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Kuon’s mask is as pristine as it ever was. She ambles up to Takuto in the parking lot. Her hands rest lightly in her coat pockets and her visage, though blank, bears a faint smile.
But Takuto Maruki has a good idea as to what she is here for. He could run, even if anyone walking or driving by would find it a funny sight; inevitably, Tokyo is home to personalities as colorful as Shibuya’s display screens (and with those posing a stark juxtaposition). But even so, he lets his instincts drive him to do something else, just whatever is going to graciously smooth out this encounter.
So, as though Kuon leaves him nowhere else to go, nothing else to do…he stands slumped against his taxi cab. Perhaps nothing he could do would “smooth out” what she’s come for.
Maruki’s eyes fall to the ground, and he sighs under pursed lips. Now a taxi driver, the psychologist remembers that his hat is still snug on his head. They’ll be a perfect shield for the top half of his face, given how pathetic he must look, anyway.
Kuon Ichinose is standing close to him. She never swoops down to fully look at him, doesn’t force herself into his line of sight.
“What’s that for?” Ichinose chuckles, and she sounds so warm, so encouraging. “You look like you’re being cornered by a bully from school.”
She speaks playfully, but Maruki knows it won’t last forever.
Of course she wasn’t a bully. Considering what he’s come to understand about Kuon, Takuto knows that it couldn’t be a greater mismatch.
But Kuon had last seen him in-person while he was waiting for Ren Amamiya and Goro Akechi to consider his actualization. While she was meeting with Maddice in Osaka, then finishing urgent work with Toho University in Sendai, every change she saw next to him was snuffed out. Everything was now as it used to be, good or bad.
All the same, Takuto knows better now than he did at the time. He had already relinquished any modicum of an urge to go back on his realizations and his new goals—and he’s still okay with it.
He just wishes that poor Kuon was there to see that, too.
“He-heh, s-sorry,” is all he can muster. “I, um—need to catch you up, but a lot’s happened, um, since you…youleftandallofit—”
He baffles himself at how he stumbles this gracelessly, yet doesn’t break into tears and wails from the sheer embarrassment.
At least he said what he needed to yesterday, only giving his word to Amamiya and his cat on their way back home. That way, all of the young man’s friends could stay rid of Maruki. He still owes all of them for this, too—from Sakamoto to Sakura, but especially still Yoshizawa—but for the time being, he could start with providing the actual escape route for Amamiya and his pet, whereas the rest of them never had to face him again this winter. He didn’t even get to drive the route as secretive and scenic as the one he wanted most, but it didn’t matter in the end. All of those government agents must’ve lost their edge since they were first outsmarted by this poor boy and his inner circle last November.
It still hasn’t been exactly twenty-four hours since then, and sometimes he really needs that full day’s worth to settle his feelings on something as important as that. But for now, Maruki feels great for tying the bow—practiced but clumsy, yet still as neat as can be—for “Joker” to see.
So as pitiful as he is right now, Kuon inherently gets the right to Takuto’s word, too—
“You don’t need to beat around the bush.” Both in pitch and tone, her voice flatlines. “I knew things were different since earlier last month.”
His head flicks up to look at her. He can feel the flush in his face as his mouth drops open.
All the way from Osaka?! Or maybe from Sendai, at that point?!
“Oh…oh no, Ku—I-I’m so sorry,” he gasps. “I—I didn’t realize that I—”
He is going to sound like an idiot to finish his own sentence. At the same time, he wouldn’t be lying; everything after his change of heart is still a blur, even though he was in control of himself when apologizing to friends and family, and taking up taxi driving for “a time,” as he settled on for himself.
“I knew it was true when you couldn’t give it to me straight that you and Azathoth didn’t finish it,” she says…so, so casually. “Not even while texting me back.”
Oh…he never ghosted Kuon. He just can’t seem to remember what he told her, especially if was still too scared to tell her the exact outcome that even she knew.
She continues, “I knew I needed you to meet me face-to-face again. This probably isn’t the kind of news we could talk about over texts. Not when we called, either.”
In that case, Ichinose could still have Maruki’s word, too—but she still won’t like it. No matter how poised she stands and smoothly she speaks, he can’t shake the dread of how betrayed she will be.
