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Shopping for apartments online was hell.
Akechi was no stranger to feelings of mind-numbing rage. Even so, there was something about the website he was using to search for a new living space that made him particularly angry, even by his own standards. His cursor drifted across its screen, its interface lagged, and despite his perfect internet connection, it seemed as though every thirty seconds the damn thing refreshed itself.
Akechi wasn’t sure where exactly he was looking to live; his requirements for a new place were the vague but apt key terms, ‘Tokyo,’ ‘cheap,’ and ‘studio.’ Unfortunately, his criteria seemed to be mutually exclusive. A room of his own would cost an arm and a leg; a room with a roommate or two would take a doable (albeit still exorbitant) chunk from his savings. It was tragic, really, that Akechi would be at risk of causing grievous bodily harm to himself and others if he were forced to share a living space. Forking over cash he didn’t have was quite literally his only option.
Akechi might have been able to search out some middle ground between striking gold beneath the streets of Kichijoji and committing another homicide if he had the luxury of time to plan his move. He had always been scrappy, even if he was seldom lucky.
Time, however, was something that Akechi didn’t have. That, of course, had to do with the circumstances that had pushed him to bearing the indignities of online apartment hunting in the first place.
On February 3rd, Akechi had woken up in his bed. This was strange for a number of reasons. One: he didn’t make a habit of waking up when his bedside clock brightly proclaimed it to be 8:37pm.
Two: Goro Akechi was supposed to be dead.
And, joy of all joys, he was not. Upon registering this unfortunate new development in the saga of misfortunes that was his existence, Akechi had rolled over, buried his head in his pillow, and screamed. When soreness in his throat informed him that screaming was no longer a viable way to spend his time, he had walked to his near-empty kitchen and grabbed the frilly bottle of expensive single malt scotch that Shido had given him the day he had reported to his office to confirm Wakaba Ishikki’s death.
Akechi had been saving the bottle for the day he won.
Well. Cheers to that one.
He had sat down on the linoleum tile floor and taken a large swig out of the bottle. Presumably, he’d repeated the act a number of times, because the next morning he’d woken up in his bed – again, ironically, with no memory of how he’d arrived there – and promptly thrown up on himself.
He’d tossed his unlucky shirt in the garbage, along with the bottle he’d found lying knocked over and bone dry on the kitchen floor. He really had always hated it.
After spending several days lying in his bed, only leaving it to periodically feed himself one of the instant ramen packets he stockpiled in the one cabinet in his kitchen he actively used, Akechi had washed his sheets and moved on.
What else could he do?
He had contacted Sae Niijima first, because while he had been spending several days laying horizontal in a dark room, adding an abstract collage of broth splatters to his sweatpants and trying to convince himself that any of his recent decisions actually mattered, Akira Kurusu was probably behind bars giving testimony that would damn Shido and potentially put himself away for good in the process.
And like hell was he going to let Joker one-up him by rotting away in jail while Akechi – clearly, the most deserving party in this scenario on both counts – walked free.
As soon as he’d heard the click of his phone connecting to Sae’s, Akechi had come in guns blazing announcing his intent to march down to the police station and confess to everything he’d done. He would gladly go down with Shido’s ship if it meant he could anchor him well and truly to rock bottom.
The elder Niijima sister had rolled shockingly well with Akechi’s punches. After expressing mild surprise that he was alive, Sae had efficiently talked him off his ledge.
“Do you want Shido to be locked away for life? If your answer is yes, I suggest you stay well away from my case. I have a strategy, and it will be much less effective if I have to account for the testimony of a magical teenage assassin confessing to cognitively killing some of Japan’s most powerful men just as they’ve begun to take me seriously.”
Akechi had never answered her question, because Akechi didn’t want Shido to be locked away. Not like this, anyway. What he had wanted hadn’t involved Kurusu, and yet, here Kurusu was in the center of it all, robbing Akechi of his chance to make Shido’s fall really hurt.
Still, Akechi had come to terms with the fact that what he wanted and what he would get were two very different things in regards to the fate of Masayoshi Shido, and to this brave new world where Akechi was meant to be long dead.
What he had done was take a deep breath, swallow down his very reasonable retorts – he had at least five – and ask about Kurusu.
