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He can’t shake that feeling off him.
The train ride back to his hometown feels like a journey through memory, symbolizing a passage between past and present, stirring introspection in the audience.
It wasn’t that the home scared him. His back was ramrod straight while his eyes stared only at the feet in front of him. He couldn’t shake that feeling off him.
It started when he left the train. A few police officers were walking in a very routine manner, their steps synchronized. Usually, Ren wouldn’t care about the usual police officers. But behind them was a flicker of unease.
He was tall, wearing a beige or tan peacoat uniform and black gloves. Light brown hair, almost a bit lighter in the spring. His head was perky, but his eyes stared at the ground. He didn’t make conversation with any of them; he just continued walking, a few beats behind him.
But once Ren looked into his eyes, he immediately felt his heart drop to his deep inside him that he couldn't ignore.
For a moment, the boy turned to the side and looked at the window. Meeting Ren’s, his eyes don’t falter.
Ren stares at the boy for a long time, watching him as he moves along unaffected. The first thought he has is that his eyes are beautifully red. It reminds him of the Metaverse, of pool, jazz, coffee, and chess. It could live in the red eyes that he stared at. Even in the last moments of looking at him fully, he wished he had gotten a chance to look at those eyes for maybe a second more. His gaze stays on the window, as if left in an almost vegetative state.
After everything he’s been through, moments shared by a ghost, why do they look so similar?
A bright light flashes as the boy leaves, and he’s gone.
That snaps him out of his state. He refocuses his eyes as he looks forward. Morgana comes out of the bag and furrows his eyebrows.
“Is everything ok, Joker?” The codename still stings when he connects the message to it, but he shrugs and shakes his head.
“I’m fine,” he hums. “Get some sleep, Morgana,” he reminds his cat, who quickly goes back to being tucked away in his bag.
Akechi's ghost lingered in Ren's mind, stirring a quiet ache for what was lost and what could never be again, deepening his emotional vulnerability.
The boy who walked with those police officers looked like Akechi, but his silhouette was gone. Was he still existing in Maruki’s reality? No, he thinks. That was all months ago.
Akechi’s red eyes didn’t even react to the gaze of Ren, while the other boy felt like his world was falling apart in only a few seconds. He sighs and tries to forget the memory, sleep finding him comfort as his eyes close.
He still can’t shake that feeling off him.
His bed is a lot more comfortable than anything he had in Leblanc, but it feels foreign. The mattress dips in places it never used to, remembers a body that belonged to someone else. Posters of video games and movies he likes are still on the wall, corners curling slightly with age, but the person that Ren was a year ago is not the person Ren is today. He feels like he’s looking at another, alternate version of himself. A ghost who liked simpler stories. A boy who hadn’t learned how heavy silence could be.
He exhales slowly, counting the seconds like he used to when his thoughts got too loud. It doesn’t help.
Ryuji’s voice is nice and loud on the phone, resting idly on his nightstand. Ren doesn’t bother holding it up. He just stares at the ceiling, tracking a faint crack that runs from the corner toward the light fixture. Morgana is doing whatever, probably kneading the blanket as it owes him money, and his parents are gone. The house hums with that hollow, lived-in quiet that only appears when no one else is around to witness it.
With Ryuji, he doesn’t have to ask questions. Almost like he can read his mind, Ren listens as Ryuji updates everything. The mundane details stack gently on top of one another, forming something close to comfort.
“They’re making me do all these exercises of just walking and moving my leg up and down,” Ryuji says. “It kinda gets repetitive?”
Ren imagines him with a furrowed brow and possibly gesticulating hands, although Ren cannot see him. Physical therapy boredom sounds exactly like something Ryuji would complain about in a theatrical manner.
He sounds so animated, Ren can almost see his expression. “Hey, Ren, you think I could become like Sumire if they make me really flexible?”
Ren smiles. “I doubt that.”
“Well, you’ll have to see when you come this summer,” he reminds him. “I just can’t believe you’re gone, man. Shit feels weird.” his voice has an inch of sadness,
Ren takes a swallow. He presses his tongue against the roof of his mouth, immersing himself in the sensation. "Yeah," he says softly, because anything else might crack.
