if the affectionate tilt of her head is any indication. She bumps her forehead against Miyu’s shoulder as the loading screen rolls on.

“I think,” she says, carefully, “they’d be excited to meet you.”

Miyu does not ask her to clarify; she knows exactly what she’s talking about. “Perhaps,” she says, noncommittal. “And perhaps I’ll get driven out of Leblanc by a pitchfork-wielding mob.”

Ann laughs, but there’s no mirth behind it. “Oh, hush. They’ll understand– they understood you before, and this isn’t any harder to think through, really.”

Miyu turns, dislodging Ann. She suddenly feels very small and very shy, and it manifests in her voice as a wavering murmur. “They did?”

Ann, for once, does not meet Miyu’s gaze as she speaks. “Yeah. It all just kind of… clicked, you know? We all understood that we could have easily turned out like you. Not like– you, now , you, but Black-Mask-you. I already told you, I was this close to wiping out Kamoshida.”

The race goes to start, but Ann pulls the game back to the home menu to suspend it. The moment of silence before she speaks is one of the most heartwrenching silences Miyu has ever experienced. “You know we were all just kids, right?”

“I guess so,” she concedes, against every last bit of herself insisting on her guilt. It feels like an insurmountable victory– but it is a victory, and she lets it sit alongside them both, up on the couch and warm in its proximity. She leans herself against Ann, shoulder-to-shoulder and biting back tears. If she tries hard enough, she can pretend Ann isn’t doing the same.

But there’s no value in pretending anymore, and when her tears spill over her cheeks and her kart goes careening directly into a wall, Ann stops pretending, too. She presses the crown of her head against Miyu’s collarbone and they curl into one another. Breathing. The game goes on, somewhere else.

—

Miyu has a detective’s heart, so she asks herself: is there anywhere else I’d like to be?

Miyu asks herself: do I want to escape?

Miyu asks herself: did I ever want to?

Miyu asks herself: and what have I left in the negative space between my questions?

—

Long hair is still a foreign object to Miyu, but one that she’s gradually growing into. She learned (the hard way) in months prior that she has to brush it at least once a day or risk it turning into an utter mess worthy of Kurusu’s head. It’s to the point where it tickles her shoulder blades when she gets dressed. As much as she’d like to get it professionally doctored up, having to make conversation with a hairdresser sounds like torture, so she tolerates it, split ends and all. 

Braiding it herself has been a fruitless endeavor– she tried it once, didn’t get it right the first time, and decided that she’d never try it again– so on days when she can’t stand it getting in her way, she sits herself down in front of Ann’s skillful hands. She gets to pick the show, and lately she’s been springing for recordings of old orchestral concerts, listening to lilting melodies as Ann tries her best to avoid tugging.

“I was thinking about getting my hair redyed at some point soon,” Ann says, slightly muffled around the hair tie in her mouth. “Do you wanna come along?”

“I’d rather not,” Miyu says. In ages past she would have said such a thing because she didn’t feel like being a drag or having to navigate the pernicious social niceties of a hair salon. Now, she says such a thing because she simply doesn’t feel like it . It’s intoxicating. A thought occurs to her a moment later. “Although… I do have something related to ask of you.”

“Yeah?”

“How much do you know about dyeing hair at home?”

Ann giggles with delight; the sound is remarkably flutelike, and the piccolos on the TV join in with her for a moment. “Oh, lots! I used to help Ryuji bleach his hair, and I’ve helped Futaba redye their roots once before, though that time was actually mostly Ryuji at work.” She leans around into Miyu’s field of vision, and if her hair weren’t tied up it would have flopped directly into Miyu’s face. “Why do you ask?”

“I was wondering if you could coach me through the process,” she says, not sure whether to look at Ann’s half-illuminated face or the screen. “At least enough so that I don’t look like I’ve exploded a printer in your bathroom.”

“Ooh, I’d love to help!” Ann hops around to the other side of the coffee table so she can see her better. “What do you wanna do with it? Streaks, or the whole thing?”

“I was actually wondering how manageable a dip-dye would be.”

Ann gives her an excited little ooooooh before pulling out her phone, braid forgotten for the moment. “There’s any number of ways you could execute that– an ombre, or highlighting, or…”

Over the course of the afternoon, Miyu is blasted with a slew of pictures of what seems like every type of hair dye and style imaginable, and what they eventually settle on is some sort of ombre, as Miyu has come to learn. 

Ann brushes black dye down through Miyu’s trailing hair. Miyu tries not to stir, and she settles for tapping one foot against the bottom of the bathtub. She picks at the ragged hem of her shirt– it’s “ the dyeing shirt”, according to Ann, and is a requirement for anyone who goes under her skilled hands. It certainly shows its battle-scars well; even just being able to see the front panel, Miyu spots splatters of orange, green, red, pink. “When did you dye someone’s hair neon green?” She inquires.

