Chapter Text
This damn app just won't stay off his damn phone.
It hadn't been long since he parted ways with the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. The punk kids’ voices still rang in his head. Gramps they'd called him all summer. He was as used to responding to it as his own name at this point. But surely he wasn't so old that he couldn't uninstall a single app, right?
The app icon shook under his finger, and he dragged it to the large white ‘uninstall.’ Zenkichi even took a second to stare at the empty space the red and black icon once occupied. He was only satisfied it wouldn't return when his ride ended, announced with a chime and the rolling of elevator doors.
Ten faces met Zenkichi behind the doors, waiting to load in. The lobby was packed with more people entering the building than leaving, even while the sky was shifting to a warmer hue.
Work had become a zoo since Owada's arrest. His corruption ran deep, and Zenkichi had been hard at work documenting the people involved for years. It had been imperative to keep his work secret until Owada's arrest could make the charges stick. The evidence already gathered, every man in Owada's pocket and Zenkichi's files had been fired or arrested in an instant. Zenkichi had his boss to thank for that, too. The corruption had been suddenly gutted, but with it, PubSec had too. Up to 10 percent of the force had been involved, and PubSec had already been understaffed.
Watching the pallid men enter the elevator behind him, Zenkichi's shoulders slumped a centimeter with guilt for leaving. But it was almost 7 already. Not the latest he'd stayed at work by far, but he was turning over a new leaf. He had trust to regain with Akane.
Akane was spending time at the park with her friend (Yuna, he'd made sure to remember) and her friend's parents. He said that he'd meet her there, and the two of them could get curry for dinner. She'd gotten a taste for it since the Thieves crashed their place. Amamiya may be a punk ass kid, but he's also a damn fine cook.
“Taking your work home with you, Hasegawa?” Asked a man walking past with hair too short and a blue suit that stood out amongst an army of black ones.
Zenkichi chuckled, raising his briefcase a little in the air in response. “Can't seem to get away from it.” He kept walking.
Strange. That man wasn't in his department, and Zenkichi didn't have much time for intermingling. His shoulders raised that centimeter back up with the swell of his ego. With Owada's arrest, maybe he'd become more notable?
Down the steps and into his black sedan, Zenkichi hefted the briefcase into the passenger seat. Then he remembered Akane and slid it into the backseat.
Another habit he'd built around a life with no room for Akane in it.
He shook the guilt off and started the car. Useless. He's noticing these habits because he's better. He's working to be better. He'd spent long enough replacing that work with guilt.
Zenkichi looked up to the rear view mirror, but something just below it caught his eye. There, at the top of the steps. Blue blazer, black tie. Black hair cropped too close to the scalp. When Zenkichi was exiting, the man had just been entering. What was he doing walking back out, now? He was holding his phone to his ear, and was he… looking at Zenkichi?
The man casually turned away. Ah. Zenkichi was just imagining things. Maybe he was still high strung from recent events. Food and family would do him good.
He reversed out of his spot and told himself not to take note of the other vehicles near his car in the lot.
This area of the city had a lot of old architecture. He tried to think about that, think about the park, think about Akane, but what he'd said had been true. He can't seem to get away from work.
The buildings brought his mind back to Akane's Jail. Akane - or, her shadow? That exact connection he'd ask the kids for clarity on one day - had said many things Zenkichi knew Akane thought about. One thing he hadn't considered, even once, was the family of Owada's secretary. She was right to think he didn't care, he hadn't cared about them at all.
At a red light, Zenkichi stole a look at the briefcase. The case around Aoi's death had been reopened, and with it, the secretary's. It was in Tokyo's jurisdiction, but since it was connected to the Owada corruption scandal, Zenkichi had been asked to contribute what he had. But what he had was naught a lead - it was treated as a suicide, so very little evidence was ever collected. Anything that had been collected had been erased as soon as Zenkichi started looking at it, too. Zenkichi had disregarded the secretary’s death as a dead end - Whoever had done Owada's dirty work would inevitably get swept up along with the rest of the corrupt, he'd thought. The only thing was, none of Owada's known conspirators had handwriting that matched the fake suicide note.
A red sedan. Same make and model. Same crack in the windshield. It had been parked three cars down at the precinct, and it was two cars behind him now.
Really? This was too much paranoia. He hadn't driven that far off, it was perfectly reasonable that a coworker was heading the same way as him. The light still red, he checked his phone (his car's clock was 11 minutes off) and saw that he was a still running a few minutes ahead of time. And he saw that the damn app was back.
