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“Okay, two possibilities,” says Futaba. “One, we hit some kind of trap or tripwire back in the Palace and it set off a strong status ailment that we don’t know how to cure. Or two, Dr Maruki just granted the wish of someone who always really, really wanted Goro Akechi to be a girl.”
“Both of those theories are ridiculous,” says Akechi. “I am female. I’ve always been female. You all know this.”
Morgana says, “No! This is definitely news to us!”
Futaba shrugs. “Option three, you’re Crow from a parallel universe?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure Akechi’s a guy,” says Ryuji.
Akechi makes one of his—one of her?—familiar scoff-sigh noises. “Do I look like a guy to you, Sakamoto?” Ryuji goes pink and starts spluttering. Ren is really glad right now that no one ever expects him to be the first person talking. Akechi does not look like a guy. He’s—she’s?—a foot shorter. And she stands differently. And, like—
“Disgusting,” says Akechi. “At least pretend you’re not leering at me.”
“I know, right?” says Ann.
“It does get tiresome,” murmurs Makoto.
“Hey, come on, give us a break!” protests Ryuji. “You’re the one who—she’s the one who—that outfit!”
“It’s remarkable how such a small change can have such a dramatic visual effect,” says Yusuke, and holds up his fingers as a frame. Ren nods. Akechi’s Metaverse combat outfit is basically the same. It always kind of clung and it always kind of… accentuated, right. Ren drags his gaze upwards and finds that Akechi is looking right at him with a look of burning loathing. Oops.
“Um,” says Haru. “Either your memories or ours are affected, is that right? So… what do I usually call you? In your memory?”
Akechi looks away. “Crow,” she says. “Or Akechi.” And then she visibly remembers that no one in the world is going to be convinced by a Haru who doesn’t do honorifics, and adds, “…-san.”
Haru smiles. Her hand is resting on the haft of her axe. “Goro-chan it is!”
Futaba cackles.
“If it’s a status effect,” says Sumire, “maybe we should just leave the Palace? Um, if that’s all right with you, Akechi-san?”
The world outside the Palace shimmers and resolves into the shell of the Odaiba stadium, where everyone is standing in a circle in their winter coats. Including Akechi. Who is dressed exactly the same as when they went into the Palace, in a tan jacket and winter scarf, except she’s a foot shorter, and her hair is a perfectly styled ponytail that goes down to her waist.
She looks at all their expressions and says, “I don’t suppose there’s any chance that all of you just felt some sort of memory-altering status effect wear off.”
“Did you?” says Makoto.
Akechi shakes her head. The ponytail does a silky-smooth flip with the motion. Ren has a stupid elementary school urge to grab the end and tug.
“And we still think you’re supposed to be a guy. Points for the parallel universe theory!” says Futaba. “Or, more realistically, the Maruki cognitive alteration theory.”
“It’s not that,” says Ren. They all look at him. He shrugs. “Doesn’t feel like a Maruki thing to do.”
“Are we once again basing our tactical assessment on your vague feelings about human nature,” begins Akechi, and then cuts herself off and says, “Will you stop that.”
“Stop—”
“Stop looking at me,” Akechi says. “We had this out already. Give it up, Joker, I’m a lesbian.”
“Uh,” says Ren.
“Oh wow,” says Ann. When everyone looks at her, she says, “Um! I think it’s really cool that you’re confident enough to just say it like that!”
There’s a long silence and then Akechi says, in a tone somewhere between flattered and pitying, “Sort yourself out, Takamaki.”
“Haha, yeah, I… probably should, huh,” says Ann. “Well, it is cool, anyway! And your hair looks really pretty like that!”
“Let’s call it a day,” says Ren, before Ann can say anything else or go any pinker. “Good work, everyone. Meet at the hideout tomorrow.” Hopefully this wears off overnight, he doesn’t say. He can tell they’re all thinking it.
“Hm,” says Akechi when Ren calls him—her—from outside the jazz club that evening. “I suppose I’ve nothing better to do. I’ll meet you there.”
Ren’s on edge as he pays the cover charge, claims their usual table, orders the drinks. Is this different? Will this be different?
Akechi says, “No singer? That’s a shame,” and sits in her usual spot, side-on to Ren, back to the wall, eyes on the room. She’s wearing the same jacket and scarf from earlier. Sitting down makes the height difference less obvious, and apart from the ponytail, she’s not a very girly girl. But her voice is still strange. Definitely Akechi, but in a completely different key. She says, “Did you pay for my drink?”
