Histoire: Mind the Gaps (French version available : "Intervalles")

Date: posted the 10th of january 2023

Beta: None

Fandom: The World End With You

Avertissement: No, I don't own TWEWY and I'm not making any profit from this story.

Résumé: Just after the Long Game, Joshua saved and resurrected the rest of the Hashiko gang but was condemned by the Angels for his actions: He is confined to Shibuya and half of his powers have been sealed. Neku dies again but without his powers, Joshua cannot resurrect him. He takes him to safety anyway, which leads to M.H being banished by the Angels. Joshua is left alone to manage Shibuya, well not quite since he's got Shinjuku's scum on his hands. Months pass, Joshua is struggling to manage the UG without Sanae and Kitaniji and Shiki and the other reach out with an offer of friendship.

Trigger du chapitre: None I can think of


I may have info-dumped my theories of how the Game works, I admit. And so it's a very long chapter (for this story) I had trouble not exceeding 3K ^^'

But we needed a chapter with Kariya and Uzuki as Conductor, right ? :3

Enjoy your reading!


"And what about the next Game Master?" Joshua asked, sitting on the couch, knees crossed, a paper in one hand and a fountain pen in the other.

"Uzuki was thinking about 777, she wants to promote him to Reaper Officer so he can be officially in charge of initiating the recruits." Kariya replied from the couch facing his own.

"Not a bad idea..." Joshua agreed, quickly running his eyes over his paper before signing it and tossing it into one of the piles on the coffee table between them. "But you're sure he's going to be... strict enough?"

"We were thinking of assigning Suzune as his assistant, that should balance it out." Kariya explained with a shrug and Joshua nodded sagely. Suzune was a newly promoted Harrier who had adapted incredibly well to her new job after her death. Too well, really. As a Wall Reaper alone she'd found a way to rack up an obscene amount of points by meticulously planning mission objectives that bordered on the impossible. Neku had been lucky that she was off duty her first week and that Joshua had done everything to avoid her walls the second or he wouldn't have lasted long. Suzune giving no chance and 777 giving too much... hmmm... well, Joshua wished the Players luck.

"At worst, it will only be for one Game." Joshua concluded and Kariya nodded. One Game where 777 will have to take it upon himself and then he'll be dealing with paperwork and recruits full time... He won't have to be on the field anymore. It was better for him, Joshua thought, he would be happier. Kariya approved the motion with a checkmark on his own list and Joshua bent down to grab the next order of business.

Koki Kariya and the Shibuya Composer were comfortably seated in the Dead God Pad. Usually a favourite spot always more or less occupied by some bubbling Reaper or other, there was surprisingly no one else there this time. Well, not so surprising, since it was Joshua himself who had sealed the place. Sunday afternoons, for any Reaper who had served in Shibuya in recent years, were synonymous with holidays. Whether they were on duty or off duty, whether it was a game week or not, absolutely no one was allowed to work and the premises were closed to them until the following Monday. Well, nobody... nobody except the Conductor, the Producer and the Composer.

During a working week, the Games hours were variable according to the objectives assigned. It could be from 6am to 10am, from 12pm to 1pm or from 6pm to 11pm. All the time, except on Sundays when, invariably for as long as the oldest Reaper could remember, the Game took place in the late morning and ended in the early afternoon. This not only gave the Reapers a well-deserved break and let them work on their last-minute reports but also allowed the higher echelons to deal with the fallout from the last Game. In the past, when Joshua didn't have to wait for the approval of his Tuners for the smallest thing, he used this quiet time to make a final choice of which of the remaining players deserved to be returned to life. While waiting for his choice, or if it did not deserve as much consideration, he would do much the same as at present, except with Kitaniji rather than Kariya.

Logically, he should have even been doing the paperwork with Uzuki, the current Conductor. However, there were several reasons why he chose to face Kariya instead of his partner. Firstly, because of the Long Game, Kariya had come to guess who Joshua really was, and in his weakened state, the less he used his Composer form, the better he was. Secondly, Uzuki was, contrary to what one might have thought, a good mediator with her subordinates. Her leadership skills were better used to pacify, guide and organise the other Reapers, especially since the ones from Shinjuku had joined the ranks. And thirdly, Shinjuku was about to add another Kapla to the Jenga pile of Joshua's problems and it was in the best interests of his Reapers that no one had any contact with him.

