Work Text:
By some miracle, the man drops all charges.
Akira's parents are thrilled with the result, of course—as excited as can be, when the man, Masayoshi Shido-san, brings up the prospect of a simple exchange: Akira spends the following year in Tokyo, attending a prestigious private school on Shido-san's dime and interning for him all the while. Shido-san's a politician, you see? He has money, connections—everything that can turn around the future that Akira had so thoroughly wrecked in a single evening.
Akira's parents fall for it, of course. How could they not, when Shido-san smiles at them so understandingly? They help Akira pack, find him an apartment in the city, take multiple trips to move him there. (He does not hear from them again, once they leave him there for good.)
On his first day of school, he accepts the ride the gym teacher offers—ignores the oddly distant look in the blonde girl's eyes, as she goes quiet next to him in the back seat—ignores the loud, rude-mouthed boy who mutters profanities at the gym teacher under his breath.
Afterwards, at work, Shido-san hands him a USB drive containing a small mountain of research papers on cognitive psience. Akira spends the week reading about liminal spaces in one's dreams, a blurred barrier between consciousness and unconsciousness, masks upon masks that people harbor within themselves—all of it made real on some plane that lies beyond human comprehension.
The following Monday, when Akira returns the USB drive, Shido-san hands him a bottle of pills.
The pills are to be taken with food, twice a day at minimum. They're chalky and sour with a bitter aftertaste, catching in his throat unless he takes them with water.
There's a number of side effects that surface immediately: a persistent cough that makes his chest ache the longer the fits go on; a creeping sense of fatigue that makes it difficult to keep his eyes open throughout the day; ever-present chills that demand that he wear a sweater well into summer.
The most important one, though, is whatever enables him to make use of that strange, eye-shaped app on his phone and physically enter that realm between worlds. It's a grotesque, ugly place, with shadows that dance against the walls. Being in that space almost makes the other unpleasant side effects worth it—because it's only in this space that a deep-rooted sense of power comes to him immediately, when he calls on it.
The power calls itself Gilles de Rais . On the best days, it's an unpleasant impulse that compels him to drag one of those shadows against the walls out into the light. The goal, Shido-san had told him, is to find the ones corresponding to a certain list of people, and…simply mess with them. Never kill them, but leave them feeling lost, confused, drained of all will to fight back.
(—but when a creature of this plane cries out, begging for mercy: whose voice is it? Why does it sound so human , right at the moment when Akira cannot afford to hesitate?)
It's a success, of course, because the creature eventually stops struggling against him—but it's still there, which means that the person it belongs to can't be dead yet. In a daze, Akira stumbles back into the real world.
He takes only a minute to catch his breath. Then, he pulls up Shido-san's list of targets on his phone, and crosses out one.
The next day, he does it all over again.
In May, a famous artist named Ichiryuusai Madarame holds a press conference on live television and confesses to decades of plagiarism, as well as the physical and mental abuse of multiple students. It's abrupt, out of the ordinary, and Shido-san calls Akira immediately after it's over, snarling over the phone: "You're responsible for this."
"I didn't—" Akira replies automatically, and it takes him an extra few moments to catch up to the fact that Shido-san hasn't accused him of anything yet.
"You should know by now," says Shido-san, icily. "People don't just confess like this, out of the blue. Not unless they were pushed . Fix it."
He ends the call then, and…does not elaborate on what will happen, should Akira fail.
In that space between worlds, Akira moves carefully, and resolutely ignores the tightening feeling in his chest as he forces Gilles to stay quiet—because one thing has become obvious: this realm is no longer his alone.
There's no concrete evidence of it—no evidence that others have traversed the same paths that he has, no signs of battle that Akira himself has not fought—but there's something different in the air, something different about the Shadows' chatter, that can't be explained so easily. It makes them huddle away in the corners, makes Gilles roar at the back of his mind.
(One in particular weeps for her daughter, laments all that she did to hurt the girl—and thanks, profusely, the three strangers to wrest this from her: one in a black mask, one in a fox’s mask, and one in a war general’s helmet.)
