"So let me run this through one more time just to see if I've got everything straight." Tokata Shinzaki finished hoisting the last bag onto the front desk before squaring off to Sojiro, expression flat. "He drove you home and passed out in your restaurant when you asked for help with your bags. Doctor said he needs to rest and you're worried about a lawsuit, so you're putting him up in your rental unit until he's back on his feet and giving him a part-time job to help pay for expenses."
"Not worried about a lawsuit or expenses, but the rest is more or less the gist." The collection on the countertop totaled up to a briefcase, a travel-worn clothing bag straining at the seams, a small cardboard box that had rattled when it'd been set down, and a backpack with an empty water bottle still fastened to it. Sojiro sifted through them. "This really all he had?"
"Apparently the rest of it's in storage. He didn't have much furniture left by the end, but he said there were some family heirlooms he wanted to keep safe."
Storage wasn't cheap. "He didn't seem too worried about these back at the shop."
"He's not the type to admit if he was." Shinzaki was still flat. The Shinzaki taxi agency's HVAC unit blew a loud static turnover through the rafters; underneath it Sojiro could faintly pick up the sounds of men calling to each other in the company's repair garage at the back of the property. "You two know each other?"
"More or less. He was my kids' school-appointed therapist last year and stopped by my shop a handful of times for coffee."
"Happy that someone is doing him a good turn, but any particular reason you're taking this on? Seems like a hell of a thing to do for someone you barely know."
"I've done more for less."
"And he's choosing to work there? It isn't something he feels obligated to do to pay you back?"
"Look, what is it you want from me?" Sojiro said, getting a little exasperated. "If I'd known I was going to sit for an inquisition I'd have brought more coffee to keep me awake. I don't need a reason. Man collapses in my store and needs a doctor, what did you think I was going to do? Kick him out into the rain and send him a cleaning bill for my welcome mat?"
"Takuto's a good man," Shinzaki said. He seemed unmoved by Sojiro's antagonism. "Had to get on him all the time about not giving free rides to people with sob stories. Wouldn't even cop to it until our billing printouts tattled on him. He trusts people too easily and it gets him into trouble."
"So I'm trouble, is what you're saying."
"I'm saying that I don't know your intentions for him. Good trouble or bad trouble."
Sojiro found himself somewhere in the middle of chronic pissiness and a pretty good day actually. His car sat sweet as banana pudding out in the guest lot, fresh out of the mechanic's garage and not currently being chewed on by parking ramp rodents. "Fine, you know what? I'll play," he said. "While we're at it, I've got questions too. Like why you let the kid drive that impaired if you're so damned worried about his safety, or why you think you've got the high ground here when he weighs about as much as a cigarette and sleeps on your old office chairs. You strip his wages once you put him up? Or is driving sick the corporate cost for room and board these days?"
Shinzaki finally backed off with a sigh. He thumbed his eyes for a minute, then signaled to a man behind the glass of the adjacent office. The man caught his eye and motioned back, phone still pressed to his ear with a shoulder as he stood to gather his desktop papers. "Come back with me for a minute," Shinzaki said to Sojiro, gruff but quiet.
Sojiro left Maruki's belongings behind and followed him up the hall. The intake office was sealed off from the main garage and let out a billow of stale air and overheated coffee grounds when Shinzaki opened the door. Shinzaki lowered himself into the swivel chair behind the desk with a grunt, pushing printouts and paperweights off to the side to clear the space and reaching over himself to get to the coffee pot. He didn't patronize Sojiro by telling him to sit, which was good because Sojiro was currently working with a rapidly-diminishing collection of social fucks to give. "Look, I didn't mean to get in your face," Shinzaki said. "Just been a long couple of months trying to keep him on his feet. He doesn't make it easy. I wanted to make sure he wasn't wrapping himself up in a project that could get him in trouble."
"If anyone's got a project going here, it's you," Sojiro said. "Not a whole lot of bosses in this part of the country who'd do this for their employees. I take it you're not a local."
"I'm not," Shinzaki said. He refreshed the mug on his desk with Sojiro presumed by the smell was fresh-perked battery acid and gestured with the pot.
Sojiro waved it off. "Let me get to the point," Shinzaki said, sliding it back on the hotplate. "I care about this kid. Problem is my resources and time to care are limited. I run a white plate operation, not a green plate. This company doesn't have a large corporate overhead like the MK Taxi uptown. I keep things small, I keep repairs in our own garage, and that gives me more control over what I have to tolerate and what I can shove out the door. Customers and employees both."
"Then why keep him on?" He was soggy from rain and still steaming clear up the back of his eyeballs from the rude reception, but he could admit to being curious now. "You're his employer, not his caseworker. You can't tell me you do this kind of thing for all the people you hire."
"Close to it," Shinzaki said without hubris. "Treating my guys like humans instead of numbers is how I keep the quality high and the turnover low. That said, I won't pretend I didn't have a soft spot for him."
"Forget soft spots, why didn't you pay him enough money to survive on his own?"
"I did. Average salary for a driver in Shibuya is just over two million yen annually; I pay three hundred thousand yen over that bar. Beyond knowing it's not going towards drugs or maid services, I have no idea where he's putting it. At first I thought he had some kind of debt or alimony hanging over his head, but I've never seen any paper billing coming his way. No kids I've found out about either. It's like feeding wages to a black hole."
"How do you know for a fact it's not drugs?"
"We have screenings monthly. Guy wouldn't even take bufferin for headaches."
Sojiro wondered how many drug tests Maruki would fail now that Takemi had dosed him up like Kong. "You didn't ask him where it all goes?"
"Not my business."
"He was sleeping in your building."
"Still not my business," Shinzaki said. "And if I'd given him any indication I thought about it even this much, he'd have turned himself out onto the street a long time ago. Long story short, it didn't cost me anything to put a roof over his head and let him graze on company coffee and whatever I shoved down my employees' throats for settai. You, it does. Unless you plan on letting him dumpster dive for his dinner."
"I don't care about the cost."
"So it's charity."
"No more charity than yours."
"Here's my point," Shinzaki said. "For as much as I tried to do, there wasn't a whole lot I could do about him off the clock. Beyond not firing him or getting him committed to some kind of in-patient program, the only thing I could do to help was to keep giving him work and hope he got over whatever was eating him himself. It's not that I didn't notice the problem – just that my hands were tied on how to deal with it."
Sojiro's phone buzzed in his pocket. It was probably Futaba. Instead of answering it he kept his eye on Shinzaki, watching the man parcel himself out some sugar and then twist over himself once again to access a hip-high refrigerator. Shinzaki wordlessly offered the cold bottled water to him, and Sojiro at last sat, sighing, taking the offering and nudging the brim of his hat up off his brow to let some of the circulating air work on the humidity. Rain and muffled industry continued to hum through the teeth of the building.
He took down some of the water in controlled sips, leaning into the silence as he sorted out the information he'd been given. "Guess I just wasn't reading this whole thing right," he said finally. "He seemed like he was afraid of calling you, so I took it to mean you'd be firing him on the spot if you learned about all this."
"He was afraid of calling me because he knew I'd give him hell like I always do," Shinzaki said. "I put up with his crap; it doesn't mean I like that he's handing it to me. When he's not being a pain in the ass he's my highest rated driver. I get calls raving about him all the time. I'd be crazy to fire him with all the good PR he's brought in."
"It can't be worth this much trouble." Sojiro was blunt. "Green plate, white plate, most companies would've turned him out long before he became even half this big an issue. You're saying everything you put up with was just for the good press?"
"If you want the honest truth of it, he reminds me of my brother. It's part of the reason I took him on over the more experienced candidates jockeying for the job. Good drivers are hard to come by. Only about twenty percent of the work is actual driving. The rest of it is how well they deal with the client. That's what I suss out across this desk. Private green plate services have to go above and beyond to compete with the big-name white plates, which means that it's not enough to get people from here to there – they have to remember at the end why they chose us over the bigger name. He got that done and then some."
"And all the trouble on the side?"
"You can probably tell at a pretty quick glance, but in case it wasn't obvious, I'm Japanese diaspora," Shinzaki said. "Our parents emigrated from Suzano into Miyama when we were pre-teens. I don't know if you've ever swung out that way on business or if you've got any roots out there, but the Brazilian culture leaves a thumbprint on you. I pushed it down when I was a teenager in order to assimilate better, but my brother never bothered. He got bullied for it and it was a full-time job trying to keep his teeth in his head at school."
"I've heard of it." Sojiro leaned away from the politics of that. Even if he knew more about the subject he wasn't qualified to comment. "What about Doc reminded you of it?"
"My brother wasn't built for big city life, but after watching our parents financially struggle in Suzano, he wanted to make sure he worked with me to support them when they got older. At first we were going to diversify so we didn't put all our eggs in one basket – me with the garage, him with a different rental company – but after he kept getting fired I just brought him over here to save our mother the ulcers." But Shinzaki tapped the desk with his knuckle a moment. His eyes were strangely intent. "'Doc'."
Sojiro realized his mistake too late. He thought about handwaving it as a slip of the tongue but something told him it wouldn't fly with this particular audience. "Long story."
"I'll bet." Shinzaki shook his head. "Wouldn't surprise me either way. He was overqualified to be here – you could tell that just by talking to him for a few minutes. I'm sure it was on his resume somewhere, I just didn't look hard enough."
"What was your brother's problem?"
"What, with keeping work in Shibuya? Nothing, just didn't kowtow. Didn't care about the politics of it all. Like I said, Suzano leaves a fingerprint," Shinzaki said. "Even among the first generation Nipo-brasseiros there, familial loyalty takes precedence over company loyalty. My brother couldn't be browbeaten into kowtowing and it drove his coworkers up the wall. Didn't participate in the morning exercises, couldn't be bullied into joining settai, didn't care about ranks or keigo. My guess is that it intimidated them."
"You don't care about it either."
"No, but I'm privately owned. I can do what I want as long as I don't run afoul of the Diet. I might've been able to pretend otherwise as a teenager, but Suzano's got its hooks in me too. There's always an adjustment period with new employees when they come in. Takes them a long time to trust me that I won't fire them for not wanting a drink after work or calling in sick."
"Is your brother here now?"
"He died a year ago in one of those shutdown incidents in traffic. A delivery truck hit him while he was crossing the street, killed him on impact along with a mother of two."
Sojiro felt something lurch his stomach like a snapped string. He set down the half-empty water bottle and thumbed his mouth for a moment, retreating into himself a bit to think. "Maybe it's sentimentality, maybe it's me making up for the things I didn't do," Shinzaki said. "Maybe it's something about Takuto himself. I really don't know. One way or another, somewhere along the line, it got personal. So I'm making it personal."
Sojiro kept both his murmur and his expression behind his hand. "I'm sorry."
Shinzaki made a noise that sounded like a shrug into his coffee. He set the mug down, scratched the back of his neck for a while, letting his gaze roam his desk. He seemed to come to a decision abruptly and stood, grunting involuntarily as his back popped. He crossed the room to the filing cabinet in the corner, jimmying it open with a metal-on-metal screech that itched Sojiro's teeth.
Shinzaki thumbed through the sea of manila folders before emerging with the one marked MARUKI. "You'll want to change his mailing address so this mail starts getting to him," he said. He sat back down, this time swiveling to rummage through the top drawer of his work desk. This search was shorter and produced a small envelope. He handed them both over to Sojiro. "Final wages. I deducted the cost for picking up the cab in Yongen-Jaya but swallowed the cost of his base pay for that day."
"Thanks." Sojiro didn't ask questions. He stored the envelope inside the larger folder and stood. "Sorry to be in your hair. Thanks for bringing his stuff down."
"He's welcome back here any time," Tokata said simply. "Tell him I'll keep him on the books for another couple of months. He wants to come back, we'll make room for him."
"I'll tell him."
"I'll keep collecting his mail until the change of address goes through. I'll forward it your way if he's not in a shape to pick it up. Let me know."
"Thanks."
"Take care of him," Shinzaki said. "I sure as hell couldn't do it."
It took two trips to get Maruki's belongings into Clarisse's trunk. The sky bitched over him the entire time and by the end Sojiro was wondering if he shouldn't just evolve with fins and be done with it. He detoured over to 777 to grab Futaba's budget-busting fancy-ass ice-cream and for the record picked up an artery-clogging pastry for himself because why not. He sat in traffic under the stifling cocoon of rain and very carefully didn't wonder what the fuck he was doing. There wasn't a lot else to focus on so it was harder than usual.
Pulling into his usual gas station on the way home to fill up, he ducked into the relative shelter of Clarisse's backseat as the pump kept working, keeping her door open as he pulled out his phone to check what'd buzzed into it earlier. Akira had sent him a picture of Morgana modeling a crocheted pirate hat and a colorful crocheted tie around his neck in the shape of a cutlass. He looked smug.
Knit the cat a full-body bunny costume next, Sojiro texted.
The reply back was a line of garbled and nonsensical text. The translation came on its heels a minute later. He can't type well with four toes but wants to politely tell you he disagrees, is not a cat, and is not a bunny either. Politely.
Sojiro didn't type come home. He closed the phone and gripped it as he leaned his forehead into the back of his hand and breathed for a while. The gas pumped thumped off somewhere under the sound of the rain. He thought, terribly, for the first time since March, don't come home.