His inquiry was fruitful, if aggravating. Akechi hadn’t been naive enough to expect that any update on Kurusu wouldn’t be aggravating.
Per Sae, it wouldn’t be long until Kurusu was released from juvenile detention (implied: so long as Akechi didn’t butt in). Apparently, his extended posse had banded together, and Sae doubted it would be more than a few weeks before he was out. He was actually on track to have his criminal record completely overturned.
Kurusu was relying on the power of friendship to not only avoid a life sentence, but to completely exonerate himself from the year he had spent galavanting around the Metaverse, stealing hearts and minds and Akechi’s life’s work, too. One might say that Akechi was less than enthused. Mostly, because he was near certain that using the force of true love to outrun his mistakes would actually work for Kurusu, because he was Kurusu, and of fucking course it could.
He hadn’t told Sae as much, but he sensed she’d intuited his frustration from his chorus of ‘...I see,’ ‘...I see,’ ‘...I see,’ through the phone, each repetition darker than the last.
With that sorted, Akechi had told Sae in no uncertain terms that she was not to tell Kurusu or any of the other Phantom Thieves that he was alive under any circumstances. She said that she would respect his wishes. She hadn’t asked any follow up questions. It was a refreshing change of pace from the back and forth that talking to the rest of Kurusu’s loyal followers always seemed to entail.
Then again, this was Sae. She had been a fixture in his life long before she had become a mainstay in Kurusu’s.
That little detail out of the way, Akechi had been prepared to hang up. Before he could, Sae had invited him to coffee. Bewildered, Akechi had accepted.
“You are aware, I presume, that I’ve killed more people than the number of cases you’ve litigated over the course of your entire career, aren’t you?” Akechi had said as soon as he had slid into the stiffly upholstered booth across from Sae at the too cold, overly gray café where they had agreed to meet the following day. “Including among them Wakaba Isshiki and Kunikazu Okumura.”
Sae had pulled her credit card out of her sleek handbag and rapped it on the table between them.
“I am. Could you give me your order Akechi-kun? Drinks are on me today.”
Akechi had ordered a black drip coffee – far from the best he’d ever had – and the two of them had talked about his future, not his past.
Sae told Akechi that she would be willing to hire him as a personal assistant. She couldn’t swing him a position interning in the public prosecutor’s office; it went without saying that Akechi ought to stay as far away as possible from any branch of law enforcement for the foreseeable future. Sure, very few people recognized him nowadays – the demiurge had fallen and taken Shido’s influence with it, and Akechi had been out of the public eye for a sufficient number of news cycles for even his most avid fans to lose interest – but it seemed unwise to tempt fate.
They both knew that most of Shido’s conspiracy was still at large. As repentant as their former leader was, his sentiments were not widely shared. Shido had done more damage than a single change of heart could fix.
All this to say, Akechi would be keeping a low profile. Not that he would have acted otherwise, regardless of who might want him imprisoned, or who might want him dead.
Akechi was, quite frankly, tired.
His employment would hinge on agreeing to take his high school equivalency and college entrance exams before the next university matriculation cycle. Akechi had, more or less, finished his final year of high school. Unfortunately, the less in that statement meant that he had never actually graduated. Still, he could easily pass a high school equivalency exam – an inconvenience, but a bureaucratic necessity, and hardly an insurmountable one. Before his life had gone to shit, he had been on track to get top marks on his entrance exams. It wouldn’t be difficult to keep himself versed in the material he needed to know in order to pass with flying colors.
He didn’t have strong feelings for or against Sae’s vision for his future. Akechi had been slated to die long before he had shot shut the bulkhead door on his father’s ship. He had gone to cram school because it was what the detective prince was supposed to do, and he had excelled at it because the world had told him that he couldn’t. He wasn’t like Makoto Niijima, with her good marks and bright future.
Sae would pay him for doing this, though. More, she had that earnest look in her eyes behind the stoic contours of her face that suggested she really thought she was doing what was best for him.
Akechi had agreed to her terms.
Besides, he’d always been told that college wasn’t in the cards for him. The idea of proving those people wrong lit something up inside him that he hadn’t realized had been smothered until then.
