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There was a moment of confusion the morning of Akechi’s 27th birthday. It was just the proper age to forget that he was turning 27, until he felt Makoto roll over from her side of the bed to press a kiss to the nape of his neck. She held onto his shoulder gently, slightly surprised to wake and see that he had turned at some point at the night to face away from her.
“Happy birthday, Goro,” she whispered softly into his ear.
He was a morning person, and the kiss naturally spurned more thoughts and turned more cogs than it should have. But, he sighed and continued sleeping. He had registered the remark, and only when he started to think about all the things he had to attend to at work did he fully realize it was his birthday.
Akechi heard her chuckle softly before raining gentle kisses on his cheek and temple.
“Someone’s eager,” he mumbled without opening his eyes.
“Mhmm, and it’s usually you. But, not today,” she hummed, pressing another eager kiss to his neck.
He felt all the hairs on the back of his neck stand up straight as she tucked a strand of his hair away and pressed another kiss there. He let the slightest tremor in his throat erupt before he gave her one last chance to pull away. Makoto was relentless, however, and the kisses were no longer just innocent pecks. She gave another before he let out a full moan and turned over in one motion. Akechi pressed her half-turned body into the bed and returned the favor, attacking her with kisses of his own.
“Ack-! Stop-!”
“Tease,” he murmured in laughter against her skin.
It became no surprise to her that her ministrations led him to press his body into hers, making her feel the consequences of her actions. Makoto sighed briefly when he pulled her hand close to his navel, squirming slightly before rolling away back to her side of the bed. Akechi frowned for a moment before following suit, pulling her against his chest and breathing in the scent of her freshly-washed hair.
“I have to go in today,” he said quietly, watching the curl of her lashes blink from realization.
She inhaled deeply.
“I forgot what today was,” he said quickly, “You didn’t make plans did you?”
“No,” she said simply, “You told me not to.”
She heard him whisper an apology, soft enough for her to barely hear it. But, Makoto understood, as she always did. He could tell that she was sullen about it, mulling in defeat at his wish.
He reached for her left hand, pressed his thumb into the diamond on her ring finger and twisted it around in one revolution.
“What?” she asked in the slightest annoyed tone.
Akechi did this every so often whenever he knew she was angry. She didn’t often allow it, but the few times he had successfully caught her hand and pulled her close to him just so he could remind her again who she was, and who she belonged to, he had taken her breath away with the gesture. Since then, he’d use this little tactic in arguments, especially when she was angry with him.
He pulled her hand out of the covers and held it to the sunlight of the window. In the light, he could see all cuts and curves in the diamond and for a slight moment, even he felt her hand was heavier than the other given the ring on her finger.
“Don’t be angry,” he said, pressing a kiss to her hand.
“I’m not,” she said with a sigh, “Just disappointed.”
“Don’t be disappointed,” he told her, “It’s just any other day.”
Akechi promised that she could make him dinner. He had opted to have her meet him after he finished up work at the office and they could stroll through Yoyogi Park or something informal, but she opted to return his favor from her birthday just two months ago. He grimaced slightly, but reluctantly agreed in the end. She pressed a kiss to his cheek before he took off, reaching for his hand the way he did with hers.
“Using my tactic against me?” he mused.
“Why not?” she said with a smile, spinning the wedding band once, “Do you ever take this off?”
“Never.”
“Not even when looking over evidence?” she pressed.
“No,” he said.
“How are you so sure it doesn’t tamper with it?” she asked with a frown.
He smiled before leaning forward and kissing her slowly on the lips.
“A story for another time,” he promised.
“And what if I never see you again?” she hypothesized.
“Don’t pick up my morbid curiosities,” he laughed, “If anything, how about my libido-“
“Go to work,” she said, rolling her eyes.
———
The train was packed for a Sunday. Akechi didn’t know why that was the case, but he elected to stand for the rest of the commute to work. A part of him realized he shouldn’t have been so eager to run an analysis on his coworker’s case, but he was. It was only unfortunate that it fell on his birthday, and he had completely forgotten.
Akechi didn’t realize he lost his ring until he got off the train. He stood still for a moment, his heart frozen and his eyes wide in realization. His head felt heavy as he stared off into space and retraced this realization. He called Makoto immediately, allowed his phone to dial three times before he ended the call.
Like clockwork, she returned his call almost immediately and he felt every fiber of his being panic. Akechi couldn’t even answer with salutations before she spoke up.
