Crack pairing treated seriously. M/M, themes of adoption and found family. Warnings for mentions of child neglect.
chapter 1 - comes and knocks
Sojiro's car double-checked his personal schedule and cross-referenced all his to-do lists before dying on the hottest fucking day of the year. Having adopted a coping mechanism in the past year somewhere between internal screaming and cognitive shutdown, Sojiro dialed up the auto repair shop with the hand not holding donuts. "That sucks, my dude," the teenage bagger said. "You got a ton of groceries."
"There's a tip for you on the hood." Futaba had plugged in a different take-out joint for every one of his speed dials. Sojiro watched the prompt for Kinnotorikara and Udagawacho flip by as he entered the numbers and wondered if this was the hill where wallets went to die. He'd planned to cook but this day was already amounting to more of a pain than he'd agreed to when he'd rolled out of bed that morning.
The tow truck arrived first, huffing plumes of exhaust that rippled through the waves of heat off the asphalt. After exchanging information with the driver and being assured the taxi was only a few minutes behind them, Sojiro sat on the curb next to his melting ice-cream and curdling milk to add a cigarette to the air pollution. He was down to the nub and digging in his breast pocket for another when the taxi pulled into the lot with a speed that squeaked. "Sorry I'm late," the driver said, hopping out. "Would it be all right if I helped you with those?"
"I can do it," Sojiro said, but he was only barely solid matter at this point and the man had already popped the trunk to hoist in the first bag. The sun sat stubbornly overhead, shrinking the shadows under their feet to smears. "What was the hold up?"
"There was an accident in the intersection just past the Hachiko exit. The tow truck was on the other side of it. It ground eastbound traffic for a while until they could get a lane clear. I think I actually passed your car on its way back the shop, though. It was the little yellow one, right? The Porsche?"
"Yeah." With his spare pack of cigarettes still under the dash, come to think of it. Sojiro flicked his cigarette nub away and tried not to give into creeping nihilism. "You swing out to Yongen-Jaya?"
"Sure do. Hop in."
He kept the bag with the donuts and eggs with him and shoveled his steaming carcass into the backseat as the driver finished up with the trunk. Not in the mood for unnecessary conversation, he scrounged his pen out of his pocket and ripped off a corner of the bag to print his address down on it.
The car bobbed a bit as the trunk closed. Sojiro waited until the driver was strapped in before handing the scrap up to him. "Thanks," the driver said, thumbing it neatly up into the catch by the meter. The display still read zero.
Sojiro held his tongue, grim and waiting, but the driver ended up flicking it on as they pulled to the mouth of the lot. The fare leapt to the base fare of 380 yen, then began to tick up steadily as the driver made a right onto the road.
Left without a lot to do besides rue his existence, Sojiro hunched down in the seat and tried to make himself unapproachable under his hat. The cooled air in the cab prickled through the sweat that had gathered under his arms and between his shoulders. "It's been a while since I've swung out that far west," the driver mused. "It'll be nice to see the area again. Most all the requests I get are for Kichijoji and Roppongi. Oh, and Hatagaya."
His lower back was itching. Sojiro considered all of the stupid egg-and-donut acrobatics he'd have to pull to get to it and decided to just live with his suffering. "Hatagaya is my favorite," the driver said. His voice was soft and unassuming, a little hoarse around the edges from what Sojiro was quickly growing to suspect was chronic overuse. "Nice and close to Shibuya and Shinjuku, but without all that foot traffic and fuss. Plus it's only about a half hour's walk to Yoyogi Park. I lost count of all the people I ferried to the cherry blossom festival there this spring. I wish I had a chance to go more often."
Suddenly exhausted, Sojiro braced his elbow on the lip of the door to massage the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. The Ohashi Medical Center smeared by his periphery at zero fucks per hour. Futaba would be wanting food from when he came home. Sojiro wasn't even sure if the perishables in his bag were still viable. He had to take care of the soymilk and eggs first, then head down to Yongen-Jaya's corner market to replace the ice-cream that'd sweated itself down to snot. They didn't carry the brand she preferred, but he'd make it up to her with a cup of—
Sojiro stilled, fingertips freezing on the bridge of his nose. He fixed an unblinking gaze at the carpet under his feet as he ran through the steps of that afternoon again. Closing the upstairs window in Akira's room. Checking that the bathroom was clear. Flipping the sign. He remembered the chill of the key in his fingers as he'd locked the door. Had he turned off the coffee pots?
Shit. He tried to excavate the memory, vaguely feeling the car slow and then stop for traffic. Shit shit shit. The key under the third pot always squeaked when he turned it. He couldn't remember hearing that squeak. He'd been preoccupied with finding the shopping list on the countertop.
He could feel the driver's eyes on him in the rearview mirror and belatedly realized the man had been speaking to him. "I'm fine," he muttered, cramming his thumb and forefinger against his eyes under his glasses, trying to calm his racing heart. If there were signs of smoke someone would've already called the fire department. As long as Futaba wasn't inside, he could survive losing the shop. Buildings could be rebuilt. In the meantime no amount of fuss here would make the traffic move faster, so ultimately he just needed to deal with his fuck-up like a man and hope he hadn't hurt anybody with his stupidity.
"Are you sure?"
"Just keep driving."
"If you forgot something at the store, I can turn back. I won't charge."
The tone finally caught his attention. Glasses still hiked over his forehead, Sojiro paused. The brim of the driver's hat and the spill of hair under it nearly hid his expression, but the sunlight had finally slid off his own lenses, allowing Sojiro to catch his eyes. "Just distracted," Sojiro grunted, letting his glasses slip back on his nose. "Just… think I might've left something on heat back home is all."
"Ah. The old, 'did I turn the oven off' dilemma, huh?"
"Something like that."
"Well, if it makes you feel better, you probably did turn it off," the driver said. "But I'll try to pick up the pace for you. Do you usually come up the main street there or the side block?"
"Side block. Less traffic."
"Gotcha. I'll take the south exit." The man's thumb flicked; a few moments later the car was decelerating into a gentle curve.
Shit. Sojiro tried not to juggle his sore knee as he ran through the possibilities ad nauseum. Shit shit. "You know, I couldn't help get a pretty good look at your car while I was stopped at that intersection," the driver said conversationally, somewhere beyond the mire of Sojiro's anxiety. "It's a condor Porsche 356, isn't it? You sure don't see many of those on the road here anymore."
Not really all that stocked up on fat to chew at the moment, Sojiro debated blowing the question off. In the end another expectant glance in the mirror forced his hand, and he relented, albeit tersely, "Looks like you know your cars."
"Naw, not me. Not really. That one's just a classic, that's all."
"Not many people know it by sight."
"It's straight out of the 1960s, isn't it? My uncle used to talk about how those things would purr down a straight road. Great acceleration. A little crotchety as they aged, though."
"She's an old girl," Sojiro conceded gruffly. "Probably just ought to take her out back to the shed and put her out of her misery at this point."
The driver slanted him another smile in the rearview mirror. "You don't sound too enthusiastic about that."
"Just one of those things. Everything dies eventually."
"I know the owners of the Shinzaki garage pretty well. We're partnered with them and give them our exclusive business when our cars need maintenance. He's passionate about his work. If he didn't feel pretty confident about your car, he'd have told you outright."
"Just because something can be fixed doesn't mean it should be. I got mouths to feed."
"Isn't part of a car's function to deliver food to hungry mouths?" But the driver laughed. The road continued to hum under them, interlocking lines and lights that flickered in his periphery. "I get what you're saying. I remember how irrationally hard I fought to keep my little grey Suzuki Fronte on the road way back when. I ended up having to give it away to a restoration enthusiast because I couldn't financially keep up with the upkeep, but at least I knew she was in loving hands. I won't lie, though – it cut deep to see her go. I'm glad you're getting to hang onto yours."
… all of that had almost definitely been a deliberate distraction. Kind of put out that he'd been read so easily, Sojiro stared out the window and wondered if he should clam up on principle or just go ahead and admit to himself that even in the middle of a possibly life-altering fiery fuck-up, he really, really liked talking about cars.
Talking about cars won. Sojiro tore his gaze back. "Had a pretty rare one yourself. Family heirloom?"
"Something like that. It was my uncle's project. He called her 'Jouchan'."
"He didn't want her back?"
"He died a while ago, unfortunately. Another reason it was so hard to give her up – taking care of her was one of my last promises I made to him. I really did try my best, but it was either give her to a loving owner or starve."
Elbow on the door handle, index finger crooked vaguely against his mouth as he thought, Sojiro huffed out an involuntary chuckle against it. "Does get to the point it feels like they're stealing food from your mouth."
"No, I mean I actually did… literally almost starve," the driver said. He sounded sheepish. "I was persuaded by one of my professors to sell her after I passed out during a presentation. He said he'd help me out, but only if I promised to stop sinking money into the car. It was kind of… do or die at that point. But yours, though! That's the real treasure, sentimentality or not. They just don't make them like that anymore."
"That's the truth. Can't say I've ever been willing to die for her though."
The driver met his eyes again in the rearview mirror, expression merry. "Does she have a name?"
"I don't stickshift and tell."
The driver's surprised laugh was the flight of a sparrow. From then on he kept his eyes on the road; an exit later his fingers flicked up to nudge the turn signal, and once again they were sloping towards Yongen-Jaya.
His panic had slipped into a vague resignation. Reluctantly thankful for the distraction, Sojiro took the silence to retreat a bit, forcing his attention back out the window so he could collect his thoughts. I should call. His fingers itched for his phone. Only hard-won grizzled practicality kept it in his pocket. At this point he'd get there about the same time she would. If the café was in flames he didn't want her to see it. "Here we are," the driver said presently, turning onto the street with a sharpness that had Sojiro's elbow slipping off the handle. "How about you hop out real quick and check. I'll wait."
"It'll be fine." But he was already unbuckling his seatbelt, craning his neck to see if he could catch a glimpse of any smoke. "It's the café up the street a bit further. Stop at the crossing."
The driver passed by his house and came to a terse halt just short of the walk. Sojiro only barely registered the passersby on the sidewalk as he fumbled for the door. "I'll wait," the driver said, hitting the button to stop the meter.
Sojiro hit the pavement at a clumsy jog, mindlessly lugging the donuts and eggs. Nothing was in flames as he passed by old Ayako's apartment complex and muttered a greeting to the officer on duty. Leblanc stood empty and quiet as he fussed his way up to the door, setting the bag aside and digging for his key.
