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After half an hour of inefficient, messy work, Ryuji bangs his hands on the table with the countenance of a man who’s served his time and is done running, announces, eyes wide - “I effin’ hate crabs.”
Makoto stifles a laugh. Haru sees her mouth ghost over her palm, the sweaty mush of meat still thick around her fingers, and looks away quickly, flushed. “I think we’ve gathered that by now,” she teases.
Ryuji turns to his slaughtered crab, a beady eye comedically popping out of the socket. His lower lip juts out. “I can’t help it,” he says then, and there it is, that slightest hint of a whine. “It’s effin’ - gross, is what it is, is this really the shit rich people get up to?”
Haru pushes back the urge to chastise him. Remembers that, no matter what, she is The One Who’s Nice To Ryuji, and that’s not a title she particularly wants to lose over - crabs. “You should’ve started with the legs,” she says patiently. “It’s common sense, really.”
“Isn’t there supposed to be meat in the legs?” Ann says cautiously. “Yes,” Haru explains, “But you should still - remove them from the main body, before eating them.”
“Right.” Ann nods. “I did remove them, I was just - checking.”
“Right.” says Ryuji.
“Shut the fuck up.” says Ann.
A year and eight months after her father dies, Haru Okumura takes her friends with her to Honolulu.
It’s - the point, from the beginning, is to have fun. Makoto has her criminal psychology classes, and Ryuji has physical therapy, and Yusuke has his internship and they all need a break, Haru thinks, but most of all Haru needs a break. From - this, the great encompassing gulf of it all. Shame. Guilt. Loneliness. Seminars about ethics in the workforce.
So. Honolulu.
The point, from the beginning, is to have fun, and it is fun, at first. Ann buries Ryuji up to his neck in sand. Morgana naps sprawled out on his belly in the hot afternoon sun. Futaba makes herself sick eating too much butter pecan ice cream - which they had bought specifically for Yusuke, Yusuke was quick to point out, and really, take your hand off that spoon, Futaba - and Akira wakes up early to make toaster waffles. It’s good. But it’s day five, now, and Ryuji’s grouchy because the service is bad, and Makoto’s always slipping out of the party games Haru’s arranging on the fucking hour to send another email, and - well. No matter where they go, they’re all still wound-up tight, the stiff putty of life clinging rickshaw to them. It is the way it is. It was not always this way. Remembering when it was better is worse, somehow. They’ll work through it, Haru tells herself. Don’t they always?
Here and now: The crabs. Pink flesh ripening, then splitting apart.
From the beginning, Haru had not been articulate about her pain. There was no artfulness nor technique to the grief. She had - turned all the lights off in her house, made a baptism out of bathwater, got up, got over it, to the best of her ability. What had happened, Haru had decided, was unfair, and deeply cruel, and so was the rest of the world, by extension.
Akira had come to visit her the day after it had happened, which was both better and worse than staying away. He had rung the doorbell and a butler came to get him, because in spite of everything, Haru was still the kind of person who had butlers. Haru led him to the sitting room.
“Do you want tea?” Haru had said.
“No, I’m alright.” Akira.
“Let me do this for you,” Haru insisted, hands scrunched in her shirt.
Akira sighed, then. He looked so tired. Haru thinks, now, that maybe he was the first one to really understand, to get an inkling of what the following months would be like, for all of them - but mostly him.
But it had gone to shit a long time before her father died, hadn’t it? It was shit back when volleyball players were jumping off buildings, and it was shit when Kobayakawa was making Makoto do his dirty work, and it was shit when Haru’s father had hits placed on the leaders of local anarchist organizations, and it was shit when the price of the burger rose three dollars in less than two years. Akira just got it. Haru didn’t yet.
“You shouldn’t be doing things for anyone, right now.” Akira had said. “You’ve done enough, Haru -”
“No.” Haru had said, all of a sudden miserable. The sun had been orange through the window, she remembers, the faint ghost of light painting the opaque marble, a fistful of afternoon shadow. From a few doors over, the vacuum cleaner rumbled, running laps through the empty halls, cleaning up dust no one had thought to leave behind, not for days. She was not lonely. There was no room for it.
“No,” Haru repeated. “I don’t think I’ve done anything at all.”
It rains the next morning, the sharp sluice of water running down the windows, firm and warm. Ryuji makes a noise like a kicked dog when he wakes up, the very last of them to do so.
“Aw, eff. I wanted to go boogie-boarding, man.”
Futaba looks up from her Gameboy. “You still could. It’s not that bad out.”
Ryuji sticks out his chin, jutting impudently. “It’s the principle of the thing.”
Haru watches them bicker with her heart somewhere in her throat, a terrible longing moving through her like melted butter. They are separated by ten feet of empty linoleum floor.
