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His hand sinks to the side, mind straining but attentive to every word being spoken. Even through the haze of the alcohol, he finds himself listening to every word she speaks and every statement she utters, clear and direct- like it was a simple existence that didn't need anymore of an explanation.

"She determined that people could thrive and be happy when giving up their pained hearts, and trusting EMMA to guide them in life. That many people are better off without hearts."

Isn't that what...he's doing? He's guiding them to a path to salvation while snipping away the tethers of their pain. Is EMMA really right in that distinction? Or is he the one who is wrong?

"If someone else is in physical or emotional pain or both, and I don't feel anything... just idly think, 'ah, that's unpleasant to look at'?"

And if...that's really the case then- then, what she said earlier was..? No- did he hear that wrong then? He palms his face, cigarette dangerously close to his face before he places it on his lips so that he could run his fingers through his hair before finding themselves looped in their tangle, eyes closed as he remembers their conversation that occured just an hour and a half ago.

"Ha...did I end up drinking too much?" He shook his head. "Or did you just...lie to me, Kuon?"

Edited 2025-06-27 17:23 (UTC)

"Lie to you? I don't think I did," she blinked in surprise, watching Takuto get... worked up. Like she was a difficult puzzle to solve - like she was truly, deeply vexing him.

Why? What had she said in particular...? Where was her lie? Can you even lie without realizing?

"You don't think-?" he blinks at her in shock, cigarette once again tended to in his hand. He scoffs lightly, like trying to laugh at a joke which isn’t funny.

"My desires matter to me," he starts and heaves a deep breath- if only to regulate his emotions. "My heart is the only thing that keeps me going. When the mind and the practical experience leaves me behind, I am nothing."

If she isn't lying to me, if I am the exception, then that could only mean she's hurting.

"...if you still had EMMA, would you steal my heart as well?"

Edited 2025-06-27 18:31 (UTC)

"I wasn't stealing any hearts. Nor was EMMA. People who wanted relief gave it willingly, they've been begging for her," Ichinose corrected, leaning back a little as she inspected him.

"It didn't seem to me as if you wanted to let go of your heart. But maybe... if you finished your work, and you were satisfied... if you didn't need to continue adjusting or changing things, and everyone was healed... would you still keep your heart? If you could finally rest after all of that. Or are you the sort of person who can't imagine not working?"

Then, how many decades would it take to change that? If Azathoth kept him healthy, how many hundreds of years?

"No, never mind that question - I remember now, you would perform your own open heart surgery. You're ambitious like that. --That isn't a backhanded compliment, by the way. I find it admirable about you, that you're driven like my EMMA to fulfill your goal."

Begging for EMMA.

They gave it up willingly because their salvation was coming in the form of an answer that would rest in the palm of their hand. The idea was simple.

He wanted to revoke the pain so people could seek the lives they wanted, finally within their grasp. Bring their happiness to the palm of their hands.

They were similar but...just different. Maruki loved people. If he could only fix those aspects of their heart and change their lives forever by creating a world of paradise where they were free to do what they wished for; their hearts would be free. They would be happy.

Still, the idea of someone else thinking about him-?

The cigarette was running out. Lips tasting of fumes and ash, parted in disbelief as his eyes widen, moisture building up on his lashes as he heaves a quivering breath. It felt absurd.

If the subconscious shares the same sentiment, the fabric of reality will shift to its favour, and that's what he wanted to change. If the masses wished for it, he would take care of them forever. With their hearts entrusted to him, he would fix it all.

Right...he had to have reached that point by now, given he remembers the depths of Mementos. He had touched the root of all cognition. The phantom thieves entrusted their trust to him, and he stepped forward to take the torch.

"If things go according to plan, the collective consciousness would keep me alive," he answers after a while. "My limitations...they would be far beyond any human scope so working would become as easy as breathing. Or sleeping. Cognition doesn't differ between human, machine or animal."

"Which is why...we would be at odds with each other," he chuckles lightly, like it is some joke. It certainly feels like one. "Because I knew someone who begged for me as well. She desired her life back by forgetting her pain."

