The relationship between the Phantom Thief, Akira Kurusu, and his team's genius hacker, Futaba Sakura, is a complex one.
For one, she knew almost everything about his daily habits well before he even knew she existed.
Which was fine, at first, since she never did plan on meeting him.
And in her defense, she didn't install the cameras to spy on him per se, but to make sure that Sojiro was going to be alright working at Leblanc when a criminal was living in its attic.
...Alright, it might as well have been spying- but it was because she cared about Sojiro not because she was interested in finding out all of this criminal's secrets.
After all, she at least owed Sojiro that much after he saved her from her uncle.
So, when Sojiro brought it up to her one day at breakfast, telling her to be careful around the cafe after April 9th, she began to make plans.
Sojiro had told her that he had been roped into taking in a kid who had just gained a criminal record- he was unclear to her on the exact details of what their visitor had done, but judging from the way he took her in… Futaba knew that the criminal had gained Sojiro's sympathy.
Which of course meant that when- if he ever made a move, like attacking Sojiro or selling drugs or stealing, Sojiro wouldn't expect it! That meant it was her job- no, her duty to keep an eye on things and make sure things worked out in the end.
That was, at least, what she told herself as she snuck into Leblanc on the 10th and installed several hidden cameras while Sojiro took their guest to his new high school.
It was a bit challenging, having to leave the house, leave her tomb, where the world couldn't hurt her… but she was willing to do it if it meant helping Sojiro. After all, he has been helping her stay comfortable as she…
Futaba shook her head, breaking her train of thought before it went too far and bringing herself back into focus. She made a light clicking noise with her tongue, half-chastising herself as she finished configuring the camera feeds to automatically save to her server at home.
Tapping out the final lines of code, she glanced at the feed on her desktop to see that it was up and running, sending a shot of her breaking out into a grin to her desktop. With that, she shut her laptop and fled the cafe, planning on finishing the bug testing at home with her actual rig, rather than this laptop, a cheap one she had grabbed to run the observations from.
At home, she waited, once again sealed within her final resting place. She eagerly tapped away at the keyboard, glancing occasionally at the live feed of Leblanc, waiting for the arrival of their guest… and for the show to begin.
This guy is the most boring person I have ever had the misfortune of spying on.
Futaba rested her chin on her knees, reaching up to adjust her glasses as she watched the criminal sit menacingly in his room… and read. The fiend. What a terror he would bring on the Sakura household. Right.
She was well and truly annoyed. He did nothing! He came home from Suujin, he barely spoke a word to Sojiro, he sat down and studied, and he went to sleep. He did nothing.
What a waste of perfectly good spyware. Futaba thought, idly tapping on her keyboard as she reviewed all she had learned so far.
His name was Akira Kurusu, and he was arrested for assault. He was expelled from his school, but was given an opportunity to attend a year at Shujin Academy while on probation. To do that, he was staying at Leblanc.
Other than that, she couldn't really see why he had a record. He was quiet, barely ever spoke, came straight home from Shujin and immediately started studying. After a few hours of that, he went to bed.
And right on time again. Futaba observed, glancing at the clock on her computer as he closed his book and placed it with the others, before heading towards his room to begin preparing for bed.
It stayed this way until the 15th. Futaba was tempted to stop spying on him, but once it hit friday, she knew it had paid off.
He brought home a stray cat of all things, which, by itself, wasn't all that interesting. What was interesting was that he talked to it. And the cat talked back! Well, meowed back, but still.
Essentially, while he was alone he would have full conversations with the feline. He would say something to it, wait as it meowed back, and respond as though he understood what the cat, Morgana, he called it, had said.
It was really weird, but… kind of endearing.
Despite his cool and mysterious demeanor, eyes hidden beneath scruffy black bangs and the lenses of his eyeglasses as he quietly observed the world around him… he was still just a dork who talked to his cat.
She sat and watched as he sat at the workbench in his room and made little trinkets, asking the cat for tips as he progressed along with his work.
As she watched him with this little black kitty, she came to two conclusions.
One, this kid was just weird and two, there was no way that he was a danger to Sojiro.
The second one took a little bit longer to form than the first, and came to being over the course of the next few months.
As the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, she sat and watched, silently observing their criminal guest without anyone's knowledge as she waited for her time to come.
She slowly learned more and more about this mysterious Akira-kun, and the more she did the more interesting he became to her.
She learned that he made friends with two blonde haired kids from his school. That he collected weird knickknacks he collected from all over Tokyo.
She learned that he liked to make coffee and was slowly learning the ropes from Sojiro and that he befriended a strange artist who painted strange, twisted creations for Akira to offer his opinion on.
She learned that he talked in his sleep unless the cat slept on top of him and learned that he was extremely gullible when he came home with a salt rock he paid 100,000 yen for.
The strangest thing that she learned, however, was that he was paying his homeroom teacher 5,000 yen to come over dressed as a maid so he could essentially be her therapist.
But while all that was interesting, and admittedly kind of funny, none of it was useful to her, per se. Because, after all, she was doing this to make sure that Sojiro would be safe with this… goofy, scruffy kid staying at the cafe.
At least, that's what she was telling herself, as she watched snippets of Akira's life through her monitor, a pang of jealousy brewing in her stomach as she wished that she was still able to live a normal life with her mom, have the kind of carefree existence Akira-kun seemed to have.
This has to pay off eventually, she thought, watching as he tried, and failed, to do pull-ups from the beams holding up the roof, he'll slip up and I'll have something I can use to keep him in line if he threatens Sojiro.
And eventually, it did, as by mid-July she knew almost every secret Akira Kurusu had to offer. In fact, she had secretly infiltrated the ranks of a choice few who knew his biggest secret:
That Akira Kurusu was a member of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts.