Literally: head of the family
Meaning: head of household
Wednesday, January 11th, Evening
Goro picked up the call. "Hello?"
"At least you didn't lose your phone," Sojiro muttered in lieu of a greeting. "Where on earth are you?"
"Oh, I'm just hanging out with a friend." Goro pointed his phone at Sumire. "Say 'hi', Sumire."
"Hello, Sakura-san!" She waved at the phone before catching herself.
"And what are you up to?"
"Well," Goro turned the phone towards himself, "we're going to the convenience store to get some foodstuffs."
"If any other kid your age told me that, I'd take it as a euphemism," Sojiro responded. "I'm glad you're finally making friends, but watch out for yourself. And remember you have school tomorrow."
"Of course, I'll keep that in mind."
"Good. Have fun. See you later."
"Buh-bye!" Goro hung up, then checked again that he did after he put his phone away. "Do you think he has noticed something's off?" Sumire asked.
"Maybe, but he didn't show his hand yet," he replied. The two had just left a train station near Sumire's flat and were heading towards a nearby convenience store. "Truth be told, Sojiro unnerves me. I feel like one day I will wake up and he'll be waiting for me with a suppressed handgun."
"But why would he…" Sumire found herself unnerved by how nonchalant Goro was about the prospect. "Does he, uh, have a reason?"
"Well, he loved Futaba's mother, if this reality is any indication."
Awkward silence followed… well, if you discount the footsteps, the noises of the streets, the chatter of other pedestrians. You get the idea. Finally, Goro spoke up: "So, what are your Metaverse meal plans?"
Sumire was glad the conversation turned to more familiar grounds. "You wanted less of a meal and more of a snack, so I was thinking of onigiri with assorted fillings."
The two entered the store. "Define 'assorted fillings', please," Goro asked, as he grabbed a basket.
"Oh, you know, standard stuff. Pickled ume, bonito flakes, kelp. Maybe salted tuna for Morgana-san, and maybe I'll fill some with jelly for a laugh." Something in the refrigerators caught her eye. "Ooh, I just remembered I have gyoza stuffing in the freezer." She grabbed a pack of pre-made wrappers and put it in the basket. "It's a bit unorthodox – curd cheese, onions and potatoes – but trust me, it tastes great."
"Even if it doesn't, I can't call your bluff. I'm an atrocious cook."
She smiled, grabbing a bag of rice from the shelf and sticking it in the basket. "You can't be worse than Sumi."
"Last time I tried to cook something outside my comfort zone, most kitchen utensils ended up melted in the resulting fire."
Sumire barely stifled a chuckle, grabbing a few jars of preserves. "You're joking."
"I'm dead serious."
The two walked to the checkout, and Goro reached for his wallet. "So… Do you want to stick around and watch me cook?" she offered. "Maybe you'd learn something useful." With the goods paid for, she pulled out a plastic bag from her jacket and put everything in it. "Or heck, maybe you'll even help in some form."
"I can help by carrying that for you," he put on a cheeky grin.
"Heh." She didn't protest as he took the bag from her and the two left the store, with Sumire leading the way. "But I mean it. Cooking is fun. Watching all the ingredients come together into something greater than the sum of its parts is so… gratifying. And when you share it with others and they like it… that's literally better than therapy."
"Once again, the okonomiyaki were delicious."
She looked aside. "You said they were unnecessary."
"My exact wording was 'unnecessary, but adorable'," he reminded her. "I thought they're impractical for infiltrating a Palace, but that doesn't mean I didn't appreciate the gesture. And so did the rest of the team."
"Oh." She glanced back at him. "Good to know I did one thing right."
"You're selling yourself short," Goro protested. "You were the only one that got three 'good' answers on Maruki's questionnaire, and earlier today you disarmed the cognition the moment he lowered his guard."
"I bit his hand."
"And he dropped his sword, giving me an opening," he insisted. "Just because you aren't doing as much damage in combat as I do, doesn't mean you don't carry your weight." Pause. "I'm sorry for letting him capture you, by the way."
"No worries."
Goro sighed. "You know, I still stand by the assertion that you are more welcome among the Phantom Thieves than I-"
Sumire responded with a punch to the arm.
"-ow?" he blurted out.
"That's not true, Goro-san!" she protested. "Yes, you've done…" She bit her tongue – they were still outside, surrounded by bystanders, remember? "…a lot of bad things, and we had… arguments, but you're trying and you're a good person now and you care about me and you bring something to the team!" Pause, sigh. "Unlike me."
