---
Ren woke up before his alarm.
This was not unusual. What was unusual was that there was nowhere to be.
No school. No chores. No Navigation app chiming in his pocket and sending him to another dimension. Just a Saturday morning in a loft above a café in a city he was still learning, with a cat-shaped entity asleep at the foot of his bed making small contented sounds.
He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling for a while.
His body ached in the specific way that came from repeated physical exertion in a space that shouldn't exist. His shoulders. The muscles along his ribs. The place behind his eyes that had been quietly throbbing since the first time he'd torn the mask off his face.
He needed a day off.
He wasn't sure he remembered how to have one at this point.
---
Downstairs, Sojiro was already at the counter. He looked up when Ren appeared, took in the careful way he was moving, and said nothing for a moment.
"You look like you slept wrong," he said finally.
"Something like that."
Sojiro slid a cup across the counter without being asked.
Ren caught it, drank, and felt something in his shoulders loosen slightly.
"There's a bathhouse across the street," Sojiro said, turning back to the wall of coffee beans. "You'll see the sign. Old building, nothing fancy, but it's nice. Sometimes they even put medicinal herbs in the baths. You should go relax."
Ren considered this.
"Thank you, sir."
Sojiro gave him a look.
"...Thanks, Boss," Ren corrected.
"Better. Take your time."
---
The bathhouse was exactly as advertised — old, nothing fancy, the kind of place that had been in the neighborhood longer than anyone currently living in it. The wooden sign above the entrance had been repainted at some point in the last decade, but not recently. The sliding door stuck slightly on the left side.
Inside, it smelled like hinoki and hot water and the particular quietness of a place that had absorbed decades of people coming to be still.
Ren paid, changed, and lowered himself into the water.
He exhaled slowly.
Then he just... sat there.
His mind, which had been moving at a continuous low-grade sprint since he'd stepped off the train at Tokyo Station, gradually slowed. Not stopped. But slowed.
He thought about the Velvet Room.
Igor's careful phrasing.
'Forces conspire to limit my guidance.'
The gold butterfly that made him grimace. The bond chant that had been interrupted by something that spoke in a tone that hurt to hear.
He thought about the cards on his windowsill. The Magician with its nine chains. The Tower, bland and waiting.
He thought about the blue-haired boy from his dream on the train.
Take care of my sister.
'I still don't know who he meant,' Ren thought.
He sank a little lower in the water.
He thought about Shiho saying that she'd convinced herself endurance was the same thing as strength, and the way Ann had just sat down beside her without a word. How sometimes the most important thing a person could do was exactly that — just sit down and not leave.
He thought about Sojiro watching him wipe down tables and saying sit down in a voice that wasn't annoyed, just tired on his behalf.
He thought about Ann's face outside the school. The short, humorless laugh.
'She's going to burn something down when she awakens.'
And he thought:
good.
After a while, Ren realized he had stopped thinking entirely and was just breathing.
He stayed like that for a long time.
---
He left the bathhouse feeling like a different person.
Not fixed. Not resolved. But lighter in the specific way that comes from having briefly put everything down.
The clinic near Leblanc.
He'd been walking past it since he arrived.
Today he stopped.
---
The waiting room had a few chairs, a dying plant, and a certificate on the wall that looked like it had been hung slightly crooked and never corrected. The woman at the reception desk — who appeared to also be the only staff member present — looked up when Ren came in.
It was the same woman from outside. Lab coat, dark bob, the expression of someone who found most things faintly tedious. Dated, yet tasteful punk clothing.
"You're back," she said.
"I wasn't technically here before," Ren said.
"The kid from Leblanc," she said. "What do you want?"
"Medical supplies," Ren said. "Specifically for treating injuries in the field. Cuts, bruises, burns, impact trauma. The kind of thing you'd want on hand if a hospital wasn't accessible."
She looked at him for a long moment.
"How old are you?"
"Seventeen."
"Sakura said you were on probation."
