Chapter Text
Five years had dragged him further away from being a Phantom Thief, and the transition hadn’t been easy.
Saving the world had left Ren with nothing but lockpicking skills, the memories of a now defunct superpower, and what Tae had once gently described as probable acute trauma. That big promise to put an end to rotten adults had been a well-intentioned placation that had proved to be woefully impossible, and it was infuriating to watch the news each day to see another too-wealthy man getting away with his crimes while the only people who could actually do anything about it sat comfortable in their complicity. Maddening to know that he and his friends had the capacity to create change without the means. What had once been long evenings spent planning societal reform were now monthly meetings to catch up on whatever crumbs of excitement they could draw out of young adult life that never came close to the exhilaration of defeating a palace ruler and knowing that they’d made a difference in the world. And he loved those meetings, loved his friends, lived for them, but he couldn’t help but miss all the things they’d once been. What they’d had.
Which was probably why he spent so much of his time chasing ghosts.
He was at Jazz Jin again. For someone with no interest in the music, he found himself there too often. There was an appeal to its underground vibe, the dimmed lights and its cluttered crampedness, something pleasing about the worn vintage records that lined the walls. He could never stomach more than one of their famous cocktails, yet he never ordered anything else. Forever sentimental, he supposed. It must have looked quite strange to the other patrons, but Ren had long since learned not to care about the opinions of strangers. It was habit. It wasn’t just about an ancient guilt over the one person he couldn’t save while he still had the chance, though that certainly came into play more than he was comfortable with. It was just… a quiet place, not physically but mentally. Somewhere he could sit and think. Or not think.
Not thinking had quickly become his preference.
He’d nursed the same sickly cocktail for almost an hour, and if that frustrated the owner, he never showed it. The ice had watered it down to a sugary lemon cordial. He was thinking about that, thinking about the edible glitter that spun in distracting patterns around his straw and not about the disappointment that ate away at his stomach, because their latest lead was always going to have been a coincidence - if Akechi was alive he clearly wanted nothing to do with Ren or any of the Phantom Thieves, and that was fine. They’d meant something to each other in the end, or so he’d thought, but it was fine. It was fine that there was one thing that happened five whole years ago that slithered its way into every dream that he just couldn’t fix. Honestly.
“Are you finally finished staring into that glass, or should I wait?”
And
Akechi looked down at him from behind the bar like no time had passed at all, one brow cocked in familiar condescension. Ren opened his mouth and promptly closed it. His brain was lagging. Clever words choked and died on his tongue.
It was supposed to be a coincidence.
“Since I appear to have rendered you speechless, I’ll spare you the trouble of asking which drink you’d like to examine next. I seem to recall you always deferred to my judgement in these matters anyway.” He took a bottle from the wall without waiting for Ren’s confirmation, paused and examined its label with pointed care. “I wonder – was joining me here part of your strategy to test my true nature? Were you waiting to catch me slipping poison into your cup?”
Ren watched the cocktail shaker rattle between his hands as he spoke. Watched him fill a tall glass that was half crushed ice. Watched him wait and watch him in return in an increasingly impatient silence.
“Poison isn’t the neat, traceless death most people presume,” he continued. “Arsenic and cyanide might be tasteless, but any detective worth their salt would instantly identify their signature violent vomiting and seizures.” God, why was he talking so much about poison? Akechi looked at him and shook his head as if his mere presence was already exhausting him. “Cleaning up your corpse on my first week here would be problematic. Your drink is safe, Amamiya.”
Oh. Slowly he raised the drink to his lips and sipped through the straw. He swallowed. He wasn’t sure what flavour the fruit syrup was supposed to be beneath the strength of the spirit Akechi had used, sharp and metallic like paint thinner. He put the glass down and looked back to Akechi, who was still waiting for… anything, he supposed. Definitely something more than the dead eyed stare he was being subjected to.
When he finally found his voice, all that came out was, “Hello to you too.”
“Yes, well. Hello,” Akechi replied.
Another customer who had somehow waded through the waves of awkwardness their encounter was surely radiating gestured for Akechi’s attention, giving Ren another blessed minute to think of something better to say. Akechi wore that practiced smile - his TV smile - and had the public cognition changed so much that nobody recognised the former celebrity working behind the bar? He looked exactly the same, barely any older, light brown hair perhaps an inch or two too long slipping stubbornly from behind his ears. He gave a pleasant chuckle as the customer fumbled with her change that slid from his face the moment she turned her back.
“You could have called.”
Akechi shrugged, indifferent. “I knew you’d be able to find me if you wanted to.”
