Work Text:
1
It starts with a phone call.
“I know what you’ve doing,” says an unfamiliar and distorted voice.
It’s a call directly to Sadayo’s work phone. She had been hoping it would be something worth her time. This isn't the first time she’s been prank called, but those all went to her regular number.
“Oh yeah?” she drawls, staring down a cigarette. She’s long since given it up, but the night’s customer gave her a pack as an attempt at a tip. Real nice. “And what am I doing.”
There’s a long pause. She pulls the phone back to confirm it’s still connected before the static around a voice starts up again. “Rather out of character, don’t you think?” the voice accuses. “No wonder you’re struggling to keep clients coming back.”
Those words send a chill down her spine. She doesn’t use her work number for anything but work. Sure, she didn’t know how pranks or anything of the sort worked, but Sadayo liked to think that she was on good terms with her meager clients. Except –
The flash of glasses sparks something in her memory and she grits her teeth.
“I’m hanging up,” she says.
“Too bad,” says the voice. And before she can hit the button to end call, she hears them quietly say, “Good night, sensei.”
It’s too late to stop herself from cutting the line. She stares at herself in the gray-green reflection of the flip phone’s screen. An unlisted number. Desperate, she tries to call back, but receives nothing but a dial tone. She’s stupid. She doesn’t know how these things work, doesn’t know how people spoof numbers, doesn’t know why someone would be so needlessly cruel – but there’s one person she knows who could hold some degree of responsibility.
It’s the only lead she has.
Quick as a whip, she texts Kurusu.
We need to talk.
Sadayo wakes up the next morning to the bitter realization of it being Sunday – the one day she didn’t have to commute to school. It was the worst day of the week, as it meant she had to fill the rest of it with Becky time.
She glances between her two phones. Her smart phone has a year old splinter that encroaches across a good third of the screen. On it are a few notifications – most primarily emails, a text message from her mother, reminders, alarms – she swipes them all away without a further glance. There is nothing from those people, so she doesn’t need to think about it. More hopefully, she glances at her work phone.
Kurusu never responded.
Unfortunately, rather than having the chance to soak in the sheer misery of being ignored by her student, her attention is drawn to three messages about upcoming appointments.
The first two go by quickly – both of them new clients. One spends the entire time staring at her tits and the other practically throws her out the moment the hour is up. It’s about as much as she’d expect. The third isn’t until the late evening, however, and she’s left to simmer in her own head as she goes through preparing for the school week over the remainder of her time.
At 8 pm, she carefully puts on her wig and wraps her long trench coat around the hideous thing her employer called a maid dress. It seems like another new client. She isn’t sure of the address, at first – going to Yongen-jaya is more than a little out of the way. The fact that she had to waste an extra few yen on the transfer makes her quietly seethe. Stepping through the backstreets, she makes her way to a restaurant by name of Leblanc.
She’d have completely missed it if not for the fact that it was the only building on the street that still had its lights on. Despite that, the door itself is accompanied by a sign that very soundly declares the place closed. Glaring at the thing, Sadayo fumbles through her options. Debase herself to the displeasure of knocking on the door or go without the additional yen for the evening. She isn’t a math teacher, but it is a devastatingly simple equation.
She knocks.
The sign bounces on the inside of the door. A third new client is just her luck. Unless it turns out one of the few regulars she has decided to take up making coffee, at least. Inside, past the frosted glass, she sees a dim figure all of a second before they seem to smack into the wall inside the small building. From there, the presumable client wobbles to the door and Sadayo near shouts –
“You!”
“Me,” says Kurusu. “You probably wanna get inside.”
While she desperately wants to be anywhere but outside, a quiet rage bubbles up past her exhaustion. How dare Kurusu ignore her text message? How dare he just throw money down and expect her to appear on hands and knees before him? And how dare he speak to her in such a casual tone of voice?
Especially after that phone call. He or one of his friends – her eye twitches involuntarily. It’s humid and her wig itches and she wants to go home and pretend this never happened, but instead, she forces a smile onto her face and says, “Of course, master!”
If he’s mortified or disgusted, neither emotion shows on his face. There’s not a single shift of a muscle as he steps back to allow her the space to come inside. The place – Leblanc – smells heavenly. Like if coffee was actually made to be enjoyed rather than forced down. As she peers around the space, Kurusu walks around her and behind the counter. He’s rubbing his face – only now does she see the red mark which covers much of his forehead and only now does she put together the sound with the image of him falling down the stairs to smack directly into the wall at the end of the room.
For one stupid instance, out of her own head from the situation, Sadayo – Sadayo finds herself laughing. At first, it’s only a snort, but it quickly turns into something worse – something truly mortifying by comparison to her maid affect. Her laugh is ugly and loud and she practically shoves her palm into her mouth to stop the stilted giggles from making their way out further. Eyes watering, she forces herself to meet Kurusu’s gaze.
