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Akira’s pretty sure she’s long past the ‘unfriendly rescue animal finally decides they trust you’ phase with Kokoro, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t still startled when, one night when the two of them are hunkered down in front of the CRT liberated from Leblanc’s attic, Kokoro glances over at her from her odd little perch on the edge of the sofa, seemingly comes to a decision, and then proceeds to slide herself over until she’s leaning against Akira, head resting on her shoulder.
Akira is too accustomed to maintaining her poker face to immediately reveal her surprise at this. She’s also too accustomed to pushing her luck to not immediately wrap an arm around Kokoro’s shoulder and pull her closer.
Kokoro lets her. Akira rests a hand in her hair, and Kokoro lets her do that too, until she’s moving once more, sliding further down, and then her head is on Akira’s lap, and oh, wow, Akira thinks. Wow, wow, wow, wow.
The movie they’re watching is theoretically part of Akira’s ongoing education on the finer details of the Featherman cinematic universe. While Kokoro seems able enough to keep paying attention despite her new position, Akira isn’t, not even a little bit, because Kokoro’s head is on her lap, and she’s letting Akira stroke her hair, and whenever Kokoro is like this—soft, trusting, willing to accept the affection Akira has to offer—that torn-up, dizzy feeling in Akira’s chest becomes almost too much to bear.
Has Kokoro ever done anything like this with anyone before? Probably not, right? She may not have technically been an idol, but she’d been close enough that dating probably wouldn’t have been allowed. Even outside of any sort of formal relationship ban, Akira just can’t picture it—Kokoro’s standards are far too high. She’d have found a scented letter in her shoe locker one day and tracked down the sender just so she could shred it in front of them with that angelic smile on her face, all because their writing was untidy.
Except—no, that’s Kokoro now. In high school, she’d played nice and dug for advantages in every interaction. Isn’t there a chance that she’d have said yes, if the person confessing had been someone she’d thought she could get some use out of?
Kokoro’s expression stays focused on the flickering of the television’s light, despite the film being one she’s likely seen a thousand times before. She doesn’t seem to notice when Akira shifts somewhat to pull her phone out and text Ryuji.
From: Akira Kurusu
Do you think Akechi’s ever dated anyone before?
From: Ryuji Sakamoto
Dude, what???????
Why would I know. Why would I WANT to know.
From: Akira Kurusu
You used to like her
From: Ryuji Sakamoto
What the eff? That was ages ago!!!
Also, I liked KOKORO-CHAN. Akechi isn’t like the Kokoro-chan on TV at ALL. She broke my heart, man!!!
I don’t even want to think about it. I feel like it will just hurt my brain.
Something tugs Akira’s attention away from the screen. She glances down only to find Kokoro’s intense stare now fixed on her.
“What on your phone has you so absorbed?” Kokoro asks with narrowed eyes, and her obvious displeasure sends a swell of fresh affection coursing through Akira.
“I was looking up who the second guy in the red mask is,” Akira lies. “I thought red was always the leader. Why are there two of them?”
“That’s Red Hawk,” Kokoro answers immediately, looking back towards the screen. “The one we’ve been following is Red Eagle. Red Hawk is from an earlier series, but this movie is an anniversary crossover, so—”
Akira tucks her phone back into her pocket. The swell of affection hasn’t diminished. She likes these moments where Kokoro forgets herself and Akira doesn’t even need to pry, her mask simply falls, and Akira gets to be the only one to see what lies underneath, as dorky and pretentious as it usually turns out to be.
“Which one would you want me to dress up as, Hawk or Eagle?” she asks, cutting Kokoro off mid-tirade.
Kokoro scoffs. “You could never be a Feather Red,” she says in a dismissive tone. “Red is always an exceptional hero, brave and clever and charismatic.”
“Hey,” Akira says. She walks her fingers towards where Kokoro’s hands are folded over her chest, twining one of them with her own. “I’m plenty charismatic.”
Kokoro’s gaze flickers towards their interlocked hands, then back up at Akira.
“Maybe I need convincing,” she says.
The kiss that follows is fumbling, clumsy with the sudden desperation of it. The movie’s ending goes unseen. They’ll have to try again some other night.
“Do you think Akechi wants to date me?”
“What the hell?”
It’s midnight in Tokyo but 5pm in Milan. Ann’s schedule tends to be irregular, but more often than not, Akira’s gotten lucky aiming for the times she’s likely to be slipping off for a meal or snack. The one downside is that it usually means having to listen to Ann gush about ricotta cream tartlets or millefoglie first, which always leaves Akira feeling hungry. Fortunately, tonight she was able to cut Ann off at the pass by skipping the hello and jumping right into the question of the day.
“I thought you guys have been going out since, like, high school. What do you mean wants to? Are you not already?” Ann asks once she’s had time to process Akira’s question. Akira kind of loves that she’s asking that, considering everything that actually happened in high school. She hopes Ann stays so sweet forever.
“Technically no,” Akira says, and she’s playing with fire, having this conversation in an apartment shared with Kokoro, but her bedroom door is shut and Kokoro is asleep—or at the very least pretending to be— meaning she shouldn’t be coming out of her bedroom anytime soon. “We did just spend the night making out instead of watching some Featherman movie, but we didn’t talk about it afterwards, so I’m not totally sure what that means.”
“What the hell?” Ann repeats. Then, after a brief, awkward pause: “Do you want to date her?”
Akira considers.
She feels, sometimes, like a bullet already fired. She’s always been able to see the bright clean line between the way things are and the way they ought to be, and she’s never been able to fully understand why no one else seems able to. Of course someone should help that woman. Of course someone should change that heart. Of course someone should kill that god. That doesn’t mean it’s always been easy; her hands had been shaking when she’d signed that false confession. But that hadn’t been enough to stop her doing it.
Kokoro, however, makes her want to slow down. She had done so as early as the day they’d first met at the TV station, back before Akira had been able to make sense of the other girl’s sudden interest in her. Akira had been forced to puzzle out the reason for that interest herself, and in doing so, had found herself venturing out of her usual straightforward trajectory to see what lay beyond.
Even after all this time, that hasn’t really changed. In their games, Akira has to really think about each move if she doesn’t want to be subjected to one of Kokoro’s insufferable little smirks. In their conversations, Akira has to really think about what she’s going to say if she doesn’t want to be cut off with something scathing. It makes everything they do together that much more satisfying, to know how earned it is.
If she wants to be dating Kokoro, then she wants it to be like that—the same way she wants to crush Kokoro in every game they play, and debate philosophy over drinks at Jazz Jin, and make her admit that Akira will always be the one who knows her best, and—
“I think so,” Akira says.
“Then maybe you could ask her out?”
Immediately: “That would be losing.”
Ann sighs. “Sometimes I forget how similar the two of you are.”
Sometime after hanging up with Ann, Akira is still lying awake atop the covers of her bed, staring at the glow-in-the-dark star stickers plastered all over the ceiling. Morgana is curled up on the pillow beside her head, snoring softly. He’d been out while she and Kokoro were having movie night, but had returned not long after her call with Ann, whereupon he’d scolded her for still being awake and she’d agreed to remedy that immediately.
She’s still awake, of course. Her thoughts are too full of Kokoro and the movie that went unfinished and why for her to sleep.
Ann had seemed to think it could be as simple as asking Kokoro out. Maybe that would work for most people, but Kokoro isn’t like most people. She’s more the type who, if sincerely complimented, would spend about five minutes preening before spending the next five hours dissecting the intentions of the compliment. She may have been the one to initiate, but if Akira asked her out, she’d be hissing about not wanting Akira’s pity in no time.
Maybe I need convincing, Kokoro had said.
Okay. Okay.
Akira can do that.
The next morning, Akira awakens after approximately four hours of sleep to the sound of low voices coming from the direction of the kitchen. As she shuffles out of bed and down the hall, still in the loose t-shirt and shorts she wore to sleep, she thinks she hears Morgana saying something along the lines of seen her do it enough times.
He and Kokoro look up like a pair of deer in the headlights when she appears in the kitchen. The coffee grinder and the bag of beans sitting on the counter are as damning as any smoking gun.
“If you wanted coffee, you could have waited for me,” Akira says mildly.
“It’s not for me,” Kokoro snaps.
Kokoro has no idea how to do a proper pour over. Akira doesn’t offer to help, only watches, admiring the look of fixed concentration on her face as she fucks it all up. The cup she shoves at Akira afterwards tastes bitter and uneven and Akira schools her expression into careful neutrality while she sips.
“I know it’s bad,” Kokoro snarls. “Don’t pretend.”
Akira finishes the cup anyway.
