Chapter Text
Ren's bedroom is warm and clean when he opens his eyes, light streaming in through the window on his left and school books stacked neatly on the desk to his right. He stretches his arms overhead, rolls his neck through a series of satisfying pops, and scoots himself to the foot of the bed to face the day.
He hasn't remembered his dreams recently; it's as if his memories of how his mind spent the night are corralled in a closet just far enough back that he can't reach them from the entrance.
He scrolls idly through his phone, checking the date, the schedule, his messages. None of it matters. Today is just like every other day in his hometown: the same chores and studies and after-school club he'll be a part of until he graduates.
When he walks outside, he'll follow the same path to his third-year classroom, have the same bland conversations with the same bland friends, and will perform his tasks easily without any fear that he won't measure up to what's expected of him.
When he gets home, his parents will praise him for jumping through the hoops so carefully placed for him and for living as an upstanding, productive student who goes with the flow and avoids making waves.
Sometimes he almost wishes he could have more to show for his seventeen years of existence than top test scores from a tiny rural high school. Occasionally he'll actually entertain the possibility that there's more he could be doing than simply maintaining the status quo. But mostly, he just feels tired.
---
One of the featured phone applications is an online chess game. It calls to Ren, a little spark of excitement that runs over his back like a cool stream of water.
He sends the link to his friends on the club basketball team group chat, asking if anyone wants to play, but doesn't get any responses.
When he asks them about it at practice, everyone reacts with the same polite, noncommittal dismissal, except for the team captain, who looks him in directly in the eye, hand on his shoulder, and says, solemnly, "that sounds like nerd shit, bro," before disappearing into the locker room.
Ren can't quite reconcile the depth of disappointment he feels over a stupid game. He plays online with strangers for a few days, but it just isn't the same as playing against a friend, an opponent whose face he can visualize.
---
The third-years are heading to Tokyo for a class trip. Ren doesn't know much about Tokyo, all things considered, but he's looking forward to the change of pace.
There's a strange, familiar sensation that settles over him as the train pulls into Shibuya station, like he's traced this exact path before. He navigates the station with ease while his classmates stumble through crowds with their noses buried in maps. He shrugs, supposes he's just always had a sixth sense for these things.
A photoshoot is blocking Central Street and the path to their hotel. Ren pauses to survey alternate paths and his eyes meet those of the girl in front of the camera. They're striking, a sparkling aquamarine that combined with her long blonde hair makes her stand out, practically glowing in a sea of browns and blacks.
He feels like he's seen her—not improbable, given that she's clearly famous—but by the looks of it, she's trying to place him too. Or maybe she's just reacting to his staring. He hears his chaperone call his name and trots away to catch up with the rest of his class, leaving the mystery unsolved.
The instance on Central Street isn't the only one. Ren's roommate is flipping past a news special about an art gallery on their hotel room TV when he feels it again—he swears he's seen the blue-haired boy onscreen wear a kitsune mask, the old man beside him in full makeup and a bright yellow kimono, but can't think of what program he could have been watching when he saw it. He thinks maybe he dreamed it.
When they visit a café, the fluffy-haired shop attendant actually asks him if they've met before. And Ren is relieved to say he thinks so, even if he can't say where. She hands him his coffee and thanks him for visiting and he can't explain why it's the happiest he's ever remembered feeling.
---
The strange events of Tokyo have shuffled to the back of his mind when something in Ren's hometown finally does change.
"Good morning, class," his homeroom teacher greets as always. "Today we have a new student."
A brown-haired boy steps out from behind her and Ren's heart does a somersault, his gut pulled up to his throat by the same sensation of familiarity that gripped him before.
"Hello," he waves with his left hand, "my name is Goro Akechi. I just moved to town and am excited to get to know you all." He finishes with a bow.
When Ren looks up, Goro Akechi is standing directly in front of him.
"Is it alright if I sit here?" He gestures to the empty desk beside them. Ren nods.
"It's a bit scary being the new student, isn't it?" he asks, like Ren would know.
"Wouldn't know," he mumbles.
"Wouldn't you?" Akechi's eyes narrow, just slightly. Strange. "Anyhow, I suppose I'll need to rely on someone like you to guide me. Are you up for the challenge?"
Ren can't make sense of the vibe he gets from Akechi. He doesn't know how, but Ren knows that the politeness is fake and the fire behind his eyes is real. He hasn't spoken more than two words to this boy, yet he feels the bond thick between them like braided cords of leather.
"Sure, I'll show you around," Ren says.
"Great," says Akechi, then, like it's a normal thing to do, grabs the phone from Ren's desk and taps it to his own.
