Chapter Text
(?? November)
The night sky is a stark backdrop against soft yellow lights adorning the marquee. Bulbs flicker with the tempo of the circling helicopters above. Whether airborne observers held safely within a metal chassis or the foot traffic below, the theater beckons all her guests tonight. News crews, lovers of art, and armed guards alike will attend tonight's showing of Romeo and Juliet.
A theater-like The Golden Apple is a holy land of creativity and adventure to any guest among its halls. Deep maroon walls with gold-accented garlands breathe life to antique walls and their matching plush seats. Wooden beams divide each theater section with lights outlining paths in and out of the upper and lower balconies—an enormous chandelier hanging directly above the audience at the center of it all.
The upper and lower balconies fill with attendants waiting for the play's final act to unfold. Memories flutter in her chest as she crouches low on the catwalk above the stage instead of recreating cardboard set pieces with homemade costumes. The Phantom Thieves are directing a different show tonight.
Beyond closed curtains, red shoes squeak against the metal grates of the catwalk above the stage. Hiding amongst steel wires, moving through the fly system, is the leader of the Phantom Thieves herself. She’s careful with navigating the suspended backdrops, not wanting to cause any noticeable movement and reveal their hand too soon. Even though Ran is up here alone, her teammates are dispersed, dressed as stagehands and audience members and blending in amongst the back of the house.
Crouching to a seated position and hopping forward onto an empty batten, Ran carefully moves to the center of the beam. With a click and a swift tug, her climbing harness hooks into the awaiting carabiner left on the pipes. The pole sways as Ran waits above the gallery. Amongst the steel wires, she may as well be another shadow waiting for the moment where everything comes to life. A voice whispers through a wireless headphone clipped to her mask, “Ready and waiting, my love,”
Looking over the edge of the batten at her planned entrance, a good thirty feet down, Ran sees her Juliet with one blue eye looking back up at her. Juliet lay, imagined dead by nature of the story, in the painted tomb of the Capulets. The ‘sleeping Juliet’ closes her eyes once more, and Ran double checks her line is secure, watching for the moment she’s rehearsed for weeks to steal.
It’s a minute or so as the actor playing Paris declares his grief for the fallen Juliet as he scatters flowers along the floor. The cloth petals dance across the stage while the lead actor playing Romeo waits in the dimmed wing of the stage. He is holding a special torch made of string lights and cardboard. The audience can’t see him, but he is her intended target, and that light is all she needs to spot him. As the page of Paris exits the stage, Ran whispers across the shared line, “Here comes my cue, everybody, ”
She has exactly one shot at this. Even with climbing equipment and controlled descent, she needs to time it perfectly. A BANG cuts through the gallery, and Ran is off with a determined grin and a fearless leap.
What happens next is so fast she doubts anyone catches the sequence.
A rubber bullet tied to a fly-wheel mechanism fires from a modified handgun and pulls a string loose, which unfurls and releases a large ream of black cloth connected to an empty batten. Wide enough to cover more than half the stage, the fabric plummets down with gravity, milliseconds ahead of Ran’s descent. A crew member flips a switch on the breaker box from the back end of the house, interrupting the circuit between the booth and the lighting system but not cutting it entirely. Every light in the house blinks.
Ran is gripping her belay to control her fall to make sure she doesn’t break her legs when she hits the stage; two more crew members leap from their cover to the actor holding a glowing target made of string lights, and bodily drag him out the back door when the stage manager says: “This isn’t on the script! Get ready for damage control—Romeo? Where’s Romeo??”
Another crew member responds, “He was right by the door. I saw him only a second ago.”
“I lost sight of him,” the stage manager snipes, “I never lose sight of—”
The length of black fabric is still falling, and half a second has passed. Two different disguised Thieves manually swing a spotlight from the catwalks above the gallery. The heavy fixture illuminates center stage like a perfectly timed set of dominoes as Ran hits her mark.
In an almost inexcusably banal act, a male voice across the Thieves' shared voice channel confirms: “The Son of Capulet has been banished.”
“It’s the other one,” A new female voice answers tersely, not sounding at all as though she’d been the one who participated in a kidnapping and had broken out in a bit of sweat.
“WHATEVER,” The male voice answers, “Joker, you’re all set to steal the scene!”
Ran has less than a second to yank down the secure line and throw it backstage. She can see Paris’s increasing look of bafflement as the final moments of her cover disappear, and the spotlight reveals her.
The light burns the edges of her vision, through her mask, and against her skin. One. Two. Three beats pass. And because people will always gossip, whispers travel across the room.
“I don’t recognize her—,”
“What happened to the other actor?”
“What’s going on?”
Ran steps forward, wearing confidence as a cloak, and into the role of Romeo. She approaches Paris, who does not look happy to see her. There comes the noisy clatter of many shoes against waxed wood, rushing around the hidden wings of the set, collating their workforce, and readying a curtain call.
Romeo speaks: “—Do not interrupt me in my course. Why I descend into this bed of death, is partly to behold my lady’s face;” with all of the pain of a despairing lover, she walks towards the man playing the role who intends to oppose her.
There is an oppressive moment because the crew could rush out to stop her. In her ear, Ran hears the encouragement of the Thieves, saying: “When you’re finished, come stage right, we’ve got the getaway ready.”
Ran’s delivery of Romeo’s lines did not surprise or alarm Paris. His tightly-wound shoulders relaxed a fraction. He sounded almost relieved when he said, “This,” he pointed to her, answering the question on everyone's lips.
“—is that banish’d haughty Montague. That murdered my love’s cousin, with which grief, It is supposed, the fair creature died;” Paris steps widely, making direct eye contact with Ran, trying to join forces with her in their delivery. “And here is to come to do some villainous shame. To the dead bodies: I will apprehend him….” All at once, he mutters crossly to himself and drops his hand to the hilt of his sword.
“Good luck... !” The earlier voice whispers through the headphone and Ran mirrors the motions. Left foot behind the other, she steps with anger, then bereft; then anger again. She felt hot and cold.
“Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man; Fly hence, and leave me: think upon these gone;... I beseech thee, youth; put not another sin upon my head,” she speaks again.
Paris glances up at her; eyes extraordinarily cut like stone. The two collide with a spark.
The stage manager grips their radio to the side of the curtain, waiting to know how this would turn out. Two Thieves slip away into the shadows and down the ladder in the catwalks. A young boy's voice speaks through the shared line: “Wow, she really can act.”
“Of course, she can; that’s our leader for you.” The female voice from before answers the young boy.
