T
The elevator doors opened onto the third-floor corridor of the Nijisanji building, and Akira felt the air change — that sterile, recycled-office smell mixed with something else, something his body remembered before his mind did. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, a sound that had once meant nothing, just the background noise of a building he moved through every day. Now it made his stomach clench.
He stepped out of the elevator and his hand found Kanato's sleeve before he even realized he'd reached for it. The fabric was warm, soft cotton over solid arm, and Akira held on like a child holding a parent's hand in a crowd. His eyes moved across the corridor — left, right, the corners, the doors slightly ajar — searching for threat before he could stop himself. Old training. New fear. They tasted the same.
"You okay?" Kanato's voice was low, meant only for him.
Akira nodded. The lie sat in his throat, dry and sharp. He couldn't find words for what he actually was — frayed, hollow, vibrating with a tension that had no release valve. Two days since the rescue. Two days of sleeping in fits, of waking to shadows that moved wrong, of Seraph's hand on his back grounding him back to the present. Two days, and he was supposed to walk into a room and talk about what happened.
The corridor stretched ahead of them. At the end, a conference room door stood open, and shapes moved inside — people in suits, a table with papers, the glint of a recording device. Akira's chest tightened. His feet kept moving because Kanato was moving, because stopping wasn't an option, because if he stopped he might not start again.
Behind them, the others followed. Kuzuha in his dark coat, silent and watchful. Lauren with his sharp gaze missing nothing. Rou and Shō, their usual banter absent, replaced by a quiet gravity that made the corridor feel narrower. They had all been there at the rescue. They had all seen the van, the restraints, the way Akira had looked when Hibari carried him out.
Now they were witnesses.
Akira's fingers tightened on Kanato's sleeve. "How many people?" he asked, and his voice came out thinner than he wanted.
"Just the police investigator, the management rep, and a stenographer." Kanato's hand covered his, warm and deliberate. "Small room. We'll be in and out."
Akira wanted to believe him. He wanted to believe that the hour ahead would be simple, that he could answer their questions and walk out and the images would stop playing behind his eyes. But he had tried to tell himself that story before. The body remembers what the mind tries to bury, and his body remembered everything.
A door to the left opened, and a staff member stepped out — a young woman with a clipboard, her hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. She smiled at them, a professional, sympathetic smile. "Shikinagi-san? They're ready for you."
She took a step toward him. Just one step, her foot crossing into his space, her hand lifting as if to touch his shoulder — and Akira flinched. A full-body recoil, his shoulders drawing up, his feet carrying him backward half a step before his brain caught up. His breath caught, sharp and audible, and he saw her eyes widen, saw her hand freeze mid-air, saw the realization dawn on her face that she had become a threat without meaning to.
"I'm sorry," she said quickly, stepping back. "I didn't mean to—"
"It's fine." Kanato's voice was easy, casual, but his body had shifted — a subtle thing, a half-step that put him between Akira and the woman. "We're good. Just lead the way."
The woman nodded and turned, walking ahead of them. Akira stood frozen for a moment, his heart hammering, his face burning with shame. He had flinched. At a woman. At a gesture of kindness. The old Akira — the confident agent, the man who had walked into hostage negotiations without breaking stride — would never have flinched. That man felt like a stranger now. A ghost wearing a face that no longer fit.
Kanato's hand found his. "Come on," he said, and there was nothing but gentleness in it. No pity. No judgment. Just the invitation to move forward together.
Akira let himself be pulled.
The conference room was bright — too bright, white walls and white table and the harsh glare of ceiling panels that left nowhere to hide. A police investigator sat at the far end, a middle-aged man with gray at his temples and a stack of papers in front of him. Beside him, a younger woman with a stenographer's machine sat ready. The management representative was a man Akira recognized vaguely — someone from legal, someone whose name he had never needed to learn until now.
Akira's legs felt unsteady as he stepped through the door. Every face turned toward him. Every set of eyes landed on him like weight. He felt his throat close, felt the familiar spiral beginning — the walls too close, the air too thin, the memory of a white van pressing in from all sides—
"We'll sit here." Kanato guided him to a chair at the side of the table, positioning himself between Akira and the room. It wasn't obvious — a casual adjustment, Kanato pulling his own chair closer, angling his body so that he faced the investigator while Akira sat slightly behind him, partially sheltered by his frame.