“Hey, don’t feel bad,” Morgana says from his perch on the counter, putting a small paw on Kokoro’s crossed arms. “Akira’s coffee was terrible at first too. Boss made her practice for weeks before he let her serve any to customers.”
“He’s lying,” Akira says, lying herself. “I’ve always been amazing at it.”
“Well, it stands to reason that a novice would require an apprenticeship period,” Kokoro says. She looks appeased, uncrossing her arms. “Rather immature of you to try and disguise that fact. I suppose I can’t expect any differently from someone younger than myself, though.”
“You’re so right,” Akira agrees, rising to rinse her mug out in the sink. After turning the water off and setting it on the drying rack, she asks, “Do you want breakfast?”
It’s unusual for Kokoro to be up so early. Usually, she’s rolling out of bed about ten minutes before she needs to be out the door, throwing herself together with a degree of speed and efficiency that both frightens and impresses Akira before scarfing down her food and bolting. A Kokoro awake this early might be capable of anything, including opening the rice cooker herself.
“Yes please,” Kokoro says, much to Akira’s relief.
It takes about five minutes to whip together some rice and egg, and the miso soup was already made, yet Kokoro’s eyes still brighten when she sees the bowls Akira brings out to the table. It’s enough to make Akira give a silent thanks for Kokoro’s reluctance to touch most things in the kitchen. It’s far easier to be impressive when the person you’re trying to impress doesn’t realize how easy the thing you’re doing is.
As they eat, Akira wonders: should she be the one to bring up what happened the night before? It seems notable, that Kokoro was up so early to try and make her coffee, but notable in which way? Was that her version of talking about it? Her version of glossing over it? If Akira broached the subject more directly, would that put her hackles up?
“I’ll do the dishes,” Akira says once Kokoro has finished. “My shift doesn’t start until 10, so I have time.”
Kokoro frowns. She’s already half-risen, bowl and chopsticks in hand. “That hardly seems fair, given that you cooked.”
“You made coffee,” Akira reminds her. “Making breakfast was me returning the favour, so we’re even now.”
“It was terrible coffee,” Kokoro mutters, but she sets the dishes back down on the table anyway.
Akira’s hand snakes out to seize Kokoro by the wrist when she does so. She jerks back, staring down at Akira’s encircling fingers.
“Do you know why I drank it anyway?” Akira asks. “Even though we both knew it would be bad?”
Kokoro’s mouth falls open, then shuts. It’s not often that she’s lost for words.
Akira smiles, not offering any answer herself, but she does bring Kokoro’s hand to her lips, kissing the back of it softly.
Kokoro reacts by seemingly cycling through every emotion in existence, her expression shifting from shocked to angry to scared before ultimately settling on a kind of haughty recognition as she declares, “Oh, I see what you’re doing.”
Akira lets go of her wrist. Setting her chin on her hands, she smiles as winningly as she knows she’s able to. “And what am I doing?”
“Do you think me some kind of fool?” Kokoro sneers, like she hadn’t just been flabbergasted by a tiny little kiss. “Rest assured, I’m more than capable of playing your little game.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
“Uh, what exactly was that?” Morgana asks once Kokoro has vanished around the corner, his tail flicking warily.
And Akira, adjusting her glasses, answers, “Just giving her an excuse.”
That day, Akira’s working at Rafflesia. It’s a slow day, meaning a great deal of her shift is spent playing with her phone when she isn’t playing diligent for Hanasaki. It’s not slacking; it’s a way of giving her hands something to do while she brainstorms.
Her thoughts are all in bloom by the time Hanasaki tells her she can take her lunch break, and the energy it imbues her with leaves her feeling far too restless to simply sit and eat. Instead, she takes her lunch and ventures out into the underground mall.
She finds Yusuke at his usual people-watching wall. He’s drawing, so rather than interrupt, she joins him in leaning against the wall.
After approximately eight and a half minutes, he jerks his head upright.
“Akira,” he says with a polite nod. “Forgive me. I was lost in seeking to capture the expression of a woman who appeared to be having an argument over the phone with someone whom I presume to be her paramour. Hers was a look of such rancour as to be rather astonishing."
He holds out his sketchbook for Akira is see. The page is covered with loose sketches of a woman with short, curly hair who, sure enough, appears to be yelling into a phone. It’s striking, for sketches done leaning against a wall based on something he must have only glimpsed for but a moment.
“Looks good,” Akira says.
It’s not the most eloquent feedback, but Yusuke seems pleased with it. “Thank you,” he says, closing his sketchbook. “I regret that my skills at portraiture remain such that I could not hope to fully capture the full spectrum of her emotions before she moved on, but I am hoping to improve with practice.”
“If you want to practice drawing people looking angry, you could draw Akechi.”
Yusuke looks thoughtful. “I have drawn her once before, actually. However, I would certainly be interested in doing so again now that we are better acquainted. Trying to convey the duality of her nature without over-relying on the superficially symbolic would make for an interesting artistic challenge. But when I asked her to sit for me most recently, she said something about my clearly not valuing my unbroken fingers enough. It’s true that humans rarely take the time to appreciate the miracle of organic machinery that is our bodies, and as an artist, I certainly ought to appreciate my hands the most, and so I decided to take some time to reflect and practice the kind of mindful appreciation an artist ought to show their most sacred of tools. But when I messaged her to inform her I had done so, she did not reply. So I assume she has been busy.”
“That’s probably it,” Akira agrees. “Do you want me to ask her?”
“If it is no trouble.” Then, a moment later, and with the kind of stiff politeness that suggests he’s remembered a social nicety drilled into him by Makoto: “I seem to recall that you are usually working at this time of day. Is that not the case today?”
“I’m at the flower shop nearby, but it’s my lunch break.”
“I’m surprised you continue working other jobs when, by all accounts, Sakura-san appears to be hoping you will take over Leblanc someday.” This, Yusuke says with the kind of bluntness Makoto has probably been trying to help him leave behind, but Akira honestly prefers it most days. It’s refreshing.
That being said, there’s no cool, controlled, Joker-worthy way of saying if Kokoro leaves Tokyo, I need to be able to follow, and that will be a lot easier to do if I’m quitting a job at a mall somewhere than if I’m disappointing Sojiro.
“Guess I can’t be pinned down,” Akira says instead, and Yusuke nods as though that’s all the explanation he needs. “You hungry?” she asks by way of changing the subject, holding up her lunch.
Yusuke’s expression instantly shifts from pensive to eager. Still, with perfect politeness, he says, “I could not hope to impose.”
“It’s fine. I already ate,” Akira lies. “This is extra I packed in case I ran into you. It’s a bribe to help me pick colours for something.”
“In that case, I shall accept with gratitude,” Yusuke says, holding out his hands, and Akira smiles as she passes the box to him, grateful that for some of the people she cares about, it really can be so easy.
That evening, when Akira shuffles through the front door, it’s to what initially appears to be an empty apartment. She’s used to finding Kokoro working on her laptop in the living room when she gets back, but today the living room is empty, the laptop sitting closed.
Morgana is curled up on the sofa, mumbling something in his sleep. Setting her things down on the coffee table, Akira briefly debates poking him awake, partly so she can ask about Kokoro and partly for the pleasure of hearing his irritable little mrrp upon waking.
She decides against it when she spots something moving on the balcony. Then the moving shape comes better into focus, and her brain splits neatly in two.
Akira roughly shoves aside the sliding balcony door. Kokoro looks up with a smile.
She’s wearing one of Akira’s hoodies. Already oversized, it hangs even looser on her than it does Akira; the ends of it coast the top of her hips, the black sleeves hanging just past her wrist as she checks one of the blouses hanging from the laundry bar.
“Good evening,” she says warmly. “I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed something of yours. I spilled something earlier and thought washing it here would be fastest, but I needed something else to wear in the meantime.”
She is so full of shit. They went to the laundromat just the other day and wound up running the dryer twice because they got so into a conversation about Foucault’s place in Hegelian tradition (a conversation Akira hadn’t at all been ready for, but thinks she bluffed her way through pretty admirably, considering how aggravated Kokoro became) that they’d missed the machine finishing its cycle and let the clothes grow cold. She should have plenty of clean shirts to wear. There should be no need whatsoever for her to borrow one of Akira’s.
“It’s fine,” Akira chokes, and the gleam in Kokoro’s eyes turns distinctly triumphant.
It’s that gleam of victory that saves her. There’s no way she can let things end like this, not with Kokoro the winner, and while she’s casting about frantically for something she can say to turn the tables, Akira recalls what she left on the coffee table.
“It’s good weather for doing laundry,” she says, voice steady again. “Warm enough that even when it’s later in the day, you can still get your clothes dry. Something to appreciate about this time of year.”
Kokoro’s gaze turns suspicious. “Yes.”