If he wanted to. Like he hadn’t bothered looking. Like he hadn’t spent five years of nights drifting back to the decision he’d been forced to make to leave a friend, or rival, or whatever dead while the rest of them got to carry on, to live and change and grow. Ren let his eyes flutter closed and bit it back. There was no point in arguing about it until he had the full picture - there would be plenty of time for that later.
“Well, as you can clearly see, I’m working. We can talk more after my shift.”
Much later, apparently.
Honestly, it would have been very funny and equally fair of him to just stand up and leave, disrupt whatever dramatic plan Akechi had rehearsed for that night, but… he didn’t. The shock of seeing him stood there, alive and well, seemed to have frozen him to his spot. So, he slumped over in the stiff stool he’d already been sat in for an hour and returned to stirring his new drink until that ice melted too, as if there was nothing wrong with the scene before him. It wouldn’t process. He stared and stared at him, but it was like watching a moving picture. A ghost retracing his steps.
Goosebumps had broken out all over his skin when Futaba had first brought the new hire at Jazz Jin to his attention - Shinji Nakanomatsu, a name any of the Phantom Thieves would recognise immediately. Was that really the best way Akechi could think of getting his attention? Had he always been so dramatic? Ren hadn’t changed his phone number since high school and wasn’t exactly a difficult person to find. Knowing Akechi like he did, he was probably testing the waters, feeling out whether that bridge had been burned. As if that were necessary when he’d long since shot out the foundations without losing Ren’s support.
Eventually the dim lights brightened, and the customers dispersed. It was strange to see the Jazz Jin with such startling clarity, as unnatural as the man in front of him cleaning off his hands in the sink. Akechi finally turned to look at him, eyeing him up and down – taking stock of how he’d aged? Probably not. Ren was a little less scrawny and wore his glasses far less (despite actually needing them to see now), but other than that he was pretty sure he looked the same as the day Akechi disappeared.
“Did you miss me?” Ren deadpanned, breaking the silence.
Akechi scoffed in disbelief. “I see you haven’t grown out of your ‘sense of humour’.”
Finally, Ren grinned – and it might have been wishful thinking, but he was pretty sure Akechi’s expression softened too. Just a little bit.
“You know we looked for you,” Ren said.
“I imagined you would. You never knew how to let something go, did you?”
“You’re not just ‘something’.” Akechi stared blankly back at him. “You should have let me know you were alive.”
With a deliberate sigh Akechi wrung a towel between his hands. “That would have been difficult. I only… woke up recently.”
Ren stared at him until he sighed yet again. There were all of these quirks that had faded in his memory. He had almost forgotten how much of a show he had to make out of everything he did. He had definitely forgotten how much he’d missed it.
“I have no memory of anything after we defeated that absolute fool Maruki. I simply came to my senses in Nagatacho, strolling down the street without a clue of how I got there.”
“That’s… strange.”
Akechi gave him a withering look. “I’m aware of that.”
“You don’t know where you’ve been for five years?”
“If I knew, I would have told you already.”
“Do you want me to help you investigate your disappearance?”
“No,” Akechi said a little too sharply. “I am simply informing you of what happened. We were… almost friends, once. I suppose I thought you ought to know your decision did not kill me in the end.”
“We were friends.”
“If you say so.”
“I’ll help you investigate.”
“I really do not need your help-“
“I want to. I’m curious.”
Akechi looked at him for a long time, arms folded neatly over his chest. Then, he shrugged one shoulder and turned away, returning glasses to their places as Ren watched his back. Thoughts were finally seeping back into his suddenly exhausted brain, and that meant he was feeling a little more emotion than he was comfortable with, a surprising swell in his throat he had to swallow down before he made things even weirder. Things were already so weird. Because seeing him again, hearing the honed inflections of his voice, made him ache with just how much he’d missed having him around.
“Don’t you have some place better to be?” Akechi asked. The club had emptied; that night’s performer had long since packed away. “Meet me at the Diet building tomorrow morning. Nine?”
“I have class until twelve.”
“Twelve thirty, then. Don’t keep me waiting.”
On the long walk to the station Ren took out his phone. The group had been organising their monthly meet up without him and seemed to have settled on the same restaurant they always did. His thumb hovered over the screen, dancing over letters as he decided how to best summarise his evening.
[Ren]:
Sounds good.
Akechi’s alive, by the way.
[Ryuji]:
Dude what, again?
--
A familiar sight sat waiting for him outside the lecture hall, cross-legged on the floor, eyes glued firmly to her heavily customised Switch. Futaba bit down onto her lip in the intense concentration he had come to expect from her.
“Futaba?”
