His head hurt.

His brain hurt.

His eyes hurt.

His thumbs hurt.

Even his stupid hair spike hurt. How did it even feel pain?

Every step Makoto took up the stairs, he felt like either he or the whole apartment complex would tip over and fall apart. He couldn't believe Niijima wanted to do this again tomorrow, and the day after that, but, he couldn't argue if this was the only way to pull his grades back out of the fire he dropped them into last month.

He forced his way up the stairs, in spite of all the books weighing him down. When he got to the door to home, Makoto took out his key and turned it in the doorknob, but he didn't hear it click. His hand stopped.

There were a few possibilities here, actually. Komaru could have just forgotten to lock the door. Although, she had said she'd be out late today. Well, plans could change, so maybe that was all it was.

With that idea, Makoto opened the door to a room he didn't recognize, not right away, and again he stopped dead in his tracks. But, he looked around at the walls and carpet and the larger pieces of furniture. Those, at least, were still in the same spot.

"What happened here?" Makoto said. The room, really the whole apartment, was a complete mess just this morning. Now it looked like someone sorted through everything, like they were looking for something.

That was probably it, Makoto thought. Just Mom or Dad trying to find something before they left for the morning. He shrugged off his backpack, a heavy thud on the floor, and pulled his shoes off and dropped himself into the couch. He just wanted his brain to turn off for a bit, and reached toward the remote control.

The TV turned on in the middle of a commercial, and Makoto sat for a few seconds staring absently at the screen before changing the channel to something else, to another commercial.

"… Whatever." He put the remote back down and shifted in place, sinking lower into the couch cushion, then Makoto got up all of a sudden, going for his room to change out of his uniform.

And when he clicked on the lights, and saw all his stray things neatly lined up along the walls, and all his stray clothes neatly folded into a stack, the thought set in again that something was wrong. Makoto checked the row of stuff on the walls, nothing seemed to be missing.

Of course, he didn't know where anything was anymore. His hand slowly reached for his phone, as his pounding head reached a distressing conclusion. It had to be a burglar.

Makoto dialed in 110 and his finger hovered over the call button. And he froze up. "Wait a second," he said out loud. The last time he got the police involved, he ended up with a gun in his face and knife at his neck. And he was hospitalized for three whole days. Hmm…

Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Better off not repeating that one.

Besides, what if it wasn't even a burglar? What if it was something else? Makoto changed into a t-shirt and a pair of pants that wasn't so stiff.

Floorboards creaked outside his room.

Makoto walked out to see what it was.

A woman with pigtails and a maid outfit seized up at the front door. The outfit left some of her back exposed. When she turned around, her eyes looked vaguely familiar, probably? "Uhh…" Makoto couldn't quite tell.

"Oh, uh, hii!" The maid's voice was discordantly high spirited, compared to her tired posture. "Welcome home, Master! I didn't expect you back so soon!"

Master? What? Makoto threw his hands up defensively. "Who are you?" he said.

The woman in the maid outfit took a step back, bumping into the door. She reached a hand behind her onto the wall, and tried to compose herself. "O-of course, where are my manners, Master? My name is Becky, and it's my pleasure to serve you today."

Makoto's right hand shield slowly turned into a point, indicating all around the living room. "Did you do all this?" he said.

The maid, Becky, took a step forward and curtsied. "Anything you for, Master," she said. "Although, I was hoping to finish before you returned. It would have made for such a nice surprise, wouldn't you say?"

An undercurrent of unease ran in every word Becky was saying. "But now that you're back, is there anything else I can do for you?"

Makoto shook his head. What exactly anything else meant, he didn't much care to find out. "No," he said, "Don't mind me. Just, keep up the good work." He broke away his eyes, and took nervous steps forward, towards… his backpack. Yeah, his backpack. "I, actually, uh, I-I…"

He couldn't look. He couldn't speak. He couldn't even grab his backpack off the floor when he passed it, and barely even grabbed his shoes on his way out the door. And he couldn't think where to go, either.

He just had to leave.

The door was already closed behind him. Makoto reached for the stairwell railing with both hands and dragged himself down to the ground floor. Not even halfway there, his pocket buzzed at him. It was a message from Komaru.

