Eyes Full of Darkness [7/?]
Title: Eyes Full of Darkness
Pairings: Nishin (Nishii Yukito/Akutsu Shintarou), Akutsu→Jun
Genre: AU
Chapter Rating: PG.
Word Count: ~3400
Summary: Akutsu learns more about the organization and considers finding a new love.
Notes: I thought this chapter was going to be about a thousand words shorter than it was. Oops.
←To Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
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Chapter 7: Loneliness begets restlessness
“Please, have a seat,” Ikeoka said, and waved his hand. A floor panel slid back and rotated, providing an armchair. After inspecting it to see if manacles would jump out and restrain his arms and legs if he sat in it, Akutsu deemed it safe enough. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t do the same, my physical condition is unfortunately not so good today.” Jun shifted in his position and Ikeoka touched him on the shoulder. “Jun, would you make us some tea?”
Jun cast a suspicious look at Akutsu before standing up. “Of course, Ikeoka-san.” He went over to one of the panels on the wall, which folded away, and busied himself with a kettle.
“So,” Akutsu started, “Yukito came to my house last night after being shot, and I took him to the hospital, and then Mitsuya-senpai came and kidnapped him. Before Mitsuya-senpai took him away, he told me to come here and tell you what happened. So…” He shrugged, figuring he better not make too big a deal about going to save Yukito before he figured out if Ikeoka was part of Mitsuya’s plot. He was already kind of interested in starting one of their routes, but he couldn’t help noticing that Jun had stopped being sweet and gentle and started being paranoid and defensive as soon as they entered the room. He glanced over at Jun, was momentarily distracted by the way the panel had folded out of the wall and wondered if all the wall and floor panels were hiding something, like bombs or something, and only realized he was staring when Jun shot an annoyed glance at him. He smiled and waved and brought his hands together in a heart shape, which Jun rolled his eyes and smiled ever so slightly at.
Akutsu turned his attention back to Ikeoka, who had transformed part of his bed into a desk. He was flipping through screens on a pair of tablets. “I suppose Mitsuya really did join Yamaguchi, then?” he asked, not looking up.
“Yes. I’m not sure if Kenki-sama’s involved with the Yukito part, but Mitsuya-senpai was definitely talking as if… he had no intentions of returning.”
“I see.” Jun brought him a cup of tea, and he patted his arm. “Thank you, Jun. Will you sit and talk with us?”
Jun brought Akutsu his own cup and sat down on the bed next to Ikeoka. “I can stay a while, so long as nobody comes.” He flipped out another desk and immediately started typing something on the computer that came up. Akutsu considered the situation and determined that despite the evidence to the contrary, he couldn’t conclusively say that Ikeoka and Jun were together, which probably meant that it was just a highly teased ship that would probably garner a great deal of fan support, or one that you might see hints of if you chose certain options during their paths but was never officially recognized. He concluded that as long as he was careful and conscientious about the way he went about it, he could end up with either of them. (Or both of them. He wasn’t sure if this scenario supported that sort of thing, but if there were a harem ending, he wouldn’t mind getting that one, provided he could add and reject members as he saw fit.) He mentally classified them as the responsible nii-san type and the sweet, shy type with a possible yandere side, and turned his attention back to the topic at hand when he was sure he was aware of his options.
“Do you have any idea why Mitsuya took him?” Ikeoka asked when he saw that Akutsu was paying attention again. “Is he attempting to make him a Yamaguchi clan guardian as well?”
Akutsu hesitated. Should he tell the truth now, or make sure they went to go save him? “I’m not exactly sure,” he said carefully. “He didn’t tell me much before he knocked me out. But I think he might kill him.”
Ikeoka had been kicking his feet in the air as he worked, but now he grew still. “Ikeoka-san,” Jun said, taking his hands off his keyboard.
“Jun,” Ikeoka responded. Apparently they could have a meaningful conversation just by saying each other’s names, because Jun nodded and began typing much more quickly and purposefully. “Akutsu-kun. Don’t worry.” Akutsu felt good about the fact that he was the first person Ikeoka had used an honorific with. “We won’t let anyone kill Yukito, and we certainly won’t let Yamaguchi have him. Mitsuya isn’t too great a loss, but I could never live with myself if I let him keep such a cute kiddo to himself, you know?” The way he smiled after saying that made Akutsu feel that even if Ikeoka did have a collection of cute assassin boys to which Yukito would be a considerable loss, he had much different reasons for wanting him back.
