Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Yellow eyes widened, staring down the barrel of a gun.

"You're Shido's, aren't you?" She said. Her voice was unexpectedly measured.

He'd been fighting all afternoon to get to her Shadow. His lungs burned.

"I'm not his," he snapped. "He doesn't own me."

"No, no, of course not—but you work for him, don't you?" She took a step back, stance widening. 

"It's not your business. You'll be dead soon, anyway."

She looked stricken, then her jaw set.

"I can't die yet."

"Oh, I'm sure you can," he gloated.

He fired, and she dodged to the side. Wings sprouted from her back with a horrible cracking sound.

Finally. 

He called forth Loki, but before he could attack, a wave of psychokinesis sent his head spinning.

"You're young, aren't you? He's got something on you," she shouted. He snarled in response.

He struck in the general direction of the sound, but hit nothing. When his vision cleared, he saw Isshiki a couple feet away, hovering with her forearms crossed defensively.

Usually, when the shadows transformed, they became unrecognizable, but Isshiki's face was identical, even attached to a giant sphinx. 

Isshiki was smart, but not smart enough to make up the difference in their strength. 

Soon enough she collapsed to the ground, wings torn and bloody. 

"I need more time… I just need more time-!" Her monstrous features shrank away, leaving only the woman behind. She held herself up by her arms.

He prowled forward until he was standing directly in front of her. She turned her face up to look at him through broken glasses. Her pupils shrank to pinpricks.

"Wait—you hate him too, don't you? I have something you can- we can use against him. We could crush him together!"

He pointed his gun away. "What is it?"

She hesitated. Her breathing was raspy and strange—internal damage, most likely. 

"I can't tell you yet. But-"

He sighed. 

"Well, it was worth a shot. Goodbye, Isshiki."

"Wait—no—please-!"

He swung his pistol to sit neatly in line with her forehead, and fired.

The shadow dissolved completely before its head hit the ground.
-

Wakaba Isshiki died after collapsing into traffic. The only witness was her daughter. Detectives ruled it a suicide. 

-

It wasn't his first homicide.

-

He wasn't a coward, or some naive, sniveling child. He knew exactly what he was doing, and why he was doing it. 

So why did he dream of her face?

-

Insurance. That's what it was.

Goro knew he was swimming with sharks. He needed every advantage he could get if he was to ruin Shido's life. He doubted it was worth more than the information he already had, but if there was something important he was missing, he would be cursing himself later.

Some months had passed since Isshiki's death. The best time to find whatever she was hiding would have been right after he killed her Shadow, but the second best time was today. 

Her lab was wiped clean. There was a "horrible accident" which forced the building to foreclose. 

His next best chance was investigating whatever was left of her personal belongings. As involved in her work as she was, he doubted that she never took any of it home with her. 

Her former house was empty. None of her immediate relatives had anything promising, no storage unit under her name. 

Eventually, he found one Sojiro Sakura. He was promising, having been a close confidant and friend for over a decade. If someone other than her family took in her things, it would be him. 

He recently quit his government job and opened a café, which earned his suspicion. It was the action of a man running away. But why? He wasn't involved in Isshiki's death, and while he had worked with her before, he hadn't been responsible for her in many years. He didn't have any connection to Shido that Goro could see, either. 

It had to be that he knew too much, and bailed when Isshiki was silenced. 

It was easy enough to confirm his position behind the bar of his café, easy enough to pick the lock on an upper-floor window and open it—credit to his experience infiltrating palaces.

The room looked like it was being used mostly for storage. There was a desk and whatnot, but beside that was piles of boxes. He spotted at least one labeled Wakaba, reading by the moonlight filtering in. 

Perfect. 

He had been depending more on Shido's orders recently, but it seemed he was still perfectly capable of collecting information on his own. He granted himself a smug expression.

Just as he was reaching for the Wakaba box, there was a click, and light flooded the room. His blood ran cold.

A girl was standing in the doorway. She was horribly thin, face and body swallowed by long messy hair and humongous glasses, and seemingly hand-me-down clothes that hung off her body.

Fuck.

There was a resemblance, even at a glance. This was probably Isshiki's daughter. He hadn't put any thought to her while he'd been investigating. 

Of course Sakura took her in. Her relatives' homes had shown no signs of an extra person living there. If he was to be responsible for her things, why not her daughter as well?

She inhaled, and he felt himself tense in preparation for her terrified cry.

Instead, she shut her eyes so tight her whole face scrunched, and shook her head severely. 

Well. 

Not what he expected, but he'd take it. Maybe if he left now she'd think it was all in her head.

He took a step backward,

and promptly sent a stack of folders cascading to the ground.

The girl's head snapped up. They stared at the fallen folders in mutual disbelief. His eyes darted back to the girl just in time to see realization set in.

Her eyes were as wide as saucers. Her chest rose and fell faster than he thought possible.

Shit. He had to fix this. He could fix this.

He put up his hands to placate her.

"Listen," he hissed, low under his breath, "I'm not here to hurt you, alright? If anyone finds out, we'll both be in danger, so if you're half as smart as your mother, you'll keep this to yourself, understand?"

She just stared back at him with damp, shiny eyes. 

"Understand?"

She flinched, then nodded very slightly. 

Good. He nodded in return, and turned to go.

A hand caught on his sleeve. He snatched it away and turned back, the urge to attack rising in his chest.

"You… knew mom?"

He stifled his aggression, and swallowed. A half-formed plan was building in his mind—a web of lies unfolding.

"Yes. We were colleagues, you could say. We had a… common enemy. Before she passed," (here she winced) "she told me she had something that could ruin him. I've been looking for it."

Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "En-enemy?"

The thought of Shido had his blood boiling. He had to be calm.