To his credit, he still seems nonplussed. But his mouth is open, faintly, and now his head tilts as his hand moves from the cup he’d pulled down from the shelf to touch his forehead once again.
“Oh,” he says. “Yeah. It’s kinda funny.”
There’s no further reprimand. No demand that she leave, no embarrassment on his cheeks. The hint of a smile appears at the corners of his mouth, but that’s it. Sadayo fidgets with the skirt of her outfit and turns around toward the door. She could leave now. If Kurusu said anything, it was always going to be mutually assured destruction. A delinquent paying for what amounted to a sex worker dirtying the place where his guardian worked? He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He didn’t have the guts.
He had enough guts to call the hotline.
Sadayo swallows and locks the door before walking back to the counter.
“Listen,” she starts. “I know I said you don’t have any friends, but if you try something like last night again, I’m not going to do this anymore.”
Kurusu doesn’t acknowledge her. His focus seems wholly centered on the filter and cup where he’s pouring steaming water. She’s never seen someone prepare coffee like this before – really, she tends toward whatever’s already in the pot at work. Sadayo hasn’t had disposable income in years. A place like this was as out of her reach as anywhere else. Not for the first time, she wondered where this kid was getting his money. Being a barista couldn’t have paid that much, right? Or maybe this place got a lot of business during the day and he got tips. Sadayo wishes she got tips, but most of her clients were likely as desperate for her to quit as she was. No one wants to incentivize some middle-aged woman like her to dress up and flash her ass at them.
“Here,” says Kurusu.
He must have been trying to get her attention – he never speaks much in class, but she’d assumed that was due to keeping a low profile. In this place, he seems just as short-spoken as he was at school.
Irritated, she takes the cup and asks, “Were you even listening to me.”
“Try it,” he says, ignoring her.
Sadayo huffs but moves to take a drink. His eyes track the movement and she wonders if he’s trying to stare at her lips on purpose or if she’s reading too much into it. It isn’t like she wants her student to think she’s hot or whatever. But there’s a stupid and miserable part of her that hopes she’s capable of doing some minor aspect of her job right. If this weren’t her student, would she be so hung up on it? Was it possible that other clients had turned out to be underaged when she’d cleaned their apartments? The thoughts build in her head until it begins to ache and she shoves everything to the side to take a deep gulp of the coffee.
“What do you think?” says Kurusu. There’s only now a genuine interest in his voice.
It’s hard not to be disappointed. That’s what they’d been staring for.
“It’s good,” she says, hesitantly. “Really good. Do you do this a lot?”
“I’ve been practicing,” he says, pride evident despite how he plays with his bangs. “Don’t have a lot of people to test with.”
Staring into the cup, Sadayo swirls the coffee. He really is just a kid. Maybe it wasn’t him that’d called. “You haven’t told anyone about me, have you?”
He’s silent long enough that she looks up, ready to scold, but the confused set of his brow makes her stop.
“The call?” she asks. When he says nothing, she further specifies, “Last night, one of your buddies decided to prank call my work phone.”
“Your work phone?” he says with a continued consternation. “I didn’t realize you had one.”
“You didn’t – I texted you!” she bites back.
“Oh! That was you?” With a snap of his fingers, he says, “I’ll make sure to save that for next time.”
She texted him after getting the call. Sadayo never gave him her specialized number – just told him to ask for her when he called the main line. The heat starts in her ears as it rises in her cheeks, leaving her red-faced and ashamed. She’s such an idiot.
He interrupts her thoughts before they can spiral much further. “I am sorry someone left a prank call.” And, fumbling once again with his hair, Kurusu says, “I haven’t said anything. I’m not going to. This is between you and me… alright?”
Rubbing her face in a dim replica of his embarrassment, Sadayo nods. “Alright.”
It had to be a one-time thing. She’d just have to trust this kid.
2
It isn’t a one-time thing.
The stranger doesn’t say much of anything after the first time. He – she assumes it has to be, one of her old male clients who decided it would be funniest to harass her now that he’d stopped using the service – stays silent, almost tricking her into saying hello. Sadayo doesn’t have a choice but to respond with her assigned declaration of joy that her master would be calling. She waits for someone to respond and each second is a buzzing sensation of pins and needles crowding her skin.
After a long minute, she hangs up.
At least the calls from Kurusu are quick. They say hello before she can say anything, quick on the draw of her answering the line, like it’s a game to be won. She doesn’t have many regular callers. The stalker once a week and Kurusu twice, asking for help with laundry and other things.
“Coffee?” she asks, incredulous.