The edge of Maruki's moving box dug into the curve of his back.
.
Takemi removed the earpieces with a fulminating noise. "Interesting," she murmured, marking the results in her chart and replacing the stethoscope back in her medical bag.
"How is he?" Phantom onions still stung his eyes as Futaba's curry finished simmering downstairs. "Is he any better?"
"He's breathing." Takemi helped Maruki back into his shirt and lowered him back to the bed. "Surprisingly stubborn fever. Have you been able to get any of the nose spray in there? Did you do it how I showed you?"
"I think so." Maruki was blinking heavily. He did manage to summon a sheepish smile for her as she adjusted his blanket up over him. "It doesn't feel like it has a lot of room to go anywhere up there, but I try."
"If even a few units of that get past the blockades, it'll do the job. Just keep at it." Takemi packed her materials back in her satchel and stood. "I'll be back tomorrow. Hold onto something if you need to get out of bed. Preferably just stay in it and let things be brought to you. Otherwise, barring emergencies, I'll be back in the morning."
"Thank you. I'm so sorry for the trouble."
"Being sorry costs extra," Takemi said. "Be compliant and sensible instead. Long, deep breaths before you take medication – you need to relax your body so you stop throwing them up. Do everything in your ability to keep them down."
Maruki's blinks were growing longer. He murmured, "Yes, ma'am."
"And it looks like I don't need to enforce the other half of my prescription. The more sleep you get the better. Day, night, national holidays, typhoons, hostile takeovers – don't try to keep a schedule. Sleep whenever your body tells you to sleep."
"Yes, ma'am."
Takemi caught Sojiro's eye as she passed. He followed her down. "I'm afraid I'll have to take my payment to go today," Takemi said as she fetched her umbrella from the stand. "I have an appointment in a half hour and I still need to review their patient file before I consult."
"I've already got your pot on." He made a cursory check of the curry before moving it off the heat to take care of later, then collected a travel cup and lid from under the counter to load up Takemi's coffee. "What's going on with him? What was so 'interesting'?"
Takemi shook her head, tilted it brusquely in the direction of the stairs as she zipped her raincoat. Sojiro got it. "I'll walk you home," he said, going to exchange his apron for his jacket.
"Thank you for this. I'm afraid I'll become addicted, honestly. I'm usually a tea drinker because it's easier on my budget."
"Come by whenever you like after the payment plan's over. I always have a few stale beans I'm willing to brew up on discount."
"You irresistible philanthropist," Takemi said. "Take a day off ladykilling, why don't you."
Sojiro hooked his own umbrella into his belt loop and pushed open the door to hold hers aloft for them both. Takemi gladly took the opportunity to wrap both her hands around the hot cup, breathing visibly over its rim as Sojiro temporarily locked up in their wake. "I can't tell you everything I told you before," she said without preamble as they traced the alley up to the main street. "Now that he's officially on the books as my patient, he has doctor-patient confidentiality."
"What are you talking about? I was there during the entire visit."
"Because he was there and awake to consent to it. Had he not consented, you would've needed to leave."
"It's my shop."
"Which you've agreed to convert to an in-patient clinic, so you can't have it both ways," Takemi said. "If it offends you, I'll call a private ambulance service to bring him over to one of my spare rooms."
Yongen-Jaya swam around them in greys and waterlogged neons. There was a thick film of standing water under their feet and despite everything Sojiro worried about his house. Futaba would've probably texted by now if there was any water coming in, but on the other hand her room was second to last in the hall and depending on her level of hyperfixation at the moment, she could easily be rib-deep in it and unaware of her imminent death until her computer drowned in front of her first. "Fine. What can you tell me?"
"Depends on your answer to my next question."
"Fair warning, it won't be much," he said. "Now that he's officially on my ledger, I have customer-barista confidentiality. You've agreed to have my clinic double as a coffee shop."
"All baristas are licensed therapists," Takemi agreed placidly, but her eyes sparked wickedly at his sass and damn was that attractive on a woman wearing leather. He bookmarked the expression for later. "Very well. We'll each give a little, get a little, how about that. You said he's been throwing up half his meds. What are you padding them with?"
"Chazuke and fresh fruit mostly. Anything he agrees to eat."
"Back off the fruit," she said. "His stomach is already inhospitable and the citric acid can interfere with the decongestant's absorption anyway. I'd suggest a muesli in a neutral base. They sell Meiji Yogurt up at the grocery store – get the unsweetened kind, soak the muesli in there for ten minutes so it doesn't clog his digestive track, and sweeten it up for him with honey for his throat."
"I'll pick it up on the way home." It was hardly a drop in the bucket compared to everything the hell else. Sojiro had been tallying recent expenses in his checkbook but had deliberately not internalized the numbers because that way lay madness. "What does all that have to do with what you can tell me about him?"
Takemi stood to the side as a biker came sloshing through. Humidity had curled her dyed hair into question marks under her ears. She reached up a bit to adjust the angle of their shared umbrella further over him and held it an extra moment to guide their pace towards the clinic. "He's improving," she said finally. "There 's a low-grade fever, but there shouldn't be any more delirium unless he stops taking his antibiotics and the infection regains its footing. That said, I'm surprised there's a fever at all. He should be improving faster."
"It's only been two days. You saw what he was like when I first called you over."
"He should be improving faster under my care," Takemi clarified bluntly, without hubris. "The cocktails I use are specially formulated in-house. It's unusual for them not to have gotten straight to the problem and cleared it up overnight. He should be weak as his body recovers, yes, but symptomatic? That's unusual."
"Maybe your drugs just aren't as effective as you think they are."
She threw him a sidelong, humorless smirk that somehow still managed to be gentle. "Perhaps you should ask Akira and the rest of his cohorts how efficacious my 'drugs' were before coming to uninformed judgments."
Well he didn't want to fucking talk about that at all and she knew that. "I still don't get what that has to do with doctor-patient confidentiality."
"Frankly put, he's underweight. I'm trying to decide if it's situational or deliberate. In the short-term it's irrelevant, but in the long-term the type of treatment he receives hinges on finding the answer to that question."
"How underweight?"
"Enough for it to be medically relevant to find out why fairly soon."
"His boss says he'd blow his paycheck every week but couldn't figure out where. Just that it wasn't on food or drugs."
"To be honest, I wouldn't be particularly bothered if it was drugs," Takemi said. "The extent of my interest in his personal life is what's relevant to his recovery. I'd like to run a nutritional panel but I don't want to spook him by demanding blood or urine from him right now. If he's in narcotics withdrawal and admits to it, let me know and I can handle it. Other than that, the food situation is the most pressing."
"Don't know if I can handle an eating disorder," Sojiro admitted honestly, gruff and quiet. He was very tired suddenly in the wake of Takemi's relentless momentum. "He'll need a facility for that. I'm up to my ears with Futaba's needs already and don't know how much juice I'd have left to deal with that on the side."
Takemi again stood to the side as a biker came through. She was slower to start them back up this time, visibly choosing her words. She wrapped her fingers around the metal part of the umbrella over Sojiro's grip and once again steered them, this time not letting go. "Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves," she said finally. "We'll have a better sense of what we're dealing with in a few days after the dust has more time to settle. It could just be that he's in a chronically anxious state and that stress affects what his stomach can hold on to. The fact that he is this underweight tells me whatever it is has been going on for a long time, but as to the why—let's hold on and let the chips fall."
"So what am I supposed to do?"
"The same thing you're already doing. Give him food, give him a bucket, and monitor how much of that food comes back up into that bucket. Don't say anything to him about it, just log it for me. I'll revisit the data in a few days and decide whether or not I need to intervene."
They reached the steps of her clinic. Sojiro let her umbrella trail up the stairs over her until she was able to shelter herself in the alcove, then handed it off so she could return the favor as he fumbled his own off his belt. "I'll check back in later to see how you're both doing," Takemi said. "Long story short, just keep trying. Any time it looks like he's got an appetite, feed it. Otherwise, meds and rest, rest and meds."
"Come by any time for your own chow," Sojiro said. "Don't pay attention to the sign. I'll keep the ingredients handy."
Takemi's smile was a bit deeper than her usual. "One more thing," she said. "I noticed you brought his belongings in from his other residence. Can I take this to mean you're committed to housing him long-term?"
"It's fine."
"That's very generous, Sakura-san."
"Just works out. I've got the space and I've been swamped ever since business picked up over the summer. He says he'll try his hand at food delivery."
Her dyed eyebrow took a jump. "You're hiring him?"
"That's the plan."
"And you're going to pay him?"
"You think I'd make him work for free?"
"I just wasn't aware you had that kind of capital."
"Hey, clam up," Sojiro bristled. "I've got money put away from my old government job. I just try not to dip into it more than I have to, that's all. The whole point of it and Wakaba's inheritance is to go towards Futaba's university fund. Doesn't mean I'm destitute, I'm just careful what I pull from it."
Takemi had eased her slender shoulder against the damp frame of the alcove to watch his tantrum. "So he's not working to earn his room and board, then."
"No."
"Room and board are free, and the job on top is… an extra incentive?"
"If he wants it."
"But it's not required to stay with you."
"No. Why does everyone act like I'm out to hurt this kid," Sojiro snapped, fed up. "I take a teenager in from people I barely knew and stick him in an attic and I didn't get even half this much crap. If you all think I'm up to no good, call adult protective services and I'll happily foist him off on someone else. I'm not planning on working the guy to death. Whatever he can do I'll have him do, whatever he can't I'll do myself. I've run that shop alone for years."
"All right, all right." Takemi was still at a murmur, eyes gentle, and Sojiro realized too late that she'd largely been fucking with him to monitor his reaction to being fucked with. "Forgive me my assumptions. A low-intensity job like that sounds perfect for him while he recovers. All I ask is that you don't let him exert himself too soon. It'll take a few weeks to get him back on track, and that's if we manage to get him to hold down a high protein, high fat diet. There's work to do."
"I know what I signed up for." He gestured grumpily towards her door. "Thought you had patient files to read."
The deep smile was back. "You are delightful beyond description," Takemi said, pushing herself off the wall with a shrug. "Tell Futaba I said hello. Get out of this rain unless you're looking to be my patient too."
"You first."
She did a mock curtsey with the protruding edge of her lab coat under her rain jacket before letting herself in. The lights of the clinic bloomed in the window after she shut the door.
Sojiro backtracked to fetch Futaba's lunch from Leblanc's refrigerator before returning home. He could admit to reeling a bit by the time he'd sloshed his way through the front door. He settled the umbrella fully-opened on the mat and leaned against the door to let it spin while he drip-dried his soul onto the mat. "Yeah, nuh-uh," Futaba exploded the instant she caught sight of him. She bullied him into the bathroom with her fists and her foot. "Are you trying to die? Get in there and warm up right now."
Sojiro showered in the tiny space and was foggy enough to clock the hell out of his elbow climbing out. Futaba had portioned out the lunch he'd brought her onto two plates and was pointedly sitting at the table with her computer next to them by the time he'd redressed in clean clothes. "That was for you," he protested feebly.
She looked at him with violence, cheek puffed as she chewed. She gestured like an executioner towards his place at the table.
Sojiro gave up and lowered his aching body to the cushion. She'd evidently warmed the food up in the microwave; it steamed up enough to cloud his glasses as he gathered up the first bite. "You're kinda old, you know, in case you lost track of time," Futaba said. She was already fixated on her screen, a rapidfire cascade of green lights reflecting off her glasses. "You can't just run all over Japan without feeding and watering yourself. Seriously, you run a café. How do you even have the gall to starve yourself? How does that even work?"
"How are you doing?"
"I'm fine. You're ancient and starving. Just shut up and eat, okay? Geez. You give me a heart attack sometimes, Sojiro."
Sojiro heard the tremor in it and gave her some latitude for sass. He tucked in while Futaba took her own portion down with ruthless efficiency across the table, eyes never leaving her screen. She'd flicked on the TV for him sometime during his shower; Sojiro allowed the quiet volume of the news channel to wash over him, entering a meditative daze until his body had processed the food enough to give his brain some fuel to run properly. He washed it down with a last swig of water and massaged his face for a while, thinking. When he'd gotten himself in order, he lowered his hands and squared off to Futaba.
Futaba's fingers flew, adding a cascade of staccato beats under the steady drumming of rain. She ignored him at first, maybe unintentionally, posture hunched and horrible over her work. Sojiro could spot the telltale lines of code scrolling in the reflection of her lenses.
He waited. Eventually he could see the twist of annoyance in her expression as her brain tried and failed to ignore him. "I can't concentrate with you eyeballing me like that," she complained at last. "I know it's my turn for dishes, okay? Just let me finish this up first."
"Got a minute?"
"Not really."
"Forget the dishes, I'll do them later. Just need your attention for a little while."
"Can't this wait? Soooorta busy. Like busy-busy."
Sojiro did pause at this. "Saving the world busy?"
Futaba blinked up over her glasses at him before looking back down at the explosion of code in front of her. Sojiro was exhausted and terrified to watch her honestly consider the question. "No," she said presently. "Not this time. I think. Okay fine, I'll bite."
"It's serious. You ready to listen?"