Hey, Makoto. Dad hired a housekeeper. Dunno if he hold you yet. Should be done before you get home.

"Could have told me that earlier." Makoto blinked a few times at the unbelievable words on the tiny screen. Well, it was exactly too late now. He puffed the last thought of THAT out of his system, and kept forcing himself down the stairs, going somewhere, anywhere, away from the maid and the apartment before he started thinking about it again.

A middle aged man confidently wearing a pink collared shirt tapped on a rustic looking machine on the other end of the bar, whirring as it dripping hot coffee into a large, clear pot. "So, kid, what brings you here?" he said.

Makoto watched him pour a mug of coffee in front of him, watched the lines of steam wafting off its surface. "Just, getting out of the house," he said. "Sorry, I'd just rather not think about it."

"No worries, kid. I'm happy to have you here." The pink shirt man put the coffee pot back under the machine. "Say, what's your name?"

"Makoto Naegi," he said.

"Naegi," the man said, nodding his head. "It's nice to meet you. My name's Sojiro Sakura. By any chance, are you a Shujin student?"

"Yeah," Makoto said. "How did you guess?"

"I just had a feeling," Sakura said. "It seems like this cafe's become a hotspot for Shujin kids lately." The front door chime clanged as someone walked into the restaurant. "Speaking of which," Sakura looked up, "You're back."

Makoto followed his eye line to the front door, where Ren had just come inside. He looked even more exhausted than Makoto felt, and waved a slow and heavy hand to Sakura. His mouth hung open, until he managed his next word. "Hey."

He just gawked for a moment, trying to process this. "Hi, Ren," Makoto said. The word 'back' in Sakura's greeting stuck out to him. "Do you work here?"

"Not exactly," Ren said. What was Makoto thinking? Of course he didn't work here, he had school all day and his Phantom Thief stuff in the afternoons. "Actually, do you have a moment to talk?"

Makoto looked down at his cup of coffee, the haze of heat that rose off of it. "Sure," he said. He expected Ren to take a seat next to him, or around the corner of the bar, but he walked past him and pointed to the stairs. He got up to follow, and Sakura looked after him.

"Go on, then, kid." Sakura pointed at the coffee. "It'll still be there by the time you're done."

Makoto glanced down at the steps that creaked under his feet. He clutched his head, steady, mind steady, eyes steady, but he still felt like the stairs might cave in. That had to be the building's fault this time.

He had no clue what to expect from the room upstairs. Maybe a storage area, for any equipment or ingredients a kitchen needed to keep dry.

Instead, the attic was a furnished room. A bed on the far wall, a desk, an old boxy TV. "So, I help around a few times, but I don't work here," Ren said. "I live here." He walked to the desk, and swept away a small pile of scrap into one of the drawers. "That's not what I wanted to talk about though."

Makoto sat down, as Ren pointed him to, on the couch next to the TV. "What is it?" he said.

"It's about the course Ryuji came up with." Of transparent noncooperation. "Do you really think it's the right way to go?"

"I think it's up to you," Makoto said. "More and more, it seems like you're the ones who have to live with everything I do. But, it'd probably be better if we weren't at each other's throats like that."

"Can't say I disagree," Ren said. "So if we go this way, trading information, how is this going to work?"

Makoto pulled himself off the backrest of the couch. "I guess I'll go first," he said. "Right at the start of June, someone came to the student council asking for me. He said his friend might be involved with some suspicious people, and asked me to look into it, and to stop it, if it wasn't too late."

"Is that what happened on the fourteenth?" Ren said.

"Yeah." Makoto rubbed the spot on his neck. "I set up two drug dealers to get arrested. At the time, I thought that would be enough to stop the blackmail situation, but there was someone else behind them. Niijima told me that in the hospital, and, that catches us up to what I told you before."

The prosecutor, her goals, her drive. Her limits. Ren considered their prior conversation, long and carefully. "My turn, then?" he said. "For us, it started at one of Ann's photo shoots. That was where we ran into Hifumi."

"Hifumi Togo, right?" Makoto said. "Your Shogi trainer."

