May 21st, 2016: Saturday

The further they went down into Mementos, the harder it was getting. Morgana was insistent on going as far down as they could, but after a week straight of going into not only Mementos but also Madarame's Palace, they needed a break.

Despite Morgana's protests, Akira had told everyone, including their new member Yusuke Kitagawa, to go home and rest for a few days. No one else wanted to argue with that. Ryuji and Ann decided to go get some ramen together, Yusuke went back to Madarame's shack, and Akira partly just wanted to stop existing for a few hours.

On the plus side, his exams scores were in the top 5 of his class. Yipee.

But as Akira was limping towards Leblanc, his eyes fell on the road leading to Takemi's clinic. He was trying to rationalize a reasoning for his decision, but they all came up short. They had plenty of medicine, the healing spells Morgana and Ann were equipped with were growing stronger, there was no need to participate in a trial today.

Truth was, he just wanted to see Takemi.

He and Morgana went their separate ways as he stepped into the clinic. He tried to hide the limp as best as he could, but the second he walked in, he knew Takemi had sensed something was wrong.

"What did you do?" she demanded, standing from her chair, and glaring at him.

Akira stopped and could only give a nervous grin. "So much for bedside manner, huh?"

That did nothing to dissipate her glare, so he shrunk in on himself and looked away. At least now he didn't have to pretend to not be hurt.

She shook her head and gestured to the exam room. "Just get in there. Let me take a look at you."

"Want to make sure I can survive a clinic trial?"

"We're not going to be doing a clinical trial," she said firmly and without room for argument.

"How'd you know I was hurt anyway?"

Takemi looked at him like he had grown a second head. "Have you looked in a mirror at all today?"

Akira raised an eyebrow.

Unbeknownst to him, he had been walking around the city with cuts and bruises the entire time. He had known he had taken a few good hits, but he was shocked it was as bad as it was.

Takemi got to work, efficiently bandaging up the various wounds along his face. They were minor enough that they wouldn't scar. At worst, people might just assume he had popped a few pimples one too many times.

"Another fight?" she asked, closing the cut above his eye. "You've been getting into a lot of trouble, you know."

"Well, everyone is so stressed with their studies," he tried to pass off, but the more than necessary pressure she applied to the final bandage told him what she thought of that.

"I've done all I can with your good looks," she said evenly. "Alright, remove your shirt. I'm sure you got issues there."

"No."

She blinked and tilted her head. "No?"

"I'd like to keep my shirt on."

"How am I supposed to deal with any injuries you have?"

A shrug. "I guess you don't."

She glared at him, but this time, he didn't budge. He kept a calm and even gaze until she sighed and turned away from him. "Fine. Not my problem if they get infected."

It was more than stubbornness. Okay, it was a little bit of that, but it was one thing for her to believe he got into the occasional fight. With his status as an outcast to the rest of Shujin, it wasn't like that was a leap in logic.

But burn scars? Electrical scarring? There was no way he could easily explain that away. It was just something he would have to deal with himself. The medicine she had been providing them did help to make it not nearly as bad as it could be, but that was not a conversation he was willing to have right now.

"Thank you," he said, putting his glasses back on.

She grunted. "You know you really should be taking proper care of yourself. Not even beyond avoiding fights like that. I can tell you still haven't been getting a lot of sleep and if you hadn't wanted to do a trial, those would have been left untreated."

Akira hid behind his glasses. "It's… for my exams."

She frowned at him and shook her head. That lie was becoming less and less believable, but he needed to stay the course. For now. There may come a day when their spells were powerful enough to no longer need the medicine.

That fact wasn't as comforting as it should be. Once these trials were done and once they no longer needed the medicine, what purpose would there be coming to see Takemi anymore?

The phone went off. She looked over her shoulder at it before turning back to him and saying, "This conversation isn't over."

He nodded.

She picked up the phone and answer, "Takemi Medical Clinic of Internal Medicine, how can I help you?... Again?... No, that ship has long sailed… You knew that before you called."

Akira could hear the person on the other end hang up, the dial tone filling the room.

Without a word, she returned the phone to the cradle. He half expected her to take a second and then turn back to berating him, but that just… never came. She just stared at her computer.

He wasn't sure what that was about, and he wasn't sure if now was the right time to ask, so he changed course and asked a different question, one that was on the back on his mind.