"Depends. Is it about serious dessert?"
"No."
"Because I could go for some serious dessert," Futaba said. "And judging by the look on your face, serious dessert is probably gonna be a lot tastier than whatever it is you're cooking up right now. Are you sure this can't wait?"
"Sorry, no dessert. And no, it can't wait. It involves you."
"I didn't do it."
"You don't even know what I'm going to say."
"Right, I'm just prefacing whatever you say by 'I didn't do it'. There's a roughly 76% chance the disclaimer will have to do with whatever you're going to say and I just figured I'd cover my bases up front."
"It's nothing bad. I just needed to talk to you about something important and need both your ears tuned into my frequency so we don't have to go over this more than once."
"Wait." Futaba's eyes suddenly lit up. She plapped her hands against the table and half-stood to loom over her computer at him in delight. "Waitaminnit, I know that face. This is it, isn't it? We're finally taking the plunge. Sojiro! Why didn't you just open with that and save us both the dramatic build-up?"
"Huh?" Sojiro jerked back at her sudden proximity. "What plunge?"
"Aw, don't be coy. You totally have the 'I don't want to do this but I have to for the sake of domestic tranquility' face on. It's so obvious."
"Futaba, I have no idea what you're talking about."
"It's a dog, isn't it," Futaba said. "This is the dog talk. We're finally finally getting a dog and you're trying to find ways to bring it up without me flipping my lid but tough luck, I've been waiting for this day forever and there's literally no time or place you can bust this news to me without me freaking out."
"I'm not—" He very nearly died but couldn't fit it into his schedule. "This isn't the dog talk."
"Come on, it totally is! There's nothing else that could make you make that face. "
"I'm not making a—"
"Can it please please please be a shibu inu? Or a blue heeler? Or a border collie!"
"We're not getting a—"
"Oh wait you know what, never mind. Husky. Husky husky husky. Final choice. You know you can train them to pull sleds? I could train my husky to pull me all around Yongen-Jaya. I could hook it to the bike rack at school. I could even take it to Akihabara and load all my electronics in the back! Sojiro, you're a genius. This fixes everything."
"Futaba." Sojiro lowered his forehead into the cradle of his thumb and forefinger and desperately clung to his fading will to live. "We don't have room for a pet. You know that, right?"
"Objection. Leading the witness," Futaba said. "I know no such thing. Fishies are adorable and tiny. A tank would look really pretty in the kitchen and provide a natural nightlight so you stop hitting your knee on the corner cupboard and waking up all our neighbors with your screams."
"I don't need a nightlight and I don't wake up the — look, I'll think about the fish." Sojiro gave up as she opened her mouth triumphantly. "But not right now. I need you to focus on me for a few minutes. Just me. No desserts, no pets, no oral dissertation about desserts or pets. Just you, in that seat, right here, listening to me for five minutes. Can you do that?"
Futaba soured. She sank back slowly into her seat, eyeballing him with chilly and conditional patience. "I'll think about the fish," Sojiro repeated. "I like fish. Okay? I admit it. You got me. But we'll talk about it later. Right now I need to talk about the café."
"The place where you almost starved yourself to death and where you've hid multiple fugitives from the government?"
"Yeah, that place," he said, instead of setting himself on fire up in the Arctic circle there so his ghost could haunt someplace quieter. "I need to talk to you about the bugs you put in there."
"This again? I already said I was sorry."
"I'm not – no you didn't. And no you're not. Don't fib."
"Okay truce," Futaba said. "I tell fibs kinda, you tell fibs maybe not as much but definitely sometimes, the world is a web of beautiful white lies and you and I are the awesome wolf spiders. Can't we cohabitate?"
"No. Listening ears," Sojiro interrupted when she opened her mouth to weave her way around his blockade. "Listening ears. My words for a minute. Give me a turn."
Futaba hesitated at the toolbox phrasing as he knew she would. He didn't pull it out often. He watched her process the request as she mutinously closed her mouth, her gaze managing to wander up to his chin before stopping. It was as close to full attention as she could probably currently manage. "I promise I won't get mad if you tell me the truth, so I need you to be straight with me," Sojiro said. "I want to know how many bugs you have in the café."
"I don't know. I lose track of them."
"Futaba."
"I don't know, Sojiro. I mean like, are you talking about live ones, or just bug-bugs period? Because sometimes one goes offline and I forget to rescue it because I'm busy, and things get moved around in there and they get lost. So I mean, if you're talking about dry spindly little dead bug carcasses, there could be a dozen at this point floating around in some old towels and stuff. Live ones? Five."
He didn't bother to ask how she'd gotten her hands on them or how she'd even known how to wire and program them in the first place. Knowledge appeared in Futaba's head as needed. "When did you start installing them?"
Futaba held up two fingers. "Years?" Sojiro was genuinely startled. "You started wiring the café two years ago?"
"Yup."
"How?"
"I installed them, duh."
"Not how. I mean… how."
She opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. She said, "Oh," and her knees slithered up, shins lodging against the edge of their table. She knocked her glasses up a bit on the bridge of her nose to rub her index finger over the reddened grooves the nose pieces had made. "That kind of 'how'."
"Ah, it's not really important." Sojiro scratched behind his ear and tried to frame his hesitation in a way that wouldn't draw blood from either of them. "I guess I just thought… well, back then you were sort of…"
"Unstable? In pieces? Stuck between floors in a malfunctioning mental elevator?"
"… delicate. And don't talk about yourself like that."
"I could still leave now and then. It just had to be really, really important. And I couldn't admit I was doing it, even to myself. I had to lie to myself the entire time just to get myself out the door and bribe myself to get down the street. That main drag? Torture. Legitimate throw-up-in-an-alley torture."
"And you did all that on your own? Without telling me?"
"I didn't want to get your hopes up. How would you have reacted if I'd suddenly asked to go into work with you one day out of the blue? Be honest," Futaba said. "You know you. You would've freaked out. Your tail would've been wagging all day and you would've started hoping that I was better and then you would've turned around and blamed yourself when I just went back to my old habits the very next day. I didn't want that in my lap. I couldn't take it. Not on top of everything else."
Sojiro felt the sucker punch of it drive the breath from his body. Stunned, he slowly wrapped his hands around his mug and tried not to swallow too visibly as he fought to dredge up a response. "Yeah, see? That," Futaba muttered. She drew up her knees and hid her own face for a while. "That. That hurts, Sojiro."
That wasn't fair. Sojiro floundered helplessly for a while, struggling to meet in the middle of his needs as a parent and her needs as a child. There really wasn't a whole lot of middle and they hadn't even gotten to the real crux of the discussion. It would behoove them both to move on probably but this would fester if left untreated.
He cheated by taking off his glasses and setting them aside, rubbing his face to hide his expression. "Futaba, I know you were thinking of me," he said steadily, muffled. "And I know it's hard for you to see me upset. I get that. But when it comes to things like that… you know you have to step up, right? You have to weigh the consequences in your head and come up with the decision that prioritizes your safety. Over my feelings. Even over yours. Feelings can be mended later. You leaving the house, even for emergencies… that's something I needed to know you were doing. It's something I needed to pass onto your advocate too. Learning about it now, so long after the fact… it's scary for a parent, all right?"
Futaba made a terrible string of noises against her knees that sounded between player two tap innnn and stopppppp Sojirooooooo. "I'm not gonna get on you for it anymore tonight, but we'll need to talk about it later," Sojiro said. "When you're in a better headspace. Just to make sure we… review the ground rules."
"It was a run for my life to the café," Futaba exploded, jerking her head up so fast that her glasses jumped to smack her forehead. "I didn't go anywhere else. Nobody even saw me. Ninja gear, remember?"
"In the middle of the night, with me thinking the whole time you were safe up in your room."
"So that's it? You're PO'd that I snuck out?"
"I'm PO'd that you were scared and alone on the streets in the middle of the night and I wasn't there to help you," he said.
Her defiance crumpled just as quickly as it flared. She slammed her face back against her knees and he felt a flare of fear for her extremely expensive custom frames. "You're the worst." Her voice was a little huff of helpless laughter. "That's not playing fair, Sojiro."
"Look, just forget about it for now. Okay? We'll deal with this later," Sojiro said. "The reason I need to talk to you has to do with the bugs you planted. Do you still have on listening ears?"
This time the string of noises sounded like words he probably wasn't meant to hear. "I can understand you wanting to… to monitor me, or keep people from stealing stuff from Leblanc, but now that Doc's there the situation's changed," Sojiro said. "Right now Leblanc is doubling as a clinic upstairs and Takemi is worried about him having the privacy he needs to recover right. Most of what he's got going on is mental. And based on what happened last time, I just… don't know if it's a good idea for you to be listening in the way you've been doing. At least for a while."
Futaba's eye found him through a sudden gap between her knees. It took her a literal minute to respond. Sojiro endured both the wait and the contortionist eyeballing with the pain of practice. "You think," Futaba said, soft and cold, "that was the reason I was monitoring Leblanc?"
"You told me the reason you put bugs in there was to make sure I was working."
"I shouldn't have to explain tsundere lies to an actual flesh-and-blood tsundere," Futaba said. "Sojiro, I don't need proof that you're working. You work like a horse. And there's nothing in there any self-respecting criminal would want to steal. Trust me, I was one."
"Then why?"
"Seriously? You seriously can't figure it out?"
No? As always the balance of power in the room had flipped on a yen and now he found himself struggling to keep up with the situation. Futaba had fully lifted her head now to stare at him and he grew flustered under it. "Look, I don't know," he gave up. "If it's some Phantom Thief thing—"
"Not everything is about metaphysical vigilantes in spandex," Futaba said. "Sometimes security cameras are there for actual flesh and blood security. You know? Security stuff. You really can't figure out what I'm trying to secure in Leblanc?"
No? Sojiro floundered a moment more and ultimately decided he probably just needed to start drafting alternatives. There were a few but they weren't great. The café had a lot of crannies and nooks but a few days of deconstruction would probably uncover most if not all of her bugs. The problem was that it was disruptive to business and frankly a literal pain in the ass and neck to do all that heavy lifting, and now that she was out of the house so much it would take absolutely nothing at all to put more back. It'd become a never ending cycle that'd end in either locking her out or sweeping for bugs every morning like he was in a spy movie.
There was also the inconvenient truth that – and this was if Sojiro was going to be brutally honest with himself – he'd occasionally leaned on the knowledge that his conversations were being recorded when a customer got too rowdy or tried walking out without paying. More than anything he just recognized that monitoring the cafe comforted his daughter. So far that'd been worth a little loss of privacy on the side to him, but he had no right to speak for Maruki. Already it was unconscionable he'd let Futaba listen in to Maruki's delirious mental breakdown and he had a feeling more breakdowns might be on tap as Maruki's mental health fluctuated. It was a matter of ethics over security and sometimes those trades had to be made.
Futaba was still looking at him incredulously. "Look, you can keep them in there if you want as long as they're deactivated," Sojiro said. "This won't be forever. I just need to be able to promise him he's safe speaking to Takemi without anyone listening in. If it makes you feel better, I can look into installing some CCTV security footage on the outside of the shop to monitor who's going in and out. A lot of businesses have them anyway, I just never jumped on it myself because I don't keep anything valuable in here overnight. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to get my hands on one at the electronics store. We could both go to pick—"
"You are really hard to handle sometimes, Sojiro," Futaba said abruptly. "You know that, right?"
Sojiro fell silent again, puzzled and a little hurt. "I don't know what to do with this anymore," Futaba said. "You just sort of… skidaddled right on from the other issue and went headfirst into this one and you're missing the point on both of them and I'm just sitting here feeling like I'm paddling around in the deep end of a pool with army boots on."
"Futaba, what are you talking about?"
"I snuck out, lied to you, invaded your privacy by wiring your café, and you're just hemming and hawing like it was all some kind of failed parent-child trust exercise."
"What—" Sojiro nearly hit the floor. "You're still on that?"
"Yes, because we didn't actually address it! You just moved on like doop-de-doop!"
"I thought you wanted to move on!"
"I did, but only after you actually understood what you were talking about! Sojiro, get mad. I totally took advantage of you. This is exactly what I'm talking about with wiring the café and why I can't take the bugs out. Because you found out I snuck out and your first reaction is to feel sad you failed me and saying it's okay to talk about it later when very clearly you need to talk about it now and the only reason you aren't is to spare my feelings."
The complete galactic disconnect between the two subjects made his sanity fracture down the middle and piss off to opposite ends of the planet. Sojiro sat there with blank eyes a moment, waveringly nonfunctional. "See?" Futaba skewered a finger at him. "You don't get it! That's the point I'm trying to make!"
"You're saying..." It took everything he had to dredge up the sounds. "You're saying you're mad because I'm not mad?"
"I'm mad because you can't get it through your head that people want to protect you!"
Still dazed, Sojiro jerked back when Futaba abruptly reared up again to slap her palms on the table. "I don't care about the café, I care about you," Futaba enunciated. "You act like you're a tough tank with this huge HP pool but in reality you're a squishy white mage that gets your squishy heart broken because you keep putting yourself on the front lines. Watching people take advantage of you is total torment. And while I couldn't stop them back then from doing it, at least I'd know it was going on. I'd know if you were being hurt. That time my uncle came in after hours to threaten you? When he shoved you and you hit one of the pots and glass shattered everywhere? I was the one who called the police. Because you couldn't be bothered. You had two phones and three chef's knives in that cafe and you did jack diddly squat to protect yourself. You just let him knock you down like a hairy bowling pin."