Ran looks at her dagger in hand, like a black arrow, far shorter than the sword of Paris. Paris was smiling at her with boyish tenacity. Still, hidden beneath the smile, was a note of doubt tugging at his mouth, and something in Ran ignited: he was afraid of her.
What happened next was like closing one's eyes while walking into a warm room. With each swing, heavy drowsiness fills the back of her head, all the way down to her toes. Her hand-to-hand skills scream to take over the exchange of blades, but she presses on. Ran pivots away from the syrup-slow thrusts of Paris’s sword. He tries to press forward, push her to the wings of the stage, but she traces her dagger down to the hilt of his sword and collides her elbow with his stomach. Making him stutter to a halt. The actor clatters against the stage, getting a desperate look as Ran towers over him.
Ran’s heart is panicking in her chest, seizing as though amid a cardiac arrest. “Wilt tho provoke me? Then have at thee, boy!”
Paris’s actor sinks to his planned death on stage, concluding the scene. The stage manager hasn’t drawn the curtain on them, so, as Romeo enters Juliet's tomb, a new act of the play begins. There, sat nary a foot away, was the gray and blue coffin-like structure upon which the white-clothed figure of Juliet lay at rest. Juliet’s face is hidden with a thin veil to all except Ran, who swallows sourly as their eyes meet. No audience member can see the acknowledgment between the two.
“How oft when men are at the point of death… have they been merry.” Ran steps forward, her voice much softer, more laden with grief as she speaks to Juliet. Sorrow follows her like a shadow as she sits on the tomb beside her fallen lover.
A red glove sets the dagger she carried on the far side of the tomb and then traces across the still cheek of Juliet. Wavy brown curls slip beneath the veil with the touch, and Ran allows herself a moment to tuck the lock behind Juliet’s ear.
“O, how may I call this a lightening? Oh, my love, my wife. Death that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath…” Her heart is still ricocheting in her chest as she cradles Juliet. Adrenaline sings through her like a hot burning fuel while her brain and heart battle to keep up, “—here’s to my love,” Their kiss like petals passing in the wind.
“—Thy lips are warm,” Juliet speaks against Ran’s lips.
At first, Ran thought Juliet had punched her; then, her body erupted in heat and nausea when she saw more than felt the blade in its flesh-made sheath. A dagger, forgotten to the tombstone, takes the spotlight with a swift upward motion with a hollow THUMP. There the edge sits enveloped in the flesh of her chest, through the layers of her clothes.
A halo of red, splotching through her clothes, seeps down the blade's handle and over Juliet's fingers. Ran doesn’t understand what she’s looking at when Juliet leans up to her ear. She can’t clear her eyes to look again; her brain has stopped thinking and given all of the thinking power to her arms-which thrust forward and SHOVE Juliet away.
—Ran stumbles back, legs rattling to keep her trembling form upright. Juliet’s lips move, but Ran listens and hears nothing but the sound of her blood rushing, boom, boom, boom, in her ears. Juliet stands, laughing with her hands on her hips. Her once white dress is now decorated in a rush of deep red blossoms across her front from when metal met flesh.
“What’s here? A lie, closed in my true love's lips?” Juliet speaks, sound abruptly coming back for Ran.
Ran shakes her head so vigorously that she’s surprised her mask doesn’t fall off.
“Joker! Hold on-!” A voice distantly rings through Ran’s headphones as she coughs wetly. Long strands of her hair fell forward with sweat mixed with blood surrounding the blade still in her chest. Leather gloves crunch beneath Ran’s fingers as she fights to hold any breath in her chest.
Her vision blurs at the edges as another comment buzzes through, “Slugger, you’re closest. Get over there!” a third voice joins in a light tenor through the personal feed.
“O, Romeo, you make a dagger happy! Giving it new sheath,” Juliet says whimsically.
Ran forces a tight smile, “De…depart again—” Sweat trickles down her neck as her lungs seize to speak. It was the first thing Romeo had said to Juliet since she arose from her grave.
There is a horrible pause as Juliet steadily ignores the approaching figures, likely the stage crew coming to intervene. The tension should have deflated then, but it doesn’t. Juliet evenly closes the distance between her and Ran. She registers Juliet stepping into her shadow, pressing their bodies together, fingers tracing down her chest again.
Juliet leans in, “While thy lips are still warm… rust and let die.”
Ran braces for a burst of angry voices, yelling, cursing, maybe even her cry of pain, but there is only silence. Time disconnects around her when she sees she is no longer verticle—a pool of crimson growing around an abandoned blade.
****
Everything shifts in flashes. She’s weighed down from the roar of sounds she can’t comprehend and the heat of too warm lights. Ran feels a charge of cold air against her face, and she realizes she no longer has her mask—. She’s awake through sheer unconscious panic and the steady sound of a monitor beeping. She lifts a hand to–or tries to–but is promptly halted by cold steel bracelets clanking against the metal sides of her bed. Passively she registers the room she’s in is alternating shades of gray and bleach white. Everything about it is sterile in a sickly way. How long has she been here? It couldn’t have been long. Ran blinks to remember where she is and why she’s in this much pain.
Right. This has to be a hospital. It just so happens to be a hospital where she’s also handcuffed to her bed.
“Oh good, you’re awake—” Ran startled, having been too focused on being bound to recognize she hadn’t been alone. A nurse was holding the clipboard, tongue in cheek, as he went over to her side to switch out the empty bag hung on the IV stand.
Throat still dry, Ran watches the nurse push a button, and her arm feels cold again.
“You lost quite a bit of blood. Not ideal, considering your blood type is fairly uncommon.” The nurse says, noticing Ran’s gaze lingering again to her restraints. “I tried to refuse the bindings,” he gestures to the cuffs, “but our hands were tied on this like you.”
She snorts.
“I’ll let the doctor know you’re up.“
***
The sound of kitten heels echoes down the bright hallway of the hospital. Usually, a detainee has already been processed before they are brought to a hospital. There are established procedures: pictures taken, fingerprints, charges all in order, but this was an exception.
The room she’s heading towards has guards stationed around the exit, and the ward itself is behind a key card-only access wing of the hospital. Were this the precinct, Jodie usually knew which room her client would be in, but it takes longer to get into the clinic. There’s a lot more red tape once anything medical gets brought into a conversation of privacy rights and the rights of the prosecution. Jodie knew the leader of the infamous Phantom Thieves was being treated here. A criminal or not, a patient still has rights, even in the unique scenario when they’re about to be arrested and need medical attention before being detained. No matter. The Thieves' large following and the list of public figures they’d targeted were persuasions enough to get her to the final barrier—the guards standing outside the patient room. The two of them clash with the stark white environment of the clinic, with their armored uniforms and visible weapons.