"How's that girl doing?"

She turned around and raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"The one with the stomach ache. Her father brought her in. Is she doing alright?"

"Is this you trying to distract me?"

"It couldn't hurt. Take your mind off things."

She laughed and shook her head. "No, I suppose it wouldn't. She's doing fine. Her father insists on coming here for more checkups. I tried to refer him to another hospital, one with proper equipment, but he refuses. I even told him about my medical error, but nothing's worked. I'm not sure what's wrong with him."

"I can answer that."

"Can you?"

"Yeah. They trust you. Just like me."

"That's…" She looked down. "Why? I'm just a quack."

"Are you?"

Takemi looked at him. "The medical error I made is very well-documented. Everyone in my field knows about it. I was the lead developer on a new drug for Crawford-Ende's disease."

Akira shook his head. "I've never heard of it."

"Not surprised. It's rare. It attacks other cells in the body indiscriminately, and once it gets to the muscles, the patient will begin to die. There hasn't been a cure developed due to how few cases there are. But regardless, even though I wasn't the one who administered the medicine, it was still my drug. My mistake."

That sounded wildly unfair, but Akira kept silent so Takemi could continue.

She leaned forward towards him. "The pharmaceutical company I worked for got to the final stages of development. We were so close, it was right in front of us."

"But something happened," Akira surmised.

"One day, I was suddenly removed from the development of the drug. No one ever told me why, only that things had changed. Oyamada, my superior at the time, took over the entire operation."

"That's pretty shady."

"Agreed. I'm not sure if it was the fame, or the money, a combination of the two, but he rushed it to completion. He didn't do his due diligence and administered it to a patient named Miwa, a little girl. She had an adverse reaction and went into critical condition. As such, the bastard panicked and blamed me. I was fired and was told I'm lucky to not have my medical license stripped."

She wiped at her eyes. "Miwa-chan and her family resented me for it… Nothing I could say would change their mind."

Akira frowned. He barely noticed his hand clenching into a fist and his teeth grinding. How many times would good people be ground up and spat out all in the name of earning a quick buck or a name to go in the history books? For innocent people to suffer due to the egos of the rich and privileged?

"Bullshit," he growled.

Takemi blinked and looked over to him, her eyes wide. "What did you just say?"

"I said, that's bullshit." He felt a fire ignite in his heart. She was used, abused, and tossed to the side like yesterday's trash. He got to his feet and started pacing back and forth. "You weren't the one who administered the drug. You weren't the one who rushed it. None of the blame should have been placed on you to begin with. It's that Oyamada's fault, he should have been the one to face the consequences!"

She leaned back, taken off guard by his outburst. He began to grow self-conscious and felt his face heat up. He sat down on the stool next to her and curled in on himself. "That's… I guess that's just an outsider's perspective."

Takemi blinked before looking away and clearing her throat. "Yes, I… I'll take your opinion under advisement."

Akira kicked himself. Normally he was better about keeping a cool head. Why did he just fly off the handle like that?

"Doesn't really matter, though." She turned back to face him and shrugged. "Regardless of who's really to blame, development was suspended. Now, I'm just a general practitioner with the help of my guinea pig, working on my own terms."

Akira slowly nodded. "The trials… you're trying to finish that cure, aren't you? It's for Miwa-chan?"

"Yes. We're in the final stages now. The drugs I've been developing searches for the cells that take the offensive and destroys them upon detection. It's harmless for people who don't have the disease… probably."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Akira got to his feet and hopped up onto the bed. "Let's get this trial on the road."

"Are you nuts? In your condition, you're less than useless."

"I can take it. There's a little girl's life on the line. The sooner we're done, the better."

"Why do you even care?" Takemi asked. "You don't even know her."

"I don't have to."

"That's moronic."

"It's…" He rubbed the back of his neck and looked away. "I'm not from Tokyo. I'm from a small fishing town, Meguro."

"And?"

"About half a year ago, something happened when I was walking home at night. I saw a guy trying to hurt a woman. I had no idea what he was going to do, but I knew it was going to be bad. She looked scared, and I couldn't just do nothing. So, I did the only thing I could do."

"What? Did you call the police and let them deal with it?"

"No. I stepped in. I told him to back off."

"You really are insane."

