Part 4: The Latest Amamiya-Sakura Defection

The sun continued to shine down and the day was still young in Yongen-Jaya. The people were few as always and as the soft, gentle breeze tickled my nose, I turned the corner to where Leblanc was catching sight of Futaba. She was crouching in front of the store, seemingly uninterested in working a shift today. She wore an all black combo of a crop top, black and lime green leggings and black and green skate shoes. She probably spent the first half of her day on her computer. As she looked to see me, I waved to her.

"Hey, Futaba." I responded. Futaba did not greet me back but replied with an order.

"You and I need to talk." Her voice sounded really calm but the pressure she radiated was unnerving. The fact her mother came up so casually, there was no getting away from her.

"In front of the store?"

"Don't crack jokes. We're going to your room." Taking my hand and entering Leblanc, I saw Sojiro manning the counters whilst Futaba didn't bat an eyelid to the customers around. Maybe it didn't faze her who was staring because she was mad at me.

"Hi, Sojiro." I greeted.

"You only come back around these times when you want to help out. What did you get up to?"

"I had an extended session with the new school councillor, Maruki-san."

"Is he any good?" Sojiro asked.

"Yeah. I think he's worth his salt. I don't know what other students think of him though." I confidently assured.

"If you think so, knock yourself out, I guess. Any update on the questioning?"

"I've not got specifics, sadly."

"You tell me when you do. Speaking of…you want to take on a shift today?"

"Sure." As Futaba took the lead, we then made our way upstairs. Thankfully, he didn't pick up on the two of us about to have a nasty argument. Or if he did, he wouldn't intervene.

"Can you wait for me to change, Futaba?"

"I cannot." she replied. Oh boy…she's really pissed off. Letting Mona get out of my bag, I put some food out for him to eat. Futaba gave him a gentle stroke for once to try and cool herself.

"Mona, can you give me and Ren the room?"

"...Okay, Sakura-san." Mona hopped through the window with no hesitation. Futaba then took her boots off and sat right by me on the bed so that I couldn't escape. She chose not to face me.

"You have my full attention, Futaba."

"What do you think you're doing, cutting a deal with that doctor?" she barked.

"It's only natural I'd do that because I trust him." I casually answered.

"This is Shadow Mishima all over again…couldn't you have waited for me to dig into the man before you go off and agree to the mind numbing crap he's going to condition you with?!" she argued, slamming her hands on her legs. Naturally, having her remain in a horrible mood would spoil tonight's shift so I'd do my damnedest to try and pacify it. If that wasn't possible, I'd at least be honest so that I could look her in the eye.

"He holds the cards. It's no biggie if you've already checked him out."

"Of course I have now!"

"Well…I don't see why we're continuing this discussion."

"Why do you believe you're doing this for me? Mom doesn't have anything to do with what we agreed!"

"Look at me, Futaba." I asked. She refused. I decided to carry on talking:

"You're right. I am. It's only been you who's done work on your end of the deal. I was planning to take full advantage of the information to make myself feel better." Now she decided to look at me sternly. Her expression was a pretty convoluted cluster of anger, confusion and distrust.

"You're being flat-out honest? I guess I'll be honest too. I think he lured you in disguising the fact he knows more about us than he lets on and framing it as his so-called theory. Then came the talk on my mother and you got to scheming. You are WAY smarter than this - there was a lot you could've done differently! Did you even want to see the schmuck in the first place?" I see now…So the supposed reason of her anger was because she believed I was caught off guard and made a reckless move. I believed the real reason she was upset was the fact her mother came up at all from a random doctor - the possibility that he could've helped her out way back when and chose not to had only now crossed my mind.

"I ended up convinced."

"..." That didn't do anything to calm her down. I placed my hands on her shoulders and she'd jolted a little.

"I'm not going to end up fucked over by that pretty boy. I have the greatest women in the world, of which you are one of them, who have my back. It's that reassurance that I'm in your good hands that makes me capable. It's also why I won't promise you that I won't do it again." I answered, removing my hands from her shoulders. She had a look of ridicule on her face.

"Really? That's the best you can do?"

"Yeah. I'm not sorry I capitalised on this. I believe the mind and the research of one Wakaba Isshiki is highly important to our team. If her research and the Metaverse are linked with one another, Maruki-san's providing a literal lifeline. I'd be a jackass not to take the help."

"That's MY mother you're talking about. Don't you even dare talk about her like some chess piece on your board." Futaba's tone turned far uglier and with such a glare so harsh, I rushed to say something else.

"Heard loud and clear. What did you find?"

"Squat! I couldn't find anything out from him - he's not been involved in any shady nonsense and while he did work with Mom a while back, the copies of research don't exist!" The spite in Futaba's voice told me this wasn't over yet.

"How can you be so stupid, Ren? Anyone who was known to associate with her probably wouldn't have gotten the chance to keep any sort of anything!"