"So you have my contact information," he explains to Ren's raised eyebrow.
---
He pulls up the new contact and settles into bed.
Ren Amamiya: New Invitation to ChessGame: https://chessgame.io
Ren Amamiya: Wanna play?
Goro Akechi: Accepted Invitation to ChessGame
Goro Akechi: Of course. I wouldn't turn you down now.
---
Ren dreams of a dusty attic. He rolls to his side on a thin, twin-sized mattress, forces his eyes open to take in the cobwebs that have grown in the corners of the ceiling. He's been asleep for so long, and yet every nerve in his body craves rest, lax and ready to collapse back into dormancy. When he reaches his phone, he finds it coated thick with dust, the battery so dead that it refuses any attempt to rouse it. Ren relates. Just before he succumbs to exhaustion once more, he catches the blue glint of wings fluttering in the corner of his eye. And then he wakes up.
His bedroom is warm and clean when he opens his eyes, light streaming in through the window on his right and school books stacked neatly on the desk to his left.
On the morning of February third, Goro Akechi feels his body lurch forward, like the rotation of the earth has suddenly reversed direction.
Seconds pass in stasis, then a wave of exhaustion more powerful than anything he's felt in any world or reality washes over him and his vision fades to black.
---
He's lying on his futon, opening his eyes to his apartment in Tokyo.
Something is wrong. Today is—what is today? He pulls his phone from its spot on the floor to check, but the numbers swim on the screen, flickering through time with no indication toward settling.
He hoists himself up and is immediately washed back down, down into a roiling void of sleep.
---
Awake, again. His memories persist, at least. That's reassuring. He scrambles across the room to the small desk in the corner. Notepad, pen. He's able to record three bullet points before he's dragged under once more.
• Time unmeasurable
• Consciousness unpredictable
• Ren?
---
He confirms that his notes remain intact, and that he remains in the same location. The desk chair, this time.
For the second time in recent memory, he sets off toward Yongen-Jaya in search of Ren.
The café sign is flipped to "Open," but no one is present. Goro barely makes it inside before he feels his knees begin to buckle and his body lurch forward.
---
Sojiro Sakura is behind the counter. Sakura doesn't seem to realize his cafe has been hosting an unconscious former assassin for an undetermined amount of time.
Goro picks himself up, dusts off his jacket, and approaches the bar.
"Welcome in. What can I get for ya," Sakura asks, absent-minded and toweling a plate as if Goro had walked in off of the street like a normal customer instead of one crumpled in a heap in the doorway.
Goro scribbles a note.
"Where is Ren?" he asks.
"Oh, uh... the kid, right?" He pauses to think, continuing careful circles around the edge of the same plate. "Haven't seen him. Wait, didn't he go..." His eyebrows knit together, then his entire expression morphs. "Say, you're one of his friends, aren't you? Sit down, I'll get you some—"
Goro turns and bounds toward the attic, but the closer he gets, the tighter he's wrapped in the blanket of sleep.
---
Goro wakes up on the floor of Leblanc, alone again. He scrubs a hand across the back of his head, half-expecting to find a crack in his skull from the fall, but finds nothing so much as a bruise or bump.
His notebook still indicates a linear sequence of events.
Next stop: Shujin Academy. There he finds Ryuji Sakamoto wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. When Goro approaches, he seems to realize this and crosses his legs and covers his chest with his hands as if it will improve the image. He doesn't seem to recognize Goro.
When asked about Ren, he falters for a moment.
"Oh yeah... that guy. I almost forgot about him. Kinda strange, huh, where did he go...? Oh!" Sakamoto pats his own bare leg as he thinks, "Yeah wait dude, wasn't he supposed to go back to his hometown or somethin'?"
Goro is several paces away before he realizes he should probably thank Sakamoto for providing useful information for once, but when he looks back Sakamoto has vanished.
---
Goro figures that since there seems to be no discrete time in this plane of existence, it's in his best interest to collect additional information.
The lives of the various Thieves seem to be far less consistent than his own.
For Sakamoto's part, in some instances he speaks of the past: of Kamoshida, his broken leg, his rehabilitation; other days it's as if he doesn't remember that life at all. He talks about his "PRs," the team's latest win, the ramen they all ate afterward. He never speaks of Ren. None of them do.
He finds Nijima taking long drags from a bottle of red wine during a law lecture at Waseda university; the next time, she's wearing her Shujin uniform and locking lips with Haru Okumura in the student council office.