“Yeah?”
“You,” she says, “Are asking me,” she states, “To make coffee for you. The barista.”
“Yeah,” he repeats.
They repeat. Sadayo reminds herself. Whatever Kurusu said about not having friends is just as bullshit as her claim about having a sick sister. She’s seen how Takamaki and Sakamoto treat Kurusu. It’s one of those trans things, like what it is with Makoto Niijima. Sadayo isn’t a kind person, but she is a teacher – and a teacher is aware of these things. Cognizant. Even if they haven’t said anything to the school, that doesn’t mean she should ignore what she’s seen, right? It isn’t like a delinquent can very well ask for school accommodations or recognition. Besides, this is about her client and their comfort. A good maid is bound to notice and pick up on things and know without her client needing to tell her!
It’s all very logical.
Except for where he’s asking for her to make them coffee.
“I’ve never done this before.”
“I can show you the basics,” they say, quietly. “I just don’t always have time to make it.”
So they’re paying her a ridiculous amount of yen to make subpar coffee. She adds on, blunt, “It’ll taste like shit compared to what you make.”
That earns her a small smile. “It’ll work. It’s not that hard. And you’ll improve over time.”
The thing about Kurusu is that he’s a liar. It is hard, because after the first three cups, they’re not able to hide that particular look anymore.
“I told you so,” she mutters.
“No,” they say. “It’s ok. This’ll be perfect for what I need.”
“Why can’t you just let me do your damn laundry,” she grumbles.
Kurusu still has piles of old sooty hand-me-downs that they must be getting from a junkyard or somewhere else. The things usually turn out looking rather nice once they’re washed, but she can’t begin to understand where he’s getting them from.
When she catches Kurusu staring at her, Sadayo realizes the language she used and puts her work face back on. “I mean, Master, I would love to make sure everything is sparkling clean for you! That’s what Becky’s best at, after all.”
“Isn’t it more fun this way, though?” they murmur. “Learning something new?”
It really, really isn’t. It just makes her all the more cognizant of how much of a loser she is. Barely able to stay awake with cleaning, not able to make a single cup of joe when her own student makes it look so easy, never capable of making ends meet.
“Whatever Master says,” Becky smiles, eyes closed and mouth spread from ear to ear.
“You’re not very convincing,” Kurusu says with a smile of their own. “S’okay. But it does help me out. So thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” says Becky, and Sadayo follows with, “If you’re sure.”
“Hey, are you still getting… never mind.”
Her eyes flicker to him in a sharp instant. “What?”
“Those, uh. Prank calls.”
Sadayo swallows and nothing goes down. She can’t move to speak. How they thought to ask – maybe it’s just too obvious on her face. “Yes,” she finally says.
“What if you got a new number?”
She scoffs. “That costs money, Master.” It’s impossible to keep the mocking edge out of her voice.
“Right,” says Kurusu. “Right. I’m sorry. Your sister…”
It should send a wash of shame over her to hear them mention her lie. Instead, she feels relief. Kurusu thinks he knows, but there’s so much he doesn’t have a clue to. If nothing else, she still has this much to take to her grave.
“I’ll consider it,” she says. “If this next treatment goes over well…”
“Right,” they say. “Hey, uh. How about I make some curry?”
3
A parcel slides into the mail slot.
Sadayo sits up, all the more aware of it for the time of night. Already suspicious, she opens the door before picking it up off the ground. Whoever must have dropped it off at that time of evening is already gone by the time she’s looking down the hall. There’s nothing else to it. She closes the door and locks it. Such a thing won’t change the envelope which lays on her floor.
There’s no mention of an address to or from. There’s a single word sprawled along it in roman letters – B E C K Y. A shudder runs down her spine. Sadayo picks it up off the ground and turns it over and over in her hands.
She doesn’t want to open it. A part of her thinks she could simply throw it into the burnable trash and be done with it. For all her fear, curiosity still manages to win out. Sadayo sits at the miniscule table off to the side of her small apartment’s kitchenette. It came with the place, something the old owners hadn't seen fit to take when they'd escaped. How it was still standing, some days, she couldn't say - even now, it wobbles under the slight weight of the envelope. Taking a kitchen knife, she slots the blade under the opening and slices through the top.
Swallowing, she spills the contents across the flat surface.
It’s pictures. Not just any. As she spreads out the dozen or so photographs, she realizes every single one is of her out on the job. Her ugly wig, her revolting dress, her grotesque smile. She stands outside an apartment – this photo is taken around a corner, the focus set wholly upon her as she makes her way inside someone else’s home. Another is taken from outside a train, showing the back of her head and how her hair flits out from under the wig. The next depicts her inside a laundry room, frowning as she shoves clothing into a washing machine – one that could almost be nothing if not for how her cleavage nearly spilled out of the dress. Each frame tells a story and it is one she is desperate for no one to ever know.