Akira sank into the chair. His hands found the edge of the table, fingers pressing into the polished wood. The surface was cool, smooth, real. He focused on that sensation — the solidness of the table, the faint grain beneath his fingertips — and let it anchor him.
The rest of Voltaction's friends filed in, taking seats along the wall. Kuzuha sat closest to the door, his posture relaxed but his eyes moving constantly, reading the room the way he read a chess board. Lauren leaned against the wall, arms crossed, his face unreadable. Rou and Shō sat side by side, close enough that their shoulders touched.
The investigator cleared his throat. "Shikinagi-san. Thank you for coming in. I know this isn't easy."
Akira nodded. His voice felt buried somewhere deep, and he wasn't sure he could dig it out yet.
"We'll start with some basic information," the investigator said, his tone professional but not unkind. "Just to establish the timeline. You went to the radio program recording on the morning of the seventeenth, correct?"
"Yes." The word came out. Akira heard it and felt relief — he could still speak.
"And the recording was scheduled for ten AM?"
"Yes."
"Can you walk us through what happened when you arrived at the studio?"
Akira took a breath. The image rose immediately — the studio door, the familiar corridor, the voice of the MC calling him in. That part was easy. That part was before. "I arrived at nine forty-five. The MC — his name is —" He stopped. His tongue felt thick. "I don't remember his real name. He was introduced to me as Oda-san."
"That matches our records," the investigator said. "Continue."
So Akira did. He told them about the coffee offered, the sharp taste that had been wrong, the way his vision had blurred at the edges. He told them about waking up bound, about the van, about the hours of darkness and motion. His voice stayed flat, almost clinical, as if he were reciting a report from his SPIA days. This was data. This was facts. This was not his body, not his fear, not the way his wrists had bled where the restraints had cut into his skin.
Kanato's friends listened in silence. Rou's jaw was tight. Shō's hands were clasped in his lap, his knuckles white. Lauren's face had gone still in a way that was more dangerous than anger.
And Kuzuha watched. Quiet. Observing. Filing every word away.
When Akira reached the part about the rescue — the doors opening, the faces of Kanato and Hibari and Seraph appearing in the light — his voice finally cracked. Just a little. A tremor that ran through the word "Hibari-san" and faded into silence.
The investigator waited. Then he said, "We have the testimonies from the other witnesses about the rescue. We'll confirm those in a moment. But first, Shikinagi-san — there's a gap in the timeline we need to clarify."
Akira knew what was coming. He had known from the moment he walked into the room. The gap. The part where the cameras had stopped recording. The part where the van had driven into the underground parking garage of a building with no security footage, no witnesses, no one to see what happened in the hours between.
The investigator leaned forward slightly. "After they took you from the radio building and before the rescue team found you — that period, approximately three hours — we need to understand what occurred. For the charges to hold, we need to establish the full scope of the assault."
Akira's hand curled into a fist against his thigh. Under the table, hidden from everyone but the person who was watching for it, Kanato's hand found his. Warm. Steady.
"I was in the van," Akira said, and his voice sounded distant even to his own ears. "They had me tied. My wrists, my ankles. There was a gag. I couldn't move. I couldn't see. They put a hood over my head after the first hour."
"And the people involved — how many?"
"I heard two voices. One was the MC. The other I didn't recognize. A man. Older."
"Did they say anything about who they were working for? A buyer? A contact?"
"No." The word came sharper than Akira intended. He felt his shoulders tensing, his chest growing tight. "They didn't talk about that. Not where I could hear."
The investigator made a note. "And the assault itself — Shikinagi-san, I need you to be as specific as possible. We need to establish what charges—"
"I know what you need." Akira's voice was thin, stretched like a wire pulled too tight. "I know."
He took a breath. The next part. He had to say the next part.
"They touched me." His voice dropped, barely above a whisper. "Before they put the hood on. They touched me. My chest. My thighs. They — they put their hands —"
He stopped. His breath came in short, ragged gasps. His chest was rising and falling too fast, and he could feel the panic climbing up his throat like something alive, like the hand that had closed around his neck—
"Akira." Kanato's voice, soft and close. "Breathe."