"The man who was funding her research," he said, voice pitching higher without his intention. Calm down. "He is more despicable than you can possibly imagine."

She chewed on her thumbnail. She kept looking behind her.

"So-Sojiro?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Not him."

She frowned and shook her head. Ah.

"That man will be of no help to me. He worked closely with some very powerful individuals before your mother's death. What pretense do I have to trust him with this? You are different. You are her daughter, and I'm sure you'll be loyal to her, and let me go."

He watched her swallow his story completely, watched her emotions play out on her face. It ended on determination, brows furrowed, mouth pointed.

"I'll help."

He blinked. He had underestimated her ambition. 

Still, so far she'd been easily manipulated, and it would be much more convenient …

"I'm not sure…" he hemmed, looking dramatically away. "I already told you, it's not safe." 

He put a hand to his chest solemnly. "Even so, Isshiki left this mission to me. I'm duty-bound to carry it through." He clenched a fist. "Even if it costs me my life."

He glanced in her direction. Oh, she totally bought it.

She was wringing her hands. "She's my mom. I have to—I have to make it up to her." She took a few steps closer, pushing him back. She was very insistent for someone who could barely speak above a whisper.

"Alright, alright," he said, hands up. "I'll let you help, but you have to do exactly what I say, understand?"

She nodded furiously, eyes sparkling with pathos. He almost wanted to laugh at her naivety.

There was a creak from further inside the house. Time to go.

"Give me your number," he said, taking out his phone. "We'll discuss this more later."

She saved herself on his phone as "Futaba", but there was no way he was giving her his real name. 

"You can call me Robin Hood," he said, typing it in to the name box. 

He felt pretty clever about that. Certainly, it represented a more palatable side of him than Loki, and the association with justice would make her trust him more. 

She paused for a moment, then nodded. He gave her back her phone.

He scaled back down. His arms ached like hell by the end, and his ankles stung when he hit the ground. Then, he tore off into the night.

-

It took her a while to work up the courage to text him. 

She saw him knock over all that stuff, and they were still knocked over after he left. And she had a new number in her phone. But she wasn't sure he was real, still.

She went back and forth over whether she should text him at all. She couldn't just let a weird, scrappy teenager who called himself something lame like Robin Hood and talked like he ate a thesaurus into Sojiro's house. What if he hurt Sojiro? Then she would have killed two people.

At the same time, she would work herself into a panic nightly over the mere thought that he wasn't real. The idea that she could do something for her mom, something that could justify her existence, was too tantalizing to let go. 

It was so selfish of her. The exact kind of selfishness that killed her mom, and made her family hate her. But, but, still, if she just fixed this, if she just made things okay, the voices might stop, for even a moment.

If mom's boss was evil, then she would bring him down. But if Robin Hood was lying, and he was the evil one, she could defeat him, too. Then Mom might forgive her.

She would just have to be careful. 

-

Futaba texted him when her guardian was gone for the evening. All clear.

They started by simply checking the contents of the boxes and sorting them by relevance. 

It seemed, at least, that the boxes were not packed randomly. At a glance, a box with clothes in it would be just clothes, a box with files in it would be just files, etc.

Personal belongings went on one side of the room, and work went on the other. Unsurprisingly, they were about evenly matched by volume.

The "work stuff" was dense enough that he couldn't glean anything useful without close reading. While less interesting, the personal items had a certain odd feeling associated with them.

Sitting in the room that held all that was left of Isshiki's life, he considered, briefly, how many boxes he would fill, were someone to pack up after him and take them all home. 

Not many, after years of being picked over by vultures and forced frugality. He swallowed the sudden burst of rage. Things are different now.

Futaba managed to communicate decently over text, but in person she was quiet as a grave, and scurried around like a frightened mouse, hiding in corners with a box in her lap, hiding her face behind her hair, hiding, hiding. At least she didn't get in his way. 

However, as they went, she got weepy. 

There was a long-necked sweater they found in one of the boxes. It was fairly high-quality. He didn't see anything of note about it, but Futaba stared at it for a long while, then pulled it into her lap and started crying. 

"You don't need to unpack them," he said, though he knew it was useless. 

"Abwuhbwuhbubu," she cried into the sweater.

He let her cry. But he could only be patient for so long.

"...are you going to help or not?" He said. "If you can't investigate without getting, snotty-"

"I can do it," she wheezed. Her voice was weak and scratchy. She sniffled and wiped her puffy face. It was the first and only thing she had said out loud since he arrived.

He looked down his nose at her. "Alright. But if you end up slowing me down, I'll have to ask you to leave." 

She shook her head and put the sweater away. Her arms were shaking.

They worked in silence the rest of the evening.

-

Progress was infuriatingly slow.

The boxes did not seem that multitudinous, but it took three evenings for them to finish the primary sorting. And, given how sparse his free time was, that meant three weeks had passed before he could even start properly looking in the damn things.

There was a box of mixed electronic devices—Futaba claimed it immediately. When he asked her what she was doing, she stuttered something about building PCs, then started crying again. 

At least she knew how to cry quietly, even if the sniffles and muted sobs dug at his nerves. 

He supervised her for a while, and was pleasantly surprised to see her acting quite competently. She had a knack for technology, it seemed.

While Futaba tapped away at the desk, he read. 

"Dense" had been an understatement. 

The files were full of coded language and specialist terms which went completely over his head, many of which had no publicly available definition. He had prided himself on his ability to read quickly, but that pride was ground into dust by the first technical document he attempted.

He yearned to call Loki and blow the whole room apart.

When he raised his eyes for but a moment, he saw Futaba cowering in her chair, looking at him with wide eyes.

"What."

She shook her head firmly as if to say nothing and went back to her computer, working with frenzied energy.

