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"So," Akira says. "You're alive."
"I've noticed," Akechi replies.
He still wears gloves, Akira notices. His hair is longer, and he's wearing it tied back. Akira's pretty sure Akechi hadn't grown — he'd seen the brief frown flick across his face when he'd noticed Akira was taller than him now, an almost childish expression on the features of his adult face.
Akira has to pinch himself, again, to convince himself he's still not dreaming. That Goro Akechi — a living, breathing, twenty-eight-year-old, not the teenage ghost that's been haunting Akira's darkest moments for ten years — is really in front of him.
"I missed you," Akira says, because I mourned you longer than I knew you and I still wasn't over it feels a bit too forward.
"I thought you'd be better off without me." Akechi takes a sip of his drink — some kind of soda, even though everyone else in the bar seems to be holding a cocktail glass or sharing a bottle of wine. "And I knew you'd never bring yourself to turn me down if I contacted you, so I decided to leave things as they were."
"Mhm." Did that mean he would vanish again after this? Would that be worse than never knowing the truth? He could spend the rest of their life just asking Akechi every question in his head right now, but instead, he just stares at him, willing him not to turn translucent.
"So, what do you do these days?" Akechi asks, stiffly. "I know what some of your friends —" he doesn't say the word friends with his familiar sneer at the concept of friendship, but there's still a hint of familiar cynicism — "have become very successful. I'm still not used to seeing Takamaki's face everywhere."
"One of my coworkers asked if she was my celebrity crush because I had a collection of her magazines," Akira says, cringing slightly at the memory. He'd gotten into the habit of buying magazines whenever Ann was on them back when she was still starting out, and he'd just… never stopped. "I still think he didn't believe we're friends."
"Some of my coworkers experience a similar issue, I believe," Akechi says.
"Yeah? What do you do?" Akira asks casually, like the question of what Akechi's been doing isn't eating away at him.
"I suspect I'm not supposed to talk about it," Akechi says, and Akira's briefly worried he's changed into someone who actually follows rules before he glances around the room, leans in slightly, and lowers his voice. "When I was in prison, I was approached by a group that deals with… well, I suppose you would call them "Metaverse incidents," though it's more complicated than that." He straightens up slightly. "They pulled some strings to get me conditionally released… around a year ago, I believe."
So he was in prison. Explains why none of us have heard anything.
"How's that been?"
"Largely, it's been a lot of frustrating paperwork." Akechi sighs. "The unexpected consequences of my own self-destructive actions, I suspect." Then, he pauses. "...Obviously, living on my own is nothing new, but it still feels strange." He takes a sip of his drink. "I have free time now, for one. More than I know what to do with."
"Hey, you had at least half an hour of free time every month when I knew you," Akira jokes.
"No, I didn't," Akechi replies seamlessly, in that tone that makes it hard to tell if he's joking. "I had "Wage billiards-based psychological warfare against Kurusu" in my schedule on random days so you'd think I had free time."
"I hope I wasn't cutting into your valuable brooding time."
"Oh, please ." Akechi rolls his eyes. "I can multitask, Kurusu. I was perfectly capable of feeling sorry for myself while otherwise occupied. But —" his sarcastic tone drops — "well, I've taken up bouldering again, and my coworkers have even deigned to invite me out for drinks, but… well, it's not like I have much of a social life, even if people insist on telling me I should "get out more"."
"Mhm." You know I'd have dropped everything to hang out with you, right? Akira doesn't say it, but he thinks it.
He fixes Akira with a glare. "You didn’t answer my question."
"Oh. Right. I'm, uh, a social worker."
"Of course you are," Akechi says under his breath, but it isn't as derisive as Akira expected.
"I had a bit of a crisis in my last year of high school," Akira starts like he has to justify his life choices to Akechi. "I wanted to help people, but… there's so many people who need help in some way. And I'm just me."
Akechi snorts. " Just you. Like you've been inadequate at helping people."
