Chapter Text
Masayoshi loved his father above all else.
In fact, it might have been more accurate to say that Masayoshi loved his father and his father only. Everyone else he shared the world with were bland and uninteresting. Nuisances, really.
He especially loathed his peers. They fell over themselves so often in the pursuit of his approval. Heartfelt confessions were a regular occurrence in the life of Masayoshi Akechi just as were his consequent rejections. He couldn’t accept those feelings, not when his peers could never match the glory of Goro Akechi. They could weep and beg and plead, but Masayoshi’s responses to their advances remained steadfast. He felt nothing for them.
Masayoshi snuck through the Palace, keeping his head low to hide the gold of his mask. He probably didn’t need to—filigree shined to a sun-bright polish rose around him like trees—but he could never be too cautious around the shadows that roamed his father’s Palace. His heart thrummed in his chest with both anxiety and excitement as a couple strolled past him, talking amongst themselves from behind masks with long beaks.
He’d already come to the Palace a handful of times, even with that threat of danger looming over him during each infiltration.
Masayoshi couldn’t help himself.
He was addicted to the sight of his father’s shadow performing before an auditorium of enthralled cognitions, all while adorned in operatic excesses that would seem tawdry on anyone else. But Goro Akechi, even as a shadow, was special.
The voices of cognitions echoed below him as he crept into one of the boxes high up in the auditorium. The opera was about to start. Masayoshi, as always, stopped to watched the performance.
Don Carlos. Der Freischütz. The Phantom of the Opera. Bluebeard’s Castle.
They flowed through Masayoshi’s head like a river, blending together until they formed a single narrative in service to his father’s shadow. The other cognitions faded into the background whenever Akechi was on the stage, exuding a presence that filled the entire opera house.
The crowd’s voices fell to a hush as the light dimmed, and the heavy curtains drew open. Masayoshi’s heart thrummed in his chest as he stole a glance down at the stage. Music both methodical and melancholic built up within the auditorium, and then the shadow of Goro Akechi was singing.
The true Goro Akechi could not speak Italian—or at least, Masayoshi did not think he could—but every word from Akechi came with a remarkable fluency. He understood none of what the shadow sang, but he could feel the accompanying dread. Even from so far away he could see the golden flicker of the shadow’s eyes, framed by both immaculately coiffed hair and eyeshadow that curled in smoky whorls. He moved very little in that heavy cloak of black feathers, but he didn’t need to. His voice was all he needed to command the attention of his audience.
Masayoshi thought of the world beyond Akechi’s Palace, with the populace as enthralled with his father as the cognitions below. Cabinet Minister Goro Akechi had a devoted following, after all. He was a man that knew how to manipulate the public for his own purposes, and he did such with ease. Masayoshi smiled to himself as he thought of his father’s latest speech, and of the way the journalists hung on his every word.
Ordinary people were so stupid. They had no idea what his father was like beneath the vapid platitudes and the promises of a liberating future.
They didn’t see the vicious creature he was under that costume he paraded around in, that elaborate masquerade as the idealist he maintained. Akechi spoke of justice, of a world free of everyday cruelties, but all the while he worked until late constructing the shackles his constituents wore. Justice to Akechi was a well-designed prison, with everyone trapped within little cells where they could never even dream of inflicting harm. They wouldn’t even notice the bars rising around them, as fixated on Akechi’s songs as they were.
And if they ever did stop listening to Akechi choose to look beyond the illusion he created for them then they would find a man with hands drenched in blood.
Masayoshi hardly blinked as he watched this Akechi sing. The shadow on stage always somehow catered to Masayoshi’s fantasies, but he never quite matched the appeal of the true Goro Akechi. The shadow was a doll. A very lovely doll, but a doll nonetheless.
The shadow reached toward the ceiling with one of his gloved hands, and Masayoshi quelled the desire to slink down to the stage and grasp it within his own. He was taller and broader than even the true Akechi—traits he was told he acquired from his paternal grandfather—and he could imagine how slender and delicate the shadow’s fingers would be compared to his own.
He wanted to pull his father’s shadow away from the eager gazes of the audience. Pull him away and into the most secluded corner of the opera house he could find. And then he could have the shadow sing a song meant only for him.
“Papa.”
Akechi looked up at Masayoshi and smiled. He normally wore contacts, but as of late he was more inclined to wear his glasses. The lamplight glinted off the silver frames. Masayoshi’s fingers itched with the urge to slip those glasses off Akechi’s face.
“You came home so late I was worried you were going to be up in time for school,” Akechi remarked. Faint curls of steam drifted from his coffee, and he reached for his cup.