Akechi would work for Sae on weekdays and study on weekends. She would check in with him once a week to confirm that he was indeed making progress on his personal studies and to assign him new memos and forms to copy edit. So long as he was on track, she would pay him another week.
It had all sounded so easy. Too easy. Akechi needed to ask.
“Why?”
Sae had taken a long sip of her cappuccino. “Why what?”
“You know what.” Akechi had crossed his arms, his mouth drawn in a hard line, “Why this?”
Sae had set her cup down onto her saucer without so much as an audible clink. “Is it really so difficult to believe that I’d want to help you?”
“You pity me.” He’d said it like a fact, because it was a fact, and he didn’t take kindly to it.
Sae hadn’t looked surprised to hear Akechi’s words. She raised her eyebrows.
“No, I don’t. And I’m not absolving you, either. You made choices that hurt people, and you need to face consequences for that. But, Akechi-kun…”
Sae paused, as if weighing her next words on her tongue. “Goro. You were sixteen.”
Akechi didn’t know which part of her addendum offended him most: Sae’s use of his given name – he’d bristled, he couldn’t remember how long it had been since someone had been presumptuous enough to call him Goro – or her implication that he hadn’t known exactly what he was doing back when he first approached Shido.
She hadn’t seen how proud he had been when Shido handed him his first pistol. She hadn’t been there each time he’d pulled its trigger. Akechi had stopped feeling anything about his hits after he’d downed a handful of targets. Through it all, he’d never felt remorse. He’d even smiled, the first time.
That smile hadn’t lasted, of course. It had fallen right along with Ishikki. Still, everyone knows that it’s your first reaction to a thing that really counts.
Her eyes on his were resolute, as if she were daring him to object. She wasn’t budging.
Sae had sounded awfully confident for someone who had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
Akechi remembered their long days at the police station and the late night dinners Sae would treat him to after, when he’d watch as she scarfed down cheap conveyor belt sushi and let her dignified mask slip like the rice that fell from her chopsticks to her perfectly starched dress shirt. He remembered their constant shop-talk that always seemed to border on something more personal.
Sae knew what it was like to prove yourself in a world that wanted to see you fail. He remembered watching her come undone in October, how he almost felt bad as he watched her slip further away from her sister, and from him.
Gripping his mug hard enough to put its handle in peril, Akechi had bitten back the urge to inform Sae that he was eighteen years old now, and had done very bad things continuously from age sixteen through now, thank you very much. He was suddenly aware of exactly how juvenile it would sound if he did.
He decided that Sae could call him what she wanted. ‘Goro’ didn’t feel wrong, he supposed. It just felt new.
She was wrong about him, but he had let her continue without correction.
“You did things that were unforgivable. What our system did to you was unforgivable.” She took a sip of her cappuccino. The action was smug, somehow, like she knew just how much she’d gotten away with when Akechi kept his silence. At least she was self-aware. “Masayoshi Shido is being brought to justice, and Kurusu-kun isn’t facing anything that he can’t handle. This will be over soon.”
Akechi could hardly believe that. While he had faith in Sae’s legal prowess, Shido was just one head of a veritable hydra of corruption and intrigue. Rooting out his conspiracy would air out Japan’s dirty laundry in a way that he doubted the powerful men who soiled it would permit. It would be dangerous business to try.
He couldn’t fathom that Shido was a problem that had an imminent expiration date. He was supposed to be Akechi’s Gordian knot. Shido was his arms race, his mutually assured destruction. Unraveling him couldn’t possibly be so simple, and it couldn’t possibly be done without Akechi.
Could it?
Where the hell did that leave him?
Of course, Sae’s words were meant to be encouraging, even if Akechi could actively feel his vision tunneling and his pulse jackhammering up. He clamped that feeling down and shoved it somewhere to sort through later – or never – as Sae pushed on.
“I want you to move forward. I don’t see any reason for you not to. That’s where you’ll find justice.”
It all sounded so scripted. Akechi wondered how many times she had practiced her little speech in the mirror after she’d drafted it on her legal pad. He knew it was her standard practice for high stakes days in court. Sae never let slip that she was nervous, but that didn’t mean she never was.