When she's not busy kissing Nijima, Okumura flits from cafes to gardens to elite, elaborate gatherings. Sometimes her father accompanies her; sometimes his skin is a natural color and other times it's blue; sometimes he's warm and kind and other times he's cold and cruel.
Futaba Sakura's feet never touch the ground—no matter where she is, she hovers about a foot in the air, so that she can observe him at eye level.
Yoshizawa is eating, always eating.
Kitagawa's fashion choices are even more bizarre in this world than in their original one. It's difficult to hold a conversation with him because he's constantly interrupting to ask Goro nonsense philosophical questions, like "why is a raven like a writing desk?" and "what color is the core of the human spirit?" and "if joy were a mushroom, what type would it be?"
Rapport with Takamaki is surprisingly effortless—she always offers him a bite of her cake or a sip of her bubble tea, even though she seems to think he's a stranger.
Her blue-eyed shadow likes sushi just a little too much to be human. Goro never could stomach Morgana's human form. With the two of them, he considers broaching the topic of their past, of their long lost leader. But he doesn't know what the consequence will be, and decides that it's too risky to do on his own.
In writing and reading and re-reading his notes, he forms a hypothesis. The surreal nature of the encounters, the transient nature of those around him, the unpredictability of his own consciousness, the displacement from time.
He's stuck in a dream. If it's anything like the rest of the forces that have twisted reality in recent memory, there is no question where further information can be found.
Ren spends every minute he can with Akechi. They study together, play chess, do crossword puzzles side-by-side, read books and then discuss them. Ren takes him to the fishing pond and watches him reel in his first catch; watches his nose crinkle as he holds the wriggling smelt in his palm.
Soon, it's hard to remember a time before Akechi came to town. Sometimes the phantom sensation of a life forgotten itches at the back of his skull, but usually it's far outweighed by how much he enjoys these moments, right now.
Occasionally, Akechi will say something that heightens it. Like he's alluding to another time, another locale.
Or maybe, Ren thinks, this is just what it's like to fall for someone. To be so compatible that their own intuition just knows how to bring you out of your shell.
The first time Akechi refers to Ren as, "my rival," Ren's knees just about buckle from sheer emotion. It takes everything in his power not to lean over and kiss him right then, but he swings his arm over Akechi's shoulders in compromise.
And then—and then, sometimes he'll mention something about death, or loss. Ren has inferred from context clues that Akechi's father is absent and that he lost his mother at a young age. And sometimes when Akechi talks about grief, Ren feels something deep and dark splitting his soul in half. He attributes the feeling to empathy, second-hand pain he feels acutely due to his strong feelings for Akechi.
---
"Goro," he corrects one day, while they're studying in Ren's bedroom.
"Hm?" Ren looks up from his notes.
"Call me Goro. I've called you Ren practically the whole time I've known you and you've never corrected me. So let's even the playing field."
"Goro," Ren echoes, rolling the word around in his mouth.
"That's better," Goro says, his lips turning up at the corners, a glint in his eye.
"Well then, Goro, what's on the agenda for today? Chess? Featherman marathon?"
"I had something else in mind, in fact."
"What's that?"
"There's a game that comes from the West. It has to do with past experiences."
Ren's gut churns with danger and anticipation.
"It's called 'Never Have I Ever,'" he says, his English accent impeccable. Ren knows the general meaning, but Goro translates it to Japanese anyway.
"It works like this: each player begins with five fingers raised. We take turns, in which we must list an experience that we've never had. And if the other player has had that experience, they must lower a finger."
"Who wins?"
"Let's just say, the objective isn't to win but to get to know more about one another."
"'Kay. I'm game."
"Excellent. Since I proposed, I'll begin." Goro looks Ren directly in the eye, crosses his arms across his chest, his expression sharper and colder than Ren has ever seen it. He feels his heart begin to race.
"Never have I ever shot a God in the head," he says, as serious as Ren has ever heard him.
Ren bursts out laughing, doubled over with his knees to his chest. Goro is static, his face stone.
"Don't you need to put a finger down, Ren?"
Ren continues to laugh.
"God, you're insane," Ren says, wiping tears from his eyes.
Goro smiles, but it's tinged with a sadness Ren can't quite place.
"Fine, we'll call that a false start. Let's try something simpler. Never have I ever had a cat," he says, and waits.
Ren's mind churns. "I... wait." An image begins to form in Ren's mind, fuzzy, as if through warped glass. Blue eyes, twitchy ears, and a yellow bandana. "I have... but... no."
Ren hears a shrill, boyish voice in his mind shouting, "I am NOT a cat! I am..."