Takuto was a part of Kuon’s barely-kept network for years, but he only ever entered her life last Christmas.
He was just getting a vegetable drink, antsy but excited to spite his professor in a few short hours with his findings. He knew he likely wouldn’t get anywhere past that—as with Masayoshi Shido’s innermost cronies, his arrogant antithesis for a “teacher” or fellow scholar loves a reductive status quo—but Maruki still had a chance. If that sliver of a chance still fell through, he could chart another course that still led to the fruition of his work.
Maybe. It wasn’t impossible, after all…just improbable. But just for now!
Standing aside to look before he ordered, Vegetariano didn’t have the seafood “aojiru” he could’ve sworn was next in the rotation for that Christmas Eve. As much as he loved the onsen aojiru being sold, he only really wanted the former’s omega-3 fatty acids. So while he still hadn’t caught the barista’s attention, he shuffled away from the drink stand.
Away from Vegetariano, a pair of opaque eyes watched him go. As soon as he felt them, Kuon Ichinose gingerly stepped in front of him. His nerves were frayed, however, and he was so close to yelping in response.
“Their ‘aojiru’ today’s supposed to be made of hot-spring water,” she mused. “It’s also got a lot of folate and L-theanine from the other ingredients—great for your mental and emotional stability!”
“Oh, uh…n-no-no, no, you’re right,” concurred Maruki. “I’m just, uh…I just need to get some seafood or other ‘brain food.’ Y’know, ome—”
“Omega-3s?” Ichinose’s smile is pleasant…even though it didn’t reach her eyes.
Maruki was too startled to take precaution, anyway. He nodded sheepishly.
“Y-yeah, yeah!” he laughed. “I got a, uh, um…a-uh-uh…sorry—a meeting on this research I’ve finally finished a paper on. I, uh, still have a few more hours, but I—um, go to Vegetariano a lot already. I-I’ll probably go back again before the new year. But—”
He cut himself off, remembering his manners.
“But—butit’snicetoseeyouagain, Ichinose!” He finally took an adequate breath. “I hope you’ve been alright.”
This time, Ichinose’s olive eyes glimmered. “It’s good to see you, too, Doctor! Toho University isn’t too close to Shibuya for me to visit often, but I’m glad I got a chance to run into you. I actually wanted to ask one of you about that ‘cognitive psience’ you’d been researching for years now.”
Given how slim his chances were with his meeting today, Maruki was more than happy to exchange information, and to meet with Ichinose for more. He couldn’t tell what an AI researcher and engineer would want with his field (no thanks to the corrosive crooks and murderers who ruined it in the first place for mere politics), but she was already a better person to share it with than the professor.
Sure enough, hours later, that crooked man threw up an impasse before Takuto Maruki—but Azathoth’s terrifying, beautiful, wraithlike presence laid a path forward. Sure enough, that was his detour. It was (almost) flattering to have been made just for him—just for his ideals, all for the world to share.
“I’m sorry, Kuon.” Takuto’s hand falls from the cab door, and he nudges himself off of the vehicle altogether. “I…I just couldn’t do it. I was—”
He can’t even look at her right now. After all this time, her blank mask must be welded to her face with how perfect it holds. Kuon is steely but neutral, barely fidgeting or averting her gaze. She looks like she couldn’t care less to interrupt, even as Takuto trips over his own words.
“I wish I realized sooner,” he murmurs shakily. “You see…that ‘ideal reality’ was screwed from the start. I was an idiot to get both of our hopes up. There was so, so much more to my actualization that I didn’t even understand. More strings were attached than I realized, and even now, I don’t know why I was willing to sacrifice so much of every person in the world, only to give them just one wish in return.”
He knows that the shift in his own attitude—from Amamiya to Ichinose—is stark. He struggles to cool himself and recollect the self-confidence he still harbors for his new outlook.
“In the end, I wasn’t healing my trauma or anyone else’s,” he says, struggling to hold back his tears. “It stayed there this whole time, and I was only trying to run from it—I would’ve just dragged all of Tokyo along with me.”
She’s still silent, still waiting on him.