“Um. Can I help you retrieve him at all?” Akutsu asked.
Ikeoka frowned. “I wouldn’t want you to get hurt in the process. It’s too dangerous to bring someone who can’t defend himself. Besides, when we come back with him, we’ll need you here to take care of him, you know?”
“But can’t you, like, teach me how to fight or something? It’s kind of scary thinking about what these guys can do and not being able to do anything about it… and I want to help Yukito no matter what, even if that means getting hurt in the process.” He wasn’t sure how honest the last part was, but he figured he was tough enough to take a badly-aimed bullet or two, since he was a protagonist and all.
“That’s the absolute last thing you could do to help him,” Ikeoka said sharply, and Akutsu froze. “Listen, I understand your feelings, but in this case, we cannot afford for you to get hurt or accidentally killed. Yukito cannot, I cannot, the country cannot. Do you understand?”
What Akutsu understood was that he had just been granted plot-based immunity when it came to bosses and upper-ranking people, but not mooks that were too useless to know better than to kill him. “I don’t,” he said, “but I’m willing to accept it provided you explain some things to me.”
“I have every intention of doing that.” The intense look left Ikeoka’s face and he smiled again. “What can I tell you?”
“I’ve been told I’m a Safety, but what exactly is that?” Something inside him felt like he was betraying Yukito by starting with that question, but he ignored it by reasoning that he needed accurate information, and Ikeoka was slightly more likely to provide it to him on the grounds that he was not as mentally unstable as Mitsuya’s words and Shiramata’s recording insinuated Yukito was, and that, precluding a radical genre shift and/or plot twist, he was almost definitely still alive, which was something he could not necessarily say was true about Yukito. Even if the secondary lead rarely got killed before the plot started really moving, it was that one-in-a-million exception he couldn’t rule out.
“It’s a person who’s designed to protect one of our workers in a way that someone more intimately connected to our organization wouldn’t be able to. Someone outside of the systems who they can trust to protect them, who would have no reason to sell them out to anyone else.”
“You say ‘outside of the system,’ but you knew who I was.”
Ikeoka flipped one of his tablets over and stared hard at the other one before responding. “Leaders are expected to be responsible for remembering their assistants’ Safeties so they can retrieve them if necessary. Otherwise, no one generally knows who anyone else’s Safety is.”
“Jun-san knew who I was. Mitsuya-senpai knew.”
“Well, Jun’s a little more special than the average assistant.” He patted Jun’s leg and Jun smiled goofily. Akutsu supposed he should have seen that one coming. “And… for that matter, you’re a little more special than the average Safety. This gets down to why we can’t allow you to be hurt, no matter what.”
Akutsu considered this and chose his next words carefully. “Is there something special about me that made Yukito choose me as his Safety? Or is there something special about Yukito?”
Ikeoka rolled over and stared at the canopy. Jun stopped typing. “Ikeoka-san, Kamitsuru-san’s lieutenant has arrived. I’ll go greet him.” Ikeoka waved him off absently and continued to stare.
When the door had closed after Jun, Ikeoka rolled back over and started looking at his tablet again. “I’m not entirely sure how to answer your question. Certainly Yukito thinks there is something special about you, which is enough to make you special in your own right. As for Yukito himself, it’s not so much special as it is… unnatural, perhaps.”
“Which is why Mitsuya-senpai wants to kill him, I assume. Are there any others like him?” He was expecting a Yukito foil and possibly even an Akutsu foil to show up at some point, because that kind of rival was way more interesting than boss after boss. Especially if it turned out, as it was looking like it would, that without someone like Akutsu in his life, someone like Yukito would turn into a total psychopath.
“Well, I for one certainly hope I never meet another one.” Ikeoka frowned at his tablet. “I’m afraid I have to meet with someone else now, but I’ll discuss this with you more after we’re finished. If you’d please wait in the other room?” A panel swung open on the wall, and when Akutsu approached, he found it led into a little side room with some chairs and a table and a big tv mounted on the wall. He picked up his cup of tea and went in.