“That’s not caffeinated, is it?”
Akechi froze just before he grabbed his coffee, as though he’d been caught in the midst of a scandal. His expression betrayed nothing, but Masayoshi took notice of how the tips of his ears flushed. He didn’t respond immediately, and Masayoshi knew his father was scrambling for an excuse that Masayoshi would accept. The man loved coffee, and the doctor’s suggestion that he cut caffeine out of his diet was typically ignored when Masayoshi wasn’t around to hold him accountable.
“There’s not as much caffeine in it as you would think,” Akechi eventually answered, and Masayoshi sighed in exasperation. Masayoshi took the coffee before Akechi made another attempt for it. The near-black coffee rippled with each movement, slashes of white light appearing and disappearing upon the surface. Masayoshi took a sip, and he grimaced. His father preferred a much stronger coffee than he did.
“The doctor said none,” Masayoshi scolded Akechi as he held back a second sigh. His brilliant, magnificent father could be so obstinate at times. “I bought you decaf. Why aren’t you drinking that?”
Akechi glanced at the far wall, his long lashes obscuring his russet eyes. Masayoshi resented how alluring his father looked when he was trying to be upset with him for shirking the doctor’s instructions. Tokyo would fall to ruin without Akechi around to drag its incompetent government from it squalor. And not just that, Masayoshi would fall to ruin without him around. He couldn’t just toy around with his weak heart because he wanted particular coffee.
“I needed something to wake me up, and it doesn’t really matter, does it? Drinking coffee is the least of my problems,” Akechi said. He leaned forward, his desk between them.
“I had a long night. Your aunt, Futaba? She’s been heading the cognitive psience research. I won’t bore you with the details, but she’s hit bigger snags than she expected. I might not be directly involved in the research, but their results do affect me.”
“Aunt Futaba, huh…” Masayoshi took another drink and made a disgusted sound. Futaba was benign—she was already married and had a daughter of her own—but he still felt the familiar twinge of jealousy when he imagined her talking to his father over the phone. The odd, joking tone that she took with Akechi made Masayoshi feel the familiar twinge of jealousy.
Masayoshi didn’t like seeing Akechi around other people. They coveted his father in a way that made him nauseous with contempt. No other person could understand Akechi the way that Masayoshi understood him. They could only see the surface of the man, with his aging androgynous allure and his position of power, but still they all somehow saw themselves worthy of his presence.
He wished other people kept their distance from Akechi, like journalists in a crowd.
“Ah.” Akechi set his tablet down upon the desktop. Masayoshi peered at the screen, and he caught the glimpse of subway wreckage. The photographer had tastefully abstained from taking pictures of the bodies strewn about in the immediate aftermath of the accident, but they’d still captured the warped steel protruding from the rubble. “Just so you know, I’ll be home late tonight as well.”
“Work again?”
Akechi shook his head. “Not this time. You’re familiar with Yoshizawa-san, aren’t you?”
“Dr. Yoshizawa?”
She was a counselor hired by Masayoshi’s school after one of his classmates jumped off the roof. He’d spoken to her once. She was friendly enough, and his classmates marveled over her background. Apparently she’d been a prodigal gymnast before she went to medical school, but a car accident had cut her athletic career short.
“The very same.” The pleasant smile on Akechi’s face would have delighted Masayoshi under normal circumstances, but it being accompanied by Dr. Yoshizawa’s name made him uneasy. “Your mother and I both knew her since high school. She’s been overseas in America until recently, so we haven’t really spoken in a long time.”
“Oh?” Masayoshi feigned nonchalance as Akechi spoke about Yoshizawa. He’d expressed his jealousy before. Moments when seeing Akechi’s time demanded by others became unbearable, and his frustration crawled out of him like a beast.
One particular incident occurred before Masayoshi even entered high school, when Akechi had taken it upon himself to try dating again. Masayoshi didn’t even remember the woman’s name, but he did recall how even the sight of her bland, friendly face—qualities that struck Masayoshi as more bovine than human—made him burn with anger. She’d been unworthy of Akechi.
But when Masayoshi had voiced his concerns he’d been dismissed by his father. “You’re being disrespectful, Masayoshi. She’s been nothing but kind to me, and she’s been nothing but kind to you.” As though Masayoshi was a small child throwing a tantrum over this new person being integrated into his home life.
Fortunately the romance had been a brief thing. Masayoshi had made sure of that.
“Well, now that she’s back in Tokyo we want to catch up.” Akechi slipped the glasses off his face, and Masayoshi schooled his expression into one of indifference. He wanted to press his lips to the indentation left on the bridge of Akechi’s nose.