Jodie rightfully belongs here. Unlike them, her intent is only to clarify details. She’s been sent by the public prosecutor's office, and this is her case.
One man seems committed to keeping her away, making excuses for how the case is no longer in her jurisdiction—whereas the other guard turns away to answer a call from what she knows is her director's demanding they let her in. Jodie holds her hand out to the officer and takes the offered cell phone from his hand with a snap.
“I thought I ordered you to stand by,” the wearied voice of her chief says without pause, already used to this song and dance and the speed it moves with by the time Jodie takes her court-ready fighting stance. She can hear the sagging of his shoulders across the tense line.
“I’m responsible for this case, yet I’m not even being allowed an interrogation?” She plants her feet firm into the tile. Her stance is an echo of the immovability of her voice.
“I knew you’d bring that up. You should just let this be a police problem. Let it be done. It’s messy enough that she's underaged.”
“I will not be convinced unless I confirm it myself, sir.”
“Fine—good luck—don’t expect anything.” He sighs again. Pleasantries exchanged; Jodie returns the cell phone to the officer as he begrudgingly moves to open the door.
“You can’t talk to the suspect for long. It’s for your own sake. Her methods are unknown, and we don’t even know if it’s simply safe to meet and speak with her—” The officer mutters.
Her? Jodie holds firm, doing her part not to reveal anything, as the face of her imagined perpetrator fades away. The pillars of an established criminal profile start to blur. A leader with power or influence over someone who has it, a pattern of violence, a repeat offender; most potential suspects fit a specific demographic. Still, as Jodie is about to face the caper she’s been chasing all year, she’s reticent.
“... I can’t believe it was you this whole time,” Jodie says.
Mouri Ran is reclined in a three-jointed hospital bed on wheels, looking more like a lost, forgotten child in a system that was never built to support her than an infamous leader of a troupe of newsworthy criminals. If Jodie had to pick a word for Ran, she’d choose exhausted. Her chest is dressed in bandages bulging through the hospital gown, paling her skin. She’s hardly moving thanks to both her hands and feet being bound to the rails of the bed by hospital standard cloth restraints. Jodie notes that the teen is handcuffed to the rail even with the cloth restrictions. One arm faces up while the other faces down. Her legs are bound, but at least her head is slightly raised with a pillow for comfort. It might seem like overkill, but… Jodie takes comfort in seeing the girl is being cared for after major surgery, not just restrained.
The battered teen doesn’t acknowledge the prosecutor in favor of forcing out a raspy, “Where are the others…?”
Jodie waves her question aside and takes her seat in a visitor's chair, hiding the bitterness behind her lips. “The police didn’t catch them. Only you can’t seem to stay out of these situations.”
Every part of her roared to reconcile the debt on society the Phantom Thieves had incurred, but Jodie knew she had little time to work with and less power than she needed. There’s a palpable emptiness between the two women when Ran again doesn’t respond to Jodie’s barb; Jodie moves on without her.
“I know you’re on strong pain medication, you just had major surgery, but I hope you can hear me. You will be processed once you leave this room, and I can’t intervene unless you work with me. It is in your best interest to answer me truthfully. There is no benefit of you wasting my time.”
Foggy blue eyes struggle to stay centered on the woman across the room as Jodie sets her cell phone on the side table to record their conversation. Ran’s expression hollows as she watches Jodie take out her notepad and begin writing.
“What was your objective? Why cause such major incidents?”
Silence.
Jodie pushes on. “I was one of the few who didn’t think this was a joke. I couldn’t assemble a solid case because I still don’t know your method.”
“Of course, you couldn’t. It’s insane.” Ran replies with a rasp.
“True.” It doesn’t surprise Jodie that the first answer she gets is snark and sarcasm.
“There’s no way I could be convinced of another ‘world’ by reading reports. It seems you’re coherent so let's get on with it. When and where did you find… this other world. How is it even possible to steal another’s heart? Tell me your account of everything.”
Ran turns her head to the side, her eyes resting just beyond Jodie’s figure across the room. Jodie watches a familiar determination flicker beneath the exhaustion and haze of narcotics. For her friends and all of their futures, she will need to fight.
“Start from the very beginning.”
***
(December of the previous year)
A thick file hits the linoleum with a heavy thump. The folder itself is worn from travel. Some papers were peaking out of the edges and Ran can’t help but feel a kinship with those papers. Barely contained in a loose sleeve, organized only in name and one drop away from spilling everywhere into one big sordid mess.
Far before she had ever thought about becoming a phantom thief, Ran had a spotty history with finding herself wrapped up in trouble. A spinning wheel of good intentions further greased by the overlap of both her parents being involved in law enforcement one way or another. In particular, last year had been a whirlwind since Shinichi disappeared. One day she was standing across the street walking together with him to school. The next day he never answered the door.
Since Shinichi lived alone, without his wealthy parents, she was the one to report him missing when he didn’t come to school for a few days and hadn’t been answering his phone.
Weeks of searching had come and passed. Ran knew she was the only one still looking for him. Everyone seemed to move on like he hadn’t existed. Like it didn’t matter that he was gone from her life. No one wanted to look too closely at his famous parents disappearing from the country with their child still missing.
Of course, she knew it wasn’t only Shinichi’s disappearance that had sent her life on the path it was in now. It was a lifetime of tiny cuts. Every night she cleaned up after her alcoholic father. Every day she wondered why her mom left her behind to pursue a career. Every dysfunctional dinner she prepared if she wanted to eat something and every desperate attempt to be the glue to fix her broken family had left its mark. She wanted to go back to some magical day where she and Shinichi stayed awake reading to each other and making their own stories, and her parents weren’t fighting on the other side of the closed door. If they knew where she was, they would be fighting on the other side of this wall now. The only thing that had changed was the room she was locked up in.
Ran blinked and burning hot tears rolled down her already stinging face. “I want my mother.”
“Your mother can’t represent you. You know this. I’m your best option.”
Ran exhaled tension from her chest and lethargic her shoulders sink further loose to the cushion of her bed. The cold metal cuff dug hard into her arm if she pulled but she wasn’t resisting at this moment. What an unorthodox interrogation room she had found herself in.