Sadayo covers her mouth – the taste of bile rises to the back of her throat and she forces down the urge to vomit over everything before her.
It’s so unfair.
Yet all she can think is – I’m so disgusting.
The thought accompanies her as she crawls out of her futon an hour later and shoves her body into the dress, wrapped around her like a steel trap ready to snap at a moment’s notice. On her phone is a notification – a job in Yongen-jaya. The coat makes her overheated, makes her sweat, and she forgoes the wig. It’s just for one night. Maybe the stalker won’t notice her so readily – she digs through her belongings and finds an old hat emblazoned with one of her previous school’s festival years.
It’s the only one she has.
Sadayo shoves it over her already messy hair and slams the door shut on her way out. She takes special care to lock the door, jiggling the knob in case it somehow comes loose. The place is dilapidated and cheap, but she’d never thought so much about it before. Sadayo Kawakami isn’t a woman with anything to lose at the physical level. And yet.
And yet.
And yet.
She glances past her shoulder a dozen times as she boards the train and makes her way across Tokyo to the place where her most regular of regulars resides. Kurusu pays for her twice a week. What she does is the bare minimum and they give her a free meal on top of a tip every time.
They're the only two times of the week she gets to eat meat.
She knows well enough now that just because the door says the store is closed doesn’t mean it’s locked. Sliding in, Sadayo takes it upon herself to lock it personally. She scans the streets outside and finds nothing and no one lurking.
Upstairs, harried footsteps make their way to the stairs, so Sadayo is quick to shrug off her coat and throw it into one of the booths. She fixes the ruffles of her dress as Kurusu bounds down the stairs, smacking lightly into the wall. Only the first time was an accident. Since then, he’s tried to make it something of a joke between them – though she hasn’t laughed since.
“Hey,” they say, all cool affectation.
“Good evening, Master~” she starts. “How shall I serve you today?”
“Uh.”
Kurusu stops in his tracks, like he frequently does around her. If she were a stupid woman, she’d pretend it was because they were a flustered teenage boy. However, he was friends with Ann Takamaki, a literal model, and seemed to handle that without the need for moderation.
“Is Master nervous? You know, Becky would never do anything to hurt you!” She giggles, leaning into the role by bending over with her arms behind her back. It’s almost satisfying to see how his face falls and flusters. “I didn’t think Master was so interested in older women.”
For a moment, he’s silent, pushing glasses up his nose and hiding his eyes behind their glare. “You do this with all your clients?”
She lets the act drop. “You’re the one paying for it.”
“Yeah,” they say, something of a smile playing at his lips. “Guess I am. How ‘bout I teach you how to make curry?”
It goes disastrously. It isn’t as though Sadayo is incapable in the kitchen – but having access to expensive spices, high quality goods, real meat, it makes her head spin. She undercuts her measurements on everything and finds herself with a tepid pot of mediocre curry. The two slide into a booth with a plate to share. As she chews, all she can think about is what a waste of good money it is.
For some reason, Kurusu nods over it thoughtfully. “This’ll work.”
“Why not just have some of the actually good curry you’ve got stocked in the fridge,” she mutters. There was an entire container, easily enough to feed a handful of people.
“This is for something else,” they say. “Thank you. For working on it.” And for some reason, they smile at her. “I know it’s hard.”
“It isn’t hard,” she responds, somewhat insulted. “I’m tired. Master, you’ll let your favorite maid take a little rest, won’t you?”
Kurusu’s mouth opens and just as quickly closes. His hand moves to his bangs. “Aren’t you kind of on the job?”
“I’ve been on the job all day. You don’t seriously mind, do you?” Sadayo stretches out and feels her shoulders pop. “Listen, I’ll let you sleep in class if you let me sleep at work.”
“Deal,” he says. “I guess.”
She pushes the plate toward them and buries her face in her arms. They shuffle further against the wall.
“I don’t mind if you lean on me,” he says, quiet.
“Shush,” Sadayo says.
“I mean it.” She almost drifts off in the time it takes them to collect their words. “You just seem more tired than usual today. Did something happen?”
At that, she sits up. Finds herself wobbling and her shoulder catches against his. Her eyes close. “Nothing in particular.”
When sleep takes her, it is cold and warm at the same time.
4
A week passes and there is a reel of undeveloped film set upon her desk at Shujin.
Exhausted, she stares at it, unsure of what to do. It would be so easy to dispose of it. Already, it is clear what must be inside – more incriminating evidence. More things she’s desperate for no one to know. But how much worse could it be? Whoever it is must have the negatives hidden away somewhere. They hadn’t asked for anything in return as of yet. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t. But in the meantime, she couldn’t imagine what their desire was. What would compel a person to stalk her in this way? What else had she done wrong that she was as of yet unaware?