“Hold, please.” The buttons cried out beneath her smashing fingers. Class had let out a little early, but he was still going to be late if he hung around for too long – not that that meant anything to Futaba. Just like Akechi, she hadn’t changed a bit. After a moment, she punched her hand into the air with unabashed glee.
“Thank you for joining me,” she said with mock formality, placing the console in her lap as she patted the floor beside him as if it were an office chair. “We have much to discuss. Like how totally right I was about the fake name, right? Right?”
She leaned her head towards him; he ruffled her hair on instinct, eliciting a pleased hum from her lips. “Right,” he agreed. Futaba had been helping him look for Akechi since… well, since the day he disappeared, though there was little even she could do past sending out feelers to all his old haunts. Checking Jazz Jin’s staff register when she had had been a stroke of genius – that and incredible luck. He felt better about the whole thing after a good night’s sleep, a little less shell-shocked and a little more lucid, and he would be lying if he said he hadn’t woken up excited, even, to be solving another mystery with his old rival - juggling university work, a handful of part-time jobs, and an investigation, just like old times. That thought filled a gaping hole the absence of the Metaverse had left behind. He couldn’t recall a single word from his lectures that morning.
It was probably fine.
“Sooo… I’m glad you don’t have to feel responsible for Akechi’s death any more, and I know you and him sneaking around by yourselves is a whole thing, but as the voice of reason in this party-“ Ren raised a doubtful eyebrow, “- I just wanted to remind you that this whole thing is super suspicious, and your rival-friend-whatever did try to kill you once, so maybe you should, oh, I don’t know, at least maybe reconsider walking down any dark alleyways with him?”
“I’ll turn on my phone location.”
Those magic words made Futaba beam. She took out her phone and ushered him to his feet, pushed him back so she could get him into the frame, circled him like the world’s tiniest wolf. “Wearing the same blue jeans he’s had since he was eighteen and a dark red t-shirt with a curry stain on the back.” Ren fished behind himself as if he’d be able to feel it. “Last seen on the 12th of July at precisely… 12:03pm.”
“I have to go,” Ren announced, waving her off but doing nothing to disguise his smile.
With one stern nod she turned on her heel and walked into the lecture theatre, but not before calling one last, “Stay safe!” over her shoulder. The next class were filling in.
He was five minutes late.
Familiar white columns stood tall and imposing behind a similarly towering gate behind a bustling crowd of workers in the middle of a lunch rush. Ren hadn’t been anywhere near the National Diet Building since they had defeated Shido. He tried to put himself in his seventeen-year-old self’s shoes – how had he felt seeing it then? Nervous. Excited. Angry. Angry most of all, at Shido and the world and Akechi for falling for their tricks. Anger felt good then, motivating and purposeful. Without his persona it was meaningless, unactionable. Awful things still happened behind that gate, and the only difference now was that he couldn’t do anything to fix it.
He scrunched his nose, shook the thoughts from his head. Akechi’s problems were his focus for the day, and he was far more suited to helping others than himself.
Eventually he spotted him. He was stood looking delightfully irritable with his arms crossed in a short-sleeved shirt and trousers, still apparently incapable of dressing his age. The sight of it filled him with nostalgia and improved his mood significantly.
“Class ran over,” Ren lied when he caught sight of him, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry.”
He hummed in response. It was a familiar, disdainful little sound that made Ren smile somehow.
Akechi narrowed his eyes. “Is something funny?”
Yes, he thought. The fact that you still act like I piss you off so much is very funny.
He shrugged and said, “Just happy to see you.”
“Then you’re easily pleased,” Akechi replied dismissively. He began to walk. Ren followed. “If you’re serious about wanting to do this, we should start with where I woke up. It isn’t far from here.”
“You said you woke up walking?”
“Mm. As if I had lost my train of thought, only instead of a thought it was four years of my life.”
“Five,” Ren corrected.
“Four,” Akechi repeated. Ren frowned. “You can wipe that look off your face. I never said you were my first point of call.”
Ouch. That stung. It really took him a year to realise that Ren deserved to know? Again, he found himself biting back the inflammatory comment that threatened to spill from his mouth. Arguing with Akechi just didn’t seem worth it right now when he could so easily change his mind and disappear again – which should have been fine really, now that Ren knew he wasn’t responsible for his death, but inexplicably wasn’t.
Akechi continued to speak, unphased by Ren’s deepening scowl.