"I didn't have the Metaverse anymore," Akira says, awkwardly scratching the back of his head as Akechi looks at him, eyes narrowed. "Eventually I decided that helping some people was better than helping nobody. And I figured, y'know, there were a bunch of reasons everything sucked for — for all of us. But it didn't help that not all of us had adults we could trust and —" He's rambling. He knows he's rambling, and he can tell from the look in Akechi's eyes that he knows why. "...It wasn't just because of you."
"I'm not upset," Akechi says. "It suits you." He snorts. "I imagine you get along very well with children."
"They seem to like me, yeah. The higher-ups… don't like me so much."
Akechi raises an eyebrow. “A difficult relationship with authority figures? You? How unprecedented.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s business as usual for me, huh,” Akira laughs. “But, I mean… It’s fine as long as nobody’s actively stopping me from doing my job. I feel like I could be doing more — I’ve been doing some volunteer work outside of work — but…” He trails off, partly because he’s sure Akechi doesn’t need to hear his ramble about how broken the system is, partly because Akechi is giving him one of those looks he used to do sometimes — like he’s trying to pick him apart.
After a few seconds of silence — of Akechi staring quizzically at him and him trying to pretend he doesn’t notice — Akechi finally speaks, slightly stilted.
“Akira, are you — happy?”
It takes Akira a second to process the question. Is he happy? Right now, he’s not sure he could answer that. He’s still reeling from the shock of being on his train home and seeing Akechi standing there in front of him. Asking him if he’s happy about what’s happening right now feels premature, but — well, he doesn’t even really think that’s what Akechi’s asking. Is Akira happy? With his job, his life — the life he’s been building for a decade in Akechi’s absence —
Well — no, saying he built it in Akechi’s absence feels… wrong, on some level. It’s more like there’s been a — a void , a cavity, some kind of gap in his life where Akechi used to be, where he felt like he should be, and eventually, it had fossilised, becoming part of his life — guilt and grief felt in his bones rather than in his heart, like the quiet background radiation of his life.
But — that’s not an argument for trying to make Akechi be part of his life again, he realises. The person he’d been mourning really doesn’t exist anymore — not in the way Akira had thought, but the Akechi he’d known had been all sharp edges and open wounds, sugar syrup disguising bitterness and white-hot anger. The man in front of him is Akechi, but not the person Akira knew, and — well, would it be selfish of Akira to try and pull him back into his life, try to fit the gap left by his eighteen-year-old self? Akira had never really been able to move on, but Akechi clearly had.
“...Yeah,” he answers. “I like my job most of the time, and the other Thieves are doing well. So yeah, I’m happy.” He takes a sip of his drink. “Are you?”
He snorts. "Happier than I have the right to be, I suppose."
"I think you're allowed to be happy," Akira says, neutrally. "If it doesn't hurt anyone."
Akechi raises an eyebrow. "For a moment, I was concerned that you may have developed common sense."
"I mean it."
"Of course you do." Akechi sighs. "You haven't changed, have you?"
"Maybe." He doesn't think that's a fair assessment, but he's not in the mood to argue the point."
“You aren’t doing this just because you feel obligated to, are you?” Akechi asks, eyes narrowed.
“Why would I feel obligated?” Akechi had let him think he was dead for ten years, after all. If Akechi ever wanted to have this conversation, they could have had it when they were nineteen. But —
“Because that’s the you I know, Kurusu. You’re still looking at me like you think you can find the right answer to any of this. As if you’re working out what I want to hear.” Akechi doesn’t blink, staring directly at him, leaning forward slightly. “What, exactly, do you want from this?”
Akira wants a lot of things, really. But he’s not sure Akechi would accept most of what he wants as anything more than meaningless platitudes, because if they’re not helpful or good, then Akira tends to shove the things he wants in a dusty storage box at the back of his mind to be forgotten. Especially when those things have to do with Akechi. That is to say that maybe if you gave him a couple full days off work he could properly sort everything out — cut open the packing tape, run over everything with the vacuum, find out what’s in all those unlabelled boxes — but he can’t do it on the spot, not with Akechi’s eyes boring into his. So, he says the only thing he can find to say.
