.

.

.

The villains themselves were ultimately responsible for much of the popularity. Audiences loved to hate.
The importance of the villain was not overlooked. Of course one of the worst of all, was Madvillain. They had no code of ethics.

Two historical figures, outlaws and desperadoes if that —
The villainous pair of really nice boys who just happened to be on the wrong side of the law, three hundred and sixty degrees.
In similar sequences, could not be defeated. Villains who possess supernatural abilities—
Villains who were the personification of carnage.

Madvillain, more accurately, the dark side of our beings.
Perhaps it is due to this seminal connection that audiences can relate their experience in life...
With the villains and their dastardly doings.

- Madvillain, The Illest Villains

7 / 20 / 2016

Headache throughout the entirety of morning classes tells me it was a terrible idea to go to a Palace so early in the day. I keep this up I'll get sick again. But I haven't been well in a long time.

Exam scores aren't particularly good. Some in the seventies, others in the eighties. I used to be reasonably good at studying. I was proud of myself for getting perfect in every test, quiz, exam. Used to relax me, to sit down and comb through notes and read and re-read and write again and again. I'm not particularly gifted at retaining information. Me studying everyday helped reinforce each and every lesson well enough, to the point where every test felt more like dredging up things I already knew, rather than forcing myself to recall everything I should.

Now, it just reminds me of Kana.

These days I feel more comfy with myself when I'm murdering demonic beings from another plane of existence, than sitting down and reading books all day. Classes themselves are boring. Half the teachers don't really give a shit about the things they're teaching and the other half thinks too highly of themselves. I'd look down on slackers and delinquents for neglecting their studies and ignoring the teachers, but now more than ever their words and lessons barely register and I'm inclined to tune them out more often than not.

There are days I feel disconnected. Even moreso than usual. It's this bizarre kind of quasi-solipsism at times; like the whole world is made of glass or liquid and you're the only fully solid thing in all existence. Sometimes words stop being words, melting into screeches and incoherent moans. Every now and again I see faces disappear and reappear. And Niijima and Maruki's words fill the air.

She doesn't know I have a Kingdom. She can't. If she did know she wouldn't have even the slightest shred of faith in me. If she did know she would never have accepted the invitation to hang out this Sunday. If she did know she'd have never greeted me with the smile she had on then.

In equal measure she terrifies and electrifies me, and I'm caught between regretting asking her out and waiting anxiously for the day to arrive.

But before that day, before that day I need answers on far too many things to keep track of. So that I may undo whatever horrible fate lies ahead of the both of us.

I don't want her to find out about my father. I refuse to let her immerse herself in that rabbit hole. Whatever happens next has to happen between me and my father alone, and I'd rather she be left out of it completely. I'd rather she forget about me, entirely.

And yet I invited her out to a fancy lunch somewhere in Shibuya, like a dumb shit.

How do I have the audacity to want to see her on that day?

That settles it. On the day itself I will tell her that I don't want anything to do with her. I will say an impossible number of terrible, destructive, hateful things that will get her as far away from me as possible. I will ensure that she will never even want to think of me in even the slightest capacity. I'll say such disgusting, repulsive things and mock all her attempts to get me to calm down to the point where she'll abscond from all this Palace bullshit and let me kill my dad and let me kill Shijima on my own.

I'm glad she hadn't spoken to me today. I'd have been caught off guard. It's nice to have a day all to myself, where I can do what I wish and speak to whomever I wish unimpeded.

Speaking of which.

A black-gloved hand slams down on the table, the vibrations nudging the glass a few inches away.

"Cut the bullshit. Why did you want to meet with me?"

After classes I called Goro Akechi and asked if we could meet up somewhere in Shibuya again. He didn't even ask why, he just said yes. And now we're back, in the Big Bang Burger that Makoto Niijima had assaulted me in many many months ago.

"Could you not make loud noises? This is a family establishment."

"Shut your fucking mouth." He gets himself in the seat across from me. "What is it that you want? Out with it."

"Why so serious, Goro Akechi?"

"Considering all the lines we've crossed and are bound to cross in the coming months I don't exactly have the privilege to relax, now do I?"

"Careful, Akechi. Stress is the enemy of beauty, after all."