Goro punched her in the arm.
"Hey!" she clutched the spot.
"Phantom Thief work is about more than raw damage – and let's be real: with how stubborn you are, you'll catch up on that front with the rest of us soon enough." He gave her the pointer finger. "No self-deprecation allowed. That's an order."
Sumire put up a cocky grin, "I won't be mean to myself if you won't be mean to yourself!"
"So, that's how the evening will go, huh?" Goro matched her expression. "With us telling each other that we're better than we think we are?"
"That doesn't sound bad though, does it?"
"Better than just punching each other in the arm until midnight."
Sumire giggled in response as they turned a corner. "I live over there," she pointed at a five-story-tall block of flats, not that distinct among all the others around them. "Again, feel free to stay for the evening. Dad's at work, so it's just the two of us plus Sumi."
"If you insist. Lead the way."
The two marched down the sidewalk in silence for a moment, before Sumire piped up: "Where, exactly, do you keep all the items in the Metaverse when you're not using them?"
"Uh… around?" Goro scratched his head. "I… guess it's a pocket dimension of sorts, but I never questioned the logic of it, to be fair – it's not like it was the weirdest thing about it."
"And how long would food last in it?"
"I don't know." He pulled out his phone. "Akira was doing this thing for months, I'll ask him."
ak56: Hey, quick question.
ak56: How long do perishable healing items last in the Metaverse?
ak56: Like, for instance, freshly made onigiri?
coffee_criminal: A loooong time.
coffee_criminal: Like, in November I've given the entire team some curry I've been carrying around since April.
coffee_criminal: Nobody batted an eye.
ak56: I could've sworn it was still warm.
coffee_criminal: Boy, ain't Metaverse convenient.
ak56: Can I be blamed for preferring it over the real world?
coffee_criminal: You can be blamed for other things.
ak56: I walked right into that one, didn't I?
coffee_criminal: :P
Akira put the phone back down on the table.
"Who was it?" his dad asked, digging into his fried rice.
"Goro. He needed some cooking advice."
"You mean the Sakura boy?" Akira nodded. "And he wrote to you instead of just asking Sojiro?"
He shrugged. "I guess he thought I'd know more in this particula-"
Cue the doorbell. "What the…" Akira's dad got up from his chair. "Who would come so late in the evening?" He walked up to the door and glanced through the peephole. "It's some guy in a white suit."
"Glasses and slicked back hair?" Akira got off and moved past his father, then unlocked and opened the door. "That's… another friend of mine." He turned to the guest. "Good evening, Takuto."
"Good evening," Maruki sighed. "Let's change our surroundings a bit."
The ground gave way underneath him and Akira, and the two landed on two soft armchairs placed in a nonthreatening black void. Maruki snapped his fingers and a table materialized between them, with a bowl of dried apple chips on it.
"Okay," Akira reached for a snack, "what's so important that you couldn't just call me?"
Maruki tented his fingers. "Get the Thieves to step down."
He put the dried apple slice back into the bowl. "That sounded less like a polite request and more like a demand."
He sighed in response. "They just… keep tampering with everything I've set up."
"You didn't give them a reason to trust your judgement, did you?" Pregnant silence followed. "Takuto."
"I didn't hurt them!" Maruki protested. "I just… showed them their biggest regrets from the past world," he mumbled.
Akira found the vagueness concerning. "Define 'showed'."
"…forced them to relive the moment right afterwards?"
"What the fuck, Takuto?!"
Maruki wasn't going to concede. "Do you expect me to just let them ruin everything?"
"I expected you to not prove the point they've been making about you misusing your power!"
"Do you think I enjoy this?!" He sprung up from his chair. "That I did this out of some sadistic glee? No, I did this because I was trying to get through to them!"
"And so the ends justify the means?" Akira got up as well. "Then why not just snap your fingers and make them cease to exist?!"
"Oh, there is no need," Maruki's tone turned somewhat obnoxious. "I'll just use the morally non-questionable brainwashing, Phantom Thief style."
Cue more silence. Both parties recognized that if they hadn't crossed a line, then they were firmly standing on it, but neither was willing to back down.
Finally, Maruki spoke up. "There… there is no way for us to reach an agreement, is there?"
"Just show me the door."