Ann’s gloved fingers brush the back of Miyu’s neck. Miyu hopes she hasn’t left a dark stain. “‘Taba,” she says, “a while ago. We thought about putting a green streak through their hair, but it clashed way too hard with the orange. It was almost impressively bad.”

“Hm.” Miyu touches another splotch. “And the pink?”

“That was mine! I did it all myself.” Miyu can envision her preening smile with uncanny accuracy. “Wasn’t my best decision, considering I would have caught some pretty decent outrage at work if I fucked it up or had to cut part of it. But it was more fun than stopping by a hairdresser, so!”

“I imagined you would have pissed off your managers– or agents, or whatever you have– just by showing up like that.”

“Oh, some of them were totally shocked, for sure. But the worst part of it was when a couple of the other models called me an attention whore for it.”

Miyu imagines this is about how the experience of going to an actual hairdresser feels, complete with off-brand pop music, the drone of a fan overhead, and now: gossip . She hasn’t actually participated in some good ol’ gossiping for a while, and she dusts off some old responses to join in. “Don’t concern yourself with the opinions of fools.”

“I sure didn’t!” Ann stirs up the rest of the dye with a swish-swish. “I offered to dye a streak for some of them– you know, so they could get their own– and wouldn’t you know it, they didn’t like that suggestion either . Sooooo weird, right?”

Ann’s sarcasm is biting in a way that, strangely, invigorates Miyu. She tilts her head back just enough not to ruin Ann’s progress. “It’s almost as if they simply wanted an excuse to converge on whoever happened to catch their ire that day.”

“Hah. Yeah.” Miyu hears Ann set the dye pot aside and feels her comb through her hair with her hands. It’s soothing, and Miyu lets her eyes shut before Ann keeps talking. “They’re not actually that cutthroat, really. Some of them are. The older models usually aren’t– the ones who have been in the business long enough to get what fights are worth picking.”

“...Have you ever observed an actual brawl break out?”

“Once.” 

Miyu turns back to see her, and Ann shrugs. “It honestly wasn’t that interesting,” she says, motioning for Miyu to come over to the mirror. “They weren’t very coordinated, and this was around the time we were really getting into Thieving, so I was mostly just thinking about how sloppy their form was.”

Miyu steps in front of the mirror. Her hair hasn’t been fully brushed out yet, considering the dye is still wet, but the ink-black tinge at the end of her mane looks promising. “Wonderful job.”

Ann claps her hands with excitement. “Of course! Now we just gotta wait, so go sit back down– you’re not leaving the bathroom like this. Can’t have you gettin’ dye on everything.”

There was a time when Miyu was worried about staining Ann’s home with her mere presence. Now, she places herself back onto the rim of the bathtub– the one that she’d occupied not that long ago, testing out a bubble-bath formula that Ann had raved about. She looks up at Ann with what she hopes is gratitude, or maybe contentment, and either way she knows she has truth shining through her face. A truth she’s bound herself to.

Ann hops herself up onto the one uncluttered corner of the sink counter and looks down at Miyu. “You never answered my question, y’know. From the other day.”

Miyu blinks up at her. “Did I?”

“Yeah, the one about kids. I can cut it out if it’s a sore spot, but I’m genuinely curious, I gotta admit.”

Miyu crosses and uncrosses her legs, thoroughly confused. “What is there to be curious about?”

Ann shrugs. “I dunno, I was just– thinking about it, I guess. The sort of parent I’d want to be. Or that you’d be,” she adds, but it comes off as an afterthought.

Miyu is not one for big, brave questions– hasn’t been for some time– but something about the whirring fan and the tiny space they’re in beckons the question at the edge of her mind forward. “What were your parents like?”

Ann huffs a quick breath out that could almost be a laugh. It’s the same sort of sound she makes when she sees something amusing on her phone. She’s backlit from the lights over the sink, though, and her face all cast in shadow cuts an image of a melancholy angel. “They were fine,” she begins, “when I saw them. They only really started travelling in earnest when I was twelve. I remember because it was a bit after I’d met Ryuji and Shiho, and I was excited to invite them over because then we’d get to hang out all by ourselves and do… I don’t know, grown-up shit. Stay up and eat snacks and all that. And we did, sometimes, when I had the caretakers that didn’t stay overnight. And th–”

Miyu cuts in. She can’t stay silent. “I asked you about your parents and you told me about their absence. You’re telling me a story where they weren’t there. It’s– I’m asking you about a museum exhibit and you’re telling me about a crater in the ground where it used to be. Tell me–”

Miyu realizes that she is suddenly, almost violently, angry. She’s shakier than she wants to be, more teary than she feels her dignity can protect. She roughly wipes away the budding tears from her eyes and tries to bring herself back: to Ann’s wide-eyed, backlit stare, to the lonely dye-pot on the far side of the sink counter. “Tell me,” she says, “about a time when they were there.”

