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Maruki is used to lending an ear to his passengers; it comes with his job. He’d go as far as to say that he likes it, even. While his grandiose machinations of freeing the world of its suffering are long dead, if he can improve the lives of others one car ride at a time, it’s more than enough of a reason for him to keep living on.
Still, there are some souls whose wounded hearts he can’t mend, some hearts he shouldn’t mend.
Amamiya, eyes bloodshot and baggy as he slumps against his passenger seat, owns one of them.
It’s been a little over a year since Maruki last saw him. By all means, he should be a thriving third-year student, not a shell of the confident teen he last saw. Instead, he pales compared to the vibrant bouquet on his lap.
Maruki hadn’t known what to expect when he’d received a late-night text from Amamiya, their first exchange since the fateful day when his godhood crumbled right under his grasp. It contained little detail, only two locations.
Naturally, Maruki had dropped everything and drove over without hesitation.
He hadn’t a clue as to the reason for their sudden reunion though, not until the pieces finally came together: Amamiya’s despondent state, the white lilies clasped between his too-bony hands, and finally, their destination, a small cemetery just outside Tokyo’s bright lights.
Words usually come easily to Maruki. Today, they die on his tongue.
For far too long they sit in near silence, his engine’s thrum, his wheels’ revolutions against the pavement, and Amamiya’s sniffling into a tissue the only reprieve from the oppressive quiet that weighs them down. It’s not until Maruki pulls up on the weathered, snowy ground and shifts his gear into park that Amamiya finally speaks.
“I…I don’t know what to do,” he admits weakly. He avoids Maruki’s gaze, though Maruki catches a brief glimpse of his eyes before he turns to look out of his window.
A year ago, they’d blazed with rebellious determination powerful enough to bring down a god. Now, they convey nothing but a broken heart.
Maruki wants nothing more than to lean over and reassure him that everything will be okay. That no matter the source of his worries, everything will turn out fine. That there’s no reason for his sorrow.
But life doesn’t work like that. Not for him, not for anyone. Avoidance isn’t a solution, a fact that Amamiya and his friends had so powerfully engrained into his mind, body, and soul as everything he’d strived for came crashing down.
Instead, Maruki sheepishly rubs his neck, uncertainty in his tone. “I’m not sure if I’m the best person to ask for advice, Amamiya-kun. I’m not your counselor anymore.”
They both know that Maruki had learned far more from their counseling sessions than Amamiya had ever learned from him.
Amamiya shakes his head, staring at Maruki like his whole world would end were Maruki to deny him.
“You’re the only other person who understands him. Who he truly is. Who he truly was,” Amamiya corrects himself, the last word a choked sob.
“What about your friends?”
“They never accepted him, not truly. I don’t blame them—Akechi wasn’t a good man. He’d committed far too many atrocities for that, so many of them personal. But he didn’t deserve to die so young, to be forgotten so quickly. I kept on thinking that he would reappear one day, you know? That I’d turn on the TV and see that smug face of his decrying the Phantom Thieves again.”
“But that never happened,” Maruki murmurs, filling in the unsaid blanks.
“I waited almost a year. Watched as the press, his fans, everyone, forgot about him until I was the only one who still cared. And eventually, even I gave up on him.”
“Amamiya-kun…”
“He never got a proper funeral. It took all my savings and months of working extra shifts to buy a burial plot and headstone, as meager as they may be. He deserved better,” he finishes, tears streaming down from his cheeks.
Maruki hardly knows what he and Amamiya are to each other. While their fates are undoubtedly entwined, their relationship is blurred and ever-shifting—mentor and student, mortal and god, to two broken individuals trying to find their place in a world so adamantly stacked against them.
He can only hope that whatever they are, they’re close enough that he isn’t overstepping. He’s seen how Amamiya hangs on others’ touches, from the way he used to absentmindedly pet Morgana whenever he was stressed, to the way Sakamoto always had an arm slung around his shoulders.
He reaches forward, ignoring the way the center console awkwardly digs into his gut, and wraps his arms around Amamiya. Amamiya freezes, his eyes comically wide as he registers the sensation, before leaning into his touch.
Like this, his hand rubbing reassuring circles on Amamiya’s back while he cries into his chest, an indeterminate amount of time passes. Maruki can’t parse quite how long, but it doesn’t matter, not really. He’s here if Amamiya needs him and while comfort’s never been his strongest suit, he’ll try his best.
Eventually, Amamiya’s tears dry, and he straightens up. Maruki returns to his seat, needing only a brief glance at Amamiya’s red-rimmed eyes and his runny nose to make his mind up.
“You said he never got a funeral—we can change that,” Maruki suggests.
Confusion twists Amamiya’s features. “Huh?”
“It’d be nothing special, but there are the two of us. Two people who remember Akechi-kun for all that he was and two people who miss him. We don’t have to of course; if you’d rather I wait for you in the car or take off, I completely understand.”
Amamiya pauses, expressions passing by his face so quickly that Maruki can’t read them. But finally, in a soft voice that conveys the sheer extent of his gratitude, he says, “I’d like that.”