He must have succeeded because Akechi didn’t seem to notice. He smiled at Masayoshi fondly. “So I’m going to be getting drinks with her after work. You’ll be fine tonight, won’t you? If you want take-out I can leave you some money.”
Masayoshi’s smile was tight. “You don’t need to worry about that, Papa,” he said. “I’ll be fine.” His spit tasted sour on his tongue. The idea of Yoshizawa getting drinks with his father was repulsive. Nervous, insecure Yoshizawa.
Masayoshi could imagine them in one of those quiet and classy bars that he knew his father preferred. Amber lighting would cast down upon them and make Akechi glow, radiant and beautiful.
And then Yoshizawa would be beside him, unremarkable with her dated haircut and glasses that never sat quite straight. Stammering out inane stories about their shared childhood, as though to forge a bond between them that Akechi would never be able to escape. The depths of pity Akechi that would have for his disappointing friend, this same woman that Shido’s mother had been so close to, would be endless.
“Masayoshi?”
Masayoshi turned to his father, smile still strained. “Yes, Papa?” he asked.
Akechi looked at him—thoughtful and faintly concerned. But then he shrugged a dismissal. “It’s nothing,” he said. “You should probably head out. You don’t want to be late for school.”
“Okay… what about a laboratory?”
“Conditions have not been met.”
Masayoshi clenched his jaw in an attempt to offset the anger boiling within his chest. “She’s a doctor,” he barked at his phone, as though to convince the Meta-Nav that he was correct, actually. She had a Palace. Her named had pulled up a hit. Eventually he would be able to grasp the entirety of this distortion that had manifested in her psyche.
It wasn’t even that hard to figure out where her psyche had planted her distortion. “She’s a doctor,” he repeated. A hospital made sense. But the keyword—
“Archaeological dig site.”
“Conditions have not been met.”
“University.”
“Conditions have not been met.”
Masayoshi felt the joints in his fingers creak as his grip on his phone tightened. “Space station.”
“Conditions have not been met.”
He couldn’t keep standing outside this hospital. A security guard was already looking at him with curiosity. He was being suspicious.
“Masquerade.”
“Conditions have not been met.”
“Asylum.”
“Conditions have not been met.”
The sky was turning a light, gentle purple. Nighttime had arrived. Masayoshi knew that somewhere else in Tokyo there were two people walking down the street, catching each other up on the details of their lives as they approached a small bar a few intersections away.
Masayoshi huffed in exasperation has he shoved his phone back into his pocket. Defeat might be his companion that day, but he would return. There was only so many things that Yoshizawa’s keyword could be. He would eventually crack it.
He just hoped he could slip into her Palace before his father did anything reckless, such as get romantically involved with this unremarkable woman he called a friend.
Masayoshi sometimes considered drugging Akechi. Not frequently. Just on the occasions when his father showed a little too much interest in someone. When his gaze lingered too long on the scrap of a woman that worked as Niijima’s secretary, or when he smiled too wide as the broad-chested man that lived a couple floors below them. Or when he spoke about Yoshizawa.
He would never actually drug Akechi. He wasn’t sure how his father’s heart would handle it. The thought of accidentally killing Akechi was horrifying. Even the prospect of Akechi becoming involved with someone that wasn’t Masayoshi himself was nothing in comparison. Even if that someone was Yoshizawa.
Masayoshi found Yoshizawa in their apartment the week after Akechi and her met up for drinks. Making curry and—though she should have known better if she was such a good friend of Akechi’s—coffee.
“It’s fine, Masayoshi. An occasional cup of coffee isn’t going to kill me,” Akechi said when Masayoshi brought up the coffee.
“The doctor said none.”
Yoshizawa’s face turned red with guilt as stared at the curry simmering on the stove. “But Goro sees a specialist too, doesn’t he?” she stammered. “And she’s said that an occasional cup is fine, right? It’s just about moderation.”
As though Yoshizawa or that specialist understood anything. Any risk was too much.
“To be fair,” Akechi started, coffee cup still in hand. “My doctor isn’t that worried about the caffeine either. He would rather I didn’t, but he also wants me to take an early retirement. Cut the stress out of my life completely. Take it easy.” How Akechi wrinkled his nose in distaste at the thought.
Masayoshi had felt indignant over the dismissal of the doctor’s concern—no, of his concern. Shame colored him the way it had colored Yoshizawa.