“I always pay for your drink,” says Ren.
“Is that so.” Akechi takes a sip. “Mm. It’s good.”
“Do we not do this?”
“This?”
“You know.”
Akechi leans her elbows on the table and looks at him. “I’m a popular young female semi-celebrity,” she says. “A proto-idol. A role model. What do you think? Do I spend my limited free time sitting around at a club with a boy? A juvenile delinquent, no less?”
“You like doing things your way,” says Ren.
“You like jazz,” says Akechi. “I thought you might, when I introduced you to this place.”
Ren ducks his head. “And you still shot me in the head, right?”
Akechi doesn’t say anything. Ren looks up and finds that she’s resting her chin on her folded hands and watching him. Her eyes glitter. “Are you somehow even more hung up on me as a boy, Ren?”
Ren keeps quiet.
“I didn’t think it was possible,” says Akechi. “Yes, I shot you in the head. A rather humiliating memory, now. Does that make you feel better?”
“Yeah,” says Ren. “Kind of.”
“This is fascinating,” Akechi says. “I can’t imagine that a healthy dose of testosterone improves my terrible personality at all. Does it?”
“You seem about the same, honestly.”
That makes her laugh. The laugh is really different, a high bright peal that rings out through the club. Ren doesn’t even know her well enough to know if it’s fake. He knows exactly what a fake guy-Akechi laugh sounds like, and how different the real laughter is, the cracked little chuckle, the wild breathy cackle that comes out in combat. “Really,” she says. “That’s a surprisingly pleasant thought. You don’t.”
“Sorry,” says Ren, and he means sorry for staring earlier as well, for anything she didn’t like. We had this out already. That’s probably the difference, actually, that—
“Oh, I see,” says Akechi. “He never told you to back off.”
“You did, though, right?”
Her expression pinches. “It was calculated,” she says. “A little secret, early on. One the world doesn’t know. Trust for trust.”
Ren nods. It makes sense to him. “And we hang out?”
“Yes, Ren, we hang out.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t be so pathetic,” she says sharply.
“I said okay.”
“If you were the only man in the world,” says Akechi, “I still wouldn’t fuck you, because I don’t like men.”
“Got it,” says Ren. “So… what’s your type?”
Akechi drains her glass of virulent pink fruit juice. “No. Absolutely not.”
“I just think, as a friend,” says Ren, “I probably need to find out if you like blondes.”
“Takamaki trips over her own feet for literally any girl who looks at her twice,” says Akechi. “And I have a terrible personality. Don’t try to set us up.”
“So you’re telling me you don’t think Ann is cute?”
“Of course Ann is—no.”
Ren grins at her. Akechi rolls her eyes, but he can tell she wants to smile. This is different. The energy is different. Not in a bad way, just—strange. It’s strange to talk to Akechi as a friend, only a friend, without anything in between them that Ren hasn’t said yet. There’s a bitter warmth in his chest. He didn’t need the proof, but here it is. He’d like Akechi in any world. He would have liked Akechi no matter what. They could have been friends. They should have been friends. Couldn’t they still at least be friends?
“You never actually managed to do more than hint awkwardly about it,” Akechi says, “but I suppose this confirms you are bisexual, aren’t you?”
Ren puts his hand on the back of his neck. “I guess.”
“Does he know?”
“He’s you,” says Ren. “Would you?”
“He knows.” She smirks. “You know, I can imagine myself as a man, but I really can’t imagine myself straight.”
“I don’t know if he,” says Ren, and then stops talking, too late.
“One of the more bizarre requests for reassurance I’ve ever heard,” says Akechi. “It’s not something people often ask me for. Well, you paid for the drinks. Would you like me to use my skills as a detective to deduce if my other self thinks you’re cute, Ren?”
Ren would like to sink under the table and then perhaps through the floor. Akechi sees it and laughs again. There’s a familiar cracked edge to that high bright bell-peal now. It makes Ren miss him. Akechi’s right here, and Ren still misses him.
“Oh, you have it bad,” she says. “But that makes sense. I could see you were falling for me last summer. I suppose that was why I decided to clarify matters.”
“Yeah?”
“That and… well, given the situation, there’s no use guarding my dignity, is there? I wanted someone to know. At least one piece of the truth about me. I wanted someone to know, and for some reason I chose you.”
“Thanks,” says Ren, and means it, even though he’s not that Ren, the one she remembers, the boy who got his crush cut off at the knees by the high school detective telling him a career-ending secret about herself. “Thank you.”
