Chapter Text
The Phantom Thieves are at once both everything and nothing that Zenkichi had expected them to be.
He’s read the files, of course; he’d made sure to peruse and look through every scrap of information he could lay his hands on about the notorious vigilantes that’d taken all of Japan by storm throughout the majority of last year. Surprisingly, there wasn’t as much as he would’ve thought, but it’d been more than enough for his mind to paint out a basic picture of the group.
The notes typed out in the files described them in curt, clinical words, passively describing the many alleged crimes they’d been accused of committing until Shido Masayoshi had stepped forward to admit his countless wrongdoings. It’s a day that Zenkichi can still remember well—or more specifically, he remembers the dread bubbling in his gut as he stared at the TV in his living room, unable to take his eyes away from the screen the moment the election results started rolling in.
He remembers the way his anxiety rose a little more with the announcement of the results from each district, how the spark of hope that Kaburagi had kindled in him flickered and waned with every declaration of victory for Shido’s party. He remembers the utter despair that had begun to set in the moment it became clear that Shido’s victory had been all but guaranteed, and the slowly building panic as he thinks about where he could possibly send Akane to in order to ensure her safety.
But then Shido stepped forward and confessed his crimes, and all his fears and worries instantly collapsed like a house of cards. It’d been simultaneously the most relieving and embarrassing experience that Zenkichi had felt in his entire life. Relief, because now he knows that Akane will be safe; embarrassed, because he wasn’t the one who did any of the work in the end.
Akane’s words the very next morning did nothing but rub salt in the wound, only made worse by the condescending glare she sent him before speaking. “Guess even the cops have a hard time knowing who the real bad guy is.”
It’d been all too easy to hear the vitriol and spite that laced her words, and everyone of them did nothing but carve a deeper notch into his already bleeding heart. Any other parent would probably have rebuked her for such blatant antagonism, but all Zenkichi could do was to swallow down the lump in his throat and quietly excuse himself from the dinner table. His breakfast had only been half-eaten but his appetite just wasn’t there anymore, and he ended up packing it to bring with him to work, steadfastly ignoring how cold and unappetizing it’d become by the time he ate it as his lunch.
For some reason, it tasted like defeat.
Considering how it wasn’t long after that Kaburagi informed him about Owada managing to weasel his way out of any charges despite Shido’s arrest, perhaps it hadn’t been too far away from the truth.
He remembers the frustration that’d consumed him for the rest of the day after hearing the news. He remembers the restless, angry itch under his skin that urged him to do something, to let his wrath be known as he set his fury ablaze for the world to witness. He wants to howl and crush and rip and tear, to turn his anger into something real and visceral.
But he doesn’t, because he can’t, because Kaburagi told him to have restraint and to be patient, to wait for the day where they could finally enact true justice on the ones who deserve it.
“Our time will come, Hasegawa,” she’d tell him, each and every time she caught him clenching his jaw, when she sensed the anger boiling through his veins like liquid fire. “Until then, we have to follow—and we have to wait.”
And so Zenkichi follows, and so he waits—until today, where Kaburagi finally agrees on his plan to reach out to the Phantom Thieves and use them to solve this new rash of Change of Heart cases that are now happening all over the country. It’d been a decision she’d made with clear reluctance, but all that mattered was that she’d agreed to it in the end.
Still, she’d given him one last warning before he’d taken his leave. “We have no idea what they’re capable of, Hasegawa,” she cautioned, her tone sharp and her gaze wary. “Pull out the moment you think you’re compromised. We can’t afford to lose you.”
“I’ll be fine,” he’d assured her, doing his best to pump in as much confidence as he can muster into his words. Unsurprisingly, his attempt doesn’t escape her notice, but she’d been generous enough to not say anything about it and simply waved him off, letting Zenkichi go so he could finally begin his mission.
It’d been easy enough at first, to make contact with the group and introduce himself to them, all while playing the role of the intrepid officer. But as much as he’d done his best to brace himself for the inevitable hostility it still hurts deeper than it should to see eight pairs of eyes (nine, if he wanted to count Sakura Sojiro) all looking at him in suspicion, the distrust clear on every one of their faces. It’s not surprising, of course, given the things they’ve allegedly done, but what really catches him off-guard is how all of their looks remind him so much of the hurt that he can see in Akane’s face every time he sees her.
“Sorry about that,” comes the beginning of an apology from one Okumura Haru, but it's clear from the very first word that she isn’t apologetic at all in the slightest. “We just despise the police, is all.”