Ann slowly, tentatively, slips down from the counter and crosses to the bathtub. She gently hip-checks Miyu to get her to scoot over, joining her on the tub’s edge. “You’re going to get dye on you,” Miyu says.

“I don’t really care.”

“I don’t think this is very comfortable.”

“I don’t care.” Ann rests her elbows on her knees and clasps her hands, sinews tight. “Look, I… I know it looks like it hurts. And I guess it probably looks worse to you because– because you had the same thing going on, except worse, so much worse, and I know…”

She breathes. Her face is only visible in the barest profile to Miyu, mostly hidden by her hair, and Miyu finds herself wishing she knew whether or not Ann is crying, so she’d know whether to put her arm around her or not.

“I know it shouldn’t hurt,” Ann says, and oh, her voice is wavering. “But it– I– I can’t think of one.”

Miyu silently slides an arm over Ann’s shoulders, and Ann leans into her, shuddering but tearless. Her head is bowed. She only begins to cry in earnest when Miyu impulsively strokes her fingertips through her hair, leaning against Miyu as if she’s the only stable thing in a room full of ceramic and stone.

What strikes Miyu is how natural this feels– how smooth of a motion it is to bring her other arm around Ann, pressing her against her. The thought of being struck or shoved away doesn’t even enter her head. The only thing she fears is her own inaction in the face of Ann’s sorrow.

But she feels it herself, just the same: the ache of vacancy. An empty picture frame in a sold-out gallery. A gravestone, already inscribed, without its occupant. She lets the flood overtake them both and cries, gently, into the crown of Ann’s head.

—

A small handful– precisely, the amount of beads a small child can hold in one hand– things happen over that span of minutes.

Ann whimpers something about getting snot on Miyu’s shirt, to which Miyu replies something about the shirt being stained already. Ann tangles her fingers in Miyu’s hair, and Miyu figures if she stains her fingers it’s her own fault. Ann almost falls off the bathtub edge. Ann is– no, she’s not much of anything at all, right now, because she doesn’t have to be anything more than a weeping monolith in Miyu’s arms.

Miyu holds onto her selfhood in the midst of her tears, because she has to be holding onto something for Ann. Even with her atrophied social acumen, she can tell that this flood is years and years in the making. She has never seen Ann shudder and wail like this. She’s never seen anyone shudder like this, not even her mother. Miyuki hid her tears from the–

–from the child she thought was her son. 

Miyu’s own sobs renew themselves with the force of it. She’ll never know. The thought is echoic and damning, slicing through her brain. She’ll never know, she’ll never–

Miyu only realizes she’s said something out loud when Ann’s arms tighten around her. She’s not even sure what she’s said, or what Ann heard over the still-droning fan, but whatever it was, it’s enough to make Ann murmur reassurances into the crook of her neck. When Ann shifts, Miyu turns, just enough for her to see Ann’s inquisitive eyes and the tear-tracks running below them. 

“What was your mom like?” Ann’s voice is high and slightly garbled. Miyu has never heard her sound this much like a child before. Miyu breathes, shaky, drawing back just enough for her to feel a bit less like she’s being set on fire. The fan, her stinging throat, Ann’s warmth– it’s overwhelming, all of a sudden.

She owes Ann an answer, though. “Tired,” Miyu begins. “Distant. It often felt as if she was… off in her own mind, where I couldn’t reach her. That didn’t stop me from trying, though. When she was– was all there , so to speak– she was… kind. Very patient with me. More patient than she had any right to be. She died when I was eleven, right when I was starting to learn how to be a good child. I wish I could have given her better.”

Miyu picks her head up to behold Ann’s horrified stare. “Miyu,” she says, voice whisper-high and wavering. Almost hissing: rain on volcanic stones. “You don’t– you were a kid . She was… you– you were good. I know you were a good kid. And even if you weren’t, it wasn’t your–”

“I know what you’re trying to say,” Miyu interrupts. “It doesn’t matter. It’s done. I was– I don’t know what I was, except that I’m done being it now.”

Ann sniffles, then coughs out a few laughs. “I asked you to tell me about your mom,” she says, “and you told me about how you failed her.”

Miyu considers a spot on the opposite side of the bathroom where the tile grout needs cleaning. “...That’s possible.”