Sadayo can’t help it.
After school, she unlocks the door to the photography club. Inside is a darkroom. It’s impossible to call it an actual room – all it happens to be is a space in the corner of the primary clubroom surrounded by a set of thick curtains. Inside stands two lamps, a table, and plenty of older photographs pinned along a crossing of wire.
She’s lucky in that there’s a set of instructions on the wall next to a piece of what looks to be rather expensive equipment. It’s apparently called an enlarger. She places each square of film along with a piece of specialized paper which, supposedly, is meant to transfer the image. Her own stupidity astounds her – she can hardly imagine how it all works and she’s meant to work as a teacher here? Kids knowing more than her makes Sadayo feel a particular sense of nausea. She’s useless to them. All she does is teach them about language they could hardly need or care about in a world where kanji can easily be typed out with a computer screen.
It’s useless to wallow over. She reads over the directions again. The blank paper goes into a developer solution for 90 seconds – easy enough instructions to follow. The liquids sit in large bottles situated under the table and she pours a thin layer into the trays which are already organized upon it. Developer, stop, and fixer.
She figures it would take more time for the picture to develop, but it’s shockingly quick. Sadayo loses track of the time and finds herself frozen as she stares at a picture of herself in one of Yongen-jaya’s laundromats. The photograph rapidly darkens and she panics, pulling it out with the tips of her fingers before remembering the tongs she’s meant to use. Quickly, Sadayo drops it back in, shaking liquid from her hand and grabbing the tool to transfer the photo to the stopping solution. She assumes it’s meant to cease the developing process, but it’s already too late – the image is dark and she can no longer make out her own face. However, that wouldn’t stop her stalker from developing the same way and likely to better results than her own.
She drops the photo into the wash basin for a few seconds before using a clothespin to hang it from the wire. It isn’t as though she’s going to keep the picture, but the thought of leaving a job unfinished rancors.
The next image she pulls out too quickly, but it’s still evident what it is – Sadayo stands outside Leblanc, fixing the back of her dress and puffing out her skirt. A cold shiver runs through her body and she’s stricken by a sense of complete and utter disgust for herself. Dressing and dolling herself up for her own student – it’s even worse realizing that someone else knows.
Each image depicts her in Yongen-jaya, candid photos of her in her long coat, pictures of her cleaning outside and sweeping, images of her scratching at and pulling off her wig to reveal the pinned-back hair beneath.
The worst comes in the final images. Kurusu standing at the door in front of her, a smile on their face she hadn’t processed at the time. Kurusu walking behind her, potentially looking at her half-bare back. Kurusu through the windows at the front of the store, steadying her hand as she attempts another cup of coffee. Kurusu sliding a plate of curry toward her.
The last makes her drop the tongs onto the ground. Kurusu sits in a booth. Their arms are held close to their sides, hands presumably pressed into their lap. Sadayo sits beside them. Her eyes are closed and she recognizes it as her own stupidity from the night after she’d first received the parcel of photographs. Her exhaustion. Her misery. She presses a hand over her mouth.
The photo darkens until nothing can be made out.
She rips open the curtains, leaving every hanging photo to burn under the outdoor light which assaults them. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now. Sadayo grabs the evidence and rips the photos in half, in fourths, as small as she can, and shoves them into her purse.
She can’t keep doing this. She can’t.
Sadayo manages to make it out of the club room before her headache explodes behind her eyes and she trips over her own feet. Her body hits the ground hard. Faintly, she hears a voice calling out to her as her eyes close and she falls unconscious.
The first words she hears upon waking up are the obvious – “Are you okay?”
They’re harried, worried, fast – her vision comes into focus slowly. It’s the nurse’s office. The room is painted gold with evening light and she slowly parses the bespectacled face at her side.
“What are you doing here so late, Kurusu?” she asks.
“Club meeting,” they say.
Both of them know it’s a lie – unless there’s some unregistered club working in the underbelly of the school. Not that she’d care if there was, as long as they kept out of trouble. Whatever Kurusu did behind the scenes was none of her business as long as they kept quiet.
“I could ask you the same thing, though,” Kurusu adds.
“I had school business,” she harrumphs. “I am still a teacher.”
“S’just...” He plays with his bangs. It’s a childish habit, infuriating, and a part of her wants to grab their hand and force it down. “...You’ve got a lot on your plate.”
Sadayo stares at them. The photographs – the memory hooks into her chest and in the next moment, she’s scrambling, frantic, for her purse. Terribly late, she recognizes it sitting on the table across the room next to Kurusu’s own cat-hair ridden bag.