Edited 2025-06-27 20:53 (UTC)

Honestly, if anything, Kuon's running theory is that the Maruki of her world had either stumbled and failed somewhere, had been stopped, or simply hadn't won the trust of the masses yet. And even still, she knows that not all would have trusted Maruki... it is so much easier, after all, to entrust oneself to an impartial machine.

He thinks, though, of someone that begged for him before. Desired her life back.

...Was that...?

"Your fiance?"

The cigarette never made its way back to his lips again. It hung there, fire burning through tobacco and paper.

His gaze wavered, looking ahead at the dark sky above. He wondered if her parents were there, amongst that sea of souls or far above in a land that was plucked out of human hands. The question was...well, it almost left him speechless sometimes- even when he told himself to prepare for it. His mind swims and drowns and pulls itself back up.

"Not anymore, remember?" he corrected as he raised his left hand at her, the one hanging off the bench, showing off his bare ring finger. There's no mark anymore.

That hand sinks inward as he fully leans back on the bench again- shrivelling away from her.

"Rumi."

He finally says- not even caring about the fluff bunching up in front of his eyes. "Her name was Rumi."

Instead, he simply looks down at the tobacco flickering in and out of its life.

"...she wouldn't have liked me smoking this much."

Rumi. That was the mystery fiance's name. It hurt him, still... deeper than anything else.

Zenkichi had talked about going deeper into Takuto's palace, plying for his secrets. But... why would she need to? At his own pace, in his own time, Takuto has been sharing more and more of his heart - all because Kuon has been curious and willing to look when offered. Maybe he thinks it's to help her understand that she might have one, too? Even if that can't be the case.

Kuon's body language shifted - she uncrossed her legs, but turned to listen, giving him her full attention while he shared his heart with her. Even being heartless, she recognized how special this trust was - and she did want to peek in, to understand, somehow.

"I imagine she would've been concerned for your health," she posited, even if it was the simplest guess in the world. "What happened to her?"

She would've... During times when he was still busy with his thesis and found himself staying up for nights on end, she would be there, scratching his head until he found himself being lulled back to sleep in her arms.

He didn't look away from the cigarette, staring at the hand that held it. No ring on next to the middle finger for it hovered right above his heart. Concealed from the rest of the world...as things should be.

"...what didn't happen to her?" He found himself asking as he closed his eyes, one hand fidgeting with his collar, feeling at the chain under. "What happens to a woman you've known for almost all your entire life, fearless, kind...passionate and reckless, lose everything in one night?"

He cuts himself off right then, lips quivering like he just came back from a marathon. There's a sigh, followed by the silence where he allows himself to settle into his thoughts.

"It happened on February 3rd, the night when we were celebrating her birthday and announcing our engagement to her parents," he smiled as he stifled a chuckle. "I was so...nervous that time. I remember picking up a cigarette before turning to her and just telling her outright that I was terrified of her parents. I was worried they might not want her to settle with a small-time researcher like me."

"She said- I worry too much, and laughed a little. She...I loved her laughter," he looks up to find Kuon's eyes staring at him, smiling like a man gushing about his wedding that would happen the next day. "Even if some part of her didn't understand where I was coming from, given that I have made way riskier decisions in life, for a moment it felt like I would be able to sleep on it."

Edited 2025-06-27 23:46 (UTC)

Like a curious cat, Kuon's head tilted as she listened to him talk. Talk about the person he loved with all of his heart - someone that can't be replaced.

Has she ever felt that way about someone? So afraid to make the right first impression with relatives... no, she hadn't once even thought about prior partners' parents. She'd gone ahead and been courteous and friendly as always, and gotten the same reaction as always - why would she expect anything else? There was no desperate need to be accepted... something deeply a part of Takuto's heart.

Has she ever loved how someone laughs, finding so much comfort that it soothed her anxieties? No... she's never felt anything that strong. A little passing fondness, the same spark of her mind piquing interest in a puzzle, but nothing like that.

