Work Text:
Pores
"That's it for today, I think," Niijima said.
They all stood within one of the safe rooms of the grand casino. The disturbance between reality and metaverse which made these safe rooms so conveniently available tended to blur the edges of walls. Gold wallpaper bled here and there into the dull grey of the courthouse's interior.
That's it? Akechi wondered.
She smiled, pleasant, when Amamiya glanced her way. She hardly had to think to do it with most people. Amamiya, Joker, however, always carried a bit of a sharp light in his eyes. She liked to imagine that it was a hint of suspicion being thrown back at her, rather than something as typical as teenage attraction or, God forbid, comradeship.
"Are you doing fine, Niijima-san?" Akechi asked.
She certainly was not, and was hardly pretending otherwise. She graced Akechi with a dark look and replied, "We should come back in a few days, after some rest," ignoring her question altogether.
Takamaki was on her back in a moment, followed by Kitagawa and the rest of them, who seemed set on pretending Akechi wasn't there. They truly were reluctant to include her; smart, for a group of idealistic fools about to lose their lives.
Only Amamiya remained close to her, and by his side, the cat and Isshiki Wakaba's daughter. Akechi ignored them; the girl especially. She smiled at Amamiya as he vanished the twisted world from around them and made them reappear behind the bushes of the courthouse's gardens.
"The gates will close soon," Akechi commented, looking at her watch. Seven-thirty; enough time, unfortunately, for her to have to make her report. "We should be on our way, if we want to avoid suspicion."
Amamiya hummed in agreement and left.
The others followed behind him, heading to the decrepit café he lived in or heading to their warm homes, and with Sakamoto giving her one last glare.
How predictable.
Akechi thought of it as she commuted back to her hotel. She hadn't expected much out of the famed Phantom Thieves, once figuring out who their members were aside from Amamiya. At least they had the brains to put Amamiya in a leadership position instead of the talking cat or someone like Kitagawa. Even her ground-laid bar, however, managed to be crawled under. The Phantom Thieves whom Shido wanted so dearly for her to get rid of were just a bunch of aimless kids in need of adventure who fancied themselves heroes.
She bit her bottom lip to blood when a man all but tripped on her in the crowded train. Her face betrayed none of the pain or irritation as he baffled in apology. She gave him a close-mouthed smile. He glanced at her chest before looking at her eyes.
When she got home, she tore open her school uniform with just enough strength not to tear off the buttons.
People liked seeing a high-school girl in uniform on TV. She didn't have the money to replace hers every two weeks over bouts of childish irritation.
Had she been free for the rest of the evening, she would have headed to the bathroom immediately. Sweat had dried at her armpits and the nook of her neck and left behind the acrid smell of unwashed skin. She seemed to wear the same odor as that man in the train, which made her want to vomit.
She was not free, however.
Akechi breathed once and twice slowly. She pulled her prepaid phone out of her bag and called the only number on it.
"Is it done?" asked Shido without preamble.
Air caught in her chest. "Not yet," she replied.
"This is the fourth day you disappoint me."
"I apologize." She wanted to vomit. "They're much slower than I expected them to be."
"Then make them hurry up."
"Why does it matter how fast—"
"I," Shido interrupted coldly, "am going to act as if you said nothing."
Silence spread. The carpeted floor beneath Akechi's socked feet numbed her soles.
She said again, "I apologize."
"I don't want apologies. I want results."
He cut the call there.
Akechi threw the phone at the single bed in the corner of the room.
She tore off her clothes, this time without a care, when she entered the bathroom. She chose to ignore the clear little ting of something hitting the tiles. She filled the bath with lukewarm water, scrubbed herself in the shower, and sank in. She picked up her skincare products with the usual frustration and filled the bath with them. She examined her legs for any stray hair she could have forgotten to shave, as she did every night. She lushed her hair with conditioner. She covered her plain face with a mask. She sat there, tepid to the bone, each of her muscles tense with disgust.
A hint of pain had swollen at her cheekbone; a zit in the making, which she would have to resist the urge to turn into a scar with her fingers and simply conceal carefully. She recalled her bitten lip and let out a trembling sigh; she would need to swing by the nearest pharmacy.