“That reminds me,” Akira continues. She takes a step back towards the sliding door, folding her hands behind her. “Speaking of the time of year, Rafflesia has new seasonal flowers in, and Hanasaki-san allowed me to bring some back with me as thanks for working on that custom order the other week.”
Kokoro’s eyes widen, but nothing could keep Akira from going for the kill. Only now does she break eye contact, turning so she can slip back into the living room. Kokoro trails after her as Akira gathers what she’d left on the coffee table, and then she turns and thrusts it towards her before she can refuse, leaving Kokoro holding a bouquet of many-coloured alstroemeria.
“Oh,” Kokoro says. She appears, for the second time that day, to be at a loss for words, and Akira mentally adds a tally to her side of the scoreboard.
“Aren’t they pretty?” Akira presses. And then, because it was really, truly quite evil for Kokoro to wear her hoodie out on the balcony, where people might see and anyone who recognized her would know it wasn’t hers and would have to be Akira’s, adds, “I thought you’d like them.”
“Mm.” Kokoro’s face is close to the blossoms. She’s not visibly inhaling, but she’s close enough that there’s no way she can’t smell their fragrance. “Bouquets are rather inconsiderate when you think about it. I mean, the person receiving them has to worry about caring for the flowers afterwards. Are you certain your employer was trying to reward you?”
“If you don’t like them, we could always throw them out,” Akira taunts.
Kokoro’s hold on the delicate paper wrapping enveloping the flowers tightens, crinkling it. “That would be wasteful. Do you have a vase?”
Akira smiles.
One of the first things Akira had come to understand about Kokoro was that, for all her public persona may have been built on fluff and sparkle, she herself was fairly practical. It was the kind of utilitarian practicality that might have honestly been a little off-putting if it hadn’t been so fascinating, the way she didn’t seem to realize—or care—what an unpleasant thing it would normally be to have someone say to your fave that they’d determined you wouldn’t be a waste of their time.
It had been funny at first. But then Akira had seen the apartment where Kokoro had lived alone—lived in but not lived in, furnished as it was with only with the barest necessities, spartan as a showroom—and the idea that she’d determined there was no value to be found in any sort of displays of personality had instead struck her as terribly sad.
The apartment they share now is a far cry from that kind of lonely sterility. In the living room, there’s always a crossword puzzle or dog-eared copy of some existentialist novel on the coffee table. In the kitchen, Akira knows she’ll find real coffee in the cupboards, dishes from the morning’s breakfast on the drying rack, cutlery for two stuffed in a drawer. Their shared fingerprints are everywhere, intermingling. No one could mistake theirs for an apartment trying to belong to no one.
But so many of those fingerprints are hers, and Akira would like it, she thinks, if Kokoro left more. She wants to steal that guardedness of hers away. Maybe then, she won’t hold herself back so much from lingering.
Flowers are useless, serving no purpose but to colour a room, and that means Kokoro won’t be able to fully rationalize them away as something ultimately beneficial for her to accept. If she throws them away, fine, they’d have died anyway. But if she doesn’t?
She’s doesn’t. Instead, she’s fastidious in her preparations—trimming the flowers’ stems, removing the excess leaves, checking the water with an actual thermometer to ensure an appropriate room temperature. Akira watches from the sofa as she does so, still smiling, playing with Morgana’s ears all the while. At some point he’d awakened from his nap and Akira had dragged him onto her lap, but his thoughts are seemingly still too thick with sleep to do much more than murble in protest.
Eventually, Kokoro settles on a spot atop a bookshelf. After placing the vase, she turns to Morgana. “Don’t eat these,” she says sharply. “These would be poisonous for you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Morgana yawns. “I’m not stupid. Akira’s cooking is tastier than any dumb plant anyway.”
“You know more about taking care of flowers than I thought you would,” Akira remarks. She feels giddy with the thrill of having gotten away with something, never mind that what she got away with was giving flowers to a girl. “Do you know any hanakotoba?”
“Hanakotoba is sentimental claptrap,” Kokoro replies, like that’s a word people their age use, which means she doesn’t but will be looking up the meaning of this particular bouquet the moment she’s alone.
Good. Akira put a lot of thought into what she could do with the flowers Rafflesia had in stock. Like all flowers, alstroemeria could have multiple meanings, but she wants Kokoro to light upon the same one she had.
And if she doesn’t, then Akira will just keep on bringing her flowers until she does.
For the third year in a row, Makoto has taken the lead when it comes to planning the Phantom Thieves’ annual summer road trip, meaning it’s not a particular surprise when she calls Akira on one of her days off to discuss the logistics of meal planning. Her timing is pretty good: Akira is in the middle of meal prepping for the next few days, meaning her thoughts are squarely in the realm of food.
“Akechi is invited too, of course,” Makoto says on speakerphone with remarkable politeness, considering the shouting match Kokoro had instigated the last time the two of them had been in the same room together. Instigated, then promptly excused herself from, instead beaming as everyone’s voices and tempers had risen all around her.
The argument had been about Makoto’s continuing determination to apply for the Metropolitan Police Academy upon graduating, so Akira doesn’t feel very bad about that particular incident. “I’ll ask her,” she says while she juliennes a carrot. “She might actually want to this time, if we’re dating by then.”
On the other end of the line there’s silence. Akira takes that as an opportunity to sample the stock she has simmering on the stove. It tastes all right, but next time, she’ll steep the kombu longer.
“I’m sorry,” Makoto says. “What?”
“Oh, did you think we were dating already?” Akira gives the pot another stir before returning her attention to the remaining carrot. “Ann seemed to think so too.”
“That’s not….to be frank, I’m not sure what I thought you two were doing. But are you saying you’re…not?”
“Not yet. I’m working on it, though.”
“Working on what, exactly?”
The carrot done with, Akira reaches for the daikon. “Making her realize we should be dating by proving what a beautiful, charming, thoughtful, romantic girlfriend I’d be.”
“Have you asked her out?”
“That’s not how we do things,” Akira dismisses.
Disapproval creeping into Makoto’s voice, she says, “That doesn’t sound healthy.”
“It’s okay,” Akira answers confidently as she begins to peel the daikon. “It’s a rivals thing.”
Silence again lapses between them.
“Well,” Makoto says at last. “If she does want to come, let me know so I can adjust the food budget, okay?”
Mornings end up serving as a kind of neutral territory in their little game. Their new routine—Akira making breakfast, Kokoro actually getting up in time to sit and eat, the two of them racing to overtake each other as they do the dishes side by side—has already become too well-established for either of them to particularly want to change it, and that means battles have to be fought in the afternoons and evenings instead.
That makes the message Akira receives one day while stocking drinks at the 777 especially concerning.
From: Kokoro Akechi
I’ll be late tonight. Don’t bother waiting up for me.
If Sae had called Kokoro in, Kokoro would have said so. If Kokoro had somehow made friends who wanted to hang out after class, Akira would know about it. That, at least, limits the possibilities somewhat.
From: Akira Kurusu
Want me to come meet you?
From: Kokoro Akechi
You have no idea where I’m going to be.
From: Akira Kurusu
Bet?
From: Kokoro Akechi
Fine.
40 minutes after her shift ends, Akira finds Kokoro staring at her phone at the entrance of an arcade in Akihabara. She glances up when Akira approaches and her expression turns sour.
“What do I win?” Akira asks as she sidles up to her.
“Lucky guessing is not a skill that merits a reward,” Kokoro says shortly, shoving her phone back into her pocket.
“It takes 25 minutes tops to get here from Hongo and you’re still at the entrance. You were waiting for me.”
“That bears no relevance to the matter at hand.”
“My prize is that you’ll play Gun About with me,” Akira declares.
“We would have done that anyway, idiot,” Kokoro says. “At least ask for something interesting.”
The arcade they’re at is on the smaller size for Akihabara, featuring no prize machines or UFO catchers and instead being lined wall-to-wall with retro cabinets. Gun About is one of their few newer games, and Kokoro heads for it near-immediately, shoving a handful of coins at Akira before seizing the gun-shaped controller and taking aim.
Kokoro always says she doesn’t miss the Metaverse, but Akira isn’t sure if she believes her. It’s hard to do so when Kokoro has a habit of venting her stress by shooting imaginary monsters in the head. But at least that makes her behaviour when she’s annoyed somewhat predictable.
“What has Her Highness so grumpy today?” Akira asks as she drops the coins into the machine.
“That moron Togawa contradicted me in seminar again.”
“Is it really all that bad if someone disagrees with you?” Akira asks, moving beside Kokoro and taking up a plastic controller herself. “Aufheben can’t happen without thesis and antithesis, after all.”
