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You silently count your last remaining coins onto the cashier counter. You’re five hundred yen short. “Shit.” You grit your teeth. Your breath is hot against the inside of your face mask, and it tastes like embarrassment. “Would it...I need to put the drinks back. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”
The man behind the counter has a face younger than his greying hair would suggest. He stares down at the two bottled drinks. Condensation is dripping down their sides, and for a moment, those droplets are the only thing inside this stale convenience store that moves.
“Keep ‘em,” he says, and slides them over the counter along with the protein bars, the box of bandages, antiseptic and disposable razors. “Don’t worry about it.”
You can’t help but wince, but nod. “Thank you. You’re very kind.” You speak quietly. Even in a higher register, in a convenience store at half past 11 at night, the fear still squirms across the back of your mind that he could recognize your voice. That anyone could.
Your hair is longer now, but less shaggy than before. It was never quite as long as you wanted it back then. Now? Now it’s close. You can put it up in a ponytail, and that probably helps obscure the boy you used to be. You dyed it black the first few weeks. That was an investment that couldn’t last, so back to chestnut brown for the foreseeable future. Your companion cut her hair short, but you would rather die than do the same. For the time being, you keep on hoping that your baggy hoodie, facemask, and the lack of television makeup will fool the few vestiges of the world still allowed to perceive you in any capacity.
The man clears his throat. “I know it’s none of my business,” he says. “But I can’t help but wonder...well, do you and your girlfriend have somewhere to stay for the night?”
You smile into your mask. Girlfriend. Inaccurate by a wide margin. Categorically impossible; your attraction to her could never be anything more than trust and envy in equal measures. But it’s cute that he thinks that. “We do. Thank you for your concern, but we’re staying with a family friend tonight.” It would be a sweet lie, except for the fact that you know better than to show your back to a stranger. Neither of you are desperate enough tonight to risk that sort of kindness.
“Good, good,” the man says, giving a smile. “Well, you have a good evening, alright? Stay safe out there."
You nod again, and collect your things, and make your way out. She’s sitting on the bottom of the steps, exactly where you left her, and you sit down next to her. Silently, you hand her one of the drinks. “It’s strawberry,” you say. “That is your favorite, isn’t it?”
Haru takes the drink from you with a smile. “On blue-moon nights, I’m more partial to peach. But this would not be one of those.”
Your gaze travels upwards as she undoes the cap and takes a sip. The sky is dark, with only a sliver of moon. Even a few dozen kilometers away from the edge of Tokyo, the metropolitan lights and storefront neon still pollute the air, veiling the stars. It is like staring up at a sea of still and silent pitch.
“When you look too long into the abyss,” you mutter. “The abyss also looks into you.”
Haru hums a thought. “Nietzsche?”
“He’s a hack,” you say, immediately. Can’t have her getting the wrong impression. “He just happens to be a very quotable hack.”
“I see,” she giggles. “You’re a girl with quite the repertoire of quotable hacks. Is there even a single philosopher you do agree with?”
You scoff. “Philosophers, by and large, are dime-a-dozen bundles of pretense and privilege. And most who buck the trend are critiqued into dust and written out of the field.”
“You’re dodging the question, Freya,” she sighs. There’s still a playful lilt to her words. Haru enjoys playing these sorts of games. Pushing steadily against your little evasive habits, the ways you skirt even the slightest of vulnerability. You can say no. There’s never an obligation. But there’s always a challenge.
“Bell hooks,” you reply. “Marx. Kafka; though he is technically not a philosopher, I find his writings on loneliness to be quite enlightening. And Diogenes.”
Haru hums to herself. “Kafka and Diogenes,” she repeats. “Chitin and fowls.” She turns to smile at you in that saccharine way that belies a smirk. “How quaint.”
You scoff. “The plucked chicken was critique, not thesis. It was a theatrical middle finger towards Plato’s overly reductive definitions of the human condition; his most well-known stunt, not a magnum opus. Certainly not comparable to Metamorphosis .”
“ Ah ,” she says, in that smug way that makes you want to dunk your head into the nearest body of water and scream. “Now I understand. You’re quite the fan of those sorts of stunts, aren’t you? Petty and theatrical does sound like your wont.”
“Shut the fuck up,” you growl back. You busy yourself with the cap on your drink while she giggles away. This time, she’s won her own game. They aren’t fair rules. But you keep on playing. Sometimes you even win. Even when you do, even when she cedes her inquiry and admits her satisfaction, even when you are the smug one in your fashioned vulnerability, she still smiles. So graceful, so proud, even in defeat. One of the many things you love about her. One of the many things you envy about her. One of the many things that might get you both killed.
***
Haru works quickly and effectively, and does not leave you waiting.