“You didn’t look,” she commands.
“Huh?” Their eyes track the line of her vision to her belongings. “Oh. No. Of course not.” She could swear there’s a hint of offense in Kurusu’s voice, but it’s impossible to apply any obvious emotion.
“Fine,” she says. “I’ll just have to trust you.”
“Thanks,” he answers, sardonic. “I wish I could say the same.”
She’s silent for a time, staring down at the sheets rather than having to risk looking at their face. Finally, she says, “That’s not a part of our deal. You don’t need to trust me.”
“It just doesn’t make sense to me,” they murmur. “We have nationalized healthcare. What is it about your sister that makes her treatment so unaffordable?”
Their words freeze the blood in her veins. “I don’t like you prying into my life, Kurusu. Even if we have a deal, you’re still my student. There’s nothing between us beyond…”
Beyond what, she wonders – beyond sleeping against him in the middle of the night? Beyond cooking and caring for them behind the scenes? Beyond cleaning his dirty clothes like some kind of housewife?
“There’s something more going on,” he says, devout and confident in tone. “You’re still getting those calls, aren’t you.”
Weak, she nods.
“I can buy you a new number. I don’t care about the cost.”
It’s almost like he cares about her. It makes her sick and satisfied all at the same time.
“They’d find it,” she says. “They’ve already found enough.”
“Kawakami-sensei… what does that mean?”
She swallows, deep and painful. “Get me my bag.”
The shredded pictures are impossible to piece back together. It’s no jigsaw puzzle. They’re bent and broken in impossible shapes, but she manages to lay out the basics – a shot of their face, the back of her dress, Leblanc’s doorknob. There’s no expression on their face, eyes searching the small pile as if it would have any meaningful clue.
“This isn’t the first time,” she says. “A week ago now. Some were dropped off at my door.”
“Huh,” they hum. And he looks up at her, all bright eyed and bushy tailed. Like it’s a game to win. He’s like that so often and she can’t understand where it comes from. “I’ll catch ‘em.”
“You won’t,” she warns. “If you get into trouble, how does that make me look?”
“It’s someone who knows you’re a teacher, right? And someone who knows how old I am.” There’s a smile on their face, one that is as terrible as it is cheery. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered to blackmail you with pictures that involve me. Right?”
Hesitant, she nods.
“So it’s someone connected with Shujin or me,” they say with a shrug – as though that narrows it down. As though it makes it easy or obvious. “But they don’t have reason or proof to take it to anyone that might punish us. So…”
“So I’m supposed to put up with it,” she says, dryly.
“Sorry,” he says, not sorry at all. “Just keep me in the loop… okay?”
If nothing else, the sudden mystery took their attention away from any questions about her fake sister. She can’t say she’s sorry for telling him. And if it helps her in the end… Sadayo can’t very well say no.
“Alright,” she says. “I will.”
As if she was ever allowed to say no to him.
5
“Sensei,” whispers a stranger.
Sadayo jolts.
The train rumbles beneath her.
“Don’t turn around now. I was just wondering how you were enjoying my presents?”
She ignores them. It’s no good. She isn’t the person they think she is. She isn’t a monster. She’s just a woman. Just trying to survive. Those people called again and she’s barely managing and she doesn’t need this on top of everything else, on top of fucking everything.
“How disappointing. Here I thought you might enjoy some reminders of your pleasant experiences with that student of yours.”
Unable to stop herself, Sadayo vigorously shakes her head.
“Well. It’s fine. I’ll be seeing you soon, sensei.” A hand touches her back, sending goosebumps shooting down her spine.
Desperate, she finally hisses out, “I can call the cops right now.”
“Oh?” The person laughs, so light and unaffected as to hardly be there at all. “If you feel you must. Just… do be careful with them. Don’t you think they already have enough trouble on their hands?”
She stays stock-still over the remainder of the train ride. No one looks or comments. When she arrives home, there’s a new parcel of photographs waiting for her. This time, her real name lies in beautifully brushed kanji. Sadayo tears it open with her bare hands, sending photos exploding across the entryway.
This time, there’s not a single shot of her.
This time, every picture is of him. Them. Kurusu sitting next to a blonde woman, leaning close to whisper in her ear. Kurusu at a museum next to a woman dressed in immaculate scene fashion. Kurusu holding what looks to be a real gun by a man with a tattoo on his neck. Kurusu in a dimly lit bar as a black-haired woman wraps an arm around his waist. Kurusu – consorting with adults of all stripes, working in different uniforms, and not a one with any of his school friends.
“What the fuck,” she whispers. “What are you trying to say.”