The game starts and Kokoro immediately blasts something onscreen. “You know I pulled that out of my ass.”
“Because you were so desperate to talk to me,” Akira says with a flutter of her eyelashes.
“Are you going to keep missing obvious targets because you’re distracted by how charming you think you are, or are you going to join me in wiping the floor with monsters?”
Akira has to seriously consider for a moment, but ultimately decides she’d rather show off her gun prowess. There’ll be plenty of other opportunities for showing off her charm.
Even without a sword to swing or claws to gouge the enemy’s eyes out with, Kokoro is brutally efficient in her mowing down of the encroaching monster hordes, and it takes a surprising amount of concentration for Akira to keep pace with her.
“We could go to a real shooting range sometime,” Akira suggests at one point.
“I’d rather not,” Kokoro answers tightly as she explodes some green thing’s brain.
Fair enough. Kokoro’s guns in the Metaverse had all been modelled after toys. The only instance of Kokoro pulling the trigger of a real gun—that Akira knows of, anyway—would probably have been in that interrogation room.
There’s something almost satisfying about that. Akira may not have really been there with her, but she’d still thrown up the last time she’d had blood drawn and caught sight of the needle in her arm. It’s only fair that they have matching scars, especially if they’re scars that no one else will ever understand.
Almost satisfying, but not quite. There’s something colder threaded through the possibility of that being a source of discomfort for Kokoro, one that comes dangerously close to resembling the shape of the girl who’d closed the bulkhead door, having decided all on her own that she had no other way to make things right.
The thought is like a hand held loosely at Akira’s throat. Not a danger yet.
Better, maybe, to smother that thought instead.
They play another round once they’ve finished, then another and another and another. Every round past the first is paid for by Akira, the likelier between the two of them to have a stash of 100-yen coins on hand, although she does mourn the loss of them when she recalls the wall of capsule toy machines she saw on the way over. There are children lingering near one of the other cabinets that are probably waiting for their turn, but whatever they see as they watch Kokoro shoot keeps them from actually demanding one, and Akira’s not feeling inclined to offer.
“We played for a pretty long time,” Akira says when they finally do hang up their guns. “Togawa put you in that bad a mood?”
“No,” Kokoro says simply.
If she had been snippier, Akira might have thought she was lying and that her mood had in fact been downright foul. The brevity of her response instead suggests honesty she’s hoping not to call attention to.
So she just wanted to keep playing, then.
“Let’s grab dinner somewhere,” Akira suggests, feeling giddy. “Mona won’t mind if we bring something back for him. I’ll text him to let him know.”
“Sorry, you’ll what?”
Ignoring her, Akira takes out her phone.
From: Akira Kurusu
Any good bistro-y restaurants near here?
[A link to a location in a maps app.]
From: Haru Okumura
Oh, yes!
Garret offers a daily menu based on freshly harvested seasonal vegetables that I quite admire. I would like to do something similar when I open my own café someday.
Seiche is also quite nice; they serve French cuisine prepared with both Italian and Japanese techniques, making for some quite interesting flavours!
La Dalle is purely French, but the décor is quite lovely. Very atmospheric! And their tea is delicious. The coffee can’t hold a candle to Leblanc’s, though!
From: Akira Kurusu
Is there one you want a spy in?
From: Haru Okumura
Hmm…
Perhaps Seiche?
From: Akira Kurusu
👍
“Are you actually texting your cat?” Kokoro demands, looking frazzled.
“He said he doesn’t need anything,” Akira replies, tucking her phone away. “Come on, there’s a place nearby that should be nice.”
As a rule, Akihabara isn’t the most romantic place, but Seiche is certainly doing its best. It has terrace seating and a wooden deck, allowing them to look out upon the sky and the rosy hues of the spring-becoming-summer sunset, and while the restaurant is crowded, meaning they more or less end up shoved into a corner, that somehow seems to lend their table an air of intimacy.
“I don’t see why we can’t go to an upscale sushi place if I’m paying,” Kokoro grumbles while they take their seats.
“Because you’re not paying. I’m not letting you.”
“Is that so?” Kokoro studies the menu with a critical eye a moment before declaring, “You’ll have the saddle of lamb.”
It occurs to Akira that she could choose something she knows to be horribly spicy. Instead she studies the menu a moment longer herself before declaring, “You’ll have the seafood pasta. And a salad. Veggies are important.”
Kokoro rolls her eyes, but when the server comes, she places the orders they selected for each other with a winning smile, arugula, pear, and radicchio salad with a vinaigrette included.
“Is it good?” Akira asks once their food has been brought to the table and Kokoro has taken her first bite.
Kokoro chews for a moment, swallows, then dabs her mouth with a napkin, manners as flawless as they always are when the two of them are in public. “Why are you fishing for compliments on the restaurant’s behalf?” she asks as bluntly as she always does when no one else is likely to be listening. “It’s fine. Food is food.”
Maybe so, but Kokoro gets weird about food, and it’s become yet another point of fascination for Akira, the way everything about her has with time. She doesn’t seem to have any preferences, but when asked to choose, she’ll always go for whatever’s most expensive. She rarely seems to bother with proper meals when she’s alone, instead getting by on protein bars and jelly packs, but she’ll still scavenge from the plates of others as shamelessly as a little vulture. She does so now, in fact, helping herself to a wedge of fried potato from Akira’s plate without even trying to hide the fact she’s doing so.
“Does food only taste good to you when you’re taking it from someone else?” Akira asks in curiosity.
Kokoro pops the wedge into her mouth, again taking the time to chew and swallow properly before replying, “Yes. I like knowing others were deprived because of me.”
“If you ever especially like something, you have to tell me so I can make it for you myself,” Akira says firmly. “I’d do a better job than any restaurant.”
Kokoro kicks her under the table. Akira immediately kicks her back. She knows the grin she’s wearing probably looks more goofy than debonair, but she can’t bring herself to care.
When the bill arrives, Kokoro snatches it up before Akira can do so and darts for the cashier, good manners apparently abandoned in the name of getting one up on Akira.
“Hah,” she crows when Akira catches up to her. “I’ve already given them my card.”
“Boo.”
“You graciously accompanied me to the arcade, and so I wanted to repay you,” Kokoro says sweetly as she reclaims her card from the cashier, who’s doing a remarkable job of maintaining a pleasantly blank smile.
“I’ll get you next time,” Akira threatens.
“See to it that you do,” Kokoro says with a smirk, and for all it may have been Akira’s loss, in that moment, it doesn’t feel like losing.
It’s not as though Akira has a guide to the top ranked Tokyo date spots to work through, but if she did, she’s fairly certain she’d find most of their usual hangouts on there. That’s part of what makes this so tricky—Kokoro already knows all of the trendiest spots in Tokyo, having spent years familiarizing herself with them as a way of farming for conversation topics. That means Akira can’t exclusively rely on things like restaurants, however classic they may be.
Would she like a cat café? Akira wonders while she’s sweeping the floor of Untouchable one day. No—even if she would, better to steer clear of those. Morgana may insist he’s not a cat, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still get cranky when Akira has the scent of another animal on her clothing. What about karaoke? Kokoro would probably love that, actually, but it doesn’t feel like what Akira is looking for—not a lot of room for swooning and radical vulnerability when you’re busy belting enka.
A classic date spot she knows Kokoro would like, but hasn’t already been to a million times, that would allow for more conversation than something like a movie or karaoke. Hmm.
A thought occurs to her. She takes out her phone.
From: Akira Kurusu
Fish?
From: Kokoro Akechi
What?
From: Akira Kurusu
Thoughts on fish?
From: Kokoro Akechi
As in, to eat?
From: Akira Kurusu
We went to Shinagawa Aquarium once in high school.
Do you like fish?
She doesn’t say or was that just because aquariums are popular, because she’s pretty sure that part goes implied.
There’s a pause before Kokoro answers that could easily be attributed to her boarding a train or something, but Akira chooses to believe it’s because she picked up on said unspoken implication and is embarrassed, just as a little treat for herself.
From: Kokoro Akechi
I do find aquariums restful, if that’s what you’re asking.
Restful? Her? God damn.
From: Akira Kurusu
If I were to obtain tickets, would you be willing to accompany me to one this weekend?
From: Kokoro Akechi
Are you imitating me?
From: Akira Kurusu
I do hope you can make it.
It would be such a shame if the tickets were to go to waste.
From: Kokoro Akechi
Yes, yes, very cute.
From: Akira Kurusu
Uwaaa, you think I’m cute? >///<
From: Kokoro Akechi
That had better not be intended as a continuation of your impression of me.
But I’ll be free, so why not.