Memories play back of burning lungs, fists pounding, heart racing as she beat back a man who thought himself powerful enough to force a woman into his car and scare her off. The red flashing lights only surfacing in her memory with the slow blinking of the recording camera in the dim corner of the room. Mouri Ran found herself caught between this moment and the present time. Which moment is where it really had all started?
Aggravated assault was the charge she got that night. Thanks to the increased strictness of the juvenile delinquency campaigns. Initially, in the courts, she had been charged with attempted homicide because Ran had the intent to harm the man precisely as she did. She gave him a fractured arm and one busted lip. In return, his gift to her was felony charges and the complete upheaval of her already dysfunctional life.
Ran had been strongly recommended towards incarceration due to her recognized skill in karate from the years prior. Her and Shinichi’s habit of being on the edge of crime scenes didn’t help either. Their troublemaking had previously been swept under the rug thanks to her father’s police connections, but now it carved away her mother’s hard-earned reputation in court. Frankly, the teen knew it was a miracle she wasn’t in juvie and had been granted the opportunity to finish her last year of high school under court supervision and court-assigned housing.
In the rush of it all her father had been legally ruled an unfit parent, with his rampant alcoholism and flagrant abuse of power to keep her out of trouble. It hadn’t been a surprise that Ran was forced from her home. It might have hurt less if she’d at least still had Shinichi then or if her mother had even offered to take her. She’d only gotten a few months from that low before finding herself hospitalized this time around.
“Tell me your account of everything. Start from the very beginning.” The prosecutor across from her asks.
A wet scoff climbed the back of her throat mixed with blood and ill humor. She was the daughter of a once-renowned lawyer and washed-up detective, and here she was, without representation, trapped in a hospital room intent on caging her permanently. What a stereotype she’d turned out to be.
****
“The very beginning?”
Ran remembered how alone she had felt, back in April, riding the train into a new city. She was going to meet her new guardian with her entire life packed into one bag. Everything that she couldn’t carry had been shipped away beforehand. Even if it got lost, she knew clothes could be replaced. She only needed her (new) uniform, exercise clothes, and a few precious mementos. Other than that, her belongings didn’t matter in the end. Ran had no official plans to go anywhere besides school and maybe work until graduation. She just needed to make it through this year, and then... well, she didn’t know what came after that.
Biting the inside of her cheek, Ran winced and double-checked the address on the home assignment paper she had been given by her caseworker. They were supposed to walk her and facilitate the meeting in its entirety. Which really should say something about how fast law enforcement had been happy to get rid of her. She exited the station and wandered two blocks down through a thinning crowd of students and adults heading home for the day. She wasn’t in Beika anymore, sure, but another town near Tokyo was still a busy town near the metro, so the crowd sizes weren’t new to her.
Ran tipped her face up, appreciating the sky as she walked through the Yongen-Jaya backroads. There was a lot of green growth interwoven between the shops and flaking graffiti. The street split into multiple paths, with store fronts and homes alternating the skyline. She’d get a chance to explore later. The once blue sky had been rapidly tinting towards an early sunset since it had taken much longer than anticipated to fully separate her life from Beika. This situation was complicated enough without making any further negative impressions.
Her new guardian was supposed to be at his home address from the paper she was given… but it seemed he also owned a small cafe nearby. Deadends and decreasing daylight weren’t exactly helping the big stupid question mark her GPS seemed intent on giving her when she put the shop name in the search bar. Ran hated how often she got lost. Her feet hurt from the long trek down the unfamiliar streets, and the more she asked strangers for directions, the more she wanted to shrink in on herself. Ran groaned as she leaned against the wall of a nearby second-hand shop. At least the stare coming from the shopkeep was one of lingering interest rather than knowing fear.
While resting her feet, Ran let her ear follow the conversation of a few girls her age walking past without a second thought. Caught up in their conversation. “Isn’t he so cool? He’s a famous high school detective,” one girl chattered to the other, swinging her school bag, keychains clacking against each other. In an instant, her cold and tired body sparked with life and Ran desperately trailed after. It was weird, yes, but she needed to be sure. It’s only when the girl held her phone out to her friend, showing the profile of a boy who was distinctly not Shinichi, that Ran stopped herself from initiating contact.
“Masumi Sera solves another case, following Kudo Shinichi, being billed as “the second coming of the Detective Prince.” played over the tinny phone speaker, and Ran wished she could close her senses at the disappointment. She didn’t need another reminder of his absence in her life. She needed…
She needed directions.
Directions to figure out where this stupid shop is supposed to be. As Ran flips through her phone screen, her thumb stops to hover over a red icon next to her directions app. It’s creepy looking. She doesn’t remember downloading anything recently with that sort of cryptic logo… but it could have just updated overnight too. Figuring to hell with it and that she has nothing to lose, Ran taps her screen and the whole display turns a deep blood red.
This startles her, and everything else in her vision changes to the same hue in one blink. The girls ahead of her have frozen, like everyone else in the street. Midstep. Mid Breath. Each one was a deep blood red, all except for a blue burning figure just at the end of the road, just barely in sight. She wants to run and scream, but Ran is frozen and can’t look away at the face in the center of the flames. Though she can’t place it, she can’t help but think about how it seems familiar. The figure turns to face her fully, and in a blink, Ran’s back again, gasping for air. Twisting and turning around like a crazy person in the path, Ran checks and triple checks her vision now that color has returned to her world.
To no one in particular, Ran starts mumbling to herself. “You know what? Nightmares happen to everyone. I mean, yes, that was in a league of its own. Daytime hallucinations can happen to people under a lot of stress. I am under a lot of stress.” If the girls she was following earlier turn at the sound of her rambling, she doesn’t care.
Ran promptly decides, fuck that weird icon, and deletes it with enthusiasm. Just for good measure, she shoves the phone back in her bag and abandons directions altogether. Being lost is better than whatever the hell that was. She’s spent a significant part of her life lost anyway; what were another few laps around the streets?
It’s nearly dark out by the time she finally finds herself walking through the door of the Le Blanc Cafe. It was cozy inside. Much more calm and peaceful than she had anticipated it being. The warm lights through colored stained glass cast a dim atmosphere into space. The shelves behind the counter were stocked with ingredients and tools she’d expect to see in any cafe but still managed to have its charm with scattered plants and artwork in the corners. Ran would have loved to visit this place on different terms. The smell of warm beans and distant spices is enough to hint at the comfort the location provides.