Akira tried. The air caught in his lungs, shuddered out. He tried again. This time it came smoother.
"I'm sorry," he said, and the apology tasted like ash. "I just — I need a moment —"
"Take your time, Shikinagi-san," the investigator said, but there was a tightness in his voice now, a professional impatience that barely masked itself as understanding. "I know this is difficult. But the more detail you can give us, the stronger our case—"
"I understand." Akira's voice was steadier now, but fragile, like glass that had been cracked and was holding together by will alone. "I understand what you need. I just —" He swallowed. "I can't. I can't say it out loud."
The room went quiet. The stenographer's fingers hovered over her machine, waiting.
Then Akira said, "Can I write it?"
The investigator blinked. "Write it?"
"Instead of saying it. Let me write down what happened. I — I can put it on paper. I just can't —" His voice broke. "I can't say it. Please."
The word please hung in the air, raw and terrible. Akira, who had walked out of burning buildings without asking for help. Akira, who had once told Kanato that begging was beneath him. Akira, who was now sitting in a conference room with his hands shaking, asking permission not to speak the worst moments of his life aloud.
The investigator exchanged a glance with the management representative. "Shikinagi-san, I understand this is difficult, but a written statement doesn't carry the same weight in an oral hearing. We need to establish—"
"He said he'll write it." Kanato's voice cut through the room, still calm, still polite, but with an edge that hadn't been there before. "That should be sufficient for now."
"With respect," the investigator said, "we need the full oral testimony to—"
"And with respect," Kanato replied, his tone unchanged, "he's told you everything that happened up to that point. You have witnesses who can confirm the abduction, the condition he was found in, and the evidence from the scene. The details of what happened in the van — those can be submitted in writing. He doesn't need to relive it out loud for your tape."
The investigator's mouth tightened. "Fura-san, I understand your concern, but—"
"Do you?" Kanato's voice dropped, and something shifted in the room. The temperature changed. The easy-going veneer slipped, and for just a moment, the man sitting across from the investigator was not a vtuber. He was the heir of the Fura mafia clan, a man raised in a world where words were weapons and a polite tone could be the deadliest threat of all.
"Do you understand," Kanato said, his voice soft, "that he is sitting here, answering your questions, when every instinct in his body is telling him to run? Do you understand that he walked into this building knowing exactly what you were going to ask him, and he came anyway? Do you understand that he is trying?"
The investigator said nothing.
"He said he'll write it," Kanato repeated. "That's his boundary. Respect it."
The silence stretched. The management representative cleared his throat. "Perhaps we can proceed with the testimonies from the other witnesses first, and come back to the written statement afterward. That would give Shikinagi-san time to collect himself."
The investigator nodded reluctantly. "Fine. We'll proceed with witness testimony."
Akira let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. His hand was still gripping the table, his fingernails leaving faint crescents in the polished wood. Kanato's hand was still over his, a steady warmth that tethered him to the present, kept him from floating away into the memory of the van.
Kuzuha was the first to be called. He rose from his seat and walked to the table with the easy, unhurried grace of a man who had been in a hundred rooms like this one, facing a hundred interrogators, and never once broken. He sat down, folded his hands on the table, and began to speak.
He described the morning of the rescue — the frantic calls, the tracking, the drive to the radio building's basement. He described finding the van, the state it was in, the way the doors had been locked from the outside. His voice was calm, clinical, every detail precise and unemotional. But when he described the moment they opened the doors and found Akira inside, his voice paused. The silence lasted only a heartbeat, but everyone in the room felt it.
"He was bound," Kuzuha said. "His wrists were tied behind his back. His ankles were tied together. There was a gag in his mouth and a hood over his head. He was —" Another pause. "He was very still. For a moment, we thought he was dead."
Akira's grip on the table tightened until his knuckles went white.
Kuzuha continued. He described the restraints — thick rope, not the kind sold in regular stores. He described the condition of Akira's clothes, torn and disheveled. He described the bruises already forming on Akira's wrists, the raw skin where he had struggled against the bonds.
Lauren went next, then Rou, then Shō. Each of them told the same story from different angles, different pieces of the same terrible mosaic. The rescue. The drive home. The aftermath. The way Akira had barely spoken for two days, the way he had flinched at every sudden movement, the way his eyes had gone empty and far away at unpredictable moments.
