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In another universe, it goes like this: Goro Akechi meets Akira Kurusu from the opposite side of the Café Leblanc counter in mid July.
It’s been months since he’d last been to Leblanc, too busy with Shido’s requests and keeping up appearances as the Detective Prince and school to take enough time off to head over to Yongen-Jaya for a simple cup of coffee. There had been times, months back, when he’d had the ability to stop into a café once a week or more, frequenting smaller locations where he was less likely to be noticed by roving fans desperate to catch a glimpse of the man they thought they knew.
At a smaller café like Leblanc, he could let his guard down, even just slightly. He didn’t need to worry about what to order to keep up the perfect Prince appearance, detesting every time he had to order something far too sweet for his tastes while in public. Leblanc, though… it had been a favorite of his, once, back when his days weren’t filled with assassinations.
Akechi sits down in his normal place at the counter, just to the left of the books Sojiro’s always kept stacked next to the phone. They seem to be different, though: some are the same old books he’d always kept there, old cookbooks with recipes he’d never sold, but some seem newer, like travel magazines and a handful of separate guidebooks. They seem recently bought, nearly unmarked like they’d only been read once, where Sojiro’s old cookbooks were folded and stained and creased like they’d been used over and over for years.
It’s not Sojiro who ducks out from the kitchen at the sound of the bell over the door, though. It’s a boy who seems about Akechi’s age, with messy black hair and glasses that catch the light in a way that suggests they’re fake. He wears the same green apron Sojiro usually wears, tied tightly around his back to keep it out of his way, and has a pencil stuck behind his ear.
Oh, he’s hired a part-timer, Akechi thinks. The café is empty enough, like Leblanc usually is, but he supposed an extra set of hands could never hurt, especially if Sojiro had things to do during the day that meant he’d be leaving the café in someone else’s hands.
Still, he runs through his mental list of coffee orders just in case. If he had to keep up appearances, a mocha would do. He was very aware his biggest fanbase was high schoolers, teens the same age he was. However, in the rare chance this one wasn’t about to take the chance to interrogate Akechi while he had the opportunity, maybe he’d allow himself a nice latte this time.
(The boy seems slightly familiar, but he doesn’t let himself dwell on why.)
There’s no verbal acknowledgement of his entry, but the boy slides the pencil out from behind his ear, reaches into the apron pocket for a small notepad, and leans one arm onto the counter, waiting.
In that split second, Akechi makes a decision.
“I’ll take a latte, please.”
~~~
The boy introduces himself as Akira while Akechi is waiting. He’s quiet; not in a dismissive way but more as if he didn’t have much to say, with short replies every so often to whatever Akechi was saying.
At the same time, Akechi thinks he’s shockingly familiar, in the sort of way where he thinks he’s seen Akira before. The closer he looks, the more he thinks he knows, and a quick glance at the stack of books on the counter proves his guess. One of them has the Shujin Academy library sticker on the spine, and Akechi knows that he met Akira for the first time when that group of students had come to visit the tv station during his appearance back in June. They’d invited him in for yet another interview about the Phantom Thieves, and Akira had been the boy he’d noticed watching him from the second row of the audience with a strange intensity.
He’d never gotten to speak, though. Akechi had wanted to hear what that boy, of all the people, would have had to say.
Akira’s watching the last of Akechi’s latte drip into the cup when Akechi speaks up. “What are your thoughts on the Phantom Thieves?”
That one gets Akira to look up at him, hands in his pockets under the apron, leaning back against the shelf of coffee beans behind him. “They’re doing good.”
“Oh?” Akechi raises an eyebrow. “An opinion becoming less rare by the day, it seems.”
Akira pours the milk into Akechi’s cup, filling it up almost to the very top, and passes it over. He picks it up, blowing softly across the top to disperse some of the heat, ruffling the vague design Akira had tried to leave on the surface, and sets it back down.