It met no resistance whatsoever when it turned in the lock. Stomach flipping for a different reason, Sojiro bulldozed his way in the unlocked door and was met with a colorful explosion of sticky notes goddamn everywhere. Rainbow patterns on his wall, his bathroom door, on the floor, waving on the edge of the tables.
He took a step forward and was promptly smacked with a chain of them dangling from the ceiling. He sent a cursory glance over to the unlit pots, then peeled the nearest purple sticky note off the chain. You totes left them on, Futaba's writing said. You owe me sooooo much curry.
He walked back outside and nearly tripped over the driver as the man finished settling half of Sojiro's bags for him on the stoop. "You didn't have to do that." Frazzled, not sure if he felt irritated or relieved enough to vomit, Sojiro tried to regain some of his dignity he'd dropped in Shinjuku. "What do I owe you?"
"The total came to 640 yen. You've got a note on your elbow. Were the pots off?"
"My daughter took care of it." Sojiro peeled it off and slapped it without looking onto a brick behind him. His squashed wallet yielded a forest of lint and about half of what he needed, which made about as much sense as any of the half-dozen other pains that'd manifested in his ass that day. "Wait here while I get," he began, then gnashed his teeth together when the Leblanc business line behind him rang. "For god's sake."
"It's all right."
"What a day." He pushed what he had into the man's hand. "Let me go in and get the difference. Don't go anywhere. And I can handle the rest of my bags."
"It's not a problem. Go ahead and answer the phone. Take your time."
He nearly tripped over the inside mat when another chain of attached sticky notes bapped him on the eyeball. He answered the call and mentally flailed through a shipping order while simultaneously flailing one-handed under the bar for his cash box. The cord caught his elbow on the way back up and nearly dragged the unit off the bar in transit.
By the time he got back outside, the rest of his groceries were arranged in a neat pile to the left of the welcome mat. The sticky note he'd taken off earlier was folded neatly to the side of the bags. Sojiro brushed the sun from his eyes with an upturned wrist and glared in the direction of the road, but the taxi was gone.
He ripped off the note and held it to sunlight. The rest is on me. Hope your luck perks up from here.
He stepped forward to get a better look at the road and felt something crunch under his heel.
… he added eggs back onto the list.
.
Futaba cooked a dinner that could've fed six kings and several of their horses. "I'm still not buying you a dog," Sojiro said.
"That's a baseless and tacky assumption," Futaba said. She had a smear of shoyu on her nose and it was taking everything in his power not to get his camera. "Please sit down at this extravagantly decorated table, oh honored father. I hope the accoutrements are to your liking."
"What's with the candle? What's with both candles?"
"One is coconut and one is verbena, so you can pretend you're sitting on a luxurious beach overlooking the sea of my many, many needs," Futaba said. "You want me to import an actual beach or what? I didn't raise you to be this spoiled. Also, you reeeeeally aren't giving me the kudos I deserve for basically saving our entire livelihood, you know."
"I already said thank you." Sojiro slipped a bit as he folded himself under the table and accidentally inhaled the smoke straight into the smallest crevices of his bronchii. The shoyu pork looked professionally edible but that was no surprise. She'd had no skill in the kitchen two weeks ago and that meant nothing. She had almost certainly downloaded the world's entire culinary library directly into her brain last night just to fuck with him. "What I could've done without was the forty-seven sticky notes slapped all over my café. It would've been easier to put out a fire."
"Inari says the best rescues are the ones done with pizzazz. Not all pets have to have fur, by the way," she said. "Some have feathers and some have scales and all are adorable. How dare you think I'm speciesist enough to discriminate."
"Futaba, I can't take care of a pet."
"You wouldn't be taking care of it. I would. With my oodles of responsibility. Did you know I have oodles? It's why I made noodles. So I could be responsible and rhyme."
"We can't afford a pet. What would we even feed it? I'm barely keeping you alive as it is."
"I dunno, I think we're doing pretty okay." Spectrum-child as she was, Futaba stunned him by embracing him from behind, albeit a little clumsily, before hurrying over to her side of the table with bare little scurrying feet. He could count on one hand the number of times she'd initiated physical contact with him in the past month. "Not enough for a pony but def enough for a cat," she added, mouth already full. He hadn't even seen her put food in her mouth. It had probably teleported there out of fear. "Or maybe a parakeet."
"Like I said, none of the above." His face was hot. Sojiro cleared his throat and tried to take the victory casually so he wouldn't spook her into holding back in the future. "Things're tight as it is, Futaba. We're doing okay, but now that that damned car's gone out from under me—"
"Wait, what?" Her fork froze halfway to her mouth. "Didn't you drive home? You brought a ton of groceries."
"My car died in the lot of the store. I took a taxi home while the old girl got towed to the shop. My point is—"
"You were in a car? With a stranger?"
"What, you wanted me to walk on the highway? It's damp as an armpit outside anyway."
"Sojiro." Futaba's fork dropped to the plate with a clatter. "You mean you just hopped into some stranger's car willingly? Like some gullible toddler on the hunt for candy?"
He coughed a laugh into his bowl, startled. "I'm serious," Futaba said. She looked deeply disappointed in him and it was hilarious. He couldn't stand it. "That's like the prime stuff of horror films. What if he'd had a hook? Or poison-tipped claws? Or biohazardous B.O?"
"B.O?"
"Body odor. Scents can kill, you know. Silently. He could've been waging biological warfare on you the entire time. You could be a zombie right now for all I know."
Well. He considered this information as he patted his mouth on his napkin. She did have a point. "You know, come to think of it, I have been feeling a little off-color since I came home."
Futaba's face lost a shade. "What kind of off-color?"
"I thought it was just me, but now that you mention it—"
"Wait, like… like shambling off-color? Green pustules? Oozing feet? Dripping skin?"
"A little like I kind of might want to try some brains. You ever get the hankering for brains? Weirdest sensation, but I feel like maybe the customers would like it if I started serving brains."
"Back, foul demon." Futaba grabbed her fork for protection and scrambled up away from him. "I rid you of your control of this man! Samerecarm!"
Sojiro took the opportunity to spear the last shoyu-soaked sliver of boiled egg off her plate. "Hey!" Futaba lunged back to rescue her plate from his dead decaying zombie hand of misery and plague. "I was saving that bite for last, you filthy desecrator! We're broke now! It's gonna be forever until we can get more!"
"The car'll be fine and so will we," Sojiro dismissed, mouth full, portioning off more vegetables off his plate onto hers to even out the lopsided distribution. "It'll make a dent, though. I'll have to ask you to tighten your belt a little bit with the electronics this month. I'll make it up to you later."
"Sure, because at least words are cheap." Fuming, Futaba pointedly reached over his half-hearted barricade and stole a slice of pork in retribution. She wriggled her fork at him, serious suddenly as an owl behind her oversized glasses. "Call me next time. You could've been in seriously mortal peril and I never would've known. That's not fair. You make me call when I go out and stuff."
"All right, all right."
"Sojiro. Seriously."
"I know." Sojiro squinted at his bowl, warm again. He had to clear his throat. "I'm sorry."
Futaba watched him, popping a sliver of green onion in her mouth to chew it with concentration. It was a minute before she spoke again. "When do you get Clarisse back?"
"Dunno yet. They'll give me a call. I got the groceries home, though, and we can use the mart in walking distance for anything I forgot. I just won't be able to swing out to Shinjuku to pick up your ice-cream for a while."
"That's fine." Futaba waved it all away with gracious and queenly pity for his shortcomings. "That's what internet shopping is for. You know you can get the same blast of dopamine from bingeing online shopping as you can eating crappy food? Splurging triggers the 'reward' process in the brain. It's why it's so addictive. Now that I know I can get just as much of a rush throwing money at things that I can when I'm stuffing myself full of delicious ice-cream, I can totally expand my risk-reward catalogue. Neurochemistry is great."
"You're in an awfully good mood," Sojiro said, choosing to ignore all of that for sanity-related reasons. "You rob a bank today or something?"
"You say that like I'm functionally incapable of robbing said bank, and that makes me real sad," Futaba said. "Nope, something better. You remember the thing I was working on with my mom's foundation? How I was looking for donors and all that? Look at this."
Sojiro set his fork down as she slapped a dog-eared notebook page over. "You remember how I was applying for that grant?" Futaba asked. "Well, I checked out sorts of ones. Federal, institutional, that sort of thing. Because I'm a minor, I had to bounce it up to a representative, but it turns out the woman had an in in the community. She found a donor!"
"Are you serious?" Incredulous, Sojiro scanned the rows of numbers and the circled name at the bottom peppered with roughly thirty exclamation marks. "Did you just hear about this today?"
"Yep." Futaba took it back proudly. "Not gonna lie, it was sort of completely terrifying to talk on the phone with a bunch of strangers, but when I remembered it was all for my mom, I sort of just… found the courage already there. Anyway, Koda-san said they're going to work on securing a more public donor. Mom's field was cognitive psience, but it turns out she did a lot of umbrella work too for neuro-stabilizers as well. You know, for depression and cognitive disorders and all that. So she got pretty well known in the psychiatric and pharmaceutical circles. They're thinking about publishing some of the lesser-known studies so more people could see the advancements she made. Once that happens, Koda-san thinks it'll be easy to set up a scholarship in her name."
"Futaba, that's…" A little helpless, Sojiro had to try a few times to speak. "That's wonderful. I know how important this was to you. I'm so proud of you."
"Well, the work's not done yet. There's a lot of steps. Just… I'm glad I could do this much myself, you know? Even with Akira not here with me. I really wanted to show the others I could navigate myself too, not just them." Futaba tucked back into her meal, pointing at him again with her fork as her cheek puffed. "And that doesn't let you off the hook either, mister. I fully plan to get more people on board the 'save Leblanc' train. Now that I know I can pirate money in a totally legal way, I may or may not become a monster in your midst. Fair warning."
"Leblanc doesn't need to be saved."
"Maybe not monetarily, but definitely aesthetically. I want chandeliers and escalators and those tiny useless little silver utensils you always see those rich people in movies using. Aaaand—" Futaba waggled her fork at him. "And if it just so happens to turn out that the venerable Sakura Sojiro was tight with the renowned Ishiki Wakaba, can you imagine the uptick in traffic once this grant gains public traction? We'll totally have to blow out the wall and add more seats. It'll be pandemonium. Just oodles and oodles of dough. Like my oodles and oodles of responsibility. For owning a pet."
