From the second the train doors opened, Makoto could feel the difference in Shinjuku from the rest of Tokyo. He felt it in the nauseating reek of grease and perfume in the air. He felt it in the howling and yelping voices coming from deeper in the station, and from the streets above. He felt it in the swirling lights in colors and patterns that made him want to throw up on the spot.
He felt it the entire way from the platform to the stairs to the overground, and the air and the cacophony weren't any less extreme on the outside. The flash and flair above, the grime filled gutters below. Makoto clutched his neck and gagged.
He followed the crowd up the main street from the station. All sorts of salesmen in every direction squawked about their stuff.
"Fire roasted chestnuts! Fresh off the fire!"
"Exotic meats here! You won't find this anywhere else in all Japan!"
"You look like you're looking for a good time! Why not take a look inside?"
They weren't talking to him. They didn't see him, and Makoto barely caught a glimpse of all the dealers and hustlers either. He didn't have any time to waste with whatever Shinjuku had to offer.
The street cleared into a huge intersection, with a sign just dim enough to read the name Crossroad Bar hung over a building right there in the middle corner. Cutting through the waves of people, Makoto found Niijima at the bar's front doors.
He waved as he approached. "Hi, Niijima," he said. "Were you just waiting here?"
"I didn't think I should start with you," Niijima said. "Unless that's how you want to go about this. It's your information, Naegi, so it's up to you."
Makoto shook his head. "No tricks," he said. "Let's just get this done. Together." So together, they entered the bar.
Immediately, a bar table ran from the door to the other end of the buliding. Pink spotlights cast a mind numbing glow over the room and every bottle on the shelves along the wall. "Welcome, welcome!" a large woman behind the bar said. She wore a full robe, with a floral print pattern. "You must be Makoto. And who's your cute little friend there?"
"Ah, there she is," a woman in t-shirt and jeans said. "Looks like I'm getting really popular these days, Lala."
"Lala Escargot. Ms. Ohya." Niijima bowed to the robed woman and to the journalist. "It's nice to meet you. This is… also Makoto."
"You two must have a lot of fun keeping that clear," the bartender said. "As for me, just Lala is fine." Lala turned to Ohya, with a serious look flashing in her eye. "Your special guests are getting younger every day."
"Oh, don't worry, Lala," Ohya said. "I know the drill by now. Anyway, we'll be in the back." Ohya stood up from her bar stool and stumbled into one of the private drinking rooms in the back. Makoto and Niijima followed her there, wary that it was looking too late to keep her from getting too drunk to answer their questions.
She shuffled a shot glass around her end of the table. "So, you have something for me?" Ohya said.
Niijima took a seat directly across from her. "That depends on a few things," she said. Makoto sat down to her right. "Such as what you have for us."
Ohya leaned in, far forwards. An inscrutable look on her face. Or that could have just been all the liquor Makoto smelled. She snapped back up. "Well, this feels familiar. What do you want to know?"
"A mafia boss," Niijima said. "A big guy, slicks his hair and wears cheap suits. From the little I've heard, he has Yakuza connections."
"And you still want to get involved with such a person?" Ohya swayed slightly to the left and lifted her shot glass to her lips. "Well, you're not the first. But I want to warn you, this is a dangerous road. I won't ask why you want to know this, but you better have a reason."
"So you know who this is, then?" Niijima said, arms crossed. "If you already told someone else."
Ohya pointed her finger to Niijima. "Good wits to have, there. I'll give you the same deal I gave the last guy." She set her glass down gently, neatly rested one arm on top of the other on the edge of the table top. "I'm looking for information on the Phantom Thieves of Hearts."
Makoto knew it was coming, he expected it, but expecting didn't make it any easier to think the Phantom Thieves' secret was once again in his careless hands. But the time to worry about that was a week ago.
All he could do now was trust himself, trust Niijima, trust their judgment, and trust their plan.
"Where do you want to start?" Makoto said.
Ohya stroked her finger along her chin. "How about who they are?" she said. "Though I guess that's on a lot of people's minds, and if you don't know…" She held on Makoto for a long time. "Or if you're not willing to say it. Did they tell you?"