Now Ann’s laughter is fledged, beating its wings against the damp patch on Miyu’s shirt. “We’re both pretty bad at this.”

“So it seems.”

“Wanna try again?” Ann leans away just far enough to grab a hand towel off its rack, wiping her face down as best she can.

“You first.” Miyu meet’s Ann’s eye in profile, and Ann shoves the other dish towel at her, still smiling in the midst of her tears.

“Sure, I can– sure. Yeah.” Ann is a bit further away from Miyu, now, and as soothing as her presence was before, Miyu finds herself appreciating the breathing room. Ann braces her elbows on her knees before she begins. “My mom is half-white– she grew up in America, but she’s got family around Finland, and… somewhere else around the Mediterranean, I think. I forget exactly where. My dad’s full Japanese, and most of his family is around Nagoya. I think we have a couple of uncles further north, though. Either way, I never got to know either side of the family beyond my parents all that well– Mom’s family is a massive plane ride away, and Dad’s family nearly cut him off after learning he was gonna marry Mom. They didn’t actually go through with it, but I don’t think things ever got back to the way they were. I’m missing context, I guess, and I don’t really want to ask him about it.

“Either way, I think that’s all important for… understanding why they are the way they are, I guess. I always got the sense both of them just kind of had each other. And me, too– they did take me along on their trips, for a while. I lived in Finland for a solid several months back when I was six or seven. But around the time I was twelve, they decided they wanted to travel more and that they wanted me to have a more stable life growing up, and that was that.”

Miyu’s ribcage hurts. She’s not sure whether it’s from her being hunched over for so long or something else– some other ache migrating there. “Did you want to go with them?”

“...I don’t know.” Ann is looking at her chipped nail polish. “I wanted to be with them, sure. But I– I did also want that sort of stable life they were talking about. People I could return to. And I got those people, in the end; I met Shiho and Ryuji just a few weeks after we had that conversation. And then the Thieves, years later, and then after that… and then you.”

Miyu’s face is already hot from all the tears and her growing headache. Her blush only deepens. Ann clasps a hand over her shoulder before she continues. “I do think about what would’ve happened if I’d argued. Demanded to go with them. Actually gone with them, and never put down roots anywhere. I do like this life I’ve made– all of it. I love all of it so much. 

“I just wish they were here to share it with me.”

Ann lets all the air out of her lungs in a single monumental breath, almost ragged with the sheer force of it. “It hurts, saying it out loud,” she murmurs. “But it’s been true for a while. I keep… I keep thinking about them getting to meet you.”

Again, bizarre anger-by-proxy creeps into Miyu’s veins. She almost wants to say they don’t deserve the honor , but doesn’t let anything so banal as words into the silence they’ve made. All she does is lay her upturned palm over her own leg, and when Ann grasps it her grip is hard and unyielding.

“I guess that wasn’t really about them either,” she says, swaying a bit from side to side. “But it’s enough, I think. I’ll try and remember any funny stories for later, cause– cause now doesn’t really seem like a funny story time.” She turns her gaze on Miyu, expectant yet open. “Do you want to talk about…”

“No,” Miyu begins. “Yes. I don’t know. The last time I talked about her was– ugh. This might actually qualify as a funny story if it weren’t so…”

Ann’s giving her a strange, amused look, and Miyu barrels on. “I spilled my guts about her in Leblanc . To Akira and Futaba. They were both quite literally behind the counter, minding their own business, and I– I still don’t know why I said what I said. I’m still embarrassed about it.”

Ann lets go of Miyu’s hand to smooth it over her shoulder. “I get you, I get you. Oversharing hits the best of us sometimes. Is sharing like this any less embarrassing?”

“Oh, it’s less awkward by far . You didn’t make me a flat white thirty seconds ago.”

Ann finally bursts into laughter, teetering forward and nearly falling off the bathtub rim with the force of it. Miyu feels some of it rub off on her even through her residual shame, and she slings herself upright as Ann pitches back upright. “I’m sorry, I don’t wanna laugh at you but that’s–”

“Oh, it’s funny, alright. I don’t mind a laugh at my expense every now and again.” She holds out a hand, and Ann hesitates for a moment before she takes it. “I’m getting some water. You can come and listen out here.”

When they pass by the bathroom mirror, Miyu is almost shocked to see her hair running half-dark over her back– she’d nearly forgotten why they had been ensconced in the bathroom together to begin with. She pauses to run her fingers through it, and Ann’s smile over her shoulder is fond and pleased. “Looks like it came out well!”

“It is lovely,” Miyu says, before part of her can yank the words away from her. “Thank you for your help.”

“No problem! It was fun. And getting to talk with you like this is… nice, in the end. Definitely really cathartic, heh.” Ann still seems faintly amused through her tiredness as they both make their way out to the kitchen.

“It seemed like that was a long time coming,” Miyu posits, handing a glass to Ann and taking one for herself. Ann nods. When they’re both sat upon the bar, Miyu can’t help but remember the countless other times they’ve shared these places: rare day-off sleep-worn breakfasts, late-night shared desserts, odd afternoons poring over books and photos. For the first time in a long time, she doesn’t feel the weight of all the passed time– she feels as if she’s standing atop it, atop a pinnacle of understanding they’ve built together. 

She hopes that it will hold.

“I don’t know if I really have all that much to say about her,” Miyu begins. She can feel Ann’s rapt attention on her, bound up in the way her pale hair spills over the counter. “I… took my name from hers, as you know. Not the same characters, but she was still Miyuki, and I am still Miyu.

“I keep remembering her in fits. Visions, almost. Just vague blurs of a person. She cared, and she was distant, and I’ve said all this already, so you know the extent of what I remember. She was a sex worker, which– complicated things, for both of us. It’s… strange, hearing you talk about distant family.” Miyu traces the water-stains on the counter and does not look up at Ann’s face. “I’m not even sure if she had anyone left. Certainly not anyone willing to support either of us, or anyone that ever visited. I always wanted to ask about them– and maybe I did, when I was very little. I don’t know. I know only that she was desperate and trying to hold everything together as best she could.

“It all had to fall apart eventually. I don’t know why it happened when it did. I don’t know a lot of things about her, and I think she kept things from me because I was young and a bit stupid and utterly naive, above all else. I think she wanted me to be that way. Innocent. Sometimes I can even believe that she thought of me as innocent.

“She killed herself. I found her. I remember it very well and very poorly at the same time. Her hair was out of place and half-tangled, as if she’d only brushed it on one side. She was very thin and her collarbone was jutting out of her skin at a strange angle that casted a small perfect triangular shadow. But that was because her shoulder was propped up oddly and– and I don’t remember what she was wearing. I don’t remember what her last words to me were. I don’t know why it happened. She left no note. I don’t know why it happened. I don’t–”

Miyu’s throat hurts. At some point Ann has silently moved her hand to be right next to Miyu’s own. She allows Ann to touch her fingertips to her knuckles; this is a scene of strange details now.

“Sometimes,” she says, “when I think about everything I’ve done– everything I’ve done here, becoming a woman– I think about her. I know very little about her, and yet I’m sure that she felt her womanhood was a prison. A curse. Both. Maybe it wasn’t always that way, to her, but there must have been some part of it that confined her. The fact that I’m freed by the same things that caged her– sometimes it feels like I’m righting a wrong, being freed this way. Sometimes it feels like an insult I’ve leveled backwards at her, across time. That I’m better, somehow, rising above her suffering. I don’t want to be better, not really. I don’t think I can ever be better than she was. I think she deserved better than anyone in this wretched city was willing to give her, and there’s nothing I can do about that now.”

“Except keep living,” Ann says. Her voice isn’t whisper-soft anymore– it’s simple and matter-of-fact. Burning bright.

“Except live on,” Miyu echoes. A new question slowly sneaks out from behind the monolith of her grief. “I don’t… I don’t think I’ve ever had cause to ask, but. What is womanhood to you? ”

Ann makes a thoughtful hm and looks down into her glass. It was once identical to the glass in Miyu’s hands now, but Miyu can still see a chip around the top where they couldn’t quite glue it back together properly. “It’s complicated, for sure. It certainly makes me happy, being the way that I am, and you know how much I enjoy getting to dress myself up and express myself that way. I don’t know whether that’s part of my personality or all part of my gender– like, whether I’d enjoy it the same way if I were a guy. But it’s there, anyway, and it’s part of what being a woman is about to me. Expressing it exactly the way I want.”

She takes a sip of her water, resting her head on one hand. “And– and all of that kind of gets filtered through the fact that I’m attracted to other women, so. There’s that. It’s… different, now that I know that. I feel differently about it. It’s hard to phrase, but…”

Ann tilts her head to look over at Miyu. “It’s kind of funny. Seeing you, growing into womanhood– and choosing it, seeking it out– it makes me proud. Of you, of course, but I also feel proud to be a woman. You look so happy, nowadays. It’s understated on you, like I don’t think you were ever the giggling type, but– but you look so happy, and it’s hard for me not to share in that happiness when you’re enjoying the same things I’ve always had.

“It’s like a reminder,” she says, peering up at Miyu, mired in nighttime blue and kitchen-lightbulb yellow. “That it’s a joyful thing, being a woman. In spite of everything else.”