"That was you?" Flabbergasted by the tirade, Sojiro jerked anew at this. "I thought it was the neighbors complaining about the noise."
"No, and again, this is what I'm talking about! You had zero intention of protecting yourself because you were spending so much energy worried about losing me that it turned off all your other brain cells. I saw my uncle's heart in the metaverse. He would've eventually really hurt you if we hadn't stopped him, and I would've never known how bad it was getting if I hadn't been listening over your head. And now you want me to unwire my ears."
The shuddering, weepy frustration she was working herself up to finally jolted him out of stasis. "Futaba." He fumbled his way up to reach her and as expected she recoiled, so he set his hand atop her computer lid instead, folding it over the lip as gently as if it were her hand. "Futaba, I should have never let you hear that. I just didn't realize—"
"Bzzt, wrong. Again," Futaba snarled. "This isn't about me. It's about you. Protecting you. How do you not get this? Literally I am spelling it out. You. Youuuu. You you you you."
"It's not about me until you're an adult. Until then it's about you. That's just how it works."
"Well 'how it works' isn't something I'm obligated to respect. I've changed entire worlds. With my head. With this." Futaba slapped her hand over her heart. "It was my choice to hear what was going on with my uncle. You don't get to take that away from me. Just like Doc didn't have the right to take away my choice to fight."
"Sometimes that'll be true, but not always. Listen," he interrupted sharply when she opened her mouth for another storm. "I know you don't like to hear it, especially after this past year, but you're still a kid. My kid. Maybe you saved the world, maybe you saw things you weren't supposed to see, and I can't do anything to take that back. But here? It's my job to protect you. You deserve the truth, but it's my job to curate that in a way that doesn't cause damage to you. You're still growing. Your mind is still developing. If you ever decide to have a kid of your own, you're going to have to learn when it's time to be truthful and when it's time to protect them."
"You mean lie," she hissed. "Whether it's for 'our own good' or for theirs, adults lie. All the time. Even you. Maybe it is to protect me, and maybe it was for a good cause, but if I hadn't been listening I would have never have known my uncle hurt you. We're family. It's my right to know that. How am I supposed to be honest with you if you're not honest with me? Can you at least answer that and stop highroading me like this?"
Sojiro slowly subsided. He thumbed the table slowly and parsed his answer.
To her infinite credit, Futaba seemed to recognize he'd finally internalized her words properly and backed off a bit, sinking back down to her side of the table. She didn't retreat behind either her knees or her coding this time, waiting for him with flinty-eyed expectation.
Sojiro took his time parsing his thoughts. He listened to the wall clock under the incessant drumming rains and felt his feet slowly prickle off to sleep as he knelt. When he finally came to a decision, he stood with a grunt and went to extricate their kettle from the sea of Futaba's discarded gummy wrappers. Futaba didn't follow him.
He piled the wrappers into the trash, had a brief requiem for the health of her teeth, put the kettle on to boil, and leaned against the handle of their oven to listen to the water stir until it breathed out the spout.
By the time he came back with tea for them both, Futaba had visibly managed to calm down. She accepted the mug and its cozy from him a little clumsily, sticking her nose so close to the steam that he worried she'd sear her nostrils. Having long-since burned his own tongue into a callused wart, Sojiro was already sipping from his own as he lowered himself back down to the cushions.
Futaba jogged her mug slowly between both hands. Her laptop fan whirred briefly and noisily to life before settling again, and once again there was heartbeat quiet of their wall clock and nothing else in the room.
Sojiro turned the cup on its saucer and thumbed the handle, gathering the last of his words. When he spoke it was tired but resigned. "Do you remember that day you came home with Akira and told me you were going to the beach?"
Futaba nodded. Her gaze was firmly fixed into her mug where he'd suspected it'd probably stay for the rest of the conversation.
"I never told you this, but it took everything I had not to say no," Sojiro said. "At the time, you'd only just started leaving the house by yourself a week prior. I… trusted Akira at that point, but he hadn't known you as long as I have. How fast you could go from eighty to zero with the wrong sized crowd. If you got caught in one of your cycles, got overloaded… there'd be no one to help you. Those kids were practically strangers to you. Even Akira. It just… seemed so sudden. Like you'd been tricked or bullied, or... I don't know. Just didn't sit right."
Futaba fixated on her tea.
Sojiro realized he'd been speaking around a block in his throat. He tried to clear it but the tension only relocated to the back of his eyes. He took another sip of his tea to hide the burn. "So I was about to compromise and offer to drive you all there. That way I could be there, but maybe go to a different part of the beach so I wasn't cramping your style. I couldn't fathom sending you off by yourself. But then you yelled at me to not underestimate you, and I realized that most of my problem was me. I was so stuck in the last two years I was about to deny you the chance to break free from them. All because I didn't believe in you. I was letting my fears get in the way."
Futaba's nose was reddening. She gave a long snuffle that she buried in her tea. "The instant you guys were out of sight, I went inside to drink myself stupid," Sojiro admitted gruffly, barely audible. He could feel his heartbeat racing behind his ears. "I was shaking like a bad spark plug. Couldn't stop. I got through one glass and stopped because I realized I needed to be sober enough to drive to you if you needed a rescue. I almost broke down right there and drove out to you anyway but then realized I was having a panic attack. So I sat my ass down in the middle of the living room and just breathed. In and out for almost an hour. All over a stupid beach trip."
"Sojiro," Futaba whispered. She sounded like she was having a hard time breathing.
"The point is…" He watched his reflection tremble on the surface of the water and thought about what the point was. The point was probably not the fact that for months afterwards he still occasionally found himself feeling a jolt of panic when he walked by her closed door. Paranoid that her recovery had been a fever dream and that tomorrow he'd have to go back to smuggling trays of food inside her door when she left it open to use their bathroom. The point. Wakaba's daughter. His daughter. The million brilliant stars in her smile when he'd trusted her to fly alone in her sky. "The point is, even though I was terrified, I said yes. I let you go. I didn't want to be the reason you were held back from your own success. And the collateral damage to me – the fallout from my own fears – was the trade I made for trusting you."
"You never told me any of this," Futaba said. "You acted like it was no big deal. I had no idea it terrified you so much."
"Trade secret: parents are always terrified," Sojiro said. "You scare the beans right out of our coffee. Every single step you take without us is a trust exercise. That first time we let you cross the street without holding our hands. The first time we let you bike off with a friend. The first day we leave you at school. But your job is to grow, our job is to let it happen. My fear… it almost stole one of the best days of your life away from you."
Futaba wasn't stupid. He could see her mouth firming as she rotated her own cup, thumbing the teddie cozy's nose so that its little crocheted head bobbed at her, waiting for him to get to his point. "Futaba, there has to come a time where you trust the people you love to make their own mistakes, live their own lives, and make good choices without you," Sojiro said. "It's like… like a parent's trust, and I'll be the first to cop to the fact that it's not easy. I had to find that trust again in order to let you go, and it was the hardest goddamn thing I've ever had to do in my life. But it's something you've got to do in order not to hurt the people you love. You have to trust in them to do the right thing."
Futaba parsed this for an extremely long time.
Sojiro occupied himself with his mug, taking measured swallows to make it last, retreating into his own head to tiredly splash around in his id for a while. The windows were darkening as the brief lull in rain intensified again into a torrent. "It kinda sounds like you're calling me a parent right now, Sojiro," Futaba said at last.
"Something like that."
"I guess I am… sort of doing that." She looked wonderingly at her mug. "I had no idea I was so mature. I was totally a parent before it was cool."
He held his fucking tongue. "Sorry, but I'm still not… okay, just wait," Futaba said. "I get what you're saying, and I… I get it, okay? But I'm still afraid. The Phantom Thieves might have gone underground, but the café is still a target. If the wrong people get the right information, you could be back on the government's radar. Shido's henchmen are still out there. Crazy begets crazy."
"Nobody's going to hurt me."
"Tell that to the men who abducted you and trashed your café."
… right. Sojiro had to do a mental backstep again. It was easy to forget sometimes that Futaba had legitimate grievances and he had, in fact, been assaulted in there several times out from under her supervision. "Okay, can we just… compromise," Futaba said before he could recontextualize for her. "Like sort of what you're saying, and sort of what I'm saying. Maybe I just… keep one activated."
"Futaba—"
"By the door. Hey, you just said you'd be willing to install CCTV cameras there," she bridled when she saw him open his mouth. "A bug there is way less invasive than CCTV footage. And its reach wouldn't extend to upstairs."
"What's the point of keeping the bug there if it's Doc you want to keep an eye on?"
"Because it at least tells me if people are coming in there trying to threaten you. And it tells me if Doc is leaving in the middle of the night, which helps both of us. And him. Look, work with me, Sojiro! I'm trying, okay? This is really hard for me and I'm not… as strong as you. I can't just let you wander off to the beach with strangers or whatever, I'm not there yet. Can you dial down the difficulty setting a little? If I don't have anything in there at all I'll lose my mind worrying about you and I know that's pathetic but just give me this one thing, okay? Please?"
Sojiro felt the conviction in him wobble at the break in her voice. He settled for a controlled cave-in. "Fine. One. As long as you promise me it can't reach upstairs."
"Why do you think I need five in there? Their reach is pitiful. I need one every few feet in order to pick up nuance. Otherwise it's just a wall of noise."
"Do you need to go to the store to deactivate them?"
"I can do it here."
He watched her wake up her computer with a flick of her fingertip.. There were a few keystrokes and a change of colors in the reflection of her glasses, and then she was getting to work , eyes roaming back and forth.
Occupied with the scrolling numbers, Sojiro was startled when her bright eyes abruptly found him over the lip of her computer. "So you're not going to make me actually go in there and remove them?"
"What? No. Why?"
"How do you actually know for sure if I'm turning them off? Or if I'll keep them off?"
"Because I trust you to do the right thing."
Futaba watched him a moment longer. Her eyes flitted back within a blink. Twenty seconds of rapid keystrokes later, she abruptly turned the computer around to face him. Sojiro couldn't make heads or tails of most of it, but the highlighted graph enlarged in the middle of the screen showed four columns in red and one in green. "Lucky for you I already had one pretty much right by the Sayori, so no tinkering necessary," Futaba said. "It's done."
"Thank you. I'll be careful. I promise."
"Yeah, whatever." She swung her computer back around bad-temperedly. "I'll make sure to put that in the eulogy."
He took the queenly dismissal as a victory. Sojiro collected her mug and stood on knees that bitched roundly. He refilled hers at the stove, emptied his in a long swallow, and set the dirty mug inside the sink to attend to later. He placed her refill back in front of her, and this time she didn't flinch from him as he set a hand on her head. "I'm going back to the café," Sojiro said. "I need to talk to Doc for a while. I'll be back in time to make dinner."
Futaba didn't answer until he had a foot out the door and was jimmying open his umbrella against the downpour. "Sojiro."
He leaned back in. "I'm…" Futaba twisted her hands a moment. She then stood up abruptly, ankle barking the lip of the table in her haste. "Okay, okay. Okay. Wait."
Sojiro took a glance outside before stepping back in to face her fully. "While we're on the subject of trust, I sorta… maybe gotta be a little transparent with you here because you'll probably find out anyway," Futaba said in a tumble of breath. "And since you're being super understanding today and all that it'd be really really nice if you wouldn't get mad at me maybe."
"What are you talking about? Get mad about what?"
"I maybe… sort of… you know."
He waited blankly.
"… weeeeeent to see Doc today," Futaba said.
"What? When?"
"When you were out picking up his stuff from the car garage."
"Futaba—" Sojiro tried not to blow gaskets. "I told you not to go up there alone!"
"I know! I know! I just… maybe felt bad about how things happened last time and I felt guilty for hitting him even though he sort of had it coming, so I went to say sorry for it."
"You could've written him an apology letter!"
"Nobody writes apology letters anymore except grade schoolers in detention and great aunts who forget your birthday. I wanted to do it in person. It was important to me, okay? So I went. I'm sorry you're mad about it."
"I'm not mad, I…" All right, he was mad about it. He scrubbed his hair and then pinched an itch out from under his goatee, trying to wrangle back any shred of patience. "I just wish you'd listen to me once in a while. It's not just your well-being I'm thinking of, you know."
"I know. And I'm sorry. Okay not really. I am sorry for making you mad," she amended quickly when he bristled. "But I'm not sorry I went. I wanted him to hear it from me. I meant everything I said, but I… shouldn't have hit him. Especially not after what he said about our fight in the metaverse. It was like hitting a puppy. I felt like crap so I went to set the record straight. It's something I had to do for me so please don't give me too much guff about it. It's done anyway and nobody got hurt. This time."
"Fine." He actually couldn't grapple with it right now as much as he probably needed to. This day was stretching out longer than his endurance could handle and he still had a half dozen things on his to-do list ready to annoy him. "Just… ask in the future, okay? At least until he gets back on his feet."