"I figured it out myself," Makoto said.
"And clearly, you feel like they trust you to keep it to yourself." Ohya dragged her shot glass closer, frowned that it was empty. "I can respect that, after all, you'll never know how many secrets journalists know, but don't publish."
"The Phantom Thieves are doing a good thing," Makoto said. "I don't want to get in the way of that." Not any more than he already did, at least.
"You don't have to spill anything that they're doing now," Ohya said. "As an alternative, we can look back at their previous targets. I already had an informative interview with one of Kamoshida's victims. If you can tell me about their Madarame…" she snapped her fingers, settling on a word, "… heist, then we can call it even."
"The artist on TV?" Makoto said. On the edge of his eye, he saw Niijima looking at him. It was a good compromise, except he didn't know anything about the Madarame heist. "I didn't catch anything about that."
"Aren't there still some people who don't think they're real?" Niijima said. She caught both Makoto's and Ohya's eyes on her. "I'm just trying to see this from another perspective here. If you want to write about the Phantom Thieves, wouldn't the place to start be asserting their existence?"
"Madarame's confession was a big deal as it is," Ohya said. "Kamoshida's confession fit the same fact pattern."
"But that's not proof," Niijima said. "It should be something undeniable, that nobody can dismiss as just a guilty conscience." She turned entirely to Makoto. "Right?"
"You mean, a current heist?" Makoto said. "They did say they had something going on." Only barely, though. Ren didn't say what it was. He definitely hadn't said who they were going after. But, it was possible their targets were the same, wasn't it?
It was possible everything was connected.
"There's a big drug smuggling ring in Shibuya," Makoto said. "The criminals target high school students to carry the drugs for them, then turn around and extort them for money, with the threat of exposure. Given Kamoshida's crimes as precedent, this criminal group seems like the Phantom Thieves' most likely next target."
"So you won't get in their way, but you're willing to put them under the spotlight?" Ohya leaned back, head floating around in careful thought. "And you think this Yakuza boss is the one?"
It had to be him.
"Well, you're in luck," Ohya said. "I've looked into him in the past. His name is Junya Kaneshiro, he's exactly the piece of work you're talking about. I think you said you wanted everything on him, is that right Makoto?"
Niijima solemnly tipped her head.
"I'll see if I can dig up any notes or copy I made, you'll have it as soon as I find it. And I suppose I'll have my story in real time." With a satisfied smile, Ohya shook her shot glass in the air. "Lala! Can I get another round?!"
The sparkly robed bartender sighed and shook her head, but didn't object to finding a suitable bottle of some drink or another. Her silent look at one Makoto and the other said enough. It was time for them to go.
In the school library, after classes for the day, Makoto sat next to a board of clacking wood blocks. He looked up from the cover of a textbook he had just pulled off the shelf, and sighed in resignation that he wasn't about to shake the wooden board out of his head, and slid his chair back to look.
Ren was playing a board game.
Although, from the symmetrical setup, it didn't look like a single player game.
"Hey, Ren," Makoto said. The pieces on the board were all odd, five sided shapes with random words on them that he couldn't make sense of. "What's this?"
Ren looked over his shoulder, no shine in his glasses today. "Hey Makoto," he said. "This is Shogi. You ever played it?"
Makoto shook his head. His entire board game experience was an hour of nothing but paying rent in Monopoly. "I can give it a shot, though," he said. As he pulled his chair closer to the library table, Ren turned the board around, and set the pieces back in place.
"I'm about to get my butt kicked, aren't I?" Makoto said, touching the strange pentagon pieces one by one.
"Don't worry too much," Ren said. "I just started recently too." He looked at his middle row, which only had two pieces, the Chariot and the Angle Mover. Ren looked up at the ceiling. "Which way did these go, again?" He switched them around, then mulled it over a few seconds and switched them back.
He gave Makoto a quick briefing on what each of the pieces did. The nine pawns in the front row moved forwards one square.
The chariot moved like a plus sign, the angle mover moved diagonally. Ren called them a rook and bishop.