The light turned green, and he drove forward, doing his best to unglue his eyes from the rearview mirror. He turned his signal on, then made a left.
Then another left. And another. And one more, for good measure.
He checked the rear view mirror. A red sedan, a crack in the windshield.
He floored it. This car didn't handle unlike his old patrol vehicle, and luckily those old tricks were still in him, somewhere deep in his bones. A bunch of furious honks followed, along with the sound of the roaring engine of a red sedan.
He made a left turn, then a right, trying his best to break eyelines with the driver, but these were packed city streets. The flow of traffic just couldn't be interrupted enough to get any distance. All Zenkichi could do was bide his time.
Finally, a lucky break. He slammed on the gas and yanked the wheel left onto a one-way street right as the light turned green. He came out ahead of a field of cars, and Zenkichi's pursuer couldn't sneak in edgewise. The eyeline was broken, and Zenkichi had more than enough time to get distance between them.
He'd have to call his boss. Find a hotel with underground parking until Kaburagi could get a detail on him and his daughter. Speaking of.
He adjusted his glasses. They'd slid askew partway through the chase. Zenkichi didn't even have to do the math on his dashboard clock to know he was late. Damn it.
Sunset was approaching. With school back in session, the park was emptier than it had been the past few weeks. A few stalls were still open, the lights glowing in defiance of the tail end of tourism season.
He'd agreed to meet Akane under a specific tree he could see from the parking lot. His stomach sunk like lead when he saw the spot was empty.
He snatched his phone and ran toward the spot - what the hell were the Thieves talking about? The group chat was pinging so much it was messing with his grappling for the phone icon. He paused for a second when Takamaki's username pinged with a screenshot of her apps. In the middle, a red and black icon. The messages were about the cognitive world, about personas. What in the world is Mementos?
“Hell-o?”
Zenkichi swiveled around. Akane's sweet, adorable, disappointed face greeted him.
“We were waiting for you for, like, half an hour.”
Zenkichi looked up, and saw Yuna and her parents by a stall about 20 feet away. Upon seeing him, the kid's father gave a curt wave as the family walked toward the lot. His planned day out had ended half an hour ago. This was not the first time Zenkichi was late.
“Oh,” Zenkichi managed, “B-bye Yuna!” he called out to the family.
“Yui, dad.” Akane said. She crossed her arms. She was being polite, waiting to berate him until they were back in the car.
“Sorry,” he said, the word coming out strangely dry and quiet as if he wasn't used to saying it.
Akane wouldn't meet his eyes. Owada's arrest could only do so much for their relationship. On the night that the Phantom Thieves defeated the jail that EMMA had built around Akane, Zenkichi had finally told Akane about the threat letter that ended his investigation into Aoi's death. While Akane's mind was clear and his explanation of events cleared a lot of bad blood in their relationship, there was a lingering weight. The cost of spending all his waking hours trying to get Kaburagi into a position of power was time spent being a father. The cost of keeping the threat on Akane's life secret was Akane's trust.
Zenkichi knew he had resolved to change, and in this moment, he ached to have Akane feel that resolve. To know that he had written a pact into his soul to get her justice. To be a hero to her. To be a good dad. But she didn't, couldn't know. He had to prove it to her first, and he failed, as he often did, at the first step.
“Something… came up.” He chose his words carefully to not alarm her. He waved away a passing thought that this was repeating old mistakes - he'd tell her what was happening once she was somewhere safe.
“Something always does.” She still didn't meet his gaze, instead just walking toward the car.
It stung. It stung too, how familiar it was.
Zenkichi brought himself to turn and head toward the car, too - the sooner it was parked underground, the better - when he spotted a red flash. Maybe he wasn't as good a driver as he thought.
A man stepped out of a red sedan with a crack in the windshield, and he was looking right at Zenkichi. It was a different man than the man on the steps, but there was no mistaking it this time. Their eyes locked.
Zenkichi ran for Akane and grabbed her by the waist. Was she always this heavy? Why do they have to grow up so quick?
“Hey, what the hell?” Akane squirmed in resistance
“Sorry, pup!” Zenkichi said a bit too loud, pulling Akane back toward the stalls.
“I don't want to look at the stalls,” Akane said firmly, beating her fists into her father's side. The last time he'd felt them, Akane was 7 and didn't want to hear that Aoi was staying out of town a day longer. Now they hit a little harder.
