Archive of Our Own

It starts in Leblanc, half past five o’clock with the minutes crawling by. Ryuji’s got a textbook in his lap but he’s not reading it, and hasn’t been for at least an hour, anyway – instead, he’s sprawled out on the threadworn couch with his arms spread up and over the back, half-listening to the low drone of the news report running downstairs, squinting at the message on Akira’s phone. It’s being held up to him and the others from Akira’s spot on the floor, cross-legged, up against the arm of the couch.

He scans the text from Mishima, and it takes him a second, skipping right past the name without processing. And then, when it hits - a laugh comes out abrupt, harsh and short like a cough. He can’t help it. “Are you shitting me?”

Nobody really pays attention. It’s just him and Akira and Haru and Yusuke today, anyway, with Futaba and Ann at the underground mall for some clothes shopping-slash-exposure therapy, and Makoto stuck with student council business nobody else had the grace to get involved in. Even Morgana is barely interested, instead curled up on Akira’s bed across the room, black fur showing its warm amber in the sunlight. It wasn’t even supposed to be a Phantom Thieves meeting, really - more of a pretend-to-be-studying, fuck-around-and-eat-snacks-until-we-get-bored kind of hangout. Very scheming-light, all things considered.

But Akira’s phone had lit up with a message. New request on the forum, and everyone’s peering over at it, and Ryuji is clenching his teeth together so tight he swears they could crack.

“Hm?” Yusuke is still reading. “It does sound like quite an… awful situation. I say this is one we should get to rather quickly.”

“No, it’s -“ His voice sounds all funny for a second, he’s pretty sure, and he clears his throat on instinct. “Tsukuda Tomeo. I - uh.” He stops.

Now they’re looking at him, instead - even Morgana, who’s cracked open his yellow eyes and craned his head to one side - and that’s worse. 

“Know him?” Akira asks, lips downturned ever so slightly, and, in that second, he’s sure Akira knows. He’s sure he doesn’t even have to say it.

“Used to.” He does, anyway. “That’s my old man’s name, you know? Or - was six years ago, at least. Who knows what he’s been up to since then.”

They’re quiet, for a few seconds, and the silence grows alive with heavy static - there’s the buzz of the television downstairs, the creak of old floorboards, his own damn breathing rattling around his chest like it’s hollow, scraping in a way it shouldn’t. And then - Akira nods, slowly, and it’s like some fucking spell has been broken, because Haru puts a light hand on his shoulder and Morgana pads over towards the couch and Yusuke runs a hand through his dark hair, lets strands fall back towards his shoulders without bothering to smooth it back neatly into place, and suddenly Ryuji’s lungs don’t feel so strangely torn up anymore.

“Do you think,” Haru starts, bless her, so hesitantly, “they might be the same person?”

He looks back at Akira’s phone, almost as if he has to read Mishima’s message again, has to go back over his father’s sins like he doesn’t know the bloody fallout just as well as whatever poor kid wrote the request in the first place. “Yeah. I mean, it’s possible, right? Not too many Tsukuda Tomeos with a thing for hitting kids out there, I’d guess.”

Morgana settles on the table by the couch and, for once, doesn’t say anything. Nobody says anything, actually, so Ryuji blinks raw into the silence and tightens his jaw and goes, “We’ll take the request, right?”

His words meet something thick in the air, heavy and overcast like a brewing storm, the promise of lightning too quick, too brutal. It crackles at his fingertips, underneath brittle nails and straight to the bone, and he feels sick.

It shouldn’t be a big deal. He’s definitely – probably - over whatever issues getting beat up as a kid could leave somebody with, ‘cause he’s sixteen now and can swing a bat hard enough to take off a shadow’s head in one go. He’s practically a superhero, or at least he is when he’s got his mask on - one that runs on magic and muscle and righteous fucking anger. Two gloves, two hands, one bat.

Only, when he looks down, all he sees is a clenched fist. Pale joints, dirtied fingernails, uncovered hands.

But - the kid. Whoever it was that made the request. Fury flares up like a comfort, and any doubts are burned away in an instant. It’s just another asshole who hurt a kid, who needs to get knocked down a peg. It’s just another job, with an unfortunate, horrifying coincidence in target, because the universe hates him somehow even more than he thought. But it won’t be a big deal.

His friends are staring, more at each other than at him - like they’re trying to take this answer slow, or maybe like they’re having whole conversations with just their eyes, speaking in deep expression he’s never been able to understand. He’s about to say something or wave his arms around or get up and move from his spot on the couch just because his whole body is tense for it, for anything, like the stretch of a rubber band - and then there’s another hand on his arm, thin fingers but a steady grip, and he looks up to meet dark eyes, thick glasses.

“Yeah,” Akira says. “We’ll take it.”

Akira walks him to the train station. It’s not an uncommon occurrence, but he makes Morgana stay behind, which definitely is. It would be a blessing if not for the stiff conversation between them, the way Akira watches him when he thinks Ryuji’s not paying attention. Nothing feels right.

They make it the station, and Akira pulls him under the overhanging and off the side. “Ryuji.” He folds his arms over his torso. “I wanted to…”

It’s not like Akira to let words die like that, left hanging between them. He supposed to be succinct, steady, careful with the economy of his voice. This is a bad sign if Ryuji’s ever seen one. “Uh. Yeah, dude?”

Akira pauses for a few seconds too long, and Ryuji can hear the chatter of commuters and the rumble of the subway beneath them and the buzz of the lights overhead. He can hear his heartbeat, and a voice in the back of his head. It sounds just like it used to.

“Dude,” he says, again, and takes a step back. “I’m gonna miss this train, and it’s my mom’s, like, one night off this week, you know how it is - but I’ll talk to you later. Later, okay?”

Akira doesn’t try to stop him when he walks away, down into the station, but he does wave, eyes neutral under his glasses and mouth a thin, tight line, and Ryuji weaves his way through crowds with only the slightest limp in his step.

He does his best not to think about it. He should be fucking over it, anyway, because it’s been a long time and he’s tougher and older and better, at least when he’s got a bat in his hands – besides, nobody likes the guy who can’t let go of the past. The teenager who’s still scared of the dark ends up losing all his friends, he’s pretty sure, and that’s the inevitability that sits hard on his chest when he can’t sleep, stuck somewhere ruthless, and quiet.

So, yeah, he puts it in the little shoebox in his brain and stuffs it far under the metaphorical bed, and he waits for Akira to make the call.

It’s been a few days, though, and they haven’t gone down to Mementos yet. Akira doesn’t seem to be in a hurry, which, fine, but he keeps trying to catch Ryuji’s eye, by the lockers or the hallway or the gate after school, like he’s trying to find the right moment. For exactly what is beyond Ryuji, but the constant attention puts him on edge, a little jumpy and a little irritable. Maybe it’s dumb – definitely, it’s dumb - but there’s this idea that he can’t quite get rid of, that sits and waits in the back of his mind – maybe Akira is looking for an opportunity to tell him that they don’t want him on the team anymore. That they’ve gotten a glimpse at something shivering and terrible and pathetic, and it’s the last straw in a long line of fuck-ups, and his place here would be torn right out from under him like some stupid magic trick.

More likely, though, he wants to talk about Ryuji’s dad, which is almost as bad a possibility, because the guy doesn’t need talking about. So when Akira puts a hand on his shoulder or tries to pull him aside, he shrugs him off and he grins, all skewed, sorry, dude, I’m gonna be late, and he won’t spend a moment alone with him. And when he calls late into the evening, Ryuji lets the phone ring and ring, until it stops, and he’s not surprised when Akira doesn’t leave a message.

It's the next day and, despite his mediocre efforts, he ends up at the Bukkuri Boy diner with Ann and Makoto, English textbooks and Frui-teas between them. It’s something he agreed to earlier, back before there was this skulking part of his thoughts, and he wasn’t enough of an asshole to cancel last minute – especially since they’re the ones doing him a favor, helping him catch up on studying and all.

Still, it’s hard to pay attention to complex grammatic rules when he’s glancing over his shoulder every few minutes. He hasn’t felt this paranoid since Kamoshida took over the track team, started throwing around his weight with more and more aggression, a hand too large and a grip too strong on his arm, barbed words settling just under the skin.