From: Akira Kurusu
:)
There had been quite a long period of time where Kokoro didn’t seem to care what she looked like anymore—not bothering with makeup, barely combing her hair, throwing together outfits using sweatpants and t-shirts taken from Akira’s closet. That period appears to have mostly passed, and on the day of their aquarium date, Kokoro looks as put-together as she ever did as the Detective Princess, albeit wearing the frown Akira likes so much in lieu of the Detective Princess’s plastic smile.
But the frown remains even once they’re past the ticket gate, and that doesn’t seem quite right. At first Akira thinks it has something to do with the gaggle of bucket hat-wearing schoolchildren chattering loudly in the first area, but the frown remains even once the children have dispersed and it’s just the two of them standing before the shimmering clouds of schooling ocean fish.
They could have gone to any aquarium in Tokyo, given that Akira hadn’t actually bought any tickets at the time she’d made the invitation, but she’d chosen Shinagawa Aquarium out of a kind of nostalgia. The solemnity with which Kokoro peers into the tanks has her wondering if that was a mistake. Sure, Kokoro said she finds aquariums restful, but maybe that’s only the new and interesting ones? Is it boring, coming to a place she’s already been, even if that was years ago? Is Akira boring for suggesting it?
Are you not having fun? she doesn’t ask. If Kokoro’s not having fun, Akira will make it so she is. Simple as that.
Kokoro’s face is illuminated by ripples of cool blue light and Akira leans in for closer study. Kokoro jerks away with a glare.
“You can relax, you know,” Akira says as she pulls back. “The fish aren’t going to hurt you. There’s glass in the way, see?”
“Joke if you must—" Akira must. “—I’m simply taking this seriously.”
“What’s there to take seriously?” Akira asks in her most coaxing voice. “Aquariums are easy. All we have to do is look at the fish and ooh and ahh together, and when I see a really weird one, I’ll point at it and say look, honey, that’s you.”
With a roll of her eyes, Kokoro turns back to the tank. “It’s not lost on me that we’ve been here before, you know. You’ll have to excuse me for having that on my mind.”
“It’s not as though I chose this place as some kind of trick,” Akira says, careful to keep her voice light. “I chose it because I liked coming here with you before. Not everything we did back then was secretly poisonous just because of what was happening behind the scenes. I know you know that, or we wouldn’t keep going to Jazz Jin.”
It had been an idea that had come to her when recalling the arcade. If there are memories that make either of them flinch, she wants to bury them beneath new memories, rewriting them with who they are now, until that’s all there is to look back on.
Kokoro’s gaze remains fixed on the tank before her.
“I didn’t say I thought it was a trick,” she says at last. “I simply wish to do things properly this time around.”
Akira hums thoughtfully. “That’s kind of a cute thing to say.”
Kokoro’s feathers ruffle. “It’s not cute.”
It was cute, but Akira doesn’t try to convince her. Instead, she points at a deflating puffer fish drifting on a current created by a passing manta. “Look, honey,” she says. “That’s you.”
“That’s you,” Kokoro counters, pointing across the room at the most hideous bulb-headed fish Akira’s ever seen.
“What even is that?” Akira asks in wonder.
“How should I know? You’re the one who fishes for fun. You ought to be the expert.”
“Come on,” Akira says, taking Kokoro’s hand and tugging it lightly. “Let’s go stand in the tunnel. We can find other weird fish to make fun of.”
Kokoro does seem to relax after that, smiling more readily as they make their way through the remaining exhibits. The aquarium itself is beautiful, all awash in brilliant blues, and for seemingly every stop they make, Kokoro has some horrifying new fact to share, like fish can drown in water—if there isn’t enough oxygen in it, they’ll suffocate or did you know some sharks devour each other in utero? And in the end, while Shinagawa Aquarium is smaller than some aquariums in Tokyo, they manage to pass two hours quite easily.
“You’re buying us a meal, yes?” Kokoro asks when the restaurant attached to the aquarium comes into view. “You said you would get me next time. It would really show me up if you paid for anything I ordered today.”
It’s such blatant wheedling that Akira’s first instinct is to laugh. But she feels too buoyant by now; the sky is so blue, and Kokoro took care when choosing her outfit for the day, and she thinks she might be able to make a pitch for buying matching souvenirs at the gift shop. So instead she says, “I’ll do you one better—pick any fish you like and I’ll make sushi, here and now.”
This startles a bark of laughter from Kokoro. It’s an ugly, undignified sound. It might be the best laugh Akira’s ever heard.
“Stupid,” Kokoro says with something like fondness in her voice. “It would be cruel to do so when Morgana isn’t here to enjoy it too.”
Akira had held Kokoro’s hand earlier when she’d dragged her off towards the tunnel, but let go somewhere near the spotted garden eels. She takes her hand again now, and in response, Kokoro freezes.
But then Kokoro weaves her fingers with hers and start walking towards the restaurant without another word, pulling her along and leaving Akira’s heart to sing and sing and sing.
Here’s the thing.
That December had been what had proven what Akira had long suspected: that Kokoro, too, was a bullet already fired. There was only ever going to be a single destination for either of them, but in Kokoro’s case, there was nothing beautiful about it—only the grim finality of two gunshots behind a closed door.
In February, when it had seemed possible, however tenuously, to redirect that bullet’s path, Akira had very nearly wavered. It had been a small and greedy part of her that had wanted to say yes to Dr. Maruki, but worse than that, it had been a childish part. It had been the part of her that saw the future unfolding in a way she did not like and thought: but that’s not fair.
Theirs is not a world that cares about fairness. Akira knows that. It’s why she’s always had to make things fair herself. Their having emerged on the other side of that year was a miracle, and if she wants to keep that miracle, then she has to make it hers, wholly and completely. That way, no one else will ever be able to take it away.
She had been aiming to be kind, mindful of the brittle fragility Kokoro tries so hard to hide, even from herself. But it’s hard for Akira’s hopes to not creep upwards when she hears Kokoro say things like I simply wish to do things properly.
It’s enough to make her imagine a future between the two of them that doesn’t have to end—time together without a deadline, that simply goes on and on and on, the gradual accumulation of small moments that will eventually lead them into a hard-won forever. It’s what alstroemeria means: longing for the future.
And so, as they’re walking to the station on their way back from the aquarium, Akira asks, “Have you ever thought what comes next?”
“After Ōmorikaigan Station?” Kokoro asks. “Shinagawa Station, presumably.”
“Very funny. You know that’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?”
How can she say it? She’s never talked about it with Kokoro directly. Been avoiding it as much as possible, in fact. It had been bad enough seeing that momentary flicker of betrayal in her eyes when Akira had dared to say her life was more than trivial.
But maybe this is the moment. Maybe this is when she’s meant to say I want to do things properly too.
“I had fun today,” Akira says, and maybe it’s pushing her luck, but the high of having spent such an ordinary, happy day together, of hoping, makes her feel playful. “When two people go out together for the purpose of having fun in each other’s company…what’s that called again?”
“I’m not sure what you’re implying.”
“Oh, come on,” Akira says, bumping Kokoro’s shoulder with her own. “We’ve already kissed. Or does that mean something different for you than it usually does for people?”
“It meant I wanted to,” Kokoro answers. Her tone is vague. “You did too, didn’t you? Or what, is that not enough?”
Akira stops.
Kokoro takes another few steps forward, then pauses and turns around when she seemingly realizes Akira isn’t walking with her anymore.
“Enough?” Akira echoes. “What does that mean?”
“We wanted to, so we did,” Kokoro answers mildly. “I don’t see the need to make things more complicated than that.”
And just like that, the ebullient hope Akira had been feeling sputters out.
The smart thing to do—the safe thing to do—would be to let it go. Kokoro hates feeling trapped. It’s the entire reason Akira has been playing this game to begin with—to encourage her to accept, under the guise of upping the ante, what she might otherwise be reluctant to allow. If even now she’s hiding under the guise of I just so happened, then it’s clearly too soon for anything more.
“So, what, you wouldn’t care if I did that kind of thing with someone else?” Akira asks, because for all she might pretend at cleverness, she’s never been very good at playing it smart or safe.
“You’re free to do whatever it is you wish to do in your spare time. It has nothing to do with me.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to,” Akira says quietly, quietly to keep the sudden surge of the flame of her temper low. “I wanted to know if you would care if I did.”
“Why are you doing this?” Kokoro asks, voice suddenly sharp.
“Because I think you would care,” Akira continues. She can hear the heat in her own voice, and it’s not cool, not cool at all, but that doesn’t make her stop. “I think it would make you absolutely crazy. I remember how you were about Sumire. You can just say you’d care, you know. It won’t kill you.”
“I’m done with this conversation,” Kokoro says shortly, half turning from Akira. “I have no interest in indulging your childishness.”