Tears threaten to slip over from behind the rims of his eyes, and the lodging in his throat is ready to fully start choking him.
But maybe this is what facing trauma feels like, imperfect as it stands. It still beats brainwashing into numbness, into trading free will for ignorant bliss.
They met again at Bikkuri Boy on Christmas Day, and Takuto finally realized just how beautiful Kuon is.
She clearly never cared to prove herself as smart and charming (later on, she would prove what a damn good front it all was). But to the “psientist” and psychologist, whoever she presented herself as over their holiday lunch was wonderful.
He opened up to her. She welcomed it with eyes and ears that were stuck solely on him.
He lamented his research, and the failures of the abusive politicians and hypocritical scholars that ruined it. She empathized with him…or, when considering her scrapped “humanity’s companion” project, she sympathized with him. He may have mixed up the details there.
But they eventually turned the tides of who was excitedly raving of their pursuits. Takuto asked about Maddice and what they approached her for, and Kuon seemed quite content—somehow maybe too at peace—with delivering her “EMMA” program to them for further developments.
As soon as their main courses were gingerly set on the table of their booth, she raved of the best beef tongue and oxtail soup she ever had, localized to a single little joint in Sendai (even as she was talking in-between bites of Salisbury steak). He elaborated on the strangest of his favorite snacks to have handed out to the students of Shujin Academy (the chocolates in boxes from a maid cafe event got the biggest guffaw out of her).
He never told her about Rumi or Azathoth, let alone about that other world, the Phantom Thieves, or poor Miss Yoshizawa.
He never realized until later, but he was just combing the surface of her over a hearty Christmas lunch.
Even then, the time read ten minutes to noon (save for the diner’s big clock running three or four minutes behind) when Kuon leaned over the cleared table, slipping her hand into Takuto’s. Even with skinship such as this, she was smooth but disarming, like she studied how to open people up and turned her findings into a mechanical science, then threw together a collection of them for her to draw upon whenever.
“I know it’s hard to say so much in the open here,” she murmurs, “but I think we both know a lot more than we can let anyone here onto. I don’t think our goals are so different, either.”
His chest churned.
“I do think you’re much more compassionate towards people.” Her smile was sly, but sweet enough to not paint her time with him as a lie. “You also give me another perspective. Honestly, I couldn’t feel any more different from you than I do, but that’s what makes you stand out from the rest.”
His face burned.
She noticed, and she snorted quietly. It’s like he was making a face that wouldn’t leave anyone reasonably cackling and rolling in their seat, but was just cute enough to earn a proper “little giggle.”
“Oh you’re fine!” Her hand slipped out and ensnared his.
She smiled sardonically, barely tilting her head from side to side and rolling her eyes.
“A real misanthrope has a couple of exceptions,” Kuon snarked quietly. “And it’s not like I can’t get along with anyone else, or want what’s best for them.”
Takuto needed a few seconds more than necessary to process what the hell she just said—but something in his head diagnosed this as an incredible opportunity, rather than anything else. He still never told her about Rumi, but he started to believe that was okay.
“I’ll tell you that your kindness is still remarkable.”
Kuon finally talks, and she lets herself look solemn and bittersweetened at last. For the moment, Takuto surpasses the need to cry.
“If Azathoth’s powers had so many caveats,” she observes, “then I guess it’s better you were stopped before it was too late.”
“Yeah,” he lamely concurs…until he catches onto the end of her response. “So, you figured I was ‘stopped,’ too?”
Ichinose blinks and nods. She looks glum, but not angry. Maruki…doesn’t mind when she looks as blank and restrained as humanly capable, but he feels assured in their connection when she lets her emotions slip through.
Even if it still scares or pains him, he’s grateful for when she opens up to him.
“The Phantom Thieves?” guesses she.
“The Phantom Thieves,” says he.
Kuon lets a few seconds crawl by in silence, almost studying Takuto’s visage.
“And you’re sure,” she interjects, “that these issues with your actualization would’ve existed without that bunch barging in?”
“I’ve no reason to believe I became arrogant because of them,” he laments, at least able to have confidence drip through his voice this once. “If anything, they helped me out of it before it would’ve been too late.”