He’s one – definitely caffeinated - tea down, leg bouncing up and down and pen cap nearly chewed to pieces when Makoto pauses in the middle of a paragraph. “Ryuji. Are you paying attention?”

“Totally. Definitely.” Um. “We were…”

“Subject-verb agreement,” Ann tells him, and she’s got her hands clasped in front of her, fingers laced. “Maybe we need to… take a break.”

“I am totally for that.” He lets his pen drop and he rubs his eyes, leaning back in the booth. When he looks again, Ann and Makoto are both watching him from across the table. “What?”

Makoto sighs, thin and weary, and she tries to smile, but he can practically feel the strain behind his own teeth. “Nothing. I’m going to get some food,” she says, after just a moment, and pushes herself up. “Totem poles okay?”

He shoots her a thumbs up and Ann looks more lively than she has all day, brightening at the promise of sweets, and Makoto disappears, away from their little corner of the restaurant. Ryuji turns towards Ann in her absence. “What’s up with her, you think?”

“Everyone’s on edge, I guess,” she says. “Because of the Phan-site request?”

Oh, shit. Guilt squirms like a worm. “You guys heard about that?”

“Just a little,” she says, and leans forward, propping her chin up on the table with one elbow. “Akira said we got a request about someone you know?”

“Knew,” he tries to correct, like it means anything.

“Was it…” She trails off, like she thinks better of it – but he knows the words anyway, knows them in the back of his head, was it my deadbeat, alcoholic father who apparently has been beating up other kids for the past six years? Yeah, it totally was. Lucky guess, Ann, we should totally go pick up some lottery tickets later!

He can’t meet her gaze, all of a sudden, her eyes too intense in their clarity, and he ends up staring at the worn-down floor instead. He wants Makoto to come back. He wants the ground to swallow him, and he wants it to chew. He even wants to study.

“How are you doing? That has to be… weird,” he hears her say. When he shrugs, it’s like his joints are running with gears where there should be muscle.

“It’s fine. Not something I’ve really been thinking about, to be real with you.”

Ann doesn’t say anything, for a moment. He listens to the clunk of dishes on wood, and to the chatter of happier patrons.

“Sure, I guess,” she says, finally. Her tone hits flat. “Well, Akira wants to talk to you about it. You should call him back.”

He grits his teeth before he can help it and his eyes are back at her level, again, only her eyebrows are all scrunched together and her skin is turning rosy, like she’s holding her breath –

And then Makoto’s there, balancing bowls in both hands with surprising steadiness. “All right,” she says, “time to get back to work, right?”

He goes over to Futaba’s place that night, after she called him on his way back home, and he – like an idiot – picked up without thinking about it. She had whined about Smash Bros and tried to get him come over, blaming phone anxiety – even though they’ve played online before, like, a thousand times. He had joked with her, are you using mental illness as a weapon right now? and she had said, well, I gotta get something out of it - and, yeah, he was already on his way over at that point. Now he’s got his legs sprawled out over the edge of her bed, back up against the wall, and a controller in his hands. His eyes are itchy from squinting up at the screen.

It takes her four rounds and a chugged Ultra Violet Monster to get to the point. She’s in the middle of kicking his ass, unsurprisingly, and the click of buttons never falters. She’s next to him, flat on her stomach and propped up on elbows, with her legs bent up behind her. “Akira’s super worried about you, I think.”

It takes him a second to catch up, even if he had been waiting for it. He had come over here anyway, because Futaba’s one of those people he just can’t seem to say no to. “What do you mean?”

“You know,” she says, “because of the Mementos thing.”

“He told you about that too?” It’s not really a surprise.

“I mean, he didn’t get into specifics or anything.” On screen, she drops him off the edge of the stage, ending the match and continuing her winning streak. “Just that there’s a request for somebody you know. And it didn’t really sound like a nice somebody.”

They don’t immediately start another game, and Ryuji’s fingers twitch, tightening around his controller. Futaba rolls off her bed and goes over to the minifridge, grabs another can before coming back to sit cross-legged on the bed. “And he thinks you’re totally avoiding him.”

“Well,” he says, “I’m not.”

“Getting caught lying will dock your charisma stat,” she huffs, and cracks open her drink. “Look, I’m not saying you should go find him and spill your guts, or anything. But he’s not, like, totally emotionally constipated when it comes to this stuff, and maybe he has some good advice.”

“Advice not needed. Thanks.”

She actually, literally rolls her eyes at him, something that he’s only ever seen Ann do before. “Maybe sympathy then, dummy. Empathy. Camaraderie in the face of evil – I don’t know, something. He has something he wants to talk about it.”

“It’s kind of none of your business,” he snaps, and the immediately regret is heavy, thick when it sticks in his throat.

Futaba doesn’t seem to care, though. She slurps her energy drink and watches him. “It’s super duper not my business. But he’s, like, my brother, and kind of so are you, and it’s dumb to sit and watch you two be weird.”

He tries to soften his tone, but it comes out a whine. “I’m not being weird.”

“You are,” she says, and starts up another round, focus back up to her television screen. “You’re losing bad, even for you.”

“Okay, man, you don’t have to be mean.”

He spots a smile, out of the corner of his eye. It pulls at the edge of her mouth, until it’s gone. “It’s just,” she says, through the noise of jumps and blasts and chiptune background music, “I get it. Having to go down to Mementos and deal with changing the heart of somebody you know. Somebody who – who hurt you.”

It takes him a moment to process, to realize he has no idea what she’s talking about. “Futaba –“

“And what I’m saying,” she barrels forward, gaze still glued to the screen, fingers moving quick. “What I’m saying is that if you want help with it, people will help. And if you want them to stay out of it, you can tell Akira and you guys can go down there alone and take care of it. That’s what I did.”

He’s pressing random buttons in his controller. He can’t focus. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

“No need to be sorry,” she tells him. “Just, like, be smart. Don’t go down there all on your own, or I’ll be super mad.”

It never occurred to him, to go seek out his father himself. The thought knocks the breath out of him, for just a moment – somehow, the fact that he didn’t even think about it is the worst part. Maybe he could have saved the Phantom Thieves the trouble. Maybe he could have saved the kid the trouble. “I wasn’t going to.”

“Good,” she says. “And you don’t have to be alone up here either, you know.”

“I know,” he says, but it tastes like static on his tongue. Dull, and disgusting. “But, it’s… not really a big deal. The request. It’s whatever.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s why you’re avoiding Akira and letting me kick your butt at Ultimate without even putting up a fight.”

“Okay, jeez, I’m trying -“ He holds up his controller, pressing buttons long, and slow. “Look, I’m trying so hard, dude! But you have the precision of a brain surgeon, or something, seriously –“

She sticks her tongue out at him, and now they’re both smiling, at least a little bit. She takes another sip from her Monster and manages to throw him off the platform using just one hand. “If you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to.”

“Good, ‘cause I don’t,” he says. “Not that there’s anything to talk about.”

Futaba snorts – the audacity – but, true to her word, doesn’t say anything else about it. By the time he leaves the Sakura’s apartment, he can hear loud snoring coming from the other room, and the sky is lit up only by the endless twinkling lights of the city.

He calls Akira on the way back home, after a few minutes of pacing back and forth in front of Leblanc’s dark windows and the eventual compromise to just talk over the phone instead. It’s nearly midnight, anyway, and he’s probably not even awake anymore, so maybe he should try again tomorrow, or, preferably, never –

“Hello? Ryuji?”

“Uh, hey.” He clears his throat. “What’s up?”

“I think I should be asking you that,” Akira’s voice says through the phone, foggy from leftover sleep. “Everything okay?”

He kicks a rock, lets it roll further and further away as he makes his way down the sidewalk. “Yeah, yeah. Just… calling you back.”

“Oh, right,” Akira says, even though it’s been over twenty-four hours since he last tried to call. There’s an audible breath from the line. “I wanted to talk to you. About that request on the forum? Wanted to make sure you were… actually okay with doing it.”

There’s something funny rising in his stomach, some sort of giddy, irrational relief – because, yeah, it’s a little bit of a nightmare, but it’s not the worst nightmare he’s ever had. Akira’s trying to be nice. He makes his best attempt to get his tangled thoughts under control when he notices his friend is still talking.

“I wanted to check in with you before we take care of it. Because you should know that if you wanted to sit this one out, that’s fine. No one would give you shit about it.”

