Chapter Text
As he zones out on the train to Tokyo, Ren hears two girls talking about the recent public transit incident. For some odd reason, the conversation fills him with a sense of deja-vu. As the train stops, so does the girls’ gossiping as they, and he, join the rest of the occupants in getting off at the station. Ren climbs the stairs out of the subway to station square, and his phone chimes, drawing his attention away from his surroundings. He looks at his phone, unsure of who messaged him. Everyone back home was all too eager to be rid of the supposed “criminal”, after all. Before he can get too deep into his head, he realizes that most of his phone screen is taken up by an app icon of a black and red eye. Furthermore, everyone around him slows to a halt, frozen in place. Abruptly, a massive blue flame flares up ahead of him and- he swears he can make out a face? And then, the fire is gone and everyone starts moving again and shit he needs to get to Yongen-Jaya. He does his best to push the strange encounter out of his mind, deletes the strange app, and moves on.
After being sent on a bit of a wild goose chase around the alleyways near Yongen, he finally finds where he’ll be staying for the duration of his probation. Ren opens the door to a quiet little cafe named LeBlanc, and the smell of coffee and curry fills him with that same sense of deja-vu that’s persisted since he got to Shibuya. He meets the manager of LeBlanc, a gruff man who happens to also be his probationary officer. Still, he can’t shake that sense of familiarity that the man gives him. He's shown his accommodations, a dusty attic that’s seen better days. With nothing else to do for the day, he cleans up his “room” before he goes to bed, his guardian coming upstairs to inform him they’d be visiting his new school tomorrow morning. Sojiro leaves, and Ren tries his best to sleep, closing his eyes to unwelcome memories of a street, a frightened woman, and a drunkard stumbling to the ground.
He opens his eyes when he hears chains rattling. Last he checked, cafes don’t tend to have iron bars and chains as part of the everyday decor. Unless it’s a particularly eclectic one, he supposes. Ren hears a deep, otherworldly voice chuckle. He turns to see an old man and two small children in front of him. The man introduces himself and the children as Igor, Caroline, and Justine. As Igor continues to explain the surroundings, Ren is filled with a sense of dread at the sound of the prison master’s voice, though he’s unsure why. Igor warns him of “coming ruin” and that his fate as a “trickster” is to stand against it. Those phrases, too, feel familiar (yet wrong at the same time) coming from Igor’s voice. In the back of his mind, he remembers a much kinder voice telling him the same things... though he’s unsure as to whom the voice belongs to. As the old man’s speech draws to a close, Ren feels relieved. The room grows dark, and the last thing he hears before he wakes up is Igor’s unnervingly deep chuckling.
The next morning, he and his probation officer, Sojiro, head to Ren’s new school. He is greeted by the principal with threats of expulsion and his new homeroom teacher hands him his student ID, before reaching for something on the desk quickly in a panic. Which, is weird, right? No one else seems to notice or mention it, though, so he doesn’t either. On their way home, Sojiro gripes about school, and traffic, and whatever else he can think of to break the silence in the car. Apparently, his warden has never heard of a comfortable silence, he thinks. The rude thought stays firmly inside his head, however. He’s only known the man a day, getting on his bad side is decidedly not on his list of priorities. They arrive at the cafe and Sojiro gives him a diary to keep track of his daily life. Sojiro gets a phone call and leaves Ren to his own devices for the rest of the evening, but not before reminding him to behave yet again.
He picks up the diary and opens it up, prepared to write down what happened today, but... strangely enough, something is already written inside of the journal. Initially, he thinks Sojiro might have used it for daily reminders, but he looks through the next page. And the next. And the one after that. As he continues to read through it, he realizes, distantly, that the handwriting in the book is his . He keeps reading, and as he does, he starts to remember things, that eerie sense of deja-vu since he got here, the sense of dread at Igor’s voice, all of it starts to slot into place, like a puzzle he didn’t know he was solving. Ren’s head starts to ache, his memories of the past year (or is it the upcoming year?) rolling over him like a wave. As he realizes that he’s back in LeBlanc, in April, he sits down on his couch. All he can think, is “Fuck.”