She moisturized her hands, her feet, every inch of her skin.
This nightly, excruciating ritual took her over an hour. She emerged from it with the same knot of nausea that she did the night before, and the night before then, and that she would for every night to come.
She couldn't stop, however.
Sometimes she dreamed of it; of a day without plucking her eyebrows or masquerading a nude face through layers of makeup, without hundreds of thousands of yens spent on beauty products which allowed her access to TV. A bare-faced teenage girl with zits and dry lips and wearing lounge pants rather than her little uniform skirt, which rode up the back of her thighs when she bowed to greet some celebrity or another, which she must smooth over quaintly over her naked knees so that a grown audience may comment on her legs. She wondered which would strike her the most; the disgust in their eyes, or the absence of looks at all.
Shido certainly would have never accorded her that first audience if she had looked any uglier. It had taken quite some time—and an illegal nose job—to make sure that she could be considered human at all in his eyes. For a given value of 'human'.
She blessed her ugliness more than she cursed it, truly.
If Shido had found her pretty, she may not have achieved all that she did.
"Don't leave. I'll drive you."
Sae left the office before Akechi could answer.
The two men who shared the room with her stared at her in faint curiosity. Akechi addressed them a smile and a shake of the shoulders. What can you do, eh? They smiled quaintly and looked back at their computer screens. One of them still carried the stench of cold tobacco over his rumpled suit. It made her throat itch.
As ordered, she waited patiently for Sae to come and fetch her. She had done so a few times in the past, usually when the time was late, and she worried that Akechi would be taking the train alone; but it was the first time since Okumura's death that she bothered giving Akechi more than a passing glance.
She did not smile when she arrived, which Akechi had expected. It would be hard for one with such a vast Palace to find it in herself to show kindness, even if Sae had ever been kind. Her worrying for Akechi's safety, as all things, was born out of a need to keep up appearances.
She kept up with those appearances less and less as time went by.
Akechi walked with her to the parking lot. Sae's car was comfortable and, indeed, a far better sight than late evening train stations in the Tokyo suburbs. She sat on the leather of the passenger's side. She smoothed the beloathed skirt over her knees.
Sae kept silent as she revved the car back in a perfect angle. She did not speak at all until a few minutes later, as she took a definite turn away from the direction of Akechi's hotel.
"Care for a coffee?" she asked. "Woman to woman."
Akechi's heart jumped. She blinked at the streetlights rushing over the clear-windowed top of the car, trying to remain poised, and replied, "Of course." The top window must have been washed recently. There were no stains, no dust, no bird droppings.
Sae nodded.
Some of Akechi's foolish excitement dimmed as she recognized their path toward Yongen-Jaya. They had to park far from the narrow streets, to Sae's annoyance; her attention was now far from Akechi and their supposed woman-to-woman outing, and settled on how she planned to pressure Sakura Sojirou into talking to her.
Of course. Akechi could practically see it through Sae's head. She imagined a room inside the golden casino, one filled with dark mist, and everywhere the pinned pictures of Isshiki Wakaba's secrets and mysteries. A photograph of her daughter, stabbed through the heart in rage.
Unfortunately for her, Sakura was not the one who greeted them at the counter. Amamiya was there, looking over the empty shop, a grey apron tied around his chest.
Sae tsked. "Is the Master here?" she asked rudely.
Amamiya looked at her longly. "No," he replied, his cool voice as unshaken as ever.
"Will he be long?"
Amamiya shrugged. The quick shadow of a cat undulated between his feet; the creature, Morgana, was here as well.
For a moment, Akechi forgot to care about appearances. She stood quiet, one foot inside and one foot out, and watched Sae's hand over the still-open door. She did not greet Amamiya in the way she usually made herself do. Sae's fingers held all her attention: manicured, filed and cleaned to perfection. Yet those perfect fingers left greased stains on the transparent glass.
Finally, right as she was sure Sae would walk back out and slam the door shut—and rush back to her car, forgetting Akechi altogether—that hand relaxed. "Two espressos," she ordered.