Ryuji's voice is tinged with sadness, which he refuses to admit, but it shows more than anything else. Ren also misses them. Misses the crowded booth at Leblanc, the way their voices overlapped, the feeling of being anchored by people who knew him without asking. Loneliness is a strange disease he has to get used to again, and though talking to his friends helps, he almost feels his heart is incomplete being in his hometown. Like a vital organ stayed behind in Tokyo, beating without him.
“Are you doing ok?” Ryuji asks after a moment. “I know it’s been hard with Maruki’s reality and you know—”
He doesn’t say it, but Ren knows. The silence fills itself in. Akechi’s name sits there, unspoken and heavy. It’s an unspoken fact that the other thieves didn’t like Akechi. Some of them are justified in that, others less so. Ren has never blamed them for it. He wishes it didn’t feel like carrying something fragile through a room full of sharp corners.
“I’m doing great.”
The lie slips out smoothly, practiced. Ren gets up from his bed and runs a hand through his hair, fingers catching slightly in the strands. He paces once, then twice, bare feet cool against the floor. He can tell Ryuji that he is ok and doing great, and his life has been incredible in the last year, and he can still live off that glory, and Ryuji will believe him. That is the case with all of his friends. They’ll never question him or his well-being because Ren is so firm in his word.
“Just settling back in,” he finally murmurs, his tone casual enough to pass inspection.
“Good,” Ryuji says, relief immediate. “That’s good. You deserve a break, dude.”
Ren hums in agreement, even though his body almost feels this weird sense of pain. It’s not the type that Ryuji feels with his leg. It’s deeper, quieter. Ren feels something spreading through his body, making him stop remembering what real life is supposed to feel like. Maruki may have had this effect on him, warped reality until happiness felt artificial, but this is different. Malice pours through his body, slow and insidious. It plagues his heart and his brain, and every living thought is not about the present, but about the past, friendship, and what could’ve been.
A train platform. Red eyes. A choice that couldn’t be undone.
Ryuji keeps talking about things at Shujin. About classes, about Ann yelling at him for skipping homework, about how Yusuke said something deeply confusing and meant it sincerely. The thieves meet up every so often at Leblanc, and they all want to videocall Ren when they’re together, including Sumire. Ren listens, responds when needed, and files each detail away like proof that the world is still moving without him.
There is a chunk in Ren’s heart that is missing, and it’s hard to admit, but it has to do with Akechi. Not just his absence, but the way his presence still lingers, sharp and undeniable, in places it shouldn’t.
After the call ends, the quiet rushes back in all at once. Ren stares at the phone for a second longer before setting it aside. His chest feels tight, like he’s forgotten how to breathe correctly.
He goes outside for some fresh air, the door closing softly behind him. The neighborhood is dim, familiar in a way that feels almost intrusive. He spots the place where he saw Shido and that woman for the first time, the event that changed everything. His gaze lingers there, then pulls away.
He doesn’t go by it.
Instead, he turns toward the general store he went to in his first year. Ren had always been a loner, so time by himself was almost like a gracious hug rather than a harsh truth. Tonight, he clings to that solitude like a lifeline, hoping it won’t slip through his fingers, too.
The store hadn’t changed one bit since he left, with the garden of plum blossoms filling the front by the entrance. He opens the door and walks around quietly. There aren’t many people, and existing in the emptiness is serene.
“Amamiya-San!” Naomi, the manager of the store, a sweet older woman, has a big smile on her face when she sees him. Her area is pleasant and well-organized. “It’s so nice to see you again. Are you doing well?”
Ren nods, “It’s good to see you as well, Sasaki-san.” He looks towards the book section, where he spent some time in his early years. He starts walking towards it. “I’ll just be looking around.”
The area still stayed the same all these years later—psychology and self-help books on top, fiction in the middle, and other non-fiction on the bottom. Ren scans to check if there’s anything on cognitive psience, even though the chances of Wakaba Issiki’s research appearing are less than zero.
