... She can't help it, that brings a small smile to her face.

Joker claps her on the shoulder. "See? There is some good in all this after all. We've just got to look for it."

Akira nods, and hugs the card close to her heart.

Julie smiles tenderly and hugs them both tightly. "Just so, chérie. And we will find it all."

Akira nods, and tucks the card back in her wallet and her wallet back into her dress' right-hand pocket.

She goes back to the desk and unzips the pencil case.

... It's full of blood-draw needles. 

She zips it shut again and passes it to Joker. "I think this is yours," she says.

"Yeah," Joker says. "Probably misplaced from the fusion room." She takes the pencil-case, and also picks up the stethoscope and loops it around her neck. "I'll put it there when we're done."

Julie arches an eyebrow and grins. "Indeed, mon cœur."

Akira goes on to the stack of textbooks. Most of them are quite heavy computer science texts, the same kind of detritus that was present in the kitchen. They're easy enough to dismiss; she's done her processing on that already. 

With another ten minutes of cleaning, Akira's down to the bare glass top of the desk. Not such a large task after all.

Should she try and boot the computer...? No, she needs to focus on getting the room squared away. 

She steps back to the calendar on the wall behind the desk and flips it forward to March, today's date. It has pages that far; and here is the date of her release, circled in green. A much better thing to remember. 

The timesheet next to the calendar comes off the wall when she pulls. Her parents never forced her to record what she was doing in fifteen-minute blocks, but they did get down as close as an hour before. Having them read her diary like that — 

It'll never happen again. 

She crumples the timesheet up and balls it in her hands, and it dissolves away. 

She'd sit and look through the desk drawers, but the chair...

She picks up the chair, and sure enough it falls apart into dust. She's never been comfortable sitting at her parents' desk. 

Still, she's making progress.

Joker gives her a thumbs-up. "We're getting there," she says. She pulls another hunk of crystal from her pocket. "Want a new chair?"

"Not just yet. Let me go through the bookshelves first."

Julie nods firmly and strokes Akira's hair. "Proud of you, moitié. We'll make a much more comfortable one when we're done."

Akira lets out a small sigh at the hair petting, then turns and looks at the bookshelf with the molecular model on it. 

There's something familiar about this molecule, but she can't quite put a finger on it. She was never very good at chemistry...

The rest of the model kit is under it, in a flat grey case. She opens it. 

Inside is her bottle of DIY estrogen. 

... She can't help it, she smirks a little. Of course. The model's an estrogen molecule. It's practically a taunt.

She takes the bottle out of the model kit. "This belongs in my bedroom, once we make it. For now... Julie, could you hold on to this?" She hands over the small bottle of pills.

"With pleasure, beloved."

She pockets the bottle for now, then kisses the top of Akira's head.

Akira flushes slightly and ducks her head. 

Then she returns to the shelves. Most of these are old textbooks; as she touches each book, it crumbles away, leaving behind empty space on the shelves. Her Shujin Academy texts are solid to the touch, though, and heavy like lead. If she fails school...

She leaves them be. 

On the bottom shelf of the bookcase, hiding behind the textbooks, there's an old volleyball. She presses it between her hands and it pops like a soap bubble and dissappears: Kamoshida's dealt with.

"Alright," she says. "Let's get a proper chair in here and go through the desk drawers."

"I have just the thing." Joker hefts a larger piece of crystal in her hands, and crushes it between her palms. In a moment, a sleek black office chair with built-in armrests appears at the table; its back and arms are covered in black and red graffiti, silhouettes of roses and thorns. 

"Not bad, eh?"

Akira's lips turn up. "I will admit it's not the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a normal office. And I think that's good, here." 

She sits. The chair's solid underneath her. 

She opens the top right desk drawer. 

Inside is her Peacemaker, sealed inside a police evidence bag.

"Great," she says. Yeah, she's still worried. She's taken precautions, of course she has, but she still can't shake the feeling that she's going to be caught with a fake gun at any moment. 

She closes the drawer. She doesn't need to mess with a firearm right now. 

The second drawer down is deeper. Inside it there's a sack of potatoes. Yes, Principal Kobayakawa does keep getting in her space, in one way or another. She hauls it out. 

"These can go to the kitchen," she says. "I bet they're still edible." And it'll help her to feel better if she gets to eat Kobayakawa's involvement in her life as delicious french fries or hashbrowns. 

She hands off the sack to Joker.

Joker takes it with a smirk, and ducks out to the kitchen.

Julie giggles warmly and nods. "A fitting fate." She kisses Joker's cheek as she departs, then Akira's as well, before kneeling down to peer through a drawer herself.

The left-hand desk drawer is full of old electronic cords, along with a dead smartphone, the screen broken in radiating cracks around the center. Next to them, buried in the mess, is Akira's old flat fox plushie that her parents threw away.

She picks up the old phone and shakes her head. "You deserved so much better than their treatment of you, mon trésor. Breaking your phone, keeping you trapped... despicable."

With a soft sigh, she sets it on the desk for Akira to see. 

Akira picks up the phone and nods seriously. 

"Yeah," she says. "I really did."

She presses it to her heart. She wishes that she could have kept it. There were so many precious things on it.

But it's in the past, now. 

It dissolves away in her hands, and leaves behind a small gleaming jewel, just the size of her pinky. A memory, perhaps.

"We may be able to recover something with that, peut-être. Best save it. And on a brighter note," she pulls out the fox plushie with a smile.