Chapter Text
28 October 20XX
What is it you can really see with the naked eye?
The continued onslaught of the mental shutdowns meant the foot traffic was intensifying around Tokyo. It felt like the entirety of Shibuya was on edge—or rather, they actively are. Seemingly random shutdowns meant any one of them could be next, and perhaps they felt as though rushing through the streets would bring them further and further away from impending danger.
They were afraid because the most recent criminal that suffered the decay of the human mind was Shujin’s principal, exposed to have been covering up the abuse they faced on campus among other things. And if you looked hard enough since the start of the shutdowns, you’ll notice even regular-looking civilians walking much quicker than usual.
Regular-looking people you walk past the street maybe once in your life so quickly that they might as well be ghosts. Ones that blend so well with the crowd that you would never know the weight they carry on their shoulders. Ones that would take you years to notice the minor shift in the way they filed through a crowd.
People tainted with the weight of thinking they could be targeted next because of whatever weight they had been carrying on their shoulders.
And within that crowd, Akechi Goro stepped onto a train car. And when people looked at him, he offered a turn of the head, a polite and sickeningly sweet smile, and a small nod of acknowledgement. This had been his routine.
‘Tsk. Two minutes late.’
Akechi had only left his apartment only one minute later than usual, and he was already late to his shift at the precinct. Two minutes past his schedule, his routine, his plan.
And it bothered him greatly.
The chattering from the sea of people around him had transformed into a white noise that carried him towards the train station on the way to work. He was too busy thinking of how to remedy the slight change in his routine. As someone in the spotlight carrying a crushing weight on his shoulders, he often felt like everyone had eyes on every single one of his movements.
A turn of the head, a polite and sickeningly sweet smile, and a small nod of acknowledgement. Perhaps even a quiet “good morning” should he see an elderly person near him or a teenage girl he thinks might be his fan. Every little calculated thing that accumulated to his image. But in his head, he’d be anywhere but, and doing literally anything else.
This morning, he opted to slash out the “good morning” part of his routine. Late to work, and all eyes were on him. One wrong move, and he would be made. After his nod towards the person next to him, his eyes locked onto the window to take in the scenery the train was zooming by. He quickly found himself deep in thought debating whether or not he was going to slap the lifeless look out of his face himself.
Too bad killing someone (no matter how wretched their actions were) sucks some of the life out of you too. And with how much killing his hands have done, Akechi himself might as well have completely sucked the life out of his own body.
If he did, then he wouldn’t have been late today making this blank, dead, expression (god knows anything he does could be made into a big deal). Meaning his mind wouldn’t be calculating and recalculating and recalculating and recalculating everything over and over and over again. Then maybe, the headache-inducing noise of Tokyo wouldn’t be banging against his head, calling for his attention. Calling and scratching at the surface of his skull, tugging on all his limbs in different directions all at once.
‘LO O K
A T
M E!
This is the city
you
killed! ’ it would scream at his face as its nails dug deep into his skin to keep him from looking away. He didn’t want this, he didn’t want this, he didn’t want this, he didn’t want this.
Yet he tells himself that he does.
Soon, he’d be watching the life drain out of Amamiya Ren’s eyes too. Or rather, that is the plan. Maybe that’s why his mind was racing, why everything and everyone was so much louder than they were on his usual commutes. The city was screaming for his attention because he’d rather be braving the noises rather than thinking about killing the leader of the Phantom Thieves. He had already succeeded in infiltrating the group, now he just needed to see everything through.
Akechi knew he was right. He wanted this—no, he needed this. This was the only way, this was the only way, this was the only way, this was the only way…
…that he knew.
That would be two more lives before he’d consider his own to be fully drained from every inch of his body even if he still walked the earth. Because after Shido, what comes next? After life drains itself out of his body, what’s left other than brittle bones threatened by the crushing weight of the past 18 years?