He lets his fingers run across the spines, feeling each texture. It reminds him of when he and Hifumi went to Jimbocho, and they spent their time just going through all the sections and having meaningful, lengthy conversations about it.
He reaches the philosophy section and immediately pauses when he sees a name he recognizes: Hegel.
“Advancement cannot occur without both thesis and antithesis.” Akechi’s voice was sharp, and Ren was infatuated and mesmerized. Each moment they shared created this lovely, idealized symphony that he never wanted to stop listening to. The vine that crept over his heart was immense, and the sight of even looking at the philosopher reminds him of the train station. Of February 2nd.
When harmony sings, and misery grows, the vine is large and almost like a weed, reaching out and clawing for your heart. It’s beautifully painful, chaotically controlled, and hums until you close your eyes for the last time and lie to rest. Ren hates to admit it, but he’d been singing this melancholy tune for as long as he could remember.
The one thing that Ren struggles to admit is that he wishes that he had admitted to Akechi that he loved him. In that cafe, as he stared at him. When Akechi told him that he would choose his own reality, Ren knew he was not going to change his mind. But not even a single 'I love you' to him. They were a bond that defied fate itself, and he was too much of a coward even to state that he loved him. Through murder and misery, Ren lives with that weight.
A ghost lives in his mind, and in these last days, he can’t get the train station out of his head.
In a sense, they were antithesis and thesis. Akechi will forever live the rest of his life without any burden to Ren or to the world. Wherever he is, whatever he is doing, he is free. Ren has something plaguing his body, something that is the amalgamation of his entire year in Tokyo, his longing for the boy he could never have, and he exists with a weight on his back. A chip on his shoulder that will stay there for the time being.
As he starts to take out the book, Naomi’s voice is heard behind him. “Will that be all?”
Ren pauses. His fingers still curl around the spine, his knuckles white and pale as snow, as if the book will lose itself in the void of his mind if he loosens his grip.
He knows that the message isn’t panned to him at all, but the words feel provisional. Something will change if he makes the wrong move. A nostalgic feeling he once felt only a while ago.
Ren’s chest tightens. There is already someone paying at the front. Someone else was here before him.
Ren doesn’t look at them at first. He stops a few steps back, keeping a polite distance from them. His eyes drift to the shelves near the register, but he can’t help but look at the man in front of him. Candy, but the man’s hair is light ash brown and tied up. A small rack of bookmarks shaped like flowers. The man’s stature is poised, almost of a gentleman’s, but he stags a bit, lacking the real composure that he wants to go for.
He misses his voice, but Naomi laughs. It’s warm, familiar, the sound of someone who wants to live a long life and is naive enough to enjoy small moments.
“You’re always so polite,” Ren hears her say. “Most young men don’t bother.”
“I was raised better than that,” the boy replies in a quiet voice. But Ren’s heart and soul will not differ at that sound.
The voice itself isn’t identical. It’s softer around the edges, less angry and sharp, and less aggressive. There’s no theatrical lili either, but its calculated cadence is meant to impress an audience. And yet, he chokes on his words. And yet—
The vertigo of recognition pulls in a strange way in the name of fate. Of course, fate is a lull. People can forge purpose, remove deep connections, and do all sorts of things that fate couldn’t even predict to happen. Ren could say fate brought him to Akechi, but he could also say that fate whispered in his ears to tell the boy that he loves him.
He’s been here before.
He shifts, pretending to read the back of a notebook. The boy at the counter turns just slightly, enough for Ren to catch the line of his jaw in the mirror behind the register. His heart drops.
His hair is longer. His skin is paler. Everything clicks. His black gloves rest on the counter with his fragile fingers folded.
The ghost exists not in a way that a stranger vaguely resembles someone he once knew. It’s not even a trick of grief or a tug at the heartstrings. Ren should see how that feels. It’s…crueler than that.
Each feature is precise. The slope of the nose, the constant feeling he always mentioned of being observed. The stillness he can create when entering a room. Why is he here?