“Easy deduction,” says Akechi. “Of course he’s into you. Otherwise he would have told you to fuck off with the staring by now. Like I did.”
“In my defence,” says Ren, and then doesn’t say the rest of it.
Akechi sniggers. “How does it look on him?” she says. “About the same?”
“Less ass,” says Ren. “More, uh, package.”
That makes her literally double up with laughter, curled around her empty glass and giggling. “That does sound like me. What a loser.”
“Hey.”
“You don’t want me to be mean about the boy you like? Try liking a better boy.”
“Can’t,” says Ren. “I’m bewitched by his terrible personality.”
“Finish that,” says Akechi, nodding at his drink. “I want another. It’s my turn to buy.”
So it’s not exactly a typical night at Jazz Jin with Akechi, but Ren has a good time anyway. He’s glad he called and glad she answered. Neither of them comes up with a better theory for what’s happened than ‘weird status effect’ (Ren) or ‘fucking Maruki’ (Akechi). A bit of phone investigation reveals that it’s girl-Akechi’s memories which line up with the way this world actually is right now. There’s a lot of Detective Princess stuff on the internet. She wears her hair down for TV appearances, with a cute black-and-white hair ribbon. They watch a video compilation on Ren’s phone that’s just Akechi-san puts her hair behind her ear! thirty-seven times. It’s hypnotic. Akechi has a critical frown as she watches the phone screen, shakes her head at one hair-tuck which is apparently insufficiently charming, and smiles in a satisfied way at the last few clips, where someone has put in some slow-mo and sparkles.
“Are you seriously telling me my male equivalent doesn’t cut his hair?” she says afterwards. “There were times I would gladly have done a few extra murders just for the chance to shave my head. That heatwave last summer.”
“I mean, it’s shorter,” says Ren. “Like…” He holds a hand at about the right length, near his jaw.
“Hmm,” Akechi says. “I bet that bastard’s tall, isn’t he?”
“Not as tall as me,” says Ren. There’s a couple of centimeters difference. Akechi’s never said it pisses him off, but Ren knows it does.
She chuckles. “And of course he hates that. Some people don’t know how lucky they are. He probably didn’t even have to wear heels and a miniskirt right through Sae-san’s Palace.”
Well, that sure is a mental image that Ren now has. Both ways. Akechi rolls her eyes. “You’re hopeless.”
“Looks like it.”
“I suppose this wasn’t a complete waste of an evening,” says Akechi. “But I’m done. Let’s go.”
Ren’s expecting the usual curt bye then outside the jazz club. Akechi folds her arms and glares up at him. “There’s something I want to say,” she announces.
Ren makes a hand gesture, go on.
Akechi keeps glaring. Then she says abruptly, “You got over me once. You can do it again. Just remember that.”
“Huh?” says Ren.
“It’s a teenage crush, it’s not the end of the world. It’s not worth getting upset over. He’s not worth getting upset over. I should know. He’s me.”
“What?” says Ren.
“You’ll be fine,” says Akechi. “That’s all I wanted to say. So… bye, then.”
So Ren goes home, curls up in bed with his cat, who is a cat and not a guy, and says, “Fine, I guess. Normal?” when Morgana asks him how the evening went. And he lies awake for a bit thinking about what if it is a status ailment trap, something in the Palace, what if Ren somehow walked into it next time and got forcibly turned into his girl self, and then… and he gets as far as what if we kissed at the duel to the death in Mementos and we were both girls before he admits to himself that he needs to stop thinking about this. Unpack all that some other time when he’s less busy and reality is less under threat by a kind-hearted monster. And also maybe when Morgana is not right there in the bed with him.
Anyway, they need to figure out what actually happened and fix it. Ren wants his Akechi back. The one who remembers all the same things he does. The one who maybe, probably, according to a detective who ought to know, likes Ren back.
He does watch the Detective Princess hair-tucking video again one more time. With the sound off. No one will ever know, except maybe Futaba, who has only herself to blame if she starts poking around in Ren’s search history.
Maruki manifests, all white coat and white gloves and slicked-back hair, in the entrance hall of his Palace and says, “I want to start by saying I’m terribly sorry about this!”
“I told you it was Maruki,” says Akechi, shifting her weight, folding her arms. The whole motion makes everything sort of… flex. There’s a little bit of jiggle. Ren, Ryuji and Ann all look heroically away and make accidental three-way eye contact about it. It’s both cool and terrible that Ryuji and Ann now definitely understand the Akechi appeal. Ren is never living this down.