Fortunately for Joshua, his Reapers were a suspicious bunch at first, and they'd only told the bare minimum about the rules of the Shibuya UG. Also, it clearly helped that almost all of his Officers had been wiped out in the Long Game and his former Lieutenants, now Officers, didn't know as much. Only Kariya knew that it was not normal for Joshua not to interact with his Officers. What was the point of staying isolated in his tower when he could spend some time in pleasant company or, even better, hassle his potential successors? After all, Minamimoto didn't know who he was from nowhere, his Officers had to know him to have a chance to erase him.

But... well, he didn't really want to give up his position at the moment and with his drastic loss of powers Joshua had preferred to remain anonymous. Information was power, and if challengers didn't know who he was, it was harder to find him or even get leverage against him. The only contact with the UG he had now were the Game preparation meetings with Uzuki where he kept his Composer form, the present meetings with Kariya and the soul passage hearings with the gracious presence of Father or Mother.

And besides...

Without a word to Kariya, he rose from the plane to resume his Composer form. The Reaper immediately swore under his breath, rubbing his eyes where the sudden flash of light had momentarily blinded him. He hadn't so soon lowered his hand and shot Joshua a bored look when the door to the bar slammed open, Uzuki storming into the living room, her heels clicking rhythmically on the glass of the fish tank.

"Another one! Those jerks have mis-...! Oh, um..." Uzuki began to shout before stopping short when she saw the Composer on the couch in front of her partner, legs crossed and face calm. "Composer." She greeted much more calmly before standing up straight next to Kariya's couch, suddenly the very picture of professionalism.

"Conductor." Joshua greeted imperiously and Uzuki relaxed noticeably at the words, her cheeks turning pink with pleasure and pride. Even after nearly five months, the young Reaper still didn't seem to be used to the title, and the same spark of innocent joy appeared every time someone treated her according to her rank. It was endless fun for Joshua, especially when Kariya rolled his eyes behind her as he was doing now. "Why so excited?"

Uzuki blushed again but this time with embarrassment. "Nothing for you to worry about, Sir." She assured. But when Joshua tilted his head and said nothing, she hastened to elaborate. "The... reinforcements from Shinjuku are simply having some difficulties fitting in."

"What have they done now?" complained Kariya as he slumped a little more into the couch. Joshua couldn't blame him, he'd carefully passed the problem of dealing with the Shinjuku Reapers onto them after all. Joshua was infinitely glad he didn't have to interact with them, even if he still suffered from all the problems they created. At least seeing Uzuki and Kariya suffer from it as well, it lightened his burden a bit.

Uzuki took a quick glance at the Composer but when he simply looked at her without interrupting, she replied to Kariya. "You know they were asking to have flats in Pork City?" Kariya nodded. Pork city was the main residential building for the Reapers. There were, admittedly, some who lived elsewhere in the city, but that was because they had moved out of it. All new recruits were given a room in one of the flats in Pork City free of charge for three months, i.e. the time of initiation. After these three months, they were expected to get back on their feet enough to start their job as an apprentice Reaper and find a small job on the side. They had another three months on half rent while they worked out what they wanted to do for the time being, and at six months they officially became Wall-Reapers and paid the full rent. They then had the choice of continuing the flatsharing, going into a flat on their own or leaving Pork City altogether and moving somewhere else. However, most Reapers would stay there at least a few more years, as the rents were cheaper than anywhere else in central Shibuya.