-

They were working in their typical silence, when she suddenly said:

"It's all gone." 

What did Futaba do now?

"What is?" Resisting a long-suffering sigh, he came up to look over her shoulder.

She shied back, but managed to stutter: "Her research. It's all gone."

"Maybe you just haven't found any yet."

She gave him a look like he was the stupid one.

He bit his tongue. If he snapped at her, she'd just hide again. 

He had to be the adult, here. It wasn't his fault he was forced to ally with a child. 

Oh so patiently, he said, "give it a little more time."

She curled up in her chair like a crumpled paper ball, distraught.

She shook her head no. "It's not there."

Patient. I'm being patient.

If he could kowtow to Shido's sick whims, then he could keep himself from snapping at some brat.

He took a deep breath.

"Maybe it's just not digital. Some places only keep hardcopies, to protect against crackers."

"But her research…"

"Give me some time. I'll see what I can do."

She crumpled further.

"Can't you just go faster…?"

Ohhh…. Oh ho ho ho… she dared to say that?

"Do you think, I do this for fun?" He said, measuring each word carefully. 

Futaba stared at him questioningly.

"I have a job, and highschool, and I need to wait for your say-so to come here in the first place. I'm moving as fast as I possibly can. Could you do all that? I don't think so!"

The last part came out as a snarl. It sent her scrambling out of her chair and hiding behind a stack of boxes.

"Are you hiding again? Are you seriously three years old? You pull this shit and still think you're so much better than me?"

She put her hands over her ears and shook her head back and forth. So fucking childish .

"No, you don't get to block me out! Listen to me, dammit!"

In a haze of fury, he snatched her wrists to pull her hands off her ears. But the moment he made contact with her skin, she screamed.

It was so shockingly loud, after weeks of whispering and tiny squeaks, that he immediately let go. 

She screamed like her body was being torn apart. Like she was really, truly on the verge of death. The sound was unbearable. It made his stomach turn. He was forced to cover his own ears, stumbling back onto the floor.

Once the scream died, she was left gulping for breath on the floor, face red and tear-stained. 

They stared at each other for a moment in the silence that followed. The scream has sucked all the air out of the room.

She's just a little kid, he thought, looking at her tiny, shivering form. This isn't how heroes behave. 

A shame he hadn't felt in a while washed hot down his throat. 

I'm not really a hero, though. 

But I told her I was. I can't let her hate me. 

"I didn't…" he swallowed uncomfortably. His voice box was full of cotton.

Just say it, dammit.

"I didn't mean to scare you." 

It came out in bits and pieces, like he had to cough each word up. 

Futaba said nothing back.

The door slammed open. 

Shit.

"Futaba?" 

There was a bitter taste. Of course she cried and someone came running. No such thing ever happened for him.

He glanced back at her, unsure. He had to go. He couldn't afford to get caught now.

He went back out the window.

-

He fucked it up. 

It was over. Futaba was going to report him to her guardian, and he was going to use his government contacts to kill him. Or tell Shido, which was worse.

He went through the next week in anticipation of a bomb going off. Any next moment could be his last moment alive, and there was nothing he could do about it.

He couldn't kill Futaba, or Sojiro Sakura. Neither of them had palaces. He checked.

When his phone buzzed suddenly that night, he almost dropped it. 

[FS: I'm sorry for being weak

FS: you can come back]

She was sorry?

…was it a trap?

What would 'Robin Hood' say?

[RH: I will take partial responsibility, as I have been tired, and responded inappropriately.

FS: sokay 

FS: I don't want you to be mad at me

RH: I'm not mad. 

RH: I was frustrated, but it's not your fault.

FS: really?

RH: Yes.

RH: I won't yell at you again.

FS: there really isn't any research left I promise

FS: I checked everywhere in the computer I've been looking all the time

RH: We'll see what we can find in her physical documents. 

FS: okay]

So it hadn't been a big deal, after all. 

Still, she was more delicate than he had realized. He needed to be careful to keep their partnership intact.

-

They weren't able to meet that day, so in a gesture toward progress, Futaba tried to explain her technological process some more instead, using the instant messenger.

It wasn't too hard to understand. She could be quite loquacious on the subject. 

When they did meet again, there was no indication of damage to their partnership. 

Futaba, if anything, seemed more cheerful and sociable. Which didn't mean much, given her prior behavior. 

As they looked, it turned out that she hadn't been exaggerating. The research they found was hardly substantial. It was often censored or contained obvious mistakes. He found a paper with a big x on it in gel pen, with the word IGNORE written in the corner. (Apparently she'd been unsatisfied with that one.)

There was a hole where Isshiki's research should be. 

"It was probably confiscated."

He wasn't surprised. Isshiki had died for a reason, after all. He had simply expected it to be less thorough. 

"By your boss?" 

He nodded.

She stared at the floor. 

"We have to get it back."

Her face was red, eyebrows knotted. 

"That's not possible," he said.

She shook her head frantically. "I'm not letting him have it."

"I'm telling you, it's too dangerous."

She took a long moment to simply look at her hands.

"...what if it's what you're looking for?"

He thought about it. 

If it was just in her research, there was no reason to treat it as secret. It had to be something particular to Shido. 

"Then he took it because he knew she could ruin him," Futaba said, gaining confidence in her theory.

He couldn't discredit the possibility entirely. He hadn't the faintest idea what Isshiki had been planning, what she could have been thinking when she died.

"We can't go for him directly," he said slowly, pulling on the thread. 

She bounced in her seat. "But her coworkers should still have some of it, right?"

He pursed his lips.

"I'll look into it."

-

Futaba insisted on coming along. 

He was against it, but she wouldn't let it go. 

