The kingdom's jester || persona 5 || shuake

Chapter four

Akechi lies awake, restless this night. His thoughts simply won't let off. Ren just had to come back into his life one way or another. And, as always, Akechi is the cause of another mess. It's like his role as the trickster is to directly oppose Ren's role as the trickster.

Wait. No. That doesn't make sense. They both caused quite the stir to the collective unconscious.

Never mind all of that stuff, he doesn't need nor want to think about the roles given to them by the velvet room. What he does need to think about though, Ren. No, Goro, his situation. 

It didn't surprise him in the slightest that Ren's parents were cruel, even he knew that they never talked to him whilst he was on probation, but calling the guy a liar with no proof was just a bit... unnecessary. And would Ren even have reason to hide a gift?

"He has a brother..?" Akechi questions, confused. Morgana never mentioned any siblings.  Ren has always seemed like the eldest sibling, if not an only child, so why was a brother mentioned in his home life as a child, but not now? They couldn't possibly have moved out...

Unless they died. But then why does Morgana not know this information? Is he not as close to Ren as Goro had thought? But that's impossible. Why else would he know Ren cries over him, but not know anything of his brother?

"No, don't go in that direction..." He thinks aloud in frustration. Too late. He sighs.

"If I go with the theory that Ren just doesn't cry for his brother, then that means that I'm more worthy to cry over to him. But that doesn't make sense either, he would have way more memories with his brother than he would ever have with me," the detective pondered.

He's reaching conclusions too quickly, he thinks, he doesn't even know the status of Ren's brother at this point, and he's already thinking about Ren's grief. This is not so good, he shouldn't be thinking about it too much, and definitely not expected of an ace detective, no matter how much of a fraud he may be.

Just what are you hiding, Ren..?

He pulls his blanket up over him and closes his eyes, unwilling to think any more deeply about this, using the warm confines of his blanket as an escape from thought.

Ren stirs, waking up from another one of his extremely vivid dreams about Akechi. He puts his arm over his eyes, sighing. He can't keep doing this, he doesn't want to keep doing this. Why is he unable to get him out of his head? He groans and sits up on his bed against the wall, his head in his knees.

He closes his eyes and tilts his head back onto the wall, calming himself. He opens his eyes, seeing a figure on his chair. An extremely familiar figure.

"... Akechi?" Ren breathes out, the sight in front of him perplexing him to no end.

There sat Akechi, in his usual detective attire, a black pawn in his gloved hand. On his table lies a nostalgic chess board. Akechi smiles.

"Care to join me?" The boy says, tilting his head.

Ren doesn't even think twice about it, "Of course," he answers, looking down whilst getting up out of bed. He reaches to pull the other chair out, and looks in the brunet's direction.

But Akechi isn't there anymore.

"Of course," Ren mumbled, his arm going limp. He sits back down on the bed and lets out a heavy sigh.

"Your thing with Akechi only seems to be getting worse, Ren..." Morgana comments.

"Don't worry about it, there's much more important things to think about," Ren responds.