While Akechi was almost flattered that she considered him worth a rehearsal or two, her dedication had been proving to be rather inconvenient that day. A Sae who had decided she needed to win seldom lost. The Phantom Thieves had helped her reorient her sense of justice towards good ends, but there was no version of Sae who wasn’t as stubborn as the one they’d encountered in her casino.
Fortunately, so was Akechi.
“I’ve earned execution ten times over.”
He barely managed to keep his words level as he forced them out. It was vexing that he needed to remind the woman sitting across from him – a public prosecutor with one of the most gleaming case records Tokyo had seen in recent memory – that per the word of her own law, he deserved to die.
She tucked a wayward strand of hair neatly behind her ear and clasped her hands together on the tabletop between them.
“And I’m telling you that executing you doesn’t help anyone,” she hadn’t raised her voice, but Akechi could hear it harden with authority, “Learn to be a better person. You still have plenty of time to grow. Don’t forfeit this opportunity that you’ve been given to do that.”
He scoffed. “And if I can’t?”
“Then don’t. But I think you can.”
She had said it without hesitation, like she really believed it. At that realization, Akechi let out a laugh that bordered on a snort, the kind he never would have allowed to slip through his throat when Sae had known him as someone else.
“You’re all insane.”
She hadn’t seemed surprised by his outburst as she took a long drink from her cup. As she swallowed, clearly unperturbed, Akechi found himself wondering if he’d given her too little credit, or himself too much. Probably both.
Sae’s lip quirked up. “Maybe. But I’ve realized that you need to be a little insane to believe you can see the world change for the better. Your teammates helped me learn that.”
Akechi’s hackles raised. “They are not my teammates.”
“Oh really?” She set her cup down onto her saucer, “I think Kurusu-kun would disagree.”
That half-smile of hers persisted, like she thought she knew something he didn’t. “You know, he asked about you earlier this week. He seemed riled up. I think he would want to know that you’re alive.”
It didn’t even take eyes to notice Akira Kurusu’s bleeding-heart obsession with who he thought Akechi was. It practically radiated off of him in waves you could touch, like he was some sort of sad magnet for homicidal lost causes. Sae wasn’t telling Akechi anything he couldn’t have reasonably inferred, knowing what he did about Kurusu.
If Sae said that Kurusu was ‘riled up,’ he knew that Kurusu must have been near hysterics. Well, per the yardstick of Kurusu’s typical emoting capacity. He could envision the way Kurusu’s lips had probably gotten all drawn, the way they tended to when he tried to hide that he was feeling more than he let on.
Kurusu didn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve, but he wasn’t impossible to read if you knew what you were looking to find. His brow had probably furrowed, his fists had probably clenched, and his eyes had probably gone just short of misty.
Akechi wasn’t sure how he felt about that mental image.
“Well, we can’t always get what we want, now can we?”
“I understand, Goro,” Sae stared him dead in the eye as she said his given name, leaving Akechi no option but to immediately take a good long drink of burnt coffee from his mug. “But consider it for me, won’t you? I don’t think that it would be a bad idea for you to build a support network for yourself.”
Akechi cursed to himself. He should have known that she wouldn’t let this topic lie so easily.
Akechi grit his teeth. “I don’t think Sakura or Okumura would take kindly to seeing me.”
“Then don’t see them.” She said it matter of fact, like it was that easy. “But, for the record, I think that Kurusu-kun would.”
Of course Kurusu would. Even a child who couldn’t add two and two could piece together that Akira Kurusu would probably lop off a limb to have been in that booth with them that day. The idiot had wished Akechi back into existence and into his life, and he would again if he could.
That was why he couldn’t know that Akechi was alive.
Well, it accounted for half the issue.
The other half rested on the fact that Kurusu had been the first thing to cross Akechi’s mind in that half second that passed between realizing he was alive and resolving to scream about it. He hadn’t had the decency to fully leave Akechi’s thoughts ever since, with the exception of the several hours he had spent blackout drunk.
Somehow, that last bit was less than reassuring.
Even worse, none of it was exactly new.
The long and short of it was that Akechi needed to get himself clean, and he couldn’t very well do that if Kurusu came chasing after him.
And so, he made his words as sharp as he could muster. “I think that Kurusu-kun should get a grip and realize that I very sincerely tried to murder him.”
Sae stared him down. He was under no illusions – this was an interrogation. It was a surprise when her gaze softened.