So, after several arguments, he taught her how to sneak out a window. 

Sojiro was gone for the night. According to Futaba, he was incredibly fussy about it, but she convinced him that she would be fine. It was just one night, and she was usually alone in the house, anyway. 

Their target was a researcher who had continued to collaborate with Shido.

"Most of them left after the lab was shut down, but some of them are working directly for him , rather than being independent researchers with various sources of funding."

"The lab shut down?" She squeaked. 

"Hm. He got what he wanted from her, after all."

She was quiet for a while after that. 

Igarashi Ryuu's house wasn't an estate or anything, but it was above and beyond anything Isshiki could have afforded. Perks of dirty money, he supposed. 

"This is it," he said. "His home security is rather lax. Some of the houses in this neighborhood have cameras, so stay close." 

He had staked it out thoroughly before bringing her here. He didn't need her making a little mistake and blowing his cover.

They were both bundled up heavily, partly because it was February, and partly to obscure their identities. It made climbing the house cumbersome, but he saw an unlocked window…

"Here." He pushed it open, and entered. Futaba scrambled up after him.

At her worried glancing around, he said, "He'll be at a banquet all night. Those parties go for hours."

He navigated them to the office. 

Coming in from the cold, wrapped up as they were, they were starting to sweat. 

Futaba did her only job and plugged a flashdrive into his PC tower. 

She sat and watched it, though the monitor was off and nothing visible was happening. Goro got on looking for anything extra. 

He rifled quickly through the drawers, until he saw a file marked Persona Manifestation. 

His gloved hands itched. 

"Let's go," Futaba whispered, suddenly beside him. 

He gave a half-cognizant nod. Now or never.

On a moment's impulse, he grabbed it. Blood was rushing in his ears. 

They went out the way they came, careful to not be seen. He didn't breathe until they were in Sakura's backyard. 

He lowered his face mask and exhaled, leaning back against the house. Futaba crouched beside him and picked at the dirt. 

"You always talk about how dangerous this is," she said. 

He frowned. "Because it is. This only went so smoothly because of all the research I put into it-"

"No, I mean…" 

She drew a circle. 

"This is like, a conspiracy."

About time she caught on. He had all but said so outright. "Yes."

"My mom…"

She took a deep, shuddering breath. Her voice came out so quietly he had to strain to hear it.

"Was she murdered?"

His breath misted in front of him. His nose was turning red from the cold.

Yongen-jaya was quiet at night. There was still plenty of light pollution, but it got darker here than it did back at his apartment.

When he didn't respond, Futaba sniffled. 

"Because… the men in the suits, they told me she—she hated me. And that's why. Because I drove her insane."

So that's what happened.

She hugged her knees. 

"And I always see her, watching me. T-telling me it's my fault. I killed her."

She sobbed, and something in him… crumpled. 

He didn't really pity her. He didn't really care about her at all. But he was tired of watching her cry. 

"Wakaba Isshiki was killed."

Blunt. To the point. 

"She was murdered for her research. Her death was made to look like a suicide."

He folded his arms.

"That's all I know."

Liar.

Futaba sobbed and flung herself at him, arms wrapped around his midsection. She was a head shorter than him, and her face smushed into the center of his abdomen.

He startled, arms hovering in the air. 

…

…???

"Get off," he said, but she was crying too loudly to hear him. Her face was wet and gross and warm and she was snotting up his clothes. The metal of her glasses was poking his stomach. 

He looked around anxiously for witnesses. He didn't need a worried neighbor interrupting them.

He dug his thumbs between him and her arms and attempted to pry her off. She was unexpectedly difficult to shake off. 

"Sakura, get off," he repeated. She shook her head. 

The pressure around his waist was strange. He didn't know when the last time someone hugged him was. He certainly didn't know the last time someone cried on him…

They were on the floor. Her face was buried in his shoulder, thin arms swallowing him. Their knees were touching. 

"I don't want to…" she cried. He didn't know what she didn't want to do. He couldn't remember what it was. Work, probably. Maybe just being alive. "I don't want to…!"

"It's okay, mom."

Tears dripped onto his shoulder. He couldn't see her face, just a curtain of hair. 

His arms dropped limply to his sides.

It was cold out, but warming up. The streetlights were on. A long ways away, he heard a train running.

Futaba peeled herself off him. She took off her glasses and rubbed at her eyes with her fists.

"Don't do that," he spat.

She drooped a little, eyes shiny. "Oh. Sorry."

She sniffled. 

"I wouldn't have known. Without you. Thank you, Robin."

His stomach twisted. 

"Don't waste your gratitude. I'm not here to make you feel better."

"Well that's stupid, because you did anyway."

She poked him in the stomach and he smacked her hand. 

"Get back in. I have to leave."

"Okay…" 

There was a spark of hope in her eyes. 

"I'll see you again soon?"

"...sure."

-

Futaba went right to sleep and didn't wake up until Sojiro returned that evening.

"I'm home!" He said.

"Woagh," she said.

She stumbled out of bed, blanket still wrapped around her shoulders. 

She felt brand new. She felt like she'd been hit by a bus.

It was all like a dream still.

It didn't make mom any less dead, but the guilt was receding. 

Mom didn't kill herself.

It wasn't her fault.

She loved her. Mom loved her. She knew that. Mom never would have wanted her relatives to treat her the way they did. She just wanted Futaba to be happy. 

She wrapped the truth up tight and held it warm in her chest.

Mom loved her.

And now she was going to find out who did it and bring them to justice.

She waddled into the kitchen as a duvet burrito. Sojiro was putting away groceries.

"Doing okay?"

She nodded. 

"Um." 

He looked at her.

She still didn't like asking for things, but Sojiro was nice. 