It’s only a half hour after she slipped out of reality when the business man you’ve been watching from across the cafe closes his laptop. He looks sick. Eyes darting around the room, gaze glassy, forehead slick. He makes eye contact with you, and you raise your right hand, two fingers up. A peace sign. It made you both laugh when you thought of it. He goes even more pale.
The man stands up unsteadily, wobbles for the first few steps, and crosses the cafe to you. You stay seated. Nothing out of the ordinary here. “I’m...I-I’m supposed to...” He swallows hard.
“Debit card and pin would be the easiest,” you reply, your voice light and low and sweet.
He nods quick and jerky, like a bobblehead flicked between the eyes, and fishes in his pocket for his wallet. He almost drops it on the floor, but manages to pull out the card and hand it to you. You pull it from between his shaking fingers and slip it into the front pocket of your hoodie. Easy to access. Easy to discard. “One, t-two, eight, ni-nine,” he says. A rivulet of blood slides out of his left nostril.
Your hands are good for killing. You made a practice of it, under your father’s guidance, before you met her. You learned how to slit cognitive throats, to turn neural pathways into static mush, to crash the software of the mind. Haru, however, has a subtler touch. Her other self can weave her fingers into cognition, bend it, redirect those dark and guilty thoughts. You’ve seen how she vivisects Shadows. It would be horrifying if every one of your targets didn’t deserve it.
“Thank you very much for your service,” you say. “You can go back to your work now.”
He turns, making his way back across the cafe, every step seeming like it might be his last. Knowing Haru, she’ll leave him barely cognizant. She enjoys allowing them the chance at rehabilitation. If he can claw himself back to lucidity, if he has retained his will to live after the guilt she just flooded his psyche with, then that will be fine. The suffering of that recovery, the permanent damage to his cognition, will substitute the penalty of death. And if not, he’ll be yet another braindead scumbag. A statistic for next month’s news report.
Picking your targets isn’t easy. Doing research on cheap burner phones and public computers, finding abusers on vile forum pages and sending messages to victims - each time, comparing those names to the ones on the Phantom Aficionado site to ensure you don’t cross paths with unwanted meddlers. It’s a taxing process. The police are morons, you know that firsthand, but you still can’t leave too many clues. The Thieves are more clever than them by far. So most of your victims, you simply kill from afar and clean your hands of. No loose ends. Nothing to tie them back to you.
But then there are the few that you leave to Haru’s expertise. Local white-collar scumbags you can brainwash into handing over their finances; the only way either of you are paying for your necessities. Monsters in and around Tokyo that she can stir into erraticism, into public displays of penance. Police officers and politicians that she can torment with nightmares and psychosis, manipulate them into calling a press conference to convey a message from the Black Masks - from you and she, from the puppeteers behind each and every collapse.
You’re the one who so often crafts the patterns for her to weave, playing chess with the Phantom Thieves as if you and Haru are just around the corner, ready to pop out and kill them all, and not conducting your business in a completely different prefecture. In truth, they might be a thorn in both your sides, but they’re an infinitely useful thorn. They do an excellent job of covering your bases, changing the hearts of those you two don’t have time to kill, and keeping the SIU’s focus divided.
It almost makes you sad to think about how you’ll have to scapegoat them one of these days. Better them than you; but you will miss them. Doing the right thing is never as fun if you don’t have someone to mock while doing it.
You focus on your coffee, taking a nice long sip of it, savoring the sickly sweet flavor. You can never understand what Haru likes about bitter coffee. You might be a connoisseur, but life is too short not to drown your veins in glucose.
Once only the syrup dregs remain at the bottom of your cup, you pull your facemask back up and slide out from your seat. You raise a hand to the barista, nodding in thanks, and then stroll away. Across the cafe, and out the door. You don’t spare even a glance towards the business man. He’s a stranger. He’s beneath you. And you have more important things to do than waste time on a dead man.
***
You open your eyes.
The hotel room is dark. But the wall you face holds the implication of brightness.
Your throat is dry. You roll over on your bed, facing the other wall.
Haru is sitting in the large armchair next to the window, hugging her legs against her chest. She’s wearing one of her oversized sweaters; pink looking pale and faded in the moonlight. You’ve both staggered your insomnia, ensuring that one of you is always awake when the other rests, that at no point are both of you asleep at the same time. At no point are you both defenseless. Her gaze is towards the parking lot.
You shift. Reach out for the nearby water bottle, uncap it, and take a long sip. Then you stand. You cross around her bed, and sit down on the edge of it.
Haru doesn’t often cry in front of you. But she has been. Her eyes are bloodshot, her cheeks and upper lip wet with saline and mucus.
“There was a woman who would babysit me,” she says, quietly. Her voice is frail, but unbreaking. As strong as she always is. “She would...take care of me, when my father was...busy. A friend of his. I considered her...my aunt, almost. She was kind to me. I know that I would not be who I am now without the strength she taught me.”