“Dude, thanks, but –“ He kicks, and misses the rock entirely. His shoe hits the sidewalk and ends up scuffed with dirt. “I kinda gotta do this, don’t I?”

“You don’t. I’m saying you don’t.”

“No, I mean… for the kid. The one who made the request?” Ryuji swallows around his words, feels anger rise back up his throat. “I can’t let him hurt that kid. I just - I can’t sit around and let that happen. Can’t let anybody get away with that.”

The kid with a bloody nose and cheekbone the colors of twilight, blooming down to their jaw like an infection. Mouth and mind an open maw, hungry for anything. He knows they’re angry. He knows they’re tired.

It’s sounds like another excuse, when he says it. But he’s not that kid anymore, and hasn’t been for six years, since his dad tread glass all the way out to their welcome mat. Or maybe for two, since he stared up at fluorescent hospital lights and let hopelessness take chunks out of his leg, or maybe for one, since electricity crackled in his palms for the very first time, or maybe since he leveled a shotgun to Shadow Kamoshida’s skull, a thousand feet away, or maybe, or maybe, or maybe –

Maybe.

“I’m coming with,” he says through the phone. “Of course I’m coming with.”

“… Okay,” Akira says. “How about tomorrow, then?”

“Sure.” He thinks about Futaba’s suggestion, to keep the others out of it. Everybody’s giving him options, it would seem. “Everybody going?”

“Yeah, if you’re okay with that.” There’s something careful in Akira’s voice. It’s Futaba luring him over to play video games. It’s Haru reaching out to touch his shoulder. It’s his mom running a hand through his newly bleached hair, eyes all crinkled up in a way he never wants to see again.

“Totally,” he says. “It’s not gonna be, like, a big deal. And he’ll probably be a pushover, so I hope we’ve got some more requests lined up to take care of.”

“We do. Ryuji –“

“Yeah, dude?” He’s at the station. He’s loitering, now.

There’s a pause on the line. It’s so familiar. “If you want to talk about it - your dad or this request or anything else - you can. I'm here."

“Appreciate it, dude,” he says, “but, for real, it’s fine.”

And he thinks to himself, slowly: maybe, this is worse.

He gets back home just a few minutes after his mom does, if her bag and hair pulled up are any indication. She’s unpacking her what remains of her lunch. She smiles at him and scratches at an eye and asks, “What were you doing out so late, huh?”

“Sorry,” he tells her. “Seein’ a friend.”

Her voice is a little gentle, mostly teasing. “Well, don’t complain to me when you’re falling asleep standing up tomorrow. Be careful, okay?”

“’Course,” he says, like it means something, and the lights of their kitchen flicker soft. “Don’t worry.”

It takes them a while, to find their final target down in Mementos. They tear through shadows like paper, dark tunnel walls swallowing up the van as they drive. The twists and turns keep them going around for hours, even with Futaba’s expert navigation, and Ryuji sees so many subway tunnels, tracks and pipes and veins, that he’s not even sure how far down they are. When Morgana finally stops, and turns, and the churning crimson of the portal towers over them, Ryuji feels so small. He knows this feeling, like his own heartbeat.

They pile out of the van but Akira stops, puts a hand on his shoulder, pulls him close so the others don’t hear. “You don’t have to,” he says. “Seriously.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says, and it comes out forceful. “I know, Joker. It’s fine.”

He pushes past, stands by the rest of the group. Haru gives him a smile, sweeter than he’s ever seen, and he gets a hesitant thumbs up from Futaba. Ann’s watching him, her lips pursed and arms folded up neatly over her chest. They’re being so careful, have been the whole ride down, and he hates it. It’s like they think he’ll break, or something. Like they think he can’t do it.

“Alright,” he says, aloud. “Let’s kick this shadow’s ass, yeah?”

When they step through it makes his stomach go all funny, even more than it usually does. And he stops and he looks but he doesn’t have to look far, because he’s right there – lean muscle, stubble creeping across his jaw, striped shirt with a fraying collar. His hands are drawn into fists, tight.

It’s him. It’s only then that it occurs to him that it could have been a coincidence, some other man entirely, and Ryuji would have stood here and snarled and laughed it off with his friends later, oh, what a coincidence, two pieces of shit with the same name – only it is him, standing here in front of Ryuji for the first time in six years. Twenty paces forward, and he could reach out and touch him.

It seems like his dad’s shadow doesn’t recognize him, whether it’s the mask or the hair or how he’s older now, tougher – he’s not sure. He’s thankful, nonetheless.

Akira’s saying something but Ryuji’s not listening. He hears it, though, when his dad laughs, dulled by brutality, and he sees it when his head tilts, jaw clenched tight, and he knows the way his eyes change, even if he tears his own away.

He looks at his hands, instead. Thin, flexible gloves, rubbed to fraying in the palms, pointer finger crooked at the joint. Shaking. He’s fucking shaking.

There’s something behind him and it takes him a second longer than it should to realize it’s Makoto, her hand pressed lightly at his shoulder blade. When she smiles it’s not her polite, honors student smile, it’s one with teeth – and she says, quiet, “We’ll crush him.”

He finds himself nodding, words locked somewhere behind his throat, and he looks down again and he’s got his bat in his hands, and maybe, maybe.

Maybe it’ll be fine.

It’s a relief when his dad finally transforms, goaded by Akira’s promise of retribution, of change. Ryuji watches with a sort of morbid fascination as the human form in front of him doubles over and crumples to the subway tracks, play-pretend flesh ripped apart as something dark and writhing leaves its own humanity in tatters. For less than a moment, it’s formless, like the smoke of a housefire, or a shadow stretched too far past its reach – and then he sees it, the bloating and tearing of muscle taking shape, the snap of a jaw with a mess of gnarled, sharp teeth. It’s almost canine in nature, only its features are too jagged, overdrawn. It’s something that towers over them, something that tenses and convulses, something the color of a deep, dark, aching bruise. Its fury is just as tangible as the concrete walls around them.

Ryuji is by Akira’s side before he even knows it, ready to flank. This might be Tsukuda Tomeo, but it’s also a monster, a shadow. This, he knows how deal with.

Akira nods to him, mouth drawn taut, and it’s almost like any other fight, as Ryuji leaps into it, hovering as he waits for an opening. His dad – no, the shadow, the beast, the thing – snarls and cracks its teeth together, its maw dripping jet black, diving down towards Akira, and that’s as good an opportunity as any.

“Get fucked,” he breathes out, rushes forward - he swings from the back, down towards the top of its spine, feels his bat strike with the full force of Captain Kidd behind it, feels the weight of it rattle his insides. And he hits again, around towards its jaw, and then again - and the thing stumbles, sputtering and heaving.

Only it’s back on its feet before Ryuji even has a chance to step back. It spins around faster than he can process, stalking only a few paces forward until they’re face-to-face, spitting ichor and loose teeth, features contorted into something past anger, past hate. And its eyes – its eyes –

The same deep brown as his own. The same as he remembers.

There’s a subway track digging into his shoulder, and his back is flat on the ground, only he’s not sure how he got here. There’s the weight of something horrible, claws digging past his jacket, piercing deep into skin. The blood drips warm, but he can barely feel it, he can barely understand.

“Always more bark than bite, eh, son?” His dad asks from the creature’s mouth, except maybe he doesn’t, maybe he doesn’t say anything at all, maybe he just stretches his jaws wide, lets Ryuji breath in the stench of booze and copper and something rotten, lets him stare through mismatched teeth and the dark horror afterwards, snapping and snapping closer, closer -

Just as soon as it’s there it’s gone, but he still can’t move – but he’s being dragged backwards, maybe, or at least he’s moving backwards, away from the fight and away from his dad, from this thing with the eyes he knows and the voice he can’t forget.

He can’t remember much else of what happens.                            

The next thing he knows, really knows, he’s looking at the ceiling of a car, and his breathing’s all fucked up. He tries to sit up, reflexively, trying to make his lungs work right, but there’s a hand on his forehead, and on his shoulder, gently keeping him down. He doesn’t fight too hard. He can’t fight too hard.

“Ryuji,” a voice says, and he has enough clarity to know that that’s wrong, they shouldn’t be calling him that right now. Right?

“Skull,” he tries to say, only it feels like sandpaper, and he can barely hear it but he’s sure it comes out messy.

“Okay, not the point,” the voice says. “Take it easy, Skull.”