"Very good," Sojiro said. "The thread nearly got lost in there, but you pulled it around by the end."
"I'll keep working on it." Futaba stuffed her forkful into her mouth. "Just you watch. I'll be the cutest monster you know."
Sojiro distracted the cutest monster he knew from her piracy with the cheap ice-cream he'd picked up at the corner mart. After he'd settled her down with her laptop in front of a documentary on zebras, he washed the dishes and tried not to think about all the things Wakaba was missing. It was a long list.
What kind of monster would you have raised. He fed the towel through the handle of the refrigerator and made up a pot of coffee, leaning over the back of the couch to watch when Futaba frantically waved him over to see the baby zebras. One way or another it was impossible to tell whether or not Futaba's quirks would've manifested under Wakaba's influence. It was possible she would've been well-adjusted enough to attend Shujin for her first year, but also possible that her anxiety would've ultimately been triggered by something else. Either way Sojiro had had to deal with the unflattering certainty that no matter how far down he crammed those traitorous thoughts, he knew his life would be objectively worse if Futaba had remained someone else's child.
How deep down, he thought, obediently leaning forward when Futaba tugged at his sleeve with excitement, into hell am I going to be sent for profiting off your loss. It'd probably be pretty deep. Maybe he'd get lucky enough to encounter a fellow hell-bound cab driver to shorten the trip.
… and speaking of goddamned cars.
.
The repair shop called to deliver a laundry list of very expensive and not at all out of their ass diagnoses. Sojiro blanked out somewhere between fuel pump and ignition coil and came crashing back onto the planet around the time the mechanic started shooting off estimates. "That seems like a lot."
"I mean, we can fix half of them for half the price, but you'll just end up coming back for the other half within the week."
"Don't you have any discounts? I'm an ex-governmental official, you know. Isn't there some kind of discount for government workers?"
They gave him a coupon for 500 yen off his next oil change and a code for a free drink at the Triple Seven convenience store. After giving the coupon to Futaba and also making her promise not to send them into catastrophic debt today by feeding her newfound dopamine addiction, he went to the café to ponder the humiliation of a tip jar. He'd traveled enough overseas during his government days to have a grasp on the concept, but something about it had always left a weird taste in his mouth. Good service paid for itself with repeat customers. Asking for added handouts felt too much like begging.
Still. Sojiro immersed himself in the needs of his next three customers and tried not to think about the needs over his own head. He maybe needed to beg. There was a nice ceramic pot one of his elderly customers had given him last year. It was tame enough to fit with the décor but pretty enough to attract a second glance.
Fuck it. He pulled out the wad of Futaba's sticky notes, found one that wasn't scribbled on, wrote TIPS on it, and shoved it out onto the edge of his counter before he could change his mind. Either it'd come to something or it wouldn't. As long as no one used it as an ashtray or an anonymous complaint box, he figured it'd probably be a net positive.
Akira texted him just as he was finishing cleaning out his refrigerator. Busy grinding the beans to prepare for his usual cranky evening crowd, Sojiro opened it with one hand as he kept half an eye on his task. The picture attachment took a moment to load. When it did he was treated to the sight of Morgana on a chair with a very handsome little yellow scarf and matching hat. Cute, Sojiro texted. You make that yourself?
I'm starting a business.
The next picture loaded with the same delay. It was a full array of tiny matching scarves and hats, along with fabric collars. Tiny bells were attached to half of them. I'd like to make them for dogs too, but I can't find one that will give me honest critique, Akira said. Dogs don't talk as much as cats.
Let's see the pink one.
The reply was slower in coming. Sojiro finished grinding the Columbia Narino beans and leaned his hip against the counter to watch as the news switched to the weather report. When the phone pinged he looked down to see Morgana, halfway between smug good looks and strained patience, modeling the pink bell collar and the adorable poofy hat. I've sold three sets so far to the women in my mother's book club, Akira said. I just learned how to knit last week, so it's slow going, but by next week I plan to move up to sweaters and cardigans.
Sojiro felt something throb a little in his head. These mutants. What was in the water to create these mutants. He'd slid his phone into his pocket and was about to move on with his life of willful blindness when he remembered at the last minute.
He pulled it back out. What did you eat today.
Breakfast and lunch. Dinner pending.
Tell me what you ate, kid.
This time the pause was longer.
Sojiro left it on the countertop. He passed by the tip jar on the way to dump out the handful of spilled grounds and stopped when he spotted a gleam at the bottom. His split-second of hope vanished when he saw it was a discarded tinfoil candy wrapper.
He fished it out and was about to toss it when he spotted writing scribbled on the inside. He smoothed it out to read it.
Try hiring a cuter barista.
On the other hand he was relieved to have been spared the humiliation of charity. On the other hand one of his customers was clearly fucking with him and it'd taken him too long to discover it, so now he didn't know whose curry to dump extra black pepper and stale coffee grounds into.
Akira texted back. Sojiro glanced at it on his way to the trash bin. The meat was a blackened lump the size of his fist and looked like it'd been worked over by several commuter trains. "I can send it to you if you want it," Akira said, picking up on the third ring. "I hid it in my room and ate krunky wafers instead."
"Would you please call the cops or something?" Sojiro snapped. "That's child abuse."
"They're just angry I don't give them anything to pick at anymore. If I don't complain, they can't complain that I'm complaining."
"If they're starving you over there—"
"They don't care enough to starve me. I'm all right, Boss. I know how to take care of myself."
"You're not supposed to have to take care of yourself." A strange, helpless, hypocritical anger was tightening the knot in his stomach. "You want me to send stuff your way, I can. Just say the word."
"It's fine, I promise. There's just frustrated and bored things don't play out with me like they used to." There was a brief scuffle and a murmur. "Morgana wants to say hello."
Clamping down his impatience with the diversion, Sojiro listened to a solid fifty-seven seconds of incomprehensible cat noises. "Do you need any of that repeated?" Akira asked. "He stutters when he gets excited."
"No, I've been, uh," Sojiro said. He closed his eyes and thumbed his forehead a moment. "I've been brushing up. Tell him I say 'yes', 'no', and 'maybe in another year'."
He heard Akira stifle a startled laugh over the sound of Morgana's frustrated yowl, and the sound was so wonderful that Sojiro felt a different knot tighten nearly to breaking. "Kid," he said. "Look, why don't you just come back, huh? I'll weather the legal end. I've done it before. I'll just have to think of something."
"I don't think they'll go for it as easily now that I came out top of my class last year. They've got bragging rights now."
"They can still brag. Just… over there."
"I need them to think it's their own idea or they'll never go through with it. I'm their only son. Whether they like me or resent me, it's always good to have a son in your pocket to pay the bills later. They're too smart to want to give that up no matter how much trouble I cause."
"You don't cause trouble." That was a lie. Sojiro pinched the bridge of his nose. "You don't cause trouble that merits abuse."
"They're just neglectful. Boss, it's fine," Akira said. "Maybe a year ago it would've been a different story, but with everything I've seen… I'd take too little attention over too much of the wrong kind of attention."
"Then how about just letting me talk to them. Maybe I can, I dunno. Straighten some things out. Dust out some cobwebs."
"I don't think they'll listen. They're already confused why you care so much about someone else's kid."
Sojiro let in a breath, let it out. "Because you're not someone else's kid."
The pause was very long.
Sojiro imagined Akira's slouch and the irritating shine off his glasses. There'd be no expression whatsoever on his face because the kid didn't know how the fuck to emote on a normal timetable. His neural processes rattled around in there more than a pachinko parlor. "Thanks, Boss," Akira said softly.
Time to wrap it up before he said something stupid. He could compartmentalize later. "You keep your nose clean over there, you hear? We'll keep working on this."
"Got it."
Sojiro hung up. Akira called back. "Do you want me to make you a human-sized pink set?"
"No." Sojiro hung up.
A minute later he texted back. Sure. Ditch the bell.
.
The car cost 124,600 yen to fix. Sojiro blew gaskets quietly into his sink next to his soapy dishes and calculated which body part he needed to lop off to pay for this. In terms of raw numbers it still made more sense to doctor her up than it did to throw in for a new car that'd probably fuck him over in newer, less creative ways, but that wasn't the point. Sentimentality had a price tag and so did raising a kid.
He withdrew the money and called up the taxi service to drive him to the repair shop. He stood outside the house on the edge of the adjacent street as Futaba peppered him with a barrage of texts detailing what large animals she expected to consume for dinner. How about radishes, he typed.
The replies came back with the speed of witchcraft. Animals consume vegetables and therefore I am consuming vegetables by consuming them.
How about turnips.
She sent a picture of a his at-home coffee pot and one of the kitchen knives pointed at it menacingly. Two vegetables, Sojiro said firmly. Or no curry for three days.
The wait was long and sullen. Sojiro was angling his hat to block out the spill of the sun as the taxi split away from the lazy stream of traffic to approach him. A thump from the window had him glancing up over his shoulder just before he let himself in. The scribble she held up to the glass was a leek drawn with Akira's hair and a bell pepper drawn with Sojiro's beard. I'm going in there, Sojiro mouthed, pointed exaggeratedly at the taxi.
He received a finger that he probably needed to punish her for later. "Thanks," Sojiro grunted as he lowered himself into the backseat of the car. He relished the feeling of his wallet digging into his asscheek, knowing it was about to get plenty slim enough to disappear over the next hour. He handed up the piece of paper with the name and address of the repair place, and the driver angled it neatly into the catch by the meter. "Traffic give you trouble on the way here? Heard the exit was a mess with commuter traffic this morning."
"Nope, clear as a mountain spring," the driver said. He was adjusting the rearview mirror as he spoke, checking the street behind them in preparation to pull out. "Got everything? I can wait if you need to check your coffee."
"No, I'm—" In the act of swiping his wrist under the brim of his hat to collect sweat, Sojiro blinked up at the front seat.
The driver aimed a sheepish smile into the rearview mirror.
"It's you," Sojiro said, still blankly. Then he rallied and scowled. "Now look here. I got a bone to pick with you, kid."