The lances on the edges of the back row only moved forwards.
The knights behind the rook and bishop moved in this weird L shape that Makoto swore he'd never remember.
The silver pieces could move one square diagonally, or one square straight forward. And the gold ones could move one square any direction, except diagonally backwards.
And the king, in the center of the back row, could move one square in any direction.
So thoroughly confused, Makoto watched Ren make his first move, and then he made his own. Every time it was his turn again, Makoto struggled just to remember which pieces could do what, and within half an hour, the state of the board had completely transformed, almost unrecognizable from the starting position.
Ren slammed his upside down rook onto the board, a strike that grabbed everyone's attention in the library. "It ends here, Makoto! There's no escape from the dragon's fury! Checkmate!"
Apparently, a chariot could become a dragon. Whatever that meant.
Makoto wasn't as enthused about the game as Ren, and simply shrugged and shook his hand. "Good game, Ren," he said. "But, was that really necessary at the end, there?" Even though he was having fun, the checkmate announcement seemed a bit over the top.
"Is that the two transfers?" "What's Makoto doing with the delinquent?" "Hey, they can enjoy a game, can't they?" "Looked like one of them was enjoying it more than the other."
"Wait, isn't Makoto close to flunking out? That goddamn criminal should let him focus!"
Ren's head snapped towards all the other students whispering just that bit too loud to be coming from genuine carelessness. They froze from seeing their cesspit of misery staring back, and some of them left the library without another word. Enough for the rest to disperse on their own.
He faced Makoto again, tapping his head. "Sorry about the shouting," Ren said. "It must have rubbed off from my master."
"Master?" Makoto said. "Do you mean like a coach?"
"Hmm, something like that. Really, we just play together whenever we have time." Ren set the pieces back into the starting position, carefully to get the rook and bishop right. "She gets really into it, it's where that came from."
A girl Shogi coach, or even just a playing partner. Makoto's mind pulled up one name in particular, but, could it really be it? Ren could see the idea taking shape on the tip of his tongue.
The first hiss of steam blew out of a tea kettle on the stove.
At the kitchen table, Makoto hunched over a laptop, scrolling up and down Ohya's file.
She couldn't believe her eyes. The exact day, the exact street, the exact vehicle, the exact driver, the exact madness, a trail for every single sen that traded hands when the deed was done. It was all there in black and white.
Kaneshiro killed her father.
Of course, he didn't do it with his own two hands. The fat coward didn't do anything that the police could explain. No one could explain it, until now.
The hissing tea kettle turned into a scream. Makoto grabbed her phone and wrote to Naegi. I got it.
I can tell your sister about it tomorrow if you send it to me.
He responded almost immediately. He just had his phone out, wherever he was. Didn't he have anything to do all day?
Makoto thought about forwarding the file to Naegi. She certainly considered it, even planned on it, before she read it for the first time. Now that she did, she thought it was too personal. It had to stay between her and Sis.
… and Fuyuhiko.
And Peko.
Okay, so maybe there were enough people involved in it already that Makoto shouldn't worry about hiding it, especially with someone on her side. But the information was only as good as someone could use it for.
Her phone chimed with another message. But you don't have to.
It gave Makoto an idea, and she wrote back. I think it works better if you don't see it. She backspaced that one out, tried again. I'll tell her. Her thumb hovered over the SEND button, but she deleted that one too. Then, she suddenly dropped her phone.
The front door of the apartment clacked open, and Sae came in and took her shoes off before joining Makoto at the table. She stopped to switch off the coils on the tea kettle, and its ear splitting shriek whimpered out. Her head took back to the spot where Makoto always dropped her phone. It wasn't there, nor was it the only thing missing.
No headband today.
"What's this?" Sae stood over Makoto's shoulder, reading along with a sudden scowl.
"Oh, Sis!" Makoto turned around and flinched from Sae standing so close in her face. "I didn't expect you back so early. I can go get started on dinner."
"You don't have to right now." Sae peeled her eyes away from the laptop screen. "And you didn't answer. What's this?"