The panel closed behind him and he immediately started looking around everywhere. He tried to turn on the tv, figuring it might show him what was going on in the next room, or at least cartoons or something, but it didn’t work. He poked at the table, thinking it might flip around and show him detailed character descriptions, or possibly turn into a save point if it were that kind of game, but while it did flip over at his touch, all it showed him was a menu. Not an equipment menu or a stats menu or a save menu. A food menu.
He bashed the table again in disgust. Really, what kind of person could eat at a time like this? Then he decided he was exactly the kind of person who could eat at a time like this and ordered a cheeseburger and fries. While waiting around for it, and secretly wondering how it was even going to get there, he started pushing on some of the walls. They didn’t pop out with massive rocket launchers or anything, and he was a little disappointed. He wondered if the menu was actually a secret code for something else, like he had accidentally just ordered a double nuclear strike on America with a side of chemical warfare instead of a double cheeseburger with pickles. He concluded that was stupid and that Ikeoka wouldn’t have put him in this room if there was even the slightest chance that he might accidentally destroy the world.
He hit the table again and a different panel folded back. The buttons on this one were marked things like “Office,” “Pool,” and “Bedroom.” He hoped that Ikeoka was in a position where he could make a threat about sleepin’ with the fishes, just in case, and pushed the Pool button. A different panel on the opposite side slid open, to his relief. He wandered in and found himself, as promised, in a room containing a huge swimming pool. (The words “Olympic-sized” came to mind, but most of his experience with the Olympics involved whining when live coverage from the other side of the world preempted his late-night anime.)
Akutsu had never learned to swim, so he stayed well away from the water, since Jun was probably too busy protecting Ikeoka to save him, and he didn’t think he’d tripped the flags for any mouth-to-mouth resuscitation events yet. He figured that would be closer to the ending, so he looked around a little longer, admiring the sea creatures painted on the walls, and then went back to the other room. A cheeseburger was waiting innocently on the table, and he eyed it suspiciously. He touched it and found that it was made neither of rubber nor dynamite, and he therefore determined it to be safe for consumption. As he had figured, the fact that it was edible meant that it was absolutely top-class, because obviously secret government-running organizations only ever hired the best caterers. The fries were pretty good too. Unfortunately, the tea didn’t really go with fast food and it was getting cold.
He threw himself to the ground and started rolling around and punching the floor. This was the worst! If he were in the audience, he’d be able to see what was going on in the other room and figure out what the Kamitsuru-san faction was all about, whether they were villainously motivated or, like, tall, or what. Instead he was stuck here in this stupid room with stupid food and just as soon as he got out he was going to be hit by the crushing anvil of dramatic irony and everything he did after that would look totally stupid to the audience.
Eventually he sat up to find his flailing had activated some kind of elevator that had taken him to a different level to a room with a bunch of monitors and flashing lights and suspicious levers and that kind of thing. Well. That was worrisome. He decided this was definitely the kind of room where he shouldn’t touch anything at all ever and started looking around without taking a step off the platform that had brought him there.
There was a large map of Tokyo on the wall behind him, with blinking lights in a variety of colors lighting up various areas. After a moment of distress in which he scanned over it ineffectively, trying to figure out what horrible but oddly festive secrets the map held, he realized it was labeled “HQ and Agent Positions.” That made things make a lot more sense, and he quickly tracked down the Ryuugo building to find that it was represented by a cluster of red dots, as well as a lone blue one. He found a similar cluster of blue in what looked like Ginza, and assumed that represented Kamitsuru-san, since it would make sense if the blue one in Ryuugo was the minion he had sent. He looked for other red dots next. There were a few scattered across the city, but there were only two that were together - and they were surrounded by a number of green dots. “Found you, Kenki-sama,” he said, and took a picture with his phone. It looked like his headquarters was in the Roppongi area, but he figured he’d track down the specific location later. He looked around, didn’t see anything else that looked both useful and difficult to accidentally destroy, and after considering his options, stomped on the ground. Luckily, this worked, and the platform lowered him back down to the previous room. He stepped off, sat down at the table, and went back to eating his burger. He thought he was a little freaked out about the whole thing, but resolved not to show it, lest viewers complain about what a lame and weak protag he was.
