Sanae saw the warning signs long before Joshua made his decision. Perhaps he had seen the warning signs even before Joshua himself had seen them. Despite being highly self-absorbed (or, perhaps, because of that), Joshua was not particularly self-aware.

And yet there was nothing he could do. Sure, he could talk to the kid. Joshua did, at least, still seem to enjoy his company. (He had a dearth of company, so he didn't have much choice.) But talking could only shift Joshua's perspective so far.

Perspective. That was something he dearly missed about the Author. She hadn't taken her job because she wanted to dominate others' will through her creations. Her philosophy on running Shibuya was something more akin to how a gardener sees her garden – she was there to nurture it and watch it grow into something beautiful. It was not Sanae's place to say how a district monarch should run his or her district. But he knew which way led to a happier monarch. And a district not in immediate danger of erasure.

Joshua may have called himself a Composer, but in this aspect he was more like a director – he wanted his residents to bend to his will and be what he wanted them to be. He probably wouldn't have admitted to that, but that was what all his complaints boiled down to, in those days between games when Joshua stole down to the RG for a visit. "Tedious Game, as usual," he would report, slouching against the bar with his feet on the stool in front of him. Joshua preferred to have these meetings at WildKat rather than his throne room. "They don't get it. Why do none of them ever get it?"

"I suppose it's human nature to be ignorant," Sanae would reply, only the slightest hint of a chiding tone, a reminder that Joshua, too, had been human once – and still wasn't quite so evolved as he might think.

"It's not about ignorance," Joshua would argue. "I can't blame them for being ignorant of something they're literally blind to. But even when they finally have the blindfold removed, it's not even to get them to change their way of thinking. They get a glimpse of the sunlight and all they want is to return to their chairs in the cave and go back to looking at shadow puppets."

"You have to trust the process," Sanae would say. "Not everyone has what it takes to win the Game – if they did, what would be the point of the Game in the first place? But follow the process, and when you finally do get a winner – "

"I spend all my energy resurrecting them, and half the time they go back to doing exactly what they were doing before," Joshua finished, his tone of voice hovering between apathy and frustration. "No matter what I do in my Game, it's not enough to get people to change their way of thinking."

"You mean change it to be like yours?" Sanae might say. Or he might not say it, because Joshua had heard it before and it didn't ever seem to do him any good. Sanae couldn't bend Joshua to his will either. And he didn't want to.

But the only alternative was to sit back and watch Joshua's misery grow like the most aggressive weeds, until Joshua and Shibuya and all that misery were tangled up so thickly within that there was no distinguishing between them anymore.

Until Joshua decided the only way out was a controlled burning.

Sanae tried not to dwell on the past. But that look Joshua gave him when he saw him in the throne room popped into his head sometimes.

It won't be as bad this time, Sanae assured himself. Joshua wouldn't know it was him. And even if he did know, he'd get over it. This was necessary. And it would, more than likely, only throw a wrench in his plans. Minamimoto made for a distraction, not a threat. Joshua would only be erased if he wanted to be.

The problem, of course, was that he did want to be.

Minamimoto cackled when Hanekoma handed over the materials: a revolver, a protective pin, and a single snapshot of Joshua's RG appearance. Anything more powerful would be a last resort. "What's his absolute value? Infinitesimal!" he scoffed, in what Sanae could only assume was a jab at Joshua's apparent age and stature. "I'll reduce him to simplest form!"

"Don't get cocky," Sanae warned.

"It's a smooth vector to victory from here," Minamimoto said, paying him no heed. "I've just got to solve for X." He left without another word, leaving the door swinging and the entrance bell chiming.

It's a distraction, Sanae told himself again.

But he was lying to himself to think anything short of erasure would prevent Joshua's victory. He was too stubborn, too singular. An attack from the RG wouldn't be enough.

Sanae looked around his café and remembered the last time he'd let his emotions control him, but that time it had been to save Joshua. He remembered Joshua lying injured on the kitchen floor with his head on a reusable bag stuffed with fluff.

Then he looked out his window at the rest of Shibuya. The sinking sun, the neon lights, that perfect blend of souls that simply didn't exist anywhere else. This was necessary, he told himself again. If Joshua was going to make him choose between two attachments he never should have had, he'd choose Shibuya.