"There's a qualifier I haven't heard in a while," the driver from the other day said with a sputtering, genuine laugh. "Must be my excellent skin-care routine, right? Seriously though, I can wait if you need to check. No charge."
"No charge my ass, you—" He could still see Futaba in the window. Fuming, Sojiro roughly ground down on his tongue and buckled himself in with rough jerks. "Pots are fine. Just step on it already."
"Can do."
Sojiro managed to maintain a neutrally non-homicidal expression up until the point they crested onto the main street. The driver's own hat was angled up a bit higher today, revealing a heavy fringe of hair sideswept over the top of his glasses. There was faint stubble angled along the bottom of his chin. He was as prodigiously careful as he'd been the previous ride, checking left and right and left again before each turn despite the fact it was a one-way drag. "Now, before you get too wound up," the driver began.
"Oh I'm already – now you listen here." Sojiro cleared his vision and jammed a finger towards him. "I don't need charity and I don't like being condescended to. I told you to wait—"
"You were so busy juggling all the business in the store and with your car, I thought—"
"You were supposed to park yourself at that door and keep the meter running so I could pay you for your extra time and tip you for bringing in the groceries. Just what kind of business are you guys running, anyway?"
"What kind of…" The man sounded lost. "What?"
"If you're going to bother to go through all that extra effort, at least stick around so the client can square up. You think I don't know that came out of your own pocket? It made me feel like a damned crook. I almost called the agency up so they'd send me the bill."
"You're angry because I didn't try harder to chisel money from you?"
"You call getting fair compensation for your work chiseling?"
"No, I—" the driver seemed to honestly flounder. "I just thought maybe it'd be welcome."
"Why?"
"Just the way you looked, is all."
"It looked like I wanted to rip you off?"
"It looked like you didn't need any more hard knocks," the driver said softly.
Sojiro had been halfway into the next barrage. The defeated tone sucked the wind out of his sails. The driver's eyes were still on the road, both hands on the wheel, but Sojiro could see his knuckles had gone white. His shoulders had curved inwards a bit as if bracing against a strong headwind. "I certainly didn't do it to upset you," the driver murmured. "If I did, I'm truly sorry. I thought it'd make you feel better. Please forgive me for my presumption."
… that hadn't gone at all like he'd thought it'd go. Suddenly ashamed and more than a little confused, Sojiro subsided and dropped his scowl down into his lap. The meter ticked by audibly on the dash as they left Yongen-Jaya proper.
… come to think of it, Futaba had side-eyed him that day too when he'd shouldered his way home with all those groceries. He'd sweat through his shirt and his hat hadn't had a broad enough brim to protect the back of his neck from sunburn. He'd been flushed from the heat index nearly up until dinner and it'd taken two extra glasses of water to get his stomach to settle back down after his evening coffee. Laden with groceries and fumbling like a geezer with his wallet had probably completed the illusion of a man on his last rope.
All his residual anger collapsed into embarrassment. Sojiro rubbed his forehead between the vise of his thumb and forefinger and tried to figure out a way to climb out of the trench of dickery he'd dug himself into.
He eventually realized the driver was watching him as they stopped for a pedestrian crossing; when Sojiro met his eyes in the mirror, the driver's flinched away immediately. "So." The driver spoke with paler but determined cheer. "I'll bet you're happy to get your girl back, huh? You know, I've been burning with curiosity over her name ever since we talked about her. I kept thinking about what my uncle would've called her if he'd had a car with that bright coloring. I'm sure he would've had a blast talking with Shinzaki about it. It's a shame they never met."
Sojiro wasn't dumb enough not to recognize a charitable out when he saw one. Now that he was bending attention to it, he could hear that the hoarseness he'd picked up in the driver's voice last time was more pronounced, swallowing up some of the vowels and necessitating a swallow at the end of his sentences. The knuckles on his thin-boned hands shuffled prominently under the skin as his hands flexed around the wheel.
The conversation about cars and starving came back to him. Sojiro frowned at the back of the driver's head. "For you to be picking it up so quick, I guess her wounds weren't too mortal, huh?" the driver said. "I told you Shinzaki was honest. I bet he had a great time working on a classic like that. He gets bored with the cabs."
"I didn't get your name last time." Sojiro was gruff but his remorse was genuine. He once again forced himself to meet the driver's eyes in the mirror, this time holding them. "I shouldn't have gone off on you like that. I do appreciate a good turn. Just… took it wrong. I'm sorry."
"No, please don't," the driver said. "I see now it was presumptuous. Um, my name should be on the back there. And you can always call into the agency for verification if you're ever unsure."
There was an enlarged scan of the driver's license and business registration number encased behind a thin sheet of plexiglass on the back of the front passenger seat. The man on it had mousy windswept hair and eyes haunted enough to have come from a ship's graveyard. Sojiro peered at it, but it looked as though some brat had gone to town on it with a permanent marker. "All I can make out is Maru."
"You got it in one! Nice work."
"Maru," Sojiro said.
"It's a family name. I know, some kid got it really good back there, didn't they? Sorry about that. I keep forgetting to ask the agency to replace it."
There was roughly about a two percent chance the name was Maru and a one hundred-seventy percent chance the guy was fucking with him. The registration number was fully intact however, as was the agency's seal, and the phone number to check in on credentials was visible in red, and anyway that had been the final confirmation Sojiro needed to connect the dots. Sojiro knew, without a lot of ceremony and with a lot of terrible finality, where he'd heard that breathless flutter of laughter before.
A too-brusque braking brought his attention up. "Sorry," the driver sighed immediately. He'd stopped at the red light behind another vehicle. As Sojiro watched, the driver finally hiked up his own glasses and massaged his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. The bones of his wrist jutted as much as his knuckles.
Sojiro was torn away from his indecision when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He sent another glance to the man before answering it. "Sakura."
The sounds of a garage immediately greeted his eardrum by stabbing it. "Am I speaking to Sakura Sojiro, the owner of the yellow Porsche 356?"
"Unfortunately," Sojiro said, half an eye on the front as the car began accelerating again. "What's the matter? I'm on my way."
"The boss just found an issue with the gas line. Looks like a rodent's been chewing on it. He says he can't in good conscience send you home in it today."
"The drive—" Sojiro nearly herniated. "I just said I'm already on my way!"
"He's sorry he didn't catch it earlier, but he's firm on it. He says since it was something he dropped, he'll slash the cost. He'll comp the taxi too."
Son of a— Freshly aware of how his temper splattered on undeserving targets, Sojiro forced himself to take a very deep breath. "Again, we're very sorry," the worker said. "Do you want to speak to him yourself?"
"No, it's all right," Sojiro said gruffly. "Tell him it's fine. Just… make sure to really look it over this time. And I'll pay full price for the damned line."
"He's already discounted it on the invoice. It should be ready in a day or two. We'll give you another call when it's off the rack."
For fuck's sake. "Trouble?" the driver asked after Sojiro hung up.
"The idiot says they found something they'd missed before. Gas line. Take another day or two to get it patched."
"Oh, no." The driver's distress was genuine. "That's a shame. I'm sorry you got dragged all the way out here for nothing."
"You got dragged over for nothing." Comped his ass. Sojiro was pissed but not that pissed. "You mind turning around somewhere up here? I'll still pay you for your trouble."
"Hey, it's all right. Better that they found it now instead of having it fail you on the way home, right?"
He didn't generally tune into rainbow-and-unicorn frequency, but the driver's tone was earnest. "Yeah."
"Let me just duck into a parking lot. We'll get you home in no time."
Sojiro chewed on his vast wealth of petty inconveniences as the driver made the arrangements to reverse their trajectory. Futaba would be disappointed, but mostly on account of the fact he wasn't going to be out of the house as long as she'd predicted. Whatever shenanigans she'd programmed into her schedule, credit card debt included, would have to be deferred while he scrounged up backup vegetables to cram down her gullet. "You mind swinging by my café instead? Figure I might as well open up a few hours if I'm not getting my car."
"Not a problem."
Sojiro braced his elbow on the door handle again as he rested his cheek against his knuckle. Extra time. This wasn't ideal but maybe it was a sign. Seeing as he'd already balanced his books for the week and done the shopping, this was as good a time as any to check in with his contacts about Akira's adoption.
Sure, one more heaping on my plate. Try as he might, Sojiro couldn't bring himself to begrudge the trouble. Akira was seventeen – well over the minimum age for mukoyoshi. Sojiro preferred not to wait until he was the age of majority, but in the end red tape was just tape. Futaba already regarded Akira as a brother and Sojiro had already made concessions in his will. If he could pull enough strings for Akira to spend his third year of high school with a family that cared about him – well. Those'd be strings worth pulling.
Another sudden stop nearly knocked his knuckle up his nose. "Hey," he snapped before he could help himself, tearing himself away from the door. "You asleep or something?"
"I'm sorry." They were at a red light again, closer than Sojiro would've preferred to the bumper of a Subaru. The driver was massaging the bridge of his nose again, hiking up his glasses to get to his sinuses. His dark eyes were shadowed but attentive on the light overhead.
Alerted now, Sojiro watched. It took a handful of seconds for the man's hand to drop. When it did it was only to cup over his mouth, firm and contemplative under his unblinking gaze. He was very pale. "You all right?" Sojiro said.
The driver started. He angled another smile in the rearview mirror. "Sorry, lost in thought."
Sojiro saw the light turn blue. The car gently accelerated, and once again the driver was utterly focused on the road. Sojiro waited for him to continue his chatter and realized belatedly that the driver had been silent since they had turned around.
Good. Sojiro tried not to feel one way or another about that. He let his gaze trail back out the window but this time kept his attention on the traffic. For the rest of the short trip the driver was exceptionally careful, braking gently and turning like he was carting a car full of eggs.
As they approached Leblanc's street, Sojiro stirred to lean forward. He tapped the driver's shoulder and gestured. "Want you to park up there."
"Huh?" Clearly having been about to angle along the side street as before, the driver jumped a bit under the direction. "Didn't you want to go to your café?"
"Like you to park first. It's up the road to your left – the parking garage across the corner from Leblanc. I have a long-term permit for a spot on the first level."
There was the barest breath of hesitation, but the driver complied. Sojiro fumbled for his wallet and opened it up to the clear panel holding his card. "Scan this," he said, handing it up, and the driver obeyed with only minor fumbling. "And step on it once the arm goes up. The window's short."