"You little shit," he says, his right hand trembling as a vein in his neck pops. "Take this seriously! Do you realize what we've done!?"

"Do you? I'm sitting here calmly eating my food, trying to talk to you about it. While you're just shouting up and down and making sure everyone in the resto can hear us."

He looks like he wants to stab my eyes out with the plastic forks they've handed me. His voice goes low as he speaks honestly for the first time since I've met him: "I hate you, more than I've ever hated anyone else I've ever known."

"I know that much," I gulp down a piece of my burger. "I'd just like to know...why?"

Akechi's face twists in aggravation as he sucks in the deepest of breaths and lets out a wide sneer. "Am I obligated to tell you?"

"I don't really care that you feel the way you do, Akechi. I do care why you feel the way you do, because I'm going to have to trust you and you're going to have to trust me. And I'd prefer knowing why someone I'll have to trust hates me so much, in case he intends to aim his gun at me in the middle of a harrowing battle."

"You think I would do something like that?"

"I don't know. Would you?" I smile at him.

Slowly, measuredly, he leans forward, and says strongly, "I would not."

"Why do you hate me, then?"

"My honest answer?" He smiles. "I think you're too reckless. I think you rush ahead into things without thinking far enough ahead about the consequences, Kazuya Hikawa. You and Makoto Niijima."

"We have that much in common, I suppose."

"The both of you are also unrelentingly, stupidly stubborn."

"Why work with us, if you hate us so much? We may have taught you a lesson in necessity, as you say, but is this lesson so important and life-changing that you feel compelled to join us on a mission that you clearly despise undertaking?"

Interestingly, he chooses not to answer me. Just closes his eyes. "I'll let you know if you answer me, first. You ask me so many things, allow me to ask you one."

"So now you're openly evasive rather than being a passive-aggressive—"

"Kana Kohaku died just a little bit after her mother had, didn't she?"

Had a feeling it would come to this. I told myself I'd make myself strong, strong enough to at least let him continue talking, but I was so full of shit. Voices clamouring in my head, all sounding like mine, telling me to stick hot pokers into his eyeballs and mouth—and it takes me a strength I didn't think I had to let this man continue speaking, unharmed.

"I did find it rather tragic at the time. I kept my eye on you two because I wanted to make sure the both of you were kept safe as possible. What her mother did must have provided you two with years' worth of nightmares. When I read the reports and went over all the details… I recall thinking that you didn't deserve something so wretched and tragic and pointless. She was a lovely girl, and for her to kill herself… it must have devastated you."

I don't answer him. He doesn't smile, though his tone is far too ostentatious for a stoic expression.

"If I am curt, I apologize," he nods slowly, retaining his maliciously stone face. "But I must know. Do you truly hate these criminals you're after, or is it just a way to stave off your guilt?"

The words roll out my mouth like poison. "I cannot be held responsible for what she did to herself."

His eyes lock into mine and were you a bystander you'd think this man is in love with me, but in truth he hates me more than most people could ever hate anyone. He leans in slowly, his voice low, and his voice is smooth like butter and his words cut like a serrated blade:

"But she didn't do it to herself, did she?"

Because fuck this guy I look back into his eyes as some cold, unholy anger surges through the palms of my hands. It takes me a few seconds of pure screaming inside of my own head not to jam my thumbs into his eyes or burst his skull open into the wall behind him. Never known anger like this, not with Kamoshida or Kaneshiro or even Niijima when she blackmailed me, and the seconds that last like hours in my brain come to pass long enough for me to come out with a half-civil response.

"She did not."

He actually sounds a little sad at that. "Of course she didn't. And I'm certain…you didn't intend to have her die, did you? You…must have tried to save her."

Can I lie to him? No. What point would that serve. Can I kill him? No. That would just get me arrested. Can I insult him to the point where he flees? No, nothing I could say could go beyond skin-deep. There is only one thing I can think of.

Tell the truth. "I did."

"Then tell me… are your acts of violence towards Palace Rulers not just your twisted and blind attempts for atonement, for murdering the girl that you loved? For being unable to save her mother and child?"

I shake my head at him, "Redemption is overrated."

"So you don't even pretend this is for anyone else but yourself."

"I've told you as much already."

"So you have… I suppose a part of me wanted you to have been lying to yourself."

"You would have hated me more had I been."