Kuon’s green eyes fall to the ground between their feet.
“It’s ‘folly’ and ‘arrogance’ to you?” Something dark and low slips in and out of her intonation, so close to bleeding into her stiffened body language.
The young man suppresses the urge to run away in embarrassment. But even though he doesn’t, the hairs on his arms lift straight off the light-bronze skin.
“You mean how I let Azathoth use me?” Maruki carefully asks, barely feeling his self-assurance from a moment ago. “Then yes. I should’ve realized that—”
He pauses when he takes a proper look at the change in Ichinose’s face.
What did he say to make her look so furious?
After they had already talked for a whole hour in her hotel room, she listened intently to his heart while he stared at the ceiling.
He enjoyed it, but cuddling had come rather fast for two people who hadn’t been close until these last two days. Especially in their worlds after graduation, anyone who was anyone needed to throw as many contacts into their network as possible, even if they kept in minimal touch from then on. Once they knew each other as decently memorable names, numbers, and emails for their own careers. But now, they were wordlessly compliant in holding hands, then checking back into her room together.
Were their conversations profound enough to also have led them here?
Did they even agree that they were dating now?
The speed at which everything happened, at first, terrified him. A lot of his life’s biggest moments—high and low, triumphant and traumatic—had come and gone, or evolved and dissolved, “so suddenly.”
But being snuggled up together on a hotel bed was very close to crossing a line with him. Even as the farthest layer of intimacy they’d dive through to that Christmas—being sprawled out on her futon without his shirt or her coat—it had shot his anxiety beyond the roofs of skyscrapers and to the exosphere between Earth and space. His heart had spasmed and skin had flushed when she shed her brown coat, and it took him an extra moment to come back down before he could unbutton himself.
Now those sensations plateaued into a numbing, calming buzz in his skull. Finally it felt nice, and it was as far as they would go that holiday. If all else in his life was going to accelerate and never slow down, then this could be the one thing that stays steady and slower.
His heart fell back into its casual, ritual rhythm, and Kuon didn’t look like she was going to unpress her ear against it for a while. Even while they talked, that side of her head kept glued to his breast, joining in its rise and fall with no resistance.
Since she first ambled up to him on Christmas Eve—actually, even back when they were very distant colleagues—she joined casual conversations with the clear and resonant voice of a perfect (if eccentric) host. Even if Kuon was hushed and soft, her cadence and enunciation were enviably crisp and silky.
So while she rested on his body, her voice was still as hypnotic and silvery as ever—just that a breathiness coexisted with every word.
“People have always said they had changed this world for the better…but you could be the first person to finally, actually do that.”
…Oh, right, that’s why. He finally told her about Azathoth, the Metaverse, and his ideal reality.
And truly, Takuto was ecstatic, too! He just needed to curb his enthusiasm while he finalized his roadmap, as Azathoth sent his actualizations into motion. He couldn’t let anything (or anyone) seep in and ruin it now, nor could he lose his mind to his own machinations now.
He was certain his head was still screwed on, anyway. He couldn’t afford to lose it, not like anything else he could lose.
“I don’t think I ever realized how far I could really go with my research.” Takuto couldn’t help but confess, still unable to boast. “I jumped into cognitive psience right after I got my doctorate, just to have it ruined by corrupted politics—but even picking up the pieces left behind led me here…and I’m grateful for it.”
The psychologist swallowed quietly. In summarizing his last few years in such a way, the back of his mouth was stung by a bitter aftertaste.
“Not only have I never felt this…strongly…be-before,” she abruptly shivered, “but I never thought someone like you could’ve been out there.” She pulled her knees up to reach the hem of her striped shirt. “And I’d already met you years ago…funny how that works.”
His fingers brushed through her long hair while they giggled softly.
“It’s surreal,” Kuon repeated.
“No kidding,” Takuto exhaled.
…Takuto’s anxiety held him back from asking for Kuon’s wish. What was there to be nervous about? He wished he knew.
“Doc?” she murmured.
He held his breath. He didn’t know what to say. And if she was going to tell him, he wasn’t sure if he was ready.