"That would be because that decision mattered more than the others, right?" she asked, keeping her tone soft and kind for Takuto, in thanks for how kind he always was to her.

It mattered.

So much.

It was the one decision in his life that he was completely sure of on the day when he decided to get down on one knee and make sure everything went according to plan. He couldn't let his clumsiness get in the way of it.

The light chain felt profound under his fingers. Soothing. Calming.

"It felt like a decision I was waiting to make for a long while," he admits. "I just didn't want...anything to go wrong, you know? It was right there. That night we had even planned to light up sparklers in her parents' back garden."

His expression falls, remembering the sparkles replaced by gunfire. Sometimes he thought he dissociated so much he couldn't even recollect the event, sometimes it felt like he was still living it.

"When I was with her on February 3rd, tragedy struck her and her parents," he says pointedly, never bringing himself up. "A burglar broke into the house and...killed her parents right before our eyes," He murmurs like they were still there with him. That he could get shot for pulling the wrong move. "He attacked her when she confronted him and...hah," He chuckled lightly, fingers shaking so much that his cigarette dropped from his hands. Open and bare and useless.

He tried to conceal the act anyway, rolling his heel over the cigarette and trying to soothe his left hand by palming with his right.

"I could only just watch from the sidelines before ...deciding to stay back to try and patch any of them up. See if I can save anyone...there was so much blood..." The last few lines were too quiet, almost like he was talking to himself.

He hadn't even realised he looked away from her again, so he forced himself to keep eye contact. "Haha pathetic...right?"

That sort of story is shocking. Something just-- unbelievably unheard of, a sort of tragedy that's impossible to imagine oneself in.

...Well, no. She can imagine one part of it. The sound of gunfire next to her ear, the barrel pointed at her head, and feeling too paralyzed to run - having to think as fast as possible on what to do and coming up short.

And she hadn't even gotten shot.

While she didn't know if the gesture would be comforting, Kuon tried anyway. She placed her hand on Takuto's back, holding it there. Something people did for her at funerals, or what the shadows did for her after she got away from Zenkichi. Hopefully it's the right answer, here.

"Not at all," she shook her head.

Even though the gesture was familiar, it was as comforting as holding an umbrella over a drenched cat. The idea of her reaching out was enough.

His skin jumped when he felt her hand make contact, but his expression remained the same. Distant. With the slightest smile on his face.

"It's alright, you don't have to pacify me for the sake of it," he shook his head. What kind of man was he? If he was so weak and helpless in the face of danger like that... "I promised her father I would take care of her," he says. "And, I did try after that. Soon, around the time when her parents' passing was announced, she was admitted to the hospital. Thankfully, she didn't have any physical injuries that would have proven to be fatal- she was always strong like that."

"But her mental scars...they broke her. Her future was stolen from her by some cruel twist of fate and forced to suffer for the rest of her life," he exhaled a shaky breath. "Depression. Anxiety. Catatonia. PTSD. Days and nights in long-term care, barely acknowledging the world around you."

"I would have given up anything in those 15 months for her to smile again. Anything."

"That makes sense," she immediately responded. And it did - she was heartless and even still, she wanted to help the man that had helped her. The real version of that emotion must be even more powerful, powerful enough to wish with all of your heart.

Her hand didn't move, and she scooted just an inch closer. She wasn't pacifying for the sake of it. She felt motivated to do it, so she did.

"Was Azathoth the one who answered your heart's desire?"

Too close. Too personal. And yet, his heart was open here, in open display for Kuon to see and perceive. To dissect and hypothesise.

With one hand on his chest, his fingers curled around the ring hanging off the chain, one that couldn't be perceived under the shirt. "The heart is a powerful...wonderful thing."
This time, the grief had reared a different head, making him turn towards her with something like delight in eyes that witnessed and recollected death like colourful shattered glass pieces, sharp edges and all.