"Yes, come to think of it, yes. I would have. A thousand times more."

"You've attended to numerous criminals throughout your day job, Akechi. You should know there's no coming back from what I've done."

"So you don't even try?"

"So I don't even bother."

"I suppose that's what it comes down to, then. With an excuse like that, you can do anything to anyone and you won't even have to put in the effort to care."

"I've answered your question, Akechi. Now, answer mine."

"Ah, yes… why do I help you?" He all but hisses his statements out, as if the act of speaking aloud is enough to corrode his tonsils. "Even when I find your methods despicable, and I find you personally distasteful. I've seen the depths of corruption in this city and I wish to purge it away completely. Except that isn't true. I see the plights of the innocent and wish to defend them, except that isn't true either."

I smirk, "Are you fond of telling lies, Akechi?"

"Are you fond of raping people's minds until you make them into what you think they should be?"

"You pointed this out to me back in your house. Call me out on changing their hearts, and saying you'd rather be dead than have that happen to you—when in reality I don't particularly care if their hearts change or if they live on."

He scoffs, "So you change their hearts not out of some poetic sense of justice, but because you just so happened to—?"

"Poetic sense of justice, you're too sentimental."

"I believed you did it because you wanted them to suffer karmically for their actions. Force them to live their lives in shame forever."

"That's bullshit you find in books written by writers who don't have the balls to put blood on their characters' hands. Justice is a lie upheld by institutions to conceal the fact that they're just another business, raking in money from the blood of their citizens. A lie upheld by cops, so they can pretend they're not just another gang."

"Cynical, but not entirely untrue. Indeed, you and I are more similar than I'd like to admit."

"How so?"

He purses his lips, wondering how to word what he'll say next. "You hate criminals more than you care about saving innocents. I suppose in that sense… we're very similar."

He isn't lying. This is the most honest I've ever seen him. I click my jaw. "What had they taken from you, Goro Akechi?"

With the face of a man who wants nothing more than to stop looking at what's in front of him, all he says in response to that is, "Far too many things."

"And that's enough for you to help us do something you believed was reckless and destructive? To rape people's minds, do unto them something you'd rather die before experiencing for yourself?"

Through his teeth he breathes deep. "I have a goal, Kazuya Hikawa. An…almost impossible goal, one I've striven to achieve for a long, long time. And I will achieve it. No matter who or what stands in my way."

"Interesting, Akechi. Why, with an excuse like that, you can do anything to anyone and you won't even have to put in the effort to care."

Now, he has the look I've had on this whole conversation. Were he a wild animal he'd have already torn away my entire upper half away from my legs. Suddenly, he gets up from his seat, looking at me right in the eyes, all the while.

"I wish to bring you someplace. It's very important."

"Bring me someplace?" I smirk. "I, quite frankly, have no desire to go anywhere with you. It's late, and I've a flower shop to get to."

"No, no, no, no. You called me here, and I came. Now it's your turn to join me."

"You could have chosen to ignore the text. I choose to ignore you."

"Wouldn't you like to know what I'd planned for you before Niijima had Tsukioka fork over everything!?"

"I don't quite care anymore, Akechi." I get up off the chair and head to the counter.

"What if I told you it had something to do with your father?"

And I turn back to him and he and I lock eyes again and all at once a thousand questions come at me, a thousand little voices telling me not to threaten or torture him for answers, a thousand possible words or phrases that I could say in response that all just come out as "What are you talking about?"

"It...was something I'd considered, when I entered Tsukioka's Palace," says Akechi. "I think...that you would want to see what I've found."

You stupid motherfucker, this is a trap. He's baiting you, he's planning to fuck you up if you go with him. Somehow someway he will manage to turn this upside down and turn you inside out and you'll have no one but yourself to blame. "I don't believe you."

He glares at me. "Chaos."

I narrow my eyes at him. "What...?"

"Your father's name. Your father's distortion. Input them."

"What the fuck are you-?"

"Morishige Hikawa. Chaos."

My phone vibrates as I check, and I see something that digs into the core of my chest.

Kingdom Ruler: Morishige Hikawa
Kingdom Location:
Kingdom Distortion: Chaos

"That grabbed your attention now, didn't it?"

I will hate this man, forever. And he shall hate me, forever.