“Takuto,” she cooed, drawing his eyes down to her in response, “I don’t have a wish to make, but I want you to promise me something.”
Would it be that he was or wasn’t “ready” for it? Either way, he exhaled with the ease he could finally settle into.
“Are you sure?” Even so, Maruki needed to make sure.
She hummed affirmatively.
“You’ve given up a lot to be where you are now, haven't you?” she interrogated.
“Mm-hm,” he wistfully replied. “So much happened to my friends and my family…I can’t wait to give them this. I want to remove their pain and suffering, to bring people happiness—it’s finally happening.”
She closed her eyes and sank deeper against his chest.
“Can you promise me that?” Her curled-up legs relaxed and slid an inch back down.
Their fingers lace together. “Promise me that you’ll give humanity what’s best for them? Give them this?”
Takuto’s chest aches, just about where her head had rested that Christmas Day.
But Kuon is already closing her eyes and taking a deep breath in.
“It’s not our goal, Kuon!” he rapidly exclaims. “I-it’s not the issue—that we want to remove sorrow and trauma from good people’s minds, tha—it wasn’t the issue! I still want people to be happy and to not be in pain, and you should still feel that way, too!”
Kuon snaps out of her reservations, looking back at him with wide-eyed curiosity.
“So,” she paraphrases, “you think that you had the wrong idea about…whatever brought you and Azathoth together?”
He fervently nods, stepping closer to her. “I did.”
“You really think that your ideal reality was the issue?”
“It was,” he says. “But I don’t want you to believe that your wish to bring a good change in the world is bad—it’s wonderful!”
Now let it bubble up from the heart, he thinks to himself—even though he has already been a nervous, confused idiot.
“Making a difference for society can never be as easy as it seemed,” Takuto raves. “To be free of suffering shouldn’t come from any of your emotions being numbed and erased. If I could have saved…all of the people I ever knew, I would do so!”
He still can’t face Rumi, so of course he can’t bring himself to talk about her, not even with Kuon or Shibusawa.
He…was never going to tell Kuon about her, was he? Not even his change of heart would give his conscience the spark it needs to make it slip.
“But I—” he exasperates, “but we can’t! We have to face our demons or flaws head-on, however painful it is. It’s the only way anyone can ever heal, no matter how unfair it is, and we have to—”
As he abrasively runs his fingers under his cap and through his hair, Ichinose finally raises her voice.
“Oh-kay!” she barks. “I get it! You couldn’t do it because Azathoth wasn’t all he was cracked up to be.”
It’s his turn to look at her in mild surprise, even though his chest sinks that she needs to snap back at him for the first time. But as quickly as she had stepped forward, she dials her volume back down again.
“What’s done is done,” she sighs. “And, so far, it’s still been nice knowing you.”
So far? Takuto doesn’t understand. Did he not fumble with the promise he made for her?
“Even if you succeeded,” the AI researcher chides, “I would’ve still kept my plans as a ‘backup.’ Remember that?”
…Oh no, she couldn’t—
“You mean ‘EMMA’? Maddice?” The blood seems to drain from his head to the rest of his body when she half-smiles and solemnly nods. “N-nu-n-no, Kuon! I don’t want you to get hurt. If you’ve tapped into the same world as I did, i-it-it’ll just conjure something like Azathoth again! It’s never going to be worth you or your dreams!”
The pupils in her olive eyes are concealed by a familiar semi-opaque haze..
“I don’t have many emotions to ‘face head-on,’ Doctor Maruki,” she chides. “Besides, I told you I’d sold her to Maddice a while ago—even if I change my mind, it’s been out of my hands for a while now.”
She continues on while her eyes trail away from Maruki.
“Ubukata…I think?” Ichinose stares above and behind him. “Yeah, Shuzo Ubukata—I’m pretty sure now. He was an artificial intelligence researcher like myself, leading a research lab in Okinawa. Maddice’s CEO had him run some tests for EMMA—until about a few days ago.”
Takuto could swear that Kuon’s face wavered, but now it holds a blank composure, not driven by the inherent weight of her own words.