The striped bar rose, and Sojiro again leaned forward over the middle hump to direct him. Midday found the first level of the garage deceptively empty, but Sojiro knew from firsthand pain-in-the-assery how packed it became once the dinner rush hour hit. "Over by the pillar, right next to the stairwell," he said, and settled back with satisfaction when the driver carefully angled the car in. "Nice work."
"You really have some prime parking here," the driver said, glancing up to the rearview mirror a last time to ensure they were centered. "You must have paid for this in blood."
"I was on a waiting list for months – way up on the third level. Before me was some hotshot business executive that moved in closer to Shinjuku. There's about a dozen people after me still waiting to get down to street level."
"Third level, huh? That must've been tough with all those groceries."
Sojiro didn't have to be carrying anything down three flights of stairs for his knees to bitch at him. At least the main entrance to the garage was facing the main street so Sojiro's street was spared the brunt of the commuting noise. "Come on," he grunted, letting himself out before the driver could shut off the car. "Keep the meter running if you want."
"Did you need help?" The driver thumbed it off anyway, hastily fumbling to open his own door once he saw Sojiro was leaving. "Is everything all right?"
"Come with me for a bit." He'd forgotten even in the short time he'd been in the cab just how hot it was. Still in the shade of the garage, Sojiro still squinted as the blast of it hit his eyes, blinking a bit to clear the dust the tires had churned up. He tented his hand over his eyes in preparation to meet the sun as he turned to the driver. "You can lock this thing up, right?"
"Yes," the driver said, but slowly. He'd risen to his full height to rest his palm against the top of the car. "Is there something you needed help with?"
"Balancing the scales. C'mon." Sojiro started walking without waiting for an answer.
Sure enough, after a few extra beats of silence, he heard the car door shut quietly and the locks click into place. "I don't suppose I could convince you to wait to kill me until after the season finale of Kitchen Royale," the driver chuckled weakly. "I really wanted to see who won."
"My thought is," Sojiro said, pushing the door to the outside open and angling his cupped hand down lower to catch the spill of sunlight, "you have a pretty hard time saying no to people. Someone asks you for something, you give in so you don't ruffle any feathers."
"Not always," the driver said. "Sometimes I ruffle feathers and… also say yes."
"So if I told you that I had a really heavy package waiting for me in front of Leblanc and I hurt my back last night falling down the stairs, it'd be pretty normal for your boss to hear from you later that you ran late helping me out."
"You hurt your back?"
"Hurts like a bitch. Been crying with pain since this morning."
"But," the driver paused, awkward. Sojiro could feel his gaze darting over him. "Have you really…"
"Been sobbing buckets. What, you haven't heard me?"
The driver looked bewildered and flustered. He began to cross the street, hesitated, tried and failed to toggle a non-existent crossing signal, then tentatively brushed Sojiro's elbow as if to help him down from the curb. "Oh, it doesn't hurt under direct sunlight," Sojiro said, glancing once up the deserted back road before heading for the sidewalk on the other side. "Holistic remedy. Gotta wait 'til I'm inside. Then I'll be doubled over like an old shrew."
The driver reflexively excused himself when he nearly ran into a teenage girl coming out from behind the fence. Sojiro passed by the apartments at a leisurely clip and wondered randomly if he had time to do laundry tonight. It was technically Futaba's week, but taking over that chore usually yielded net positive results, like fewer bleach spots and mildewed towels from where she forgot them in the washer for two days. They managed to make it nearly to the door to his café when the driver said, stumbling but firmer than before, "Listen, I would be of course very happy to help you, but I have to get—"
"You're taking a coffee with you," Sojiro interrupted. He turned on his welcome mat to squared up to the driver for the first time. The driver looked fidgety and confused, eyes darting around like he was an escaped fugitive. "I meant what I said earlier about squaring up. I want you to wait here, either in the store or on this mat, while I prep it. Then I pay you, in full, what I owe you for the trip today, and you'll go home with that coffee you earned. Got all that?"
"That's very generous, but I—"
"Okay, you didn't get it. I'll repeat it. I want you to stay here, in my store or on this mat, until I've prepped your coffee that you earned. After that, you take that coffee with you and we call it square. Got it?"
The driver looked at him helplessly a moment.
Sojiro jangled his keys in his pocket and waited. He let his expression be read, then watched the man's eyes drift over the store behind him. The man swallowed and tried to speak, and failed.
Sojiro gave him another moment. "Inside or out?"
Again the driver tried to reply and failed. He swallowed, licked his lower lip, and murmured with barely-audible humor, "I look that bad, huh?"
"You look fine. Just gonna get you some coffee."
"I appreciate this, but I really should—"
"Fine, you look like someone dragged you behind a liquor store and beat you with a shovel," Sojiro said. "You're not leaving here without coffee, kid. You try and I'm ringing up your agency."
There was something a little warm and a lot hollow on the man's face. "You drive a hard bargain."
"If you don't want to sit, you can stand out here. I don't care as long as you wait."
The man's gaze found his shoes. It didn't come back up. "Got it?" Sojiro said.
"Yes," the man sighed.
"Oh yeah?"
"I'll wait."
Sojiro waited, a hard expression on his face. "Cross my heart," the man said, obligingly drawing it on his chest. His continued smile towards his shoes was empty enough to suck something out of Sojiro's own chest.
Sojiro escaped it by letting himself in. He absently tossed his keys and wallet on the shelf behind the counter and got to work, throwing a glance at Futaba's communication pad to see if she'd been over. He fired up the pots as a matter of course, an eye on the upcoming mid-afternoon crowd, but scanned his shelves to debate just how much of a point he wanted to make. Supplies were limited for his top-shelf specials, but there were only a handful of beans he'd recommend in an iced coffee, and something told him that a hot steamy beverage being carried on a hot steamy day wouldn't be appreciated.
With only minor grumbling, he got down his Panama Esmeralda Geisha and prepared the materials for a pour-over. His customers tended to be the type to prefer to sit and savor, but he had a number of younger customers that insisted on coffee to go before school in the morning; he accessed his collection of compostable travel cups in his corner cupboard and set it up with a cardboard cozy to better fit into the taxi's cup holder.
He debated going with pure water but ultimately decided the vanilla-flavored cubes would bring out the floral aroma and balance the acidity. He let the Esmaralda brew as he leaned against the bar, rolling a cigarette in his fingers without lighting it. He could still see the edges of the driver's silhouette to the right of the door's window.
When it'd finished brewing, he executed the pour-over, gave it a stir, and capped it. He savored the rare fragrance of the Esmaralda as he walked it over to the door, knowing it'd be a while before he found an excuse to make it again.
As promised, the driver was leaning precariously against the wall by the door, skinny body folded in between the plant and the table. He was watching the passersby with a look somewhere between tender interest and the glaze of a four day-old corpse. "Here." Sojiro let the door fall shut behind him with a tinkle of the bell. "Figured the iced coffee will do a better job of keeping you awake. There's a kick, so drink it slow."
The driver didn't respond. Sojiro waited, then followed his gaze. There was an old woman toddling slowly but steadily a few paces ahead of them down the street. She was carefully toting what looked like a heavy package in one arm as she leaned on her cane with the other. As she came across a grate, Sojiro saw her tap experimentally over it, looking for a safe place to position her cane.
"Excuse me," the driver said, and worked himself from the wall.
Sojiro watched him introduce himself to the woman with a murmur. After some brief exchanges, the woman allowed him to take her package. He cradled it into his elbow with a smile, then offered his other arm for her to take, saying something else that didn't quite travel the distance. The woman squinted up at him with filmy eyes and pointed.
Sojiro waited as the driver delivered the bag to her stoop four doors down, helping her up the stairs, and disappeared briefly inside to deposit the package. As he came back out the door he turned back briefly; the woman could be seen patting his arm from the threshold before the door gently shut.
The cubes inside the cup popped as they settled. "I'm sorry," the driver said as he returned. There was a film of sweat across his brow. "This is very generous. It smells wonderful. You really didn't have to go out of your way."
"Figured you and I might as well be square." Sojiro handed it over, bracing the bottom so the paper coaster wouldn't slip off in transit. "Don't do anything stupid out there. You stay awake, you hear me?"
"I will," the man said. He took it, cradling the bottom with as much care as Sojiro had. He opened his mouth to say something else, then collapsed at Sojiro's feet with a cacophonous splash that soaked through Sojiro's shoes.
.
Sojiro blew eight ligaments and detonated at least two discs in his back helping him up to Akira's empty room. The man frantically refused an ambulance and tried to crawl out the window when Sojiro tried to call anyway, so Sojiro flipped the sign on the door and dug through his kitchen for supplies instead. "I'm so sorry." The man was on his back, pale as salt, the backs of his hands over his eyes. "What a waste."
"Don't worry about it." The welcome mat was a lost cause but it'd been getting pretty tired anyway. This would be an excuse to upgrade as soon as he had the budget. Sojiro pulled the rickety desk chair over and peeled the man's hands from his eyes. "There's more were that came from."
"What a way to repay you for your generosity. I'm sorry, please forgive me."
Sojiro soaked the cloth in the bowl, wrung it out, and situated it over the man's forehead. His glasses had suffered a bent right temple, but Sojiro was pretty sure he could wrangle it back into place if he could get his hands on his glasses kit. "My boss is going to wonder where I am," the man said. "I have to get back."
"No boss in their right mind would want you out on the road right now. I'll let you use the phone in a bit." Sojiro clinically pressed the back of his hand against the side of the man's face. It was blazing hot and he wasn't a fucking doctor. This was probably already a lawsuit against Leblanc if you squinted at it right. "Can you take down some water?"
"I don't know," the man admitted, hoarse. His hands were back over his eyes and Sojiro prayed he wasn't weeping. "I haven't… I can't lose this job. They already took a chance on me."
Sojiro sopped up some more heat before removing the cloth to rewet it. He checked his watch, gauging how much time he had until Futaba started to worry. Probably at least an hour. Traffic got dicey during rush hour and he'd left her with snacks. She'd cope. "I'm sorry," the man whispered again. He was definitely in tears.
Sojiro wrung the cloth out one-handed. The man's eyes fluttered a little as it returned, his pale throat jumping in a swallow. "Probably about time you told me your real name before I get it from your agency anyway," Sojiro said nonjudgmentally.