“Did you call me?” she asked urgently.
“No,” he lied.
She was silent on the other end.
“...Was it an accident?” she asked slowly.
“Sort of,” he said blandly.
“Did something happen?” she asked even slower.
“I thought… I left something at home, but turns out I have it.”
“Huh.”
There was a silence for a bit until Makoto wished him a good day at work, and he was standing alone in the station, retracing his steps.
He knew it was gone. Either someone caught him properly off guard and had taken it right off his hand- maybe he dropped it? All sorts of considerations went through his head as he stood in the middle of the station pondering this. One thing for certain, though —he couldn’t tell Makoto.
Akechi felt like a piece of him was gone, and quite literally, it was the case. But this was a phantom feeling, that something was just dreadfully wrong without it, and he could never feel the same until the ring was returned in its rightful spot.
This feeling plagued him as he wandered the station looking aimlessly for it. He careened in places where he knew he didn’t drop it because he couldn’t confront the realization he had lost it to begin with. There was no way he was making it into the office today.
The price was no big deal, and Akechi was hardly one to be sentimental given his youth, but he had things that were important to him now. He cherished the bond he had with Makoto the most, and the symbol of their love and promise had simply vanished. Of course, he might have been rational and logic his way out of the social constructs of marriage and material items representing feelings - but this was Makoto.
Niijima Makoto.
Niijima-Akechi Makoto.
He knew that Makoto’s natural instinct would have been to push aside all her emotions immediately and focus on the task at hand. Find that ring.
For Akechi, it was almost too easy to simply give up and recognize that it was gone forever. He could’ve elected to buy another - it was a simple band that he and Makoto had picked up together at the jewelry store. She specifically wanted something inexpensive so that he could take it on and off very easily for work. Naturally, this assumption on her part didn’t apply to him as he wore it wherever he went.
All the dirt, scratches and buffs on the ring were a symbol of their marriage, and as logical and rational as he could be, he couldn’t weasel out of the grasp of his emotions weighing him down.
Akechi especially hated it when people in passing - friends - would give him letters or things they made in class. Every time he saw that these kids would phase out of friendship with him when he moved school, he properly tossed those items away and forgot about them. But Akechi never actually forgot - a curse that he was going to live with in the shadow of his loneliness for much of his youth. Was there room to forget? There were rarely any people that made an impact enough to consider him more than an acquaintance.
In the spur of this loneliness, Akechi had met Makoto under circumstances that shouldn’t have made them anything but strangers. To go from having absolutely nothing to having Makoto - everything - it was not something he could take for granted or take lightly.
That’s what the wedding band symbolized, he told himself. And so, the charismatic detective with no friends grew sentimental when he met the love of his life.
Akechi wandered aimlessly for an hour in the station before he decided he would take that stroll in the park he offered Makoto. He knew there would be no consequences from his wife for losing the ring, but no amount of reassurance or sympathy would change that the ring likely sat in someone’s pocket now.
The problem with conviction is that there will always be a part of your truth that gnaws at you while you’re asleep. He knew the address to the store, he knew his ring size and everything would be a natural transaction to fill that void on his finger. But the truth of the matter was much harder to hide from. Deep down, it’s why Akechi is so good at what he does as a detective.
Everything has its truth, but those with the conviction to know they’re right often miss the truth. No matter what he did, Akechi knew he would lose sleep over this consciousness. Even those who are truly villainous know this truth.
He sighed in this revelation, shrugging off his blazer when the afternoon heat shined down on him through the mosaic patterns of the trees. Akechi didn’t know what to do. Obviously there were better options that he hadn’t explored, but matters of the heart did not make for easy solutions.
Logically speaking, what was one thing he could do out of the many that he considered? He thought about this on the bench while he stared at the discolored band around his finger, likely from wearing it quite literally everywhere. He wouldn’t have been surprised if he had tanned everywhere but that pale band around his finger.
Akechi returned home when the sun became too much to bear in the early June heat. He might have opted to stay out the entire day considering all of these options, but he chose to do nothing. He thought about what Makoto might have done.
She definitely wouldn’t have taken a day off of work for it. She’d spend most of her time thinking and retracing her steps, but throwing out anything that didn’t make sense to her. Makoto was too careful of a person to assume that someone might have just slipped it off her finger, so she would’ve first looked at home.
