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Wakaba Isshiki is curious, fascinated, and concerned in that order.Her curiosity isn’t some delicate thing, either. It’s fiery, passionate, all-encompassing. It was the reason she’d shown up to the research lab hours before she’d needed to that morning. It’s, regrettably, also the reason that she forgot to grab herself a cup of coffee before she left the house. Her mind had been running away from her, planning out everything she wanted to do that day, only pausing briefly to write Futaba a good morning note and leave it on the counter.She’s been like that for as long as anyone can remember. She just can’t leave things be; she can’t let the unknowns stay that way when they’re so reachable.She was already well into going back over her notes from the previous day when she got the call.Something between a sigh and a groan escaped from under her breath. Off the top of her head, there was only one (maybe two) things she truly hated about her job. One was this. It was such a headache to deal with higher-ups. They were all formalities and bureaucracy with an irritating tendency to act as if they knew more about her field than she did. She still frowned and furrowed her brow when thinking about the time she’d had to spend upwards of an hour trying to explain why exactly she needed more resources to a man who very much did not get it despite confidently asserting otherwise. So she picked up the phone with an already-irritated look on her face and a sting in her head that reminded her of her forgotten coffee, expecting to waste a good thirty minutes of valuable time dealing with some arrogant micromanager.Instead, she was told something that could change the entire course of her research.Suddenly, she had something tangible to study. A real person, one who supposedly demonstrated strange abilities that seemed to align exactly with her theories. Cue fascination.They bring him in only an hour or so later, escorted by men in suits who look tall and imposing compared to the boy. He’s fiddling with the sleeve of a jacket that doesn’t fit right on his small frame, only to look up and put on a fake smile when he realizes she’s there. His hands fall to his sides in a purposeful movement, and Wakaba realizes that a very important detail was left out during that phone call.Goro Akechi is a child. He looks like he could be a classmate of Futaba’s, and Wakaba’s mind is quick to shoot off the thought that he really doesn’t have the ability to recognize what he’s getting into. Even if her research was in no way dangerous, in no way harmful — which is doubtful at best — would it really be reasonable to allow someone his age to consent to a study like this? The question itself is fairly ridiculous, fairly obvious, logically. Of course, Wakaba already knows from many lengthy phone calls and unfortunate meetings with people she frankly never wants to speak to again that a lot of her higher-ups and colleagues don’t exactly operate under the same obvious logic that she does. This, though? This has to be a new low. The question of where exactly they found this boy comes to mind too, rushing by along with her other concerns. She’s acutely aware of eyes on her, however. So, outwardly, she just nods and dismisses the ones who escorted the boy to the lab, then walks back into the room where she’d left her laptop and monitors.Akechi presents himself as calm and still the whole time Wakaba is asking him for his information. She enters all of it as he speaks, only pausing briefly when she asks for his age and birth date and he answers. He’s only around two years older than Futaba. Something in Wakaba’s stomach twists.(A fourteen-year-old shouldn’t be wrapped up in all of this. It’s not his issue to deal with. Even Wakaba herself doesn’t fully understand the cognitive world, but she’s well aware that it is just as capable of being dangerous and hostile as it is capable of helping people and changing the world. And all those layers of bureaucracy, all the conflicting interests and powerful players watching with close eyes — Wakaba has noticed them, too. This isn’t the place for a child to be getting involved. He’ll only end up caught in the middle of a situation that he shouldn’t be anywhere near.)(There’s a reason Wakaba doesn’t let Futaba come to the research lab with her.)“Can you tell me about how you first entered the cognitive world?”Wakaba taps the tip of her pen against the pad of paper, leaving the clipboard laying on her crossed leg, ready to write down everything he tells her.Akechi keeps his hands folded in his lap, eyes only slightly glancing over the paper before he begins a calm and to-the-point explanation. Wakaba gets lost in her notes for a moment, too focused on Akechi’s actual explanation to consider that no part of it truly explains how he ended up here. That sets in a moment after he stops speaking, when Wakaba’s notes are full and her mind is buzzing with thoughts and theories about this app that Akechi explained had appeared on his phone.Before she asks about that part, Wakaba asks, “And how did you get involved with this?”“Like I just told you—““That’s not what I mean.”For the first time since he arrived at the lab, Akechi’s faux smile wavers. His lip twitches downwards, eyes finally moving somewhere else in the room.