“Like I said. I’ve missed you.” He breathes out, slowly, “You’re not exactly — I don’t think my brain’s caught up to you still being alive, but — You don’t have to stay. Not if you don’t want to.”
“Kurusu.” He leans back, taking a sip of his drink. “Do you think I’d be here if I had no desire to be around you?”
“...No,” Akira admits. “Unless there’s something big happening I don’t know about —” he says it jokingly, but Akechi still glares — “then no, I know you wouldn’t.” He takes another sip, hoping whatever’s going on in his head will slow down enough that he can latch onto any one feeling. “I’m not… not angry about you not contacting me for ten years.”
“I can imagine,” Akechi replies, in a tone that suggests that he doesn’t think Akira is nearly angry enough.
“I’m not so sure I haven’t changed, and you definitely have, but —” His words catch in his mouth. He isn’t quite sure what he wants to say. I still care about you. I love you. Let’s go back to how things were. Things can never go back to how they were. I’d prefer you shooting me again to you leaving right now.
“... I kept your glove,” is what he actually says. “Don’t carry it around with me anymore —" he sees Akechi's eyes narrow, but he at least spares his dignity by not asking how long he did carry it around — "but, well, I kept it.”
“Is that a challenge?” Akira can see the beginnings of a smile playing on his lips. Maybe, once, the smile he received for challenging Akechi would have been a cruel one, but now — well, there's still the familiar confidence, but there's something softer there, too .
“Probably not a fight," Akira says before he lets the familiar spirit of competition take over completely. “I’ve been going to the gym, but…”
“I don’t know,” Akechi says, leaning forward, sharp grin almost playful. “I’m sure it would be entertaining.”
“For you, maybe.” Akira stretches, and he hears a clicking in his spine, again , feeling the stiffness in his right shoulder as he reaches for his drink. “The doctor says there might be something wrong with my back.”
“It’s almost as if you were carrying a cat full-time for a year,” Akechi smirks.
“Longer than that. But it's fine, he makes sure I do my stretches now, so we're even." Akira taps on the table, trying to think of something that would be an interesting competition. It's a challenge in and of itself. Their lives have moved in different directions. There's an asymmetry now that there wasn't before, but — and call him an optimist — Akira doesn't doubt that there are some right answers. A common ground he'll either find or make.
“Billiards?” A safe answer. Their first real hangout, the place they'd returned to most often. (He'd struggled to go back to the Penguin Sniper after Akechi was gone. He'd been there without him when he was alive, obviously, but it was easier to construct the ghost that haunted him in a place with that many memories.)
God, he needs to keep it together. He looks back up at Akechi.
“I haven’t played billiards in ten years," Akechi replies, although he doesn't have the flat tone he does when shutting down an idea completely.
“I haven’t been in a proper fight in ten years."
“Well, then, I suppose if we do both , then we’d be evenly matched,” Akechi says, with a wave of his hand.
"That's not a fair comparison. Also, the first time I played billiards with you was, like, the third time I ever played."
Akechi snorts. "By that metric, I don't think any of our contests have ever been fair. "
"Then we'll have to make them fair," Akira replies.
Akechi's look is almost fond. "You would say that."
"Maybe I'll play left-handed," Akira says.
Akechi rolls his eyes. “Oh, I have zero intention of losing to you at billiards just because I’m out of practice,” he shoots back. "But, if it takes some time to get used to it again, and then some more time to even our scores…" He looks up at Akira, then away again. "Then I suppose we'll simply have to keep playing."
“Well, then, guess I’ll just have to train so I can win our duel again,” Akira replies, a small smile crossing his face.
And, well — it's not like he can't still feel the ache from the years spent in mourning, and he's sure he'll find the time to be angry about that at some point. He's sure he'll find the time for a lot of things, because Akechi is here . Akira watches him adjust his gloves and sweep his hair out of his face as he talks about whatever’s on his mind, and he knows that — no matter how things have changed — he will try to make this work.