Zenkichi took a sharp right between two stalls. He'd gotten out of sight of his pursuer, but in a single line of stalls, there's little guessing where he'd be. He set Akane back down, crouching below counter height between two stalls, earning a lot of strange looks.
Despite a long series of “Heys” trying to get Akane to listen, as soon as Akane's feet touched the ground, she started trying to walk to the car again. Zenkichi didn't let go.
Akane started with “Dad! Let me - “ and Zenkichi couldn't hold his composure anymore.
“Would you just listen to me for once!” he snapped.
That caught Akane's attention. She looked at him like a squashed bug, though.
“There's a man, orange and white shirt, shaved head. He's been following me since the station and I think he wants to hurt me. Stick by my side and don't let him see you, okay pup?”
Akane stopped looking like she wanted to say something a kid shouldn't, and instead just nodded with wide eyes. His heart ached a little, seeing the fear in her face.
“Okay. If we get separated, you run straight to Yun- Yui's house, okay?” Akane gave another slow, scared nod.
Zenkichi started moving, keeping one hand on his daughter. They were behind the stalls, the counters giving them enough cover to move between them. They kept making their way down the single line of stalls, Zenkichi looking for one with a backdrop or something to give them cover while waiting for the goon to pass. But no backdrops came, and whenever Zenkichi poked his phone camera out to peer above the counters, that white and orange shirt stained the screen.
It was a long row of stalls, thankfully. Zenkichi spotted a ramen stall with thick blue cloth draped down the back that could hide the two of them long enough that their pursuer might pass them by and let them head back toward the car. He got into a rhythm, raising the camera to check, moving to the next stall when he saw the opportunity, repeat. Camera, move, repeat. Camera, move, repeat. Camera - no orange.
Akane yelped.
Zenkichi could only glance behind long enough to see orange, white, a running man, and a glint of metal. They ran.
The pair of them ran further into the park, pedestrians parting for them. Thankfully, their pursuer looked like a hired goon, and his huge body rounded corners like a freight truck. Zenkichi kept directing Akane in different directions, thankful she was keeping up. They had to dart from tree to tree for cover - Zenkichi still didn't know what that metal was.
They ran deeper and deeper into the park. It was where cover was leading them, and where their pursuer wasn't. The fear in Akane's breathing filled Zenkichi with guilt, sorrow, and a hell of a lot of anger.
They'd never been this far in the park, and with the setting sun and the more forested trees, they were starting to run blind. Eventually it caught up with them in the form of a chain link fence.
They almost ran face first into it. 15 feet high, empty batting cages taunting them on the other side. They'd lost sight of the man, but he wasn't far behind. There wasn't a sure way to know which way the man was walking from, no sure way to run.
When Zenkichi hesitated to move, Akane whimpered, and his heart sank through his feet.
A voice writhed through Zenkichi's mind.
Thou wouldst not fail to protect thine daughter.
Alright, he didn't need to remember that whole thing right now.
Actually, maybe he did.
The Jails, the Phantom Thieves, the Personas. After those 5 strangest days of his life, Zenkichi had packed those memories away to fondly revisit once they had time to become memories. But the Thieves’ group chat was strangely active today, and he finally remembered what they told him about the “meta-nav.” Before EMMA, they had a different app they could use to access the cognitive world. They never said what the app looked like, but if he had to guess, it was red with a black logo.
Zenkichi's hands were shaking so much he almost fumbled the phone onto the ground. There it was, that damn app that he just couldn't keep uninstalled. He tapped it, and the logo took up the screen. EMMA was based on voice navigation so…
“Mentos” Zenkichi said resolutely. His voice rang clear through the trees.
Akane looked between Zenkichi and his phone, bewildered. “Men toes?” She repeated in a harsh whisper, aghast.
He glanced at her, then back to the phone. He cleared his throat. “Mentos?” It came out a lot quieter and shakier.
The crunching of fallen leaves sounded a lot quicker and a lot closer all of a sudden.
Zenkichi felt something numbing and powerful crawl up his brain again.
Thou will not fail to protect thine daughter. Hone thy mind, temper thy memories.
Akane looked at him even stranger. “Dad… your eyes…?”
That was something he'd have to ask about later.
For a moment, he was back in the abyssal Jail. Confused as hell, worried about a young girl, scared about the world ending, and hearing one stupid word uttered over and over even though no one would explain it. “It looks like Mementos…”
“Mementos,” he spoke into the phone, grabbing Akane's shoulder. The world twisted.