He continued to munch on his fries, which were no longer as delicious as he had thought they were earlier, until the door opened up again and Ikeoka called out to him. He went in obediently and tried to pretend that nothing had happened, which in this case meant being as otaku as possible and directing attention away from himself. “So who was that guy anyway? Was he ikemen? Are you going to try to steal him from Kamitsuru-san and add him to your ikemen collection? What’d you talk about? Is he going to help us save Yukito, or is he a bad guy?”
Ikeoka blinked at him. “Sorry, what’s an ikemen? As you can imagine, I don’t get out much.” He gestured at the bed. Akutsu didn’t think that was an excuse, since he avoided leaving the house as much as possible and still picked up plenty of useful vocabulary, but decided he’d cut him some slack since he probably spent a lot of time trying to run the country and not die of a terminal disease, or something.
“You know, a pretty boy,” he said with a shrug. “Like you, or Jun-san. You’re both super ikemen.”
“Oh.” Ikeoka considered this. “Thank you. You’re very ikemen as well.”
Akutsu giggled and shifted from side to side. He was known as the “Ikemen Otaku,” but only to his roommates and select parts of the internet. It was nice to have someone outside his inner circle confirm that. “Oh, but so was that guy ikemen too?”
“Uh. If I understand the term right, then yes, he is quite ikemen.”
“Is he tall?”
“Not much taller than the average, I think.”
“Is he…” Akutsu closed his eyes and recited what he remembered of Shion’s description. “Uh, olderish, with longerish hair, and does he try to act tough but really he’s squishy and lovable, and does he have a tragic past?”
“…What?”
“Um, never mind. You can show me a picture later maybe.”
“Okay?” Ikeoka said. Jun came into the room, no longer wearing his collared shirt and tie but some kind of combat outfit. In addition to being quite skintight, it was exactly the style Akutsu preferred, and combined with Jun’s innocent smile, was managing to push nearly every moe button he had at once. It took all the willpower he possessed not to throw himself at him and start kissing his cute little face. He only managed to restrain himself by telling himself that he didn’t want to alienate Ikeoka yet, and he didn’t want to get kicked across the room by Jun, but it was definitely more the former than the latter. He made a series of strange faces and had to look away from Jun lest he spontaneously go bald and lose all of his protagonist appeal along with his hair.
“Akutsu-kun?” Ikeoka said, and he snapped instantly back to reality.
“Yessir! What can I do for you, sir! Permission to take a picture of Jun-san, sir!” He covered his mouth in horror, which was approximately the expression Jun had on his face as well.
Ikeoka was the only one unaffected. “Permission denied, soldier,” he said with a smile. “The situation has changed. We’re about to go in and recover Yukito, and you may join us if you like. If not, you’ll be perfectly safe here until we get back.”
“Yes, I’ll go, please let me go,” Akutsu said, carefully not checking to see if Jun was still totally creeped out by him. A thought occurred to him. “Ikeoka-sama, you’re going too? Will you be okay?” He wouldn’t mind going alone with Jun, and maybe getting to apologize for being weird and make excuses and try to win his love a bit, but if Ikeoka was only pretending to be sick and was secretly a badass and was going to wear the same outfit as Jun and they were going to battle things together, he wanted to know about it ahead of time so he could try to prepare his heart.
A section of Ikeoka’s bed folded out and transformed into a wheelchair, which Jun helped him into. “Don’t worry. If something goes wrong, it’ll be better for me to be there than here.” Akutsu saw for the first time that his torso was completely wrapped in bandages beneath his sheer pajama shirt, and shivered, wondering what had caused it. “More importantly, let’s move. We still have time to save Yukito, but we’ll have to hurry!”
“All right!” Akutsu said, and followed them down a dark, sloping hallway that had opened up in a side panel, trying to hold in his feelings of excitement and moe, and also trying not to look at Jun’s butt too much. It was time for the next part of the adventure!
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Next chapter→
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A/N: I was looking at my Tokyo guide to figure out where everyone's bases would be, and part of the description for Ginza was "a flamboyant district for sophisticated adults."