Maruki powers off his taxi and walks outside. He moves to the other side of his car and holds Amamiya’s door out for him, waiting for him to exit. After bundling his affairs tightly in his arms he does, taking shaky but determined steps forward.
Wordlessly, they trek through a field of fresh snow. Every step wets Maruki’s leather shoes and sends a shiver down his spine, but like this, the cold can’t touch him. His heart burns with a resolve far too intense to fall victim to nature’s woes.
Had Amamiya not stopped, Maruki would have never spotted Akechi’s headstone. As is, its marbled stone just barely peaks out from underneath the white.
Maruki crouches, his knees cracking unpleasantly, and brushes all the snow off it. The chill bites his hands, but he ignores it as he wipes them off on his coat and straightens up, stepping back to stand in place with Amamiya.
Amamiya hadn’t been lying; Akechi’s grave is as minimalistic as they come. Even uncovered, it’s barely elevated over the ground it breaks through. Sixteen engraved words grace its surface:
Akechi Goro
Forever remembered. Not as a Detective Prince nor as a Phantom Thief.
Just Goro.
The tribute would be monumental coming from anyone, but from a lost teen on the cusp of manhood, it’s strikingly poignant. Maruki can’t imagine how many nights Amamiya must have tossed and turned in bed trying to think of a proper epitaph.
Akechi wasn’t a man easily understood. He’d built himself up on foundation after foundation of lies and personas, so entangled in his being that one could hardly hope to unravel the real him: a boy struggling beneath the weight of expectation, lonely above all else. Maruki had managed it with supernatural intervention, but it speaks volumes of Amamiya’s dedication that he deduced it by himself.
Maruki doesn’t know if there is an afterlife, but if there is, he thinks Akechi would surely be pleased.
He inclines his head toward the plot before them. “What would you like me to do? You knew him much better than me, but I can say some words if you’d like.”
Amamiya pauses, his fingers toying with the pocket of his jacket. Several times, they plunge inside, just to come back out empty. Maruki watches with the utmost patience as finally, Amamiya produces a single black leather glove.
It’s familiar. Too familiar. Maruki raises an eyebrow inquisitively, and Amamiya gives a terse nod.
“It’s his. He threw it at me, actually, after declaring that he hated me.”
“I don’t think he meant it,” Maruki quietly muses.
Amamiya hums contemplatively. “I don’t either.”
He hesitates, eyeing the glove in his bare hands, before sighing. His breath is visible thanks to the harsh winter air.
“I’d accepted a duel with it; a duel that never happened. It’s the only reminder of him I have, but at the same time, it feels wrong to hold onto a broken promise.” He crouches, placing the glove on a patch of unperturbed snow. He stares at it as if weighing whether he can handle such a gesture, before nodding resolutely. “I never found his body. I was thinking that in its place, I might bury his glove.”
To give up his last tie to Akechi is beyond selfless. For all that Maruki let himself be martyred for Rumi’s well-being, he will never abandon the mementos of the good old days when she loved him back.
Maruki gets on his knees. “Let me help.”
They’re woefully unprepared for such a task; they don’t have any tools and the frozen ground is nearly impenetrable by hand. Still, Maruki digs until his nails are bloody and his digits are numb with frostbite.
As soon as they’ve dug a satisfactory, if a little shallow hole, Maruki moves away. He watches as Amamiya unzips his coat, presses the glove against his heart, and finally, gently places it on the ground. For a moment, he stills, memorizing the sight forever, before covering it with earth first, then a fresh layer of sparkling snow.
Maruki hands him the bouquet. Stem by stem, Amamiya lays the lilies across his grave until nothing but its paper wrapping remains. His tears return as Amamiya slowly brings himself to his feet, his expression so heartbreaking that it will forever remain engrained in Maruki’s mind.
The longing in his eyes is familiar, a sight he’d once reveled in daily, but now is only present in his reflection during the loneliest of nights.
Maruki places a comforting hand on Amamiya’s shoulder. “You loved him, didn’t you?”
Amamiya swallows a choked cry. “Yeah,” he admits, the word achingly tender. “I still do.” He looks up at Maruki with all the lostness of a stray cat. “How do you move on?”
Maruki thinks of the Rumi-sized hole in his heart, having shrunk but never fully sealed with time.
“You don’t. Not really,” he admits with a sigh, his answer honest but not unkind. “The pain eases with time, but some sleepless nights, it’s just as searing as it was when it first came about.”
Amamiya stares down at his feet, crestfallen. Maruki places his palm flush with Amamiya’s chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath his touch. Amamiya blinks at him.
“But I keep going. You keep going. Akechi-kun will forever reside in our hearts, our memories, and our souls. Don’t you think we should live on for him?”
Maruki gestures opposite the direction of Akechi’s grave, to the yellow-orange hues of the rising sun. To a new life where they focus not on mourning Akechi’s death but on celebrating his life.
Amamiya steps forward into the golden light.