“That isn’t exactly relevant, then, is it?”Wakaba moves on and asks to see his phone, which he hands over. She plugs it into her computer and gets to work trying to make sense of the app with the eye icon, all while Akechi just sits and waits.As Wakaba clicks through data, her mind is running all too fast. There’s so much she wants to know. She wants to — needs to, maybe — know what happens when he enters the cognitive world, what he sees there, which of her predictions can be proven or disproven with this entire new world of information and possibilities. She eyes the icon again, and then her eyes drift to Akechi, tapping his thumbs together in his seat. In a different situation, this may have been one of the most exciting days of Wakaba’s career.But then there’s Akechi, possibly more uncomfortable with the newfound silence than it seemed, asking, “Is there anything you’d like me to do while you’re checking out the navigator?”No, the whole situation makes her more uneasy than anything. There’s this lingering tension, an undertow of unanswered questions about why this boy was just handed off to her with barely a word, as if he weren’t a person at all.As if no one bothered to care about his well-being.She goes back to her screen, “No, no, it’s alright.”He seems unsure of what to do with that answer. Wakaba sees him out of her peripheral looking down at his own hands with a new tension in the way he’s sitting. His facade wasn’t exactly perfect to begin with, but now more than ever he’s almost starting to look nervous. Maybe not to an unobservant onlooker, but Wakaba has always had an eye for detail.She slides out from the desk and gives him a pen and an empty notebook. She knows all too well that sometimes simply having something to do, some action to allow your hands to perform, can ease nerves. It’s certainly that way for herself and Futaba, who have never quite been able to master the ability to simple do nothing.“Actually, go ahead and write down every detail you can remember about the cognitive world.”It’s not going to be particularly necessary. She knows that she needs to see how he gets there anyways, that she’ll have to ask the exact question again right when he comes back and the details are fresh in his mind. But it certainly won’t hurt, and Akechi’s tension seems to ease slightly when he starts writing.Wakaba leans against her desk with a hand on her head, rubbing a thumb against her temple as she digs deeper for anything she can find from the navigator. She really wishes she had that coffee. _______ Time moves fast when she’s focusing and painfully slow when she pauses and allows herself to think about the situation at large. For once, she’s almost relieved when it’s time to go home. She needs time to think, and she needs to talk to Sojiro.Akechi is picked up by someone, and Wakaba moves to her car.She has Sojiro on speaker phone during the drive home.“I’m on my way back. How’s Futaba?”“Good. She’s in her room working on something or other right now, I can get her if you’d like to—““No, not… not yet. I need to ask you about something else first.”Over the phone, Sojiro is quiet for a moment. Then his voice comes through, slow and careful, “Is something the matter?”“I just wanted to ask if you knew anything about a certain… addition to my research?”“Addition to your…?” Sojiro echoes, “What do you mean?”Wakaba already knows the answer at this point, but she clarifies anyway, “They brought in this kid for me to study.”“What?”“He’s connected to everything I’ve been researching, but… I don’t know, the whole situation is just way too shady.”“I didn’t hear anything about this. And this is really the sort of thing that should’ve gone through me at some point.”Right, that too. Sojiro’s lack of knowledge means several layers of procedure were skipped along the way.Everything about this is very, very wrong.She’s zoning back in as Sojiro is asking “…Wakaba? What are you going to do?” and she can hear a door opening and closing on the other end of the phone. _______ She doesn’t know. It’s the second day of the work week, and she knows there’s nothing left to check on Akechi’s phone. She really could’ve predicted that from the beginning, but her detail-oriented mind wouldn’t let the mysterious navigator app go uninvestigated. It’s something else, though, that makes her spend her morning checking it all over again, while sipping on a cup of coffee that’s quickly losing temperature.She has Akechi’s notes from the previous day sitting next to her on her desk. She’d read over them at home out of curiosity, scanning over each word, making a mental image of what Akechi had written. He called it a warped subway system, describing it as a dark maze filled with shadows. Certain details stuck out to Wakaba, there were certain things that she made mental notes to look into further. She’d only been broken out of her hyper-focus when she noticed Futaba leaning over the back of the chair.Upon being noticed, Futaba had just asked, “Whatcha reading?”“Just notes from work.”“But that’s not your handwriting.”Wakaba leans back in her seat, exhaling and setting her coffee down on her desk. Across the room, Akechi is sitting and waiting. He must be wondering why he’s here, when all Wakaba’s been doing so far is going back through notes and folders she checked yesterday. If those are his thoughts, he doesn’t voice them, instead just sitting in silence. It would almost be possible to forget his presence entirely.No more stalling. Wakaba takes one more sip of coffee, then sets down an empty cup. “Are you up for entering the cognitive world today, Akechi?”He straightens, “Of course.”Of course echoes in her brain a couple of times. As if anything about this is normal, as if he has no problem being given to some researcher like a lab rat. If the lead researcher was just as shady as whoever put him in this situation to begin with— well, Wakaba doesn’t want to think about that.(Then again, she is about to send a fourteen-year-old into the Metaverse alone, so can she really be so judgmental? Is there really any difference, if she isn’t protecting him either?)It’s not her job to protect him, of course. It’s her job to study whatever connection to the cognitive world he has. It’s her job to forward her research.But she just can’t look at him without wondering how many adults must’ve failed him for him to even end up in this situation.She watches how he vanishes from existence in person, then plays back the recording on her monitor. She has him do it again, then she tries just about every recording device she can get her hands on assuming they’ll fail but needing to test them anyways. For Akechi, it’s entering and leaving the cognitive world. Entering, leaving, entering, leaving…“How are you feeling?” Wakaba asks.