He brushes it off then, but it comes back to him later that night, as he rereads the files that he has about the Phantom Thieves and thinks about their reformed targets who he last heard were now all exemplary prisoners in their incarceration—even Shido.
He wonders what they would do if he told them about Owada, but quickly banishes that thought from his mind before it can take root. They’ve made it clear how much they distrust him, and he can’t blame them. They’re all victims of a system that has failed to take care of them like it should’ve.
Something ugly and twisted rears its head at the back of his mind, but Zenkichi ruthlessly squashes it down. He tries to stare at the files again but the words blur together into an illegible jumble. The only thing that he can make out now are the pictures of each member of the group, taken from their schools’ respective yearbooks.
School photos, Zenkichi can’t help but think. These are school photos. Granted, they were high school photos, but Akane wasn’t that far off from starting there herself and—
—enough.
Before he can second guess himself Zenkichi snaps the files shut and backs away from the desk, leaning back so that he can rest his head against the chair’s headrest, gazing up to stare at the dirty, stained ceiling right above him.
The Phantom Thieves of Hearts, his mind echoes the words of the file back to him. A group of highly dangerous individuals who have allegedly perpetrated numerous crimes, including but not limited to: obstruction of justice, blackmail, defamation, possession of weapons and manslaughter. To be constantly kept under surveillance. Any contact with them should be done under strict supervision and in a controlled environment to prevent any sort of compromise.
With words like that it’d been easy to picture them as a group of rowdy thugs, to regard them as nothing more than a bunch of upstart children who didn’t know better about the harsh cruelties of the world and society they live in. But now, when he closes his eyes, all Zenkichi can see are their hurt, distrustful looks that remind him far too much of Akane.
Nobody should ever look like that, he tells himself. Especially not a bunch of kids.
The silence that settles around him after those words haunt him for the rest of the night.
“Okay, folks, listen up!”
Sakamoto Ryuji’s words echo across the entire Scramble as the screens all around light up in flashes of dazzling red and black. It’s a familiar sight to anyone who even paid a modicum of attention to the news last year, but even with the countless hours of footage that he’d seen of this moment back then, Zenkichi has to admit that seeing it happen again before his eyes is an experience quite unlike anything else.
“Good evening.”
“Been a while, huh?”
“Perhaps you remember us.”
“We are the Phantom Thieves.”
“And we’re back in action with a new heart in our sights!”
The Phantom Thieves' iconic logo blazes upon every billboard in the Scramble, the equivalent of the group waving their flag to once again declare war against the evils who think are above the law. People like Shido, or Owada, and now the likes such as Hiiragi Alice, who they now openly condemn.
“A wicked witch who treats people like toys—Hiiragi Alice!”
“You pretend you’re a ray of light, but all you do is hurt people to indulge your own darkness.”
“You’re a bad person, and bad people have to be stopped.”
Hearing them speak out like this with such unerring, unflinching certainty, it's hard to imagine them as the same group of teenagers he’d seen just the other day at Shibuya Station. From where he’d been watching them they looked just about the same as any other gaggle of teenagers congregating together for something much more mundane like going to the movies or heading to Destinyland or any other number of far more normal teenager type things that anyone else at their age would be doing instead. Unless you were in the know, there’d be no way for anyone to guess that they would be the infamous, notorious vigilantes who’d single-handedly toppled a potential dictatorship regime.
And now that same strength is being directed to something under his control. With them, he can actually make a change for once instead of being impeded by countless strings of red tape and useless protocols. Finally, there will be actual results for the things that he wants to do, and those results will help Kaburagi to go further up the ladder, and they will be one step closer to achieving their goal.
The idea of that alone is enough to make him crack as smile as he stares at many screens across the Scramble again, where they all now flicker to reveal the silhouette of Kurusu Akira, cloaked in darkness and shadow.
“Tonight, we’re taking them all back!” The leader of the Phantom Thieves declares without missing a beat after the previous words from Takamaki Ann. The conviction and authority in his voice a complete one eighty from the quiet, laid back demeanor that Zenkichi had been far more familiar with even if they’ve only seen each other a total of two times thus far. But seizing people up is something he’s always been pretty good at, and it’d become clear to him quite quickly that Kurusu was one of the quieter ones, only speaking his mind when he felt was necessary even within the circle of his closest friends. The contrast from that to this display of flashiness and unfaltering confidence that Zenkichi can tell isn’t forced in the slightest boggles his mind in more ways than one.
For a moment Zenkichi imagines himself being able to feel that way, to have the strength to keep his head high even with the entire world against him, and he can’t help but scoff at the idea. Those will be nothing more than the dreams of the foolish. One day, they will truly understand what it means to face something undefeatable; until then, he’ll make use of their zealousness as he needs.