This is not him. Ren is hallucinating for all he knows. Maruki has done this once; Ren’s mind can pull a trick again. His heart begins to race, then it slows. It’s heavy and deliberate, each beat echoing too loudly in his ears. His hands feel cold, and his mouth tastes like metal.
This is stupid, and what grief does, he tells himself. Misery finds patterns and makes them your worst enemies. Akechi is gone. He watched him walk into the abyss.
The boy turns a little more, and Ren finally catches his eyes in the mirror.
Red.
Not blood red, but it’s not glowing nor dramatic. Muted red. Tired red. Red that has seen too much.
His vision blurs for a moment, looking down immediately, his pulse roaring as it has never done before. His body reacts before he can stop it, every instinct screaming for him to fight, or run, or kiss him. To reach out. To delete the memory.
The boy turns back, though, and finishes paying, as nothing happens. Naomi hands him a small bag and smiles. “Take care!” she exclaims.
The boy nods his head and heads for the door.
That was his chance. He needs to get him. The footsteps approach the door, and Ren can see the faint freckles dusting on his cheek. The boy smells like soap and cold air.
For one impossible second, the boy glances at him.
There is no recognition here. There is no spark or flare from something remembered. Just a brief, polite acknowledgment that another person is using the same space.
"Sorry," the boy murmurs, already passing him.
Ren does not respond. He cannot. His throat has closed around words that can no longer exist.
The bell rings again as the door opens, and light floods the store in a pale wash. Then it closes, and the boy is gone.
Ren stands frozen, his heart pounding and his hands shaking at his sides. Naomi clears her throat gently. "Next?" she asks, as if nothing had occurred.
He approaches the counter with legs that do not feel like his. He sets the book down with careful, controlled movements. Naomi picks up the phone and talks idly about the weather and how nice it is to see familiar faces return.
Ren nods, pays, and thanks her. He leaves the store.
Outside, the air is crisp with spring. Plum blossoms drift lazily to the ground, the petals catching in his hair and coat. The street is quiet, normal, and painfully honest.
Down the road, the boy in the beige coat walks slowly away, hands in his pockets and head slightly bowed. He does not look back.
Ren watches him until he vanishes around the corner.
And he runs.
As soon as he hits the door, he’s standing under the dim wash of a streetlight, and he’s panting as he gets closer and closer to the image of the boy he loves. His feet ache from hitting the pavement too fast, and his heart is pounding more than it did in the store, enough to rattle his ribs. The coat gets closer and closer and closer, just had, turning the corner at a quick pace.
“Hey!” Ren calls out. It sounds wrong in his mouth. “Wait!” It’s too loud
The boy keeps walking, even faster. It should hurt, but this is a game for them. Ren knows this feeling, it’s innate. He gains on him anwya, steps shortening, pulse climbing into his throat. The vine that wraps around his heart will break.
It's delightfully painful, chaotically controlled, and hums until you finally close your eyes and lie down. Ren hates to acknowledge it, but he's been humming this mournful song for as long as he can remember.
A thousand thoughts crash into one another, the damage staying in his brain. The scars, the words, the hate that Akechi holds for him. This is everything and nothing.
“Please!” Ren pleads, feeling himself panting. The beige coat keeps going… and going… he feels a sensation of water. He’s drowning.
With his final breath, he yells with all his might,
“AKECHI!”
He feels himself collapse on the floor, his knees flailing on the concrete. It presses into his pants. He can’t see Akechi anymore, but the figment that is him is slowly walking back. The patches are unclear, but he’s bracing himself for deja vu.
The boy—
No. Akechi.
Goro Akechi crouches next to Ren. He looks better than before, yet everything feels worse. Every detail is a betrayal. His vision clears, and his smirk remains the same. The curve of the smile is exactly how he left him. There is a faint scar near his hairline, but his eyes are still on fire.
He scoffs, “You shouldn’t follow strangers.” His voice is clipped, carrying a nostalgic edge. “That’s reckless, Amamiya.”
Ren’s chest seizes. His hands curl uselessly. The tension in his body loosens.
