The Fool's Journey
Chapter One
Coffee, Curry, and the Delinquent
?/?/?
"Can you hear me? It seems you've been through a lot."
"Almost anything can happen here, and I can't stop them."
"That's why I need you to answer me honestly. I don't have much time either."
"What was your objective?"
"Why did you cause such a major incident?"
"I didn't think it was a prank from the get-go but I couldn't assemble a case for prosecution."
"It's because I couldn't figure out the method behind it."
"Of course you couldn't..."
4/9/20XX
Day of Arrival
"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for riding with us today. We will be arriving in Shibuya shortly; this is the last stop for this…" Akira Kurusu snapped back into consciousness, not quite startled but definitely shaken. He had been dreaming about it again, a woman crying in the night, a man's drunken slurs, police lights blinding him, handcuffs restricting blood flow, and then-
Quit thinking about it. Akira rubbed his eyes and shook his thoughts from his head. I can't change it now anyways, quit stressing yourself out.
The train rolled into its station, and Akira, more than eager to get up and further escape his frame of mind, bolted from the train and into the crowded station. It was more packed than he expected, but he squeezed his way through the crowd, and up the escalator out of the stop. Stepping outside however was plain overwhelming. Holy shit that's a lot of people… His breath hitched.
His hometown wasn't quite your cliché "everyone knows everyone" towns, but it was far from this size. The station square, between the high rise buildings, had a large open area with crosswalks and more people than Akira might have ever seen in one place in his life outside of some social gathering. The sound of miscellaneous conversations and foot steps and cars made up the bustling background noise of the city.
*Ping!* The noise from his phone yanked him from his thoughts; a red eye icon had appeared on his screen. The heck is this? He thought as he began tapping on it for some sort of response. Why isn't it- what the..?
All noise, all movement, everything had frozen.
People stilled mid step, faces contorted as they went to speak, but no noise came out. A nearby child's ice cream cone floated in mid air as they had seemingly dropped it. Startled, Akira scanned his surroundings, looking for something to hint as to what was happening, some sense of what was going on. His hint didn't come however; all he received was more confusion when a pillar of blue fire burst out ahead of him. Gleam evident in his glasses. The blazing blue pillar slimmed in shape, and sprouted two protrusions near the center, almost as if it obtained a human like shape. Then, as suddenly as it happened, it disappeared. The fire faded and the surrounding noise and motion resumed. What the actual hell was that?! Akira internally screamed, and the panic must have shown on his face because a man in a suit gave him a concerned look as he passed by.
After taking a moment to regain his composure, and convince himself that he was just having some freaky, hunger induced, hallucination, he walked back into the next station entrance and hopped on the subway to Yongen Jaya.
So his house is somewhere in the back alley… Akira thought to himself as he stepped into the back, narrow, street of Yongen. He searched for the house of his supposed guardian for the next year, Sojiro Sakura, a friend of a friend of his father. Frankly he didn't enjoy that he was going to be watched by someone whom his father didn't even personally know, but it was either that or Juvenile Hall, and Akira knew that, that was far from a preferable alternative.
I guess all I can do is hope he believes what my father told him… If this Sojiro didn't believe his father when he said Akira was innocent, this entire year would be tens of times harder than it was already bound to be. He already has to deal with adapting to city life, but also going to a school where the staff knows of his record, and unlike his guardian, with them they hadn't gotten the knowledge that he was actually falsely accused. All the school saw was an assault charge, the only reason he's allowed in, in the first place is that they think "reforming" a criminal would be good for their reputation.
Akira rang the bell and waited. Then rang it again, and waited. Then again, and waited… He's supposed to be here, he knew I was coming. Akira rang yet again, and waited. I swear to god if he's in there and just screwing with me right now. He thought, annoyed.
"Why are you loitering outside this house?" A stern voice called to him from a little ways down the side alley. Akira turned to see an officer approaching him, and instantly grew rigid.
"Am I not allowed to be here? This is public property after all." Akira said firmly, yet made sure to not sound too disrespectful; he already knew the police weren't always fair…
"I didn't say you weren't allowed to be here, I asked why you were here." The cop replied, annoyed at the dodging of the question.
"I'm supposed to be meeting with Sakura-san; I was given this address and told he would be here. Which evidently he isn't…"
"Sakura-San owns the café back down the alley; he's almost never home at this time."