"Ngh..." Ren grabs his head as a wave of dizziness washes over him. He feels Goro's arms wrap around him; distantly he hears him whisper, "I know you can remember."
"He... wasn't a cat?" Ren says, though it comes out like a question. "I think I dreamed it."
"Hm," Goro says, his hands still firm around Ren's shoulders.
Ren chuckles, though there isn't much force behind it. "Gotta call that a point, huh?"
Goro smirks. "I suppose so."
"It's my turn. But first... can I show you something? It's... weird. I haven't shown anyone before."
Goro sits perfectly straight and still, as if a wire ran up his spine to hold him in place. "Alright."
It's just where he left it, under his pillow, never to be seen by anyone but him. The fuzzy, glitchy artifact that seems to hold a concentration of that strange, familiar, disconnected sensation that's simply become a part of the soundtrack to Ren's life now.
It's black, it's a glove, and he thinks it's made of leather but it's almost impossible to tell because every time Ren tries to look at it directly, or focus on the texture of the material or the stitching, it's as if his eyelids turn to stone.
When he presents it to Goro, he can see it's having a similar effect on him; watching him struggle to keep his eyes open is one of the most adorable things Ren has ever witnessed.
"Ren..." Goro says blearily.
He stashes the glove back under his pillow before they both pass out, and when he turns back around, expecting Goro to react to how strange the whole thing is, instead he finds him wiping tears out of red-rimmed eyes.
"Whoa, hey, you okay?" Ren puts a hand on Goro's shoulder as he pulls himself back together.
"I'm fine... just." Goro sighs, sounding exhausted. "Do you remember where you got it?"
"I wish I did," Ren frowns. "It seems important."
Goro nods. "I see."
They're silent for a moment, Ren rubbing Goro's arm in what he hopes is a comforting motion.
"Oh! I uh," Ren pauses, moving the hand from Goro's shoulder to rub at the back of his neck. Summons his courage. "I never took my turn."
"Go ahead," Goro gestures for him to continue.
Ren blurts it out, "never have I ever kissed a friend," and the instant the words have left his mouth they're surging toward one another, arms wrapping around one another, tongues tangling and teeth clacking. Ren hums into Goro's mouth and feels a hand grab hard at the nape of his neck, feels the plane of Goro's body press closer.
Goro tastes like saltwater and feels like the crashing of tide; kissing him reminds Ren of the time at the beach in Okinawa when he was small and fearless, swam too deep, and spent several minutes tumbling between waves until the ocean spit him back out onto shore.
It's exhilarating. It makes him feel like he might be permanently damaged. It's the best thing he's ever felt.
Sometimes an itch wriggles its way into the corners of Goro's mind, a cognitive dissonance that tells him that he should be angrier with Ren for folding under pressure the way he did. For failing to accept the truth, for caging him in... whatever all of this is. He'd thought they'd been in agreement, however long ago it was when he opened the door to Leblanc and found Ren crouched on the farthest bar stool, as tense and shaken as Goro had ever seen him at the wrongness that surrounded them. Anger should burn. Betrayal should sting.
But by the time the thought makes it to Goro's emotional core, it's changed shape. He finds that he can't summon the blunt force of the righteous rage that used to drive him, and instead he feels something that lay underneath. Something earlier, quiet but equally powerful.
Once before, he'd watched someone fold under pressure. Too much to keep up with; to care for an unwanted child, to weather the judgement of the public, to sell herself to earn enough to survive. Goro would have given anything to be the support she needed. Once she was gone, leaving him abandoned, that same strange, detached thought crossed his mind from time to time. Anger should burn. Betrayal should sting.
But all he wanted was to go back in time, to hold her hand and tell her it was going to be okay. That if she just held on a little longer, they could figure everything out together.
---
Goro knows he's playing with fire, tempting fate to intervene the more time he wastes. But fire is keeping him warm and comfortable, and the shelter of living within a dream he shares with Ren is too sweet, too enticing to let go of—so much so that the longer he stays, the more he feels compelled to trade the fate of the world for any time it will earn him.
The longer he stays, the sweeter it becomes to spend afternoons discussing nothing. The stars grow brighter each evening they venture with blankets and travel mugs of coffee to the open field by Ren's parents' house and lean into each other's warmth, fingers tracing constellations, faces illuminated by the twinkling glow of clear night. By now, they've seen the four movies that cycle through the town's tiny cinema enough that they can recite them in unison, word for word.
They cycle for hours and miles, always keeping pace with one another, endurance strong enough to travel far from town so that that they can hold hands openly without fear of judgement. Goro has learned to cook every dish in Ren's accessible memory, admittedly a small repertoire, and feels confident that he'd never grow bored or hungry here.