“That’s—” Ren’s always planned his words, but he can’t think even for a moment straight. “That’s rich coming from you.” He laughs, a broken sound arising from his throat.
Akechi’s gaze sharpens. It’s recognition, flickering and gone within a fraction of a second, like his mask is slipping—usual Akechi.
“Ren,” he states.
What a relief to hear his name. He gets himself off and dusts off his coat. “So you do know me,” he says, breathless. “I was starting to think I lost it.”
“You look pathetic.” Akechi sneers, getting up to match Ren’s movements. He takes a small step back.
“You can say that again,” Ren exhales through his nose, slow and deliberate. Silence stretches between them thickly. A car passes at the end of the street. Somewhere nearby, a door opens and closes. The world keeps going, blissfully ignorant.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t,” he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Notice me, I mean.”
Ren feels the glove in his pocket, something he’s ignored the entire time, even while seeing Akechi. He takes it out, Akechi’s eyes widening.
“Why did you keep it?” he spits. “You’ve hit a new low, Amamiya.”
Ren takes it and curls his hand into a fist. “Why are you here?”
“I didn’t plan any of this,” Akechi turns to him. “Paying at the counter, even giving one look.” His composure is slowly starting to move.
Ren takes another step closer. He can see the tension in Akechi’s shoulders now, the ways his hands flex inside his gloves.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Ren says quietly, almost reaching out to touch him. Just to see it’s real. It’s a confession. “I watched you die.”
Akechi’s jaw tightens. “And yet,” his voice is sharp as glass. “I’m standing here, aren’t I?”
“You don’t get to joke about that.” Ren snaps back. “Just tell me why you’re here.”
Akechi pauses, crossing his arms. “I have my reasons.”
Ren shuts his eyes, not letting his anger get to his brain. “You are an absolute fool.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Amamiya.”
“You knew where I was.”
Akechi bitterly laughs. It’s more hollow than ever. “If you want to do something about this,” he gestures to himself. “Go for it.”
They stare at each other, and there is something raw in Ren’s chest he can’t get out. He can’t claw in there and get it either. He already feels like he’s split open, every emotion laid bare.
“Why didn’t you come back?” Ren asks. The words tear free before he can stop them. “You could’ve!”
Akechi’s eyes flick away, just for a moment. When he looks back, there’s something colder there: his prince mask. “And do what?” he tilts his head. “Haunt your doorstep? Play make-believe in the fantasy world you have going on in your head?”
Ren flinches. “That’s not fair.”
“No,” Akechi agrees. “It isn’t. Neither was asking to go for Maruki’s deal.”
The words land heavier than expected. It’s a reminder that Ren couldn’t accept it all, but he didn’t. If he had a few moments, if he had the world at his fingertips, why couldn’t he do something?
“But you accepted what I wanted.” Akechi murmurs. “And that’s more than enough.”
Ren steps closer again, enough that he can feel the warmth from the coat. So close that he could reach and cup Akechi’s face and—
“I should get going.” Akechi raises his eyebrows and moves his head a bit back.
“I didn’t know what to say back then.” Ren feels his voice crack.
“That’s funny,” Akechi murmurs. “According to your friends, you had all the answers. But it’s satisfying that you are just as clueless as the rest of them.”
Ren’s hands shake at his side. Akechi turns around to walk away. “You are the only person who can understand—” He can’t finish the admission.
“Understand what?” Akechi bites back with all teeth.
“To understand me!” Ren exclaims, his voice loud enough to make the whole street pay attention.
Akechi freezes.
For a long moment, he doesn’t react at all. Then something in his expression shifts, not into anger, not into relief, but into something beautifully crafted into something incredible.
“It’s too late for that, Ren.” Akechi voices quietly.
“No.” Ren shakes his head. “You don’t get to do this.” He walks fast to Akechi, back to being face-to-face with him. “You don’t get to walk back into my life, tell me that none of this matters, and then walk out of my life again with my last memory of you being out of anger,” he scowls. Akechi is silent, soaking up all of this like a sponge.