“Just fine,” he smiles.He’s a good liar, but a good lie doesn’t will away the bead of sweat on his forehead.“Okay, let’s do vitals just in case.”When Wakaba decides he needs to rest and tells him to lay down on a little cot in the lab, he complies. He does give his first hint of a complaint, though.“I can go for longer.”After spending the better half of the day going in and out of the cognitive world, his only complaint is being forced to take a break. Wakaba is entering her notes on a laptop to have them in a digital format, glancing between her quick, messy handwriting on off-yellow lined paper and a glowing screen. She doesn’t look at Akechi when she answers.“Oh, I know you can. But you won’t.”Maybe he considers saying something else. Maybe he doesn’t. Wakaba isn’t looking, and Akechi doesn’t argue further.And the drive home that day is long.It’d be easier if she could just refuse to study Akechi, and maybe confront whoever decided to send him to her while she’s at it. Her foresight won’t allow it, though, not when she knows it would do nothing except maybe get her fired and the boy handed off to whoever replaces her. In that case, it’d be easier if she could turn off the part of her brain that wants to keep Akechi from getting hurt. Something (maybe everything) about the thought gives her a sick sinking feeling. No, even if that were possible, she’d never be able to live with herself. She’d never be able to face her daughter without thinking what if it was her?She can’t remember another week when she’d gotten so little done. _______ Akechi comes in sick at the beginning of the next week.“I hope this isn’t a side effect of going to the Metaverse,” Wakaba voices her concerns while holding a pen to her chin, scanning her brain for any evidence of such a connection.“Ah, no,” Akechi speaks with a hoarse voice muffled by the fabric of a face mask, “I’m fairly sure it’s just an ordinary cold.”Even if that’s true… Wakaba moves the pen to tap it idly on her desk. All she’s had Akechi do so far is enter and leave the Metaverse, never asking him to stay for very long. It’s hard to stomach going much further than that, and even if she doesn’t…“You didn’t have to come in if you were sick, you know.”Akechi doesn’t respond. When Wakaba looks at him, there’s a vague anger in his eyes that gives her pause. Then she taps her pen again.“Well, regardless… it’s not exactly safe to send you in without knowing what effect your being sick will have on your cognitive self.”“Oh, please,” Akechi closes his eyes, his tone seeping once again with forced politeness. His mask hides it, but he probably put back on his fake smile, “don’t fall behind on my account. I’ll be fine.”Wakaba raises an eyebrow, then turns away, muttering out a response without thinking too hard about it, “Your lack of self-preservation concerns me.”“Excuse me?”Wakaba shrugs her shoulders and leans back against her chair, then turns to face him again, “Do I need to repeat myself?”She’s surprised to see him no longer scowling or closed-eyed but glaring an intense, rage-fueled glare.“I’m sorry,” he snaps sarcastically, “I was under the impression that that’s what you people wanted from me.”Wakaba’s chest sinks into her stomach. She has nothing to say as she watches the rage slowly leave Akechi’s eyes, replaced by something like regret. He stops looking at her, then he coughs a couple of times into his elbow. When the coughing subsides, he murmurs a reluctant, “I— apologize. For the outburst.”“No need,” Wakaba assures.A long stretch of seconds pass by silently before Wakaba adds, “But I do want to ask again… how did you get involved with all of this?”Akechi is quiet for an additional couple of seconds. Wakaba wishes she knew what was going through his head while he sits there, glare still tugging at his brow even after he let the anger pass. Or maybe suppressed it.“Masayoshi Shido,” Akechi finally offers.Wakaba wishes she could be surprised.Akechi continues flatly, with all the emotion from before dissolving and leaving his voice sounding hollow, “I approached him.”“Why?”“Because… I agree with his ideals. His message really spoke to me.”Wakaba knows that’s a lie, but she bites back the urge to press for the truth. A sick feeling has taken root in her stomach, but she doesn’t let it out. She can’t ask for more details, not right now. Not directly.“Got an interest in politics?”“You could say that.”Wakaba takes a deep breath in, then lets it out. She tries to tap her pen again, but the noise bothers her in a way it hadn’t a moment ago, so she sets it down and lets silence form.It gives her time to pause, to think, to let her mind run the way it only truly does when she’s alone and it’s quiet. Then she breaks it.“Do you have money for the subway home?”“I don’t take the subway home.”Wakaba hums, then raises a hand and points at a door to her side, “Through there, then. Down the hall, second or third door on the right. You can pick either. They’ll be empty. Go in there and take a nap.”Akechi blinks, then asks, “What?”“Don’t worry, I’ll get you up before it’s time to leave.”“But—“ he starts to protest.“We’re not doing anything while you’re sick,” Wakaba interjects, “Besides, I have other work I need to get done.”Akechi looks stunned, and for a second it looks like he’s going to try again to argue. Wakaba gives him a stern I’m-not-budging look before he gets the chance, though, and then he slowly gets up and walks out of the room. Wakaba turns away, but she hears the door shut and Akechi’s steps echoing further down the hall.