At least Akechi didn’t do such things in the realm of Masayoshi’s fantasies. He laid peaceful and helpless on his bed, sprawled out in an unconscious sort of invitation as Masayoshi unbuttoned his shirt.
Vulnerable.
Pliant.
Masayoshi spent multiple nights entrenched in that fantasy. Hand around his cock so tight that his knuckles turned white from the strain. He wanted to hide in one of those fantasies as he looked at Akechi and Yoshizawa. After dinner he retreated to his room to do just that.
“I didn’t upset Masayoshi, did I?” Yoshizawa, when the two believed Masayoshi could no longer hear them. “You’ve mentioned he can be…”
“Overbearing?” Akechi suggested in a voice that verged on patronizing. “He’s fine. You didn’t say anything wrong. He just frets about me. Sometimes it feels like he’s the father and I’m the son.”
A pause.
“Was he always like this?” Yoshizawa asked. “I don’t remember him being this worried about you when he was younger.”
After his mother died, Masayoshi knew she wanted to say. He closed his door then, not wanting to hear his father’s response.
Of course, Masayoshi knew that he could get a private audience with his father whenever he wanted.
And so Masayoshi did, on one of those blessed days when Akechi stayed home. “I don’t like her,” he said. Akechi was working late in his study, and Masayoshi had walked in to see him when he saw the door ajar, with a beam of light slicing through the dark hallway outside.
Akechi looked tired. The glasses couldn’t hide the bruise-like smudges under his eyes. The campaign took so much of his time anymore. An exasperated murmur rumbled forth as he looked up from his tablet. He didn’t seem surprised by Masayoshi’s remark, nor did he seem thrilled to hear it. “You barely know her,” he told Masayoshi.
“I know her well enough,” Masayoshi said. He wouldn’t accept this dismissal. Not only was Yoshizawa a threat to Masayoshi and the little time he was able to spend with Akechi, but she was a threat to his father’s health. She encouraged the worst in Akechi, assured him that his health was of little concern. Masayoshi felt green as he thought about it, as though jealousy and dread were blending together into a uniquely nauseating cocktail. If he took a sip he would taste nothing but acid.
Akechi sat the tablet down and gave Masayoshi his undivided attention. “No, you don’t,” he said. “You’ve met her maybe three times in your entire life, and if the other night is anything to go by you barely talked to her during any of them.” Irritation showed itself in his furrowed brow.
“I’ve talked to her enough.” Masayoshi circled the desk, and he leaned down to wrap his arms around Akechi. His father was warm—he wanted to take in all of that heat, until he was filled with nothing but what Akechi gave him. Maybe then the jealousy and dread and acid-sharp nausea would have no space to thrive. “I know she’s a friend of yours and Mama’s, but I don’t see why you have to be in a relationship with her.”
Akechi paused. “That’s right, isn’t it?” he murmured, “Sumire and I are involved.” Speaking to himself more than to Masayoshi, as though he’d not considered his evolving relationship with Yoshizawa.
Masayoshi wanted to scoff. “Are you saying you didn’t know?” He didn’t believe that. Akechi was smart, too smart to stumble into a romance without realizing it. He buried his face against his father’s shoulder. It was a level of physical intimacy that most men didn’t permit their sons, but Akechi never complained. Perhaps he understood the depths of Masayoshi’s love on some instinctual level that his rational mind never quite considered.
That obliviousness was so frustrating, and Masayoshi amended his opinion of Akechi as he contemplated it. His father was the exact sort of man to end up in a romantic relationship without even being aware of it. If only that romance he’d fell into was with someone actually worthy of his affection. If only it’d been with Masayoshi himself.
“Hm.” Akechi drummed his fingers against his desk. “Well, Sumire and I didn’t have a conversation about it,” he said, and then he shook his head. “But that’s not important right now. Sumire has had… a difficult life. She doesn’t need you antagonizing her just because you’re upset she’s dating me.”
Masayoshi bristled. “It’s more complicated than that,” he protested. Akechi spoke as though he was a small child that resented change purely for the sake of it. So Masayoshi pushed forward with his defense. “You’re the most remarkable person to ever exist. You’re brilliant and passionate, and whenever you speak I see people falling over themselves as they praise you. You put so much work into your campaign, but even if you didn’t it’s obvious that you’re going to be the next prime minister. No other candidate comes close.”
The barest trace of a smile appeared on Akechi’s weary face. He was fighting the urge to preen. “It makes me happy to know you think the world of me,” he said. “Most fathers don’t get that degree of approval from their kids. But we’re discussing Sumire, not me.”