“My last memory of you will not be a lie,” Ren promises.
Akechi swallows. For the first time in a few months, his red eyes shine, just barely, like he’s holding something back by sheer force. “Well, congratulations to both of us,” he barks out a sardonic laugh. He furrows his eyebrows, “Our plans to ruin each other have succeeded.”
Ren reaches out without thinking, fingers brushing the sleeve of Akechi’s coat. Akechi stiffens but doesn’t pull away.
“Are you real?” Ren’s voice is barely above a whisper. “Or have I been losing my mind since March?”
Akechi looks down at where Ren is touching him, then back up to his face. The touch is welcoming, and his voice is softer when he speaks.
“Does it matter?”
Ren uses his other hand to cup Akechi’s face, his face colder than ever. How can someone be so delicately disastrous?
“I just need to—” he moves the hair covering Akechi’s eyes. “See you for myself.”
It isn’t clear who closes the distance between them. Ren reaches out, hand settling against Akechi’s wrist. He waits. Maybe he will pull away.
The kiss is tentative at first, barely present—a question rather than an answer. Ren's breath catches, and for a brief moment, he fears this will vanish like everything else. But Akechi leans in, slowly and deliberately, as if savoring the decision. Their lips met again, this time softer and more assured. There is no desperation in it. No hunger. Just a quiet, aching tenderness that resembles a confession.
Ren tastes something bittersweet, like a long-awaited ending. His hand moves up to Akechi's shoulder, fingers curling into the fabric like an anchor. Akechi exhales against him, a sound that could indicate relief or surrender.
When they part, they don't go far.
“What kind of life do you want to live?” Ren whispers.
Akechi hesitates. It’s subtle, but Ren sees it. Usually, Akechi has calculated when asked these questions. On TV, he grins and tells the announcers something extremely faux that Ren himself couldn’t believe. There’s the instinct to lie, like in Sae’s palace with all of the thieves. When he speaks, there’s flair. His joy is his misery. They are codependent.
But when he speaks now, it’s stripped bare to its very bones. “A quiet one,” he murmurs.
Ren’s chest tightens. “You deserve that.”
Akechi snorts softly. “Do I?”
Ren does not argue. Instead, he responds honestly. "I want a life where I don't feel like I'm missing something every time I'm happy."
Akechi's eyes flicker, pain flashing like a fault line. "Then you shouldn't be here."
"I know," Ren declares. "But I am."
Akechi rests his forehead against Ren’s. “You know,” he murmurs, “you’re the only one who’s understood me too.”
And that’s love.
The controlled chaos. The push and the pull. Akechi and Ren love so viscerally towards each other that it’s lust produced as pain.
Ren smiles sadly. “I know.” He knows, and that is what hurts the most. It was never on the table, and Akechi was not going to run back into his arms. It’s his reality to go off on his own. To be free. Not to be tethered to another. Shido and Maruki already did that. What is one more?
They are too close to be strangers, too far apart to be lovers. The night air cools Ren’s skin.
They stay like that for a while, suspended in the space of their choices. They sway a little, the imaginary music carrying their bodies with it as they move with the night.
Eventually, Akechi straightens, stepping back just enough to reassert the line between them.
“I can’t stay,” he admits.
Ren nods. He knew that answer before any sort of interaction. It’s something he’s played in his head, his dreams, his nightmares.
“Will I see you again?” Ren asks, composing himself not to reach out.
Akechi eyes Ren one last time, gaze unreadable. The red catches the streeglith just so. His voice is quiet when he speaks.
“Soon.” Akechi hums. “For now, let’s meet in each other’s dreams.”
The ache in his chest doesn’t vanish, but it settles. Maybe the feeling will never shake off him. The familiar melody lowers its volume. There’s the life he wants to live. Quiet mornings. Happiness surrounds him in a serene, plain life. Loving the pain of his past and loving Akechi.
He walks back towards his house, adjusting his coat. He lifts his gaze.
As he walks away, a figure catches his peripheral vision one last time. For a fleeting second, it looks like someone walking beside him.
He doesn’t stop to check.