And through all of it, Akira sat beside Kanato, his hand held, his breathing measured, his eyes fixed on a point on the wall that no one else could see.
He listened to them describe his own brokenness as if they were describing someone else. A stranger. A man who had been taken apart and put back together wrong, the pieces no longer fitting the way they used to.
When the last witness finished, the investigator turned back to Akira. "Shikinagi-san. We've confirmed the timeline. We have the witnesses. But we still need to establish the details of the assault itself. The written statement will help, but I need you to confirm — on record — that the assault included sexual elements."
The word hit Akira like a physical blow. Sexual. Elements. As if it were a chemical compound to be broken down and categorized. Elements. The word made it sound clinical, objective, something that could be measured and filed and used in a courtroom.
Akira's throat closed. His vision blurred at the edges. He could feel the walls pressing in, the ceiling lowering, the air growing thick and heavy. The van. The hands. The hood. The voice of the man who had laughed while—
"Akira." Kanato's voice, sharp with concern. "Akira, look at me."
He couldn't. His eyes wouldn't focus. His breath was coming too fast, too shallow, a rabbit caught in the open—
"I need," Akira gasped, and the words tore out of him, ragged and desperate. "I need to — I don't want to — please, I don't want to talk about this, I can't, please—"
"Shikinagi-san, we really need—"
"Enough."
The word slammed into the room like a door closing. Kanato's hand moved — one swift, fluid motion — and the recording device on the table went spinning across the polished surface. It hit the edge, clattered to the floor, and the small red light that had been recording their every word flickered and died.
The room went silent. The investigator stared. The management representative's mouth hung open. The stenographer's hands had frozen over her machine.
Kanato stood up. Not dramatically — just a slow, deliberate rise, the way a predator gets to its feet when it has decided the hunt is over. He looked down at the investigator, and his face was not the face of a vtuber, not the face of an easy-going young man with an infectious laugh and a talent for making people feel at ease.
It was the face of a man who had grown up in a world where respect was enforced, where boundaries were absolute, and where the word "enough" was not a request.
"You heard him," Kanato said, and his voice had gone quiet and flat, stripped of all its usual warmth. "He said he doesn't want to talk about it. He said he would write it. That should have been the end of the conversation."
The investigator found his voice. "Fura-san, the recording—"
"Will be picked up when you're ready to proceed without pushing him past his limit." Kanato turned to Akira, and his face softened, the mask of control giving way to something gentler. "Come on. Let's get some air."
Akira couldn't move. His hands were still gripping the table, his body locked in place by a terror that had nowhere to go. He could feel the room around him — the silence, the stares, the weight of what had just happened — but it all felt distant, muffled, like sound through water.
"Akira." Kanato's hand touched his chin, gently tilting his face up. "Look at me."
He did. Kanato's amber eyes were close, warm, steady. The sharpness from a moment ago was gone, replaced by the familiar gentleness that had carried Akira through the past weeks.
"You don't have to say anything else," Kanato said. "Not today. Not until you're ready. I'll handle it."
And Akira believed him. He let go of the table. He let Kanato guide him to his feet. He let the warmth of Kanato's hand on his back lead him toward the door, past the stunned faces of the investigator and the management representative, past the silent witnesses who watched him go with something like grief in their eyes.
In the corridor, the air was cooler. The fluorescent lights still hummed. Akira stopped walking and leaned against the wall, his legs giving out, his body sliding down until he was sitting on the floor with his back against the cold plaster. He pressed his palms to his face and tried to breathe.
Kanato sat down beside him. Not touching, but close enough that Akira could feel his warmth. Close enough that Akira knew he wasn't alone.
They sat like that for a long moment. The corridor was empty. The door to the conference room was closed. The world had shrunk to this small, quiet space where nothing demanded anything of him.
"I'm sorry," Akira said into his hands. His voice was muffled, broken. "I wanted to — I wanted to tell them. I tried. I just — I couldn't —"
"I know."
"They needed to hear it. For the case. I know they need the details. I know—"
"Akira." Kanato's voice was patient, unwavering. "The case will survive a written statement. You won't survive breaking yourself open in that room. Some things need time."