"I… I don't want to be the antagonist, Akira," he tried to reassure him. "But-but you must admit that even if we take my fallibility into account, the advantages of my plan vastly outweigh the drawbacks."
"Exit. Now."
Sigh. "Fine."
Maruki snapped his fingers again and the two found themselves standing back in front of Akira's house, and in front of his increasingly confused father. "Uh, what's going on?" he asked. "Who are you? Why did you disappear and reappear like this?"
"Akira will fill in the blanks," Maruki looked aside. "I must leave now. I have a train to catch."
"We both know that you don't need public transport," Akira growled in response, to no avail, as Maruki quickly marched away from the house and disappeared behind the corner.
"What on earth just happened, Ren?" Akira's dad asked, completely out of his depth.
"I… it's a long story." The two moved back into the house and locked the door behind themselves. "A long, implausible story with supernatural elements and I honestly don't want to tell it now."
"You know you can tell me about anything, right?" his dad protested. "I feel like we didn't talk too much over the past few years…" Something clicked in the back of his brain. "Why… I only called four or five times when you… when you…" The coin dropped. "Moved to Tokyo? Wha- what's happening? This isn't right…"
Akira sighed – he wouldn't weasel out of this conversation. "I'll explain everything." He pointed at his chair. "Sit down, dad. As I said, it's a long and implausible story…"
"…and the man running all this? He visited us a moment ago." Sigh. "Any questions?"
He rested his elbows on the table, in front of the untouched rice, and hid his lower face behind his clasped fingers. He had to admit, 'implausible' was the right word to describe the story he had just listened to. But for the past fifteen or so minutes his brain has been trying to process two sets of conflicting memories and at least one of them seemed to confirm what he had told him.
"Why was I… out of the loop for so long?" he asked.
"How do you imagine that would go?" his son sighed. "'Hey dad, I took down a rapey teacher with magic powers'? 'I'm now a vigilante making evil people good'? 'A populist politician and his bastard son want me dead'?"
"And said son is now adopted by Sakuras, apparently."
"I got through to him. He's a good guy now, if only out of respect for me and my crew."
He sighed. "You've had a heck of a year." There were so many things he wanted to say, and he decided to pick the chronologically earliest: "It was hard to find a school to take you in after you," cue air quotes, "'assaulted' that MP. But if we knew that Shujin was such a hellhole, we would've kept looking."
His son glanced at him. "I'm not angry at you. I'm sad that you and mom called so little, but you had no control over all the other things. Hell, I had little control over this."
"We erred on the side of caution. We didn't want to mess up your probationary period by accident." Another sigh. "It was a mistake in retrospect. But if I were to find out about your organ theft-"
"Stealing hearts, dad."
"-I would probably overreact. But now, you can be honest with me. My lips are sealed and I support you, no matter what you choose." He dared to smile. "And hey, if in your ideal world you're still staying with us, that means I'm mostly a good parent, right?"
His son looked aside awkwardly.
"R-right?"
"Yes, yes. There are just… other factors."
"Do you want to talk about them?"
"…not really."
"That's fine." He picked up his chopstick, ready to finish his cold rice. "One last thing: do you think your friends should be warned that the therapist might get desperate?"
"I think they have figured that out on their own." He got up. "I'm gonna go to sleep, if that's okay."
"Of co-"
He was interrupted by someone grabbing the front door handle. After a moment, it was unlocked from the outside and a woman in her early forties walked in. "Hi, guys." She took off her brown overcoat and swapped her high-heeled shoes for a pair of comfy slippers, then unbuttoned the dark blue suit jacket, and finally read the room. "What's happening? Did someone die?"
"Quite the opposite, in fact." He glanced at his son. "I'll recap everything, you can go and rest."
"Thanks, dad. Goodnight, mom." he waved, then promptly retreated to his room.
She looked at him. "Jun, what's going on?"
"It's a long and implausible story," he sighed. "Will you reheat your rice yourself or should I do it?"
"Where on earth have you been?" Sojiro crossed his arms.
"Cooking with Sumire." With an excited smile, Goro showed him an open plastic container with a dozen or so gyoza in it. "Want a bite?"
Sojiro's stern expression did nothing to deflate Goro's enthusiasm. He then realized just how unusual it was for the kid to get so enthused about something, and decided to humour him this one time. He picked up one dumpling and took a bite. "Hm." It tasted unusual. "What's inside?"
"Curd cheese, onions and potatoes."