Her eyes darted down to Ohya's file, and back to Sae. There wasn't going to be a better time to bring this up. "Remember a few days ago, I told you about a Yakuza head meeting one of my classmates?" Makoto said.
"You only said he was at the school." Sae walked around the table to sit down. "So this criminal has business with a Hope's Peak student?"
"Well, with the Ultimate Yakuza," Makoto said. "Anyway, I met a journalist who investigated street crime once, and she sent me a compilation of her notes. You told me to get something solid, after all."
Sae tapped her fingertips on the dining table. "I think I told you I needed something solid. Not that you had to get it for me."
"Well, I did. And I have a name." Makoto scrolled to the summary of the incident report, the page on their father's death, and turned the computer around for her sister to see. "Junya Kaneshiro."
Sae pulled the laptop closer to her. Her arms laid stiff on the table, still as a stone with the rest of her body. "Son of a bitch," she said. "It just had to be this untouchable bastard, didn't it?"
"You knew about him all along?" Makoto said.
Sae jabbed a finger at the laptop. "I thought this all along! What, you think you're the only one who can deduce a cop like dad was killed by the criminals he's investigating? I just couldn't figure out how." She scrolled around the file. "And it looks like this journalist of yours couldn't figure it out either."
"So how could you just let it go?"
"I never let go!" Sae stood up all at once, slammed the table. "Is that what you think happened!? I put everything on the line when dad died. I fought for every last shred of evidence I could put together against Kaneshiro, and guess what. The lead prosecutor threw it out."
She pushed the computer back toward Makoto. "There he is. Inejiro Mizutani. He was my senior when he dropped the case. Paid off with dad's blood. You know what he is now?" Even looking at the monitor, trying to make sense of things, Makoto could still feel her sister's stare.
"Director," Sae said. "I couldn't keep pushing the issue. That path only has one ending, and I couldn't afford it. Not with you to think about. Because real life doesn't play fair, Makoto. This is just one more crime that bastard got away with."
Makoto clung her arms close to her chest. She shrunk down in her chair, shut her eyes tight. She barely moved a muscle, not until she knew Sae was done shouting.
Sae came back around the table, and knelt down at Makoto's side with her hand on her shoulder. "Look. Makoto, look. I care. Alright?" she said. "I'm not giving up. Not on… not on this. But it takes time. Do you understand?"
Makoto's hand clutched around her phone, and she pulled away from Sae's hand, going for the door to her room. "I'll still make dinner later," she said. "I just want to take a shower first."
Sae shot up to follow her, right when the door slammed shut. "Makoto, wait." She pounded on the door. "Makoto!"
Makoto closed the door to the bathroom and turned on the faucet. She leaned over the sink, drawing deep breaths as she looked in the mirror. She turned her phone over in her hand.
I got her right where I want her. The rest is up to you.
The summer sun bore down over the school, over the courtyard, over the rooftop. Makoto hadn't seen Ren or Ryuji or Ann up here in a while. The only other person up here was Haru, tending to the planters she kept.
The roof access creaked behind him, catching Haru's attention. "Did you need something Makto?" she said.
"Oh, sorry Haru. I didn't mean to interrupt anything," Makoto said. "I'll just be a minute." He took out his phone, and Sae Niijima's business card.
I got her right where I want her. The rest is up to you.
Even though it all came down to this, Niijima had done all the heavy lifting. There wasn't anything left for Makoto to do but pull the trigger. To just say the word, and everything would happen according to plan, if their plan was any good.
He stood at the edge of the roof, looking down through a barrier that was recently installed, and he made the call.
"Tokyo Prosecutors Office," a dull receptionist said. "How may I direct your call?"
"I need to speak to Sae Niijima," Makoto said.
"Who may I say is calling?"
"Makoto Naegi." He waited for the click of the transfer. The dial tone ringing before Sae picked up the phone. He felt a familiar dread, like he stood at this crossroad before, though he now knew he was only ever going to go one way.
The call connected. "Niijima speaking. You have a lead, Naegi?"
"I got a name on the boss behind the drug smuggling, part time job scams," he said. "It's Junya Kaneshiro."