She’s not jealous. She isn’t bitter. She isn’t mad. She isn’t sure what’s running through her head, but there’s a sensation tickling the back of her mind, twisting her into pretzels at the mere thought of how this person is tracking Akira Kurusu even more than they’re stalking her.
“It’s not even about me,” she says to herself. Kicking the pictures out of the way, Sadayo stumbles into her futon and buries her head in a pillow.
Nothing can ever be about her.
She can’t tell him about this. Can’t tell them. Just interacting with a kid like this was putting them in danger – was making her life worse – she needed to cut and run – she needed to protect them – needed him to stay the hell away from her so whatever freak was after him would stop coming after her.
This wasn’t happening until he discovered her secret. Sadayo’s face rubs against the pillow and she forces herself to breathe shallow through the fabric. It’s a problem. It’s a problem and she doesn’t have solutions, but she does have one thing. One person.
“Me?”
“A dozen or so, yeah,” Sadayo drawls. “You picked a fight with a real freak.”
Inside Leblanc’s attic, Kurusu is sweeping dust while she lays across the thing they call a couch. Much as she can figure, it’s an old booth that the owner of the place wanted gone but didn’t have the wherewithal to have a hauling truck do it for him. Dust billows into the air and settles behind them rather than going into the handpan they’re holding down with a foot. A ghost of irritation settles upon their body language – almost entertaining if not for the situation at hand.
“Guess it makes sense. It’s kind of my fault you’re in this mess, then?” he asks, like it’s just that easy.
“Of course it is!” she harrumphs, kicking her feet in the air like a child. It isn’t like Becky and it most certainly isn’t the behavior of Sadayo Kawakami. Being around Kurusu makes her into some third thing, some Other that she hates more than the rest. But it makes it so much easier when she can just say – “So what are you going to do to fix it, hm?”
It comes out as teasing, like what Becky would do, but so much more mean than what her maid persona was supposed to be. Some men like a mean girl, but that usually predicates a girl’s relative youth and vitality. Whatever Akira is – whatever Kurusu is – she doesn’t really know. Doesn’t understand. What possesses a teenager to spend thousands of yen on a maid service they can’t meaningfully use? What possesses a teenager to spend so much time around adults in seedy situations? What possesses a child to do anything that isn’t goofing off and spending time with friends?
Not for the first time, Sadayo Kawakami worries about Akira Kurusu.
“You’re the one being hurt,” he says, all confidence and gentility. “I’ll stop them. Whoever’s doing this.”
Sadayo lets out a long sigh before rolling onto her back. “Unless you plan on having those Phantom Thieves fix this for you, I don’t see how you’ll manage.”
“I will,” he insists.
“The only clues you have are based on circumstantial evidence,” she mutters. “There’s no way you’ll be able to do anything.”
She rolls further, burying her face against the back of the couch. The thought of police runs through her head, but she nips it in the bud as it comes. Cops wouldn’t look favorably on a woman in her position, even if she weren’t doing openly illegal work. Worse, they’d be bound to take it as a strike against Kurusu when all they’d ever done was try to help her. The booth’s fabric hurts her nose, but she shoves herself against it.
Does it really have to be such a crime for someone to be on her side? For once?
There’s no one to answer the question. All Kurusu’s blustering comes to a single statement – “I know someone. A detective.”
“Oh,” she deadpans. “And here I thought you were a delinquent.”
Rolling back over, her arm hangs over the side of the couch, wrist draped graceless on the floor. Above her, Kurusu grins.
“I am.”
“So how’s a detective going to help you.”
To that, he shrugs. “I never said anything about helping. I just know one. So I’ve got this under control.”
Sadayo feels drunk when she grimaces. It’s hard to remember the last time she slept a proper night’s rest and the urge to yawn overwhelms her. When her watery eyes reopen, Kurusu’s grin has softened to a baleful smile.
“Just trust me, sensei.”
She didn’t. Couldn’t. Or … shouldn’t.
“Whatever,” she mutters. Her eyes drop back closed. There was nothing she wanted more. “Do what you want.”
+1
“I’m not meeting a client at a hotel,” she hisses into the phone, desperate to keep her voice low for the thin walls of her apartment.
“The client insists.”
“I – I don’t do that kind of work!”
There’s nothing but static for a short time. Finally – “The client confirms they are paying for a cleaning and nothing else. If you won’t take the job, we’ll inform them and attempt to reassign.”
“Attempt to reassign?” she whispers weakly.
“He requested you in particular.”
She can’t very well say no to that.
The hotel is middle-grade. She’d seen better on television, but it’s nicer than the places Shujin books for their second years. Sadayo pulls her out of season coat tighter around her person and gets a keycard from reception. There’s a blockade between their eyeline, but she still imagines the receptionist’s mocking gaze upon her as she walks unevenly in her heels to the elevator.