"She's the one. But, by the time we met her, she'd just been suspended from professional play," Ren said. "She was the subject of rumors of match fixing for a while by then, too. We found out her mother was in on it, as was Kaneshiro. Everything got worse from there."

"That was when you intervened." If this was Shogi related, it had to be just as recent as Makoto's investigation. As recent as their match in the school library. "Was this the other case you were talking about at the gym, when Kasumi left us alone?"

"You don't forget a thing, do you?" Ren threw his head back. "There really is no hiding anything from you, if you put it together based on that."

Makoto looked away. So, that was how things started, the coincidence that put him and the Phantom Thieves on a collision course. Where two thoughts of justice converged. "Well, you know what I've been doing since then," he said. "I guess you're getting ready to go, steal his heart?"

"We were just in there today," Ren said. "It was different. I think he knows about your plan, but not you."

That wasn't so big a surprise. A gang leader knowing about progress on a potential arrest warrant, considering how upside down the police could have their priorities, Makoto really should have seen that coming.

"Wait, what?" Makoto said. "In there? In his heart?" What the hell did that mean?

Ren sighed. "It's not something that can be explained," he said. "You have to see it for yourself. I can show you, but, it'll have to wait until tomorrow."

"I think I'll just take your word on it for now." Of course, Makoto had to admit to some curiosity. But if this was the final piece of the puzzle, if going into Kaneshiro's heart would prove the Phantom Thieves' methods all on its own, he didn't think he was ready now to know for sure. He didn't know if he'd ever be ready.

Water droplets trickled down the faces of the leaves all over the treeline, and gathered together at the edges and tips. When one drop grew big enough to fall, its leaf flicked back up like a springboard, and the drop plunged down and soaked into an impression in the dirt trail underneath.

For a while, a chirping crescendo filled the park, hidden in the leaves and branches. Reformed raindrops took their turns to fall out of the trees, until everything silenced all at once.

A rush of heavy breathing passed beneath the tree shroud. Makoto struggled to keep pace with the other girl in front of her, Peko. They both vanished around a turn in the trail, only to return some minutes afterwards.

This time, they slowed to a stop next to the railing over the pond. Makoto propped herself up on the barrier, and checked on the tracker on her wrist. Half an hour, decent heart rate. She steadied her breath, looking out over the still water.

Her eyes shifted around. Makoto just now heard the silence. Not a bird, not a squirrel, not even an insect. There was nothing but the crunch of the ground beneath their feet. "Does it feel too quiet to you?" Makoto said. "The park is usually pretty lively."

"It's probably me," Peko said. "I don't know exactly why, but animals always seem to run away from me."

Makoto turned toward Peko, fixing on the sword held on her back. "Do you think that has something to do with it?" she said.

"It's possible."

"Do you always carry that katana around?" Makoto said.

"It is not always the same sword," Peko said. "I can handle straight swords just as well. Whatever the tool, it is an extension of myself. In that sense, though, if that's what you're asking, then, yes."

Makoto looked back over the pond. "That must be a hard life to live." Only someone who expected a fight needed a weapon. And thinking the other way, someone who carried a weapon everywhere expected a fight everywhere. In the murk below the water's surface, she wondered if her dad expected his last fight.

"It helps to have something to live for," Peko said. "Few people can truly live for the fight, for its own sake. Often, there's something they want to achieve, or someone they want to protect."

"What is it for you?" Makoto said.

Peko looked away. "… Few," she said. "Not none."

"Of course." Makoto broke off the other way, grinning over the water's edge.

Silence fell over them again, for a short while. Makoto checked her tracker again, switching over to its built in GPS to set back to downtown Shibuya. "Ready to head back?" she said.

"Whenever you are," Peko said. "Fuyuhiko will want to talk to you."

"I've been going to the same place after school for four days," Makoto said. "If he needs me, he'll find me." On their way back up the trail, to the clearing at the park entrance, she caught some of the lingering drops of the morning rain.

Makoto laid on the table, slumped over flat on his chest. He was feeling it again, everything about to stop making sense.

"Come on, Naegi." Niijima sat right next to him at the table in the bookstore. She snapped her fingers in his face. "It's just finals. You can do this. After everything you've been through, this should be easy."