Yusuke looks up from his spot on the couch, gently rebuking - “I wouldn’t say it’s not that bad.” As if backing him up, a shrill howl splits the sky wide open, that roar of broken thunder. Futaba drops her Gameboy on her foot.
Makoto arrives nearly on cue, and the sight of her - drenched, the film of her raincoat pulled slick over strained shoulders, sends Haru to her side almost instantly, feeling the cold of her body, the clammy meat, the strangeness. Makoto pushes her wet forehead against Haru’s arm, and something hot and wanting shudders in the place where they overlap, a shock of electricity, blinding. Haru wants - to pull away, to distance herself, but forces herself to stay close, to feel it. Makoto shuddering over the early morning grocery run. The inside of her fingernails still baby-pink. The guts.
“You look like shit,” Ryuji says, because he is the least tactful person on earth.
“Rude.” Says Futaba. “But also, yeah.” The second least tactful person on earth.
Haru feels Makoto grind her teeth. “It’s storming out. Could I get a thank you?”
“Thank you,” Haru interjects, before the situation can - make itself difficult, get pain involved. “I really appreciate it, Mako-chan. We needed more milk, so… thank you.”
The term of endearment, whispered like a prayer, makes Makoto move against her almost instantly, face flush with the rough skin of Haru’s three-hundred dollar Nordstrom coat, and Haru beats down the instinctive hot flash of embarrassment with a stick. Makoto is - needy, Haru thinks, with a sort of savagery that doesn’t suit her well, and hungry, and cold from rainwater. That’s no one’s fault. It’s fine.
It’s fine.
“Time to get out of those wet clothes, I think.” Haru says.
Father had wanted to be embalmed, which was cruel, Haru had thought, that desire to preserve himself, in all his incalculable suffering. The pain, she believed, would remain, underneath the fresh makeup, the fitted suit. Maybe no one would remember but her. But forgetting the blood and black bile, well - that had been an impossibility, right?
The usual procedure, the maids had instructed her, involved black flats, black tights, black dress, and soft veil, like a shroud, covering the filmy wetness of her eyes. She was to go up to the body with her purse clutched close to her chest, she was to lean over, she was to push his hair back from his face to look at the gentle shriveled raisin that was his terrible, old-man face - and then she was to leave, without circumstance. If she played her cards right, she may be allowed to cry, even.
The actual ceremony was over an hour long, because of course. A Western-style funeral, because father had always liked that sort of thing. Even without taking his gaudy, comic-book Palace into account, there were still - the several American rifles hoisted above his bed, the autographs from American footballers. He always was a child in a very big suit. At least everyone sitting in the pews was permitted to take the little cocktail shrimps - because prior to the actual funeral, there had been a fucking cocktail party, for whatever reason - with them. Haru chewed on one as she regarded the pastor, his dreadful drone.
For a moment, Haru thought of what she would have said, had she been allowed the space, the agency, to take to the steps, to stand over her father’s body like a little girl, not a socialite. The first thing that came to mind was, absurdly, a children’s rhyme, modified to fit the cadence of her father’s stupid, stupid selfishness, his refusal to quit playing with dolls and ray guns.
Here lies Kunikazu Okumura. He played too much and worked too little.
When the time came for Haru to say goodbye - the real goodbye, her in black performing grief for an audience, she walked up to the body with a confidence she did not possess. And there he was.
He was dead. He was not alive. At one point, he had been alive, but he wasn’t anymore. What was there was white meat, like the inside of a crab, when cooked.
Haru had allowed herself that one moment. She leaned down. Pulled his hair back, as instructed. Kissed the cold slit of his eye. Imagined, for a second, him older, with salt-and-pepper hair, him on the couch smoking, him crying out for mother at night, him taking the press conference and walking away knowing he could make things better, now, that that was a gift he had been given, the breathing room to fix things and come out with clean hands. How unfair was that?
It didn’t matter. Haru rubbed the smeared makeup off her face and walked away.
Here and now: The shower.
Makoto’s skin heats up slowly, then all at once. In the beginning, that had been one of the first things that Haru had learned about her - that she was very cool, and vaguely punk, and that she liked her showers hot enough to charbroil. Haru had wondered aloud what that signified, some desire for pain, and Makoto had replied - “I don’t think it means anything. Some things just are.”
Haru sponges Makoto down like a baby. Regardless of what Makoto might think of the whole endeavor, there is nothing sexual here, Haru tells herself. Makoto is cold and drowning. Makoto wants, with all the subtlety and grace of a rampaging bull. Haru gives her touch. What a wonderfully kind thing she does. What a wonderfully kind thing she is.
Haru moves to lather up Makoto’s hair, when, suddenly -
“What do you get out of this?”
Haru pauses, fingers still tight against Makoto’s scalp. “Do I need to get something out of this?”