He tries to push himself up again, and this time they let him, but half a second later his head is swimming and he wishes they hadn’t. He has to close his eyes, something like a headache scraping at his eyelids, one hand coming up to his face and another to his chest, pressing down hard. His breath come in too shallow, air escaping him with a wheeze, and he can’t quite –

He can’t quite –

“Skull,” another voice says. “Deep breaths, okay? Here –“

Something brushes by his hand, by his face, and he recoils backwards on instinct, his shoulder hitting the soft seat behind him. He can feel his heartbeat in his fingertips, hear it in the moments between breaths.

“Sorry – shit. Sorry,“ the voice says, and it sounds… he can’t tell. He can’t tell.

“Think you can open your eyes again?” It’s the first voice. But he won’t, or maybe can’t, so no voices say anything at all, only he can’t tell for how long – until he can take full breaths, deep into his expanded lungs and back out again. He cracks open one eye.

He’s in the Morgana van, he realizes. Squeezed in between Ann and Akira, his legs swung over the latter’s lap and feet pressed against the door. Makoto in front, Futaba beside her. Haru and Yusuke in the back seat. They’re all watching him.

“Hey,” somebody says, and it takes him a moment to realize it’s noise coming from Ann’s mouth. “You okay?”

“Okay,” he repeats. His voice still sounds all rough, tangling words up before they make it out of his mouth. “Yeah. What?”

It’s then that it comes back to him, a little bit. When he looks down, he sees his mask in his lap, a lump of metal warped to fit his face. He blinks, and finds it stings.

“Is that a yes?” It’s Futaba, squeaky. She’s fully turned around in her seat to face him, her hands held up in front of her, frozen.

“I don’t –“ He tries to detangle himself from Akira, unceremoniously moving his legs around until his feet are planted fully back on the floor. Everything is a little too fuzzy, still, and it’s only when he tries to move around that he realizes how shaky he feels. “What happened?”

“Tsukuda Tomeo,” Makoto says. “You remember?”

Yusuke speaks up from behind him and Ryuji nearly jumps out of his skin, trying too hard to keep focused on what’s right in front of his eyes. “I dare say we changed his heart. Effectively.”

“We –“ He stops. Something doesn’t make sense here, but it’s taking his brain so many tries to figure it out, like a computer restarting, or a lost child walking in circles. “What happened? Anybody hurt?”

“You are,” Akira says, and it’s not unkind but it stings anyway, and Ryuji stares down at his hands, the yellow cloth, and his forearms, where he can remember a sharp, tearing pain. There’s nothing but bloodstains now, drying dark on his skin.

“Makoto took care of it,” Akira continues. “But…”

Morgana goes over a bump, and the jostle makes Ryuji’s head feel even worse. He wants to curl up and sleep.

“You were a little – a little gone,” Haru says, her eyebrows knit together in the perfect picture of classic concern.

“Like, kaput,” Futaba adds. “Totally out of it. Nobody home.”

Morgana’s voice crackles out from the speaker where the radio should play. “What happened, Skull?”

That’s the question, isn’t it? Makoto lightly swipes at the dashboard, likes she’s admonishing him for even asking – he can tell they’re trying to be delicate. His heart is sinking, far down through his chest, all the way to the subway floor. He reaches up to rub an eye, only to find his fingers clammy.

Nobody speaks, for a moment. This is bad, so fucking bad.

“Dunno,” he croaks out. “But you guys got him, right? So… the kid’ll be okay? From the forum?”

“Totally wrecked him. Joker finished him off.” Futaba mimes a gun with one hand, points it straight at him with one eye skewed shut. Bang. She shoots him something like a grin, but it falters almost as fast as it starts. “He was spewing a lot of apologies.”

That thought brings a fresh wave a dizziness. It’s something of a consolation prize that he didn’t have to watch his father beg for forgiveness. “Well, good,” he says. “Guess we’re done then, right?”

“Heading back up now,” Makoto confirms. “You should… lie back down.”

“No need, ma’am. A-okay upright, thanks.” He’s trying his best to find his footing, but it comes out unsteady, and by the looks he’s getting, definitely not convincing. He sways like a stuttering top, and has to lean back into the seat to keep himself completely upright.

“You lost some blood,” she tells him, and for just a second, their eyes meet in the rearview mirror. “Not too much that magic couldn’t handle it, but – still. And please, don’t call me that.”

“Sorry, captain.”

He watches her open her mouth again, like she wants to say something, and the swallow it behind a pinched expression. It makes him feel like he’s missed a step, somewhere. “Sorry,” he says, again, “that you had to stitch me back up. You know, magically.”

“No, that’s –“ Makoto takes one hand off the wheel, brings it to her temple. “That’s fine. It’s not your fault, so you don’t have to apologize.”

He can feel hot breath on his skin, smell something rancid and disgusting and familiar. He can still see eyes when he closes his own. He says, slowly, forcing words out with each exhale: “Yeah, well. Sorry for all the other bullshit, then.”

“What Queen says is correct,” Yusuke says. “One should not offer apologies when no fault rests on their shoulders.”

Normally the mild proverb-talk would be comforting in a familiar way, or maybe funny, but right now it’s just tugging at his headache. “No, it’s –“

“Not something to say sorry about,” Ann butts in. She’s got one hand twisting the ends of a pigtail, wrapped around and around and around. She’s frowning. “Like, seriously. We just – I mean, are you okay? Really okay?”

“Yeah, I’m -”

“Yeah?” She echoes. She suddenly sounds sort of pissed, or maybe she always did and he just now noticed – either way, he shifts a little bit, trying to keep their knees from knocking together at every bump. “You don’t have to pretend right now,” she says.

“I – what?” He’s still trying to get his head back where it should be. “You don’t get to –“

“Ryuji. Ann.” There’s a voice and it’s steady and it’s Akira, pulling them back. Everyone’s looking at him and no one’s breathing. Carefully, he reaches up over Ryuji, lets his arm rests over his shoulder, with his hand on Ann’s. The cotton of his coat is warm and scratchy on Ryuji’s neck. Akira turns out towards the window, then, and before anyone has a chance to spit anything else up, he says: “We’re almost out.”

Ryuji tries to follow his gaze out into the tunnel, to the sea of shadows and brick, but it’s just the same labyrinth of subway lines it always is. Whatever their leader can sense in the endless dark, it’s lost on him.

“Sure,” he says, just to say it. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Ann doesn’t say anything.

Akira insists on walking him not just to the train, but to his front door. He tries to suggest he stay over at Leblanc, actually, in that subtle commanding way he does, but Ryuji’s pretty sure he can’t handle any walls but his own right now. Futaba follows behind, on their way back, tugging at the ends of her sleeves, shooting him glances as they weave their way through the sidewalks of Tokyo.

Ryuji’s tired. Standing leaves him unsteady and walking is worse, and the evening crowds of commuters rattle him more than he’ll admit, eyes in all directions. His knee aches. His head aches. He’s more relieved than ever when he makes it back home.

“Ryuji.” It’s Akira. He and Futaba came all the way up to the third floor of his building, stood out on the creak floorboards and under the overhead light. “If you want to, call.”

“Thanks,” he says, instinctually, ‘cause he knows he should. His thoughts are too jumbled to understand, much less speak. He wants to collapse.

He closes the door behind him without looking back.

He’s pictured it a thousand times: meeting his dad again. Sometimes they reconnect at Leblanc, apologies mixing in with the milk in the man’s coffee, sometimes they run into each other on the street and his features darken with something past recognition, merging towards regret. Sometimes he shows up at their apartment, or at a track meet. Sometimes, it’s midnight and Ryuji wanders into a low-lit bar with a flickering sign outside, and their eyes snag, and tensions escalate, and they have a screaming match right there, in front of every patron who cares to stay and watch. Sometimes there’s a grip on the front of his shirt and a blinding pain blossoming across his cheekbone. Sometimes, he’s the one with the bloodied knuckles, torn to gore when he dares to look, but it’s far and few between.

Any night where he thinks about his dad is a bad one. The nights where he forgives him, though - those are the worst.

This is a new one. Searching out his father’s heart in the depths of Toyko’s underground, watching him grow to a horrible giant dog made of smoke and blood and hate. Akira putting a bullet between his eyes.

It’s kind of a trip, honestly.