"Maybe there aren't electronic copies. Or if there are, they don't exist online. The possibility does exist. It just means a little bit of in person digging."

"I never would've taken you to spout naïve crap. Get real, Ren." She rebuked.

"Oh but I am. The one who needs to get real is you. I see no reason why this lead has to be dismissed immediately. What happened to overclocking your brain if need be?" I finished. She turned away from me again and looked towards the banister. We'd continued to sit in silence until Sojiro called us both.

"You two! You ready to start your shift?"

"...Let's just get through this night and call it a day." Futaba said nothing, putting her shoes back on and leaving me upstairs. I got myself dressed into some suitable clothes and made my way down to the kitchen floor. Sojiro took on a concerned look as soon as I came down.

"Are you guys alright?"

"We'll figure it out." I answered. Futaba remained silent. He nodded and calmly faced us both.

"Okay. I want you two to work together in order to prepare, cook and serve the food here. There's a couple of portions you can serve quickly but you'll need to make a fresh batch or two. Futaba, you've more than got the taste of Leblanc down to a T so I'll have you focus on the curry and rice portions. Ren, you'll prepare the beverages that are on offer here. Both of you should try to observe the other in order to build upon your abilities. I'll be on serving and cleaning duty tonight so you won't need to worry about interacting with customers. Whatever issues you've got with one another will need to be put to the side tonight. That's going to be your main challenge."

""Roger!"" We affirmed before getting ourselves ready and then moved over to our stations. We'd gotten through most of the orders exchanging the fewest of words between one another and focused on our tasks. When things quietened, Sojiro took a chance to scold the two of us for our mood bringing down the whole store but what really stung was another concerning aspect.

"You guys just can't get over this…neither of you are willing to observe the other when you're not working on your tasks? I expected better from the both of you." On Sojiro's chiding, the two of us felt guilty for causing him trouble. I stepped up and invited Futaba over, preparing the brew as I was taught - she observed what I was doing to the letter.

"You need a lot of focus, Ren?" Futaba asked.

"Yeah. You don't want to cock up the beans you grind because there's only so many you use. You've also got to be mindful of the strength in the beans too." As I poured out the coffees and had them ready for Sojiro to bring to customers, Futaba happened to beckon me over to see how the dishes were presented.

"Now, you seem to have the magic hands when it comes to cooking but butterfingers when it comes to presenting what you've made. Pay attention! The rice goes on the plate first - don't overfill the ladle as you scoop up two spoons. Then comes the star of the dish itself!"

"I'm listening, Master Fu-chan."

"Using the curry ladle, portion out 1 full helping of curry with pork, carrot and onion and another helping of just the sauce. You could spread it over the rice in your own time but it's preferred to lay it besides the rice. That way, the customer chooses whether they want a bite of curry, a bite of rice or both!" She explained in such an easy way that I wasn't lost at any point. She even gave me the chance to try and lay out a curry dish. I thought my first attempt was pretty lousy but the Sakuras disagreed. Futaba gave a thumbs up of approval praising my god gifted talents in the kitchen and when Sojiro heard that, he was highly annoyed at me for trying to take his thunder from under his nose. I regretted not showing her how to make a coffee but I knew I could do it another time. Before we knew it, we'd come to the end of our shift and Sojiro had his thoughts.

"So…this is no surprise to any of us when I say there were no winners tonight. You guys didn't think I failed to notice something happened when you came in?"

"I knew it…"

"He noticed."

"You both let your personal argument brew on throughout the evening and the petty silence was pathetic. The teamwork that could've propelled our sales tonight was nowhere to be found. You're both highly mature for your ages and I expect for the both of you to sort this out and soon." he ordered, very firm in his voice.

""Yes, Sojiro.""

"As far as your individual roles go, it was good to see you both doing your best. Futaba, you're scarily close to perfectly passing of a Leblanc curry indistinguishable from my own. Ren…you do have a knack I'd kill to have but you got a lot of work to do." He teased. It softened the atmosphere a little.

"I'm going to head home - you coming, Futaba?" She nodded. Jeez…just as things were starting to go on track again: a defection that was hard to swallow stymied that. Sojiro locked the door behind him so all I needed to do was turn off the appliances. Heading back upstairs, I got back into bed and provided some dry food for Mona.

"Joker. I've not seen Oracle as furious as she was today in a while…you should try and be more careful because she's listening in almost all of the time now. Her mother coming up of all things…"

"I know. It really is a delicate situation."

"Tomorrow, I'll keep tabs on the counsellor and see if there's anything I can find. Is that okay with you, Oracle?" Pipipipi…Opening up the phone, I happened to see a rather angrily worded response my way.

Futaba: "Seeing as it's free real estate, knock yourself out for all I care." That brought down the mood altogether and neither of us exchanged any more words for the rest of the night.