The worry was that, just after the Long Game, to support the Reapers who couldn't work on the side because they needed them in the UG, Joshua had rented flats to the living. This wasn't new, half the flats in Pork City were already rented to exclusive RG residents and it was those rents that supported most of the UG's operations in the RG. That and Gatito. All the tenants in the RG were carefully selected with certain criteria: they were either creatives or former players on their way to becoming their true self. So much so that Pork City had a reputation as a talent and celebrity hub and it was not difficult to find new tenants desperate to live there. That hadn't been a worry at first, Joshua had made a limited-time contract this time, warning new tenants that there was unlikely to be a renewal. Even with the wave of recruitments he'd started, he'd simply more people in a same flat and thought they'd stay a little longer this time. But of course, this was all before the arrival of the Reapers from Shinjuku. That hadn't been a problem at first, he'd provided them with Minamimoto's old flat and Higashizawa's as well as three or four free places in existing flatshares and that had done the trick. It was a bit tight, but with the loss of their old district, no one had complained. Especially since this system of cheaper flats providing a source of money for the Reapers, allowing them to devote time to their creative projects, which in turn fed and nurtured Shibuya... well, it was a very effective little system that had largely contributed to Shibuya's place at the top of the rankings, and it was purely Joshua's creation. That is to say, the Shinjuku Reapers were not used to these advantages and so it took them some time to understand how it worked. It must be said that Shinjuku did not have an appreciation for the minimum amount of work required to foster material stability and creative fervour. No, it was rather the opposite with them. To put it simply, with the Game taking place every week in Shinjuku, 90% of their workforce was constantly working. This gave the Game certain results, sure, and of course it helped the district as well, but it also meant that not only were their Graduated Players not always of good quality and therefore not very useful afterwards, but their Reapers didn't have the time or motivation to bring anything creative to the district. As a result, there was one of the highest burn out and turn over rates in Shinjuku. But one had to admit that those who remained were incredibly resilient. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger and all that...

All this to say that, when the Shinjuku Reapers had finally gotten used to the way Shibuya worked and had learned that Officers and Harriers usually got a flat on their own or in pairs, well, they had started to make some noise. The last he heard, they had started a meme campaign on the RG residents to get them to move out and get their flats back. Which wasn't to Joshua's liking, but he supposed mind control was better than going into total poltergeist mode and making Pork City lose value by turning it into a haunted place.

"Yeah well, they managed to get a former Player, the one from about a year and a half ago, which started his insurance company." She explained and both men nodded to indicate that they could see who she was talking about. He'd been a thirty-something a bit like Neku, Joshua recalled, an overeager businessman who had no time for his partner, a homeless forty-something who was barely hanging on to life. An odd pairing but one that had somehow worked. For the man, anyway. She, having helped her partner to reach the end, had asked to be erased. And he, touched by her kindness, had devoted his new life to helping people like her, who had lost everything to fraudulent insurance. Not that he remembered her, of course, but his determination remained. "But the others are resilient and obviously I tried to stop them. We really need the money with all these new Reapers." She growled. "And now they've started harassing the Harriers! I caught the big lizard girl threatening Suzu. 777 got there before me but she would have kicked his ass too if he wasn't still rooming with Tenho and BJ.

"That is problematic, indeed." Joshua muttered. None of the solutions were optimal. Chasing the living he'd carefully selected wasn't ideal whether it was for the money, the emulsion of ideas the flat fostered, and especially the imagination with which they fed Shibuya. As for the Reapers, they needed a place to live and the privilege of a solo flat had long been affiliated with rank. Favouring the brutality of Shinjuku against the traditions and rules of Shibuya seemed like a bad idea. But Uzuki was lost, otherwise she wouldn't have told him about the problem without outlining possible solutions.

"Come on, don't worry. It'll blow over." Kariya replied nonchalantly, but Joshua could sense that he was not as calm as his words : he didn't believe it for a second. Still, it served his purpose to calm Uzuki down a bit.

"We'll compromise. I'll get one of the living tenants out, he was going to decide to move out soon anyway. On your end, see if Suzu and the Reviewer would be okay to be roommates. With the insurance company's, that's three flats for the Shinjuku Reapers, let's hope they're happy with that until the situation stabilises." Joshua ordered and Uzuki nodded, invigorated by a clear task at hand.

Joshua didn't need Kariya's dubious look to know that they were headed straight into a dead-end.


Think about letting a review on your way out and see you the 20th for the continuation!