Ryuji rolls over in bed and tries to remember what happened during the fight. It’s hazy, like he’s trying to go through a movie he watched as a kid, scene by scene. It’s impossible to tell what really happened and what he imagined, either in the moment, or now, after, trying as best he can to fill in the gaps. His thoughts fester, the details twisting inside and out, getting stuck to the inside of his skull like gum, even when he tries to close his eyes.

He wonders what the others are thinking, right now. He wonders how long it’ll take them to get around to kicking him out, now that they know for certain he’s the kind of kid to freeze up like that, the kind that can’t hold their own in a fight when it really matters.

Shame settles in his stomach, disgustingly heavy. He’s crying, he realizes, only he’s not sure how long he’s been crying for, how long it takes him to notice. The tears are hot, and when he finally sobs his whole body shakes, violent and shuddering.

He’s exhausted, but he barely sleeps. He drifts, sometimes, but he can’t tell for how long, in and out, and pretty soon it’s morning and his alarm is blaring, and he should, technically, be getting up for school. When he turns it off, he pulls his blanket far up above his head, burying himself in an early grave of threadbare yellow cotton. The idea of going to Shujin - to trudge through the halls where he used to have a team, to catch on untied shoelaces and sit alone in his classroom to eat lunch - makes him feel nauseous.

So he lies on his futon and tries to close his eyes and plays mindless games on his phone with the brightness turned all the way down. Tries to keep his dad’s claws from digging under his skin. Eats half a box of Pocky. Akira calls, sometime in the afternoon, and then again, a couple hours later – he lets them both ring, an uncomfortable buzzing in his hands. Ann calls. Futaba calls. He doesn’t answer them, either.

His mom gets home early, moves around in the kitchen and plays music in her bedroom that he can barely hear through the door. It’s when dinner comes around that she knocks to get his attention. “Ryuji? You home?”

She brings in blinding light from the hallway when she steps inside. “Hey,” she says, and she’s trying to be quiet, but the noise is nearly too much for him anyway. “You feeling okay, sweetheart?”

He must look like shit, ‘cause he can’t remember the last time she called him that. He tries to sit up, but she tuts at him and puts a hand to his forehead. The touch makes his eyes well up again, but it’s overwhelming to the point of something on the edge of pain, and he goes to wipe at them – that’s when he notices blood, collected under his fingernails and still caught at their edges, and he quickly changes his mind.

“Sick,” he tells her. “Feelin’ sick. It’s okay, though.”

“Well, at least there’s no fever.” Her eyebrows are all creased up with worry. He hates it more than anything. “Have an appetite?”

He lets her bring him a steaming cup of tea and a bowl from the ramen place down the block, even though he knows he won’t eat much of it. She was going to pick something up from them, anyway, she tells him. Just a coincidence that it’s his favorite.

Ann calls him again the next morning. Her picture is one from middle school, that she sent him a few months ago as a joke. Her hair’s down around her shoulders, and she’s smiling wide, right at the camera. He doesn’t pick up, and he doesn’t listen when she leaves him a message. Akira calls again, too, because apparently nobody knows how to leave it well enough alone.

His mom pokes her head into his room on her way out to work. She smiles at him, soft, like she’s glad to see him awake. “There’s some curry for you, in the fridge. Found it out by the door,” she tells him, and holds up a slip of paper, his name printed in neat, tiny letters. “Good to have friends who care when you’re sick, huh?”

One day and twenty-three missed phone calls later, there’s a knock on the door. It’s a few lifetimes away from his spot rotting in bed, too many steps past his threshold of ability, so he’s sort of banking on them giving up - it’s easy enough to ignore, for a little bit, only it comes again, and again, and all of a sudden, it’s a lot less distant and a lot more annoying. He climbs out of bed, shakes himself out, hands and feet and hair. By the time he makes out towards his front door, it’s a pounding, a hard fist on wood. His heart is sinking, fast.

It's Ann. She nearly falls forward when he swings open the door, putting so much effort into every hit – she stumbles, straightens up, and stares at him. “Ryuji! You’re here.”

“Yeah, you know, I live here.”

It’s like she doesn’t even hear him. “I’ve been out here for, like, five minutes!” She huffs in his direction. “I thought -”

“Look, it’s not really a good –“ He stutters and stops when she brushes past him, marching into his apartment. “Yeah, fine, come in, sure.”

Now that she’s here, he can’t help but notice just how messy their combination living room-kitchen is - his mom tends to leave out dishes when she’s not paying attention and almost never thinks about throwing anything away. Not that he’s any better. Under normal circumstances, he might be embarrassed, but right now, he’s just annoyed. “Are you here for, like, a reason?”

“Are you serious?” She’s staring, not at the dirty plates on the coffee table or the skewed pictures on the walls, but at him. “You – you haven’t been coming to school, you haven’t been answering your phone –“

Anxiety prods at him. “What, did some Phantom Thief shit come up?”

“Nothing like that,” she says. “We were worried about you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m fine. You shouldn’t have been.”

Her blue eyes are glassy, like still water. She blinks at him, once, twice, and something turns kitchen-knife sharp. “We shouldn’t – I thought you were dead, or something!”

“Dead,” he echoes. “I’m not dead.”

“Well, you could have been, since you just disappeared like that!”

He shuffles his feet, clad in socks with a hole big enough to let his toe peek out. He can’t keep the hard edge out of his voice, or maybe, he just doesn’t try. “Look, I’m here, still breathing and everything. Check, if you want. Anything else?”

Ann crosses her arms and says, “Don’t be like that.”

The stale air of his apartment turns stifling. “Like what?” He asks. “Like fucking what?”

“I didn’t –“ She stops, and for a second, he swears her mouth twitches down, like she’s trying not to cry, but then it’s gone and he can’t tell if he imagined it. “I didn’t come all the way over here to yell at you, or whatever this is. I came over to make sure you hadn’t done anything stupid, which I guess you haven’t, so -”

“So, bye,” he finishes for her, and distinctly steps out of her line to the door. He’s being a total dick, he processes, he knows, but it’s five o’clock and he’s in pajamas and she’s in her school uniform, and the last fight he got in he ended up flat on his back and mind fully out of his body, blood soaked through his gloves, so, sure - why not here. Why not now.

She doesn’t move, towards the door or otherwise. Not towards him. “You can’t just – I don’t know. Brush this off.”

“What?”

“You were practically catatonic, Ryuji,” she says, like he doesn’t know, doesn’t get it. “We were so worried, you know, not knowing what happened, or what was wrong! What if you -“

“Can you not?” He snaps, and his throat burns. Isn’t this it? Isn’t this what he wanted? “Nothing’s wrong. Nothing was wrong, and nothing is wrong, and nothing will be wrong. Nobody needs to make a big fucking deal about it.”

Her eyebrows scrunch up and her mouth draws tight, and suddenly he’s looking at twelve-year-old Ann, angry with him for taking the last strawberry milk carton, for never paying her back after the aquarium trip, for glancing at her English homework without permission. His breath catches, hard.

“But it looks like a big deal!” She explodes. “You’re standing around her, looking like you haven’t slept in days because it’s not a big deal?! You’re avoiding your friends because it’s not a big deal?!”

“I’m not –“ His voice is rising to meet hers. “It’s not –“

“Why are you being so frustrating?!”

“Why are you being so pushy?!”

Her face is bright red, just the way it used to get. “I am not pushy, I care about you! I don’t know understand why you won’t let anybody do that right now!” She’s leaning towards him, clear eyes steely. “Or – scratch that. You know what? I do understand. I get it.”

“I’m not some shitty puzzle,” he spits. “I don’t care what you think you understand –“

“You -” she interrupts him, but her voice shakes - anger clings to its back, weighs it down. “You don’t push help away because you think you don’t need it, you push help away because you think you don’t deserve it. And I am not going to sit around and let another one of my friends leave me behind when they need help, because they think it’s for the best. I’m not.”

He tries to swallow, can’t.

“I’m not,” she says, again. “I need – I need to leave. I’m leaving.”

She takes four, five steps and she’s at the door, and then she turns back to him, stuck still. “Call me,” she tells him, “when you goddamn want to. I’ll answer.”