"You've got to be kidding me." Even just from her voice, Makoto could tell she knew it was true. This must have been what Niijima meant.
Well, there was no stopping it now. "There's one more thing," Makoto said. "I heard from someone that the Phantom Thieves are active again. I didn't know what to make of it at the time, but now I'm pretty sure this is it. Their next target is Kaneshiro."
There was dead silence on the other end of the line. When Sae spoke again, her voice stirred with an anger that came from the depths of her heart. "Not on my watch. I'm not about to let a bunch of self righteous brats steal everything I've worked for!"
Niijima knew her sister better than anyone, Makoto supposed. If this was really necessary, if this was what it took to protect the school, and to settle whatever other scores there were, he had to trust her judgment.
"I apologize about the outburst, Naegi," Sae said. "I should be thanking you, for telling me this. We'll catch Kaneshiro. We'll catch the Phantom Thieves. Everybody wins." When she hung up, there was just one last thing left that Makoto hadn't told her about the Phantom Thieves' next move.
He made it up.
His hand trembled from the weight of his lie. He dropped his phone onto the rooftop, and when he knelt down to retrieve it, he couldn't find the strength to grip it between his fingers.
Haru heard the crashing plastic and rushed over to help pick it up. She even plucked a piece that chipped off the corner. "Is everything okay, Makoto?"
He took a look at the crack on his phone's touchscreen, before slipping it into his pocket, together with the chipped off piece, though that was bound to get lost in the laundry. Makoto looked at the business card, tore it in half and flung it off the roof.
"I guess that's a no," Haru said. She helped him up to his feet. "Is it something I should know about?"
"Probably," Makoto said. "I found a way to put an end to the blackmail threats. I'll tell you the rest after school, but, for now, I had to lie to a lawyer to do it."
Haru looked him over, at every inch of his body vexed with guilt. "I see," she said. "I think the lunch period is almost over now. We should return to class."
So from the roof to the third floor hallway, from the stairwell to the classroom, from the end of lunch to the end of the day, Makoto could only look down.
The last minutes of the evening twilight faded into night as Makoto climbed the stairs to his apartment home. He opened the door, dropped off his backpack, and he saw Komaru laying over the couch, flipping through channels on the TV.
She briefly looked up. "Hey, bro," she said.
"Hey Komaru." Makoto nudged her feet, and she quickly pulled them back to make room for him. Every other second, the TV screen flickered to a new channel.
"You feeling better now?" Komaru said. "With your neck and all."
Makoto tapped at the spot on his neck, where he could still faintly feel the scarred ridge of skin. He gulped. "It's a lot better than it was a few days ago."
The image of a sharp eyed girl in a blue uniform blazer flashed on the screen for a moment, replaced by another channel the very next. "Oh, wait, was that Hifumi?" Komaru said. She changed the channel back.
It was the news, not a fashion network, and image of Hifumi Togo was a photograph.
"… Togo was recently suspended from professional Shogi," the newscaster said, "after allegations that her women's league matches were fixed in her favor. Although an investigation by the league took place, the accusers have since withdrawn their statements."
"Huh. Ren's playing partner," Makoto said.
"Oh, you know her?" Komaru bit her lip and touched her fingers together. "Or, at least you know someone who knows her?"
"Kinda. One of her pupils, or something like that. I had no idea she was this good." Her title in that magazine, Venus of Shogi, might not have been an exaggeration. No wonder Ren kicked his butt.
"… expected to compete in the upcoming national tournament, though some have expressed concerns that this may also be susceptible to match fixing. One anonymous source even says the Yakuza may be involved."
"Oh, that doesn't sound good," Komaru said. But she didn't know the half of it.
If the Yakuza was involved, then it was likely Kaneshiro was involved. Ren said he only just learned Shogi recently, from Hifumi. If she was involved with the Yakuza, if she was involved with Kaneshiro, Ren probably knew it. It struck Makoto just then, this was the something he mentioned at the gym.
And it meant the Phantom Thieves were targeting Kaneshiro after all.
It turned his lie into the truth.