But perhaps never as much as I hate myself. For I am a fool the likes of which few will ever compare.

"Do you have any guesses as to what the location might be? Kazuya Hikawa."

My hand trembles uncontrollably as I set the phone in my pocket, and I just barely have it in me to keep myself from bursting into tears on the spot.

A nearby alleyway is where I find the courage to say "The world."

And at once, the whole planet transforms into something almost completely unrecognizable. When I reawaken the first thing I feel is an unrelenting cold, a vast freezing storm that causes my whole body to shudder maddeningly. Though I'm dressed in a thick black trenchcoat I feel the urge to hold myself close and never let go as thick sheets of rain dash upon my body.

Can't even see, can't see what's in front of me - the only time I do is when thunder screams overhead, and lightning spears across the skies, allowing me to see my hand, to see what I'm standing on, to see that I'm not alone. The wind is strong, almost so strong I'm swept off my feet before I find it in myself to crouch right down, Akechi right beside me.

We are on a stone platform, a thick landing of rock that hasn't been swept away from the tides and waves, though they crash into the stone all the same. The water hits us and nearly causes us to slip right into the black waters but we remain steady enough. Well and steady enough.

In my father's Kingdom, the sky is dark, so dark you could think it just the evening, but you would be wrong. Above us hover clouds that consume each other, the blackest I've ever seen. Not even the barest glimmer of light shines through, other than shafts of lightning that stretch so far and wide they're a nation unto themselves.

The dark waters rage, they bubble and broil and the waves undulate into themselves, when they splash over our bodies we develop the worst kind of hypothermia almost immediately, and neither of us can even hear our voices in the middle of the storm. There is a roaring noise, and I do not know if it belongs to the winds or if there lies something in this place, something I cannot comprehend.

I see it.

Off in the distance.

A large, colossal shape, one that blends in so perfectly with the storm and the skies that it would take a person with untainted vision minutes to even grasp. It stands there, almost a mountain in itself, its shoulders so broad they nearly span the skies. Are those its shoulders, or its arms? The sounds that emanate from it cause my eardrums to bleed, like a million lost souls crying for salvation, like a scream that remains a single low droning pitch, forever and ever and ever.

The most I see of it is its bright yellow eyes.

I scream at Akechi then, I scream at him to get us out of here, and that's something he hears, and at once he gets his phone out of his pocket and I'm afraid the rain might cause it to fly out his hands-

But it doesn't.

We the both of us land back in the alleyway. Our breaths labored, bodies coated in sweat. He's leaning against the wall, I'm on all fours on the ground.

There is no hole deep enough in the world to hide in. There is no escape, no lies I can tell myself to quell all my fear and rage. I realize I'm crying minutes after I've started, and though I wipe my eyes I can't shake what I've seen, I can't accept any of it whatsoever, though it is true. It is the truest and most terrible thing I've seen all year.

In cosmogony, chaos is defined as the state of existence before the emergence of order and life. The nothingness before everything, the hole of creation - where madness and genius lie, where creativity and nothingness are at one. In Christianity, chaos is defined as the gap between Heaven and Earth, caused by the fall of Man.

"How...how did you...?" I tremble, glowering at Akechi as I rise to my feet.

"When I entered Tsukioka's Palace the first time, I combed his library for information," he groans. "I searched a good number of his records... and I was obscenely fortunate to have found the records concerning your father. Blank. Utterly blank, and empty, and void of anything useful. It struck me. So after I left, I scoured the internet for information. Your father is a very private person. Everything about him that's online, it's all basic. Where he was raised, where he went to school, what college he graduated from. And so on."

"You're telling me you guessed that my father had a Kingdom...?"

"It wasn't particularly difficult to find the keywords. Speaking his name in the Palace section of the app did nothing. Not so, when I opened the Kingdom section. The world was easy to determine as the location of his Kingdom. A Kingdom is produced by a certain, singular madness. You know this as well as I do. So. Finding out his distortion was all that was left. And it wasn't easy. It took me a week and a half."

"You just so happen to run into Chaos?"