Makoto frowns. “I’d like it to be.. an equal exchange. I want you to want me here.”
Haru thinks before speaking, her words very, very careful. “I’ve spent.. a remarkable amount of my life being provided for. I’d like to provide for you. If you’d have me.”
Makoto turns around, the warm water still running in rivulets down her back, beading down her face, the pale sludge of conditioner soaping up her hair. Her expression is serious, a little firm, unyielding - another consequence, Haru thinks, of Makoto’s tendency to fall into self-parody, to exaggerate herself to the point of perverse aggrandizement, maybe, that refusal to back down, putting her hand against the open stovetop to prove a point. “I don’t want to be - to be had, Haru, I want you to… allow yourself.. To feel something.”
Haru’s mouth quirks. “That’s an odd way of putting it, Mako-chan. I’m feeling plenty of things. I’m happy I’m here, and I’m happy you’re here. Isn’t that good?”
Makoto doesn’t quite seem convinced, so Haru leans in, puts the pressure on - “You have an awful lot of questions. Do you not want me here?”
As predicted, Makoto falls into stuttering apologies, explanations, discomfort forgotten. The soft pitter-patter of still-falling rain against the window, the warmth from the showerhead - all mingling together, all that immeasurable beauty.
Haru had talked to Akechi in person just once, during her third semester. It had been enough.
Haru had been the one to reach out, which she (privately) thought was a very mature thing for her to do, thank you very much. But when she saw him walk into the little cafe she’d chosen - decidedly not Leblanc, because Haru had thought Sojiro probably wouldn’t like that - she felt all pretense ebbing away, leaving only coldness, stillness, terrible hurt. She absolutely couldn’t do this, she had told herself, almost out of her mind with fear - until he sat across from her and ordered a black coffee with zero sugar, whereupon she realized she had no other choice, not really. All paths had led to this - the afternoon sun, Akechi under fifty layers of shitty trenchcoats and designer scarves, raising his mug of overpriced coffee to his face and letting the steam waft directly in his eyes.
Haru ordered a slice of cheesecake, and they did not speak for quite some time.
Then -
“I suppose I should ask why I’m here.” Akechi had said.
“To talk.” Haru said automatically. (She had that part prepared, at least.)
“About what?” Akechi asked, sounding genuinely curious, for once. “You’ve agreed to work with me. If I betray you again, you’ll just kill me for real. And I’m going to be dead once we get this done and over with, so -”
“Don’t say that,” Haru interrupted, anxiously stabbing her cake between words. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“Well it’s true, isn’t it? Regardless of how nice it is to say.”
Haru looked down. The cake was, truly, quite awful. “You should have a little more faith in yourself than that. You’ve been remarkably good at not dying so far.”
That last sentence had come out a bit meaner than she intended, and Akechi had raised an eyebrow, looking, in spite of himself - a bit impressed. That made Haru angrier, somehow. “Don’t look at me like that,” she muttered, still engrossed in the act of stabbing cake, the rhythmic back-and-forth of her hand. “I’m not - saying it to be cruel.”
“No,” Akechi interrupted, with the air of someone proving a point, “You said it because it was true, didn’t you?”
Haru didn’t have a response to that. A period of time - small, nearly inconsequential - passed. A car horn honked outside, followed by vigorous swearing.
“I just came here to say that I don’t understand.”
A moment.
“If you were really planning to betray Shido, from the beginning, why did you have to do all the things you did? Wasn’t there a better way? A cleaner way?”
Akechi’s lip curled. “If there was, I didn’t find it. I don’t think anyone could have. With a man like Shido, who’ll set anyone on fire to keep himself warm - the only way out is through.”
“But there still must’ve been a way that didn’t involve… that.”
“You mean murder.” Akechi said.
Haru’s throat was very dry. “Yes.”
Akechi leaned across the table. His eyes were piercing, but not angry - there was a sympathy to them, a gentleness, bulwarked, somehow, by the sun, the sky, the birds all up above, a sense of self unchallenged by the undeniable truth that he should not have been alive, not in that moment, not ever, with his cup of shitty coffee and those bags under his eyes - had they always been there?
“I’ll say this once for you. I don’t regret killing your father. I regret the consequences, and I regret the impact it’s had on you, and everyone else, and I acknowledge the kind of beast it makes me. But I don’t regret that he’s gone. Because he was very, very deeply evil and my goal was always, inevitably, to bring men like that to their knees. I understand that you hate me. That’s fine. But I won’t lie to you and pretend I regret killing him.”
Something stirred in Haru, then. How dare he. How dare he sit across the table from her, and say those words that she had been thinking, privately, for years and years, drag them up into harsh focus, the reality of them, the barbarism. Because before there were the Phantom Thieves and Shido and Yaldabaoth and Maruki there had only been Haru, parallel to her father at the dinner table, watching him move ghostlike from his body, the point of no return. How dare he say what she had known for a long time. That she would be the only one to mourn him - and even then, not really him, but the person she wanted him to be, the person she was grooming like a heir, to be better, to be different. To be touched, and changed. How dare he. How dare he.