But the longer he stays, the sharper the guilt digs into the pit of his stomach. If not for the rest of humanity—them, he owes nothing—then for Ren. Who deserves the opportunity to wake, to live a true, full life with someone other than Goro alone.
When he really thinks about it, unselfishly and without pretense, he knows that's what the boy he loves would want.
---
The timing is important, the method just as much. Goro has sensed the fragile, hidden corners of Ren's mind and knows that the slightest push too far will send him crumbling. He knows, too, that he must be direct; whether by external control or by his own psyche, Ren is bound too tightly to come to conclusions on his own.
It will be painful. It's a pain Goro must endure, for both of their sakes. To bear the brunt of what Ren failed to do before.
He bites the bullet after dinner.
"I'd like to discuss the glove under your pillow," he begins once the plates have been cleared from the table and they've settled on the sofa, feet entwined.
"What about it?"
"You need to remember its significance."
"I told you, I don't..."
"I do. And I'll tell you. Now."
Goro has ever seen Ren's face contort into such an expression of blank shock one other time, and at the time—thankfully, in hindsight—it was only a cognition.
"Do you trust me?" he asks, knowing that in any other reality the answer Ren should give if he has any sense at all is "no."
"Yeah..." Ren shakes his head like a dog coming in from the rain. "Yeah, okay. I trust you."
Goro sighs in relief. "Good."
And then he reaches his hand back as far and as quickly as he can and slaps Ren across the cheek with his full strength.
Ren's hands come up to his face instinctively, his eyes wide with shock and pain, and the second they come down Goro slaps him again.
"I gave you that glove," Goro says, "Do you remember?"
"What? No, I..."
Goro slaps him again.
"I threw it at you after we fought in Mementos. I told you it was because I hated you."
"You wouldn't—" Ren begins, but Goro sees the recognition begin to dawn on his face.
"You—you were... the Black Mask," Ren says.
Goro's expression is solemn. "Yes."
"And you were Crow."
"I was."
"And I was... Ngh..."
"Remember, Joker. Please."
"The leader of the Phantom Thieves. Oh fuck, I actually did shoot a God in the head and..."
Through the shape of his eyes, Goro watches realization flood over him.
It's a bittersweet feeling, awakening the pain of their history. But it feels right, makes him feel whole.
Ren's next question is exactly what Goro expected. "Where are the others?"
"Off living phony, perfect dream lives I'd imagine, thanks to Maruki."
"Maruki... my school counselor, he... Oh." His face falls further.
"You've been living in a dream too. My suspicion is that your dreaming state--and mine, by consequence, is stuck in a pseudo-cognitive realm. My consciousness seems to be tethered to yours; thus, when you are here," he gestures around them, "so am I."
Ren bends his head forward, lets the information sink in.
"The rest of your team phases in and out on their own schedules, seemingly appearing here when they are asleep in what they consider to be reality. I was able to make contact with each of them before I came to find you."
Then he asks another question that Goro was anticipating. "Are you real?"
"Does it matter?" Goro bites. Ren's silence and hangdog expression compels him to answer honestly. "I don't know."
"Are you..." Dead? The question hangs in the air, unspoken.
"There is a concerning gap in my memories, between Shido's ship and seeing you on Christmas Eve. But I can't be certain. Ren--"
"Wait. Just... hold on. This is too much," he whispers, "it's too much,"
Goro wraps his arms around him.
"I know." It's too much to ask of you, he thinks, but what other choice do they have?
Ren shudders in the embrace, buried too deep under the pressure of the forces around him to make a sound. He mouths the words he can't say out loud.
"I know." Goro isn't strong enough to tell Ren he loves him either. "But you know that we must try. You can't waste your life in a dream."
Ren's face crumples and he falls forward, leaning his full weight on Goro's chest. He heaves and sobs and it sucks just as much as Goro knew it would. But it's cleansing, too. It's closure, if not for all of the time they have to spend with each other, then for the time they've spent here.
"The world has no business asking you to be this strong," Goro whispers, like if he says it quietly enough all of this might shift to the shoulders of someone other than Ren.
"I could have said the same thing to you, back then," Ren mumbles, muffled in a damp spot on Goro's shirt.
He pulls away, wipes the fluid off of his face with his sleeve.
"This sucks," he sniffs, and somehow Goro knows this is the moment he's agreed. His heart rises and sinks at once.
"Yes," Goro agrees. "However, regardless of what's ahead, we're together now. So let's make the most of it, shall we?"
"… Yeah. Let's do it."