But he had felt her fingers laced around his that morning, her pretty face upturned in a radiant smile when she pulled away from the kiss. The moment was so perfect, and he had lost all semblance of time and construct that maybe - just maybe - the ring truly did vanish into thin air and he wouldn’t have noticed it because all he could see was Makoto.
He sighed again when he got on the train, sulking at this loss of a scenario. There was peace and freedom in honesty, and he felt his heart ease ever so slightly when he told himself he’d tell Makoto the second he returned home. Akechi knew she would shrug it off and opt to go with him next weekend to buy another. But, that was the band she had placed on his hand on that god forsaken wedding all their friends had planned for them. It was irreplaceable.
He felt like an asshole for feeling bad for himself. Makoto lectured him often for this, and all he could really do was move on from the matter. He tried to adopt this mindset quickly when he made the final switch on the line home, and then realized he couldn’t.
Akechi was not an emotional being because it’d be such a toll on his job. But there was only one thing he really cared about in this world, and the emotional turmoil that came with those feelings wracked him so endlessly that he felt he might die of heartache from the amount of love he could feel for someone. It was so deep and so painful that the conviction of knowing that he was capable of something like this was what gnawed him from the inside out. To put it plainly, he loved Makoto so much that even the slightest disruption caused irrevocable pain and joy.
He didn’t think about the door, or how he might unlock it. There was no use in analyzing the walk of shame home. He felt like he could breathe at the very least now that he was around Makoto again. The sounds from the kitchen notified him that he had walked in on her cooking.
The footsteps on the wood notified him that she was coming.
“You’re earlier than expected,” she said, eyes wide and slipping off her oven mitts as she spoke, “They let you off work because they found out it’s your birthday?”
“Something happened,” he said.
“With the case? What’s wrong with the evidence?” she asked.
“Nothing. Nothing with the case,” he said in irritation, “I-“
His brows furrowed when she tucked the oven mitts under her arm. The usual ring that sparkled so obviously under any light was gone. She may as well have been unmarried or a widow and no one would have been wiser about the matter.
“Where’s your ring?” he asked slowly.
“I put it upstairs,” she said simply, “I never cook with it on.”
“Do you leave it on at work?” he asked her with the slightest growing scowl.
“... Sometimes. Not always. When I’m on duty I don’t as much-“
“Makoto.”
“What?”
He waited a few more seconds in silence. The vent for the oven was on, and she was clearly antsy about returning to her cooking. In those few seconds, Akechi wondered what he did to deserve someone like her. There were so little words that could describe properly the feelings he felt, but in that moment, he wanted nothing more than to kiss her and reassure himself that everything was fine - until he saw what she wore around her neck.
“That’s…”
“Your ring,” she said with a smirk, “You left it with your keys.”
“My keys.”
“You forgot your keys,” she said.
“I forgot my ring.”
“Yes, well, you wouldn’t have been able to get inside with your keys. Luckily, I was home.”
“We have a spare under the doormat,” he said robotically.
“The spare is with Sae because guess how many apartments my team were able to break in because the tenants simply left a spare under the rug?”
Akechi wasted no time before rushing to her and kissing her hard. Even in her muffled explanation, he felt the love that was so endless and so frightening grow deeper by the second. He pressed his fingers to the back of her neck, feeling the clasp and the silver of the necklace. He grabbed her face, so afraid to pull away.
“So you opted to wear it as a necklace, then?” he asked, out of breath.
“I do that sometimes with mine,” she said with a secretive smile, reaching for the gold band around her neck, “I can’t lose it.”
“Can’t, hm? I thought we specifically bought inexpensive ones for the purpose of losing it,” he reminded her.
“It was for the insurance of my anxiety. I wouldn’t feel good about an expensive wedding band on top of a million yen ring,” she said quietly.
“It was 11 billion,” he reminded her again.
She sighed, wondering how much of a fortune he made from Shido’s case. Some things were better left unsaid.
“I thought I lost it,” he told her softly.
“Why do you think I don’t wear mine? I’m too afraid of losing it,” she said with a shrug.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he continued quietly, reaching for the band on her neck, “Perhaps it’s best that you wear a piece of me with you always.”
“A piece of you?” she asked, glowing.
“I felt like I lost a part of myself when I thought I lost my ring,” he said with a scoff at himself, “I kept reaching to touch for it only to realize it wasn’t there.”
“Sounds like the worst birthday ever,” she said with a half smile.
“I’ve had worse,” he said with a smirk.