"It's funny...I thought I was helping her by being there, but it was actually the complete opposite- I'd become a trigger for her. Her cognition must have linked me to her trauma, with how she lost her parents." He patted his chest. "Meanwhile I made it out mostly unscathed."

"Back then, I didn't perceive Azathoth the way most users do." He explains. "When she begged me to forget it all, recovering from her screams, I hypothesised that if you could alter a subject's cognition by changing their heart, any trauma-related incident can be eliminated."

He practically hung off the bench now- worked up, only slightly, like he was talking to himself just as much as he was talking to Kuon. "Azathoth answered to me."

"I got my wish."

He chuckled lightly, eyes closed as tears welled up within. Moisture threatening to break out.

"She forgot so many things and I..."

"I was one of them."

Edited 2025-06-28 12:20 (UTC)

It was like a puzzle piece falling into place, anchoring other pieces, revealing the actual shape of the picture. Everything made sense about Takuto Maruki, now. Why he did what he did... and why his heart hurt more than anything else.

Gently, she found his other hand and rested hers on it. Should she be feeling pained, for him? That's probably what an empathetic response would be. But all she feels is... impressed.

"So that's why your heart weighs so heavy. I think I understand, now," she reassured, the hand she had on his back moving to his shoulder and squeezing it.

"I understand now why you must persist. Your miracle, though painful... it will let you grant that miracle to everyone else in agony. To make a world that people have always desired. I see now... that's why you and EMMA came to the same conclusions," Kuon said, somewhat reverently, voice filled with a quiet awe.

"Your love for her meant giving up everything to see her smile, just like you said. And your heart knew the truth of what had to be done to accomplish it. Right there, in that very moment... granting your wish... Azathoth is your heart's miracle"

Edited 2025-06-28 14:53 (UTC)

He's here now, sitting before her with layers shed around his heart. The organ that beats even though both he and Rumi died that day, but he's here now, he's sitting here before Kuon, so it has to mean something, right? All of that has to mean something. It's not so simple that he should just believe in someone who has never swum before to make it out alive from being caught up in a sea storm.

Why Rumi?

Why should anyone suffer that fate?

His heart...yes, it's heavy. It's heavy with Rumi's memory. It's heavy with the sight of being able to see her smile for the last time before he had to leave her life forever. Even if he wished that he could leave with a little kiss to her forehead, to bid her well on her journey ahead of him, rather than simply turn away from her when she looked at him like he was a stranger all along.

A sniffle left him. Pain echoed in his throat as he remembered that day like it was yesterday. A tear slipped from his eyes as the memory of Rumi, the cognizant one who called out to his name when he tried to bring her to the velvet room, remained all too fresh in his head.

I understand now why you must persist.

"...!"

He raised his head, askew glasses and all, as Kuon drew open the curtains that threatened to shut away the sun. A miracle, powerful...even if it were painful. Perhaps that's the cost of it all, isn't it? Rumi, Shibusawa...Akira...all of them will forget about him, too. This is what his miracle must be, and the memories that erode must be the cost. Rumi will go on to make better memories. Shibusawa will never go through what he did. Akira won't be punished for stepping forward to help someone.

All that he never had.

Edited 2025-06-28 18:16 (UTC)

Right there, in that very moment... granting your wish... Azathoth is your heart's miracle.

Not strange.

Not malicious.

His inner self wasn't rotten.

A miracle.

The brown in his eyes flickered gold. Tears threatened to break through the surface as his sniffles grew.

"...my heart's miracle."

He grew quiet, closing his eyes shut.

His voice breaks, lifting his hand from his shirt to cover his face.

"...why didn't we meet earlier?"

Edited 2025-06-28 18:36 (UTC)

She's never cried. Never mourned, not like this. But there is something she can see in Takuto, right now... it's the same feeling she had when he first praised EMMA to her. Praised her even after finding out what she was able to do, instead of reacting with fear. How he only got more and more understanding of EMMA.

Humans are social animals. Ichinose Kuon knows this. Heart or no, it's ingrained deep in the psyche to notice the silence of an empty room, or scornful furrowed brows, over and over and over again.