He stares at the screens (long since returned to normal) for a while more, then shakes his head and turns away, squeezing his eyes shut to ease the strain that comes from looking at bright, flashing lights for far too long.
The fact that the logo of the Phantom Thieves imprints itself behind his closed eyelids is something that he forces himself to not think about, instead letting himself get distracted by the noise and the chaos happening around him as the public scramble about with the sudden, unexpected news of the return of Japan’s most notorious criminals.
Everything that happens after Hiiragi Alice’s confession and subsequent arrest is… not anything that Zenkichi could have ever prepared himself for.
He’d come up with his theories, of course, ideas and explanations on how and why the Phantom Thieves could accomplish the many things that both the public and the police knew them for. But even his wildest ideas were nothing compared to the things that the Thieves had shown him. Even now, a whole day later, Zenkichi is still half-convinced that they’d somehow managed to slip some kind of drug into him without his knowledge. He’d ask the narcotics division to test him if it wasn’t for that fact that it’d most likely lead to several raised eyebrows and a hell of an awkward explanation that not even Kaburagi would be able to give him a pass for.
He turns off the tap after having splashed his face for the third time, hands braced at each side of the sink as he looks up and stares at his own reflection at the mirror in the station bathroom once more. A whole day later and he still can’t find any sign of obvious drug use on his body or his face, which means he really has no choice but to accept the fact that everything that the Phantom Thieves had shown him yesterday wasn’t some drug-induced fantasy like he’d hoped otherwise. Everything they told him, the things he’d seen—all of it is real. All of it… exists.
Zenkichi doesn’t know how long he spends looking at himself, taking in the tightness of his jaw as he grits his teeth, the way his arms begin to tremble the moment his mind even starts to try and makes sense of everything that's happened yesterday afternoon. While he isn’t a stranger to panic attacks, this feels so far out of his depth that panic isn’t the word he’d use to describe what he feels. Incomprehensible perhaps was the better term to use here. A world based on cognition? Talking cats? Fighting Shadows? It’s all so beyond him that he can barely make heads and tails about it all, as if he’s been thrown into a completely different world without any kind of warning whatsoever.
For the first time, he wonders if he should back out of this. To give up on this assignment and run back to Kyoto with his tail between his legs, to return to a house full of regret and silence and continue to live through each day with a daughter who hates him with every fibre of her being. Sure, it may barely be a life, but at least it is something that he knows instead of… all of this.
The unknown is scary. The unknown is terrifying. The fear of the unknown is the same reason as to why humans have always been afraid of the dark no matter how many times they have to face it. The element of the unknown is always enough to shake anyone’s confidence, and it goes doubly so for him—a man who struggles to get through each and every day. Working under Kaburagi, following her direction, knowing that he has a goal to strive towards… it had been one of the few things that gave him the strength to keep him going instead of being stuck languishing in his miserable pile of failures.
He turns his gaze back down to the sink and spits into it. No, he can’t go back. He has to do this—he needs to do this. If he stops now it’ll be essentially a betrayal of the trust that Kaburagi has placed upon him, and he can’t do that after everything she’s done for him.
As if summoned by his thoughts, Zenkichi feels his phone buzz in his pocket as his notification chime goes off. He takes a moment to quickly gargle some water and spit it out, wiping his mouth dry with the sleeve of his suit as he fishes out his phone and checks what the notification is from.
FROM: Kaburagi, M
Sent 13:27
I’ve filed some time off for you once this case is done.
Spend some time with your daughter—she needs it.
A second notification informs him that his work inbox now has an email that details his newly approved leave in the beginning of September. Zenkichi lets out a tired sigh as he opens up his inbox app just so he can get rid of the notification. It’d be a lie to say that he doesn’t appreciate the sentiment, but it’s also hard to ignore the date as the days crawl ever closer to the anniversary of Aoi’s passing.
He flips over to look at his calendar and stares at the upcoming dates. With the operation at Sapporo starting only on the eighth there’s not a lot of time from then to the day where he needs to be back in Kyoto. He isn’t sure at all how long the whole thing is going to take, but based on how quick the Phantom Thieves acted with Hiiragi Alice, he can only hope that the same will apply when the time comes. But until then, he has a job to do—one that he has to see through to completion.
Zenkichi locks his phone and slips it back into his pocket, turning away from the sink as he makes his way out of the bathroom.
Two weeks, he tells himself. Two weeks, and hopefully by then this will all be over and done with.