And then the door slams shut and he’s left staring at the mess always on his floor, and the blood under his nails, and the growing hole in his torso. It’s ripped through his shirt and skin, an aching maw of his guts, clawing him up from the inside out, or maybe the outside in, what’s the difference when this much of him is all over the living room carpet –

He needs something. Anything. He puts on the first pair of real pants he can find and throws on shoes. Now that he’s sunk his teeth in, he can’t let go – there’s a charge, just underneath the skin, a never-ending electric buzz, and he has to get out of this apartment now, now, now.

He’s out his front door and down the street before he even knows it. He feels disgusting, frustration building and crackling down towards his fingertips, a horrible, unshakable itch. He wants to run, always, and he wants to bite his lip ‘til it rips. He wants to find the fray, he wants to jump in headfirst and go until he can’t, until his lungs burn and he cracks more bones and spits blood and ends up with his face smashed in, and he wants nobody, nobody at all, to care.

He wants everyone to care. His mom and his dad and his friends and his old track teammates and every stranger on the street. God, he wants it, so bad he burns.

Maybe he’s still that kid. The one with the bloody nose and secrets kept between knocked-loose teeth, the bleached hair and fucked-up leg. How could he not be? How could he ever have been anything else?

He walks forever, street after street after street, except he doesn’t because his shoe gets caught on an uneven piece of the sidewalk, and he goes down hard, scraping his palms in the middle of Tokyo. When he tries to stand, his knee buckles a little, the familiar sharp pain shooting up through muscle, and he has to stumble to the wall beside him for support.

Without the constant push, energy drains out of him like he has a leak. It’s only then that the guilt and horror choke up his throat, when he tries to catch his breath. What was he thinking - how could he yell at Ann like that? She was trying to be nice – all of them were trying to be nice. The missed calls and the curry at his doorstep, the are you sure’s and the how are you doing’s. He’s stupid, so stupid.

When he looks up and around, it takes him a moment to realize he recognizes this part of town, not too far from Leblanc. His legs carried him here all on their own. Commuters and students and families bustle by him like a current.

“Sakamoto?” It’s gruff, but light, and Ryuji’s eyes snap to focus. It’s Sakura Sojiro, his hat tipped down, an armful of groceries. Stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Oh –“ His brain is still catching up, caught in its own whirlpool. “Chief.”

The man nods to him, and starts up again - and for a moment that seems like that’ll be it, a hit and run of conversation, but he stops after just two short steps, and turns back. “You here looking for the Kurusu kid?”

Ryuji is hyper-aware of is own blinking, all of a sudden, of his own breath rattling around. It’s like his brain short-circuits, and he has no idea how to answer that question. “Uh – do you know where he is?”

“I’m never sure, with that kid,” Chief says. “But he always comes back, so –“ He motions with one free hand, and starts to walk again. “Well, come on. It’ll start to rain soon, anyway.”

The sky is clear, the first stars of the evening poking through the haze of the city’s pollution. But Ryuji will have to take his word for it.

The lights of Leblanc are on when they get there, but, yeah, Akira’s not anywhere to be seen. Ryuji hovers, for a moment, while Sakura disappears into the kitchen. He hasn’t been in here without Akira, ever. The overheads seem too bright and the floor too creaky when he shuffles his feet, and he blinks a little too quickly into the quiet. He leans down to rub his knee, even though he knows it won’t help.

Sakura emerges again, a cream-colored ceramic cup in his hands, and slides it onto the counter. “Sit,” he says, like it’s not even a big deal - so Ryuji does, doing his best to keep his pace even, staring into the rising steam.

“Hot chocolate,” Chief says, after a second where nobody, at all, moves. “It’s for drinking, you know.”

“Oh, uh –“  He picks it up in his palms instead of by the handle, and it burns. He doesn’t drink it. “I don’t have any money on me, though.”

“The day I need to extort ¥450 from a teenager, is the day this place shuts down,” Sakura says, but he’s not even looking – he’s picking a newspaper, from somewhere behind the counter, spreading it out in front of him.

Ryuji takes a sip, finds it sweetness deep and rich. It only stings his tongue a little bit. “Well. Thanks.”

They lapse back into silence, while Ryuji steadily makes his way through his drink. It’s enough time for him to slump in his chair, a little bit, bounce his good leg up and down where he rests it on the worn floorboards. He’s starting to wonder what the point of waiting for Akira is, what he’s actually doing here, when Sakura asks, abruptly: “Want some ice for the leg?”

He chokes, coughs into his elbow until he manages to clear his throat. He must not be as good at walking steady as he thought. “Nah, it’s an old injury. It’s fine.”

“Fine,” Sakura says in return, and then, “Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.”

“Yeah, well –“ He crosses his arms loosely, leans his elbows onto the counter. He chews on the end of his lightly burnt tongue. “You have some?”

“This is a restaurant, kid.”

“Not really a kid anymore,” he points out. He can’t help it. “And restaurant is, like, three steps too far, to be real.”

The chief shakes his head, and for a second, Ryuji thinks he’s offended him, an uncomfortable spike of nerves in his stomach, before the man says, his voice tinged with just a little bit of humor, “Trust me, every kid says that. But this place, you might be right about. Hang on.”

He disappears into the back again, returning with something wrapped up in a blue and white striped dish towel - a bag of frozen peas, like he used to grab from the back of his freezer for bruises and old track injuries. Sakura puts it down beside his hot chocolate and tells him, “Don’t let that melt on my wooden counter.”

It’s not long before Akira comes back. Ryuji’s got the frozen bag draped over his knee, the cold seeping through his jeans and numbing his skin. When Akira comes through the door, shaking the rain from his half-opened umbrella – it had started to rain, huh – he abruptly stops when he spots Ryuji at the counter. “You’re here.”

“Hey, dude.” He runs a hand through his hair, feels its grease in between his fingers. “I, um –“

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Akira says, and it’s sudden. “Ann told me –“ He stops, and his eyes flicker to the chief, like he’s only just noticed him. Morgana pops his head out from Akira’s bag, paws up on his shoulder and blue eyes wide, unblinking.

“Well, I’m heading out,” Sakura says, and it sounds casual but everyone in the room knows it isn’t. He folds up his newspaper – and it’s then that Ryuji realizes he’s been looking at one page all evening. “You kids better not burn my shop down.”

“We’d never,” Akira tells him, monotone. He pokes gently at Morgana, between his ears. “Go hang out with Futaba for a bit, okay?”

“All she does is watch those dumb cartoons,” the cat grumbles, but he hops up and out and follows Sakura when he opens the door, out into the downpour.

Akira sits down at the counter beside him, when they’re alone. The ceiling fan up above them runs slow, and ceaseless. “How’s the knee?” Akira asks, because he must the spot the make-shift icepack.

It’s something of a struggle, to figure out how to answer. The truth is the truth and a lie is a lie, and that’s something Ryuji’s always known, but, sometimes, the truth strikes too sharp. It’s an old lesson. “Not great,” he settles with, and it’s something of a start. “Um. What were you doin’ out on the town, dude?”

“Looking for you, actually.”

He keeps his eyes locked on what remains of his hot chocolate, the way it ripples when he shifts it around on the counter. “Ann talk to you?”

”She talked to everybody,” Akira says, which makes Ryuji swallow, thick. “Just – she said she went over to your place and you guys had an argument, and when she tried to go back and talk to you after, you weren’t answering the door. She really freaked out. Messaged everybody. I can show you the texts, if you want.”

He cringes away from the very idea, even though it’s supposed to be some attempt at transparency. “Uh – no. But can you tell her – I don’t know. That I’m here? Didn’t bring my phone.”

“Already done,” Akira tells him. That’s a relief. When Ryuji dares look, his friend’s face has shifted into something quiet, almost contemplative. The subdued look isn’t uncommon – but still, when they make eye contact, Ryuji’s stomach ties itself into knots. Akira’s eyes are a stormy gray, under the lenses of his glasses, a slice away from silver. “So, do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Ryuji says. “But you’re gonna say I should anyway, right?”

Akira shrugs, not a non-commitment but a genuine answer. “Maybe you think it’s a good idea, even if you don’t want to. Or maybe you don’t.”

“I don’t,” he says. “Or - I don’t know. I guess I do. It’s – it’s complicated.” Without the fight in him, drained by exhaustion and regret, he’s left treading water.

The kid’s always scared. The kid’s always hopeful. It’s tearing him to pieces.