"Yeah, that's what I thought too," Makoto said. "But I can already feel my brain turning to mush again."

Niijima glanced down at something on her wrist. Makoto had noticed it a couple of times, but wasn't sure if it was some sort of watch, or something else. "Oh," she said, "Looks like it has been a while. We'll break here. You can take a walk around, stretch your legs. I'll see if there's a better way to get through all this. Okay?"

"Sure," he said. Makoto shoved his chair back and stood up, bending one way and the other. "Thanks again for doing this, Niijima."

"Thank me in your third year," she said over her shoulder.

Makoto strolled around the familiar aisles, and wandered his way to the far aisle with the kids' section in the middle of the row. He pulled out one of the books with a touch of laughter. It was the same Buchimaru book Sumire made fun of, all the way back to midterms.

He put the book back on the shelf, and when he felt the pounding in his head subside, it was time to get back to studying.

At the front door of the bookstore, someone's eyes pressed on him, a boy in a black suit, even shorter than Makoto was. "Hi there-"

"Save it," the boy in the suit said. "Do you know where Makoto is?"

"Yeah, that's me," Makoto said, holding his hand over his chest. "Do I know you?" He didn't think so, but there were plenty of people at Shujin Makoto didn't know anything about.

"Motherfucker, this isn't a joke!" the boy in the suit said. "Tell me where she is now or piss off!"

Oh. He was talking about Other Makoto, likely knew her from school. Despite being short, he sure had the presence of an Ultimate student. Or maybe it was just the volume of his voice. "I was just headed her way," Makoto said. "Sorry for misunderstanding."

Makoto went back to the study table, with the boy in the black suit glued to his shoulder the whole way there. "There you are," he said, and walked past Makoto, circled around the table to the chair on the other side. He locked eyes with Niijima. "So, what's he to you?"

"Besides a notorious criminal?" Niijima said.

"There's lots of criminals everywhere," the boy in the suit said. "What makes him so special?"

"Well, what's he to you?!" Niijima said. "I think it goes without saying why anyone would want to see a scumbag gangster go down. What makes him worth protecting?"

"He's profitable," the boy in the suit said. "It's that simple. Why isn't it that easy for you to say?"

All of a sudden, Makoto thought back to his days at the hospital, and his makeshift sting operation even before that. And it only occurred to him just now to question, why was Niijima there, why was she invested in this?

"I wanted to know if he was the one," Niijima said. "The first time I saw him, you mentioned he killed a cop. I thought it might be, and I was right. That bastard killed my father."

That… made sense.

As much a shock as it was to hear it said so plainly, it made sense of a lot of things Makoto couldn't explain before. He took a step closer. "Is that was this was about?"

The boy in the suit leaned forwards, shifted his head wide, from one side to the other. "If it is, you're barking up the wrong tree. I know that fat ass, he couldn't hurt a fly. Not with his own two hands. Guess it doesn't stop him from posturing about it."

His eyes of dimming contempt flicked back and forth between Niijima and Makoto. "Well, if you think this gets you closer to the answer…" The boy turned away. "Maybe you want to talk to him yourself."

"What's there to say?"

"Fuck if I know! You're the one with the questions." He stood up and marched away, but spun back just before he got to the main storefront. "Anyway, if you do want to talk to him, just let me know fast. Like, within a week."

It wasn't until he was out of the bookshop that Makoto felt like the boy was actually gone. He sat down at Niijima's side, looking at the missing page of the textbook. "Did you ever plan to tell me about your dad?" he said.

"I don't know," Niijima said. "Not before the whole thing with Sis. And after that, I don't know."

"Well, it's behind us now," Makoto said. He leaned his head back, put the front door of the bookstore at the edge of his view. "Are you going to talk to, uh, our suspect?"

"I don't see any need of that," Niijima said. "Either he did it, or he ordered it, but either way, it's not like he'll explain anything to me. But, I suppose we should keep our options open. In any event, are you ready to get back to this?" She slid the book over to him.

"Ugh…" Makoto protested, but the rest of the afternoon wasn't so bad, and in the wake of this clash with the boy in the black suit, he found himself making more progress in his studies than ever.