A shudder escapes her. “She left our life before things went wrong. And I hate her for it.” Her fingers curl against her legs, digging her nails into the soft fabric of her sleep pants. “I want to kill her for leaving me there. For leaving me alone with the man who manipulated my sense of reality, who sold me to a predator . For...” Haru laughs quietly, bitterly. “I want to kill a woman who was never anything but kind for being allowed to leave him. Because she was free when I was not. And apparently, I think she deserves to die for that.”
“Why stop at her?” you ask, your voice marred by shallow sleep. “There are millions of people who will never know our scars. Who will breathe fresh air their whole lives while children like us sleep in alleys and die at twenty. All those innocent , ignorant motherfuckers.” Your hands curl and uncurl against your thighs. “Don’t they deserve some pain too? Doesn’t everyone deserve to hurt like we hurt?”
She smiles in that plastic way she sometimes does. “Your bloodlust is showing, Freya dear.”
You smirk back, for just a moment. “Why her? Why cry over one more bitch who didn’t save you?”
“Why indeed.” Haru turns her gaze back to the window, to the parking lot below.
And you are quiet, for a time.
You begin to feel restless before she finally speaks again. “I was thinking of the little boy that she helped raise. Because, if she ever knows the person that boy became, that little odd and feminine creature, I’m sure she would feel so aghast.” A strained, awful laugh. “It would upset her delicate temperament. She was a very proper woman like that.” Haru peels her hands off her legs, turning her palms to face her, staring down at them. “I am a person who knows what it is to love with one hand and kill with the other. I wondered...what that boy would think of that.”
She lowers her gaze, closing her eyes. Some mixture of tears and exhaustion. “I wonder what he’d think of me. Everything he wanted to be, and every monster he once feared. Could that boy ever love me? Ever think of me kindly, knowing I was the one who would take his father away from him?” Haru laughs now, and it does not hide her sob. “Because he doesn’t know. He is as innocent as she is. He doesn’t know what it feels like to have the kindness trained out of you, to spend a night stiff in bed until your bruises lull you to sleep. And he won’t know, because I slaughtered every man who could ever hurt him like that. Would he consider that a kindness!? Or would he just see the same monstrous thing in me that every other fucking person sees!?”
Her voice, raised briefly, is stifled. Haru is all but silent, shaking, holding herself tight. Even her breakdowns are clean and quiet. So careful. So precise. So sickeningly unintrusive.
You do not stand. But you cross the distance. From the bed to her side, and you wrap your arms around her, and she grabs onto your shirt and clings to you, burying her face in your shoulder. And you close your eyes and hold her and say nothing as she sobs against you. There’s nothing you can say. Because there is not a single word of comfort or reassurance that does not taste like a lie against your tongue. And, of every person in the entire world, Haru is the one who most deserves the truth.
***
The bar was Joker’s suggestion. Owned by a friend of his in Shinjuku. It’s still his home field, but it’s the closest you’ll come to neutral territory away from prying eyes. If you and Haru are to even consider working with the Thieves, and that’s a very sizable “if,” it requires an even playing field - bare minimum. The gun tucked in your waistband should help keep things very, very straightforward, if it comes to that. Haru similarly has a knife tucked into her sleeve. You’ve prepared for the worst as best you both can with no allies, no backup and no exit plan beyond the obvious one.
And, for the first time in a long few months, you board the train back to Tokyo.
The ride is quiet. Few passengers, you were able to just slip in after rush hour. And now here you are. Two young women with blood-soaked hands sitting on the train together. Just...waiting.
“It’s not too late to run,” you say. “We could get off at the next station, get farther off the grid. Change haircuts, get new clothes, pick our targets more carefully.”
“You said they have Medjed on their side,” she replies.
You purse your lips. “I don’t know for sure. But with how quickly the Thieves solved their conflict with that collective earlier this year, and how they pulled information off our burner accounts, it only makes sense the two forged some manner of alliance.”
“Then we’d be delaying the inevitable,” Haru says. “They’d find us, eventually. That’s not a very promising prospect.” The train rumbles beneath you both. Her gaze wanders off, out through the windows towards the buildings that seem to be passing you by. “And, in all honesty, I’ve grown rather sick of simply running.”
“Ah,” you say. You smile. “As have I.”
Neither of you say a word, for a time.
“Freya,” Haru says. “I’ve known since we first became friends that this would end in our deaths. I never had any doubt in my mind. And...maybe that day isn’t today. But maybe it is.” She takes a deep breath in, and then lets it out slowly. “For what it is worth, if today is our last, then I’m glad I get to die next to you.”
It takes you a while to choke down the knot in your throat, but you manage. “Thank you,” you whisper. “And...I’m glad too. There’s no one else I’d rather have done this with.”
Her hand finds yours, and you take it, and squeeze it tight.
And for the half hour before your transfer, for that wonderfully long time, you feel the closest to safe that you’ve been in seventeen years.