Sojiro loved her. Just like mom did.

"Can we have curry? Mom's curry?"

His eyes went wide. 

"Yeah. Yeah, of course. Are you hungry now?"

She nodded.

"I'll get right on that, then."

She went and sat at the table to wait.

Her eyes were crusty. She was trying not to cry again. 

Enough crying. She was going to get revenge.

She listened to him puttering around the kitchen until she drifted off. 

She woke up with her face on the table. Sojiro was bringing her the curry.

The familiar smell was enough to make her tear up instantly. So much for not crying.

"I hope this meets your standards," Sojiro said.

"Yeah."

After a moment to swallow the tears back down, she started to eat.

Mom…

Once she started she couldn't stop. She ate greedily. It was like coming home. And it wasn't her, it would never be her, but it was warm and she missed it and she couldn't believe she decided to never eat it again.

"Woah, don't choke."

She gulped down a glass of water, clearing her throat but making her burp. 

She scrubbed at her eyes with a fist.

"It's good," she said. 

"I'm glad."

Taking slower, smaller bites so she could savor what was left, she thought about Robin. 

He was the one that gave her her mom back. Maybe he'd like some curry, too.

-

Igarashi's headshot stared up at him from the file on Shido's desk.

"...This is a member of your research team, isn't it?" Goro asked.

Shido hmphed.

Don't react. Don't flinch. 

"He's under suspicion of selling research to third parties," he said. "He conveniently lost some high-clearance data."

He shook his head.

"I don't need to tell you how important it is that no one else gets access to this research." 

Goro nodded, flipping through the file despite knowing exactly what he would find. "Of course. So you think it was intentional…?"

"Whether or not it was intentional doesn't matter. It's a shame, but greed often eclipses better sense. His death will be a sufficient warning not to bite the hand that feeds."

From deep underwater, he watched himself neatly shut the folder. "I'll look into it immediately, sir," his voice said.

Shido smirked. "Thank you, Akechi. At least someone knows how to do their job around here."

-

Goro crawled in through the window.

"That data better be good enough, because we are never doing that again."

Futaba frowned at him. "Um, hello to you too?"

"They discovered the data breach. It hasn't come back to us yet, but I'm not risking anything else."

She froze. "Oh."

"Yes, oh. …What's that?"

There was a pile of snacks on the desk in front of Futaba. She looked sheepish.

"Snacks? You know, in case we're hungry?"

He looked through them suspiciously. 

He was hungry, actually. He was often hungry. There simply wasn't enough time in the day for him to beat all thee palaces and be the number one student in his class and eat three square meals.

It wasn't like he wasn't used to it, but this time there was the added luxury that he was choosing to forgo meals. 

His traitorous stomach growled. 

Futaba looked unbearably smug. 

"I-" his face was hot. "I didn't have lunch today."

"Oh, me neither. I forget a lot."

She ripped open a chips packet and started devouring them.

"Sojiro lets me keep all the snacks I want in my room, though, so I at least have that."

"Mm." The unopened taiyaki was calling for him. He grabbed it before she could change her mind about sharing.

As he nibbled on it, he noticed Futaba staring at him. Her big round eyes were off-putting.

"What."

"Um. Do you like it…?"

He swallowed, brushing the crumbs on his hands off on his jeans.

"It's adequate."

Futaba brightened.

-

He was checking through the boxes they had deemed unimportant, just in case there was something they missed.

Last night, he woke up in a cold sweat thinking about secret codes hiding under a pair of stockings that he had missed because of his own hubris. 

The mind-numbing task of packing and unpacking a bunch of meaningless things was getting to him. 

He glanced over at Futaba, wondering about her own progress, when a familiar website made him freeze.

"Are you seriously reading fanfiction right now?"

Her shoulders shot up, and she peeked guiltily over at him. 

"I'm bored…" she grumbled.

There should have been enough material on that flashdrive to sate her for a month at least, but two weeks later, she had lost interest, having squeezed everything worthwhile out of it already.

"You would be less bored if you helped me."

Sighing, she tapped the keyboard, putting the computer to sleep, then wandered over and plopped down next to him. 

He shoved a box at her, and her face crumpled in a frown. There were deep bruises beneath her eyes.

"...are you going to cry again?"

"No…" 

Dutifully, she began her task. 

A few minutes later, she said: 

"...you recognized the website."

"I…" he wrinkled his nose. "I used to peruse it. Occasionally. A long time ago."

"Like, how long ago?"

"When I was younger."

Futaba puffed out her cheeks. "You're so slippery," she muttered. "What did you read about?"

When he didn't respond, the room filled with quiet.

At some point, it began to crawl under his skin.

"Featherman," he mumbled, like it was compelled out of him. 

Futaba beamed.

"Really? What's your OTP?"

"I'm not so shallow that my interest in the show is solely centered on shipping of all things," he sniffed. "I actually care about the plot."

"What? I care about the plot too! Shipping is part of the plot!"

"No it isn't. It's just about instant gratification."

"What's wrong with gratification, huh? Why are you reading at all if you aren't getting gratified?"

"Wha—you're making it sound weird." 

"No I'm not."

"You make it sound… sexual, or something." His cheeks glowed.

"Well it is sometimes!"

"Don't—stop being weird!"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "You're the one being weird. Shouldn't you have had the talk by now?"

"I know what sex is!"

"Then why are you so weird about it… it's just sex." She said, as if it was the most obvious, banal thing in the world.

"That's enough," he said, putting his hands over his ears. "Just—shut up."

"You're such a baby," she grumbled. 

Once she finished with her box, she threw it down and crossed her arms. "This is stupid. Shouldn't we be finding my mom's research?"

Like that was happening any time soon. "I'm working on it." 