Everywhere he looked in the train car there were people, lights flashing from the speed of the train passing by buildings, the city screaming at him for true justice, shadows of the people he’s killed from the corners of his eyes, people, Shido, Ren, his mother, injustice, blurry faces, indiscernible spaces—
So he took a deep breath, leaned his head back against the wall of the train, and closed his eyes.
“Goro, have you looked over the files I emailed you?”
“What?”
His colleague almost doubled back at the dumbfounded sound that left the Akechi Goro’s lips as he stupidly blinked himself back into existence. “What do you mean what..?” she asked, narrowing her eyes as she took his body language as a hesitant consent to enter his precinct office with a coffee cup and toasted bread in hand.
‘When the hell did I get here?’
Akechi blinked once. Then twice. Thrice, even, before his eyes fully readjusted.
“Oh… right,” he utters, “the files.” With a cough to clear his throat and his hands to readjust his position on his office chair, he guides himself gently back to earth. “I’m just about to go through them.”
He cracks his knuckles and clacks his fingers against the keyboard of his computer, sifting through shared case files and documents before skimming the contents of the files he was sent.
“Thank you, Haruhi.”
“You good?” Haruhi asked, still not moving from her spot across the room by the door.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, I’m good.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Yes.”
“Have you eaten?”
“You may go.”
“Have you eaten? ”
“Fine,” Akechi sighs in defeat. “No, I haven’t.”
“Thought so,” Haruhi shook her head and stepped closer towards his desk and nudged the coffee and toast in his direction. “Eat… please.”
“Thank you.” His voice was uncharacteristically quiet like he had lost a battle. But he bit on the toast and sipped, leaning back into his chair and letting his eyes settle on his friend. “Really, though. I’m okay.”
She nods slowly in acknowledgement, relenting to his imposition. Her eyes follow his movements for a moment before she finally steps back towards the door, offering that she was available whenever he needed her, and she was gone.
Akechi continued to eat, scrolling through the final file Haruhi had sent him about the latest case they had closed just three days ago. A young girl was found dead in an alleyway right by a bar where a known underground crime boss hung around. Haruhi was the first to notice a semblance between the suspect and the girl, and she was the first to even suggest that it wasn’t an isolated case with no motive.
It wasn’t the first time they had encountered this criminal, and his M.O. was widely known as that he never knew his victims. Just killed them for the hell of it. This case was the first this criminal had been tied to where his motives ran deep, where he had a connection.
Hanako is her name, Akechi recalls. And he’d remember her for the rest of his life. Because Hanako was his age; and Hanako, too, was abandoned by her father.
Akechi was the one who Sae had asked to accompany her to speak to find the mother and report the news to her. To let her know how the case was going. Sae couldn’t have known that the entire time, Akechi’s blood went cold at seeing the mother in her state. She had long, wavy chestnut brown hair that fell past her waist. Her eyes, you could tell, were once vibrant orbs full of life and love. But she was still warm and kind even in the midst of her anxiety and despair over the loss of her daughter. She was so at a loss that instead, she spoke fondly of Hanako like she had never died in the first place. She spoke of her like her daughter still stood next to her.
That love and warmth was the same love he had attributed to his mother.
‘Go-chan…’
His body jerked so violently to the side to catch whatever that was, and in his panic he shoved the coffee cup off the edge. Even through the anxiety, he whispered like a child.
“Ma…?”
He felt stupid. Of course, he would. He’s 18 years old, a detective, somewhat of a celebrity, and here he was calling for his dead mother. As if she’d somehow managed to reach him. As if she’d somehow come back to him. So in defeat from his state of mind thus far, he languidly turned back to his computer, accidentally shoving the coffee cup off the edge of his desk.
Akechi is a man of action. He rarely stared, and he rarely was at a loss for what to do; but he looked down at the coffee cup and the coffee now pooling on the cement floor. The fall wasn’t enough to break it, but it left a crack on the lip in its wake. Like the fall hadn’t done its job—the aftermath of not having been far enough from the surface. Like a morbid wake up call. Like how he—
“Goro, you good in there?” Haruhi called from outside his office door with a gentle knock. “I was passing by, and heard something fall.”