"You forget that I've spoken to your father. I had to, considering that I also investigated your assault case, and the murders that went on in the Kohaku household. He's a very stern, no-nonsense kind of man. One that never let much of anything show. I tried everything, you know. Graveyard. Speck of dust. Blue rock. Nightmare. Heaven. Hell. Dungeon. Prison. Chaos worked, because I wanted to give a try to something that he seemed he would have despised, more than anything else."

"You motherfucker. You fucking bastard."

"You spoke to me, of Shijima. That day, in the hospital. You spoke of Shijima and how you wanted to find them. And it's clear you are after them because of a need for vengeance."

"Goddamn you, you fucking-"

"Listen to me. Now everything makes sense. Don't you see!?"

"I don't see you piece of shit, fucking enlighten me!"

"You father put a cognitive block on Hideyoshi Tsukioka! Your father managed to keep all information surrounding himself completely blanked out, inside that man's Palace! Your father has a Kingdom and your father has enough money to fund people like Tsukioka, like Kaneshiro, don't you see!? He's involved! He has to be! And if he's involved then he almost certainly has a hand in this Shijima's operations!"

"This can't be real."

"It isn't like you to deny cold, hard reality," he grabs me by my collar. "You know what this means."

"What the fuck... my father's a fucking electronics CTO. He makes gadgets and shit, what the fuck could he do to someone like Tsukioka?"

"I don't know. But this is a hunch, it's a lead. Even if your father is not as involved as I assume, there has to be some reason his name is blanked out in Tsukioka's Palace. He is at the very least an important figure in all this, and you know it. You know it in your heart of hearts."

"You wanted to pit me against my father!? Is that it!?"

"I thought that since you were his son you could at the very least tell me something, anything of value, so that I might make my way up the ladder and see if there was any way I could stop him when the yakuza war died down! Hikawa, I wanted you to help me! I want you to help me find information surrounding your father, because even if he isn't the one running this whole fucked up operation he's almost certainly connected to the people who are! And he's got enough command over the situation to make the head of the SIU blot out all information surrounding him inside the one place where he should be safest! And if he is behind everything, if he's the one pulling the strings, then we have to stop him! You're the only one who can!"

"What the hell makes you think I can even touch my father?"

"Because you are his son! That has to count for something! He's raised you, dammit! If anyone alive would be able to worm their way into his heart then you-!"

"My father doesn't give a shit about me, he's disinherited me."

"Well, we're all fucked then, aren't we? I decided screw it, after Niijima got Tsukioka to bend over like a fucking dog, because if your father's involvement is as deep as I assume it is, then sooner or later we'll run into him anyway. And we'll be kneecapping all his co-conspirators in the process," he chuckles. "In a way, this gets us to the same goal, regardless. Me watching over you and your fucking girlfriend as you traipse into people's Palaces, beating up the bullies with your fists and calling yourselves big goddamn heroes."

"Niijima won't have anything to do with this."

"She already has everything to do with this! She threw herself into all this bullshit! It's only a matter of time before she finds out about your father, only a matter of time before she goes into his Kingdom and gets herself killed!"

"She won't."

"And how will you make sure she won't!?"

"Because you and I are gonna find out what the hell's wrong with him, first."

He pauses. The both of us glare at each other then, as I slump my shoulders in defeat and lean against the wall behind me. "I can't kill my father. I don't know shit about my father. But if we go into his Kingdom...we might find out something. Anything we can use. A weakness we can exploit. Something I...I can use to convince my father to change...or use against him if he won't."

Akechi's jaw twitches. "Are you're willing to do what needs to be done, if the time comes? If worst comes to worst."

I close my eyes. The words I speak next are a truth so painful it causes my ribs to crumple, and I almost forget to breathe when they're spoken out loud. "Yes, goddammit. Yes."

Shakily, slowly, Akechi raises a hand up to me. Silently he gazes into my eyes, vulnerable and almost seeming scared; it's perhaps the only time he'll ever let down his walls in front of me now and for the foreseeable future.

And I take his hand, and I shake it, and I unhand him almost instantaneously after the fact.

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.

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7 / 21 / 2016

I resolved to do this almost immediately after Akechi and I had parted ways.

Three things I need to do, for today specifically.

One, get enough money to fund future operations.

Two, find out more about Sojiro Sakura and Futaba Sakura.