Miyu feels shocked and awed in equal measure. “I’m honored,” she murmurs, because there’s nothing else she can say.

Even as Ann slumps forward, clearly exhausted, she bears her praise with grace. “I’m glad everything ended up like this. This all feels… good. Right. For both of us.”

“For both of us,” Miyu mirrors.

“And,” Ann adds, a few moments later, “I don’t know for sure how your mom would’ve felt, but I think… I think she’d be proud of you too.” 

Miyu is too tired to cry any more, but her body reacts like she’s going to, churning up her insides as if she’s on a rough tide. She drinks from her own glass until the waver in her throat goes away. “She’s in our living room, by the way. I moved her urn out of my closet a long time ago.” 

“Oh.” Ann rotates herself around to look out over the living room, inquisitive in the moonlight. “Is she that– the blue urn, there? On the shelf?”

“Yes.”

Ann pauses for a moment, then smiles and waves hello, quick and excited. Miyu almost tells her off for being so morbid, but– but it occurs to her that as far as she knows, the only other person to ever greet Miyuki so enthusiastically was Miyu herself.

She deserves this, she thinks, and Miyu hopes that wherever she is– sunk into the sea of souls, or somewhere even beyond those shores– Miyuki can feel the joy that lives here.

It’s all she can hope for. Miyu looks back into her glass and lets her eyes slip shut.

—

“Your hair is pretty,” Ann says, when she’s finished brushing it out many minutes later.

“It’s your handiwork as well as mine,” Miyu says, taking an errant lock of it in hand. “You should be proud.”

“I am,” she says, putting the brush down and leaning into Miyu’s frame of vision. “But you should be too, then. You put in the hard work to grow it all.”

Miyu chuckles, despite herself. “It’s not hard work, growing hair.”

“Maybe not. But it happened anyway.”

Miyu understands, deeply and distinctly, that Ann is talking about a multitude of things at once. She touches on each of them, one by one, and then lets them lie as she drops her head back and settles herself into a repose at the base of the couch, upon the freshly-vacuumed carpet.

—

OCTOBER 2018 –

Miyu is getting ready to shower when it happens.

She is partially undressed– her shirt only off one arm, the old bra she’d gotten from Ann still firmly in place, a stripe of grey over her flowering torso– when she looks in the mirror.

Something holds her there; she stands and watches. Her gaze wanders over the dark ends of her hair and the edge of her ribcage, now rounded over and barely visible after a year of living well. There are stretch marks visible where her shorts have slid down to expose her hips. Miyu looks in the mirror and she sees someone whose seams gladly struggle to contain the new life she’s wrought for herself.

But the blue looks like a trick of the light, at first. 

She has no reason to believe it’s anything but some quirk of light and reflection that has placed a blue mote of light there, just over her shoulder, flickering and wavering. The yellow-white light over the bathroom at large makes it look even more out-of-place, and Miyu briefly wonders where it could have come from.

On a whim, she looks over her shoulder. 

It is the size of a clenched fist, ragged at its edges and casting so little light that Miyu could not read by it if she tried. It is the color of a bygone shore, of a sea that has held a dozen bodies. It hurts to look at directly; it is a kinder presence in the mirror.

Miyu turns back to look into the mirror, and– and there is a lurch within her, so violent and jarring that for a moment she feels as if she’s been stabbed. She remembers what it feels like, the sudden painless shock and then the hollowing-out of it, and she braces herself for the pain to come. She finds nothing but her heart still pitter-pattering and her eyes going wide, glimmering, in the mirror.

The second lurch is just as unexpected as the first. She braces herself against the counter, white-knuckling its edge. Her breathing evens out just enough for her to dissect the sensation, and she finds that it felt– felt like when she swapped between her Personas, in those few bygone, lonely moments where she could wear both masks freely. There was always a moment in the midst of the shift that set her teeth on edge: the vacancy in-between, where without Robin Hood’s bravery or Loki’s rage she was left with nothing but herself, alone.

She knows she is not alone anymore.

Good evening, maiden.

The voice is dulcet and smooth. Low, full of power and poise. Miyu’s head whirls with it. Do you feel the change in the wind? Do you see the shoreline in the distance? Do you see the bodies in the water?

Miyu feels her insides burning, but it’s a pleasant burn– not pain, but potential simmering there, writhing. Begging to be set free.

She speaks again, slow and deliberate. Tell me, O muse, of the girl who ripped herself open and transformed herself anew. Sing, goddess, of her rage which brought misfortune down upon those who have wronged her. Tell me of the girl that stands at her side. Tell me of the spells she has wrought upon herself.