Would have been nice to know ahead of time but noooo, that would have made too much sense. He thought to himself, "Thank you."
The officer waved him off and he started towards the café, as soon as the man was out of earshot Akira breathed just a bit easier. He felt stupid for being worried, but his last "encounter" gave him trust issues with the local law enforcement.
"Coffee and Curry, Café Leblanc," Akira read aloud, "That's an… odd combination?" He twisted the knob of the door and stepped inside. A row of booths lined the left wall where an elderly couple sat, and a barista counter lined the right where a man in a pink button up and apron sat. In less than a second of being in the café, the smell of the food hit him. It may sound weird but ohmygoddoesitsmellgoodthough- His sleeping, empty stomach woke up at the tantalizing scent, and immediately it growled almost loud enough to drown out the television in the back, almost…
"A public transit bus was driving down the opposing lane today, multiple people were injured, and the driver was arrested at the scene."
"Oh my… these sorts of things have been happening a lot lately…" The elderly woman sounded concerned as she discussed the event with her husband.
Akira stepped forward to the man with the apron, "Sakura-san?"
He glanced up quizzically, "So you're the guy huh? Well, they did say that was today." He paused, "I was told you'd be here in the morning, it's after three, what took you so long?" The man looked disapprovingly.
"The trains took a lot longer than we thought, and I may have spent the last ten minutes standing in front of your house ringing the bell, thinking you were home." He sheepishly said.
"Yeah well I was home this morning." He sighed annoyed. "I wasn't exactly going to stick around for your sorry hide at the cost of not opening up the café."
"Yeah well I didn't even know you had a café." Akira said deadpan.
"Whatever, anyways, follow me; I'll show you your room for the year."
"What happened to not wanting to have the café closed?"
"Who said your room was in my house?"
Oh son of a-
It won't be so bad in Tokyo he said, you'll have fun he said, well sorry dad, but cleaning up an attic that I'm pretty sure violates this cafés health regulations just to make it livable for the next year DOES NOT SOUND FUN.
Akira had a pile of four or five trash bags in the corner of the attic, a large pile of dirt from sweeping, and enough dust in the vacuum he found to make a dustman.
"Kid, the hell's with all the noise?" Sojiro called from the bottom of the stairs, prepared to chew out the delinquent for all the unnecessary noise in the middle of business hour. "I'm running a business you know."
"Trust me; I'm doing you a favor." Akira called back down. At that Sojiro started coming up.
"What do you-?" The café owner paused when he saw the room, it had gone from cluttered with stacks and stacks of books and useless knick-knacks to decently organized, dust free, and having a lot more floor space. Hell, he even dug out the old plant and watered it. "When I heard the noise I didn't think you'd be cleaning." He caught on to the surprise in his face and hid it. "Well uh, I guess it's only natural you'd want to keep your room clean."
"I'm surprised you hadn't cleaned up here sooner." Akira smacks one of the pillows he had yet to dust and coughed when a cloud of said dust came out. "Agh, I'm pretty sure this is a health code violation." He waved the cloud away.
"Is there an issue?" Sojiro narrowed his eyes.
"Well I mean, not anymore." Akira smirked. "The problem is in those trash bags, and that vacuum cleaner."
"Ugh, forget it." The café owner sighed, not willing to deal with the kids shit. "Anyways, I wanted to talk to you about the situation you're in, I didn't have much time before."
And this is the part I've been loathing all day. Akira felt disheartened, even if he didn't let it show. "What exactly about it Sakura-san..?"
"Your father explained your record to me for one thing."
Akira sprang up, as if writhing at the mention of the charge. "So… you know it was a false charge right?" A pleading tone was present in his voice. "All I was doing was protect-"
"Kid, I don't really care." Sojiro interjected sternly. "As far as I'm concerned, you're a troublemaker and your dad threw you out for being a pain in the ass."
O-oh…
"And furthermore, if you cause any trouble, I won't hesitate to throw you out of here if you go causing me trouble."
Dejected. That was the word for what Akira was feeling right now. Dejected.
"I uh… I understand." Akira hid the sadness in his words.
"Good." Sojiro frowned. "Anyways, you should be getting to bed soon. I'm taking you to the school for introductions in the morning."
"Right… Yeah, the school." He paused. "I'll just take these to the dumpster and then get ready for bed then..." At that, before Sojiro could say anything else, Akira grabbed as much of the trash as possible and bolted for the stairs.