The man seemed nonplussed by the ministrations. His hands still bracketed his face, knuckles curled against his damp temples. At first Sojiro thought he'd have to repeat the question, but then the man swallowed again. "Takuto," he murmured at last, barely a breath. "My name is Takuto."
"And the Maru I saw in the car?"
"My family name. Maruki. Maruki Takuto."
Sojiro waited. "You sticking with that? Takuto?"
"It's what my mother called me."
"My mother called me 'pain in the ass vacuum mouth', so I got hairs if you want to split them," Sojiro said. "You got a history, Takuto?"
"None on record. None that would prevent me from getting hired."
"Sounds like history to me."
"I don't have a history." Maruki's knuckles migrated, lodging instead between his teeth. The defensive motion was so unintentionally childlike that Sojiro paused despite himself, hand on the cloth, to watch. "I don't have anything."
The chill of the cloth seeped into Sojiro's palm. "I'm sorry," Maruki said. "I can't… my head isn't on straight. I can't organize my thoughts at all. I should leave."
Sojiro went down to fill up a glass of water. "C'mon, sit up," he grunted, lowering his cranky rickety ass back into the cranky-ass rickety chair. "Take some of this down."
It took Maruki a moment to obey. When he did it was slow, almost mechanical, using the support of the wall behind him. Sojiro handed it over, caught it when Maruki fumbled it, and held it steady while they got it to his lips. "Thank you," Maruki murmured when it was lowered.. "I didn't think I was this bad off this morning."
Sojiro got up to put in distance. He slid the cloth off into the bowl of water, then absently leaned a shoulder against the shelving unit to get a better look. Maruki's hands were pale around the glass, his fingers slender, veins like spiderwebbing bridging the knuckles. He looked like he hadn't seen a solid meal since the Vikings invaded eastern Europe.
It hadn't really been a question, but the confirmation of his name did turn the key the rest of the way into the lock. October had been rough enough that more important business had prioritized itself at the time. Memories of Akira's school counselor were mostly crowded out by the revelation that his adopted kids were part of a wanted vigilante group with the power to burrow their way into people's psyches like cheery-ass skinwalkers. The impressions he'd gotten of Maruki when he'd first walked into Leblanc were the kinds of impressions he gleaned off any other customer. Predilection for sweet or acidic flavors, how much caffeine they needed to stay upright on the stool, whether they needed mild curry for a cat's tongue or spicy curry for a dragon's heart. Come to think of it, he hadn't asked for the man's name at the time. It was no wonder Maruki had assumed Sojiro had forgotten him.
Remembering the way Futaba's body language had fallen open when Maruki had spoken to her, Sojiro continued to turn information over slowly as he thought about his next step. Seeming to sense some tenterhooks, Maruki lowered the glass carefully into his lap and took a breath. "You probably have some questions."
"I've cooked up a few," Sojiro said, still nonjudgmental. "We'll start with the one that asks when was the last time food went down your neck."
"Not too long ago. I just don't have a very strong constitution."
"We talking 'soon' as in hours, or days?"
"The same thing, philosophically," Maruki laughed, but very softly. His thumb was skidding up and down on the condensation forming on the glass. "I'm afraid I don't recall. Not too long. Perhaps a day."
"Broke, bad memory, drugs, or self-destructive?"
"A bit of a la carte, probably."
Sojiro was frank. "Pick one."
This finally seemed to break through the man's dissociation. His eyes roamed up from the water to find Sojiro's. Evidently he picked up the serious mien, because he quickly ducked his head, clearing his throat. "Broke, mostly," Maruki murmured. "Never drugs. Money… doesn't tend to be my first priority. I've never been very good at managing my finances."
"Put a lot of people in danger getting behind the wheel like that."
Maruki's face twisted. Sojiro heard the squeak as his grip tightened on the glass. "It wasn't intentional," Maruki said. "Please believe me. I thought I had more in me than I did. It was my mistake. I'd have never done so otherwise."
Sojiro said nothing. He massaged the back of his head slowly and wondered how many fucks he truly had left to give at this point. "Will you…" Maruki seemed to hesitate. He carefully gathered the glass in again on his lap. "Will you call my agency?"
"Don't know yet."
The honesty oddly seemed to placate him. Maruki was silent a moment, watching his own reflection in the water. "My cab doesn't have a permit to park in this district, let alone in your lot. It'll get towed eventually."
"You've got some time. They don't really start manning or enforcing that until after five. I'll stick a note on it before I go home. Can someone from your agency come and pick it up?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure what the protocol for this is."
Sojiro massaged the back of his neck absently with his thumb.
Maruki finally seemed to notice his glasses on the bedside table. He slid them off gingerly and rested them atop the jut of his knee, regret flickering across his face as he took in the bent temple and missing screw. "Another job for packing tape, it seems," he laughed. It caught in his chest. "I really am a mess, aren't I."
Sojiro marveled at the rich history of idiots this café had hosted. Furry four-pawed ones, rich ones, flamboyant ones, drunk ones. One who'd sat against the café in the rain for nearly three hours the week after Akira left because he could figure out how to knock on the door anymore without them. It just don't feel right, Boss. He'd come down with a fever the next day high enough to bubble lead. Sojiro had bought a new comforter with the budget he didn't have and assured Sakamoto's mother over the phone every night for the next three days while he slept it all off in Akira's old bed. He's not bothering me. He just needs some time. I got the space. It's fine.
Looking at the newest idiotic pile of feverish human baggage on his property, Sojiro felt more worlds realign in order to lean on his personal galaxy. He slid the cloth off and rewet it and rubbed his eyelids to imagine what personal space was supposed to look like. Dust motes and empty attics. Sunlight hitting an unused mattress.
He lowered his hand. "You got somewhere to sleep?"
The man's dark eyes flitted up again. They were too large for his face. "Sleep," Sojiro repeated. "You got somewhere to crash?"
The man stared at him for a long time, uncomprehending. He flinched a little when Sojiro moved, but Sojiro only came to take the glass from him. "Tokata-san has been letting me use one of the empty offices at night," Maruki murmured at last. "It's not ideal, but I—"
"You on the floor?"
"No, I – there are two office chairs in there. I push them together so I can stretch out my legs."
Sojiro studied his reflection in the remaining water. "I know it doesn't sound like much, but it's warm and clean," Maruki said preemptively, incorrectly reading Sojiro's expression. "I've been very fortunate he's been so generous. I've had some… financial setbacks, but when my next check comes through, I should be able to start putting more away for a new apartment. I just need to be frugal until then."
"Sounds like a plan." Sojiro made for the stairs on legs that bitched at him roundly from the knees-up. He still had to clean up the coffee spill and had probably lost at least three thousand yen already by flipping his sign during the evening dinner hour. "You're staying here tonight. I'll bring you up a change of clothes. I've leave you enough for the bathhouse next door, but you can use the bathroom to tidy up if you don't feel you can make it. The café opens at six to pick up the morning crowd, so if you wake up before then, keep it down until there's a break in traffic."
"Wait." Maruki's face lost several shades during this. "Sakura-san, I really can't—"
"You can, unless you can give me one real reason you can't."
"I couldn't possibly impose."
"You already have. I'm over it." Did he still have Akira's towels here? Sojiro tried uselessly to figure out where his past self put things. Probably directly up his ass where he stored the rest of the things he didn't use, like common sense and self-preservation. "I'm gonna be making dinner for my kid. You allergic to anything?"
"Wait." Maruki was a shuffle of elbows and knees. He struggled upright and had to quickly flail out a hand to catch himself against the wall. "I can't stay. I really need to—"
"Look, I'm not an idiot," Sojiro said. "Do you really think I wouldn't remember who you were?"
Maruki stopped utterly.
Sojiro watched the cold tide of dread rise behind his eyes. Maruki looked around, edged towards the window, then seemed to sense how stupid the plan was and folded back on the bed. He hiked his knees up like a child. "I may have only talked to you that once, but it's not just anybody who can get my daughter to open up on a first meeting," Sojiro said. "Leaves an impression. Might've taken me a second back when you first picked me up, but I'm not that old. Give me a break."
When Maruki managed to speak it was nearly too hoarse to make out. "When did you remember?"
"Remembered your name from the staff registry at Shujin and put two and two together after the first time you picked me up. The kanji in the 'Ma' in Maruki clinched it. Not really a common spelling."
"If you knew who I was, why didn't you say anything?"
"Why should I? I'm not in the business of grave-digging or ghoul-hunting. There's plenty enough topside for me to stick a shovel in."
"You should've said something." Maruki covered his face. "I feel like such an idiot."
"That's the part about all this that makes you feel like an idiot?" Sojiro asked incredulously. "You were at Shujin for six months and had a parent conference with me. For both kids. How the hell did you think a hat was gonna camouflage you? What kind of moron do you take me for?"
"Not a moron," Maruki said weakly. "Just… hoped my misdirection would delay the inevitable for a bit."
"You had to know accepting clients from here would turn me up eventually. If you really wanted to hide you would've stayed east of Yongen-Jaya. Plenty of clientele out there that would've never known your face."
"It was my assigned district. I couldn't just say no."
"Then don't take a taxi job. Go get some low-profile filing job or something down in shipment. Not a lot of places you can hide when you're picking people up day in and day out."
"The taxi agency was the only—" Maruki trailed off suddenly. He blinked his way out from the barricade of his hands. "You said 'both' kids," he said. "Just now, you said… I thought you just had your daughter."
"I do."
"The only other child I talked to you about was Kurusu-kun."
"What about it."
Maruki's gaze was clear and astonished across the space. "You've adopted Akira?"
"Akira's my kid," Sojiro said dismissively, diffusing the weight of the moment with a flap of his hand. "Doesn't matter what his trashbag parents say. Whether he stays there or he gets away to come back home, I'm adopting him once he's an adult so he's out from under their thumb for good. Point is, I know who you are. And even if I didn't know, you just collapsed into a heap on my floor. You're not getting behind a wheel like this so you can take someone else out."
Maruki looked hollow with shock. He eased back against the wall behind the bed slowly, wiry body folding like origami so his knees crooked up against his chest. He slipped a hand behind his neck to massage it.
Sojiro had anticipated a dozen likely things to fall out of Maruki's mouth, which meant of course Maruki chose none of those things. "He must be so thrilled."
"Huh?"
"Kurusu-kun. He must be ecstatic. About the adoption."