He grinned a devilish grin. "Never said I wasn't. I wasn't scared of the guy, though. He could barely stand on his own two feet, he was so drunk. I got his attention, but the dumbass tripped and fell and busted his face open.

"Would have been the end of it, but… that's when a couple police officers showed up. They asked questions, the guy lied through his teeth and said I just attacked him and his secretary out of nowhere."

Akira frowned and pushed up on his glasses. It was still sometimes hard to talk about.

"The woman was scared. I don't blame for her what she did. Doesn't make me less angry."

"What did she do?" Takemi asked.

"The guy threatened her, so she corroborated his story. Pointed the finger at me and said it was all my fault."

"That's… that's horrible."

Akira shrugged. "Didn't seem like she had much choice. Given how quickly they believed him, I assume the guy has a certain amount of power. They arrested me on the spot. Less than a month later, I was getting shipped out to spend my parole in Tokyo."

"Good God," Takemi breathed.

"It's my fault, really," Akira said. "I saw someone that needed help and I couldn't just turn away. That'd be no different than doing the deed myself."

"It's not your…" Takmei stopped and pursed her lips. She raised an eyebrow and leaned back. "Is there supposed to be some application to my situation?"

Akira grinned. "Maybe a little. But you want to know something? I haven't told anyone this. But if I was sent back to that day, that exact same spot, do you know what I'd change?"

Takemi shook her head.

"Nothing. I'd do it all over again. Every single time."

"Why on Earth would you do that to yourself?"

"Because if we can't step up and help each other, what's the point of living? That woman needed help getting away from that man. I made that happen. You need help curing Miwa-chan. I'm going to make that happen. And to do that, we'll need to get started on those clinical trials, won't we?"

He held out a hand and awaited her decision. She glanced up at his still smiling face, down at the hand, and back up again. After only a moment's consideration, she reached up and took it.

"Indeed, we will," she agreed. She pulled back her hand and crossed her arms. "However, I'm still not going to perform a trial on you today. Take tonight and tomorrow off. Come back in a few days when you've had a chance to recover. Then we'll see if you're feeling the same."

"Right." He slid off the bed, still feeling sore, but much better than when he came in.

As she handed back his bag to her, she said, "Now hurry home. I have things to do."

"The medicine?"

"No. I have to figure out a way to scare off that father and his daughter." She brought a pen to her lips. "Being mean and scary hasn't worked… What else can I do?"

Akira snickered as he exited the examination room.

Akira stripped off his shirt and let it fall to the side. Sojiro already left for the day, meaning he didn't need to explain his bandages to him. The old man tried to act tough, but the longer he was here, the more he could see the big softie hiding behind it.

His phone went off in his pocket and he brought it to his ear. "Hello?"

"Hi, guinea pig. How are you feeling today? Did you make it home alright?"

"You know, doctor, if you wanted to check up on me, you could have sent a text." He couldn't fight the smile on his face.

"Cute. I just wanted to make sure you didn't die on the way home."

"Not yet, but who knows, maybe next time will be the one to do it?"

"Maybe. I also wanted to apologize. I really wasn't planning on telling you all of that."

He took a seat on the bed. "No, that's fine. I'm happy you told me. I think it was something that you needed to get off your chest."

"Just like how you needed to tell me about your parole?"

"I hope me being a convicted felon doesn't change your mind about our deal."

"No more than me being a quack changed yours. Thanks to your cooperation, progress on the drug is going smoothly. We're almost at the finish line. If there are no issues with the next sample—Hold on."

"Takemi-san?"

He heard her scoff over the phone. "Sorry, looks like I have a patient. I think it's that girl and her dad again. What a pain… I have to go, I'll see you later."

She hung up and Akira fell back onto his bed. It felt good that Takemi was willing to trust him with all of that. She seemed, well, happy wasn't the right word, but a weight was certainly lifted off her shoulder.

Now, however, it was a race against time. As soon as his body was feeling better, first thing he would do is the next clinical trial. For Miwa-chan.

For Takemi.

On his perch, Morgana silently watched as Akira drifted off to sleep with a smile on his face. He'd been smiling like that every time he was coming home from those trials with that shady doctor.

He hummed to himself and rested his chin on his paws. Something was going through Akira's mind. It wasn't a concern as of yet, but there was more to these clinical trials than he was saying. That much he was certain of.