"Yes."
"And you want trauma supplies."
"Yes."
She leaned back in her chair and studied him. She had seen a lot of people come through her door with explanations that were either too detailed or not detailed enough. Ren offered neither.
"Haaaaaa. I'm running clinical trials," she said finally. "New compounds. I need subjects who won't ask too many questions and will show up when I tell them to."
"What kind of compounds?" Ren asked.
"Restorative agents primarily. Some experimental analgesics. Nothing that'll kill you — probably."
"Probably," Ren repeated dryly.
"Medicine involves uncertainty," she said flatly. "Are you interested or not?"
Ren thought about the inside of the Metaverse. The way his ribs had felt after Shadow Shiho had knocked him into the wall. The way Morgana's Dia spell had sealed the damage from the inside out — warm and strange and not something he could replicate in the real world.
"I'm interested," he said.
She nodded once.
"Takemi. Tae Takemi." She opened a drawer and slid a form across the desk. "Fill that out. You'll come in when I contact you. You don't discuss the trials with anyone outside this office."
Time froze.
The gentle voice sounded in his mind again.
"I am thou. Thou art I. Thou hast established a new bond. It shall become the wings of rebellion that breaketh thy chains of captivity. With the birth of the Death Persona, thou hast obtained the blessing that leads to freedom and new power."
He heard chains rumble as if something was trying to break out of them, before unnerving silence.
Time picked back up
Takemi glanced up from whatever she was writing.
"The two girls from yesterday," she said.
"Yes?" He said in confusion.
She held his gaze for a moment.
"Send them in," she said. "I'll see them. They look like they need a checkup. It won't be any part of the trial."
"Thank you, Takemi-san."
"Don't thank me yet," she said as she uncrossed her legs and stared him in the eyes with a smirk. "You and I will be having quite a lot of fun, my new guinea pig."
She turned back to her paperwork.
Ren took that as a dismissal and left.
---
Leblanc was quiet when he returned, the mid-morning lull between the breakfast customers and the lunch crowd. Sojiro was reading a newspaper with the focused irritation of a man who disagreed with most of what was in it.
Ren climbed the stairs.
Morgana was sitting on the windowsill when he came in, watching the alley below with an absurdly focused intensity.
"How was it?" Morgana asked without turning.
"Good," Ren said, dropping onto the couch. "I think I forgot what it felt like to just stop moving."
"You should do it more often," Morgana said.
"I sorted things out with Takemi," Ren said. "She'll provide supplies in exchange for clinical trial participation. She'll also see Ann and Shiho."
Morgana turned from the window.
"Clinical trials."
"She said it probably won't kill me."
"Ren."
"We need the supplies, Morgana. And she's not going to ask questions." He stretched his arms above his head. "Besides, I have a feeling whatever she's developing is important to her."
Morgana looked at him for a long moment.
"Fine," he said. "But you're telling me what she is going to give you after you find out."
"Deal."
Ren's phone buzzed.
---
[Shu7thefup]
oi you free today
[J0ker]
Just got back from running an errand. Why?
[Shu7thefup]
untouchables. you said after school but today works better for me. My mom is kinda mad at me for the bad grades...
[Shu7thefup]
also captain kidd wants a better weapon than a lead pipe
[J0ker]
Captain Kidd wants it or do you want it?
[Shu7thefup]
...
[Shu7thefup]
both
[Shu7thefup]
mostly me
[J0ker]
Give me twenty minutes.
[Shu7thefup]
What about a crowbar?
---
Ren switched into clothing more suited for being in public, pocketed his phone, and headed downstairs.
Sojiro was still at the counter, newspaper now folded and set aside, rubbing his temples in annoyance.
"Mental shutdowns again. Ugh. It's not any of my concern." He quietly grumbled.
"Heading out," Ren said. "Meeting some friends in Shibuya. I'll be back before it gets late."
Sojiro looked at him and raised his brow.
"Late means when?"
"Before nine."