Honestly taken aback, Sojiro finally paused at the landing with the bowl in the crook of his arms. "He loves you very much," Maruki said. "That much was clear to me in our therapy sessions. He always seemed wistful that he had to return at the end of the year. At the time I thought it might be avoidance – him not wanting to return to the scene of the crime and relive those memories. But after a few sessions it became obvious that he valued what he was receiving here. You truly supported him during a rough time in his life."
The floor felt a little insubstantial under his feet. Sojiro stood there, blinking, waiting for the next salvo, but Maruki seemed lost in thought, continuing to massage the back of his neck with a shaking thumb. "I can't impose," Maruki said. "If he's spoken to you about me, you know what I've done."
It took him a second to recover his voice. "Broad strokes."
"Then you know what happened in the metaverse."
"Not really my business."
"It involves your son. Or soon to be son. It's very much your business."
Sojiro turned to face him fully. Evening light from the window behind Maruki flared in the chaotic mane of hair, illuminating the strands of silver previously hidden by shadow. He didn't look up.
For a moment, standing there with a stranger in a room that no longer felt like he owned, Sojiro leaned into that memory. Scabbed knuckles and haunted eyes. A phone call from home that had cut out in Akira's hand. Dust motes trickling from the ceiling because Sojiro hadn't been able to summon the decency to clean his attic before throwing a child into it to sleep. Please take care of me. He hadn't even made the kid dinner that night. Futaba's fearful eyes at the window as he'd left to pick him up had been the only thing he could focus on. I'm sorry to be in the way. "You're seeing him, aren't you," Maruki said. "I'm invading his space."
"Quit trying to shrink my head," Sojiro said. "I'm going to make dinner. I'll bring yours back after my daughter eats. You allergic to anything, speak up now."
Maruki opened his mouth to say something. He shut it. His lower lip slid between his teeth. "I don't want to impose," he repeated, soft but firm. "If you're determined to be generous, I won't spurn the bed for the night, but I won't take food from Futaba's mouth."
Hearing his daughter's name coming out of Maruki's mouth elicited a lot of emotions. Most were pretty unpleasant but not all. Suddenly remembering that he wasn't as divorced from the situation as he thought, Sojiro once again paused on the top stair to give him a hard look. "You fought Futaba in there too, didn't you. In that meta-place."
"Yes," Maruki said.
Sojiro was flat. "Did you hurt her?"
"No. Never. God no."
"Akira?"
Maruki was silent.
Sojiro drew in a breath to speak and then aborted it. He sagged against the landing's divider and used his free hand to massage his eyes again. "Look, it's getting late. I need to get food down my daughter's throat before she riots and eats the table. We'll sort this out later. Use the restroom while I'm out – clean up as best you can. There's a bathhouse nearby that'd do you some good but we're gonna have to wait until you can manage on your own. Anything else, just sit on it. I don't have time to do this now."
Maruki was terribly soft. "And if I'm gone when you come back?"
"Then you're a fucking idiot," Sojiro said, and left.
.
Futaba listed off fourteen options of dessert that she wanted him to feed her for dinner. Sojiro served her curry and forced two vegetables down her picky teenage gullet before clearing the table. It was his turn again for dishes, so he snapped his apron back off the hook and was sliding the first plate off the stack to dunk into the sudsy basin when Futaba said, apropos of nothing, "So when were you gonna tell me you were harboring a fugitive in our café?"
Sojiro dropped the dish with a force that made a chip fly off. "I'm not."
"Are so. I was waiting all through dinner for you to fess up."
"I'm not harboring a fugitive."
"You sure about that?"
"Where is this coming from?"
Futaba was upside down on the couch, hair trailing over the side to puddle on the floor, bare feet waggling in the air. He saw her finger shoot up over the ledge to accompany them as she recited in a deep voice, "Then you're a fucking idiot—"
"You little— " He dropped a second plate. "What did I tell you about putting bugs in my café."
"Uh, literally nothing except 'I don't like bugs in my café' which you should know affects me literally not even sort of," Futaba said. "Just tell me what's going on already. You know I'll just ferret it all out anyway if you don't tell me."
"Futaba—" his hand was soapy. He remembered it too late when he went to rub his eye. Cursing under his breath, he jammed the faucet on and lifted his glasses to angle the stream onto his face. "There's just someone who needed help. This isn't going to be a repeat of Akira."
"And why weren't you gonna tell me, exactly/"
"I didn't want to upset you."
Futaba's legs crooked. She used the leverage of the back of the couch and hauled herself upright, easing her skinny body onto the back to perch like a bird. "It's just overnight." Sojiro plucked the towel from the handle of the refrigerator and wiped his face down, blinking rapidly to dispel the rest of the sting. "He collapsed in my store – I needed to take some responsibility. You'll understand when you're older."
"Lame old-person cop-out," Futaba said. "C'mon, Sojiro, you're better than this. You realize we like, fought him, right? Maruki? As in, he had a persona and was in the metaverse and sort of tried to do a take over the world thing? How on earth did you think I wouldn't find out?"
Sojiro pulled up a stool from the kitchen to sit on. Futaba was chewing on something he was fairly sure wasn't from dinner or that had even existed a moment ago. She'd pulled it directly from nowhere. "Futaba, I…" He bit his tongue sharply, frustrated, trying to figure out how best to word his next point. "I know. I need you to listen real close to my question, all right? I know you're not always comfortable about talking about the… the metaverse stuff, but I have to ask—"
"He morphed into a giant biblical tentacled mecha-god and begged us to let him save us all from our boo-boos," Futaba said. "He cried. It was the least villainous villain speech I've ever heard save for that one evil pigeon from the Passenger Pigeon Romance! Featherman episode, and at least he got a dramatic orchestral sting when he betrayed the hero. This was just sad."
Sojiro parsed this slowly. Futaba was still chewing and looking at him like he was supposed to provide a response. "Okay," he said.
"Is that all you wanted to know?"
"Yeah. I mean — no." He took off his glasses and scrubbed them a while with his shirt. "You told me everything that happened in that… that alternate reality. I get that part. I want to know about him. Did he hurt you?"
"Me specifically? Nah. And actually…"
Sojiro watched her pause, tucking her tongue against the inside of her cheek for a moment. "Never mind," she said. "I don't want to air that right now."
"Is it relevant?"
"Yeah, but I want to sit on it. It's not bad," she said when she saw his expression. "His memory was… kind of screwy once we got him out. We'd knocked him around a lot and he was having a hard time staying conscious. I don't know how much of that was him and how much of it was Adam Kadmon. He just did something for me during the fight I'm not sure he remembers."
"You're sure it's not something I need to know?"
"Like I said, not bad. I just want to see if he remembers it on his own."
Sojiro considered pressing but knew any further questing would make her clam up. "And the others?"
"Oh, his persona knocked them all around like pool balls. He was sorta ridiculously level 99."
So he had hurt Akira. For some reason the confirmation made something sink in Sojiro's stomach. The warmth of a smile in a rearview mirror. Hands that shook with exhaustion as they took an old woman's groceries for her. Sojiro had to kick him out. This was something that couldn't be fixed with platitudes and iced coffee. Even now his phone felt heavy in his pocket. Hey kid. A text with a picture of his occupied bed under a glaze of dust motes and sunlight. Look who I found.
Futaba was talking. "What?" he said.
"Would you quit spacing out?" Futaba looked cross. "I was saying that his persona did all the heavy lifting. He was way too squeamish to fight us himself."
"Do you think I'm an idiot? Personae don't act without permission from the wielder."
"Categorically false. Mine totally sprouted tentacles and slurped me up without a dialogue option to nope out of it. But that's not the point. Just give him a break, Sojiro, seriously. We've kind of been over this for ages. None of us hold a grudge."
"Give him a break?" Sojiro was incredulous. "He attacked you!"
"C'mon, did you even look at him? He's made of tissue paper and gummy wrappers. There's no way he could offer any of us a decent fight on his own. Just listen for a sec," Futaba said when he tried to interrupt. "I'm not splitting hairs with you. I mean, I am, but that's not what I'm trying to do. He cooked up a whole world built on butterflies and rainbow-pooping unicorns because that's how he thinks everybody deserves to live. Murderers, criminals, good guys, doggies, kitties, sewer rats. All deserve to live inside a big happy rainbow. And yeah, he tried to defend what he'd built. Not a question. Still doesn't make him evil. It's more nuanced than that. Besides, we're the ones who picked the fight."
"Don't." Sojiro hid his face in his hands for a while. "Don't do that."
"Don't do what."
"Don't make excuses for someone who hurt you."
"I'm not making— gaugh, will you please just listen to me?" Futaba pried his hands away. "Sojiro. I'm not victim-blaming and I'm not making excuses for him. All right? I'm just telling you how it was. If there's one thing I learned in the metaverse, it's that a reductive categorization of good and evil doesn't get anyone anywhere. All palaces are created from intense cognitive distortion. Greed, lust, jealousy, all of the above, whatever. It's a grab-bag of sin. Maruki's? His was made out of sorrow. For other people. His persona materialized because his heart was too big to fit in his body. And I'm sorry, but I'm just… I can't demonize that. I know you disagree, but I'm sorry, you weren't there. You didn't see what we saw. You didn't see the look on his face when it all crumbled underneath him. It sucked. Nobody wanted to hurt him. We just… wanted to make him stop."
It was easily the longest speech he'd heard her make that wasn't about pets or curry. The fact that it was about the metaverse was simultaneously relieving and terrible. "If the reality over there was so wonderful, why did you knock it down?"
"I dunno," Futaba said, surprising him. "I mean, I had my mom, you two were together, Akechi-kun was alive, Ryuji could run again, Ann had Shiho back… everybody was happy. On the surface it was a paradise. But underneath… I guess something in me rejected it because I didn't build it, you know? It's not what I worked so hard for. I miss my mom, but I like being here with you just as much. We worked hard for what we've got. It hurt a lot, but we did it together. I didn't want to erase all that just because I miss someone who isn't here anymore."
Sojiro stared at her helplessly, hand curled vaguely around her wrist. "You need a drink," Futaba decided. She slid off the couch before he could stop her and jogged to the fridge. "And I need a snack. That worked out. Here."
"Futaba," he began, and grunted with surprise when she mashed the can of beer against his cheek. "Now, look—"
"Open ittttt. Take a drink. Just slow your roll for a sec."