Akira's hands dropped from his face. He stared at the corridor wall, at the tiny imperfections in the paint, at the way the fluorescent light made everything look sterile and wrong. "I used to be able to do this," he whispered. "I used to be able to compartmentalize. File it away. Talk about it like it happened to someone else. That was my job."
"That was before."
"I know." Akira's voice cracked. "I know. I just — I don't know who I am now, Kanato."
Kanato was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "You're the same person. Just with new scars."
Akira let out a shaky breath. "That doesn't feel true."
"It doesn't have to feel true yet. It just has to be true."
They sat in silence. Somewhere in the building, a phone rang. Footsteps passed on another floor. The ordinary sounds of a building that had no idea what had just happened in one of its conference rooms.
The door opened behind them. Akira tensed, but it was only Kuzuha, stepping out into the corridor with his phone in his hand. He looked at them — Akira on the floor, Kanato beside him — and his expression flickered with something unreadable.
"The investigator agreed to the written statement," Kuzuha said. "I made it clear that pushing further today would be counterproductive. He'll send a formal request for the written supplement by end of week."
Kanato nodded. "Thanks."
Kuzuha's gaze lingered on Akira. For a moment, the mask slipped, and Akira saw something raw underneath — guilt, perhaps, or grief, or the weight of having told a room full of strangers the most vulnerable version of a man he considered a friend. "Get some rest," Kuzuha said quietly. "We'll handle the rest."
Then he turned and walked back into the conference room, closing the door behind him.
Akira sat on the floor of the corridor and let Kanato's presence anchor him. He didn't know how long they stayed there — minutes, maybe longer. Time had lost its shape. But eventually, his breathing steadied. His hands stopped shaking. The world came back into focus, frame by frame, like a camera adjusting to the light.
"Can we go home?" he asked.
Kanato's hand found his. "Yeah. Let's go home."
They stood up together. Akira's legs were unsteady, but Kanato's arm around his waist held him steady. They walked down the corridor, past the elevator, toward the exit that would take them out of the building and into the gray afternoon light.
The others would catch up. The written statement would come. The case would continue. But for now, there was only this: Akira's hand in Kanato's, the cold air on his face as they stepped through the glass doors, and the quiet promise that he didn't have to carry this alone.
Behind them, the building hummed on, indifferent to the small, human thing that had just happened within its walls. And ahead of them — for the first time in days — there was nothing but the open road, the sky, and the long, slow work of putting the pieces back together.
Akira stirred against Kanato's shoulder, the motion small at first — a shift of weight, a turn of his face into the warmth of Kanato's neck. His fingers found the fabric of Kanato's sleeve and curled, clutching with the unconscious grip of a child holding something precious in sleep. His breathing changed, quickening, the rhythm of it turning shallow and uneven.
Kanato felt it before he saw it — the tension returning to Akira's body, the subtle rigidity spreading from shoulders to jaw. He looked down. Akira's eyes were closed, lashes dark against pale skin, but his brow was furrowed, his lips parted, and his chest was rising and falling too fast.
In his half-sleep, Akira was back in the room. The white walls. The bright lights. The investigator's voice, patient and relentless, pushing past every boundary he had tried to set. We need to establish the full scope of the assault. Sexual elements. Can you confirm on record? The words echoed, repeating, multiplying, filling the space behind his eyelids with the terrible geometry of that moment. His hand tightened on Kanato's sleeve. A sound escaped him — thin, animal, the sound of someone trying to hold something in.
"Akira." Kanato's voice was soft, close to his ear. "You're dreaming. Come back."
Akira didn't wake. The images pressed harder — the investigator's face, the stenographer's hovering fingers, the recording device on the table with its small red eye watching him. Sexual. Elements. Can you confirm. On record. Akira's breath caught, stuttered, and his hand flew up, not to Kanato but to his own chest, pressing against his sternum as if he could hold his ribcage together.
"Akira." Kanato's hand found his, gently prying it away from his chest, threading their fingers together. "Nagi-chan. Wake up."
The name cut through the dream like a blade through fog. Nagi-chan. The name Seraph had always called him, the one that meant home, meant safety, meant someone who knew him before any of this. Akira's eyes opened.
The world swam into focus — gray sky, concrete, the glass doors of the building they had just left. Kanato's face above him, close enough that he could see the flecks of gold in his amber eyes. The warmth of their joined hands.