"Work on it faster."

His eye twitched. Where was this brattiness coming from?

But he had learned his lesson from last time. He took a deep breath and centered himself.

"I'll tell you when I figure it out, ok? Just—keep working."

He pushed his current box away, done with it for the moment.

As he went to grab another, Futaba spoke up:

"You can take some of it with you."

Now that was unexpected.

"Won't your guardian notice?"

"He doesn't look at this stuff. If you take one or three boxes he won't find out."

It was a very tempting proposal. 

He ran his finger over the soft material of a stuffed animal that took up the majority of his current box. If I had this many boxes of mom, I wouldn't part with them for anything.

How naive was she to just let him take it?

Well. If it benefited him, then she could keep on being ignorant.

"Okay. If you're fine with it, I'll put together a box to take back with me. I can't promise I'll bring it back quickly. I have a packed schedule."

"That's okay. It's for mom, anyway." 

His mouth tasted sour. "Yes. For her."

-

"The guy we stole from died," Futaba said.

He better have. Goro pulled an all-nighter on his palace. 

Still, he didn't expect Futaba to find out. She was more on top of it than he realized.

"It's just like I told you. The conspiracy got to him," he said. 

Futaba didn't respond. She was oddly somber. 

"Is it… our fault?"

"It wouldn't have happened if he had better security, or better yet, if he hadn't gotten involved with that man in the first place."

She melted into her knees. "But if we didn't steal from him…"

He sighed. "Technically, yes, he would likely be alive."

She hid her face in her arms.

"Are you really upset about this? He betrayed your mother, remember? For nothing more than his own greed."

"I didn't want him to die."

"Yes, well." He sort of shrugged. Not much to do about that. 

Her shoulders were shaking. Shit. This was his problem now.

"...if you're going to blame yourself, don't. I knew the risks, I chose the target, and I led the operation." He also pulled the trigger, but she didn't need to know that. 

Futaba sniffled. Her head popped up. Her eyes, red and accusatory, turned on him.

The furrow of her brow looked just like her mother.

"Did you know he would die?"

"...no. I didn't think this would happen." He really hadn't expected anyone to figure out something had happened in the first place. 

Her face softened. She looked at the floor instead. 

"Did you find anything of interest in the data yet?"

The file he stole had turned out to just be notes about Loki. It was a little disconcerting how even offhanded comments were recorded—many of them from conversations with Shido. He had to be more careful about what he told them. Regardless, he knew how his own persona worked, thank you.

Futaba shook her head.

"Most of it is his personal files. Oh, I did find out his taste in porn, if you're interested?"

He grimaced. "Spare me."

"Boo…" she went back to clicking around on her computer.

After a moment, she said, "I won't let his death go to waste."

She had a sharp look in her eye. 

He couldn't care less about this man, but if that's what it took to motivate her…

"Good," he said. 

-

"What are you doing when you're not here?" She asked.

Futaba found a research paper in the data they pulled. She already went through it on her own, but Goro wanted to give it a look as well. 

Apparently she'd gotten bored of sitting on the floor while he read off her computer.

"Why."

"I dunno, I'm just curious."

"...School," he said. That was safe enough.

"You have a job too, right? The one you knew mom from?"

"...yes."

"What do you do?"

He couldn't just say it's classified at this point, when his disdain for his employer was so obvious.

"I work with a variety of people," true. "I do… whatever needs to be done." 

"What, like scrubbing bathrooms?"

"I do end up cleaning up after them a lot," he admitted, smiling at his own joke. 

Isshiki had been a sort of turning point for him. It was perhaps the job with the best results he'd gotten so far. Since then, his workload had increased. 

"...what about with Mom?"

Ah. He should have expected that one. He read and reread the same paragraph a few times while his brain scrambled to put something together.

"...to be honest, I didn't know her that well. But our fields of interest overlap."

"Then why did she…?"

He finally managed to tear his gaze from the screen. Her face was pale, even more so in a room lit only by the cool light of the computer screen.

He couldn't help the way his mouth curled ruefully.

"I suppose I was simply the one that was there."

Futaba was picking at the carpet. 

"I imagine that's not what you wanted to hear."

"No, I understand, I think. I'm just… glad that you listened to her." She gave him a wobbly smile. "Even though you didn't know her, you still put yourself at risk for her, you know?"

He felt cold, like something dripping from the nape of his neck down his spine.

"It's not nearly as selfless as that," he mumbled.

"It's good enough for me."

He went back to reading without saying anything else.

-

Come on. Ask. You can do it. You're already here so do it already!

I can't! It's scary! I can't!

"Curry's good?" Sojiro said, taking her out of her inner dialogue.

It took her a second to process the question. She stared at him blankly across the kitchen table.

"Uh, yeah." She fixed her eyes on the bowl, hands kneading in her lap.

They lapsed again into silence.

"Um. Can I ask you something? About mom?"

There was a clink as Sojiro put his utensils down. He cleared his throat

"Yeah."

"I was just. Thinking about her job, recently."

His face was super serious, but he didn't say anything. She hunched a little further in her seat, then remembered she wasn't supposed to do that, and straightened her back again.

"I was wondering if you knew anybody she worked with?"

His eyebrows twitched. "I met some of em, yeah. Don't, uh, know any of them that well."

"I was just wondering," and oh man, she was really doing this? She was really gonna lie to Sojiro? 

It's for Mom. It's important. 

She swallowed.

"...because she talked about, um, a kid she worked with. A few times."

"A kid?" His eyebrows really shot up now. 

"Like," she tried to remember exactly what he looked like, again. "Like a highschooler, maybe?"

He laughed.

"I don't know about highschooler. She was probably talking about a graduate student. The people she worked with always had at least a bachelor's."