I'm sorry about Shin.
Pairings: Nishin (Nishii Yukito/Akutsu Shintarou), Akutsu→Jun
Genre: AU
Chapter Rating: PG.
Word Count: ~3400
Summary: Akutsu learns more about the organization and considers finding a new love.
Notes: I thought this chapter was going to be about a thousand words shorter than it was. Oops.
←To Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
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Chapter 7: Loneliness begets restlessness
“Please, have a seat,” Ikeoka said, and waved his hand. A floor panel slid back and rotated, providing an armchair. After inspecting it to see if manacles would jump out and restrain his arms and legs if he sat in it, Akutsu deemed it safe enough. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t do the same, my physical condition is unfortunately not so good today.” Jun shifted in his position and Ikeoka touched him on the shoulder. “Jun, would you make us some tea?”
Jun cast a suspicious look at Akutsu before standing up. “Of course, Ikeoka-san.” He went over to one of the panels on the wall, which folded away, and busied himself with a kettle.
“So,” Akutsu started, “Yukito came to my house last night after being shot, and I took him to the hospital, and then Mitsuya-senpai came and kidnapped him. Before Mitsuya-senpai took him away, he told me to come here and tell you what happened. So…” He shrugged, figuring he better not make too big a deal about going to save Yukito before he figured out if Ikeoka was part of Mitsuya’s plot. He was already kind of interested in starting one of their routes, but he couldn’t help noticing that Jun had stopped being sweet and gentle and started being paranoid and defensive as soon as they entered the room. He glanced over at Jun, was momentarily distracted by the way the panel had folded out of the wall and wondered if all the wall and floor panels were hiding something, like bombs or something, and only realized he was staring when Jun shot an annoyed glance at him. He smiled and waved and brought his hands together in a heart shape, which Jun rolled his eyes and smiled ever so slightly at.
Akutsu turned his attention back to Ikeoka, who had transformed part of his bed into a desk. He was flipping through screens on a pair of tablets. “I suppose Mitsuya really did join Yamaguchi, then?” he asked, not looking up.
“Yes. I’m not sure if Kenki-sama’s involved with the Yukito part, but Mitsuya-senpai was definitely talking as if… he had no intentions of returning.”
“I see.” Jun brought him a cup of tea, and he patted his arm. “Thank you, Jun. Will you sit and talk with us?”
Jun brought Akutsu his own cup and sat down on the bed next to Ikeoka. “I can stay a while, so long as nobody comes.” He flipped out another desk and immediately started typing something on the computer that came up. Akutsu considered the situation and determined that despite the evidence to the contrary, he couldn’t conclusively say that Ikeoka and Jun were together, which probably meant that it was just a highly teased ship that would probably garner a great deal of fan support, or one that you might see hints of if you chose certain options during their paths but was never officially recognized. He concluded that as long as he was careful and conscientious about the way he went about it, he could end up with either of them. (Or both of them. He wasn’t sure if this scenario supported that sort of thing, but if there were a harem ending, he wouldn’t mind getting that one, provided he could add and reject members as he saw fit.) He mentally classified them as the responsible nii-san type and the sweet, shy type with a possible yandere side, and turned his attention back to the topic at hand when he was sure he was aware of his options.
“Do you have any idea why Mitsuya took him?” Ikeoka asked when he saw that Akutsu was paying attention again. “Is he attempting to make him a Yamaguchi clan guardian as well?”
Akutsu hesitated. Should he tell the truth now, or make sure they went to go save him? “I’m not exactly sure,” he said carefully. “He didn’t tell me much before he knocked me out. But I think he might kill him.”
Ikeoka had been kicking his feet in the air as he worked, but now he grew still. “Ikeoka-san,” Jun said, taking his hands off his keyboard.
“Jun,” Ikeoka responded. Apparently they could have a meaningful conversation just by saying each other’s names, because Jun nodded and began typing much more quickly and purposefully. “Akutsu-kun. Don’t worry.” Akutsu felt good about the fact that he was the first person Ikeoka had used an honorific with. “We won’t let anyone kill Yukito, and we certainly won’t let Yamaguchi have him. Mitsuya isn’t too great a loss, but I could never live with myself if I let him keep such a cute kiddo to himself, you know?” The way he smiled after saying that made Akutsu feel that even if Ikeoka did have a collection of cute assassin boys to which Yukito would be a considerable loss, he had much different reasons for wanting him back.