He sighed and popped it open. She retreated with her chip bag back onto the lip of the sofa, which was apparently her new favorite spot in the house to mess with his reality. Last week it'd been the kitchen counter. "Look, I won't tell you not to kick him out," Futaba said. "You do what you want to do. But just… I don't want that on me. None of us hate him. He's… Doc, you know? He's not a bad guy. And he tried really hard. I know how it feels to try and still get everything knocked out from underneath you. If you're gonna do it, just… be gentle about it. Okay? Like real real gentle. Just tell him it's bad for business or something. And don't throw my name into it. And don't throw him out without giving him something for the road. Just do that for me, okay?"
Sojiro cycled between things he didn't want to know and things he really didn't want to know and ended up somewhere in the middle of his own fugue. He watched her eat things exactly like she'd been raised by two generations of mountain goats. "Okay?" Futaba pressed. "Deal?"
"No," he said. "Why didn't you tell me all of this earlier?"
"I did tell you. You just kept changing the subject."
"I did not, I just don't get it, all right? It goes over my head."
"Sojiro, I have no idea why you pretend like you don't understand cognitive psience," Futaba said. "Like, it's not cute. You don't have to dumb down your intelligence when you talk to me, all right? I won't break if you mention Mom's research."
"I'm not—" he shoved down the rest of his sentence with a medicinal gulp of his beer. "It's just been the cause of a lot of problems, that's all. I have a right to not want to talk about it."
"Fair, but you don't have a right to act stupid about it. It just wastes time."
He set the beer aside and for good measure stole her chip bag. She howled a complaint as he carried it back to the kitchen. "If you're hungry, eat more vegetables," he said. He clipped it shut and tossed it up on the highest shelf, where his daughter would presumably teleport the instant he turned his back. "I need to go lock up the store."
Her bare little feet were in the kitchen an instant later. "Are you going to kick him out?"
"It's too much trouble. I'll kick him out in the morning."
"Sojiro." She embraced him from behind. "You're like the world's most crotchety knight."
"I can't keep taking in strays, Futaba. We can't afford it."
"Then charge rent and have him pay you in optimism." She eeled around him and grabbed the half-finished box of strawberry pocky before he could stop her. "Remember: service with a smile!" she hollered as she pelted up the hallway, and a moment later her door slammed and locked.
Sojiro rued his existence for fourteen minutes while he used the leftovers to mix up a bowl of Chinese medicinal rice. He resented his existence an extra four as he boiled the water for tea, then let it steep as he loathed his existence and scrounged up Futaba's old bento to put it all the food in.
Leblanc was still unlocked when he got to the door. Sojiro angled himself in carefully, remembering this time to pull in the stained mat. There'd be extra dirt coming into his café for the next couple of days but he figured it was better than keeping the eyesore out and dissuading new customers.
Maruki was asleep under the spill of moonlight from Akira's window, fetal position under the sheet. His back was rising and falling steadily, his breaths soft and congested in the silence.
Sojiro stopped at the top of the stairs, conflicted emotions slowing his trajectory. He'd half-hoped Maruki would take the decision out of his hands and kindly fuck off before Futaba got too invested in this. Sojiro meant what he said about limiting his quota of strays. Futaba's description of Maruki as a golden tentacled god in the metaverse wasn't doing him a lot of favors either. Mostly Sojiro wanted to kick him out without having his daughter climbing up into his grill with her own tentacles, which would be harder the more she kept latching onto Maruki as a pet project. Best to feed and water him, take care of the peripheral damage, and throw him out the door in the morning. Gently.
His feet moved him before he could give them the order. Maruki's glasses glinted from where he'd carefully set them on the stand. The man stirred with a hitch of breath when Sojiro set the bento down atop the bedside table, flailing reflexively to his right and smacking his hand against the wall. "Eat up," Sojiro said, cricking the hell out of his back as he straightened. He knew morning would teach him the errors of his philanthropy, but right now his nerve endings were as exhausted as the rest of him. "Drink the tea while it's hot. I'm gonna go lock up."
"What?" Maruki's voice was blurred. He had shakily climbed up against the wall. "What time is it?"
"After dark. I'm locking up."
"Tokata-san?"
"It's Sakura. I brought you dinner. Don't let it go to waste."
"Wait. Who—"
Halfway back to the stairs, Sojiro paused at the note of panic. Maruki was fumbling at the bedside table. A moment later the crooked glasses were on his face, and Maruki's wide, frightened eyes were on him in the gloom, his hand splayed against the wall behind him as though preparing to launch himself off it or maybe through it.
Realizing how disorienting the surroundings must be, Sojiro swallowed a surge of guilt. "It's Sakura," he sighed, gruffly reaching over to toggle the light. "You're in Leblanc. Brought you up earlier after you fainted. Ring a bell?"
"Leblanc." Maruki flinched as the bulb flooded the area. He still looked dazed, but once he'd tented his hand over his eyes to help them adjust, Sojiro could see his gradual recognition as his gaze roamed the room. "I'm in Leblanc."
Sojiro gave him a once-over, frowning. Maruki had taken off his vest and folded it neatly over the back of Akira's desk chair, organizing his boots and socks at the foot of the bed. Again too late, Sojiro remembered he'd promised to bring him over a change of clothes. "I'm sorry," Maruki said. "I'd only planned to nap for an hour. I didn't mean to stay so long."
"You're fine." The box Akira had left would have to do. Sojiro bent on increasingly uncooperative knees to rummage through it. Akira hadn't brought much in the way of clothes and had taken even less when he'd left, but he'd acquired a healthy collection of gifts from his friends throughout the months. Some ransacking turned up what was likely a joke pair of fuzzy bunny pajama pants and an intentionally voluminous sweater high quality enough to have probably come from the Okumura girl. "Stay here tonight," Sojiro said, tossing the clothes onto Maruki's lap and making him fumble. "I mean it. I'm locking the door, so it'll be a security hazard if you leave in the middle of the night. Whatever else you've got going on, you can sort it out in the morning."
"My cab." Maruki looked sallow under the light. He still had his hand over his eyes. "I called Tokata-san. He told me I had to move the car. It comes out of my pay if it gets towed on the company's expense."
"I already did that," Sojiro lied, making a mental note to hit up the garage. He'd honestly intended to take care of it earlier and had gotten distracted by domestic terrorism. "What'd he say?"
"He won't pay my base rate for the day, and I owe him my… my fee for your ride, but he says he won't fire me. A-and I have to pay for the gas it takes to send someone out to pick up the car. I'm sorry I used your phone without permission."
Huh. Sojiro barely heard him. "Eat your food," he said, turning towards the stairs. "Help yourself to the water downstairs if you need more during the night. I'm heading out."
"Sakura-san."
Sojiro again turned. Maruki had used the bedside table to leverage himself onto his feet. He now sketched a deep bow that nearly cracked his goddamn forehead off the corner and had his glasses bouncing off the floor a second later. "Damn," Maruki muttered, fishing them up and clutching them as he straightened. "Thank you. I don't know what I did to deserve this kindness from you, but I… I just wanted to say that I'm sorry about what I did in—"
"Eat your food," Sojiro interrupted him, keenly aware of the fact that his daughter was probably tapping into the conversation with trollish delight. "And it's not a kindness, it's insurance. You collapsed in my store because I bullied you into leaving your cab. You'd have probably made it back to your agency if I hadn't fussed with your schedule. There's no debt here, understood? Just balancing the scales."
"You're wrong," Maruki said, surprising him. He wilted immediately, clutching his glasses to his chest with enough force to probably bend the other temple. "You're wrong," he repeated, softer. "I'm aware of the burden I represent. Not just to you, Sakura-san. If it weren't for you kindness, I'd… I'd likely have ended up somewhere worse. I could've… really hurt someone in the shape I was in. I should've known better. For you to… take me in, despite that – despite everything else – it is a kindness. I don't know if I'll ever be able to repay it."
He could psychically hear Futaba sniggling on the other end of her surveillance. Horrified, he beat a flustered retreat. He double-checked the pots, turned the security nightlight on, and bolted the front door before the cosmos could get any more leverage to screw with him.
Futaba was likely expecting him to come back right away, but he knew himself well enough to know he wouldn't be able to be patient with her sense of humor right now. He spared them both the trauma of his temper by diverting himself. He pocketed the keys and slid his hat lower on his eyes, taking the long way to the garage and letting the colors and sounds of Yongen-Jaya filter through and around him until he felt steadier.
Old Haruhito was at the booth when he came up to it, reading a dirty magazine poorly disguised behind an owner's manual for a Nissan 2009. "Hey." Sojiro thunked his knuckle on the glass. "Forget something?"
"Sakura-kun." Bleary eyes peered out into the relative gloom beyond the box. "Oh yeah. That reminds me."
Sojiro waited with strained patience as Haruhito languidly fished up the citation slip. "Found a car in your spot that wasn't yours," Haruhito said. "But it was a cab, so I figured something had happened."
"Why didn't you call me if you thought something was off?"
"Didn't see your car. You wanna file it, you can file it. Management will collect it at the end of the week."
"What would you have done if it'd been a different car?"
"Figure something else had happened. Just maybe faster. Lot of busy businessmen around here if you know what I mean. I usually give it a day to make sure."
Sojiro snapped the citation slip and crumpled it irritably in his fist. "Hot date?" Haruhito said.
"Gimme a cigarette and I'll tell you about it."
Without taking his eyes off the magazine, Haruhito fished out a cigarette from his breast pocket. "Ran off with the cab driver and left me the bill," Sojiro said. "All I got was a sock."
"You old dog," Haruhito grunted, laughing around his smoke. "You know it's true love when she leaves you the wallet to pay the bill."
Futaba was safely in her room by the time he made his way home. Sojiro was seeing double. He washed up as best he could with the sink, too tired to do much but scrub the sweat out of his beard, and collapsed into bed with the velocity of someone careening off a bridge.
He was on the edge of sleep when he heard something scritch under his door. Groaning, he peeled an eye up from his pillow and squinted in the darkness. There was a pale rectangle on the floor.
He heaved himself out of bed to pick it up, turning on his bedside lamp. It was a drawing of an anatomically-correct heart with tentacles and big, smiley eyes. The caption underneath read You really octo-vated my uwus!
… he needed a drink.