“Yeah!” he called right back. “I’m alright. My mistake.”
“Can I come in?”
He let her, even if he didn’t want to. But his fear of his mind overpowered his fear of being made at the moment, and he needed the company. Desperately.
Haruhi closed the door behind her, and she approached Akechi with a look on her face that he hated more than he could ever express.
Worry, he thinks it might be.
Akechi shook his head in an attempt to stop her in her tracks before any word left her lips. He was fine, and he will be fine. He just needed to pick up the pieces.
“Let me help you…” she says softly, kneeling down next to him as he picks up the chipped piece of the mug from the ground.
“Mm,” he hummed in acknowledgement, not lifting his head to meet her gaze. There was nothing wrong; so he didn’t have to look her in the eye like he had done something wrong—like a kid looking for someone to guide him.
He detests feeling so small and useless. It was even more stupid to him that he was feeling this way over a chipped coffee mug, because what is a coffee mug in the grand scheme of Akechi Goro? So what if it fell? So what if it chipped? A crack in a mug means nothing, because again, nothing. Was. Wrong.
Even then, he knew that Haruhi was aware something was up. They had been working together for more than a year now, and friends for half of that year. He knew she wanted to ask, but he also knew that she knew better than to ask. Haruhi’s always had that level of intuition, he noticed. All the times he had distanced himself in the name of ‘refusing to care for people other than himself,’ Haruhi knew. To the point where even she distanced herself too.
Yet she was still here kneeling next to him, helping him pick up the pieces.
How could he have fucked up this much in a single day? To let his mind wander a step too far away? Wasn’t fucking up for the early parts of his childhood enough?
‘We’ll mess it up if we keep this going, Goro,’ he’d seethe at himself. ‘We’ll get ourselves made, we’ll end up in jail, and we’ll keep living our sorry little fucking lives.’
“So, you read the file I sent?” Haruhi asks, getting a few paper towels from the dispenser on Akechi’s desk.
“Yeah, I have,” he nods, lips pursed into a thin line as if he regretted something about that case.
“We did what we could,” she says, knowing that simply catching the criminal just wasn’t enough.
He chuckles dryly, patting the pool of coffee with a few paper towels. “Normally, I’d be saying that to you.” He was able to force out a laugh, feeling somewhat comforted in her presence.
“Yeah, well.”
The two shared the gentlest and weakest of laughs before Akechi eventually sank down to the ground, opting to sit while drying up the mess.
“There’s something I’d like to look into,” he carelessly blurts out even before the thought crosses his mind. He really was not in control of anything today.
“A new assignment?” she inquires, tiling her head as she turns her gaze toward him.
“No. Just a follow up…” quickly, he thinks of something that wouldn’t invite too many questions despite what he's already begun. “…on that case."
“The guy we put behind bars has ties to Masayoshi Shido, yes?” he continues. “Losing track of children they put on this earth without any care…it’s... sick. I just… I need to know if someone else out there is just as lost.”
Haruhi has seen him vulnerable, but never like this. She knows his father abandoned him, and she knows the surface of his pains. But the specificity got her thinking.
“Okay, I get it… You’re a good guy, Goro.”
“Just… look into some old files you might have access to. Juvenile cases, something like that. Maybe claims we filed as false,” he says, filing through his brain for more instances they could look into. “I need your help on this.”
A sinking feeling grew and tugged on Haruhi’s stomach the more the idea welcomed itself in her mind. To find intimate ties like this and possible children… Connecting loose strings wouldn’t be anywhere near simple. But Goro never asked her for anything that didn’t mean anything in the bigger picture.
“Okay. I’ll let you know about anything I find as soon as I find it, okay?”
“Okay. Thank you. I’ll owe you for this.”
Haruhi chuckled. “Just make sure we don’t get our asses killed for this.”