"Not even if they were an intern?" She had a horrible thought. "Or a test subject, maybe?"

He furrowed his brow. "Did she say something to make you think that?"

"...no."

He leaned back. "That's… no, Wakaba never had a test subject. Especially not a teenager. It's illegal, she would have been risking her lab."

"Oh. Yeah. That makes sense." 

"Do you remember what she said about this 'kid'?"

She braided her fingers together. "I dunno, all I remember is they worked for the same boss… I guess?"

"...Same boss, huh…?"

Sojiro's expression was stern. He rested his chin on his hands.

"Did I say something wrong…?"

His face softened. "No. It's just, uh… I didn't like Wakaba's 'boss' much. …You don't remember anything else?"

She shook her head. She felt very small under his scrutiny.

He hummed, then shook his head, too. "It's nothing for you to worry about. Did you have anything else you wanted to talk about…?"

"I'm fine," she squeaked.

He sighed, then took the empty plates to the sink. 

"Alright."

She needed to go back to her room and lie down.

-

"Are you doing okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You don't seem fine."

"I am."

Actually, he was fucking exhausted. But he already promised to show up today, and they had to be close to something. 

"Do you want to take a break?"

He glared at her. 

"We've been working really hard, it should be fine, right?"

If he stopped moving, he might actually collapse. He was not falling asleep here .

"It's fine." 

She looked skeptical.

"Why do you care so much?"

His glare intensified. "What?"

"We're trying to take this guy down, right? He killed my mom, but why do you care? Like, actually?"

Tar bubbled under his skin. 

Why did he care? She had no idea how—how much-

"I hate him," he said, voice rough. "That's enough, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but why?"

There was fire in his stomach, licking up into his throat. The heat was becoming unbearable, smoke wafting from his mouth.

"He threw away my mother," he spat, "like she was less than garbage. And she died."

He had never said it out loud before.

"Oh-oh…" Futaba curled up and stared at her feet. "Is he your…"

"Yes."

"Oh."

Oddly enough, he could breathe again. The smoke wasn't choking him any longer. Fire not extinguished, but small, manageable.

"Do you pity me? Are you embarrassed to have known me?"

Her face popped into sight, eyes clear, brow furrowed. 

"Of course not! I'm… I'm the same, y'know? So… there's no way I could."

"You don't know your father?" 

He knew the answer to this already. He felt cruelly indulgent.

She shook her head. "No. Just Sojiro. We aren't related, um, he and mom weren't like that."

"Well," he said, crisp. "How lucky for you."

"So… do you live with him?"

He laughed sharply. Futaba looked like a startled rabbit. 

"No. I live alone."

"Oh." She pressed her face into her knees. "Well. That's probably good. Because he's so shitty."

"Shitty is an understatement."

"Yeah."

She stared wordlessly at her screen for a while. 

"Um… once we find whatever it is mom had…"

He had a horrible feeling he knew where this was going. He tried to keep his expression flat. 

Futaba glanced at him then curled in further.

"Nevermind."

Good. Don't give me more hope than I can handle.

"Alright."

-

When he got there, Futaba was already at the computer. There was a grim set to her expression.

"Look at this."

"What?"

Looking over her shoulder, he recognized Igarashi's house. The world snapped into sharp focus.

"...What is this?"

"It's security footage of the research guy's house."

"No, I know." He recognized the angle from one of the cameras he had made them dodge. "What is it doing on your computer?"

"His neighborhood has a security camera network. You can sign in and request footage for whatever reason, and all his sign-in information was on his device. Easy-peasy."

"...so you're just watching the camera?"

She gave him a dull look, like no, stupid. 

"This is the day he died."

She scrolled forward in the timeline until a man left the house. He locked the door, turned around, and promptly collapsed to his knees. 

His eyes and mouth were leaking a horrible black fluid. His head tilted up, eyes white and unseeing, while his hands clawed at his throat. 

Eventually, the rest of him fell, too, face smashing into the driveway. Black fluid like an oil leak started pooling beside his head.

His body lay there, crumpled. 

Futaba paused the video. 

He noticed, distantly, that he'd broken into a cold sweat. 

"That's—that's how my mom died," she said, voice shaking. 

She swallowed. Her face was pale.

"I found this earlier today. I didn't know what to do… I was too scared… but I understand now."

He was clammy all over. He had never seen a mental shutdown live before. His mind was racing trying to figure out just what that fluid even was. 

Blood? Bile? The brain itself, melting and pouring out of their head, leaving them empty? 

"Your…" he coughed, "your mom?"

He couldn't throw up right now. He refused. His throat burned with bile.

"The same thing happened, with the… stuff. I thought I imagined it… but it really happened."

"How can you watch this…?" He asked. He couldn't tear his eyes away. 

"I have to. For mom."

She changed tabs, and a rush of relief filled him. 

That… that wasn't real. That was somewhere else, far away from him. It was all a bad dream. He just had to push it down, down…

"You already told me mom was killed, but I couldn't figure out how. They're just normal one moment, then dead the next. It's like a slow-acting poison, or something. But I couldn't find any poisons that do this."

She was saying something. She turned around in her chair and looked at him. Her eyes gleamed with determination. 

"I think it's cognitive psience. Mom thought if you killed someone's Shadow, they would die, too. I think that's what's happening."

His mouth was dry. "Their Shadow…? How would you even…?"

"I dunno. That's just one theory, anyway." 

She turned back around and started typing.

"I'm thinking, like, if they figured out how to kill people with cognitive psience, you'd want to keep that for yourself, so that's why they took everything."

Her hands stilled. 

"Mom didn't believe in keeping knowledge secret. That's probably why…"

She sniffed.