When the door opens, no one’s inside. She takes a few steps forward, allows the door to shut behind her, and slowly turns to find – she was wrong.
“Not the most observant,” says her stalker, standing from a chair pulled to sit in the opening’s blind spot. “Are you?”
At least, she can only assume it’s him. He’s deadpan, all flat affect, as had been the quiet voice behind her on the train. However, there’s no face to match the voice. He wears a mask, looped behind his ears, and sunglasses. The two together effectively cover his entire face. On top of that, he wears one of the ugliest wigs she’s ever seen – and Sadayo has seen ugly wigs. It’s black, badly cropped and hardly styled. He seems to notice her staring.
“I can’t very well come undisguised, now, can I?”
“You – what the hell is wrong with you!” She steps forward, but from his pocket comes a small black box with two metal wires sticking out from the top. Squinting, she recognizes it from television. All her pep dies in an instant. “T-tasers are illegal for civilians to own… you know…”
“I think we’ve established I don’t care all that much about the relative legality of things, don’t you think?” He laughs lightly and waves the device in the air. Every question stands as a further mockery. “This is just a deterrent. I don’t intend to use it as long as you intend to stay civil.”
“And how is cornering me in a hotel room civil.” She curses him out in her mind.
“This is just a formality,” he soothes, “Because after this, we can be done with one another! I thought one proper meeting to discuss things like adults would be nice.”
Tensing her shoulders, Sadayo asked, “Why now.”
The stalker shrugs. “Well, your boytoy seems to have figured me out,” he says. “Took them long enough, hm? This trouble all could have been avoided if they’d maybe thought to consider who had the skills to do this in the first place. I suppose they aren’t always as clever as everyone thinks.”
For everything he says that’s wrong, all she can mumble is, “... not my boytoy.”
“What was that?”
She slams a heel against the ground, regretting it in the next second for how it sends an unpleasant vibration up her leg. “I said he isn’t my boytoy! He’s my student!”
“And that’s better… how? You really do fascinate me, Becky. They spend their time with so many adults, but none are quite so pathetic as you.” He settles back in his seat, kicking up a leg to cross over its pair. “But for all of how desperate you are, you still see yourself as above actual sex workers, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she mutters. “I’m not doing anything illegal… I’m just cleaning.”
“Cleaning and showing off your body to the highest bidder, yes, yes. You’re quite unpopular from what I’ve heard. It must be nice to have a child to drop so much money on you when you’re so desperate for positive attention.”
“I’m not happy about that!”
If she could, Sadayo would walk over and strangle the man on the spot – but even in heels, she can tell he’s taller than her. She could probably use her weight to pin him to the chair, but he has that weapon in hand and no matter how casually he speaks, there’s no doubt in her mind that he’d use it on her in an instant.
“If you’d just be honest with yourself, I wouldn’t be so hard on you, Becky.” He kisses his teeth and rests his elbows against the arms of the chair, bobbing a foot restlessly. “If you truly felt bad about it, you’d have made the leap to your sister company before taking money from a student. But you feel relieved. You have someone who wants to save you now.”
She turns away. The bed is neatly made. There’s nothing for her to touch, nothing to clean, nothing she can do to busy her hands.
“Considering what you did to that other boy, I was concerned you might have fallen into your same old behaviors.”
Her fists clench involuntarily.
“Have you ever wondered if the Phantom Thieves would change your heart? Free you from your sins and make you sob out your crimes to the world when you were too terrified to do it on your own?”
She spits out the words, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Now that’s what I love to hear,” he laughs. “So why are you paying those monsters? Why bother when you could move on with your life?”
“Because – Because I…”
She is at fault for it. Just as much as she is at fault for using Akira Kurusu. Just as much as she doesn’t deserve to be a teacher. Just as much as she doesn’t deserve to escape this career path.
And yet.
The idea of admitting such to a man who had revels in her misery is anathema.
She spins around.
“I’m done with this – I’m done with men like you,” she spits. “I’m done with people like you! And – And!” She stalks over, all too aware of how he trains the taser in her direction, and stops about two feet away.
“And?” he drawls.
“And I fucking quit!”
Underneath that mask, she hopes he’s angry at her. Hopes he’s disgusted and annoyed and through with her.
But when she pauses, staring at his hands, all he says is a quiet – “Good.”
She grabs the door’s handle and rips it open, slamming the entire thing shut behind herself. Sadayo wobbles home on uncertain feet. When she arrives, there’s a message on her personal phone – it’s the parents. The family. Shaking hands click the message open. The contents are unimaginable and yet all she can think about is her stalker's final word.
We’re sorry, says the message.
Please don’t contact us again.