Ren shrugged. "I guess I should count myself thankful none of the damage in the Metaverse ever carried over. But yeah, sorry about the intrusion. I asked around, people said this was where Akechi spends most of his time... I figured I should at least check the place out, right?" He climbed up the ladder as instructed, though. "Ren Amamiya. I'm a friend of Akechi's from..."

Akechi snorted. "From the Phantom Thieves. It's fine, it's not as if we need to hide anything here." He also pointedly avoided Blitzø's eyes. "Closest I ever had to a friend, for a while."

"I'm touched. What's the exact date, by the way? Didn't get a chance to look."

"May... twentieth? Twenty-first? The exact day might have been concussed out of me."

Ren looked thoughtful, for a moment. And then his smile turned somewhere south of impish and just a hair north of Faustian. "Plenty of time, then. I was worried, I mean, a jug of coffee's a pretty crappy birthday present."

And there he froze again. "I don't- how in the hell- Futaba."

"Futaba."

"God dammit."