“I wasn’t quite prepared for the intensity of the wishes generated parasocially around a popular public figure,” says Maruki. “Really, this wasn’t intentional. Akechi-kun, I want to offer you my sincerest apologies. I would never knowingly implement this sort of change without your consent.”
Akechi’s hand goes to the hilt of her sword as she lunges forward and snarls, “Everything you do is without my—”
Maruki vanishes. The room blurs. Everyone yelps and stumbles. Akechi says, “—consent.” His sword is in his hand and his voice has dropped down an octave.
Ren feels something in his ribcage come loose. As much as he liked short angry hot girl Akechi—and he did—it was too weird. It was way too weird. Ann kept peeking at her and blushing.
“Welcome back, Goro-chan!” says Haru.
“Goro-chan?” says Akechi in tones of mingled horror and outrage.
“Oops,” says Haru unrepentantly. “Please forgive me if I get mixed up sometimes!”
“The… other you… didn’t seem to remember things ever being different,” says Makoto. “Do you know what just happened?”
Akechi doesn’t remember. For him, everything cuts off this time yesterday and resumes a moment ago with him yelling at Maruki. Ren is both relieved and weirdly uncomfortable. He feels like he’s got one over on Akechi now in way that’s like… not fair? Like he knows too much. It’s no fun to win by accident.
“Come on, then,” says Akechi when they finish in the Palace for the day—early, because Sumire has an evening practice session to get to. “I don’t see why I should wait around for you to call me in two hours like you’re obviously going to. Let’s have it.”
So they get the subway to Yongen-Jaya and Ren makes coffee. Akechi sits at the counter waiting. He pulls a book out of Ren’s stack on the side and starts flicking through. “You’re not reading this.”
Ren glances. It’s Social Thought. “Already read it.”
Akechi’s breath puffs out in a way that’s either disbelief or irritation or both. He keeps skim-reading the book, eyes darting down the pages. Ren sets a coffee in front of him. Sips his own.
“You’re being so remarkably awkward about this I can only assume you confessed to her and she reciprocated,” says Akechi without putting the book down. “Perhaps you had a passionate clinch on the stairs over there. Did she tell you she’d always loved you?”
Ren snorts. “She told me to fuck off because she was a lesbian.”
“—ah.”
“Pretty bad deduction,” says Ren. “For you.”
“I’m not infallible.”
“You think just because she was a girl, her personality changed completely?”
“I admit,” says Akechi, “I find it hard to imagine myself as a woman.”
“She was you,” says Ren. “She was basically the same, just with longer hair. Ann thought she was cute.”
“Of course.” Akechi closes Social Thought with a snap. “I can’t picture any version of myself who didn’t know how to present himself—or herself—appropriately. Naturally I was cute.” He makes it a sneer. “So what is it, exactly, that you feel you need to talk about?”
Ren thinks about it for a moment longer, though he doesn’t really need to. “So,” he says. “I like guys. And girls. Both, I guess.”
Akechi’s expression doesn’t match his tone of voice when he says, after a few seconds, “So what?”
Ren shrugs. “Just wanted to tell someone. I never have.”
“I have heard you announce to a Shadow that you like men,” says Akechi. “More than once.”
“That’s different,” says Ren. “You know it is. I wanted to tell you.”
“I knew already.”
“I know.”
“You’re obvious.”
“I know.”
“Is that all?”
Trust for trust, thinks Ren. “I like you.”
He always thought if he ever said it, he’d be Joker about it. He’d be cool and relaxed and stylish, he’d drop the confession like it was nothing, a sharp-edged dagger tossed and caught and balanced on a fingertip. Ren doesn’t feel like that at all. He feels embarrassing. Stupid. Kind of soggy. He cares too much and it shows, which with Akechi is like rolling over and offering your belly, it’s asking to have your guts torn out.
Akechi says, “I know.”
“I mean, like—”
“I know, Ren. It’s obvious. You’re obvious.”
“Okay,” says Ren, guts still intact for some reason. Akechi looks hunted. He looks haunted. “So why haven’t you told me to back off yet?”
Akechi says nothing.
“It’s fine, I can take it,” says Ren. “Just we should be friends, whatever. I’d like to be friends. I guess I was friends with the other you, with her? She said I had a crush and I got over it. We were cool.”
Still nothing.
“Just say it,” says Ren.