“I believe my opinion of them is well known,” Akechi continues, giving a knowing glance to the TV off to the side of the counter, playing a news channel. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Akira not moving, still watching. “It’s all anyone asks me about these days, and my answer is always the same.”
He’d spent days on end trying to refine that answer, trying to think of what would be best to spread to the public. There were some that clung onto his every word, elevating the Detective Prince to a true prince status in their minds, and Akechi thinks finding out the truth about him would shatter them.
It’s not like he cares, though. The public isn’t a necessity for his end goal. They’re more of a stepping stone. What he needs right now is to sway them the way Shido wants, get closer to the man until all that’s left is Akechi striking the final blow one dark night.
“Do you think they’re guilty?” is what Akira asks in return.
“You’ve already heard my thoughts on that,” Akechi replies. “I believe they should be tried in court. I believe their methods need to be discovered and prevented. I believe it should be a crime to forcefully change any person’s heart.”
Akira raises an eyebrow. Do you think they’re guilty, though? he says, silently.
I don’t know, Akechi thinks. What I think does not matter, has not mattered, will not matter. However guilty the Phantom Thieves are, I am a thousand times more.
“Highly likely, yes, they’re quite guilty,” is what he says. “Since it’s impossible to know exactly how they’re managing to get their targets to confess in the way they do, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer happened to be some form of blackmail or similar threats. All of those are rather illegal.”
He takes a sip of his latte, noting it’s close to Sojiro’s but not exactly the same. While Sojiro’s brews tended to be smoother and more refined, there’s a certain roughness to Akira’s that tells Akechi he’s been doing this nowhere near as long. It makes sense, though. Sojiro had likely been running this café longer than Akira had been alive. The coffee to milk ratio is off as well.
Akechi likes it.
“Of course, first there’s the issue of finding them, if they even exist in the first place,” he adds, setting his cup down again. “We can’t even be sure how many of them there are, because nobody’s ever seen them in action, and none of their targets are ever willing to talk about what happened to put them in that state. The only things we can guess are- well,” and he stops himself with a chuckle, “you didn’t exactly sign up to hear a detective’s ramblings, did you?”
The corner of Akira’s mouth quirks into a tiny smile, and Akechi takes another sip of his coffee.
“It’s always nice to hear a differing opinion, though. After all, advancement cannot occur without both thesis and antithesis. Just a little something I believe makes conversations more meaningful.” Another sip of the coffee, long and slow. “By the way, I was curious. I’ve been in here several times before and never seen you around. When did Sojiro hire you?”
Akira furrows his eyebrows. “Never, technically. I live here and help out.”
Akechi nods. “Ah, so you’re the one staying here now. In the storage room upstairs?” Akira nods. “It makes sense, honestly. I assume you got here somewhere around April? I was last here sometime in March, and Sojiro was still running the store alone then. Assuming he’s the one that’s been teaching you–” and Akechi looks down at the coffee cup in his hand, swirling it around slightly, then looks back up at Akira, “ –he’s taught you rather well.”
He drains the last of his latte in a single long gulp, setting the empty cup back down on the table and not looking at Akira’s reaction to his words. “I’ll just leave what I owe you here, then? I assume the price hasn’t changed.”
(It hasn’t. He knows it hasn’t. The sign still sits above the counter, and he thinks it’s less dusty than he’s ever seen it before.)
Akechi slides the money onto the counter, looking back up at Akira: pencil back behind his ears, hair obstructing his glasses, staring back at Akechi across the empty café. There’s something about this boy, he thinks. Something far more than he’s showing.
Standing from the chair, he slides it back under the counter, picking up his briefcase from the chair next to him. The pair of them are almost the same height, he notices from this perspective. Making his way to the door, Akechi looks back over his shoulder. “Thank you for the coffee. I’ll be back another time.”
The bell dings as he leaves, with neither the Black Mask nor Joker, leader of the Phantom Thieves, aware they had met the other.