“Nobody’s been able to find him,” she drones. “I have my ways of keeping tabs on EMMA, though. Of course I can’t see him or that large chunk of Okinawa myself. But I was given some intel, if you will, that Mister Ubukata’s…umm, crossed a line. Maddice’s CEO, Akira Konoe, already has a good idea of what happened, too.”
Takuto’s heart lurches.
“Kuon,” he begs, “I can’t let you get yourself killed or—or whatever else EMMA, or that other world, could do to you!”
She looks him in the eyes again. “Please relax, Doc. I’m still standing in front of you, but even after right now, there’s nothing putting me in danger. It’s quite roundabout thanks to Konoe and Ubukata, but eventually, even their folly and arrogance will lead to the truest desires of humanity being granted. We’ll change the hearts of the masses, and finally lead humanity into a greater world.”
Her smile is sweet. If only a little, the blockade in her eyes lifts.
“I hope you’ll come with me—or, at least keep in touch with me?” Her voice is warm and encouraging again.
“But I thought that the other world died, anyway?” blurts Maruki. “Did it not, or…or did it come back somehow?”
Ichinose shrugs. “Either it did, or you’re also right that it was never gone to begin with.”
The former psychologist shuffles through her profile as he had built it in his brain, trying to think of something to change her mind.
EMMA…there was no way this wouldn’t endanger all of Japan, maybe even the world—and the backfire on Kuon would be devastating. A genius like her has to have a course to change to. She had to—
“Whatabout—please, Kuon, there has to be a way to delete EMMA and start over. What about ‘SOPHIA’?!” He steels himself in the event that he just crossed the line at last.
Sure enough, the veil behind her retinas lifts and she stumbles back with a soft gasp.
“What?”
A trio of steady heartbeats pass on in silence.
“‘Sophia’ was,” he finally continues, “the other project you were working on and then scrapped. You wanted her to be humanity’s best friend, remember?”
He throws his hands up in desperation. “Surely,” he continues to protest, “you could make a better difference if you gave her another shot! I…I don’t know much about AI, but she’s not tied to the other world like EMMA, is she?!”
Another measure of his pulse flies by to the tune of nothing. Kuon’s shock dissipates; she pulls herself together as best as she can.
“I can’t recover her, but she didn’t have much going on to begin with.” Her mask snakes its way back over her pretty visage. “There was nothing to lose with her, Maruki—there just wasn’t anything she could ‘become.’ That’s the end of it.”
He slumps back against his taxi again.
“I understand that Azathoth failed you,” she soothes, “and I’m sorry he let you down. But you don’t have to worry about me—all EMMA has to do is spread to all the masses in Japan, around the world, and she’ll be able to find and choose their truest desires.”
Maruki can’t even look up at Ichinose anymore. Whatever happens, it’s his fault.
“Then, I wish you the best,” he whimpers. “Let’s stay in touch, though.”
He swallows. “If you need any help from me, just…just please tell me. I’ll come find you, and I’ll help you in whatever way I can.”
It would be a miracle through the unlikeliest of chances, but maybe he could save her. At the last minute of that fateful day, they could abandon whatever can be conjured after Azathoth. Then they could live on, just as the rest of the world should, to better humanity head-on.
“I’d really appreciate that, Doc.” Her nickname for him summons a brigade of swellings that rock his chest and churn his stomach. “You said it yourself that we have the same goal, after all.”
Maruki nods, and finally looks back up at Ichinose.
Even now, Kuon looks warm and beautiful. Bittersweet as it is, Takuto smiles.
“I’ll see you soon,” he coos. “Good luck.”
She doesn’t say anything else, but she flashes a bright, energized grin that…doesn’t feel forced.
But maybe he doesn’t know her too well anymore.
Ichinose saunters past Maruki and on into the direction of Shibuya Station.
As he stumbles back around to the driver seat of his cab, the hope resting in their farewell vanishes. By the time he settles in and pulls the door back shut, he jolts himself with the sob that manages to escape his mouth.
But in spite of the inevitable calamity to come, he knows that Kuon Ichinose will have her way out and to see the light. As for Takuto Maruki, he knows better than to run from his past.
He drives out of the parking lot. Even as the tears slip from his eyes, his vision of the road is just fine.