She hummed. “Do you regret it?”
And wasn’t that a loaded question?
He regretted that it had all amounted to nothing. He regretted that Shido had played him for a fool, and that on the evening of November 20th, he’d gone home and damn near cracked open his bottle of Shido revenge scotch. He regretted that at some catastrophic point in the past year, besting Joker had become something bigger than besting his father, and that just as soon as Akechi had thought he’d managed it, the metal on metal scent of blood splattering onto the interrogation room’s table from Kurusu’s too-blank face became something he needed to forget.
Of course, he also regretted that he’d been tricked, and that he’d wasted several nights wide awake thinking about the way Kurusu had looked at him that night in the bathhouse, sweat on his brow and droplets of steam condensed on his irritatingly long lashes, like he had really wanted to be there with him, listening.
His brief brush with insomnia had cost Akechi twelve dollars in drugstore coffee, five dollars in sugar-free energy drinks, and at least three years of his life, if you accounted for the carcinogens that made up the latter. Akechi did.
At least he’d saved that bottle of scotch. It had gone to waste anyway, but it was more about the principle of the thing.
But he couldn’t very well explain any of that to Sae. So, Akechi had lied.
“No.”
“I see.” If Sae was disappointed in his answer, she didn’t show it. She gave him a nod, drummed her fingers on the table, and checked her watch. “Let me know if you change your mind. I’ll keep your existence to myself until you tell me to do otherwise.”
Sae had swallowed down the last of her drink, and that was that.
Since that day, his life had gone on. He spent his weekdays looking over Sae’s contracts and his weekends grinding out practice problems from study books. Sometimes he would work in his apartment. He’d draw open the blinds and spread his papers across his bed – he had a desk, but it was cramped, his chair was stiff, and he’d never really brought himself around to using the space as it was meant to be used.
Other days, Akechi camped out in cafés around the city. He operated under the assumption that any place that had the audacity to charge 700 yen for a barely passable latte must have presumed he would use said latte as an all-day pass to free wifi and a climate controlled workspace. Akechi felt vindicated in taking full advantage.
He found that the more tasks he had to fill his time, the less liable his mind was to wander.
Not that it was always easy. It had been hardest at first, when more mornings than not the was filled with the urge to lay under his comforter and rot through the day. He’d learned quickly that when that urge struck, it was best to call Sae and pick up an extra stack of whatever she could push off on him before her work day started. He would chip away at it during the daylight hours and catch up with his other tasks at night, a can of cold brew in one hand and a highlighter in the other.
He never slipped behind Sae’s expectations for him, because he was Goro Akechi, and he didn’t let himself lose if he could help it. Still, it wasn’t lost on him that he wasn’t supposed to be alive. Sue him if that got to him once in a while.
He hadn’t planned for any of this, and if he did anything besides move straight through it all, the shiny paint of productivity he’d slapped over his unplanned extension pack to living would slide right off. It would become obvious that there was little holding his life together besides spite, busywork, and a lawyer who had willfully decided she wouldn’t let him quit as her part-timer, or as anything else.
Thinking about that never did him any good, so he didn’t. Fortunately, Akechi was no stranger to doing what needed to be done first and wondering how on earth he had managed it after the fact.
Now, he needed to move forward. So he did.
That wasn’t to say his strategy always worked.
It tended to happen late at night, when Akechi didn’t have the energy to stop his thoughts from drifting to the subjects his wiser, more conscious self refused to engage.
Typically, that meant Joker. No. It always meant Joker. Shido, too, but it was infuriating, really, how even those thoughts tended to meander back around to Joker, too.
As Akechi had taken his post-hibernation shower months ago, his sheets in the wash and grease sloughing from his hair in the suds of overpriced shampoo, Akechi had come to a number of resolute conclusions about the state of his life. Namely, if he was going to continue to live it, he had a few non-negotiables.
To start, he would keep a wide berth from any news outlets covering the Shido trial – he was sure there would be more than a few. He’d find a way to get his hands on another, cheaper bottle of something high-proof. He would learn to use one kitchen appliance besides the microwave. The oven, maybe.
And, of course, he would keep himself far, far away from Akira Kurusu.