“—opposing lane with passengers still trapped inside,” comes through the speakers of an aging TV on the back counter. Two of the shop's three inhabitants are intent on the news stream from their seats in the booth.
The older woman sets her cup down with a clink. “The passengers were still on the bus as it drove the wrong way...
“...What’s the world coming to these days?” the elderly man responds with a hum. He shakes his head and looks over at the final occupant, sitting across the aisle on a chair. He is a taller, quiet-looking man with thin steel-framed glasses and soft chestnut brown hair. He sits quietly behind the shop’s counter, seeming to only passively listen to the news in favor of reading what looks to be a short novel behind the napkin stand. It’s as the door swings shut behind Ran, with the sharp jingle of a bell, that his attention shifts.
“Ah, right. Today is the day,” the man says, setting down the book.
Ran steps up to the counter and gives a polite bow. “Y-yes, I’m Mouri Ran. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she forces out in a fit of stiff manners tied tightly into a ball of nerves. Her nervousness was sure to make itself known to what small audience was available.
“Apologies, I can get so caught up in a story I lose track of time. I suppose you went looking for me at my home address and had to be directed here.” Coming around the counter, the man collects the dishes of his elderly guests as they gather up their belongings.
“Sorry, we kept you so long, Okiya-san.”
“It’s just safe here—tucked away like this.”
The elderly couple gave a polite bow to the shopkeeper, and then there were two. Ran looks directly at Okiya? With his back to her, she can’t read his expression as he locks up the shop.
“I was wondering what kind of delinquent would show up when I agreed to take you in. I’ll admit that I’m surprised to see a young lady like yourself. Nevertheless, I am Okiya Subaru, your new warden or caretaker; however, you’d like to think of it. One of my regulars seems to know your parents, and I’m sure you know the rest. Will you follow me?”
They go up the stairs, and Ran enters the dusty attic space that fills her with an irritation that she usually reserves for her fathers’ office. There’s dust on every surface, sans the one large box sitting in the center of the floor, clearly labeled with her name. There are a few dying plants, many dusty books, and scattered cleaning supplies everywhere. It’s apparent this space has been serving as a storage closet for ages until today.
“Should everything work out, consider this to be your home for the next year,” Okiya comments as he pulls a dust cover off the futon left to the corner. “I won’t pry into your life. I understand how complicated your situation is. I’ve heard a bit about your case.”
Ran feels her stomach twist as she watches Okiya continue to move around the space. He seems to be adjusting particular items; grabbing a small book and tucking it in his pocket, nudging a broom with his foot, turning a Maneki Neko statue away from the window, and facing the stairwell leading to the shop.
“You inflicted bodily injury on someone with significantly more money and influence than you. I can't say it’s exactly a surprise that a national karate champion would be capable of such a thing, but not often do you see one get charged for it.”
The intentional barb doesn’t go unanswered. Ran lets it tug at her lingering irritation. “You have the wrong idea,”
Okiya does not let her get even halfway through her defense. “It’s of no real concern to me —the exact details of what brought you here. After all, I am being compensated for your care. That has its benefits. Just so we’re on the same page, though... Before turning 18, you became a nationally recognized karate champion, got expelled from your high school, then lost both your championship and rights to compete nationally, all thanks to your newly recognized criminal record. Does that sum it up?”
Ran scowls, biting her tongue fiercely at the oversimplification. Okiya takes her silence as permission to continue.
“I know strictly speaking; the court ordered you to transfer to a different district. Which your legally fit parent consented to. However, all of this did not include your mother altering her employment situation to go with you… At the very least, it looks like uprooting their plans for your mistakes wasn’t in the cards.
Do try to keep that on a need-to-know basis. It could be bad for customers. If you follow my rules, you'll be off probation next spring and well on your way to being a respectable adult.”
Ran nods, a frown still evident on her face. She didn’t miss the implied ‘I’ll throw you out at the first sign of trouble.’ Ran knew she was in no position to negotiate in this attic, barely lit by the dust-covered light. She’d do anything to get her life back in order at this point, and she isn’t going to mess that up any further by being short with her way out of this hole she’d dug herself in.
Neck muscles tense down her back as Ran forces her line of sight to break the stare of defiance she knew was fighting to make itself known. She fixes her vision to the trailing debris in her new space. Exhaustion frames the edges of her eyes as she blinks back warm tears, willing herself not to cry in front of Okiya. Ran pinched her nose and nodded along again to Okiya’s explanation of house rules as he went on. She has to stay at the shop by herself. The door would be locked, and the shop sign flipped to closed. This was partially so she could have a space of her own—yadda yadda. One way or another, she’d need to make this new routine work.
It was no surprise that the same strict house rules were going to apply at school. The first sign of trouble she’d be expelled. Hell, part of the only reason they accepted her enrollment was her recognized skill in karate. Though, her reentry into any competition was probationary and based on her grades and social standing. In Between the fear politics and her probation requirements, Ran knew a scheme when she saw it. The school was looking to leverage her skill to advance their district standings, and with her being in the position she was, she didn’t have room to argue against it. They were ‘going out on a limb to vouch for her, after all. They probably expected her to be gratuitous.
“—you’ll go to the principal's office to pick up your student ID and get your class schedule. I won’t be going with you. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
Ran had stopped fully listening at some point. The tension behind her neck is spreading to the back of her eyes. Ran knows the beginnings of a migraine when those symptoms combine. She faintly hears the floorboards creak under Okiya’s weight as he shifts to retreat down the stairs.
“...Why did you take me in ?” Ran feels the words stumble out of her mouth, despite her better intentions. If she had to put her finger on it, from the plain expression across Okiya’s face. Ran isn’t a charity case. There were no ulterior motives at play here. Okiya had taken her out of what goodness existed in his heart, and she didn’t like how it made her feel.
Seconds crawl by as Okiya’s delicate features hint at a smile, his eyes peering right through her as he gives her a small smile. “Hm, I suppose I was asked to and didn’t mind agreeing to it. Additional income is a nice benefit, but you’ve got a spotted record girl. If you want to change your course, you’ll need to be a lot smarter about it. You can’t bring trouble home like that anymore. Got it? I don’t need your particular brand of nonsense knocking on my door.”
Ran feels her face stiffen at the response. She bows her head with closed eyes, unable to stop the tears she’s been fighting from trailing down her cheeks. Fingers clench the edge of her skirt, letting the tension curl and twist before she exhales and stands upright once more. “I understand,” she answers as best she can, without a hitch in her voice, tear trails still fresh down her face.