“Um. Can I help you retrieve him at all?” Akutsu asked.
Ikeoka frowned. “I wouldn’t want you to get hurt in the process. It’s too dangerous to bring someone who can’t defend himself. Besides, when we come back with him, we’ll need you here to take care of him, you know?”
“But can’t you, like, teach me how to fight or something? It’s kind of scary thinking about what these guys can do and not being able to do anything about it… and I want to help Yukito no matter what, even if that means getting hurt in the process.” He wasn’t sure how honest the last part was, but he figured he was tough enough to take a badly-aimed bullet or two, since he was a protagonist and all.
“That’s the absolute last thing you could do to help him,” Ikeoka said sharply, and Akutsu froze. “Listen, I understand your feelings, but in this case, we cannot afford for you to get hurt or accidentally killed. Yukito cannot, I cannot, the country cannot. Do you understand?”
What Akutsu understood was that he had just been granted plot-based immunity when it came to bosses and upper-ranking people, but not mooks that were too useless to know better than to kill him. “I don’t,” he said, “but I’m willing to accept it provided you explain some things to me.”
“I have every intention of doing that.” The intense look left Ikeoka’s face and he smiled again. “What can I tell you?”
“I’ve been told I’m a Safety, but what exactly is that?” Something inside him felt like he was betraying Yukito by starting with that question, but he ignored it by reasoning that he needed accurate information, and Ikeoka was slightly more likely to provide it to him on the grounds that he was not as mentally unstable as Mitsuya’s words and Shiramata’s recording insinuated Yukito was, and that, precluding a radical genre shift and/or plot twist, he was almost definitely still alive, which was something he could not necessarily say was true about Yukito. Even if the secondary lead rarely got killed before the plot started really moving, it was that one-in-a-million exception he couldn’t rule out.
“It’s a person who’s designed to protect one of our workers in a way that someone more intimately connected to our organization wouldn’t be able to. Someone outside of the systems who they can trust to protect them, who would have no reason to sell them out to anyone else.”
“You say ‘outside of the system,’ but you knew who I was.”
Ikeoka flipped one of his tablets over and stared hard at the other one before responding. “Leaders are expected to be responsible for remembering their assistants’ Safeties so they can retrieve them if necessary. Otherwise, no one generally knows who anyone else’s Safety is.”
“Jun-san knew who I was. Mitsuya-senpai knew.”
“Well, Jun’s a little more special than the average assistant.” He patted Jun’s leg and Jun smiled goofily. Akutsu supposed he should have seen that one coming. “And… for that matter, you’re a little more special than the average Safety. This gets down to why we can’t allow you to be hurt, no matter what.”
Akutsu considered this and chose his next words carefully. “Is there something special about me that made Yukito choose me as his Safety? Or is there something special about Yukito?”
Ikeoka rolled over and stared at the canopy. Jun stopped typing. “Ikeoka-san, Kamitsuru-san’s lieutenant has arrived. I’ll go greet him.” Ikeoka waved him off absently and continued to stare.
When the door had closed after Jun, Ikeoka rolled back over and started looking at his tablet again. “I’m not entirely sure how to answer your question. Certainly Yukito thinks there is something special about you, which is enough to make you special in your own right. As for Yukito himself, it’s not so much special as it is… unnatural, perhaps.”
“Which is why Mitsuya-senpai wants to kill him, I assume. Are there any others like him?” He was expecting a Yukito foil and possibly even an Akutsu foil to show up at some point, because that kind of rival was way more interesting than boss after boss. Especially if it turned out, as it was looking like it would, that without someone like Akutsu in his life, someone like Yukito would turn into a total psychopath.
“Well, I for one certainly hope I never meet another one.” Ikeoka frowned at his tablet. “I’m afraid I have to meet with someone else now, but I’ll discuss this with you more after we’re finished. If you’d please wait in the other room?” A panel swung open on the wall, and when Akutsu approached, he found it led into a little side room with some chairs and a table and a big tv mounted on the wall. He picked up his cup of tea and went in.