Akechi would have liked to think that his thoughts always seemed to land on Kurusu out of force of habit. After all, he’d spent months tracking his every move. He’d never quite learned to think like Kurusu – he doubted that anyone could – but Akechi certainly knew the timetables of the trains he took to get around town, the names of his managers at each of his (many) part-time jobs, and which vending machines he preferred to get his snacks from.
Had he strictly needed to collect so much information on the leader of the Phantom Thieves in the name of reconnaissance? Perhaps not. It wasn’t as though knowing that Kurusu routinely arrived at his station around three minutes before his scheduled train would actually give him an edge in battle.
(Akechi of the past had tried to posture that it might, but Akechi of the past was an idiot, and Akechi of the present could admit that.)
He had never been one to half-ass, though, and Kurusu had always been so interesting. His calendar protested his reprioritization, but there was nothing new or surprising about that. The detective prince’s life had been a scheduling impossibility, and Akechi had managed regardless. More than managed, really.
Tragically, ‘reconnaissance’ couldn’t account for the way Akechi’s vision tunneled around Kurusu. It couldn’t explain away the thoughts Kurusu always managed to coax out of his head and into speech.
So, no. Akechi wasn’t stupid enough to believe that his continued fixation on Akira Kurusu was ‘force of habit.’ It was something much more dangerous, and he couldn’t afford to allow himself to succumb to it. Not after everything.
If Akechi was going to live a life, that life would damn well be his own. He refused to live for anybody but himself, and that included Akira Kurusu.
Still, the version of Akechi that lay awake in his bed at 4am, strung out on caffeine, had been known to have other thoughts from time to time. When his eyes were bloodshot and jargon swirled on his ceiling, he thought back to the look on Kurusu’s face when he had caught his glove. Cocky — Joker always was — but something more behind that. Akechi could only describe it as the expression of a boy missing something he hadn’t yet lost.
It had taken him too long to realize that Kurusu had known exactly what the glove had meant from the moment it had been thrown. It had taken him even longer to realize that Kurusu had understood it better than Akechi had.
It was enough to make him want to tear Kurusu apart, nice and slow, piece by piece. It was almost enough to make him want to reach for his phone.
He didn’t, of course. There was a lot of power in ‘almost.’ It meant that he was in control.
It was easier during the day. Sae always had something to shrug off on him if he needed it.
Of course, there was also the pesky matter of his father.
That day at the café, Sae had mentioned that she’d spoken to him. Shido had said that he wouldn’t implicate Akechi in his trial. Apparently, he’d expressed regrets about his treatment of his son.
Akechi hadn’t asked her for more information. She had already said too much.
Once, there had been nothing Akechi wanted more than to hear his father drool out how big of a mistake it had been to leave him. Now, the thought of Shido feeling at all guilty, or heaven forbid, apologizing to him, made bile rise in the back of his throat.
Just one hit, and Akechi would want another. There would be nothing of him left. It was a trend, it seemed, that Akechi needed to learn when to keep well enough away from people he’d let spin him in circles.
Fortunately, he had always been a quick study.
Akechi hadn’t tried to contact him, and he and Sae hadn’t discussed Masayoshi Shido any further since.
Given his track record with all things luck and Shido related, Akechi really should have expected that decision to come back and bite him.
The rabid dog that was the universe’s refusal to let Akechi live his life in peace caught up to him one day in early June. Coming home from a coffee shop, mini-mart sushi in hand, he’d seen it.
He had thirty days to vacate his apartment, because of fucking course he did.
Akechi felt six years old again. Seeing the notice pasted to his apartment door, he may as well have been holding his mother’s hand. He felt it clench around his pudgy fingers tight enough to hurt. He knew that she didn’t mean it. He knew that she hadn’t meant to fall behind on rent, either. He knew that some nights at her club were lucrative, and that some mornings, she couldn’t find it in herself to get out of bed. Their income had never been stable, and neither had their address.
But his mother wasn’t there, she hadn’t been for a long time, and Akechi was the only one responsible for the little crescent-shaped indents in his palms as he stared at the paper on his door and tried to will it away with the sheer force of his – in his humble opinion – very justified righteous anger.