A hummed acknowledgment seals the agreement between them as Okiya leaves Ran alone in the dusty crypt that would be her new home. She stands there until the front door swings shut with an empty jingle.
Phantom fingers clutch at her sleeve and pull her to the side. For a split second, the teen debates throwing herself on her bed. She could let herself feel sad and scared. It’d let out the tension she had trapped within her body. There’s still time to clean before school tomorrow. She’d done enough emotional labor to make up for required good behavior. Even if following these strict rules put a sour taste in her mouth.
Then her sense of responsibility whispers at her inner demons, reminding her how much better she’ll feel in a clean room. Ran sighs and drops her bag and phone on her mattress. As she turns her back, twisting her hair into an impromptu bun, the screen lights up again with a bright red app staring up at the ceiling. It pulses and glows as Ran loses herself to the moment and organizes the space well into the night. Never sparing a thought to the cellular device.
Her dreams are haunted that night by train crashes, radio announcements, and waiting mysteries.
****
A pen clicks against the table as Jodie digests her thoughts. “I remember back then, the subway accident. It was all over the news, based on the overlapping threads, that several victims came from your new school.”
The short-haired prosecutor clicks her teeth, spinning the pen in her hand again before crossing out a line of notes on her topmost file.”Of course, coincidentally, after you started at Shujin, these occurrences began ramping up. It’d be insane to label someone as an omen, but… then this showed up.”
Hazy blue eyes stare through damp brown hair as a worn postcard is slid onto the table. The teen recognizes the very first draft of the cards that would begin the end. She dealt with the affront by alternately closing her eyes and staring blankly at the prosecutor across from her. Each time she just barely stopped herself from reaching out and grasping the paper.
The issue was more minor about Ran’s reaction to the card and more about Jodie’s information regarding it and why she had waited this long to bring it out. “At the time, people thought it was a prank, but clearly, that wasn’t the case. This was the first calling card of the Phantom Thieves, your little troupe.”
Ever the daughter of a lawyer, she recognized a planned strike. A few leading questions would have been standard, but this was a setup for a takedown. The issue was more minor about Ran’s ability to represent herself in a locked interrogation room alone and more about how long she had waited to talk. If Ran didn’t start filling in gaps, what would be said for her was as significant a threat as the physical abuse she had taken from the cops. Almost.
“This was a challenge for your first victim.” Jodie urges.
***
Sitting in the school office, having forgotten her schedule on her first day of school, Ran is beside herself. She can hear the distant sounds of students meandering down the halls, heading towards their classes. Hands gripping the strap of her new school bag, Ran fidgets in her seat as she waits for the clerk to return from the back office. There are muffled voices behind the closed door, and it has been going on for the last five minutes. After a beat of silence followed by more murmuring, the door creaks open, and a student charges out of the office in a huff.
Ran watches a girl her age storm through the room without leaving her seat, ignoring the voice calling after her in the office. Tight, chin-length hazelnut brown hair flows wildly with the speed the girl left the office, and Ran is left in a dizzying state, processing the appearance of the girl who stormed past her. It had happened so quickly; she hadn’t expected that.
“Mouri Ran?” A woman's voice calls sharply at the front of the counter, and Ran whips her whole body to face the assistant.
“Yes!”
The woman holds out a folder of mixed papers without leaving her seat with a student ID card on top. “Take your class list. You’re going to be late.” Tentatively, Ran reaches for the folder. As her fingers touch the paper, a couple of things come back to her in a non-specific order: this was yet another folder of rules she’d need to keep track of, despite the arguments behind closed doors and angry, beautiful women leaving them in a huff this was not the detective agency she used to live in, and also, a little belatedly, right, this was her first day of school.
She spends the next several hours in a cosmic dissonance, introducing herself to her classmates while trying to hide her starstruck gaze from the beautiful girl she ran into earlier at the office. Weirdly, she ends up in the seat right behind her, which ends up with them both close to the window and not too far from their homeroom teacher's eye. Ran wonders if she could make friends with the girl, seeing as they were neighbors in the same year and class. It would be nice if she could make friends.
It was a strange place to be caught between, being the late-year transfer and all the attention that came with it, while also being a rumored trouble maker. It put a spotlight on her that was chased by whispered half-truths of her record.
Something that was supposed to be kept secret yet within a single day managed to get out entirely. ‘Radio one Asia’ strikes again, she thought bitterly to herself, walking the halls to the gym as the school day concluded. Each of the different whispers in the hall played back in her head like an earworm she couldn’t dig out.
‘I heard she’s secretly a Yankee.
‘Ehhhh, a criminal??’
‘Bet she smokes and drinks too.’
‘She’s violent-definitely-don’t mess with her.’
‘Scary’
‘Arrested for assault—‘
‘Haven’t I seen her somewhere before?‘
“Can’t believe they’d let someone with a criminal record back on the karate team,” a male voice says behind her, though with his thick Kansai accent it’d sounded more like, “Cahn bah’leive the’d l’ed someone wit’ a criminahl record bah’k on ah team.”
There may have been a lot of mystery surrounding Ran in general, but there was nothing mysterious about her athletic enrollment. She was stupidly skilled. The bar on the graph representing Ran’s ranking compared to her peers was far off the charts save for a few contenders. She knew her mother had probably helped smooth that particular bump in the poorly patched pavement of her road forward. She also knew the school likely was willing to overlook many rumors and active criminal history to get their hands on that kind of potential.
The unfamiliar boy sits behind her on the gym bleachers. Leaving just the two of them on an otherwise empty riser as the P.E class goes on with their warm-ups. Ran feels her shoulders and forehead stiffen, reminding her that she needs to be good..
If this guy was bold enough to corner her, alone in the gym away from a crowd, she was smart enough to let his weak baiting fall flat.
“I’m sorry, are you talking to me?” she responds without turning around, taking her phone out and flipping through the screens with disinterest. To her credit, she manages to look more reproachful than irritated, which is a large part of how she was keeping herself buttoned tight through this hellish day.
“I deserve that,” the boy laughs with a hitch. “Here, try number two. Are you sure you want to compete? It'll only make the rumors worse for a violent transfer student.” The boy leans towards her like it’s a secret between the two of them, not that it particularly matters since they were still the only two on the bleachers.
Ran holds her tongue as she stops on the app screen that held the creepy red icon from the day before. Hadn’t she deleted this already? She taps on the red icon, accepting that whatever the program is, it is at least more interesting than this boy trying to rile her up. “Is that so?”