Come 6:00 PM I make my way to a small little shop in the Yongen-Jaya district. Through the windows blare bright yellow lights, a canopy hanging overhead reading Leblanc. When I enter through the door I hear a bell ring and a fresh maple scent hits me; maple mixed with caramel, a nutty kind. Whole shop is small, somewhat cozy. Booth seating to my left, counter to my right. Antiquated yellow telephone on the counter next to a set of coffee bean containers. A man is sitting on a small stool in front of a shelf packed with even more coffee bean containers, and when he sees me he folds his papers and gets up off his seat.

Straight to the point he asks me, "What'll you have?" as he rolls up his sleeves.

His voice is deep, but not the intimidating kind; there's a light warmth in it, despite its sternness.

He's got a hunched posture. Wears a pink collared shirt and a dark-brown apron. Got a wrinkled, wizened face; his black hair is slicked back into a widow's peak and he's got a goatee that might as well be another chin.

"Er, I called earlier, sir," I mutter, somewhat nervously. "For the job offer."

He raises his brow, then mouths ah, as if he'd forgotten what I was talking about until just now. "I see. So you're...?"

"Hikawa. Kazuya Hikawa, sir."

"Right."

"You're...Sakura-san?"

"Boss is fine," he says, shifting around the counter and approaching me, grabbing a large black cloth in his hands. His gaze wanders, from my shoes to my face; with his left hand he cups his chin and with his right he cups the elbow of his left arm. "You're a high-schooler, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"You've any experience working in restaurants?"

"No, sir."

"You like coffee?"

"Haven't tried it, sir."

"Haven't tried it?"

"Haven't tried it."

"You look like you've had a lot of sleepless nights, if you don't mind my say so. Any experience in customer service?"

"I've another part-time job in Shibuya Station, sir. Working in a flower shop."

"Any experience in cooking?"

"I've only recently gotten into the habit, sir."

"Then why should I hire you? We've had an influx of customers recently and I've been looking for people who can help me keep up with the times. What makes you think you're fit for this job?"

"Because I am a smart and hardworking person, and I put whatever I have into whatever I do, sir. Whatever I may struggle with, I'm quick and eager to learn."

"Platitudes. Why do you really want to work here?"

Never before have I met a man other than my father who never demands anything less than sheer, brutal honesty. "I really the need the money, sir."

"Don't we all. Are you good with long hours? I close up shop after 10:00 PM."

"Yes, sir."

"Are you good with overtime? Some people really like our curry. Had several busboys quit because our customers ordered so many platefuls we couldn't handle it all."

"Yes, sir."

"You good with working every day of the week except Sunday?"

"Yes, sir."

He raises his brow. "This won't affect your studies?"

"No, sir."

"First night's a trial run, here," he hands me the cloth he'd had in his hands; another apron, a black one this time. "We sit here and we wait for people to show up, and give them exactly what they ask for. You act as waiter and busboy for now. We'll see how things go and depending on what happens, I'll teach you how to cook meals and prepare coffee. Sounds good?"

"Yes sir."

"Good. Now, have you eaten?" Stomach grumbles before I can even say No. "Alright, then. Take a seat. I'll come up with something."

"What? N-no, I couldn't impose-"

"Nonsense, you're skin and bones. Besides, today's been slow. I can take some time off."

I blink at him, then nod, "Thank you."

"You won't be thanking me once you actually begin work," he says. "The instant I see you're more of a hindrance than a help, I'll fire you without severance pay."

"I understand, sir."

"Good. You like curry?"

"I do."

"Alright, then sit right over there."

Forty-five minutes later.

Holy shit. "This is delicious."

He smirks, "Of course it is."

"A-and you're gonna teach me how to make this?"

"If you prove yourself useful, then yes. That said, if you sell my recipes or claim them to be your own I'll have you strung up by your ankles and waterboarded."

"I won't do either of those things, sir."

"You'd better not." Suddenly, he grabs a nearby mug and pitcher, and within almost an instant I'm handed a black cup of coffee. Smells fresh, the scent almost overpowering. "Have a swig. You're gonna work here, so you'll have to get used to the smell and the taste."

So I sniff it a little, and take a tiny sip, "Is it supposed to be so bitter?"

"Yes."

"I guess it's an acquired taste..."

"Coffee usually is, to rookies."