“Well, I indulge yours.”
And Akira knows, as soon as she has said it, that she has made a mistake. She sees the way Kokoro’s face closes off in that moment, and it’s like having her hold slip from her grappling hook, sending her plummeting to the ground below.
There’s room in the silence that drags between them after that for Akira to apologize, to try and walk back what she’s said. But before she can, Kokoro looks up, smiling warmly.
“Yes, you do,” she says. “Perhaps too much. Anyone would grow tired of it. It’s quite understandable if you have.”
She says it in that way that means she’s going to lock herself in her bedroom later and scream into a pillow while Akira acts like she can’t hear.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Akira tries.
“Regardless, I suspect it may be accurate,” Kokoro says, cutting her off. She’s still smiling. “I shall try to be more mindful going forward. Thank you for bringing the matter to my attention.”
She turns her back on Akira and continues walking towards the station. Not once does she look back to see if Akira follows.
It was Akira’s apartment before it was Kokoro’s, and that means she has every right to crash about the place however she wants, regardless of how awkward things have suddenly become between them. But Kokoro disappears into her bedroom almost immediately upon Akira unlocking the front door, and the thought of her taking herself out of Akira’s way unprompted makes her feel sick enough that she decides to be the one to leave instead.
“There’s stuff for dinner in the fridge,” Akira says while putting her shoes on in the entryway. “Will you make sure she eats properly?”
“I’m not her babysitter, you know.” Morgana grumbles, tail thumping on the mat. “And neither are you, I might add.”
Akira knows that. Obviously she knows that. It would be so much easier if she was, because then at least she’d have some security. If Kokoro literally needed her, it wouldn’t matter how cool or clever or charming she was. It’s easier, when people need things from her.
But Kokoro never has. Even when she gets demanding, she’s always so surprised when Akira tries to give.
“Helpful kitties get fatty tuna,” she says out loud.
Morgana’s tongue flicks out to clean his nose. “You’re lucky I’m so nice.”
Futaba and Sojiro welcome her in a way that says neither of them are particularly convinced when she insists nothing’s wrong but also know her well enough not to push. Sojiro in particular seems committed to the not pushing side of things, offering her a plate for dinner on the sole condition that she do her own dishes before shuffling off to do whatever dads like to do in their spare time so Futaba can drag her to her bedroom.
Lately, Futaba has been obsessed with some game that involve a lot of things called hyperdashes and cornerboosts and mostly seems to be about a tiny pixel character pinging about onscreen very, very fast. She sits Akira down beside her computer and explains what she’s doing in great detail, and Akira lets the rapid chirping of her voice wash over her, not particularly understanding but happy to nod and occasionally ask questions. It’s nice, being sunk so deeply into listening without having to think, until at one point Futaba abruptly asks, “So are you and Miss Pointy in your divorce era now or something?”
The question jerks Akira from the comfortable stupor she had been wrapping herself in. “Wouldn’t we have to be married first?”
“Anyone can be divorced. Divorce is a state of mind,” Futaba says wisely. She hasn’t paused her game, her character still whipping around lightning fast as she taps and clicks away. “I mean, if you are, good for you. I’m just curious because it’s weird of you to randomly drop by like this, and I have to ask for deets directly like a caveman because you won’t let me bug your place.”
“I appreciate that you haven’t done so anyway.”
Futaba makes a face. “I would have if I wasn’t scared of what I might end up overhearing. Gross.”
Akira usually makes a point of not telling Futaba anything about Kokoro unless asked, but when asked, she also makes a point of not hiding anything, feeling vaguely that Futaba’s entitled to her nosiness. So she tells her about the aquarium and its fallout, and at some point while listening, Futaba does, in fact, pause her game, even swivelling around in her chair to face Akira more directly. Her brow furrows while she listens, but she holds off on responding until Akira’s finished, at which point she says, “This whole thing sounds kind of cringe.”
“Yeah, but I like her.”
“You’re cringe too, dork,” is Futaba’s unexpected reply.
“I’m cringe?” Akira asks, a question she knows, the moment it leaves her mouth, does, in fact, make her cringe.
Futaba’s eyebrows fly as high as they can go when she says, “Miss Pointy says something about how you must be tired of her and you leave? That’s the kind of poor decision-making that lands even normie relationships a one-way ticket to a Dead End.”
“It’s not like I was running away,” Akira say, defensive. “I’m giving her space.”
Somehow, Futaba’s eyebrows fly even higher. “Space to do what? Overthink everything and stew? Because she has such a good track record for reacting to things rationally when given a long enough time to dwell on them?”
Akira considers.
“Okay,” she says after a moment. “Maybe leaving was a mistake.”
“No duh.” Futaba swivels her chair back to her computer, unpausing her game and seamlessly resuming her run. “This is why you’re always supposed to have the mighty Oracle scope out the sitch-ee-ashon before jumping into things. You get dumb and impulsive on your own.”
“Well, what does the mighty Oracle suggest I do?”
“Right now? Nothing, because you’re committed to hanging out with me while I show you this new tech I’ve been working on. But tomorrow, you go back and have a proper talk about feewings. If, you know, this is something you actually want to patch up and not just call it quits over, which you could definitely also do, if you’ve decided that you’re sick of getting bitten.”
Akira sighs. She likes getting bitten. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, yeah. Honestly, what would you do without me?”
Akira has no idea how late Futaba stays up, but she herself ends up crashing around 2am, falling asleep in a nest of spare blankets on the floor rather than bothering to dig out the guest futon. Even so, she’s somehow up with the sun, her desire to make sure Kokoro hasn’t exploded yet apparently serving as some kind of internal alarm clock.
She may not have stayed for breakfast if she’d had a choice, but neither Sojiro nor Futaba give her much of one. And it is very good curry.
“I should get going. I have a shift at 10,” she lies after clearing her plate.
“Sure you do, kid,” Sojiro says. “But if that ends up falling through, I could use you today. I’ve got some inventory that needs doing.”
She doesn’t actually have anywhere she needs to be, so she’ll think about it, once she’s satisfied herself vis-à-vis Kokoro exploding. “I’ll let you know,” she says, and Sojiro nods gamely, not believing her in the slightest.
It would have been nice if Sojiro offered her a ride. He doesn’t, which she supposes is fair, given that she’s pretending she’s only in a normal sort of hurry and not a wants-to-see-the-girl-she’s-obsessed-with sort of hurry. At least it’s early enough that the trains aren’t particularly busy.
The apartment doesn’t seem particularly exploded when she steps inside, and Kokoro’s shoes are still in the entryway. Two good signs. She can smell coffee as well, which could either be a very good sign or a sign of Akira’s own personal apocalypse, given that she doesn’t know if Kokoro was expecting her back yet.
Akira kicks off her own shoes and heads for the living area. The kitchen comes into view, and there stands Kokoro, coffee pot in hand with Morgana draped about her shoulders like a furry stole. She turns when Akira approaches, allowing Akira to see that her hair is neat and her eyes not particularly red, although she’s still dressed in the same clothes as the day before.
“Hello,” she says politely. “There’s enough for you as well, if you’d like.”
After a moment’s pause, Akira says, “All right.”
“Okay, well, I’m tapping out,” Morgana declares. He hops off Kokoro’s shoulders, landing neatly on the countertop. As Kokoro opens the cupboard to get a second cup, Akira goes to open the sliding door to the balcony for him, and his tail curls briefly around her wrist before he disappears.
With Morgana gone, Akira takes a seat on one end of the sofa. Kokoro brings out the two cups on a tray and sits on the opposite end while Akira takes a sip. It tastes like shit, thankfully.
“I’m sorry,” Kokoro says once Akira has lowered her cup. She’s clenching her own in a white-knuckled grip despite the calm with which she speaks. The fall of her long hair shadows her expression. “I’ve been trying to be less difficult lately, but clearly I failed yesterday.”
Akira places her mug on the glass-top coffee table. “Is that how you’ve been thinking of it?”
“It’s what it was.”
“No it wasn’t. I got mad and was intentionally riling you up.”
“Regardless, I’ve been wondering if perhaps we ought to—”
“No,” Akira interrupts, heart suddenly pounding.
This seems to throw Kokoro off whatever internal script she’s working from. “What do you mean no?” she demands, lifting her head and narrowing her eyes. “I haven’t said what it is yet.”
“No,” Akira repeats. She draws one leg up onto the sofa, wrapping an arm around it in what she hopes reads as a disaffected slouch. “You’ve decided this all by yourself, so I disagree on principle with whatever comes next.”
“Again, I haven’t said what it is yet.”
Akira shrugs. “Then say it.”