She pulled Akechi in as Amamiya went to work. They waited until the coffees were before them and Amamiya had gone into the tiny kitchen, and the sound of the running faucet reached them.
Akechi sipped her coffee. She waited.
Sae was staring at the shadows where Amamiya had stood.
"You know him, don't you?" she asked.
"I do," Akechi replied. "He's somewhat of a friend, I believe."
"You believe?"
There was judgment in her voice. Akechi smiled at her.
Now that the cat was out of the bag—that Sae had only asked her out for coffee in order to come here, to corner Sakura—Sae lost interest in entertaining her. She pulled out her laptop and started to work once more, ignoring Akechi.
Oh, how bitter did that coffee taste.
Woman to woman, Akechi thought. How rare for someone to call her a woman. How impossible, after all, for a woman like Niijima Sae to look at Akechi and see an equal of any sort. Akechi observed her in the glacial silence; she was beautiful, as always, the epitome of femininity. Muted and enhanced at once by her shapely grey suits and expensive high-heeled shoes. She showed none of the symptoms that those close to psychic breakdowns harbored: no tired lines on her face, no rabid speed in her breathing.
But then again, Akechi had never met anyone whose Shadow was so calm within the metaverse. And Sae knew how to mask her face in ways unknown to the likes of Okumura or Madarame.
Perhaps she would simply sit on the ground in silence when the time came. After Akechi had allowed her to capture her hard-sought Phantom Thieves, and then put a bullet through the head of her Shadow. Just sit there in silence and look forward, and all that ferocious mind of hers lost to the ether.
"How is your sister?" Akechi asked.
"That's none of your business," Sae replied without looking up.
Akechi tasted blood among the warm acidity of her drink. She loosened her jaw, and the inside of her cheek stung.
"My apologies," she offered, conciliating, "I just thought she was rather remarkable when we met. I was wondering if she was doing well."
This, at last, caught Sae's attention. "You know Makoto?" she asked sharply.
"I was invited for a speech at her school recently. She was the one to welcome me, as head of the student council."
A moment passed.
Sae leaned back into her seat. One of her perfect hands came up to brush back some of her beautiful hair, and she allowed her expression to loosen at last.
"I see," she said. "I forgot about that."
"That's okay. You've been particularly busy."
Sae gave a dry chuckle. She took a sip of her cup for the first time; the warm steam flushed her cheekbones. Shadow and light, at this angle, revealed the near-invisible texture of her foundation.
Even Niijima Sae had pores in her skin. The revelation traveled through Akechi's throat and chest like another sip of her scalding drink.
She loved and feared that feeling, just as she loved and feared the experience of roaming a Palace with others, with a team, at her back. With a bunch of naïve kids who disliked her, yet protected her, as if she was worth more to them than a tool on a chessboard they hardly knew the rules of.
She hoped that when she killed Amamiya, that the betrayal in his eyes would be enough to wipe her heart clean of those useless emotions.
She knew that when she killed Sae's Shadow, the apparition would simply vanish. There would be no time for any betrayal. Sae's shadow would disperse like mist and Sae's real self would sit and never speak again.
Niijima Makoto would not look so strong and admirable, after that.
Akechi knew that she would not, either.
"She looks like a very bright young woman," she told Sae, and Sae smiled truly.
"She is."
"You must be very proud of her."
There was an audible hitch in Sae's exhale before she admitted, "I am. I know she'll do great things with her life."
There was so much more than Akechi wished to ask her. What future do you want for her? she imagined herself saying. Was it hard, raising her on your own? Do you wish you had been kinder to her? How much do you love her? Would you give your life for her, the way that a mother should?
She pictured the both of them somewhere else, far from Sakura Sojirou's den of sorrow, far from the listening ears of Amamiya's monster pet; sitting for a coffee in a little trendy shop in Shibuya, indulging in confessions and trust. Bare-faced under the ugly light and with their nails chipped at the ends, wearing jeans and graphic tees.
Woman to woman.
Sae drove her home.