Miyu’s hands go to her face. She feels it– she feels it! The barest edges of something metal and cold, ornamented with horns and a fell, jutting beak. She knows her mask for what it is. And yet it is not entirely there; her fingertips scrabble over her cheekbones, where the edge of it lies, finding purchase against the mask in one moment and nothing but flesh in the next. It isn’t there, it isn’t there, it isn’t–

Maiden, the voice commands, inscribe this unending story in your own words! Take up the beauteous enchantments at your fingertips, and drink deep of all that this world has to offer! I am thou, and thou art I– LIVE!

Miyu tears the mask off her face with a silent scream and looks, eyes blazing, into the mirror.

Behind her stands Circe, veiled and radiant, adorned in silks and pelts and feathers alike. She brandishes her distaff in one hand and lets her spindle hang freely in the other. Miyu cannot see her eyes, but her teeth are bared, visible through the dark veil that covers her upper half.

Beside Circe, two beasts lie docile. The white lion inclines its head proudly– a truthful being, in the end. The eyeless black wolf at her other side is more wary, more malcontent, but it is still obedient.

Miyu realizes, moments before the flames recede, that her mask is different. She turns it over in her hands even as it fades, trying to commit its shape to memory: still horned, still beaked, but warm in its darkness and open eyeholes. When her hands are made empty, she looks into the mirror and sees nothing more than the girl she began this day with. The blood in the sink is gone. She is still half-dressed.

Circe’s presence within her is not the childish assurance of Robin Hood or the dread promise of Loki. She is fluid, joyful, calculating all at once. Possessed of so much care and so much resentment at its misuse. She feels like thread held between the fingers; she tastes like sweet wine and bitter medicine and seawater. She sounds like hope. 

Miyu tugs her shirt back on. She knows Ann should be home today, and she races back out to find her, and she stumbles into the living room and she sees her there and she– 

—

Ann gently touches Miyu’s shoulder as the train’s brakes groan. “We’re the next stop,” she says, only briefly glancing to Miyu before she looks back out at the sunset.

It’s not a very good sunset, strictly speaking– half-hidden by skyscrapers and the bodies of commuters– but it is there, lining everything in the car with gold. Miyu smooths down her skirt and checks the time on her phone again. It’s barely a few minutes past 5. Her heart keeps betraying her, rising every time she remembers what she’s about to do. Circe smooths it down, sometimes, but more than that she makes Miyu’s heartbeat feel weighty in a way that it didn’t before. There’s power, there, in that little thing.

Miyu takes a deep breath before she turns to Ann. “We don’t… have any plans in particular, do we?”

“Nah.” Ann rifles through her purse half-heartedly. “I figured it’d be better if we kept things open, since– well, I think everyone’s gonna pelt you with questions.”

“Oh, great, another interview.” Miyu almost rolls her eyes, but Ann’s fond smile quashes any bitterness she might have.

“It’ll probably be less boring than any of the TV spots you had to do.”

‘Less boring’ registers as the understatement of the decade to Miyu’s ears. If there is anything she knows the Phantom Thieves for, it is that they are the single most interesting people she has ever met.

The train slows again, and although it looks and sounds and feels exactly the same as the last two stops they’ve passed, there is a sense of finality to it. Miyu rises and shuffles her way out of the car and onto the platform. An old messenger bag of Ann’s is at her side– it barely has anything in it, but she needs something to grab onto, to keep her tethered through a thing like this. It fulfills the same function the old briefcase did.

They walk; the sun sets. Miyu watches Yongen-Jaya fade into being around them, the neighborhood growing clustered and communal. The crossroads before Leblanc is just familiar enough to be comforting, although almost all of its comfort is swallowed up by her dread.

Ann pops a couple steps ahead of Miyu and waves wildly, and for a moment Miyu worries about being seen early , before she was really ready for it– but it’s just the eldest Sakura slowing his pace, trying to spot Ann underneath the streetlights.

“Well, there you are!” He waves a salute of his own to Ann and shuffles over to join them. Sakura looks much like he did a year and a half ago: slightly older, and with a slightly better-trimmed beard, but just about the same. No, there is something different there– his smile is wider. “All the others are already gathered over there. I’m just heading on home for my boring old man time.”

“You’re not boring!” Ann protests. “But thank you for letting us have the space again.”

“You don’t need to keep thanking me for that and you know it. It’s yours if you need it– always has been.” Sakura turns to regard Miyu with a stony eye. “And you’re the roommate I’ve heard so much about, huh?”

Miyu nods. She’s maskless, but her hair is braided over her back and her blouse highlights her growing figure. If he does recognize her, he’d have to do some serious detective work to back it up, or at least step away from a few assumptions he might have.