“Don’t do this,” says Akechi. “You’ll regret this.”
Ren comes around the counter. Akechi’s head turns to watch him move like he’s expecting to be stabbed. He shifts in his seat when Ren walks past him. Ren just goes to the door, flips the sign to Closed, turns the key in the lock and slides the bolts home. Leblanc never gets customers at this time of day anyway.
“What do you think you’re doing?” says Akechi.
“Locking up,” says Ren, and goes back to him there at the counter. Akechi’s had so many chances to move now. Ren’s given him more than enough time. And still he’s sitting there with his coffee and Ren’s copy of Social Thought, one foot hooked up on the footrest under the bar stool, the other one just touching the floor. One thing Ren’s always liked about seeing Akechi at Leblanc is how he takes up space differently here. He’s not all tucked in and packed away. His elbows rest on the counter. His thighs spread. He has long legs, and his shoulders look bigger hunched up under a winter jacket like that. Less ass, more package, he thinks, and smiles to himself. It’s the same, though, right? That does sound like me, girl Akechi said. This side of Akechi is a person with a body, a person who loves to use his body, powerful and shameless. And hot. Really hot, to anyone who’s into that.
Ren brackets him with his own body, right up close behind him, his fingertips on the counter either side of Akechi’s gloved hands. Akechi doesn’t turn, doesn’t move, doesn’t jab his elbow back hard into Ren’s diaphragm. His winter coat covers him up just as thoroughly as his school uniform used to, and Ren doesn’t think that’s an accident. There’s almost nowhere to get at skin. But Akechi keeps his hair long. Right through the heatwave last summer, when his girl self would have killed to shave her head, Akechi kept it long.
For the second time in his life, Ren puts his hands into Akechi’s hair. It’s not a gleeful tousle this time. He’s careful. The strands are as silky-soft as he remembers as he slides his fingers into them, gripping a little, tugging. He can just about make out their double reflection repeated over and over in the glass coffee jars behind the counter. It’s not clear enough to see Akechi’s face. Ren keeps hold of his soft handful of hair and leans in.
“Ren,” says Akechi at the last moment, very tightly, “I think we should be friends.”
“Liar,” says Ren. He presses his lips to the back of Akechi’s neck.
Akechi is perfectly still until Ren opens his mouth. Then his shoulders slump and his head tips forward. His hair pulls against Ren’s fingers and some of it slips out of Ren’s grasp. Ren gathers it up again, digs his fingers into Akechi’s scalp, and tries teeth at the nape of his neck. Akechi makes a sound and slumps further forward. Ren’s pressed in close behind him, and he’d be closer if the bar stool wasn’t in the way. And Ren knows what it feels like to be godlike, to be right on a level with the greatest gods and monsters known to the collective unconscious, and that’s how he feels right now. Akechi’s body, all shameless power, and he wants Ren to touch. All Ren has to do is be shameless right back at him. “Mm?” he says, in response to a mumble from Akechi, and then he tries another little nip of his teeth right as Akechi takes a breath to speak.
This gets the exact reaction Ren wants—a hiss and a shudder—and then Akechi snarls, “You gloating piece of shit,” and twists up and back, off the barstool and grabbing Ren by the wrist in one motion, shoving him backwards against the booth seating. Okay, Ren got cocky there. But this is good too, this is so good, Akechi red-faced and glaring at him and then spitting, “Fine,” like someone goaded past all bearing before he slams his mouth onto Ren’s mouth.
Is kissing meant to feel like a duel to death? Or is it just that their duels to the death have always felt like kissing?
“There’s a giant glass door right there,” snaps Akechi a few moments later, like sticking his tongue in Ren’s mouth and just going for it right here in the café wasn’t his own idea. “You—”
“Come on, then,” says Ren, making it a challenge.
Akechi growls at him and then shoves him backwards in the direction of the stairs. Ren goes, still gleeful, godlike, and lets Akechi shove him up against the wall at the back of the café. The wood of the lowest stair creaks alarmingly under them. Akechi goes one step up and then gets his own fistful of Ren’s hair and kisses him even harder. When Ren can breathe again, he says, “You care that much about being taller?”
“Shut up,” says Akechi. “Shut up, shut up.”
Ren’s face is at the right height to go for his neck again. Akechi’s sensitive there. Ren knows now and will know forever no matter what Akechi does. But Akechi catches him by the jaw just in time and tilts his face up again. This kiss goes—
Soft.