“Idiotic as I was, I was still aware of the precariousness of my situation with Shido.” The way he spat out the name broke his pleasant, conversational tone, but he inhaled sharply through his nose and continued as if he hadn’t needed the moment to breathe. “I lived modestly throughout my high school career and moved half of my pay checks into a secret account in case matters ever complicated. Lucky for me, that account was neither discovered by him nor locked by the bank. I had enough to support myself while I investigated alone. Which was when I discovered something curious - very few people seem to recognise me. I searched for myself online and my fansites are still accessible, however all activity – even criticisms – quickly dwindled after Christmas in 2017. I presume that is something to do with public cognition.”
“That happened to the Phantom Thieves too,” Ren said. “People sometimes remember if you say the name, but otherwise…”
“I thought as much. I get the occasional odd look and confused strangers who ask if I worked here or there or if we went to school together, but nobody seems to be hunting down the big bad hitman behind the mental shutdowns.”
Akechi smiled at that, a smile that cracked his face in a way that was uncomfortable to look at. Realising that none of his adoring fans had even questioned his disappearance must have been difficult. He thought he should say something, but there was nothing that wouldn’t drive home just how alone Akechi was in the world. He looked down at his feet instead.
“Well, back to the topic at hand,” he continued breezily. “This is the place.”
Ren stopped to look around. A tall concrete office block loomed to the left of them, a wide busy road to the right. There was nothing significant about the location past its proximity to the Diet. He tried to imagine Akechi blinking himself awake there mid-stride, lost and confused and surrounded by noise and strangers. The real Akechi cocked an eyebrow at him. It was so difficult to consolidate the sad truths of Akechi’s life with the person that stood before him.
“I managed to convince a police officer that my wallet had been stolen to gain access to the office’s CCTV footage. All that revealed is that I, thankfully, did not appear out of thin air here, and that I seem to have walked from the direction of Kensei Memorial Park.”
“This could have been the last place you were seen in 2017,” Ren pointed out.
“Correct,” Akechi agreed. “I’m glad we’re on the same page.”
He carried on walking. Ren caught up to walk by his side, brushing their shoulders together as he moved out the path of another pedestrian. Akechi glanced at him from the corner of his eye, and the silence that followed was not… uncomfortable, but present and heavy, like small talk was now beyond them. Well, Ren wasn’t much of a conversationalist anyway, but Akechi usually had something vague and threatening to say to him in times like this. It felt like he was holding something back.
When they reached the park Akechi seated himself on a bench and looked up at Ren as if waiting for him to do the same. He did. The midday sun bore down on his head. He wished they could have met somewhere else.
“Contact Lavenza,” Akechi ordered suddenly.
Yeah. It probably was something to do with her and her master. But… “Sorry. I don’t know how.”
“And here I thought you were their favourite wildcard.”
Ren resisted rolling his eyes. That pointlessly jealous pettiness certainly hadn’t gone anyway. “They always contact me first.”
Akechi nodded slowly, gaze wandering to the browning grass ahead of them.
“I already asked Morgana about it after you disappeared. In case there was any chance you were there.”
“You really did look for me.”
The hint of surprise in his voice was infuriating, but instead of trying to explain once again that he really did care about Akechi’s wellbeing against all reason, Ren said, “We still have a deal.”
And Akechi laughed at that - quite genuinely, as far as Ren could tell. It diffused some of that lingering tension, and that allowed Ren to relax into the bench, to spread himself out in a vain attempt to cool off. All it did was put more of him in direct sunlight. The heat didn’t seem to bother Akechi at all, of course; he was leant back into the wood, legs crossed, eyes trained on the nails of his left hand, his smile slowly fading.
“We can get to our long-awaited rematch once I’ve confirmed whether or not I’m truly, unconditionally alive,” he said after some consideration. “I had a suspicion that you’d be unable to lead me to the Velvet Room, but I’ve been exploring other possibilities to get what I want.”
Well, that sounded terrible. Ren tilted his head curiously, trying to keep the concern from his expression.
“I don’t believe we were the only persona users in Japan,” he said. “In fact, there are around a dozen cases from the past thirty years that I believe might have some connection to our own.”
Morgana had told Ren something like that, but he’d never been as privy to all the details as a Velvet Room attendant, and Lavenza and Igor had only briefly touched on the room’s other ‘guests’. He straightened up, attention successfully pulled away from the heat.
“Kyoto, Mikage-cho, Sumaru, Sendai, Tatsumi Port Island…” he listed them off on his fingers. Akechi loved having knowledge that Ren didn’t - Ren could see as much in his smug expression. “The most recent and most promising case for us, however, is a little closer to home for you.”
It took a second for him to get the implication.
“Inaba is your hometown, is it not?”
He wasn’t about to ask Akechi how he knew that, because Ren was pretty sure he’d never told him exactly where he was born – it was far easier to say he was from Okina, a name people would occasionally recognise. It shouldn’t have surprised him that Akechi would rather spy on him than ask him something outright.