But if he recognizes her, he doesn’t show it in his own brisk nod. “Nice to meet you. The others’ll fill you in on the rules of the road around here, but just in case they forget: don’t go behind the counter without Akira or Futaba there, clean up after yourself, and if you need a place to crash there’s at least two spare futons in the room above the cafe. Ask Akira first if you’re gonna stay up there for the night, though– it’s technically his room.”

Miyu nods along to the explanation as dutifully as she can. It’s amusing, hearing him prattle on to her as if they’ve truly never met– as if she isn’t oh so familiar with the intricacies of Leblanc and its usual inhabitants– but in the end, she’s grateful for it. It feels like a few stepping-stones laid out just for her.

Sakura inclines his head in Ann’s direction. “You wanna do the next part of the whole spiel?”

Ann blinks at him and mutters something about “what next part?”

Sakura shrugs and, without warning, fixes Miyu under his intense gaze. “Futaba’s my kid, and they’re not a girl. Refer to ‘em like they are and we’ll kick your ass out. They’re not a boy either, mind you– and neither is Akira, for that matter.”

Miyu can’t stop herself; she half-coughs a quick “what?”

Sakura scoffs. “You’ll figure it out. It’s not that hard to understand– hell, I think I’ve about got it and I’ve got one foot in the grave already.” 

“Oh, don’t say that!” Ann bustles to Sakura’s side and pulls him into a half-hug. “You’ve got plenty more time and you know it!”

Sakura begrudgingly loops an arm around her shoulders for a moment before turning back to Miyu. “That’s all. I just figured I’d give you the spiel for them. They’re probably tired of doing all the legwork themselves, and they said it was alright if I did that part of the introductions.”

Aside from the fact that Miyu feels like the pot being told how to refer to the kettle, she’s still reeling a bit from what he’s told her about Akira. He’s changed too , she muses. Her drive to step back into the Thieves’ lives was vague before, but now she feels all the more drawn to them– she’s curious . 

“I understand,” Miyu replies, with a gracious nod. “Thank you for allowing me in.”

Sakura looks mollified. “Don’t thank me. It’s the rest of ‘em that’re gonna keep you on.” 

There’s an implied or not resting there, eyeing Miyu from the underbrush, and Miyu does her best not to antagonize it. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Sakura and Ann say their goodbyes, and Ann and Miyu hang back in place as Sakura goes plodding off back towards his home. “He’s rather protective,” Miyu murmurs. 

“It’s kind of cute, isn’t it?” Ann waits for a moment before nudging Miyu on. They stroll for a few lazy paces before Ann pipes back up. “How’re you feeling?”

“About?”

“Seeing everyone, duh.”

“...Not horrible.” Miyu half-rolls her eyes as Ann stifles a giggle. “You’ve earned my respect, and I suspect they will in time.”

Ann’s laughter fades quickly. “Yeah, but that respect’s worthless if you don’t extend it to them. We’re a package deal. I think you’re smart enough to figure that out, but still.”

It’s purely a hypothetical, but even the possibility of Ann’s rejection still stings. Miyu wasn’t expecting it at all, and she’s only been struck that deeply by anyone’s opinion of her– only been affected right down to her core– three times before. At least, the three times she’s been willing to admit it to herself. If she really thinks about it, there’s more sentiments lingering there, in Sae’s idle criticisms and an errant word from Haru and–

–no, she doesn’t have the time for past papercuts right now. Ann is right here, before her, watching her with her sky-blue eyes. “I understand,” Miyu says, “and I’ll try not to let you down.”

Ann’s hand brushes against her own, and just before they turn the corner they stop, just long enough to entwine their fingers and hold tight. 

It’s dark enough for Leblanc’s light to be spilling out into the street, uncontained and warm. Miyu sees them there in the back: the gentle halo of Haru’s hair, the quiet dignity of Makoto’s brow, the lopsided gleam of the pins and buttons on Ryuji’s jacket. She counts off the rest, and finds almost all of them there, except for Sumire, Ann, and–

Ah. Akira comes bustling out from the back, still adorned in his apron and wiping down his glasses. He has, indeed, grown his hair out, and the longest strands of it just barely brush the junction between his neck and shoulder. He’s laughing, presumably at a joke someone’s told, before he disappears back behind the counter.

Miyu considers the weight of her presence and the words she bears. She knows she’s about to share an unfathomable discovery with them– and that she has much to discover about the Thieves, too. 

Ann opens the door. The bell chimes, and she steps through, looking over her shoulder to regard Miyu with nothing less than genuine affection.

Miyu feels, at last, worthy.

She steps over the threshold.