The panel closed behind him and he immediately started looking around everywhere. He tried to turn on the tv, figuring it might show him what was going on in the next room, or at least cartoons or something, but it didn’t work. He poked at the table, thinking it might flip around and show him detailed character descriptions, or possibly turn into a save point if it were that kind of game, but while it did flip over at his touch, all it showed him was a menu. Not an equipment menu or a stats menu or a save menu. A food menu.
He bashed the table again in disgust. Really, what kind of person could eat at a time like this? Then he decided he was exactly the kind of person who could eat at a time like this and ordered a cheeseburger and fries. While waiting around for it, and secretly wondering how it was even going to get there, he started pushing on some of the walls. They didn’t pop out with massive rocket launchers or anything, and he was a little disappointed. He wondered if the menu was actually a secret code for something else, like he had accidentally just ordered a double nuclear strike on America with a side of chemical warfare instead of a double cheeseburger with pickles. He concluded that was stupid and that Ikeoka wouldn’t have put him in this room if there was even the slightest chance that he might accidentally destroy the world.
He hit the table again and a different panel folded back. The buttons on this one were marked things like “Office,” “Pool,” and “Bedroom.” He hoped that Ikeoka was in a position where he could make a threat about sleepin’ with the fishes, just in case, and pushed the Pool button. A different panel on the opposite side slid open, to his relief. He wandered in and found himself, as promised, in a room containing a huge swimming pool. (The words “Olympic-sized” came to mind, but most of his experience with the Olympics involved whining when live coverage from the other side of the world preempted his late-night anime.)
Akutsu had never learned to swim, so he stayed well away from the water, since Jun was probably too busy protecting Ikeoka to save him, and he didn’t think he’d tripped the flags for any mouth-to-mouth resuscitation events yet. He figured that would be closer to the ending, so he looked around a little longer, admiring the sea creatures painted on the walls, and then went back to the other room. A cheeseburger was waiting innocently on the table, and he eyed it suspiciously. He touched it and found that it was made neither of rubber nor dynamite, and he therefore determined it to be safe for consumption. As he had figured, the fact that it was edible meant that it was absolutely top-class, because obviously secret government-running organizations only ever hired the best caterers. The fries were pretty good too. Unfortunately, the tea didn’t really go with fast food and it was getting cold.
He threw himself to the ground and started rolling around and punching the floor. This was the worst! If he were in the audience, he’d be able to see what was going on in the other room and figure out what the Kamitsuru-san faction was all about, whether they were villainously motivated or, like, tall, or what. Instead he was stuck here in this stupid room with stupid food and just as soon as he got out he was going to be hit by the crushing anvil of dramatic irony and everything he did after that would look totally stupid to the audience.
Eventually he sat up to find his flailing had activated some kind of elevator that had taken him to a different level to a room with a bunch of monitors and flashing lights and suspicious levers and that kind of thing. Well. That was worrisome. He decided this was definitely the kind of room where he shouldn’t touch anything at all ever and started looking around without taking a step off the platform that had brought him there.
There was a large map of Tokyo on the wall behind him, with blinking lights in a variety of colors lighting up various areas. After a moment of distress in which he scanned over it ineffectively, trying to figure out what horrible but oddly festive secrets the map held, he realized it was labeled “HQ and Agent Positions.” That made things make a lot more sense, and he quickly tracked down the Ryuugo building to find that it was represented by a cluster of red dots, as well as a lone blue one. He found a similar cluster of blue in what looked like Ginza, and assumed that represented Kamitsuru-san, since it would make sense if the blue one in Ryuugo was the minion he had sent. He looked for other red dots next. There were a few scattered across the city, but there were only two that were together - and they were surrounded by a number of green dots. “Found you, Kenki-sama,” he said, and took a picture with his phone. It looked like his headquarters was in the Roppongi area, but he figured he’d track down the specific location later. He looked around, didn’t see anything else that looked both useful and difficult to accidentally destroy, and after considering his options, stomped on the ground. Luckily, this worked, and the platform lowered him back down to the previous room. He stepped off, sat down at the table, and went back to eating his burger. He thought he was a little freaked out about the whole thing, but resolved not to show it, lest viewers complain about what a lame and weak protag he was.