Kokoro takes a deep breath, then sets her cup down on the table as well. It occurs to Akira that she’s sitting the way she used to sit for interviews; perfectly straight, hands folded neatly on her lap now that they’re no longer wrapped around her cup. She doesn’t like it. She turns to Akira, expression perfectly neutral, and she doesn’t like that either.
“We have been acting in a somewhat…exaggerated manner with each other, as of late,” Kokoro says, and it’s not quite her for-television voice, but it’s measured enough that it may as well be. Like Akira isn’t even there. “I fear this may have caused our relationship to become distorted. I’ve been wondering if it might not be wisest to recalibrate our sense of distance.”
“I don’t think that’s what you want,” Akira says, and she thinks she does quite a pretty good job of keeping her own voice calm despite her rising desire to throw up.
Kokoro offers a tight smile. “And you would know what I want better than I do?”
“I wouldn’t,” Akira concedes. She feels the nervous-twitch urge to tug at her braids, but forces her hands to remain still; if she visibly comes to pieces, she’ll lose whatever ground she has. “But you’re not always honest. So convince me. If that’s what you want, make me believe it.”
“It’s not a matter of wanting,” Kokoro says with a note of frustration in her voice. Good. “It’s a matter of logic. You are, objectively, a good person.” Here, she grimaces as though she finds the epithet distasteful. “I, on the other hand, am not. It’s a waste of time, pretending like I’m suited for the kinds of relationships that come naturally to good people.”
“It’s not like you to give up,” Akira says, but internally, she thinks: okay. Okay, it’s not I’m tired of this. She can work with that.
Kokoro purses her lips. “If you’re going to insist on being stubborn, shouldn’t you be offering a counterargument, rather than being contrary for the mere sake of it?”
That’s a good sign too. Demanding a counterargument is a way of fishing for reassurance. She thinks Akira is capable of reassuring her. But what would be most reassuring for Kokoro to hear right now?
“I think you’re overestimating how much I care about goodness,” Akira tries, but Kokoro gives a sharp laugh. Bzzt, wrong answer.
“I’m aware of how little you care about goodness,” Kokoro says dryly. “You’re stupid enough to care about anyone and anything, no matter how many reasons you’re given not to. Someone has to be the adult and recognize when that line of thinking is doomed to failure. It may as well be me, given how this is my fault in the first place.”
“So you’ve decided it would be better for me if you weren’t in my life. Is that it?” Akira interjects, despite the sensible part of herself begging her not to, because the words my fault feel as searing as a knife when they come from Kokoro. The conversation taking place is starting to feel more and more like a wall slamming shut, and she doesn’t know when she could have stopped it, when she could have knocked the gun out of her hand, or if it always would have been too late, leaving her on the other side.
Kokoro’s posture stays rigid. Akira wants to believe she can see her folded hands clenching minutely, but she has no idea if they actually do. She likes to think she’s so observant, catching all these secret meanings and hidden details no one else can see, but maybe that’s only ever been in her imagination.
“It’s nothing so extreme that,” Kokoro says. Her tone is still so even, and Akira hates that evenness, almost as much as she hates the false docility Kokoro likes to hide behind. More than tear it away, Akira wants to shred it to pieces and torch it so she can’t ever rely on it again. “I simply don’t wish to become complacent.”
“Complacent about what?” Akira demands. Her leg is still drawn up on the sofa, but her arm has grown tighter and tighter in its hold by the second, and she doubts it reads as disaffected anymore, if ever it did. “You keep talking around what you think the problem is. Is it that you’re unhappy? Or is it that you like me and think you don’t deserve to? Use your words for once.”
Kokoro’s expression darkens. This time, the movement of her hands is not minute, fists flying from her lap to slam into the sofa cushions.
“You’re one to talk,” she snarls, the shift in attitude as sudden as a thunderclap. “What about yesterday, your little ooh, what’s that called act? You’re so enamoured with your own cleverness—when was the last time you were clever enough to use your words to say what you want? Or what, is the great Joker too good for that? It’s only those lesser than her who must resort to something so base?”
The hypocrisy of this outburst is outrageous, and under different circumstances, Akira might have laughed in her face. Don’t throw a tantrum because you don’t like what you’re hearing, she can hear that version of herself saying. I’m not like that at all.
But the words die in her mouth before this version of herself can so much as utter the first syllable.
Because she’s enough of a liar that she knows what a lie feel like.
And that is what makes Akira think: oh.
Oh.
Is she right?
The moment she does so, the weight of her own hypocrisy seems to crash about Akira’s shoulders like a tidal wave.
What is wrong with her? Getting up in arms about Kokoro dancing around something she doesn’t want to say, when she herself had made a game of the very same? Telling herself it was fine, that it was just what the two of them did, that it was a form of consideration, even? When, however reluctant she may be to name it, it had still been Kokoro who had made the real first move, that night they’d kissed in front of the CRT?
“I am cringe,” Akira breathes.
“I didn’t say that,” Kokoro retorts. She sounds both insulted and perplexed, but Akira doesn’t care.
There’s always been something others wanted her to be—the steadfast best friend, the indomitable leader, the reliable senpai. Usually, she was happy enough to give it to them, happy enough to shape herself into whatever others needed if it meant those she cared for felt cared for. But it’s always been different with Kokoro. Rather than colour her, Kokoro has always placed the brush in her hand and told Akira to impress her instead.
Is this the best she can do?
Under different circumstances, Akira might have asked for more time—time to first breathe deeply, to centre herself, to muster all her courage and steadiness in the face of the prospect of flaying herself open. Now, she instead lifts her head to meet Kokoro’s glare, and, allowing their gazes to fully connect, says—as directly as she can—“I don’t want you to leave again.”
Saying the words out loud feel akin to plunging headfirst into an icy river. The shock of it almost swallows her until she’s able to break the surface long enough to hear Kokoro say, “I’m not the one who spent last night elsewhere.”
Finding her voice despite the seizing of her throat, Akira counters, “You left first.”
“What?”
“That December in high school,” Akira says. She can feel her heart thumping erratically in her chest. It’s like it knows she’s going to expose it and is trying to break free of her ribcage before she does so. “I watched you die. Or—not watched, I guess. But—you know.”
Kokoro simply stares at Akira, brow furrowed. But her silence seems invitation enough to keep going.
“February after that,” Akira continues. “I thought we had another chance. But you knew what was coming, and you didn’t say anything until it was too late. I had to…”
She swallows, taking off her glasses and pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes. She feels naked, doing so, but if she doesn’t, she fears the words she’s dragging out will drag fresh-sprung tears with them, and while she’s willing to try being honest, she’s not willing to be pathetic.
Still, her voice cracks when she says, “I had to make myself be okay with that. I had to say it wasn’t enough to stop me.”
While covering her eyes, Akira can’t see the look on Kokoro’s face when she answers. But her voice is surprisingly soft when she says, “It’s not as though I want to do that again.”
Akira lowers her palms. She almost reaches for her glasses again, but ends up leaving them aside. “Then what do you want?” she demands. “Because I want you to stay, but it’s sounding like you don’t want to be here anymore. And if that’s the case, I…”
She stops. She doesn’t know how to finish that statement.
It’s so, so hard not to worry that a third disappearance won’t be what finally snaps them out of each other’s gravity forever. Some dark, selfish part of her wants to do whatever it takes to keep that from happening, regardless of what Kokoro wants.
She had come so close to saying yes, that February.
“I didn’t mean I wanted to leave,” Kokoro says. Her brow is no longer furrowed, but her expression is one Akira hasn’t seen on her in a long, long time—a bit like wonder at the words she herself is speaking, as though she doesn’t quite recognize them but wants to see what they become. “It’s more that I would…regret losing our friendship, such as it is, by testing its limits.”
“How do I know you mean that?” Akira challenges, a lick of the same cold fire from before in her voice once more. “You’ve already vanished on me twice. And you were fine with that, both times.”
Kokoro looks away. Her gaze becomes fixed on a point somewhere on the coffee table, as if trying to see through to the other side.
“Because I…like…your coffee,” she says after a long while. “The…coffee I make on my own isn’t any good. You know that.”
And, despite still feeling somewhat overcome by the watery, quavering feeling of having just made herself terribly, terribly vulnerable, Akira manages to think: don’t laugh. She’s doing her best.
“I bare my heart and you’re talking in coffee metaphors?” she says out loud.
Kokoro bristles, but before she can say anything sharp, Akira adds, with only the barest trace of urgency in her voice, “That means we both want the same thing though, doesn’t it? If you don’t want to go, and I don’t want you to leave, then aren’t supply and demand in sync?”
Again, Kokoro’s expression darkens. But it’s less so than before, closer to her usual peevishness than the kind that precedes one of her genuine storms. “That’s not what you said yesterday,” she mutters.