When he returns to the real world, there's something different about that strange, eye-shaped app: three text inputs asking for a name, a location, and a keyword.
Akira frowns at it, his thumb hovering over the first text box—and Gilles roars at the back of his mind, makes his chest feel oddly tight, and so he presses down and types: Masayoshi Shido .
When he hits "enter," the two empty text boxes are highlighted red—but the first text box is highlighted green, and next to it is text that reads: Candidate found .
—and then, something slams into his shoulder, sending him crashing to the ground: a boy with soft brown hair that he's in the middle of shoving into a ponytail. "Watch where you're going!" the boy snaps, irritably.
Akira opens his mouth to apologize—but then his breath catches in his throat. He coughs to clear it, but it turns quickly into a full-on fit.
The boy turns, his scowl softening into something less assured. It can’t be something like concern—not when Akira’s making a nuisance of himself, and in public at that.
—but the boy crouches down before him, and reaches into his backpack to retrieve a bottle of water. “Here,” he says, more gently.
Akira’s hands are shaking as he takes the bottle, sips at it slowly—and all the while, the boy stays there quietly, asking nothing.
As Akira hands the bottle back to him, the boy rises to his feet, and then extends one hand out towards him to pull him to his feet. "Are you okay?” asks the boy. “Nothing broken?"
"No, I don't think so…" Akira replies.
The boy clicks his tongue, scowling down at his watch. "I'm late ." But there are no words of scorn or derision, blaming Akira for it—without so much as another word, the boy disappears into the crowd.
With a weary sigh, Akira turns on his heel and heads for the exit—but in the corner of his vision, there's a black and white cat with bright blue eyes, blinking slowly up at him. For a frighteningly long moment, Gilles is utterly quiet—and Akira can't quite shake the feeling that something about the cat has forced him back .
That cat does not move; Akira does not dare to even breathe—but then his phone buzzes in his hand with a text from Shido-san, pulling his attention away in an instant.
When Akira looks up again, the cat is gone.
The location that fits with Shido-san’s name is simply: “Japan.”
Akira discovers this after about a day's worth of trial and error, and moments before the screen of his worktop freezes suddenly, as dozens of ghost-like blobs with wide eyes and human feet dance tauntingly in the corners.
Shido-san scowls, when Akira shows it to him. "Medjed," he says in half a growl, slamming his fist down on his desk. "Head straight for IT. Until this issue is resolved, take this time to work on other projects."
It's as close to time off as he'll ever get in this job, so Akira doesn't dare to question it—and once his laptop is sufficiently quarantined, he hops straight onto the train and doesn't look back.
The more he thinks about it, the more sense it makes that such a location would be of such importance to Shido-san—it's no secret, after all, that he's gunning for the Diet. It implies that he holds the country in high esteem, even if the same can't be said for its people.
(That woman who'd cried out for help that night…what happened to her? Does Shido-san even care?)
Something unpleasant wells in his chest, and Akira turns his head to the side to clear his throat.
When he returns to himself, sitting next to him is next to a boy with soft brown hair, pulled back in a ponytail. "Oh, you're…"
The boy lifts his head, squinting at Akira—and then there's something like recognition in his expression, before it shutters closed. "You again ?"
With a sheepish smile, Akira raises his hands in something like surrender. "Ah…thank you, for yesterday. I was…"
"…hacking out a lung, apparently."
"Thanks again for your help," says Akira, sheepishly. "I'm Akira Kurusu, by the way."
The boy hums, leaning back in his seat. "Goro Akechi."
"And where are you headed, Akechi-kun?"
At that, Goro huffs out an irritated sigh. "Work. What else?" He eyes Akira's jacket—clean, tailored, specifically chosen to convey every bit of dignity and class Shido-san demands. "And where are you headed?"
"Ah…" Akira starts. "Dinner, actually. Got off early from work, because someone hacked my work computer." He leans to whisper conspiratorially: "It was Medjed, if you can believe it."
At that, Goro barks out an ugly laugh. "If Medjed took the time to do that, then your employer probably deserved it." He grins. "So what, are they a public figure, or something?"
"Something like that."