It is lonely. It is deeply lonely, and it makes that inner social animal ache.

Gently, Kuon took the hand that Takuto was covering his face, pulling it down so he wasn't hiding, even as messy and tearful as he was. He was raw, flayed himself open just because of how much he trusted Kuon... and if he could trust like that, it was only fair to reward it.

"It is a lonely road, sometimes, seeing what we see. Knowing what we know," she started, lightly moving herself a little closer, lightly pulling his hands towards her.

Moving his hands, she pulled Takuto's shoulders towards her and into a hug, embracing him and offering a shoulder to cry on - what is a doll but a thing of comfort and companionship, when all of the world's humans reject you and scorn you? She can be a doll for his comfort, put to good use, for once.

"You don't have to be alone, anymore. I'm here."

"It is a lonely road, sometimes, seeing what we see. Knowing what we know."

Why is his vision so blurry? Why do his insides feel like mush all over, destroyed and disintegrated into a hundred pieces in a way he never really let anyone else perceive? Not until today, before this doll who claims not to have a heart and yet, understands him like she has one.

A beautiful, impossible being, delicate and deliberate, who comprehends what it means to try, and try, and try again—only to feel the world fall apart in your hands like ash and saltwater.

She sees him.

All of him.

Maybe it would take a thousand years to count the cost of everything he's lost. Maybe longer.

But somehow... it feels like he could bear it now.

With her.

"I'm here."

With the quiet, gentle warmth from Azathoth-so unlike its usual consuming cold. Even the vast silence in his mind stirs, broken not by terror but by a single, trembling piano note. Something human. Something tender.

A miracle. His heart can create miracles.

And she's...accepting it. All of it. The ruin. The tremors. The vulnerability. She doesn’t flinch from his wreckage. Doesn’t pity him. Doesn’t recoil. She meets his eyes without judgment, as though she’s been waiting to carry this with him all along.

He freezes as her arms come around him-an instinctive disbelief that such grace could be meant for him. Pretence flickers, that old habit to hold himself at a distance. But it crumbles. He lets go.

Like fate had once again fought against him and failed, and he held her like he had hoped he would. Residing in a place inside her chest where he belonged.

He abandoned all pretence. All the walls that threatened to pull him away as he broke into pieces, knowing Kuon would catch him on the other side.

His knee bumped against hers, shoulders broad and open as his arms curled around Kuon's waist. Tall as he is, it takes nothing at all to close the space between them. To let her feel how deeply he wants this.

He holds her with purpose, with promise, with gratitude so large it aches.

And as his breath shudders and the tears fall freely, Rumi’s laughter echoes softer, more distant in his memory.

How many dolls in the world have been held like this? Those holding the doll curling around their heartless companion, soothed nonetheless, filling the fake hair with tears and sobs like Takuto is doing now.

"Dolls can also be pretty."

Like a piece of a puzzle falling into place.

She always believed in EMMA's deductions. In what EMMA represented in her success. In the obvious proof that being heartless isn't so bad. But she hadn't made the connection here, before... this is what a doll is for. To be an ever-smiling companion, not blinded by empathy.

Kuon let Takuto sob into her shoulder, hugging him back, a silent gesture to show he didn't need to pull away or stop himself. Lazily, she rested her cheek against his shoulder, closing her eyes and feeling... at peace. She understood herself, now it made sense... and if she was going to be anyone's doll, best be the person who best matched what her EMMA so wisely chose for the future of the world. If she'd throw in her whole lot with EMMA, then obviously she should do the same for Takuto for as long as they share this reality together, right?

Her gentle pats on his back are unpracticed, but no less earnest, and she doesn't complain about her leg feeling a little strained from the angle or her mind getting restless from so long without something to settle on - those weren't important. Though maybe, later, she'll have to ask him how to actually act comforting - that way she can do a better job of it next time.

Inbox & In-person meetups

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tw: slight toxic masculinity thoughts but also not really

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