He’d called Sae immediately, right as soon as he’d ripped down the notice, gone inside, and poured himself a drink. Apparently, all of Shido’s hidden assets had finally been frozen. Even if he wanted to continue to pay Akechi’s rent, he couldn’t. Akechi hadn’t been affected until now because Shido had, prior to recent events, had his apartment bills set to auto-pay from one of his more clandestine bank accounts.
That was something that even now made the part of Akechi’s brain that had stayed young and poor recoil. To have so much cash that a transfer of that size could simply be counted on to go through every month, no risk of declining – from an auxiliary checking account – seemed almost gluttonous.
Well, the payment had finally bounced, it seemed. Nobody was untouchable. It would have been more gratifying if Akechi weren’t the one being left high and dry. He had hung up the phone and downed the last of his drink. His mediocre room-temperature sushi forgotten, he’d taken a seat on his floor, opened his laptop, and typed in a preliminary search for Tokyo-studio-cheap.
That brought him to now. It was remarkable, really, how his day had only managed to get worse and worse in the hour that had passed since then.
Staying in his current apartment simply wasn’t an option. Akechi had tucked money into his savings account during his time as the detective prince, of course, but even the sizable amount he had slowly accrued for himself over the last several years wouldn’t be able to cover more than a month or two of rent in the place Shido had picked out for him. It had a separate kitchen, living, and sleeping space, alongside a full bathroom. It was fully renovated and featured in-unit laundry. It even came with a parking spot (not that Akechi owned a car, could drive, or feasibly use his space in the garage in literally any capacity).
All of it had been an undeniable power play on Shido’s part. The place really was too much for him. It was a needless show of excess – an in-your-face sort of look what I can do for you, aren’t you scared to lose it?
Sure, Akechi could spend three years worth of residual earnings on thirty extra days in this place, but all it would do was buy him time, not to mention drain the last financial cushion he had left. He needed to put down a deposit on another place, after all. His bank account would be running on fumes after that, and rent at his new place would be due almost immediately.
Fuck. He’d almost forgotten his utilities. His phone bill. His Wi-Fi. He didn’t need to be a genius to know that any day now, those expenses would hit him too.
Shido would be burning in hell for a whole host of reasons – Akechi knew this, because he’d spent the last several years of his life passively looping his long, long list of them through his head like a rallying cry. It was always a solid hit that got his head where it needed to be to do whatever he needed to do. This newest slight was a tiny drop of water in the ocean of ways his father had wronged him.
Still. If there was any justice in the world, Akechi would be allowed to spit on his father during his fiery descent. Just a little bonus to him for needing to go through this after everything he’d already endured.
All roads led to moving. May as well get it done sooner rather than later.
Akechi would need to pick up a second job to somehow come up with the difference between his dwindling savings account, Sae’s weekly commission, and the cost of living accommodations that would let him avoid adding to his death toll. It would be a less insulting prospect if any of the studio apartments he would be able to afford after that looked remotely liveable.
This one said that the paint on its walls might contain traces of lead, and that its landlord wouldn’t be held liable for medical damages that resulted from it. That one had visible mold on the bathroom tiles, even in the very obviously postured online listing photos. He shuddered to think of the state of that shower if he saw it in the flesh.
Every listing Akechi had looked at so far seemed to come with its own set of shockingly diverse hazards, their one continuity being that they evoked similar feelings of dread in the pit of his stomach. The ones that didn’t come with a laundry list of health and safety violations stated up front that they required an application pre-screening. Akechi’s credit score was perfectly fine – the detective prince had always paid off his statements in full, and on time. What he didn’t have were two good references. As it turned out, that was rapidly proving itself to be a serious problem.
Even on a webpage with the best user interface imaginable, the experience would have been bleak. That said, Akechi might have felt slightly less homicidal if the website didn’t reload every single time he clicked the back-out arrow after he decided he wasn’t (yet) desperate enough to risk braving exposed wiring in his combined living-bedroom-kitchen-foyer-bathroom space.
It wasn’t as though Akechi hadn’t expected this would happen – he just hadn’t expected it to happen now. He had wanted to be able to really plan his move. The fact he’d even thought that taking his sweet time could be an option for him was proof that he’d let his guard down.
He clicked on another listing. Wonderful. This one was just under 150 square feet. He honestly hadn’t known that was legal.