She came closer, skittering like an indecisive fawn in front of him.
Sojiro opened the arm not holding the umbrella. She bashed into him and just as quickly scooted away before he could make the hug official. "If you're going to take away my eyes and ears you have to promise me to be careful," she said in a rush. "Maybe you could sit here and stew and drink and not go nuts with me at the beach but I'm totally not at that level yet, okay? Like normally I'd manufacture an item to put in my accessory slot or something, but those bugs were my item and now I've disabled them, so it's just me and all this noise in my head and you have to promise, promise, promise me you won't make me regret this because if you do, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to forgive you."
"Futaba." Sojiro spoke very gently to cut her off. "He's not going to hurt me. Kid can barely get out of bed."
"He's not a kid, Sojiro," Futaba said. Only half-invested in this and mind mostly on the upcoming chores, he came to attention at her serious, no-nonsense tone. "And if you listen to literally not a single other thing I say to you tonight, you have to listen to this and really, really take it in. His body might be weak right now, but underneath those mountains of gross snotty tissues and sweaty blankets? He's a god. Or as good as. His powers are so strong they leaked into the real world. He changed hearts without weapons, outside of the metaverse, just by willing reality to bend around him. Even with good intentions, that kind of power is dangerous. The metaverse might be muted right now, but it's never really gone-gone. It can be awakened with the right triggers, same with subconscious thoughts. I can still sense its echoes even when it's asleep. And if I can, you can bet he can too."
"What are you saying." He tensed at this. "What does that all mean?"
"It means that if he wants to hurt you, he doesn't have to get out of bed to do it. Shido's men, my uncle… they're all playground bullies compared to him. And you're a squishy white mage. Okay, maybe a gunner," Futaba relented. "Like, ranger build, some white magic, some long distance weaponry, good with animals. But either way, not a tank. And Doc… he knows that. I can promise you he knows that."
He thought about the stark shift of a spine under his hand, the broken smile at the window. Takemi's cautious warmth in the haze of rain. Tokata's eyes on him over the desk. Take care of him. His phone lay heavy in his pocket. Maruki's murmur under the rain. I haven't decided yet.
"Not a kid," Futaba said, watching him.
Sojiro flexed his fingers subconsciously around the umbrella's handle and realized he'd already closed his fist as tightly as it would go. He loosened it and felt the knuckles creak. "I'll be back in time to make dinner," he said, and shouldered his way outside to open his umbrella against the rain. He got soaked anyway.
.
Maruki was awake again from his doze by the time Sojiro changed clothes in the café and dragged his exhausted vessel of miserable philanthropy up the stairs. Sojiro immediately felt the cool ribbon of damp air from the open window as he reached the landing. Maruki was tucked against the wall underneath it, blanket bunched off to the side, long legs spidering over the bed. His attention was down on the green handheld console in his hands. "Hey," Sojiro snapped, utterly fed up with all planetside bullshit in his galaxy. "Didn't Takemi just get finished telling you—"
Maruki flailed and dropped the console. He caught it before it tumbled to the floor and clutched it to him, wide eyes finding Sojiro in a panic.
The rest of the recrimination died in his throat. Sojiro massaged the back of his neck, closing his eyes to wrestle his temper under control. "You're still sick," he said gruffly, softer. "You at least need to cover up. Takemi will have my head if you don't."
"I'm sorry." Maruki was fumbling for his blankets. "Of course you're right, I'm sorry, I forgot. You're right."
Sojiro crossed the room. Maruki's body language folded like a lotus. "Stop." Sojiro impatiently brushed his hands aside. He helped organize Maruki back against the pillows against the perpendicular wall, straightened the blankets, and then scared the hell out of him by perching on the side of the bed instead of the chair. Maruki looked a lot like he was preparing himself to get stabbed and also preparing an apology for getting stabbed. "Hey." Sojiro flagged his attention. "Look at me."
Maruki did eventually. "Tell me when I gave you the impression I'm planning to hurt you," Sojiro said.
"Never," Maruki answered immediately, a flutter of a hysterical laugh underneath. "God. Not once."
"So what is this."
"I don't know."
"You figure I'm going to lay into you while you're down? Throw you out on your ear if you have an opinion?"
"No. Of course not, Sakura-san. I've never doubted your generosity or your sincerity."
Sojiro jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "What's with the window, kid."
Maruki shook his head. "Talk to me," Sojiro said. "This isn't the first time this has been a sticking point and I'm guessing it's not going to be the last. If it's important enough for you to risk pissing me off with repeat offenses, I'm thinking it's probably important enough to just have it out. If you give me a ballpark we can see about coming to a middle in it."
"That's not necessary, Sakura-san."
"Why not."
"It's your café and I'm its guest. I'll keep it closed. I just forgot myself." Maruki angled the sheepish, placating smile of a child up at him. "Please forgive me. I'll remember next time."
Sojiro very nearly ruined his seconds-old vow of non-violence with the reflex to knock it off his face. "You didn't forget the first time. You opened it because you wanted it open."
"I'm sorry. It won't happen again."
"You claustrophobic? Needed fresh air?"
"No. It's nothing. Please forget it."
"Look, kid, if you'd just—"
Maruki dropped his face into his hands.
They'd hit his limits so quickly that Sojiro was left stumbling with stalled momentum. Frustrated, ashamed of himself, he sucked in a serious-business breath and then let it blow back out abruptly when he realized there was no business. Even if he hadn't been accommodating Futaba's needs her entire life, watching the way Maruki was subconsciously angling himself towards open space to get away from the unwanted conflict made the interrogation needless to anyone with eyeballs. Avoidance behaviors he could tolerate. Just not a splatter on the sidewalk.
He backed the hell off, massaging his own eyes for a moment to give both of them some artificial distance. "You can keep the damn window open," he said gruffly, quietly. "Wanted to know is all. As long as you don't plan on being stupid, I'll stay out of it. Just cover up when it's open. Rain starts coming in too much more and we're gonna have to think of something else. The humidity's not good for the beans."
Maruki's entire existence seemed to hitch a ride on his exhale before getting sucked back into his chest. He lowered his hands and began to speak, maybe to argue on principle, before abruptly appearing to lose the will entirely. "Thank you," he murmured. He was blinking rapidly.
Sojiro tried to figure out how to dogpaddle back towards civil conversation. He stood to retrieve Akira's desk chair and made an unnecessary fuss bringing it back to the bedside. Maruki was gingerly fumbling with his blankets, bear-pawing the folds over his knees while holding the console in the other hand. A PAUSE screen was rotating on the display, occasionally making little chirping noises to annoy any parents that happened to be in the vicinity. "Here," Sojiro said, and Maruki handed it over so he could devote both hands to his task.
Sojiro took his own seat and turned the console over in his hands. He immediately recognized Futaba's handiwork in the souped-up back panel, an unlicensed battery pack protruding from the original receptacle and some suspicious hubs epoxy'd to the side. She'd likely loaded it up with modifications that'd voided the warranty the instant she'd touched a screwdriver. "Didn't know you were a fan of these," Sojiro remarked once Maruki was situated, playing dumb, handing it back over. Maruki took it almost reverently. "Gift from a student, or you pick that up yourself?"
"Futaba-san gave it to me." Maruki laughed softly. "Well, threw it at me, to be more accurate. She said… ah, but maybe I wasn't supposed to say anything, come to think of it. I think she was here operating as a rogue agent."
"It's all right. She came clean already."
"She did?"
"Bad liar," Sojiro summarized. "Even the Phantom Thieves thing she barely managed to keep under wraps for more than a few weeks. Left her calling card right out in the open on her desk for me to walk in and find. Even if she wasn't though, that's her stamp right there on the back. Never was able to buy her a single piece of equipment she didn't take apart within the hour."
"I see." Maruki's smile was small but genuine. He looked at the console again with something like fondness, which was honestly more sentiment than Sojiro had ever been able to dredge up for them. Even just hearing the frenetic tinny music from them gave him a tension headache. "That doesn't surprise me. Duplicity doesn't seem like it'd be in her nature."
"Gets it from her mother. She didn't actually throw it at you, did she? Because I'll have words with her if she did."
"I don't think it was on purpose. I think she intended to hand it over but panicked halfway through and just… kind of launched it the rest of the way across the divide. It's all right, it didn't bruise." Maruki turned it over and ran an analytical thumb across the scored plastic of the chassis, chasing down the evidence of Futaba's tinkering. He was visibly mulling. "It's funny, actually," he murmured. "I've always known what academic benefits these games had for my neuroatypical students, but I'd… there were a few studies I'd co-authored on the various applications of it in behavioral and social therapy, as well as pattern recognition and task-managing, but even though I was interested I'd never really had a chance to sit down and partake for myself as a hobby. Everything I know about video games is scholastic."
"Probably pretty common," Sojiro said. "It's hard to go back to seeing something as a hobby once you break it down into empirical data."
"Honestly, even if I'd had the time, the game shops had stopped their rental programs years earlier and I hadn't been able to afford a console of my own. One of my students was kind enough to let me borrow his handheld for a weekend, but I had so much to do I ended up running out of time before I was able to play. He was so disappointed that I never had the heart to ask him again."
"You said you use games in behavioral therapy?"
"More often than not it was an earned reward for non-preferred tasks, but we'd couch those rewards in a social setting to foster peer-to-peer communication. Kind of a win-win as we were usually fighting on both fronts. Academic and social, I mean. But we also… there were some researchers working hand in hand with some developers to code games targeted to neuroatypical students, and we ended up setting up some fairly extensive targeted studies. Retention, hand-eye coordination, decoding patterns – it was really something. I would've loved to have devoted more time to the study, but I…"
Sojiro watched Maruki trail off as he finally seemed to realize how much he was talking. He withdrew with a nonsensical murmur of an excuse, ducking his head, clearing his throat as he returned to examining the chassis of the console. His ears were rapidly reddening.
It was so unlike the cheery persona he'd first encountered in the cab that Sojiro felt an unexpected pang of loss. Looking at Maruki hunched over the console, Sojiro realized that he actually didn't really know if either face was authentic. None of the Marukis he'd met so far matched up with the descriptions he'd been given. This wasn't even the Dr. Maruki who'd come to the café to speak to him about Akira's counseling. Every glimmer he thought he got turned out to be a shadow thrown by another shadow. "So Futaba is trying to get you to branch out into other scientific avenues is what you're saying," he said.
"Ha." Maruki's laugh was startled. He looked flushed and miserable. "I think it was a peace-offering, actually."
"What, did she demand that you defeat her high score before telling you that you two were even?"
"More or less. I took the challenge in the spirit of how it was intended."
"You'll be here all year," Sojiro warned. "Can't say I pay all that much attention, but even I know she's set a couple of world records. Best not to bite off more than you can chew."
"Well." Maruki's smile was listless as he turned it over in his hands, back to the screen. He drew his thumbs over the controls, distracted and slow. "At least I can't say I lack for free time anymore."
Sojiro let the rain talk for him for a while. The lackluster stamina Takemi had warned him about had clearly been taxed during even that short conversation. Maruki had probably already been running on fumes by the time Sojiro showed up to startle the rest out of him.
Sojiro recalibrated abruptly. "I'm gonna head down and make you something to eat," he said, standing. "Rest up while I do. Once you've got some chow down your neck there are a couple of things I'd like to go over with you."
"All right," Maruki said. He didn't seem at all surprised. Sojiro guessed one probably didn't have to be an omnipotent metaverse god to read his intentions coming up the stairs. "I'm sorry to inconvenience you. I wish I could help."
"We'll get there. Right now you help me most by following directions." Sojiro took the game out of his hands and set it on the stand, helping Maruki settle clumsily against his mountain of pillows before retreating downstairs. He watched the evening news as he fired up some more chazuke, squishing cigarette smoke out a sliver under his front window instead of risking it wafting upstairs. Again heeding Takemi's advice, he kept the food almost criminally bland, rejecting every instinct as a restaurant owner and putting practicality before hubris. Chances were Maruki's taste buds weren't firing all that efficiently anyway and even if they were, Maruki was still throwing up a good percentage of what he took down, so it'd probably be better for a bland meal to come up later than a flavorful one.
Maruki was obediently dozing by the time Sojiro dragged himself back up the stairs with his tray. He woke without being prompted, jimmying himself up on his shoulders and then his palms as Sojiro arranged the meal on the bedside table. "Thank you," Maruki murmured. "I'm afraid I don't have much of an appetite, but I'll do my best not to waste the food."
"It's not like it's gourmet." Sojiro kept an unlit cigarette in the corner of his mouth as he maneuvered the chair away to the foot of the bed, propping himself against the wall so he could settle his feet on the empty storage trunk. He threw himself down into it with a relieved grunt, angled his ass up from the seat enough to slip out the folded-up newspaper, turned it over to the crossword puzzle, and rescued the pen from behind his ear. "Take your time. No rush."
He slowly unbraided the answers to 'apply oneself' and 'pours or sprinkles' as Maruki made it through the meal. When Maruki finished his first glass of water, Sojiro bestirred himself to pour him another and guided him through that one himself. He supervised the last few bites of chazuke when Maruki's hand started to wobble under the bowl. "Do me a favor and try to keep that all down for a half hour," Sojiro said, setting the mostly-empty dishes on the tray before moving the entire unit down out of the way on the floor. "Should be enough time for your body to absorb the calories. Anything after that is between you and the bucket."