He continued to munch on his fries, which were no longer as delicious as he had thought they were earlier, until the door opened up again and Ikeoka called out to him. He went in obediently and tried to pretend that nothing had happened, which in this case meant being as otaku as possible and directing attention away from himself. “So who was that guy anyway? Was he ikemen? Are you going to try to steal him from Kamitsuru-san and add him to your ikemen collection? What’d you talk about? Is he going to help us save Yukito, or is he a bad guy?”
Ikeoka blinked at him. “Sorry, what’s an ikemen? As you can imagine, I don’t get out much.” He gestured at the bed. Akutsu didn’t think that was an excuse, since he avoided leaving the house as much as possible and still picked up plenty of useful vocabulary, but decided he’d cut him some slack since he probably spent a lot of time trying to run the country and not die of a terminal disease, or something.
“You know, a pretty boy,” he said with a shrug. “Like you, or Jun-san. You’re both super ikemen.”
“Oh.” Ikeoka considered this. “Thank you. You’re very ikemen as well.”
Akutsu giggled and shifted from side to side. He was known as the “Ikemen Otaku,” but only to his roommates and select parts of the internet. It was nice to have someone outside his inner circle confirm that. “Oh, but so was that guy ikemen too?”
“Uh. If I understand the term right, then yes, he is quite ikemen.”
“Is he tall?”
“Not much taller than the average, I think.”
“Is he…” Akutsu closed his eyes and recited what he remembered of Shion’s description. “Uh, olderish, with longerish hair, and does he try to act tough but really he’s squishy and lovable, and does he have a tragic past?”
“…What?”
“Um, never mind. You can show me a picture later maybe.”
“Okay?” Ikeoka said. Jun came into the room, no longer wearing his collared shirt and tie but some kind of combat outfit. In addition to being quite skintight, it was exactly the style Akutsu preferred, and combined with Jun’s innocent smile, was managing to push nearly every moe button he had at once. It took all the willpower he possessed not to throw himself at him and start kissing his cute little face. He only managed to restrain himself by telling himself that he didn’t want to alienate Ikeoka yet, and he didn’t want to get kicked across the room by Jun, but it was definitely more the former than the latter. He made a series of strange faces and had to look away from Jun lest he spontaneously go bald and lose all of his protagonist appeal along with his hair.
“Akutsu-kun?” Ikeoka said, and he snapped instantly back to reality.
“Yessir! What can I do for you, sir! Permission to take a picture of Jun-san, sir!” He covered his mouth in horror, which was approximately the expression Jun had on his face as well.
Ikeoka was the only one unaffected. “Permission denied, soldier,” he said with a smile. “The situation has changed. We’re about to go in and recover Yukito, and you may join us if you like. If not, you’ll be perfectly safe here until we get back.”
“Yes, I’ll go, please let me go,” Akutsu said, carefully not checking to see if Jun was still totally creeped out by him. A thought occurred to him. “Ikeoka-sama, you’re going too? Will you be okay?” He wouldn’t mind going alone with Jun, and maybe getting to apologize for being weird and make excuses and try to win his love a bit, but if Ikeoka was only pretending to be sick and was secretly a badass and was going to wear the same outfit as Jun and they were going to battle things together, he wanted to know about it ahead of time so he could try to prepare his heart.
A section of Ikeoka’s bed folded out and transformed into a wheelchair, which Jun helped him into. “Don’t worry. If something goes wrong, it’ll be better for me to be there than here.” Akutsu saw for the first time that his torso was completely wrapped in bandages beneath his sheer pajama shirt, and shivered, wondering what had caused it. “More importantly, let’s move. We still have time to save Yukito, but we’ll have to hurry!”
“All right!” Akutsu said, and followed them down a dark, sloping hallway that had opened up in a side panel, trying to hold in his feelings of excitement and moe, and also trying not to look at Jun’s butt too much. It was time for the next part of the adventure!
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Next chapter→
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A/N: I was looking at my Tokyo guide to figure out where everyone's bases would be, and part of the description for Ginza was "a flamboyant district for sophisticated adults."
I'm sorry about Shin.