“Complicated,” Akira echoes. “It’s always complicated. And it always will be, I think. Doesn’t mean it won’t get a little less complicated, every time.”

“Maybe.” It’s quiet, but louder than the ceiling fan. Around and around it goes. “Can I… I don’t know, just be here? Is that okay? Like, is it enough?”

Akira smiles at him, and it’s a little gentle. His hair sticks out past his ears, past his glasses. “Enough is relative. Nobody knows what it means.”

“Reassuring, dude. Is that a no… ?”

“It’s a yes,” he says, “of course, it’s a yes.”

Akira lets him sleep on the sofa up in the attic. He has no idea how late it is, but after he calls his mom with Akira’s phone and leaves her a message, puts the make-shift ice pack back into the freezer, washes out his mug – he lies down. His knee feels a little better, or at least a little more numb.

Akira sits on the ground at the edge of the sofa, right next to Ryuji’s head, and he reads, which must mean it’s not late enough to sleep yet. Ryuji’s eyelids aren’t so sure. He starts to drift pretty much immediately, the fuzzy blankness right before the snap back to focus every time his body unconsciously shuffles around.

He sleeps, eventually.

They have curry in the morning. It’s another round of the same stuff Ryuji’s been eating pretty much exclusively for the past couple days, but he doesn’t mention it. He drinks a whole glass of water in one go, by the sink in Leblanc’s kitchen.

It’s early, too early for the coffee shop to be open, or even for the sun to be up much further than the alleyways of Yongen-Jaya, poking orange and yellow through the scratched glass. Ryuji’s back at the counter with Akira behind it, like they’re pretending to be customer and owner.

Nothing here is perfect, but it is gentle. He’s tired as shit and the curry is mush in his mouth, but it’s quiet, even when Akira’s got the tv turned on. Quiet like when he was little and used to wake up before his parents, watch the dark slowly fade to something new from the safety of his blanket. Like when his mom would take him to the laundromat before school, and he’d sit up on a dryer and let his legs dangle. Like when he used to get up in the mornings to go running, to return sweating and breathing hard, in and out, and in again.

It takes him a while to work up the courage to say anything. Like it’s sitting just behind his teeth, and won’t go a step farther. He nearly chokes on it, when he finally forces out, “Um, you know – Akira?”

“Hm?” He turns his attention away from his book, and to Ryuji.

“If you guys are going to – I mean – I would totally get it, if you did, but – uh –“ He’s stumbling, lost in the sentiment as he tries to find a way out of his own mouth. “Kicking me out. Of the Phantom Thieves? Just, like – get to it, I guess. Don’t drag it out because you think you’re being nice, or whatever.”

Akira blinks at him from across the counter. His expression’s back to that unreadable mask when light from the window glints on his glasses. “What? Why would we do that?”

“Because –“ He starts, then stops. Starts again. This is so much messier than he wanted. “I mean. You saw that shit – me freaking out. I couldn’t do it. Hold my own. So, like, it’s whatever.”

There’s a small thud and the book is abandoned on the counter. Akira’s got his hands out flat, by Ryuji’s picked-apart plate, his finger long and thin and knobbly at their joints. “Ryuji, you’re not leaving. Unless you want to leave. And even then, you’ll probably end up with some more concerned and upset house guests.”

“But – I fucked it up.” It’s like something’s getting lost in translation here. “With my dad. I couldn’t do it, not like everybody else – like Yusuke and Haru and Futaba, you know? You know?”

“You’re not them, Ryuji,” Akira says, and nothing in the room makes a sound. “You’re you. They react and experience these things in their own ways, and you do in yours. That’s just how people are. You didn’t mess anything up.”

Ryuji feels that familiar disconnect, like he’s lost his footing. It feels violent, his misstep. “But it’s stupid, to be this fucked up. Like, selfish and gross and – and fucking pathetic. Why would you even –“ He has to force the words out from where they want to hide, in the back of his throat, back of his mind. Maybe this is the selfish thing. The pathetic thing. “- Put up with it. Why would you put up with it?”

He watches Akira’s face twist, and when he speaks, it’s with a conviction he’s only ever heard out in the metaverse, like a leader, like someone who really, actually cares – like he’s never believed anything more in his whole life. “Because you’re Sakamoto Ryuji, and you’re not fucked up, at least not in the way your brain is telling you. You’re a person – not the radically unlovable thing you think you are. And you can push us away and have arguments and try to do this all on your own, but you’ll have to look each of us in the eyes and tell that to our faces, and you’ll have to mean it, because otherwise no one, no one is leaving you behind. Understand?”

He’s a boy with eyes like his father’s, afraid of the dark. Everybody knows it. There’s blood all over the café, again.

“I don’t,” he chokes out. It struggles, and it writhes. “No, I –“

There are arms around his shoulders, wrapped tight, and his face is buried in Akira’s shoulder. It’s uncomfortable, crouched over the counter, but it’s warm and strong, and the ends of Akira’s hair brush up against his forehead. The sun outside is so bright. Ryuji can feel his friend’s heartbeat, deep and low like thunder, every time.

“That’s okay,” he can hear Akira say. “That’s okay. We’ll work on it.”

Akira walks him home that afternoon, after some soba and another hot chocolate, and a promise to call. It’s Sunday, so no one’s at school but his mom’s at work, which means he’s going home to an empty apartment. It feels a little strange - vacant in a way it hasn’t in years, like it might after a ghost has been exorcised and you’re left with lights that don’t flicker and doors that don’t slam. Only, when you look at the walls, the stain of the blood drip is still there, and maybe always will be.

He showers, for the first time in days. Considers going to the bathhouse down the block instead, but can’t quite muster up the energy. Being clean is nice, even if he ends up dizzy from the steam after just a few minutes, and even if he has to be careful not to put too much weight on his bad leg while he stands.

He clambers out of the shower and goes to get dressed. He catches himself in the bathroom mirror, though, eyes with dark circles and scraped-up palms, but clean fingernails. His roots are growing out, he realizes, darker hair poking through his bleached ends. He’s not sure how he didn’t notice before.

So he’ll fix it. He needs something to do with his hands and the long stretch of time that’s been left in front of him, anyway – and he’s pretty sure that if he goes back to bed, he won’t get back up.

He’s already mixed the lightener and developer together in a little paper bowl when it occurs to him he meant to call Ann, like, right after he showered. He has to talk to her, to apologize or explain or something. Let her know he’s alive, at least. Not be a giant dick. He tugs off one of his gloves and reaches for his phone.

Anxiety sits in his stomach when it rings once, twice. And then – “Ryuji?”

“Hey,” he says, and he’s going to say more, going to say as much as he can, maybe – but he’s overtaken, quick.
“Ryuji, I’m so glad – so glad you’re okay. Oh my god, I’m sorry I yelled at you, sorry I said that stuff –“ Her voice breaks, and he stares into the open wound in the light of his bathroom and forces himself in.

“Ann, no, listen. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that shit. You were being nice. Trying to be -”

“I was being pushy,” she says, “like you said. You were in a bad place and pushed way too hard, because – because –“ She stutters, and he can hear her breathing, even through the phone. “Can we talk about this in person?”

It’s ten minutes later and he’s got chemical bleach in his hair and he hears a knock on his door. When he wrangles off one glove and swings it open, Ann’s there, leaned up against his doorframe and breathing hard. “Your hair,” she says, first thing, strained by her own lungs.

“Uh, yeah, I kind of thought you’d get here at, like, a normal human pace.” He backs up, lets her in. “Did you run here, dude?”

“I was in the area,” She breathes out, which decidedly does not answer his question.

“Right, well –“ It occurs to him he has no idea what to say now. All this time turning over the argument in his mind, again and again, and he’s still not sure where to start. “Want some tea, or something?”

“No, thanks.” She slides off her shoes, anyways. Her socks are yellow, with little pink flowers sewn into them. She catches her breath in his living room. “So. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” he says, and, god, he means it. Speaking it hurts. “Sorry I wasn’t answering you before, too.”

“That’s –“ Her voice shudders, like a butterfly’s wings. “I don’t know, a complicated thing to apologize for. I know I made a big deal about it, but I shouldn’t have. Shouldn’t have been so pushy with you. It wasn’t… really fair, was it?”

“You had a right to freak out,” he says. “I get why you were so – so scared. You know?”