He nodded.
“Then you’ll recall the strange occurrences that coincided with three murders in 2010.”
“Not really,” he said. He had only been ten, after all. “I remember them finding the bodies and arresting the officer behind it all.”
Huh. Was that where all his hatred for authority had come from? That was definitely something to analyse later.
Akechi looked somewhat disappointed. “Then allow me to remind you. A previously unrepentant murderer suddenly confessed to his crimes despite a lack of evidence to convict him - a change of heart, one might say. That, combined with a mysterious fog that some suggested were connected to a series of otherwise unexplained illnesses.”
Oh, right - he did remember that, but he’d forgotten that those things had occurred so closely together. He recalled his mother forcing him to wear a mask to school after a girl a few years below him was apparently hospitalised because of it. He had never considered those incidents to be related, but he quickly understood why it caught Akechi’s interest.
“Do you recall anything about a ‘Midnight Channel’?”
Slowly, Ren shook his head. Now Akechi was obviously disappointed in the direction his questioning was taking, arms folding across his chest.
“There was a rumour circulating your town -” he emphasised the your like Ren was being difficult on purpose, because god forbid he have trouble remembering something that happened while he was still in elementary school, “- that staring into your television at midnight on a rainy night would reveal the person who was supposedly your soulmate.”
“And?”
“And. My hypothesis is that all of the above plus strange local rumours go hand-in-hand with persona users. In our case, the rumour was the Phantom Thieves themselves, if you recall. It seems to me that many of our modern urban legends have roots that stretch all the way back to the Velvet Room.”
And it was a shame, because Akechi really was a genius detective. Even without seeing the files he no doubt kept wherever it was that he was living now he knew with certainty that he was on the right track. “You’re good at this,” Ren said, when what he meant was it sucks that you had to be a hitman instead.
“I’m aware,” Akechi preened. “It turned out to be more troublesome investigating in Inaba than I expected, however. That ‘charming’ little place fulfilled every small-town cliché. Very few were willing to talk about the murder spree to a stranger.”
The image of Inaba’s elderly inhabitants slamming their doors in Akechi’s face was almost too delightful.
“I’m sure you’re beginning to understand why I’m telling you this.”
Ren nodded. “My parents want me back after exams finish next week. They won’t mind you coming too.”
“Perfect.” Akechi stood up abruptly and wiped invisible creases from his shirt. “Then I’ll see you at Jazz Jin next week.”
Ren stood up too, sweaty and sluggish. Annoyed, again, but he was starting to remember that that was just his general state of being around Akechi, because he was the most frustrating person on the planet. Sure. You just walked back into my life knowing full well how much choosing to let you die traumatised me, but we can wait a week and probably continue to not talk about how messed up this all is then, too. That’s fine.
Instead he said, “Do you want to get dinner on Friday?”
Akechi’s face crinkled, though whether it was in confusion or distaste, Ren couldn’t really tell. “Why?”
“We’re meeting up before our exams.”
“Then no,” Akechi said. At Ren’s expression he sighed. “I have no interest in your friends, and they have even less interest in befriending me.”
“They don’t hate you.”
“I killed Wakaba and Okumura. I promise you they do.”
Ren gave a shrug, relenting. Fine. He’d tried. His friends were the most amazing people and more forgiving than they should have been considering the cards that had been dealt to them, but maybe it was childish of him to think he could force Akechi back into their lives. He wasn’t even sure why he wanted to. Nostalgia for a time where he hadn’t known he was planning to betray them? What did that even mean? The real Akechi – the difficult asshole in front of him - had never really hung out with his friends anyway.
They walked to the train station together, idly commenting on things they passed along the way that had changed since Akechi had last been alive like there was nothing strange about it, advertisements for new phones and television shows he hadn’t bothered to catch up on in the first year of his resurrection. At the ticket gate they re-exchanged phone numbers, and then they parted ways.
His train was disgustingly warm and smelled nauseatingly of sweat and heated metal. No matter where he sat the sun inconvenienced him, but he chose to suffer the heat on his neck over than the sunlight in his eyes. That’s why he saw Akechi watching him expressionlessly from behind the gate, turning swiftly the moment he was caught. And that felt familiar. With all the strangeness of the past 24 hours, it only just occurred to him that something in Akechi’s story wasn’t adding up. He could still see him distantly, vanishing up the stairs, and… there was a reason why Ren had never given up on him.
March 2018. What he’d seen through the window. Even now, he was so certain.
If Akechi was lying to him again he’d kill him back.