The boy isn’t deterred even slightly. “Are you sure this is a good idea? You don’t exactly look like you feel up to the punishment it’ll bring.”
Her thumb slides harshly to the right and presses firmly on the screen without discretion. Ran entirely turns to face her harasser, getting right up in his face with nary a centimeter between their forehead, her blue eyes staring directly into the startled gaze of the other teen.
“Look, in case you haven’t noticed, I don’t want to talk to you,” she says. “Unless you feel like giving me a name and using some manners, I don’t owe you anything. Shut up.”
He holds his free up in mock placation. His arm is in a sling; she hadn’t seen that earlier.. Ran lowers the temperature of her fury with palpable reluctance and takes in the rest of his appearance. He has a t-shirt under his school blazer for an Osaka baseball team and a matching hat. She looks over his injured shoulder, the cast is poking out of the sling, and releases a breath tight in her chest. It seems like this school is a little lax about improvements to the uniform with his personal touches. He’s probably bored being sent to the benches after an injury, not someone she needs to worry about.
“Hattori,” he says after a heavy ten seconds.
She raises an eyebrow at him.
“It’s Hattori Heizo, okay, and he’s an invidious—” To neither of their notice, a line pops up across Ran’s phone screen, rising and falling with the pitch of their conversation. Taking scattered words from each sentence as it carried further. “—warden here. Runs this place like a prison.” Three beats. Three phrases and the phone screen beeps. Drawing Ran’s
attention away from the boy and to her phone.
She releases her thumb from the phone as a message of ‘destination mapped’ scrolls across the screen. She hadn’t meant to grip the phone so tight and didn’t want to see what that meant, so she drops the device in her bag without regard —ipping it shut with finality.
“C’mon, all I want is to warn you, okay?” he says,I’m not trying to rile you up.”
“Well, you’ve done a bang-up job of that. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
The boy trails after her, keeping pace as she storms out of the gym. As a welcome present, it turns out, Ran would not be able to escape this troll. So she swiftly turns down the hall, changing her course to return to the principal's office. She feels dead on her feet with a growing headache that could benefit from a painkiller.
By the time she rounds the corner and has her hand on the door, the boy's composure has rapidly gone from antagonistic to downright rigid. She isn’t sure what this rollercoaster of emotions he was going through was about, but it had nothing to do with her as far as Ran was concerned. She needs this set up to work, even if it means the school is going to put her through the ringer athletics-wise.
“Moron! I’m talking to you,” he growls, looking tired but inexplicably on edge as she flings the door open.
“I’m done listening,” Ran answers while throwing the door open with a cold look in her eyes, trying to figure out how to get this guy to give up. As she steps into the office, confusion hits her like a tidal wave. This isn't the office she’d been in this morning. Well. It was, but it wasn’t?
The counter is there, the walls are the same, but the chairs in the waiting room have changed into exam tables, and the lightning has turned a sour green. Office plants have turned into glass terrariums filled with black and gray worm-like creatures, snakes?
“What the hell…” the boy answers behind her, having followed her right into the room. The two of them stand awestruck, just trying to take the space in. The office blinds are half-closed, and a green light casts a horizontal bar pattern across the two of them. The jade light behind them sends their shadows up to the edge of the counter, which seems to trigger a hollow siren sound in place of a bell to summon a clerk.
Ran cautiously walks forward with the boy, turning her head each way as she recognizes the advisor doors, where she had been this morning, are now closed with their motivational slogans now replaced with portraits of students hung on each center. They weren’t well-maintained photos, either, each one being defaced with black graffiti and marred uniquely.
There were slanderous names written on each, lines scribbling out eyes and mouths, but none were as destroyed as the portrait hung over the door furthest from the front. A light in the distance flickers offbeat, illuminating a closed-door labeled “Warden.”
“Hold on… isn’t that… you?” Ran audibly observes, the tone of her hesitation hinting at fear as she looks at the likeness of her pursuer to the beaten and battered portrait hung on the door. She hesitates again, comparing the two visuals as a narrative starts to thread itself together.
The door handle to the warden's office turns, and Ran watches with horror as the boy flinches as if he’d been shot at. She felt her stomach twist with sickness as the door creaked open to reveal the figure inside.
“I thought I told you not to bother me, or haven’t you learned your lesson yet?”
The owner of the voice steps forward into the sick green lighting, and Ran is once more meeting her school principal. She stares in shock. At first, Ran couldn't believe her eyes; he looked every bit the same as the man she saw this morning, right down to the deep brown suit that indicated every bit of purpose and class he brought before her now. Compared to the man she saw earlier, the one before her certainly feels more sinister with a shining black crown on his head, sharp-pointed teeth edging into view as he speaks.,
“Your ambition does not match your abilities. The differences between you and me are as wide as a canyon. ACCEPT THIS HEIJI.”
He smiles, looking right past Ran and locking eyes with the boy behind her. She glances back and watches as his whole person seems to acutely feel the words. She takes a step back and brushes shoulders with the boy as the principal advances slowly towards them.
Heiji, Ran observes, spends a terrifying moment eyeballing the man before them. His injured hand grips tightly at the sling, but his stance slides into a comfortable defensive spread. She recognizes it instantly as an overlap in principle body posture. Karate and Kendo shared enough similarities to influence one another… and what she sees before her is someone actively drawing upon a striking stance with total awareness. He is prepared to react, even as injured as he is.
“I will say though, boy, I’m not surprised you’d get involved with the transfer student. A weakling like you would look for any kind of protection.”
The problem is, Heiji didn’t stare at the principal like an opponent ready to engage in a regulated match. If Ran had to put her finger on it, it was more like Heiji was expecting something far more painful from his challenger, and Ran was an unplanned observer to the show. It didn’t give her a very optimistic feeling. She wanted to move, she tried to speak, but her feet stayed glued to the floor as a dark haze seemed to surround the both of them in the narrow hallway.
The terrariums of snake-like creatures writhe and hisse in the distance, and internally, Ran screams. She flips between an overwhelming fear to correct her path in life and a decade of practiced martial combat that was second nature to her. She knows she can do something. She knows she’s capable, but before she decides what to do, a harsh blow collides with the side of her head, and her vision goes dark.
***
She wakes up in a strange room that is both a small classroom and a jail cell-like area. Ran can hear the muffled demands of Heiji, screaming out through the bars on the door, banging against the metal with his good hand. As she sits up with a groan, his voice becomes more apparent as he demands them to be released.