Tokyo's polluted light shed an orange glow upon the car's insides. The blacker the night was, the brighter the color looked. They remained silent the whole way, although this silence was of a mellower kind. Akechi's hand brushed against Sae's when she reached for the radio to lower the volume. Sae did not react except to smile at her for a fraction of a second.
They said their farewells at the bottom of Akechi's hotel, and Sae did not linger. Akechi watched the hindlights of her car swerve and vanish into traffic and remembered the first time Sae had been here.
"You live here?" she had asked with a frown, and then offered briskly to house Akechi herself during her stay in the city, rather than let her stay alone in 'such a rancid place'.
"I have a sister your age. I wouldn't let her stay here either."
This Sae was not the same as she had been then, however.
This Sae had a casino for a heart and bet on her achievements with loaded dice. Her Treasure, when the Phantom Thieves found it, would not wear the face of a little sister.
We need to find it fast, Akechi thought after her evening ablutions were done. Her plan relied on Amamiya and his band of misfits being on time. If she could not induce Sae's psychic breakdown right after exposing the Thieves, everything would fall apart.
She had worked too hard, for too long, to become this close to Shido and to her goal.
Her phone rang as she was about to start another night of insomnia—for a second, her heart leaped, thinking of Sae; but Amamiya's name was the one on the screen.
She clenched her teeth.
"Hello," she picked up pleasantly.
Amamiya, as was his way, spared no time for greetings. "We should head back to the Palace tomorrow."
"Of course. I'll be ready at the courthouse by five. Has everyone rested enough?"
There was a murmur through the static. Morgana the monster.
"Yes."
"Very well."
"Haru isn't completely fine yet."
Akechi had been about to hang up, thinking the discussion over. Amamiya rarely offered topics of conversations by himself; they spoke often, but he was always the one to listen as if to absorb her words and then sort them, carefully, into categories known to him alone. He showed up to spend time with her and then left as if having filled his quota of socializing. He was odd that way, and yet undeniably charismatic. Akechi hadn't been surprised at all to discover that he was the leader of his little group.
"What's wrong with Okumura-san?" she asked carefully.
"She's still dealing with her father's death."
Akechi fidgeted with the blue plaid over her bed. She buried her nails into it.
"She lost her mother when she was young, so he was her only family."
"It must be hard for her," Akechi said.
"She keeps wondering who could've done it. It's hard to understand how she managed to trust us so implicitly when we explained that it couldn't have been us."
"Her father had many enemies. He was a terrible man."
Amamiya hummed.
Another echo of Morgana's voice came, undecipherable.
"It's difficult for her to see that, even with how he treated her. She's a kind girl."
Oh, that, she was. A kind and beautiful girl with a voice like a bird's thrill and a cutesy love for flowers. A rich little princess saved from her tragic fate by a convenient prince. She was halfway in love with Amamiya already.
"She wonders," Amamiya said lowly, "how someone could be so evil, to provoke so many psychic breakdowns and then kill his victims on top of it."
Akechi took her hand back. The plaid's cheap fabric was dispersing into strings. "Hopefully we can stop it all," she replied. "Although you won't be able to prove your innocence to the public, unfortunately."
"I don't mind. I just want the man in black stopped."
"That's commendable of you."
"It's just being human."
Akechi breathed. "Don't you think the man in black is human?"
Wind whistled through the window's broken interstice. It caressed her skin and felt like the edge of a razor, scraping her skin off layer by layer.
"I think this person may have reasons other than simply being evil," Amamiya answered. "And that regardless of those reasons, they must be stopped."
He said nothing more on the topic. After confirming the time and place of their meeting the next day, Akechi wished him a good night and hung up. She threw her phone to the end of the bed and stared at it unblinkingly.
"Unfortunately for you," she murmured; "I have no reason other than being evil."
She would kill Shido in this world and in the next. It didn't matter if she had to step on the lives of seven brave teenagers or shatter the mind of the woman whose attention her foolish, childish heart ached the most for. And if she grew a Palace of her own in the process, if her Shadow started roaming empty halls, painted-up with garish makeup, distorted out of the very image of herself, each of her pores gaping open with hatred, then so be it.
So be it.