"I was —" Akira's voice came out wrecked, sandpaper and gravel. "I was back in there."
"I know." Kanato's thumb traced a slow arc across his knuckles. "You're not. You're outside. It's over."
Akira let out a long, shuddering breath, and the tension in his shoulders bled away in increments, like water seeping from cracked stone. He was sitting on a low concrete wall at the edge of the building's entrance plaza, Kanato beside him, the afternoon light falling gray and soft across the empty street. He didn't remember walking here. He didn't remember sitting down. His body had carried him on autopilot while his mind was still trapped in that room.
"How long was I out?"
"A few minutes. Maybe five." Kanato's hand was still holding his. "You went quiet on the way out. Then your eyes closed. I figured you needed the rest."
Akira nodded. His gaze drifted past Kanato, scanning the plaza, the street beyond — old training, checking for threats, finding none. The world was ordinary. Cars moved in the distance. A delivery truck idled at the corner. Somewhere, a bird was calling. The ordinary world, indifferent to the war inside his skull.
He opened his mouth to say something — he didn't know what, maybe an apology, maybe a thank you — but the glass doors of the building slid open and Hibari emerged, his face shifting from worry to relief the moment he saw Akira awake and upright.
"You're up," Hibari said, crossing the plaza in a few long strides. His voice was bright, but his eyes were scanning Akira the same way Akira had scanned the street — checking for damage, for tells, for the invisible wounds that didn't bleed. "How are you feeling?"
Akira considered the question. The honest answer was shattered, but he was tired of being honest about that. "Better," he said. It was not a lie. It was just not the whole truth.
Seraph emerged next, his silver-white hair catching the gray light, his pale eyes finding Akira immediately. He didn't speak. He walked over, lowered himself to a crouch in front of Akira, and rested one hand on the back of Akira's neck — a touch so familiar, so precise, that Akira's body relaxed into it before his mind had even registered what was happening. Seraph's thumb pressed gently at the base of Akira's skull, and Akira's eyes closed, a breath leaving him that felt like the first real one he had taken since entering that building.
Behind them, Kuzuha, Lauren, Rou, and Shō filed out at a slower pace, their voices low as they spoke among themselves. Kuzuha caught Akira's gaze and gave a single, small nod — a gesture that said everything and nothing. It's handled. You're out. Rest now.
Akira's hand, still gripping Kanato's sleeve, slowly relaxed. His fingers uncurled, the fabric releasing, and he slid his hand into Kanato's instead. Palms together. Fingers laced. A simple claim, made in full awareness this time.
"I still have to write the statement," Akira said quietly. The words felt heavy in his mouth, stones he had to push past his teeth. "I know. I haven't forgotten."
"Not today," Kanato said.
"Not today," Akira agreed, and there was something like relief in the admission. Permission to be weak. Permission to be not-yet-healed. "But soon. I know it has to be soon."
Seraph's hand tightened fractionally on his neck. Hibari's knee pressed against his, a warmth through denim. Kanato's thumb traced circles on his palm.
"We'll figure it out," Kanato said. "Together. That's what this is."
Akira looked at them — at Kanato's steady gaze, at Seraph's quiet presence, at Hibari waiting with his boundless energy held in check, ready to crack a joke the moment Akira needed lightness. Behind them, the others were waiting too, a small army of people who had seen him at his most broken and had not looked away.
"Together," Akira repeated, tasting the word, feeling it settle into his chest like a new anchor.
He stood up. His legs were steady now. The sky was gray, the afternoon was cold, and there was a written statement waiting for him at the end of the week, a statement that would require him to put the worst hours of his life into words on paper so strangers could read them in a courtroom. That was still ahead of him. That was still waiting.
But that was not right now. Right now, there was only the plaza, the cold air, and the warmth of the people who refused to let him face this alone. Right now, that was enough.
They walked toward the car — Kanato on his right, Seraph on his left, Hibari a step ahead with keys already in his hand. The building watched them go, indifferent and silent, its glass facade reflecting the gray sky.
Behind them, the fluorescent lights hummed on, empty now, waiting for the next meeting, the next testimony, the next person asked to break themselves open in a room with white walls.
But here, in the open air, Akira took a breath that felt almost easy, and let himself be led toward home.