“She ain’t got nothing to do with me!! Just let us OUT!” He yells hoarsely.
Silence is the only answer they get as Heiji scowls and turns back to Ran. Their eyes lock with shared anxiety that fills their space. Somewhere between the gym and the head office, they’d wandered into some hellscape that was bent on imprisoning them.
There was a pause. When Heiji spoke again, his voice was rough. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”
“I’m not sure this is your fault.” Ran starts. She could admit to herself that ideas of the supernatural terrified her on a typical day, and that was because she couldn’t fight and punch her way around it. Even still, what she saw now definitely was far enough above a high school theater budget that it couldn’t be… could it?
“Nah. It is. See, I had a reason for seeking you out. Doesn’t have anything to do with the rumors going around the halls.”
Ran looks up at him, worry and confusion bleeding into the stiffness of her eyes. She couldn't picture a time she’d ever run into this boy before at a competition, at least not recently. Maybe they had competed in the same arena with different sports?
“I’ve seen you before, a lot actually, in a lot of news articles. High school detective-Kudo Shinichi- solves murder-’ you were in the background of nearly every shot.” Heiji walks over with a purpose, his stance far more gentle and resigned. “I’m not saying I’m a fan; I just want to know, what happened to him?”
Four words were all it took for Ran’s throat to close. Her eyes burn, her chest screams, and it took crisp intentional breaths for her to ground herself at this moment. She could picture this conversation at another time, in another place. This total stranger on the other end over her stack of missing person papers, staring intently at the photo of her childhood friend as her heart splinters. Several weeks ago, she might have asked, ‘will you help me? But that was back when it’d been accepted to be vulnerable.
Now she has to keep it together because she’d let that vulnerability take control of her and found herself in court with a hanging weight ready to crush her with one more mistake. Ran’s silence seems to say something to Heiji as he opens his mouth to speak again. “It’s just-”
A heavy clinking sound of their cell door being unlocked stops their conversation cold. The two teens turn as four fully geared officers walk into the half cell half classroom with the principal. Heavy boots pounding against the floor and plastic shields clacking together as they form a transparent wall between the two students and the powerful man across them.
“You know, the two of you breaking into my prison is as idiotic as it is a blatant show of disrespect. I will not tolerate this insolence. Only the truly deserving are allowed the accolades of my tutelage.”
The guards step forward, pressing Ran and Heiji further into the wall they had backed up against. One masked figure, in particular, reaches out and roughly grabs at Heiji, using the strap of his sling to drag him forward. The remaining three guards surround Ran and hold her against the wall before she can even think to move at all.
The principal ignores the grunt of pain from Heiji and continues with his self-important speech. “It’s despicable to think that someone like myself would father a child as useless as you-” the man spits out sourly, gray smoke pooling at his feet and filling up the small room.
“Weak-minded, weak-bodied, you’re an insult to my legacy. The cost for these offenses will, of course, be appropriate. So you will be executed.”
“What?? DAD-What are you talking about?!”
The guard kicks the legs out from under Heiji, sending him to the ground painfully as Hattori takes off the brown blazer he was seen in earlier and rolls up his shirt sleeves.
“This isn't fucking necessary-I’m sorry okay-just let us both go-” He’s cut off as Ran had now put together; principal Hattori Heizo takes a vicious swing at the teen. With four knuckles and a swift cut to Heiji’s jaw, the teen’s mouth is slammed with enough force to cause Heiji to bite into soft flesh. Blood spilled from his lips, and the teen scrambled to his feet with one arm.
Ran watches in horror as principal Hattori begins a practiced beating of Heiji. She doesn’t miss how the way the two of them swing and dodge at each other is a routine they seem to have down to pat. Frozen, she follows the fight back and forth, with every strike from principal Hattori further indicating the upper hand he has on his injured son. It’s cruel.
There’s a moment when Heiji, face swollen and bleeding, tries to use a broom against the cell wall to defend himself with a stance she identifies as another Kendo style, but they both know the effort is hopeless. His cast limits his ability to hold his arm and the wooden pole properly and all it gets is another decisive hit from his deranged father.
She could hear the wet cough of pain as Heiji absorbed the hit with his chest. Her ears ring loudly, and the sound of shuffling guards pins her painfully against the brick wall.
‘MOVE. DAMNIT.’ Ran screams at herself inwardly. ‘What’s the point of being GOOD? If she doesn’t move then, this kid won’t SURVIVE.’ She blinks, feeling the pressure behind her eyes and all around her head pounding harder than ever. The first time she’d felt this pain, she’d woken up in tears enough to burn her face. Weeks later, she still couldn’t pull together the steps necessary to reshape her trauma into armor that would protect her from repeating her mistakes. Whatever was left had built itself up behind her skull and had taken something; she knew that now.
Ran blinked slowly until her vision focused over the blur of bodies in front of her. The swift wet punches as principal Hattori beats Heiji, who was falling limp with each strike. The guards crowded her into a corner. The screams of a strange woman Ran happened to pass down a street as an unknown man tried to force her into a car. The memories blurred together with the pounding of flesh matching the slam of hollow wood hitting the counter of the judges’ stand in court. Like the beating of a drum, the violence continues, and Ran refuses to look away.
She just met this guy. If she doesn’t do something, he’s going to be beaten to death. She can’t let that happen. She won’t look away. Ran’s head throbbed painfully as she felt a warm liquid rush from her eyes. She just has to MOVE.
That part of her cogently rejoiced as an iron weight lifted itself from her shoulders with the recognition that her choice was not a mistake back then, and it won’t be now. It was almost fitting that a wind current rushed through the empty room and the gruesome sounds of violence came to a halt as Ran screams her battle cry. The sound bursting from her mouth startles the guards, and she wastes no time in using her whole body to shove the three of them back to the ground.
The full force of her splitting headache comes to a peak as Ran yells again and takes a practiced leap towards the principal. Her face was burning from something, adhering, and pulling harshly at her skin, but she didn't care. She knew her purpose. She knew her regrets, and she knew what she needed to do.
Her foot slams against the back of principal Hattori’s head in one lethal swing, and Ran watches as every muscle in her leg sends a message through his body. The man was sent staggering off of Heiji, and with an exhale, she fell into a comfortable stance, ready for her next strike.
The chains of her mistakes couldn’t hold her back anymore. Being good wasn’t the type of person she could be; it was something she could do. Ran knew that even if it meant a trip straight to the back of a police car, she would accept it with her entire being. All that mattered was stopping this from happening.
——