“I said the wrong thing yesterday because I’m stupid,” Akira says with exasperation. “Cut me some slack. We can’t all be geniuses.”
“You’re insulting yourself and flattering me to make me feel better,” accuses Kokoro.
“I am,” Akira affirms.
Kokoro visibly relaxes, the rigidity in her shoulders loosening somewhat as she leans back into the sofa. “Well, good. Keep doing that.”
The sight of the tension keeping Kokoro so taut finally slackening helps Akira relax a bit herself, but even so, she still feels a bit like an outside observer to her own limbic system. It’s like she’s the caretaker of a neurotic prey animal trying to soothe it while it struggles in her arms, shushing there, there, everything will be all right even as it swipes and scrabbles at her exposed skin.
“I suppose I should be used to this,” Kokoro says after a moment.
“Which part?” Akira manages to ask despite the skittering of her heart, because she’s always been good at pushing through that kind of thing.
“Having you insist you want me around,” Kokoro answers. Her eyes are far away. “You’ve been doing it for years. And yet it never stops feeling strange.”
“Is that bad?”
“It’s not bad,” Kokoro thankfully dismisses; there had been a time where she very well might have called it bad. “But I do question your judgement. I mean, I made my mother kill herself. I tried to kill you. The people I have grown attached to have historically suffered for it.”
She says this so naturally, like it’s simply a fact.
And Akira knows she could say what your mom did wasn’t your fault, but Kokoro would already know that, given that she’s heard it so many times from both Akira and Dr. Sonomura. And she could say it wasn’t really me you shot, but Kokoro still pulled the trigger and saw the splatter of blood and a corpse that looked like Akira slumped over a table.
And it’s probably not completely normal that she wants so badly to reassure her on the latter, anyway.
“You’ve been attached to me for a long time, whether you’ll admit it or not,” Akira says instead. “And I’m still here. I think I’ll probably be fine.”
Kokoro smiles wryly. “You’re saying that with such confidence despite everything I’ve done is proof that you’re a lunatic.”
“It’s your fault if I am. You sort of broke my brain.”
At this, Kokoro looks, of all things, pleased. “Did I?”
A kind of possessive contentment bubbles warmly up Akira’s throat at the sight of it, further easing her lingering palpitations. “Oh, yeah,” she agrees. “You were practically designed to make people like me insane.”
“People like you,” Kokoro scoffs. “Masochists, you mean.”
Her scorn is clear and Akira relishes it. “A bit, maybe,” she agrees. “But that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Means I’ll make you coffee anytime you want.”
“Hm.” Kokoro glances down at the long-abandoned pair of mugs on the coffee table. “Well, I suppose I did say I needed you for that.”
“You just have to ask, honey.”
Kokoro makes a face. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”
“You like it,” Akira says, to which Kokoro doesn’t reply, meaning that she does. And because she can’t help but be annoying, she adds, “You know my coffee isn’t actually that good, though, right?”
Kokoro frowns. “Yes it is.”
“It’s average.”
“It’s good,” Kokoro insists. “If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t drink it.”
“You’d drink anything,” Akira points out. “Eat anything, too. You don’t care how things taste.”
“That’s not true,” Kokoro says, once again visibly bristling. “I have very high standards.”
“Your dream meal would be a flavourless white nutrient cube.”
“Such a cube would certainly be efficient, and if it were flavourless, then there would no risk of going against people’s individual tastes, reducing food waste,” Kokoro says like a literal insane person. “But even if such a thing existed, I would still want to drink your coffee, because I like it.”
Akira crosses an arm over her face. She had been building up to saying something like since the coffee is just average, you must really like the barista, haha, but instead says, “I don’t think we should talk about coffee anymore.”
She can feel the sofa dip as Kokoro moves closer. Something pries her arm away, and then Kokoro’s face is hanging over Akira’s, a gleeful look in her eyes. “I do like your coffee, though,” she says. “I think it’s delicious. It’s the first coffee I ever really liked. It’s the only coffee I ever want to drink.”
“So that’s the trick?” Akira demands, cheeks blazing. “You’ll be sweet if it embarrasses me?”
“I’ll be sweet if it means I’m winning,” Kokoro replies with a haughty air as she draws back to her end of the sofa.
“You really think you’re winning just with that?” Akira manages once she’s certain she can speak without squeaking. “Like you’re not the one admitting she likes my coffee?”
Kokoro’s eyes narrow. “I can do worse. Come here and see.”
Akira begins to slide over, but then Kokoro’s arm shoots out to grab hers. With a tug, she pulls Akira down so that she falls with her head on her lap
“There,” Kokoro says smugly. “See how you like it.”
“You put your head in my lap all by yourself that time,” Akira points out. “I didn’t make you.”
“Shut up,” Kokoro says, and her fingers are gentle in Akira’s curls, so she shuts up.
For a good long while, neither of them speak. Akira simply lies there while Kokoro strokes her hair. Akira’s heart remains a quivering, small thing, despite her best efforts to soothe it, but at least she’s not the only one trying. And it’s nice, she thinks, when she doesn’t have to ask—nice that someone knows her well enough to know when there’s something that has gone unspoken and will answer it regardless.
Eventually, Kokoro’s fingers still.
“That winter,” Kokoro says. Her voice is low, as if hoping nobody will hear despite it being just the two of them, but she’s close enough for Akira to catch her words anyway. “I thought I wasn’t meant to be there. And…I know it wasn’t fair to you, but…I was…happy that…for at least a while, I got to…”
She trails off.
Akira has always been good at filling in her blanks, but she doesn’t try to fill in these blanks. She waits, instead, for her to speak.
“What I’m saying is…” Kokoro takes a breath. “I also found it hard. Back then.”
“Really?”
Silently, Kokoro nods.
“And you definitely don’t want to go anywhere.”
Kokoro shakes her head.
There’s probably something Akira is meant to say here—something confident and cool and effortlessly charming, a promise or a vow to help solidify whatever has just passed between them.
Instead, she hefts herself upright, turning so she can cup Kokoro’s jaw. Holding her face as carefully as she can, she says, “You don’t get to take that back,” and leans in.
Their first kiss had been awkward and desperate, full of bumped noses and clacking teeth, hands shaking as they’d gripped the backs of one another’s shirts. This time is softer, untouched by Akira’s urgency. But then as she’s about to pull away, Kokoro grabs Akira by the shoulders and drags her back in, and the kiss becomes hard and biting, almost like a punishment. Akira melts into it regardless. Behind closed eyes, she sees the sparkling of stars.
“I think I’m in love with you,” Akira says when they finally do break apart.
A strangled sort of sound erupts from Kokoro’s throat. She shoves Akira off her lap, causing her to lose her balance and tumble off the sofa before landing with a thump in the space between it and the coffee table.
“You don’t have to say it back,” Akira adds from the floor.
Kokoro drops her head into her hands. Her shoulders begin to silently shake, and for an awful moment Akira fears she might be crying, only to realize that it’s actually laughter.
“Why are you like this?” Kokoro demands, lifting her head. Her cheeks are even pinker than before, which Akira will graciously attribute to her laughing. “Just when I think I have the upper hand again, you play that card with no hesitation whatsoever?”
Akira hoists herself upright, leaning against Kokoro’s legs. She gazes up at her with upturned eyes, batting her eyelashes. “Aren’t you going to answer my confession, Akechi-senpai?”
She expects Kokoro to yell at her. But instead, Kokoro wordlessly leans forward, pressing her face against the top of Akira’s head, and Akira decides then and there that if all this were to turn out to have been for the longest, clumsiest honey trap of all time and Kokoro were to try and kill her again after all, she might actually be okay with that.
“I was joking earlier,” Kokoro says, voice muffled by Akira’s hair. “I do want to be nice to you, even if I’m not winning anything.”
“I know,” Akira says, ignoring the way her heart has fully graduated from trembling to backflips thanks to the warm weight against her head. “You’re bad at pretending otherwise.”
“Not always, though,” Kokoro adds. “Sometimes I really do want to destroy you.”
“Well, yeah,” Akira agrees.
“I don’t think I can…say it, just yet,” Kokoro says, pulling away. “But I’m...trying. Do you understand?”
“Not really,” Akira answers honestly. “But I’m willing to figure it out, if you are for me.”
“Nobody has ever been willing to figure it out before,” Kokoro says in a very small voice.
She leans forward once more, again pressing her head against Akira’s. Akira stays leaning against her knees, keeping her head there to be leant against.
There’s something wrong with both of them, she knows. Maybe someday that will change, their twisted feelings warping into something prettier. But for now, at least, they’re twisted in a way that seems to match. Whatever they end up calling it, Akira thinks she can be satisfied with that.