"Thank you, Sakura-san." Maruki looked at once more exhausted and better focused after the meal, reaching for his glasses by the lamp. Behind the lenses his eyes appeared larger, gaze finding Sojiro with a return of the resigned but professional expectation Sojiro remembered from the first night. He'd apparently spent the meal squaring himself to his fate. "You said you wanted to speak to me?"
Sojiro tucked the newspaper back in his pocket. Popping the pen back up behind his ear again, he folded his arms and stood over Maruki for a moment with indecision he didn't bother to hide. "Depends," he said eventually. "Really need to have you fully between your ears to hear this out. If you don't think you can stay topside for a while, I can come back later, but there's some business that needs to be settled before we get much further into this whole arrangement."
"I'm sorry, arrangement?"
"You staying here. Also need to go over some ground rules, expectations about the job, that sort of thing. Few other things too, but those can wait for another night."
A flicker of surprise broke through Maruki's expression before he tucked it away. "All right," he said. He reached up to adjust his glasses, hesitated, then let them be. He straightened instead to regard Sojiro fully, concentration unexpectedly gentle. "I'm ready."
Maybe. Sojiro ultimately decided to just start lobbing things against the wall to see what stuck. Maruki seemed to be reasonably cogent and Takemi had greenlit anything that didn't agitate him medically. This would also likely be the only night Sojiro could fully trust that all of Futaba's devices would stay off as promised. As the days wore on and she started losing her nerve, she'd likely start activating them sporadically in her anxiety to check in on him before eventually 'forgetting' to turn them back off. With any luck Maruki would no longer be using the café as a clinic at that point and Sojiro could allow the entire matter to drop.
He retrieved the chair from the foot of the bed and once again set up his station at Maruki's bedside. Having eased to a canter during the meal, the rain now returned to a walloping full stampede. Lost in the sound, Sojiro thumbed the back of his ear idly as he debated how to start, but to his surprise Maruki spoke up first. "I see you met up with Shinzaki-san."
"I did."
"I don't suppose…" Maruki hesitated. "Did he say anything to you?"
Sojiro assessed him flatly. Maruki couldn't meet his gaze for long, clearing his throat and dropping his gaze to the hands worrying together on his lap. "He did," Sojiro said. "Had plenty to say, actually."
Maruki's chuckle was desolate. "I'm sure he did."
"Not the things you're thinking. He really cares about you, kid. More than what's normal, if I'm gonna be honest. I wasn't sure about it all at first, but he's dead serious. He tore me a new one over where you were staying and why. Came to pick up some boxes and got a damn inquisition."
"He's invested in me," Maruki said, surprising Sojiro a little. He'd expected more denial. "He's never bothered to hide that. I know I remind him of his brother – the one that he lost in the accident. I tried not to take advantage of it, but I guess I'd just always worried… well, I'd hoped I wasn't tarnishing whatever memories I was dredging up. I always worried about disappointing him for that reason."
"I really didn't get that impression when I talked with him," Sojiro said. "He knows you're your own person. It might've opened the door at first, but it's not what kept you the job. He made that clear."
"He saved me," Maruki said. "I'd done so many interviews that first month. I was overqualified – too specialized for most jobs and not specialized enough for others. I could have probably landed a position as a research assistant or a tutor, but I didn't want to return to those settings. I needed a fresh start. Shinzaki-san was the only one willing to give that to me."
"Apparently he thought you were worth the risk."
"He isn't the first to regret it," Maruki Takuto said.
Sojiro slowly hiked his ankle up over his knee to scratch it through the sock, wondering how to find the exit ramp off this particular conversation. The déjà vu was disorienting and so was the everpresent curtain of rain. Everything felt slurry and surreal. "I've… inconvenienced a lot of people, Sakura-san," Maruki said. "And I don't mean that in the cultural, self-deprecating way we're taught to embrace from childhood whether we're at fault or not, but in the truest sense of the word. You, Shinzaki-san, Futaba-san, the Phantom Thieves… I've left a stain on the world I can't scrub out. Even now I don't know the full breadth of the damage. It's beyond calculation. Just now, just by sitting here, I'm keeping you from a daughter who needs you. I'm taking up the bed of a son who wants to come home. Everywhere I go has a ripple effect of collateral damage. I thought I could minimize my impact by becoming a driver, but in one afternoon it all broke apart and I'm back where I started. Every move I make scatters like… like buckshot. Like a farmer flinging seeds out across a farmyard. They land and they burrow and they grow and I spend all my time ripping out the plants they sprout. I can't stop the spread. It's exhausting to try. I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted. I—"
Maruki seemed to run against his own wall this time. He took his glasses off roughly but every move beyond that was gentle: massaging his eyes, the bridge of his nose, his temples. He drew his knees up and allowed himself a brief bastion, childlike, resting his forehead against them.
He said from behind it, very softly and steadily, "Whatever ground rules you have, Sakura-san, I am more than happy to follow them. Please just tell me how best to stay out of your way."
Sojiro had to excuse himself for a few minutes. He used the bathroom, went into the kitchen to put coffee on, and gave himself the courtesy of an anxiety-deadening smoke at the front window before heading back upstairs. He sat back down and fisted his hands on his knees and stared at them until his vision blurred, and all the while Maruki curled unmoving against his knees like a fucking gargoyle made out of tissue paper and spiders and Sojiro just thought he might be going crazy maybe. Everything about this was over his head and outside his pay grade. Reality was as chaotic and nonsensical as the explosion of Futaba's multicolored sticky notes. It flung itself together and flew apart like saltwater breaking on stone.
"Futaba took out her bugs," Sojiro said. "I can't guarantee your privacy forever, but for tonight at least – and for every time Takemi is seeing to you – you're alone. The things we say here tonight stay here. No other ears but ours."
Maruki was still.
"Here are my ground rules," Sojiro said. "We'll work on the food thing. It's not an overnight fix, and to be honest I'd rather you be in a facility for it, but Futaba went through something similar and I've got a few coping strategies up my sleeve from back then. I told Takemi I'm willing to field it for now. That said, you ever hurt yourself on purpose in this café and Futaba catches you doing it – if I catch you doing it – I'm turning you out and calling a facility. I'm not exposing my daughter to that after all she's been through. You stay here under this roof, it's under the assumption that you feel the same way."
Maruki said nothing.
"I'm not a fucking therapist," Sojiro said. "But if you need to talk, I've always got an ear for you. I can't promise I'll have the right answers or even know what the hell you're talking about, but you don't have to balk at coming to me. You're not a goddamn inconvenience. You're not in the way. If I didn't want you here, you wouldn't be here. Stop throwing my decision in my face and making me explain myself over and over to you. It wastes my time and yours."
Maruki finally stirred at this, but dully. "I'm not—"
"Shut up, I'm talking. Takemi says you're still too weak to work right now and I agree with her. You don't have to earn your keep to stay here until you're fully healed up. If I catch you downstairs trying to work before Takemi medically clears you, I'll have words. I decide when you're ready to work, whether it's tomorrow or a month from now. If you're on board with all the basics, we can move on."
Maruki didn't move for a long time. When he did it was a very pale, slow bloom. He notched himself against the wall and closed his eyes, and Sojiro could see the struggle in him as he fought to parse the words behind the wall of fatigue. Honestly the timing of this was probably unfair. On the other hand Sojiro knew this had to be done before Futaba got any more attached. Offering a job was one thing: offering lodgings near his kid was another.
Maruki lowered his knees into a criss-cross position on the mattress and hiked his glasses up to rub his face clear; by the time he lowered his hands the earlier professional poise was back. "I'm sorry, Sakura-san," Maruki said. "I think I've given you the wrong impression."
"Yeah? Enlighten me," Sojiro said. "I got a few impressions so far. Which one is off."
"I feel very strongly about Futaba's well-being," Maruki said. "I'm not willing to compromise that for any reason. As for the rest, I'm… not in the habit. My food restriction also isn't deliberate. You don't have to worry about me bringing any harmful habits to her doorstep."
"Fine." Sojiro wasn't going to go further into it now. He'd given his fair warning and that evidence or lack thereof would make itself available in the coming weeks. "Not even Akira has a key to this place yet, so if you find yourself locked out because you don't plan ahead, you'll have to get one of us to let you back in. You're also going to need a curtain to stretch across the attic's landing but it'll take a little longer before I can fit that into the budget."
"I can contribute," Maruki said. "I'm not certain how much was docked from my last paycheck, but—"
"I don't want your money. The costs I'm fronting you will eventually be paid off through work. Right now I want you to keep it in case of a medical emergency my budget can't cover. I can do a curtain, I just need a week or two. In the meantime, this is yours."
Maruki fumbled as Sojiro slid the phone out of his pocket and tossed it to him. "It's a burner," Sojiro said. "A little sketchy and I can't vouch for quality, but it's all I could afford right now."
"Oh, no," Maruki said.
"I want you to use that in case you're too sick or injured to make it down the stairs to call for help. Or the opposite, you get downstairs and can't make it back up. I plugged Takemi's number in there too."
"Sakura-san, I can't accept this. You have to let me reimburse you—"
"It's a business expense too, not just a personal one. I might need to update you on an order mid-delivery or have you pick up supplies for the café when you're out and about. I might also need to call you here at the café if I've got an issue that needs attending to at night – checking on pots, locked doors, that sort of thing. I don't want you rushing half-cocked down the stairs to grab the business line and hurting yourself. If all goes well, I'll either have enough to buy you more minutes or just add a phone onto the family plan to include you. I've already spotted Akira to get him out from under his parents' thumbs and I've been toying with the idea of adding on the Sakamoto kid as well to give his mom a break. It all depends on my profits this next month."
Maruki looked completely helpless. He handled the phone like he'd never held one before on this planet and that this alien technology could maybe kill him. "I get that it's hard, but I don't want to have this conversation every time I do something for you," Sojiro said. "If I make a move it's only because I thought it out real hard first. I don't have money to fling at problems. When I do spend it, you better believe I've chiseled it down to the yen. It made life easier for both of us for you to have a phone, so I got you a phone. Let it go."
Maruki's mouth moved a while without sound.
Sojiro wondered too late if he'd legitimately never owned a phone before, but decided the likelihood of that was pretty slim. It was a requisite for most if not all jobs at this point and Akira had mentioned during the year that the school's therapist regularly kept in contact with him. Had he been using Shinzaki company equipment while driving the cab? "Thank you," Maruki murmured. He was pale and miserable. "I… your generosity is more than I deserve, Sakura-san. I'll take good care of it."
"Going to lay out the last of my ground rules if you're ready to hear them. After that you can make your final decision about whether you actually want to stay and work here or not."
It took a very long time for Maruki to look up. His eyes were still enormous but his face was blank with expectation. "This might be the final make or break for you, so pay attention," Sojiro repeated. "You can go wherever you please. I'm not your jailer. What I do ask is that if you go out – to get milk, grab a walk, head out for a delivery – you flag my attention. Either with the phone or in person."
"All right," Maruki said, still a little blank.
"I don't want to call you up or text you to chase you down. Just want you to be accountable for your own whereabouts for a while. If you disappear with no explanation for more than a few hours, I reserve the right to close that door behind you. Doesn't mean I will – just means you don't get to be surprised if I do."
Maruki's expression finally animated. He searched Sojiro's face very quickly, eyes darting to read whatever was apparently there. Sojiro let him do it. "Ah," Maruki murmured within a few moments, softening. It was gentle and a little horrible again. "I can see where that would be less burdensome than wondering what I've done to myself."
"It's not for me." Sojiro didn't bother to deny the accuracy, but the tone made his stomach twist. "Futaba is my first priority. Now and always. Even Akira stands in line. I'm not going to make life any more volatile for her than it already is. And it's not to say I don't care what happens to you, just… laying out my priorities where you can see them. If that's fine with you, and these are ground rules you can live by for a while, I can sign you onto the books officially and change your employment status for you."
"I understand," Maruki said. "Yes. I think those are more than reasonable. I accept your terms. Thank you."
"You sure?" Sojiro was blunt. "Most wouldn't."
"I don't think any of them are particularly unreasonable."
"It'd be different if you were just my employee, but living here… that's got different nuance attached to it. It's why I'm being hard on you. You get that?"
"No, I get it," Maruki said. "Thank you, Sakura-san. Truly. It's… more than I deserve. I'm incredibly grateful for your generosity and your, your… your candor. Thank you."
Sojiro wasn't quite sure how to quantify or qualify the success of the entire affair. Maruki smiled again when their gazes met, small but earnest, and Sojiro wondered why the pang of loss was back. The work terms had been intentionally ridiculous and Sojiro had mostly thrown them out there to check if Maruki was listening. He had zero intention of calling the café up in the dead of night to check on the door or have Maruki double back to change an order already in transit. Instead Maruki hadn't blinked at all, accepting both the domestic and the employee restrictions like both of them were equally acceptable. He was supposed to push back.