Sojiro nodded slowly. "Good. Keep it that way for now."
"Understood."
"And—" Sojiro set his cup down and reached under the counter. He came up with nothing, seemed to reconsider something, and waved a hand. "Remind me in the next couple days. I'll get a key made for you. You still have a curfew for now, but as long as you stay in Yongen I don't mind you wandering about in the evening. As long as you don't cause trouble of course."
Ren went still for just a moment.
It wasn't a large thing.
It was, in the case of the last several months, an enormous thing to him.
"Thank you, Boss," he said.
"Don't make it weird," Sojiro muttered as he tried to hid a smirk, picking up another cup to wipe down.
Ren almost smiled. "I'll flip the sign on my way out."
"I already flipped it."
"Right." He paused at the door. "Do you need anything from Shibuya?"
Sojiro blinked.
"...No," he said, he really hadn't expected to be asked.
Ren nodded and went outside.
---
The walk to the station gave Morgana time to complain quietly from inside the bag about the clinical trials, the lead pipe situation, and what he'd observed from the windowsill that morning, which turned out to be a territorial dispute between two cats in the alley that had been ongoing for several days and had reached what he described as a critical juncture.
"You've been watching two alley cats fight over territory," Ren said.
"I've been observing a complex social negotiation," Morgana said with dignity.
"Who's winning?"
A pause.
"The orange one," Morgana admitted. "But I think the grey one has a plan."
Ren thought about this.
"You can go down and check on it later if you want," he said. "While I'm in the clinc or bathhouse or whatever."
Morgana was quiet for a moment.
"I might," he said, very casually.
---
Shibuya was loud and large and still slightly overwhelming even after several days of navigating it. Ren had started mentally mapping it — the station exits, the shopping streets, the alleys that cut through faster than the main roads.
Ryuji was waiting outside the station in the way he always waited — standing, visibly restless.
"Took you long enough," he said. "Come on, it's this way."
They moved through the back streets, Ryuji navigating with the ease of someone who had grown up nearby. The neighborhood shifted as they went — shopping fronts giving way to narrower streets, fewer pedestrians. They soon came across a small back alley.
Untouchables announced itself with a window display that stopped Ren mid-step.
Model guns. Replica blades. Airsoft pistols, mock suppressors and the kind of accessories that existed in a specific legal grey zone that depended entirely on who was looking.
"See what I mean?" Ryuji said.
"Yeah," Ren said in shock
The bell above the door was much louder than Leblanc's. The shop was narrow and dense, merchandise covering every wall, the counter barely visible behind stacked display cases.
Behind it sat a man who looked like several different problems compressed into one. Large. Quiet. Dark eyes moving from Ryuji to Ren in a single unhurried sweep. A tattoo of a gecko on his neck.
He had the bearing of someone who had been in rooms considerably more dangerous than this one and had come out of all of them.
"Sakamoto," he said. His voice matched the rest of him.
"Hey, Iwai-san," Ryuji said, with the energy of someone trying to sound more casual than he felt. "This is my friend Ren. He just transferred to Shujin."
Iwai looked at Ren.
Ren looked back at him.
"Transfer student huh?" Iwai groaned.
"Yep, only been in Tokyo a few days," Ren said.
Another pause. Iwai's expression shifted slightly.
"You looking for something specific?" he asked.
"Replicas," Ren said. "Models. The kind that look real. Had to leave my collection at home"
"Real," Iwai repeated.
"Cosplay has to look good, you know?" Ren said. "Display purposes. We take care of our things."
Iwai looked at him for a long moment.
"Browse," he said finally. "Touch anything you want to buy. Don't touch anything you don't."
He picked up a magazine from behind the counter and returned his attention to it.
Ryuji exhaled quietly beside Ren.
"He likes you," Ryuji whispered.
"How can you tell?" Ren murmured back.
"He didn't tell us to leave."
Ren looked around the shop.
"If you say so," he shrugged, and started browsing.