"A-anyway," she said, voice wet, "if you could get into the collective unconscious somehow, then you could get the unconscious self. Is that it?"

Looking at her expectant eyes, his mind stalled. 

Is that…?

Oh.

"Just the potential existence of a method for killing doesn't indict the one using it. We'd need evidence that he was connected, for a start."

Futaba's eyes shined. "But I can find that! This guy's data—"

"Evidence that was acquired legally, Futaba."

She deflated.

"Can't we just like, leak the information?"

"To whom?"

"To everybody!" She threw her hands up. "If I find enough evidence of him doing bad stuff, we can post it up everywhere and ruin him!"

"Who will believe you? Who will believe this… cognitive psience bullshit?"

She looked like she'd been slapped. "It's not bullshit," she said. 

"It sounds like bullshit. The 'collective unconscious'? Do you think anyone is going to take that seriously?"

"But it's real! If we just explain-"

Goro laughed in her face.

"This is the real world. No one cares about your explanations. The only thing that matters is power."

Futaba pursed her lips.

"What are you looking for, then?"

"I-"

Something. Anything. A buffer between him and Shido. a way out . 

His voice fell quiet. "I don't know."

"I'm going to keep looking into this," Futaba said, apparently satisfied with his non-response. "I'll get the evidence together, and I'll get justice for my mom. I bet I can find all the people he's killed."

Blood rushed in his ears.

"Wait!"

"What?"

"You can't do that."

"Are you kidding? This is the best lead we have! He's killing people. We could get him arrested."

The computer screen reflected off her glasses. His heart clenched.

"We should dig into everything we can find on him. You said he's awful, right? What else has he done? Embezzlement? Drugs?"

"You—you have to stop. It's too dangerous."

"There's no way I'm stopping now."

"Please. You can't."

She was typing again. 

"It's Masayoshi Shido, right?"

His heart dropped into his stomach. 

He fucked up.

"There's some stuff about a Shido, so I started looking him up."

He never should have talked to her. Never should have let it get this far.

"He's a diet member, so he's probably really powerful. And he's rich."

He jammed himself between her and the computer, wrestling her hands away. 

"Hey!"

"I told you, that's enough. This isn't helping anyone, you'll just get yourself hurt."

"You didn't care before!"

"You weren't on this psychic assassination bullshit before! You have to back off. This is over. We're done."

"You told me you would do this for her! Don't you care about stopping this guy?"

"You don't know me," he hissed.

"Apparently I don't! All you cared about was getting back at him, and now that I actually have something you're throwing a fit!"

She scrabbled at him to get him out of the way.

"This has nothing to do with you—"

"What is wrong with you!!" She shouted. "Why are you—"

She went limp suddenly. She must have given up.

He took the opportunity to breathe.

"...I told you, you don't know what you're messing with. You're too impulsive."

Futaba didn't say anything. He pushed her and the rolly chair gingerly back, then turned around and shut off the computer. The screen went black.

"There," he said. He took the flashdrive out of its slot and pocketed it. His heart was still beating unsteadily. "You'll thank me later."

"What's your job?"

"Excuse me?"

Her eyes shone with determination. "What do you do? What's your actual, real job title?"

"I—I hardly see how that's relevant."

"You clean up after people? What does that mean? If your areas of interest overlap, then why weren't you working with her?"

"I'm just an intern—just because I'm interested doesn't mean I'm an actual scientist."

She got up from her chair, stepping forward. "For who? For mom's boss? There's nobody that young on his staff! You—you said I was the one that was there. What were you there for, huh? Why was she telling you, a stranger, about her secrets?"

"How should I know? She was the one blabbering at me!"

"Why? Why were you there?!"

"I was just doing my job—"

"Your job? Your job where you sneak into buildings? That job? The job nobody is allowed to know about?"

His face tightened. "I'm trying to take down a conspiracy."

"No, you aren't! You won't even entertain the idea! You're too scared! So what are you doing here?"

He snapped.

"Apparently, following a dead woman's goose chase! But it's my folly for actually listening to that bitch's nonsense, she would have said anything— and I believed her —"

"She would have said anything ?" Futaba asked. 

His mouth clicked shut. 

Neither had moved, yet the chasm between them yawned miles and miles wider.

"Why? What did you do to her? What did you do to my mom?" Her eyes were overflowing with tears. "You—did you—"

He made a run for it.

-

It was in one of the boxes he took. A notebook with cartoon cats on the cover, documents stuck haphazardly between the pages. Annotations in her awful handwriting- save the emails, remember tuesday, ask Takano.

In true scientific fashion, her notes were absurdly comprehensive, though parts had been scribbled out, almost randomly.

(Blank) says the case would never go to trial (blank) unlikely to settle, either. Advised that (blank) my career. Still had to pay (blank).

There were printouts of emails and texts, either flirtatious or threatening in nature. Photos of bruises and scratches on pale skin.

A story emerged.

Wakaba had been preparing to sue someone for sexual assault. She collected as much data as she possibly could. Despite constant dismissals and discouragement, she kept going, and was trying to find others who would testify with her. 

(Blank) former mistress/hostess - refused to speak to me. (Blank) on the phone.

He traced over the lists of contacts.

Former secretary, former classmate, former girlfriend, former colleague. Escort, call girl, dancer, hostess.

She didn't have much success, it seemed. They would agree to meet and then never show up, gave her wrong numbers, threw drinks in her face. None of it stopped her.

For three months, she was entirely consumed by it. Then, abruptly, it ended. She censored all the names and dates, so that the only ones that appeared had little significance. 

There had to be a reason. Something that curbed her reckless pursuit. 

I'm responsible for someone else, now.

And now he knew.

So he laughed. And laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Isshiki had been useless, after all.