With what leverage. The shame was crippling. Sojiro wavered between fixing the situation now and just running damage control later when Maruki was actually well enough to work. "All right, well." He gave up and rubbed his eyes again. "Now that all that's out of the way, I've got some smaller asks. These aren't iron-clad, just hoping you'd go along with me for now on them until I can hammer out some solutions."
"Yes," Maruki said. "Of course. Whatever I can do to help."
"You can come in and out of the attic as you please when the café's open, but until you start working, I want you staying away from the customers for now. You don't have to be invisible, just don't hop in conversations or add to any gossip."
"You're worried about Futaba's reputation at school next semester if it's discovered Shujin's old therapist is staying at her unmarried father's café."
Sojiro nearly stumbled out of the chair from a sitting position. Underneath the stuttering neuroses it'd been a little too easy to forget the godless number-crunching brilliance he'd adopted off the streets this time. "Yeah. More or less."
"I understand," Maruki said. "A live-in employee who pays rent at your business is less conspicuous than a man living in your house, so this is the better of two options. It doesn't make it a good one. I'll try to be discreet so I don't embarrass either of you."
"You're not embarrassing us. It's just politics. And frankly…" Still a little unhorsed, Sojiro scratched his chin and thought about maybe just throwing Futaba under the bus on this one. It wasn't a lie but it also wasn't strictly Maruki's business. "Futaba wants you here. If Akira was here he'd say the same. As far as I see it the rest of the kids have a soft spot for you too, so if I'm gonna be honest, I knew I'd catch hell from any one of them if they'd found out I'd left you out there to sweat."
"Sakamoto-kun comes here frequently, doesn't he?"
"Yeah. It's fine. I'll figure it out."
"If Kurusu-kun comes home I'll leave to make room for him."
"I'm not kicking you out like a goddamn stray cat just because my other stray cat comes home. I'll figure it out. That's not on you. I can always put him up in my room. Any place of ours is better than what he's got going on over there. Don't worry about it."
Maruki looked nearly translucent with exhaustion. Sojiro knew he was likely holding himself upright out of sheer stubbornness at this point. "All right."
"That should be good enough for today, at least as far as all that's concerned," Sojiro said. "There's just one more thing on the agenda we need to square. You still with me?"
"I'm here."
"If you get tired, sick, or overwhelmed, any of that, you tell me so I can lighten your load. I'm not always good at telling people when they need a break, and you're apparently not real good at taking them, so it's going to be a challenge. We'll both have to pay attention. You need me to ease up, you tell me. It's a damn coffee shop. There's not going to be any working until you collapse. You give me your best and not anything over that."
"All right."
"The floor's yours," Sojiro said. "Your turn. You give me your rules so I can follow them."
Maruki had been looking like he was preparing to reinvent the entire world again just so he could plug in extra hours to sleep. At this he woke in a hurry. "What?"
"Your rules. Give me some."
"I don't have rules."
"Sure you do. Let's talk them out now so we can come to a middle."
"Sakura-san…" Maruki fumbled. If Sojiro hadn't been invested in getting this part over with so he could collapse in a sea of cigarette smoke and rye, he might've gotten a guiltier kick out of the bald panic in his eyes. "Sakura-san, I don't make the rules."
"You don't make my rules. You're making your rules."
"But I don't have—"
"This isn't like when Akira's here. You're not some underage kid living under my roof that I'm legally responsible for. In order for this to work – for two grown-ass strangers to share the same space – there needs to be boundaries in place. I set mine. It's your turn to set yours."
"I'm fortunate enough to stay here, I couldn't possibly ask for—"
"How about I help then," Sojiro said. "What about this. I knock when I come up into this space. Not just invite myself up here like I've been doing. That goes for Futaba too, though it'll take some time to retrain her muscle memory. It'll be easier for her once we get your curtain."
"Sakura-san, I'm a guest," Maruki said. "I do… I do appreciate what you're trying to do, and I'm thankful for the gesture, but I truly have no objections to your rules. They're not unreasonable. As long as I'm here, you are fully within your right to set boundaries."
"Then this isn't going to work," Sojiro said bluntly. "If all we have are my boundaries, this isn't going to be a place you'll feel safe in. Give me something to respect so that when it comes down to it, you feel like you've got enough power to advocate for yourself if you're backed into a corner."
Maruki subsided. He adjusted his glasses slowly, mouth working a moment before clamping into a hard line.
Sojiro out-waited him with the ease of practice. When Maruki finally looked back up, it was with a smile so sudden and helpless that Sojiro felt the blunt force of it wallop his stomach. "I don't suppose anyone has ever told you that you would've made an excellent therapist," Maruki said weakly.
"Every barista is a therapist. Same goes for every hairdresser, bartender, and wedding planner. I'm going to give you time to think about it while I take down the dishes." Without waiting for another objection, Sojiro gathered up the tray and navigated the stairs like a geriatric on the way back down to the kitchen. He could barely hear the TV over the rain but turned on the evening news anyway to give his ears a different white noise to chew on. The clock was edging past seven by the time he'd finished wiping down the sink and countertop, and he stole another minute to lean out the front window and cool the flush on him. His joints creaked warnings and his bones weren't all that happy with him either. Morning would come quickly and he still had inventory to parse.
He fired himself up a fresh cup of coffee and wrote a silent apology note to his heart before ascending the stairs for hopefully the last time that night. "I'm not… very good at drawing boundaries," Maruki admitted as Sojiro settled with a barely-suppressed yawn into the chair. "This is difficult."
"I figured," Sojiro said. "Good time to start, get some practice."
"I did come up with one, but thought maybe it's not what you'd be looking for."
"I don't care. It's your floor."
Maruki drew in a breath that trembled on the way out. It looked like Sojiro had socked him in both eyeballs and Sojiro wondered how long Maruki would crash and sleep after this. Hopefully long enough that tomorrow's customers wouldn't have to ask questions about strange men lurking around his attic smelling increasingly like a campsite bathroom. "My mother for the most part raised me herself," Maruki said. "My father was a kind man, but he was absent for business more often than he wasn't. When he died, very little changed. It had always fallen to my mother to create and enforce the house rules. The basics were more or less what you'd expect: splitting chores evenly, not wasting food, being kind to animals and pets, being respectful to others. But there was always one rule that she enforced over all the others. From the time I was very young, if I became angry – whether it was at her or anything else - I had to write her a note telling her why."
Having gone in for a swallow, Sojiro huffed unintentionally across the surface of his coffee. "Hard to imagine you angry."
"It happened more often than you'd think," Maruki admitted. "Though as a therapist now I think I'd diagnose it as fear. I had an obsession with getting people to see the world the way I saw it and got angry with myself when I couldn't phrase my arguments well enough to convince them. If I discovered something interesting in the fields outside my grandfather's house – an abandoned bird's nest, a… a piece of bark on a tree that looked like a face, flowers that smelled nice, a pretty creek – well, of course I wanted everyone to drop everything they were doing and come look at it with me. And then of course when they did, they never agreed that it was worth coming out to see. It always felt like I was seeing things that were invisible to everyone else, and because I think that frightened me, I'd lash out at them and accuse them of lying. Of course now I can't help but wonder if…"
Maruki trailed off. Sojiro didn't have to guess what that train of thought led. "Well, either way, it was no excuse," Maruki said. "I would throw tantrums. Some days I'd even get into physical fights with my classmates when I couldn't convince them – oh, I'd lose," he laughed at Sojiro's expression. "I didn't have the stomach to follow through even if I'd been capable of beating them. But still, it was a situation. My teachers were completely at a loss."
"Small wonder. You sound bossy as hell, kid. I would've set you off just to fuck with you."
"I'm sure that's exactly why they did it. Not only was I angry, I cried easily too: they made it a sport to see who could set me off first." But the half-smile on Maruki's face was wry, so Sojiro figured he'd probably come to terms with it a while ago. "Eventually my mother made a rule. When I was angry, I had to put my anger down into words. She gave me a notebook for it – the 'Why Book'. She never locked me in my room when I misbehaved, just would send me outside or out in the hall with a notebook and pencil. 'Come to me when you can put it into words'."
"Did it work?"
"Not always. Sometimes I'd just be too upset to write. Sometimes I'd even throw the book or break the pencil. One way or another, that book always ended up back in my lap and a new pencil would appear. If I tore the pages, there'd be more Why Books in the closet. She outlasted my anger every time. Eventually, though…" Maruki rolled a piece of his blanket between his fingers, contemplative and slow. "Eventually I got to the point where I could rationalize whether it was justified or not. I could understand why it hurt – and more importantly, how my anger had hurt other people. Soon enough I was able to curtail the collateral damage just to me. But looking back at those books, I…"
Maruki trailed off again. Sojiro watched his shadowed gaze meander out the window, into the neon-frosted curtains of rain. "Anger is the smoke signal, not the fire," Maruki said. "Once I really parsed the reasons I was angry, I could see just how often I was getting upset over things that didn't really matter. But then sometimes the opposite happened: I found that what was really making me angry wasn't actually related to it at all. It was a bigger issue camouflaged as a smaller one. Once I pinned that down, my mother was able to help me find what sparked it. She didn't treat the smoke – she treated the fire."
Sojiro watched him. "Sounds like a hell of a woman."
Maruki's chuckle was soft and oddly deep. It started in his stomach and rattled up his thin chest until his head was tucked under the sill, body folded against the wall like he was trying to press himself through to the other side. "She was a saint," Maruki breathed. There were tears in his eyes. "You had to be in order to put up with me."
Sojiro had resolved to leave once his coffee was gone whether business was finished or not. Now he found himself lingering as Maruki fought sleep, fixated on the way the warmth from Maruki's presence seemed to physically wane and wax as he drifted in and out, sunlight under shifting cloud cover. "If I could have one rule," Maruki said, "for myself… if I could ask for one thing from you, Sakura-san… if you're angry with me, please tell me why. With words, not actions. I've… gotten so bad at knowing what others want from me, how others are really feeling, and I make assumptions. I don't trust myself to interpret others' actions accurately anymore."
Sojiro waited for clarification that didn't come. "You want me to write you notes when I'm pissed at you," he said, just to make sure he'd translated correctly.
"It doesn't even necessarily have to be notes. Just… please don't make me have to guess what I've done wrong. It festers, and I can't…" Maruki made an aimless gesture with a flicking wrist. "I'm sorry. I'm tired. I'm sorry if it's coming out wrong."
"It's not coming out wrong. I just want to be sure. I'll do it."
"Or just knock. You know what, maybe you were right the first time. Maybe just knock and forget everything else. I should have just taken you up on that and taken the easy out for once."
"I'll do it," Sojiro repeated. "It's fine. And I'll knock. Get some sleep. I'm opening up the café in the morning. I'll bring you up some breakfast in the morning before we open."
"Thank you, Sakura-san." Maruki didn't move. It strongly looked as though if Sojiro left him he'd sprout and assimilate into the ivy creeping up by the window. "I know how much energy and time this has cost you. I intend to make it worth your while."
"When you're ready I'll welcome any help I get. Any sooner and it's just going to snowball into a bigger headache." Sojiro drained the last swallow of his coffee and set it on Akira's desk while he helped move Maruki back under the covers. "Need anything else, speak up now."
"No." Maruki's fatigue was thready and bottomless. Sojiro could already see him drifting. "Futaba-san will probably want this back."
"Want what back."
"The game system."
Sojiro glanced at it. It was still on the PAUSE screen but the display had long ago dimmed. It'd likely shut off to power-save if left alone. "I guarantee you she won't accept returns until you show progress she approves of."
"I see." Maruki was distant. "Thank you. Good night, Sakura-san."
Sojiro didn't make it out of the café. He fell asleep in one of the downstairs booths under the drum of rain and woke to Futaba furiously shaking him, spitting mad as an alleycat and soaked to the skin because he'd failed as a parent and educator apparently. "Why didn't you bring your umbrella?" he said groggily.
"Because I – was – worried – you – were – dead," she snarled, pummeling his shoulder until it drew yelps out of him. "Don't make me turn off my ears and then do weird stuff like this, Sojiro! How do you expect me to trust you if this is what you do with your newfound freedom?"
He closed up in a hurry, still stumbling occasionally with disorientation as she shoved at him and regaled him with her ceaseless nagging all the way out the door and into Yongen-jaya's waterlogged hellscape. "That was not okay," Futaba seethed as he shook out his umbrella over her. She grumpily smacked the handle over so that the shield angled over more of him. "If this is how being a parent is then I'm never going to be a parent. This was way too stressful."
"Good, because I don't want to be a grandpa," Sojiro said. He checked to see that the door was locked before pocketing the key. Ignoring her hiss, he plopped his head on her still-damp head and steered her closer to him so she could soak up more of his body heat on the way home. She'd changed into the spare set of clothes she kept in the bathroom cupboard under his insistence but was also made out of toothpicks and superglue, so he kept an eye on her to make sure she didn't start shivering. "Did you finish your online coursework?"
"Booo, Sojiro," Futaba said. "Not even subtle deflection. Don't even pretend I'm the one on trial here."
"Well, did you?"
"I finished it literally in the same hour it was posted. I actually think I was still asleep so I'll have to check if I actually hit Submit. Any other side streets you'd like to drive your getaway car down?"