Well. Actually.
He paused. Zoomed in.
On second glance, maybe it wasn’t so bad. It looked clean, recently renovated. The move-in date fit his needs. It was small, sure, but it seemed like the space was well allocated. He mentally crumpled up his commitment to learning how to use an oven. It wouldn’t be happening in a place of this size, but maybe that was for the best, anyway.
He decided to click the button to arrange a tour with the landlord. Maybe his situation wasn’t so dire after all.
Of course, that was when the website decided to crash.
The noise that wrenched its way out of his throat wasn’t unlike how he expected a dying cat might sound. He slammed his laptop shut and rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyelids.
He needed another drink.
He poured himself a coffee mug of vodka and water. It was like vodka and soda for people who barely had the means to buy themself vodka, and for whom also needing to buy mixers felt like adding insult to injury. It was disgusting, but a disgusting necessity. Today, his crime against good taste was the housing market’s fault.
He took a sip, grimaced, and climbed into his bed. He propped himself up on his pillows and took another long drink. It didn’t taste quite so bad now that he’d whet his palate.
Fuck. He hadn’t even had the chance to change when he’d gotten home. He undid the top buttons of his dress shirt where they pinched at his neck. It wasn’t as though Akechi had anyone to look nice for, nowadays, but his wardrobe hadn’t gotten a radical overhaul since the detective prince’s fall from notoriety. He’d worn designer shirts then, he’d wear designer shirts now. They looked slightly worse for wear, but at least that meant they were incrementally more comfortable to wear out now than they had been back in the day.
Not by much. He sighed as the stale air conditioning of his room hit his skin. He took another sip of his drink. Then another.
It wouldn’t be so hard to find that listing again. He was pissed on principle. Websites should work. Apartments should be bigger than closets. You should be able to beg a landlord to let you live in a closet-sized apartment on a website that at least functioned halfway decently.
He took another good long gulp from his mug.
He could have really gone for coffee, right then. Not the glorified overpriced milk you could get from any old chain. The good stuff.
It had been a long time since he’d had good coffee.
There was only one place Akechi had ever had truly, honest-to-god good coffee.
His cellphone was lying at the foot of his bed.
He could send him a text, right now. Something clever. Akechi knew that no matter what it was, it would shock him, but it needed to be witty, too, because he would expect nothing less. He would kill to see the look on his face. He would look down at his phone, see Akechi’s name light up his screen, and his eyes would get all wide and scared.
You’ve been alive all this time?
They would meet up, and Kurusu, he’d be miserable, he’d probably cry or do something equally sappy, and – once he really processed – he’d be mad as all hell. Akechi would laugh at him, say something as snarky as the situation demanded, and watch the anger melt right off of Kurusu’s face in real time.
Akechi would finally have pulled one over on him. He’d finally win. He could feel the rush already.
Kurusu wanted to lose so bad, it was embarrassing, really.
Right as fantasy Kurusu threw himself at fantasy Akechi, real Akechi felt a wave of cold dread wash over him.
He walked to the sink and poured his final few sips of vodka water down the sink.
No. Hell no.
He turned on the tap and splashed cold water on his face. It dripped down his neck. He couldn’t bring himself to mind as it trickled down to the collar of his undone shirt.
He was better than this. He knew damn well that the only one ‘losing’ in the situation his addled mind had cooked up was himself.
It had only taken half a drink to get him there.
Fuck. He doused his face in more water for good measure.
He walked back to his bedroom, unlocked his phone, and scrolled through his message logs to find his last conversation with Akira Kurusu. Taking care not to click anything damning, he swiped to delete it.
There. It was over. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t done that sooner.
He rinsed out his mug and poured himself a glass of water from the tap. It didn’t need ice – he’d already confirmed that it was sufficiently chilled.
His laptop was still on his kitchen floor. Akechi took a seat, cross legged, and reloaded the webpage he had been on previously. Surely, he’d have more luck this session. Maybe he’d even find a place larger than 150 square feet. 175 seemed like a reasonable goal.
He would make this work. He was moving apartments, and he was moving on. He’d managed far more difficult things in the past.
He looked at his phone, sitting on the floor to his right. He tapped the display once.
No new messages. And why would there be?
He sighed and got to work.