So slow, so delicate, and so, so soft. Ren’s the one who’s shivering when they break apart. Akechi looks down at him with the exact satisfied expression of his girl self admiring her own perfect sparkling performance on a phone screen. Ren licks his lips. Passionate clinch on the stairs, he thinks. And Akechi’s the one who thought of that. Who’s thought about this before. Who tried to imagine what a self who didn’t have his murderous macho pride might do, and went straight to—
“Are you going to tell me you’ve always loved me?” he says.
Akechi’s satisfied expression vanishes like melting snow. “I’ve always hated you.”
“Got it.” Ren can’t stop smiling.
“We’re not going to have intercourse,” Akechi announces from his commanding position one step up. Ren can’t control his blooming grin. Who says intercourse? Akechi just scowls at him. “This is a bad idea that you’ve had, we shouldn’t do it, and I won’t let it progress past… well.”
“Sure,” says Ren. “I’ll be a gentleman.”
“I can see you reaching for gentleman thief,” says Akechi. “Don’t. Or I’ll change my mind.”
He won’t. He wants this. He wants it like Ren does, because he likes Ren, the way Ren likes him. Trust for trust. “Whatever you want,” says Ren.
“Stop looking so happy.”
Ren lets his expression go completely flat.
“That’s worse.”
“Girl you wasn’t this hard to please,” says Ren, which is complete bullshit pulled from nowhere purely for the joy of seeing Akechi’s eyes flash with irritation.
“It sounds like you couldn’t have pleased girl me if you tried,” says Akechi. “She probably had the right idea.”
But Ren doesn’t care what bullshit comes out of Akechi’s mouth, because Akechi’s gloved hand is reaching down for him. They don’t even manage to get up to Ren’s room. The minute their bodies are close the air between them catches fire, and then they have to make out on the stairs some more. Ren trips Akechi up and climbs on top of him and they kiss for a while stretched along the steps, which is insanely uncomfortable and neither of them even cares. When they eventually stumble up to Ren’s attic, they make out on the couch and then on the bed. “You actually sleep on this?” Akechi says, which is more or less the only thing they really say to each other. Ren gets to take Akechi’s gloves off him, and his winter jacket. He gets to put his hands back into Akechi’s hair.
And then they reach the point where Ren has to say, “Uh, as a gentleman…”
Akechi groans and rolls off him and flops over on his side, facing away from Ren. They lie there together breathing their way down from how hot that was, how much. Ren basically has to put his arm over Akechi or he’d fall off the bed. He doesn’t have to put his face into Akechi’s hair, right up against the back of his neck. He just wants to. And Akechi lets him do it.
So this is cuddling. Spooning, even. Eventually Ren reaches his other hand down to the floor for his phone, and he lies there with Akechi and scrolls mindlessly, and it’s just nice. It’s really nice.
We could always have been friends, he lets himself think. We could still be more than just friends.
“Wanna see something?” he says after a while.
“Go on, then,” says Akechi, and he doesn’t even really sound annoyed about it.
Ren passes over his phone. The first thing Akechi says is, “You bookmarked this?”
Then he says nothing else for as long as it takes his girl self to put her hair behind her ear thirty-seven times, sometimes in slow motion, with sparkles.
“Very cute,” is his verdict. “You know, I’ve never really had cause to consider how much worse things could have been.”
“She said her Robin Hood Metaverse outfit had a miniskirt and heels.”
Akechi makes a noise of mingled pity and disgust. Then he says, “You liked her.”
“Amazing deduction,” says Ren. “How do you do it?”
“Well,” begins Akechi like he’s genuinely going to explain, and then he gets it and says, without heat, “Fuck off.”
They’re quiet for a bit. Ren’s starting to think about maybe some more kissing. Or maybe dinner. Or both? Both would be really good.
“So her version of you had a crush. And then you got over it,” says Akechi softly. “When you realized it was impossible, I suppose. As a gentleman should.”
“She said it wasn’t the end of the world,” says Ren. He’s not going to go into: I didn’t say anything to her because I’m not a huge dick but I actually spent a lot of yesterday night seriously hoping that suddenly turning into a girl was a weird status effect so I could get it too. I don’t think I got over it. I don’t think there’s any version of me who could get over any version of you.
None of that stuff seems like a good idea to say to Akechi right now.
“You were fine,” murmurs Akechi. He’s still facing the other way. His bare hand reaches back until he finds Ren’s leg and pats it a bit, awkwardly, like he doesn’t really know what he’s doing. “You’ll be fine.”