"I can use this," Joker thought. The boy stretched his neck while passing through a curtained doorway and let out a sigh of relief. Wisps of steam waved to him and he was greeted with silence, just as he hoped.
	Walking over to the stools, Joker quickly washed himself, eager to have a shot at the onsen all to himself. His friends, The Phantom Thiev- “Wait, can we call ourselves that anymore...?”
The past year had come and gone, bringing together a motley crew of outcasts under a name as ridiculous as it sounded back then. And yet now the Metaverse, and that chapter in his life, was over. The thought gave him pause.
	“I shouldn’t worry about it,” he cleared his head from the mental tangent. Everyone had piled into a van that afternoon and headed to an onsen resort town for the team’s last operation. Makoto proposed it originally, Haru volunteered to pay for it, and Sae agreed to come along at the behest of several guardians, although she wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow morning. “Work stuff,” Makoto quipped, knowing it would be asked.
	He stood up, cleaning finished. Joker squinted, using what little moonlight coming through the clouds to scan through the mist. He didn’t expect to find anyone; whole team had long gone to bed. Just the way he wanted it. Yes, they were his friends, better than any back home, but in the month since his return from juvie the hectic juggle of school, work at Leblanc, and touching bases with friends and confidants left no time for introspection.
	“I could have had that behind bars,” he joked while lowering himself into the bath. “Not this though” his body unwinding on contact with the near-steaming water. Minutes passed as Joker lay there, simply taking in the onsen. He glanced up, to a night sky with clouds half-blanketing the moon. There were more stars here than in Tokyo or his hometown. More time to digest the past three months since release instead of blitzing through them in what felt like mere moments. And then he heard a shuffle of feet as another patron entered the bath.
	Joker quickly looked around before confirming the new entrant wasn’t coming from nearby, but from the other side of a bamboo divider splitting the onsen between sexes. Curious, or so he justified in his head, Joker slowly waded to the divider. “She’d kill me if she knew,” he thought, right before losing balance and faceplanting into the water with a resounding splash.
	“Shit.”
	“Who’s there?” Makoto.
	“Double shit.” His Makoto.
	“Hey, who’s there?” she said, with no small measure of aggression.
	“Maybe they’ll let me back into Juvenile Hall?” Joker thought as he briefly sunk his face into the water for a moment before coming back up.
	 “Fancy meeting you out here...”
	“Joker?... Oh thank god,” he heard movement in the water across the fence “I thought you were some creep or worse, Ryuji” She paused before changing topics, “You’re out here late.”
	“Yeah, just wanted some time to soak it the ambiance,” He said with no small measure of relief.
	“Mmmhmm. How’s the bath?” her voice drew closer to the wall dividing them
	“Great,” as his voice relaxed “I haven’t been to one of these since I was a kid.”
	“I’m glad.”
	“Yeah. I have to hand it to you, this is exactly what we needed. I think Futab-oOOOph” his words were interrupted by an errant wash bin clearing the divider and hitting him square in the head. The image of a smug young woman making a silent fistpump on impact flashed across his mind.
	“Is everything alright, Joker? I heard another splash,” the voice’s aggression returned.
	“Yeah, great, I forgot how dangerous it is to be out this late,” a grimacing Joker absentmindedly rubbed his forehead. Although he couldn’t see her, Joker could tell from her voice that she was next to the fence.
	“As long as you’re aware of the danger.” the threat, thankfully, dissipated.
	Sighing, the young man approached the divider.
	“Of all the people to fall for, it had to be someone good at physics.”
	The source of the voice turned around before lowering into the water “And it’s hard to keep you talking. I almost had trouble guessing where you were. And I’ll have you know ballistics are an important part of police forensics.” The two laughed. Joker followed her lead and sunk back down into the water with his back against the wall. The bath felt significantly warmer than before.
	“Hey...” The bamboo creaked slightly as the fellow patron looked over her shoulder.
	“I came by your room. When I didn’t get a response I thought you were ducking out for the night.”
	“I wouldn’t ignore you like that.”
	“But you came out here alone. Or do I need to find more bins?”
	“No no, you’re right I came out here by myself. I thought you were exhausted so I didn’t want to wake you.”
	“Don’t underestimate me. It’ll take more than this team’s antics to tire me out,” Joker could taste the satisfaction her voice projected through the wall.
	“Can you blame me? We spent most of today trying to keep the staff calm. I didn’t think Futaba would actually punch Yusuke over a bad draw of cards.”
	“Or assure them that they weren’t in any danger after watching Haru’s ping pong serve...”
	“Right? Isn’t this suppose to be Sae’s job?”
	“Well, as you know she wasn’t here to see us all arrive early.”
	“Yeah, shame she couldn’t have the extra day-” Joker stopped mid-sentence confused,
	“Hang on what do you mean ‘early’?”
	“I may have… stretched… certain details out when I asked her to come. I figured it would be easier to address some… things that are best done without supervision.”
	Joker smiled. “Really, Miss President? Didn’t think you had that one in you.”
	“Well now I think you can say things are different now. Plus I graduated, Little Miss President’s gone, I’m just another college student now.”
	Her words drifted as a body momentarily sunk into the onsen water.
	“Joker? What happens now? Between us I mean.”
	“Hey now I came here to relax.”
	“Oh come on!”
	Joker grimaced slightly, “Strike Two” he thought. Occasionally Joker regretting teasing her. Occasionally.
	“Look, I’m going to be busy with university, and you’re going to wrap things up back home… and you have college exams too... Heaven knows what else the government will want with someone with firsthand experience of the metaverse. You’ve only been back a month and now you’re leaving. You’ve thought about it too, right? Where do we end up?”
	Joker furrowed his brow and exhaled. Joker knew his answer would be the one she wanted to hear, but making those words count would be important. Makoto’s disapproval was rarely the overt show from earlier, but she had a way of making her intentions known. He turned his head toward the wall and his partner behind it.
	“Does ‘together’ work for you like it does for me?”
	He hadn’t raised his voice any louder than normal, but Joker swore the wall shook ever so slightly against his back. The bath echoed his words. He hoped that got his feelings across. He regretted the delivery, but meant the words. He hoped Makoto knew he was serious.
	Joker gazed at the sky again, clouds parted, face still, but mind racing. The pit of his stomach felt the slightest unease as the silence continued.
	“Makoto?”
	“Yes Joker?”
	“I’ll be a train ride away. I want this... us... to work out.”
	“I do too. More than anything in the world.”
	The two sat for awhile back to back, quiet and unsure what else could or should be said. 	Eventually Makoto rose from the bath. “I’m glad that’s over, but hey… I’m not letting you head to bed until I take a look at you. I… probably shouldn’t have thrown that at you earlier. I’m sorry.”
	“Thanks, I might have had that one coming... Let’s meet up inside.”
	“Yeah, your room sounds great.”
	A surprised Joker paused briefly before replying,
	“Yeah.”
	Makoto’s silence gave him something to smile about as he left the changing room and saw her beet-red face. After making sure he was alright, Joker and Makoto spent the rest of the night together.