He was too old to sulk so he settled for grumpily picking up the pace to escape her. "Ope, nope, wrong way," Futaba said, ruthlessly catching him and towing him by the wrist. "We're getting me a reward for my excellent parenting. Let's go."
"Futaba," he groaned.
He waited outside the convenience store in the monsoon while she used his waning funds to pick up more teeth-rotting Pocky and instant ramen. She made him carry the bag and then took him the long way around their block despite her apparent imminent death by starvation. He had only about a minute to wonder why before she slid both hands around his elbow as they walked. "You scared me, Sojiro," she said, voice small.
"I'm sorry." Despite his annoyance with the situation he did know he'd messed up. He hoped his tone would convey what words couldn't. "There was a lot of ground to cover with him and it's been a long day. I guess I sat down to rest my eyes and time got away from me."
"You know that's no excuse, right? Like if I were hanging out with my friends and I blew past curfew because I lost track of time, you'd still be mad if I didn't call, right? Or didn't pick up your calls?"
"You called me?"
Futaba thrust out her phone. Sojiro's smarting eyes adjusted slowly to the light to see sixteen unconnected attempts. "My phone must've been on silent," he muttered, puzzled, fumbling one-handed for technology before Futaba batted him away from the search. "I'm sorry. It was my fault. I'll be more considerate next time."
"There's only one of you and I'm a collector, so it falls on me to make sure any first editions in my house aren't damaged. You said you had a lot to cover, right? What did he say?"
"He says he'll accept my terms as long as he's living here."
"So he is on board? He's actually going to work at Leblanc?"
"As far as I know."
Futaba processed this a moment. He was surprised by her next question. "Are you going to tell Ryuji?"
Their house was already looming ahead in the haze. As they approached their street he felt her hands tighten on him to slow him down, and he submitted to it out of curiosity more than anything else. Whatever conversation they were apparently having was too hard on Futaba's nerves to withstand the transition inside a well-lit house. "Because if you don't, and he stumbles in on it by accident, you know that information's going straight to Ann and Akira," Futaba said. "They don't keep anything from each other. It'd actually be pretty cute if I didn't have to think about anybody being into Ryuji that way and oh god my mental eyes. Why is this my brain. Why does it burn."
"What would you have me do?" he asked, taking her seriously.
"Honestly? We've already lost our window to not make Ryuji mad. Doc's in Akira's room already and now he's an employee and it's not… going to go over well just for territorial reasons."
"Is the kid gonna hurt him?"
"Oh god no, he could barely stomach it when there were tentacles and capes involved. But he'll blow like all his tiskets and taskets and baskets and gaskets," Futaba said. "Just for strategy's sake? I'd invite him and Ann – Ann and him? – over at the same time so she can run damage control. Then we can leave it to the two of them to tell Akira."
"That's the best way to handle it, huh." He didn't disagree but he was glad he'd asked. It wouldn't have occurred to him to include Ann. "You mind getting in touch with them for me?"
"What, now?"
"No, wait a few days. Just give Doc a chance to settle."
"Ryuji might come over before then," Futaba warned.
"I know. Just… we have to make sure we do this right. Ryuji's a tough kid and his heart's in the right place. If he gets bad news I know he'll be able to walk it off. Doc's..."
She watched him. "A god."
"… an idiot."
"Idiot gods exist and I've met them," Futaba said. "Fine. Maybe I'll call in the big guns and involve Haru. She can keep a secret and she's his closest friend on the team that's not currently getting busy with him oh god the burn in my brain. I can get her to set up some study dates with him and keep him out of our hair for a while."
"Sounds good." He settled a hand on her head again and tolerated her flashing her canines at him. It was 98% for show and only 2% actual legitimate malice. "Thanks for doing all the heavy lifting. I'm out of my depth with that one."
"Nobody on the team is all that complicated when you get right down to it. We're even color-coded for each other's convenience. You just have to know the right way to break bad news to each person. I gotcha covered, Sojiro."
Great. He needed to eat and then get horizontal and he didn't even care what order that was in. He wasn't in any shape to make dinner and belatedly he realized that maybe that was why Futaba had been so hardassed about picking them up instant food. His abused eyes stung in the spray and he found himself blinking hard to orient himself as they navigated the trenches of water lying in wait on the sidewalk. Another couple days of this might overwhelm even Yongen-jaya's state-of-the-art drainage system.
"Can I ask you something?"
He blinked down. "What."
Futaba didn't follow up right away. By the time they got to their street he could still see her chewing, so he swallowed his misery and nudged her gently in the direction of the parking garage so they could circle that block as well. It took her halfway around to finally finish processing her question enough to articulate it. "When you bought the building the cafe is in, why didn't you convert both the top and bottom floor into a restaurant space?" she said. "And don't tell me you didn't need the room, because the downstairs is cramped. We could've super expanded our kitchen if we'd moved the counter out further and had the upstairs converted into the table space instead. A lot of restaurants do it that way."
"How honest of an answer do you want."
It said something about mutual trauma that Futaba considered the question seriously. "I dunno. Uh, yellow. Middle-road honesty to start."
"It's hard work. I'm old and I can't handle going up and down the stairs all day every day to serve food."
"Sojiro, I know I tease, but you're not actually old," Futaba said. "You're out of shape and slow but that has to do with bad habits, not age. And you could've brought on staff to help with that."
"There's also the cost of having to keep the stairs and landings up to code. Every floor you add onto a business exponentially ups the cost of upkeep – I'd have had to keep both floors up to code rather than just the one. Plus keeping everything ground-floor minimizes the risk of injury and lawsuits. Yongen-jaya's got a big elderly population and they're the ones coming into the store, so chances are I would've lost that clientele if I'd forced them to climb stairs to enjoy their coffee."
"So you paid extra for an entire second floor that you neglect because old people are a fall risk?"
"Look, you said you wanted middle-road honesty," Sojiro said. "Middle road is what you got."
"Fair," Futaba conceded. "Okay. Dial it up maybe a little then. Like one notch under brutal."
"I wanted that space open for emergencies. I had to pull every string I had and a few more I didn't have to get our set-up. Your mother had left you her entire estate but your uncle was a factor, and at the time I wasn't sure if I was going to get custody. I ended up getting a big NDA payout from the sect I was working in on the condition I never took a post up with the government again, and that's what covered the down payment for both the house and the café."
Futaba was startled. "They actually paid you not to talk about the stuff you saw? Just how high up were you?"
"I had pretty high security clearance. Just resigning by itself would've given me a good severance package, but because of the things I'd seen and was involved in, I guess they thought it'd be a good idea to wheedle a little more legal secrecy out of me."
"Would you have really blabbed if they hadn't paid you?"
"Yeah, right to the press," he said, rolling his eyes. "Look, they insisted they pay me to clam up, so I decided I might as well run with it. Half the stuff they didn't want me to blab about I've forgotten anyway, so joke's on them."
"So why did you get a café with two floors specifically if you just planned to use one?"
"Because at the time I wasn't sure if it was safe to leave you alone."
Futaba let out a breath. "One notch under brutal, got it."
"It wasn't just that," Sojiro said, gentling a little. "You were only thirteen. Your uncle was still getting up to no good, and after all that'd happened to you - it was just safest to keep you close. I kept that room unoccupied for you to campout in while I was downstairs working. It was the only way to earn a living and make sure you were taken care of."
"That's right," Futaba murmured. She was contemplative again. Her hands felt frigid through the fabric of his elbow but she wasn't shivering yet. Still, he increased the pace just a bit, making it tacitly clear to her this was to be their last detour. "Now that you mention it, I do remember hanging out up there a lot. The wifi sucked hard until I cobbled together the extender. I'd spend hours and hours up there. Weird I forgot."
"First year was rough on you. I don't want you to worry about it. You and I did the best we could and it all worked out in the end."
"You know, I sort of… have a lot of extra ears, Sojiro," Futaba said. "I know how people gossip about me in town. They say all kinds of things about me and you when they think nobody's listening. Especially about that time."
"So? Who cares? Let them talk. Lot of old people here with nothing to do. I can't always protect you from flapping gums, Futaba. You just have to have a thick skin and try not to let it get to you."
"Sojiro, you literally have the thinnest skin of like everybody I know," Futaba said. "You take everything personally. Are we seriously playing this game where I'm pretending not to remember how you went upstairs to weep after a customer told you your apple fritters were gross and walked out?"
Well now that had just been uncalled for. He'd plucked up his courage and taken a risk branching out to pastries, pulling an all-nighter to put out a decent display for his early risers. By the end of the day over half of them remained and the majority of those that had been purchased had discreetly found the trash after a few bites. "I don't weep."
Futaba was already on her phone. "What are you doing," Sojiro said.
"Calling for reinforcements." Her text indicator pinged seconds later. She held it up to him.
Sojiro squinted at it in the gloom. Futaba had texted Would you say Sojiro weeps? to Akira, who had responded, Who made him cry this time? "Would you two idiots get a grip?" he snapped, shoving it out of his face and ignoring her sharkish grin. "My point is, people will talk. Unless it's something that's actually criminal and needs to be legally addressed, you have to try and let it go."
"He wanted to change the customer's heart who insulted your pastries," Futaba said. "It really bugs him when you cry."
"Let it go."
"Okay, fine. So what now, then," she said. "You're going to adopt Akira, right? Which means he'd be living at our place if all goes as planned. We don't really need that space for him anymore. So why not convert it now that I'm better and he won't be staying there anymore?"
"Because I don't want to."
"Why?"
"Sakamoto sometimes comes over and crashes. Haru-chan comes over and uses the place sometimes when she's studying and needs the ambiance. Just because it's not part of the restaurant doesn't mean it's not serving a purpose. I want to keep the room open for the people who need it."
Futaba murmured, soft and dull, "There it is."
Surprised by the abrupt change in tone, Sojiro squinted through the gloom to try to see her expression more fully. She'd gained some height recently but she still managed to magically present the top of her head to him when he cranked his neck around to try to spot her face. The more he contorted himself the more she mirrored him, finally plunging her face down into the plastic grocery bag to escape him. "Okay, fine," he laughed, prying her out. "You don't have to suffocate yourself to get out of the conversation. Don't wanna spit it out, don't spit it out."
She didn't return the smile. She hadn't let go of his arm but no longer tried to impede him when he led them towards the house. "Take a bath and warm up," he said, shoveling her in front of him as he angled his umbrella over the threshold. "I'll heat up dinner."
She obeyed without argument. Sojiro hung their jackets in a place that wouldn't ruin the floor and tried valiantly not to fall asleep on the stove. He didn't assault his cardiovascular system with more coffee but did filch some of Futaba's fruit juice to clear his head a little while he rustled up a vegetable side dish.
At one in the fucking morning he flew awake to the sensation of someone standing over him and flailed so violently that he nearly fell off the other side of the bed. "One more question." Futaba still sounded subdued. "Did you hire Doc just because of me?"
"Is that what you were on about during our walk?"
"No. Well, part of it. But not really."
"This couldn't have waited?"
"I can't sleep. It won't shut up and stop rattling around in there until I get it out. And you told me to wake you up if I know what can solve my problem and it has to do with asking you something."
Stifling a groan, he rolled back over and pummeled his face into his pillow a moment to brace himself. "No, I didn't hire Doc just because of you," he said wearily. "I had my own reasons."
"So it had nothing to do with me?"
"I mean, you advocating for him helped tip the decision in that direction, sure. But ultimately it was my call, and I called it."
"Does it have anything to do with my mom?"
She'd definitely been percolating this for a few hours. "Little bit."
"So if he hadn't had any connection to Mom or me? Would you have taken him in then?"
"I don't know. Guess it depends on what kind of an impression he made on you and how comfortable you'd be with a stranger in the café."
"But you'd have considered it," Futaba said. "Housing a… a stray in there if they were in trouble. Or something. Like that. A stranger I mean. Doop."
At this point he was considering not even housing family here. "Futaba, it's late and I have a long day tomorrow. Not to push you, but is there something I can answer more… you know, quickly? Please?"
Futaba said nothing a moment. She was half in silhouette from the hallway light and was holding something that looked like an LED keychain. She'd evidently remembered the cardiac near-event that'd happened last time that she'd abruptly thrown on his lights in the middle of the night and was at least trying to save him an ambulance ride.
He waited a minute. "Futaba."
"Sorry. Never mind. I'm good."
"Sure you are. What's this really about?"
"Nothing. I mean okay, it's something. But it can wait. Now. That… helped. I think I can sleep now. You should really be sleeping too, Sojiro. It's bad for your health to be up this late."
He didn't smother himself with his pillow but only because funerals were expensive and he had curtains to buy. "Got it."
She padded out his door on bare whispering feet. She came back. "Hey, Sojiro?"
"Yeah."
"I'm not the only one in Yongen-jaya with a reputation people gossip about, you know," she said, and before he could ask she retreated behind her door. This time it stayed closed.
Seconds before falling back asleep again he realized his phone was glowing on his bed stand. Reeling, he fumbled with the charging cord to free it and brought the display level to his sore eyes. A text message had been sent at midnight.
Fr: Maruki Takuto: The café door is locked and the coffee pots are off. I've replaced the towels by your door as the others were damp from the rain. Good night.
Another at 12:02: Thank you, Sakura-san.