" Eugh . Those are the worst ." The boy turns his head to the side, pressing his lips together in a tight line. "It makes you wonder, doesn't it? How many people they've crushed underfoot, to get to where they are. Like that artist, Madarame."
…because how could someone with so much power, so much money, see fit to betray those who depended on him for all that they had?
What is it about Madarame specifically, that had piqued the interest of those three strangers who interfered in that other world, if it was indeed them? When that woman wept for her daughter, how much of it was personal ?
"Humor me," says Akira, deliberately lightly. "If you had the power to influence someone…anyone, really. Push them to say things they would otherwise never consider, confess secrets that they've kept buried for years…if you were to use that power, then would that make you any better than, say, someone like Madarame?"
Goro gives him a long, calculating gaze—but then he hums, rubbing his chin. "An interesting conundrum…because to consider that possibility would be to entertain a scenario where the power is in our hands for once, not theirs. For it to remain righteous…it must be acknowledged as such, I think. And then, when the job is complete, the power must be relinquished—otherwise, the person with that power would simply become a new tyrant altogether."
…which is exactly what Shido-san will become one day, if Akira continues to use this power to his benefit.
—but at that moment, Gilles makes his presence known once more.
It’s embarrassing, when these coughing fits happen in public—but on this train at least, people are kind enough to not stare. It’s longer, rougher than the previous day’s had been; Akira reaches for the pill bottle in his bag, fumbles with the lid—
“Here,” says Goro, reaching for the bottle. “Hasn't anyone ever told you to stay home if you have a cold?”
Amidst Akira’s coughing, rough fingers curl lightly around his own, closing them around two pills. Akira takes the water bottle from Goro for the second time in as many days, swallows down the pills—and Goro continues to frown at the pill bottle that’s still in his hands.
There’s something almost like recognition there—and that’s dangerous. There are a number of excuses that Akira’s prepared for this moment—that it’s cold medicine, or some sort of vitamin supplement—but all of them run dry in an instant, because there’s something almost like recognition there in Goro’s eyes.
“Who did you say you worked for again?” he asks.
Absurdly, there’s a part of him that wants to tell the truth. It would be so easy to do it—to confide it in a stranger who’d been kind enough to stop for his sake, to pay attention —but in the back of his mind, Gilles roars .
“A politician,” Akira answers, shakily. “I’m not at liberty to discuss who.”
Goro sighs, pressing his lips together in a thin line. “I see…”
Awkwardly, Akira sips at his water. “It’s not a bad job, all things considered,” he lies. “Pays well.” Keeps him out of prison. Ensures that his criminal record remains clean. Makes his parents happy, despite the circumstances.
“It can’t be all that great if they’re not even letting you take time off for a cold,” Goro points out.
He’s right, of course—not that simply knowing it has ever done Akira any good.
“Though if you’re ever looking for something different,” says Goro, “the cafe I work at over in Yongen is always looking for new part-timers.”
How nice would it be, to work a normal job like that? To live a life that Shido-san doesn’t hold in his hands? What must it be like, to work alongside Goro in a cafe—with nothing else pressing except simply getting through the shift in one piece?
It’s an impossible dream, though—one that Akira cannot afford to dwell on, if he wants to make it through this year with his mind intact. “Perhaps another time,” he demurs.
“Fair enough,” Goro replies, shrugging. “But for the time being, let’s exchange email addresses. If you ever find yourself in Yongen, consider paying a visit.”
Once they do, the first message Goro sends him is of a link to a cafe that advertises curry paired with coffee—warm, peaceful, everything Shido-san’s office is not.
As the train pulls into Shibuya, they step off together. “Thanks again for your help back there,” says Akira, a bit uselessly.
“It’s no trouble at all,” Goro replies pleasantly. They part ways—and for an instant, something quietly shifts in Akira. It’s pleasantly warm, like that cafe—and suddenly, it’s impossible to ignore the feeling that this likely won’t be the last time he’ll see Goro. A part of him doesn’t want it to be the last time.
As he steps off the escalator, there under the awning is a black and white cat with bright blue eyes, blinking slowly up at him.