“But that’s not an excuse." She blinks at him, faint. “When’d you get so… emotionally intelligent?”

He can’t help but snort and smile, but it wobbles. “I totally haven’t. I really don’t know what I’m doing, Ann. I’m fuckin’ useless.”

“You’re not,” she tells him. “Trust me, nobody knows what they’re doing. That’s just how it is.”

“Fair fucking enough.” He’s got bleach in his hair and he hasn’t changed his shirt in five days. He’s scared. His leg hurts like hell, and his dad doesn’t love him. But his mom’s at work, and there’s curry in the fridge, and a friend in her socks in his living room.

“Hey, this is random,” he says, all of a sudden, “but I’m sorry I never paid you back after that field trip, too. Kind of shitty of me.”

“You still have time.” He can’t tell if she’s teasing. “But don’t worry. You’re forgiven, anyway.”

Maybe, he’s realizing, he really does have time. He can't help it when he asks, "So... are we good? Totally good?"

"If you're good, I'm good," she says. "And, well, now that we're civil - do you want some help with your hair?"

He doesn’t say no. His scalp is starting to itch. It’s only when she’s got the gloves pulled on and chemical goop on her hands that he thinks to ask, “Hey, have you ever done this before? You actually know what you’re doing up there?”

“Never,” she says, “but that’s kind of the fun part, isn’t it? Are you thinking of trying other colors this time? Pink would be so fun. Oh, or blue would be nice. Or sort of a lilac -”

“Hey, hey –“ Ryuji cuts her off before he ends up with the full spectrum on top of his head. “Nobody said anything about hair dye, you know. Blonde’s good enough.”

He watches her smile grow, like the rising sun of Yongen-Jaya, in the mirror behind him. “I guess,” she says, “blonde’s good.”

Futaba calls, and he answers. It’s days later. They’ve texted, but they haven’t talked since she dropped him off at his apartment, after the trip to Mementos. He puts his old 3DS down. “Futaba? Yo.”

There’s a deep breath, and a pause. A long pause. He twitches at the silence. “Um, Futaba? Everything –“

“My uncle,” she starts, shaky. “He was the one I had to go find in Mementos. I lived with him for a little while after my mom died, and it was really – not good.”

Something cold floods, unsettling his stomach. “Shit. You don’t have to –“

“I know,” she interrupts. She clears her throat, and her voice comes back a little stronger. “But I wanted to. Anyway. Want to get absolutely wrecked at Mario Kart?”

He absolutely does.

Ryuji goes up to the roof because of the noise, or maybe the eyes. Being gone for days with no explanation or warning raised some rumors, apparently, at least they do when you’re the school’s scapegoat delinquent – so, yeah, he slips out and up the stairs and pushes open the big heavy door to the roof instead of eating lunch in his classroom. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last.

It is the first time, though, that he runs into Haru up here. She’s got her gym clothes on, red and white stained with dirt, and chunky green gardener’s gloves. She jumps when the door closes, glances up and gives him a smile. It’s sweet, like her cotton candy hair. “Ryuji! Hi.”

“Hey.” He tucks his own hands in his pockets, deep. “Whatcha doin’ up here?”

She raises her gloves up in front of her, loose soil tumbling from her open palm, and tells him all about the vegetables she’s growing, the upkeep and the progress and the problems she’s discovering. She only slows down when she looks back up at him, suddenly, and says, “Oh! Hm. Would you mind giving me a hand?”

He shrugs and takes the spare gloves when they’re offered. Pretty soon, they’ve got a whole row of basil transposed across the bed.

“I love coming up here,” she says half-way through, almost absentmindedly. “Working with the plants always helps chase bad thoughts away, at least for a little while. Don’t you think?”

He never gets a chance to eat his lunch, in the end. But Haru insists he takes home a basketful of fresh tomatoes and peppers, and, to that, he won’t say no.

“So, uh, why exactly am I here?”

Ryuji’s never actually been in Makoto’s apartment before, until now. It’s sleek and tidy, the polar opposite of his own. But he spots picture frames upon picture frames hung up on the wall, all of smiling people, color in a space of otherwise white paint and dark furniture.

Makoto’s in the middle of unpacking her bag, spreading out folders and papers and textbooks out on her kitchen table. “I told you. Studying.”

“Well, yeah, but –“

“You seem to have trouble focusing,” she tells him, and he doesn’t miss the mindful edge to her tone. She brushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “So I thought somewhere secluded might help. Without people. Without background noise. Or –“ She motions vaguely towards the television on the wall. “- We could get background noise. Music, or - whatever works best.”

He blinks at her. He sits down. “That’s – okay. Thanks.”

“Sure,” she says, like it’s not a big deal. “If it doesn’t help, it doesn’t help. Let me know.”

The quiet, it turns out, is a little bit worse. But they turn on the tv and let some talk show spew background noise, low volume so it barely grabs his attention. He still ends up a little twitchy, caught up in a new, unfamiliar space - but he manages to finish a chapter for the first time in weeks, anyway. Next time, maybe, she can come over to his place.

Yusuke drags him to lunch, out to what Ryuji’s pretty sure is the one ramen place in the city he’s never been to before. Its walls are made of naturalistic wood and so are the tables, and the lighting is low. The whole place smells like miso, savory and tangy.

It’s sudden, when Yusuke starts to talk about it, halfway through their bowls. “I broke a finger, once,” he says. He’s still holding his chopsticks. “When I was young. I slipped on the ice and tried to break my fall.”

Ryuji stares as Yusuke holds out his free hand, fingers so slender they’re almost delicate, decorated with thin silver rings. His middle finger sits just a little crooked. “I was terrified my artistic career would be over. Irrationally so, of course. But it never healed as it should, because I kept trying to paint with it. And I was allowed to do so. Encouraged, even.”

“Shit, dude.“ Ryuji feels that familiar sick. “I’m sorry.”

He pauses, swallows, while Yusuke shrugs. It takes a few seconds for him to get his limbs to move correctly, when he tries to prop his elbow up on the table, extend his hand so it hovers next to Yusuke’s. It’s a touch larger, rougher with callouses at the palm and fingertips. His pointer finger, askew at the joint. “I never – never got this looked at, or anything. ‘Cause it’s not like I needed it for track, I guess. Didn’t bother.”

Yusuke doesn’t offer condolences or sympathy. He just hums, and when Ryuji glances up to look at him, he finds his friend gazing at him quietly, gray eyes made soft by something akin to sorrow.

For the first time, they end up splitting the bill.

It’s late and Ryuji gets a text. It’s a link from Akira, and when he clicks it, he’s taken the Phan-site, the little forum section he used to scroll through for fun, or when it felt like he needed it. It’s a post, from two hours and forty-seven minutes ago.

He knows what it’s about before he even starts. He holds his breath. And when he reads it, relief hits hard, choking him up from the inside out, and he cries. The other kid’s safe. They’re safe.

And his dad’s a better person now, apparently. That’s a whole different thought spiral.

Another text comes through, popping up at the top of screen. Akira’s contact picture is from their trip to Hawaii, the one where he’s got a flower tucked behind one ear. Also, hey, the text reads, Morgana keeps bugging me to tell you he helped make that curry I dropped off a little while ago. So if you find any cat hair in there, you know who to blame.

He can’t help but laugh.

A kid and his mom sit down to have dinner together, on her one night off that week. They made a stir-fry - she chopped up the veggies and beef, and he stood at the stove. He burnt the snow peas, just a little bit at their edges, but she doesn’t mind.

“Can I tell you something?” He asks, eventually, chopsticks in hands. His nerves are as bright as lightning.

“Anything,” she says in return, and there’s broccoli in her teeth.

When he speaks, it’s slow. “I ran into dad, you know, last week.” It’s a half-truth.

She stops eating. She puts down her chopsticks. “Oh, Ryuji. Oh.”

He nods and chews on rice and says, “Not around here. I don’t think he’ll bother us, or anything. Seemed to have had kind of a change of heart, actually.”

“Are you –“ She stutters on her own care, but it’s sweet. It’s kind when she asks, “You okay, sweetheart?”

Ryuji blinks at her, soft, eyes dark brown. He swallows his dinner. “No,” he says. It makes his chest feel wrong and his throat dry up and his fingers shake around his bowl, and it’s the truth. “No. How funny is that, mom?”

And when she tells him it’ll get better, he sort of believes it.