“You don’t get to say that.” Haru said, incandescent. “You don’t get to walk in here and pretend like you were doing me a favor.”
Akechi stared at her, his face strange and taut with pity, knowing. “I don’t know what you expected me to say.”
“I didn’t-” And she was crying now, which was the exact opposite of what she wanted. “-I didn’t want you to say anything. I wanted you to listen to me hate you. And then we wouldn’t have to talk, and you could go off and die somewhere where I didn’t have to see it.”
She regretted the words the second they came out - but Akechi had smiled.
“I’m glad we’ve decided to drop the pretenses with each other.”
He stood up. Pulled out his wallet and threw down a tremendous fistful of cash on the table, like paper birds. “Since I’ll be dead soon, tip our waitress excellently, okay?”
And he was gone. Haru sat with the remnants of cooled cream cheese on her plate, her face hot with tears, wanting so desperately to be anything else.
The rain clears, with time. Ryuji brings out the stolen tequila by the time evening hits and the tide goes out. Amongst a crowd of giggling, drunken children, Haru sees an opportunity to slip out, down the stairs and to the beach, still barefoot. Up above her, the seagulls are whimpering, a strata of white noise and sunlight, all entangled together. It’s a beautiful night. Haru barely sees it.
Akira stands with his phone pressed up to his ear half-submerged in water, seemingly oblivious to the tide coming in. Haru watches his mouth move, the soundless roar of the ocean muffling his words, like a hand held over a lamp, smothering the light. She watches him end the call and move his arm, slowly, to his face, as if roughly wiping away tears of sudden sharpness, of joy.
“Good news or bad?” Haru says.
Akira turns around, and the look on his face is sudden and guilty, drawn. “Haru.”
“Me.”
“It’s from Sae.”
Haru knows what that means. She repeats - “Good news or bad?”
“From my perspective, good.” Akira says, struggling towards her, holding his phone in one hand and discarded flip-flops in the water. He’s gotten freckled, Haru notes distantly, and sunburned, both working to cancel each other out and failing, becoming additive, point of overlap. “There’s.. A lead.”
“A lead.” Haru allows him to spell it out for her.
“Someone’s sent in a report mentioning a doppelganger in Peru. He took pictures, and.. It really looks like him. But he’s on the move, and - I need to be out of here by morning.”
Haru pauses. She had expected that, yes, but not the - urgency of it, the frantic, almost maniac fire in Akira’s eyes, the sheer shamelessness of it. Everyone around her is so fucking stupid with need.
“...But tomorrow is Monopoly night,” Haru says plaintively. It’s the only thing she can say, so taken aback, adrift in a raft of her own making, so thoroughly out to sea. Akira winces. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t understand,” Haru says, and once she starts talking, she can’t stop. “Why you keep covering for him, after all this time. I mean - he’s in Peru, for fuck’s sake. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be found?”
Akira exhales. “I’ve thought about that. But ultimately - Akechi is - he’ll do anything to prove a point. He’ll go to the ends of the earth to avoid me regardless of what makes him happy. And I can’t just let him disappear for my sake.”
“Well then what about mine?” Haru says, desperate, the breeze stinging her eyes like a whip. “My sake, Akira? What if I don’t want you to leave me?”
“I’m sorry.” Akira says. He hesitates, as if on the precipice of something, regarding the gap between what he thinks he should say and what Haru knows he wants to. And then he barrels forwards anyways. “And honestly, Haru - I appreciated the sentiment, really, but - you can’t fix everything with a trip to Hawaii paid from blood money. It’s an occupation victim, you know? We really shouldn’t be here.”
“This isn’t about Hawaii,” Haru says, frustrated, “It has nothing to do with - Hawaii, or occupation, or blood money. This is me, needing you here. This is me asking you to put me over him, just once-”
Akira cuts her off, his face half-crushed, eyes bright with unshed tears. “I owe it to him, Haru. I can’t - I can’t be here anymore.”
Akira pushes past her roughly. He’s halfway past a sand dune, shoulders still shaking - Haru’s too, for that matter - when he turns back around to yell “And it has everything to do with Hawaii, by the way. You’re so blind sometimes. It makes me sick.”
And then he’s gone too, and Haru is alone again.
The thing about crabs is that they had to be wooed, Haru had learned, flipping through the manual she had bought from a seedy corner store, her first day in. You couldn’t just expect them to come crawling into your net for the taking. They had to be loved - to be wanted, to be coaxed, belly-up, and split down the middle. It was the natural way of things. As a matter of fact - it had always been that way.