“That’s the point I’m getting to. You’re everything that people aspire to, but Dr. Yoshizawa? Everything she is and does is because she can’t stop failing.” Masayoshi could feel Akechi tense, and he imagined the man’s mouth thinning into a drawn, angry line. He enjoyed how his father looked when he was angry—haughty and sincere and passionate—but he strove to avoid that ire. Good sons weren’t supposed to anger their fathers, and an exemplary father was owed an exemplary son.
“She’d wanted to be a gymnast when she was young, didn’t she?” Masayoshi asked as he propped his chin on Akechi’s shoulder. “She told me as much, during that counseling session my school made me go to, because I guess they thought was gonna jump off the roof like that girl.” His fingers dug into Akechi’s shirt. “But then she ended up in that car accident while in college, and her body wasn’t the same after.”
“…That’s correct,” Akechi said. “Your mother and I had to help her while she was recovering.” His voice sounded tight. Masayoshi thought of a cord stretched to the verge of snapping.
“So she went into medical school when her gymnastics career became impossible,” Masayoshi said. “But what kind of career has it been? Cognitive psience? She hasn’t managed near as much with her research as my aunt has.” Masayoshi thought of Akechi’s Palace, with its high ceilings and Akechi’s voice a wail as the orchestra reached a crescendo. The physical proof of Yoshizawa’s theories. Had she been a better doctor she might have found it, considering that Masayoshi stumbled into the Metaverse by sheer chance.
“I don’t know exactly what her research in America involved, but she didn’t return with a a whole lot to work with, did she?” Masayoshi continued. “I guess it’s no wonder she got dumped off on a bunch of high schoolers to ask if we want to kill ourselves. At least most of us don’t know she’s a crackpot.”
“Masayoshi.”
Akechi’s voice was sharp. The cord had snapped. “There’s no point in being this cruel because you’re jealous.” The words were a knife bearing down on Masayoshi. Akechi sounded bewildered, as though he hadn’t been prepared for the depths of Masayoshi’s contempt for Yoshizawa. “You’re not making a case that she’s somehow unworthy of my time. You’re being petty because you’re mad that I’m spending some of my free time with someone besides you.
“That might have been fine when you were still young. I accepted it whenever you acted out. Your mother…” Akechi paused. Swallowed as he mentioned his late wife. Pulled his anger back from this ghost he’d just summoned. “It was a bad death, and you didn’t take it well. Neither of us took it well. But you’re eighteen now. You can’t keep taking it out on anyone I give the least bit of attention to.”
The suggestion that he was acting on a juvenile impulse dug into Masayoshi’s skin like a poisoned barb. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.”
“Then quit acting out like a child.”
It was cruel. It wasn’t the first time Masayoshi tried broaching this conversation with Akechi, but he never succeeded in conveying the shape of his love for Akechi. It was always dismissed as the love of a child—pure and naive, occasionally tainted with a vindictive outburst. The way Masayoshi ached for Akechi was placed in the realm of the familial, regardless of whether or not it belonged there.
And his jealousy was regarded with that same sentiment. He was once again being dismissed as a petulant child, upset to see his father with someone besides his mother.
He was eighteen, almost out of high school, and Akechi still saw him as a little kid.
Akechi rubbed his forehead. Fatigue was drawn on his face with a heavy hand. “Please tell me you understand,” he said. “I don’t want to keep arguing with you over this.”
“Zoo.”
“Conditions have not been met.”
“Theme park.”
“Conditions have not been met.”
“Desert.”
“Conditions have not been met.”
Masayoshi was running out of ideas, and he didn’t want to return home without having made any progress. “Castle.”
“Conditions have not been met.”
Thumping echoed within his head as the herald of a fast-approaching migraine. Masayoshi had a bottle of ibuprofen in his bag, but reaching for the bottle felt like surrender. He refused to take a couple pills until he cracked Yoshizawa’s Palace.
“I refuse to believe I just can’t break in there,” he grumbled to himself. “Come on, Yoshizawa, what the hell have you dreamed up?”
He recollected every encounter he had with Yoshizawa for clues. Maybe the coffee she made, or the books that his father lent her. Her cell phone case might even reveal the shape of her Palace.
“Coffee shop.”
“Conditions have not been met.”
“Library.”
“Conditions have not been met.”
“Fairy tale kingdom.”
“Conditions have not been met.”
Masayoshi nearly threw his arms up in exasperation. “I don’t know then. Murder mystery?” He thought of his father’s collection of old mystery novels, the ones that she was currently borrowing a couple from. The suggestion felt absurd even as he said it, but then the Meta-Nav answered him.
“Result found. Beginning navigation.”