Takes me a few moments to finish it. When I do I wipe my mouth with a nearby napkin, "Thank you for the meal."

He grabs the plate. "First task, wash everything there. Put the apron on. And get the coat of your uniform off."

Points towards the sink. There's about twelve plates in there, all varying degrees of filthy. Pots, too; large ones, with saucebits remaining in the corners and the bottom of the pan.

Washing them isn't particularly difficult work. Maruki had me take on basic necessities like that from time to time, so it's really nothing special. Sakura-san watches like a hawk, says nothing more until I'm finished.

"Not bad," he looks at his watch. "Faster than I expected."

"Fast enough?" I ask him.

"No. But we can iron it out over the next few weeks. You officially start tomorrow," he says. "When you come here, I don't want you messing up your uniform, so change into something more casual. There's a bathhouse nearby that you can change in. I'll have you wait tables and wash dishes. We clear?"

"Clear."

"Good. Get out of here. Hang the apron up on that wooden hook over there, next to the door. You come tomorrow at seven PM, on the dot. You're late by even a few minutes, you're fired."

"Alright, sir."

"If ever you need some time off to study, let me know," he says suddenly, almost quietly.

I nod. "Okay, sir."

He lets loose a light chuckle. "Okay, just stop with the sir. I'm not that old. Just call me Boss."

"Yes, boss."

Kind man, despite being rather rigid. Speaks like a government officer, but without the bluster or the false promises. The kind of man who would despise me, if ever he knew the truth of what I am.

So concerned is he over my studies. When the truth of the matter is I haven't done any homework in the past three weeks. Barely studied or read through anything, and this job will likely worsen things for me in that regard. Makes school more difficult, far more difficult than my future can afford. But when has it ever been easy, when have I ever needed a future, and when has anything other than finding clues to Shijima mattered?

Futaba Sakura has a Palace. I checked last night. Haven't a clue what her distortion is or what the location is, and what her and this man's significance actually is, in this vast conspiracy bullshit that makes no sense. She doesn't seem to be in the coffee shop itself. Sakura-san likely lives nearby, and wherever he lives she likely lives, too.

Unless Tsukioka's fucking with me, she has information I need. Surrounding how he and Shido and others got ahold of the Vortex World.

How my father might have gotten ahold of it.

Whatever information she has, I'm willing to take it slow to get it. I've rushed ahead into too many things, I can afford curb myself for now.

In the meantime I'll make some dough and figure out what the hell else I could possibly do to fit all these broken fucked up pieces into a puzzle that actually makes sense.

There are three things I need to do, for today specifically.

One, get enough money to fund future operations.

Two, find out more about Sojiro Sakura and Futaba Sakura.

And the third thing. The third thing is something I've kept to myself, away from Akechi's prying eyes, away from Niijima before she could ask me a dozen questions I'd never be able to answer.

Akechi's logic is solid. Perhaps there will be no other way to stop my father than to kill him, and perhaps I am the only one who can do it. But something bugs me, something irritates the back of my head and I can't put a word to it. It's all unbelievably suspicious. How it so neatly ties together, it's too clean.

So willing is he to risk everything. There's something profoundly disturbing about all of this.

He spoke at length about what he did to find my father's Kingdom. The words he typed in. The days it took for him to figure it out, and I honestly can see all that happening. But perhaps that's the point. Perhaps, because I can see all that happening, he was able to say it with confidence. Say such a thing with utter conviction, that I'd believe him.

But I remember that hateful, disgusted look in his eyes; for as much as he may recognize my help, he hates me. And it isn't out of my recklessness, it isn't because I'm an asshole.

Perhaps it's because, deep down, he's just like me.

I need to find answers, and I need to find other ways to get them other than Akechi, other than Tsukioka, other than my father's fucked up Kingdom that is shrouded in darkness and rain and black waters. I need to know more, far more than what every single piece of shit around me knows, because I will either win this game or die.

In Tsukioka's Palace I found his file. It too, had been blackened and emptied of all verifiable information. If the thought of it seems crazy to you, then you weren't crazy to begin with. So I speak his name into my phone and at the end of all this shit do you know what I fucking know?

Kingdom Ruler: Masayoshi Shido
Kingdom Location:
Kingdom Distortion:

Nothing.

Absolutely goddamn nothing at all.