[It's at the tip of his tongue, knocking against his teeth - he could tell Maruki right now. He should, probably, if Akira really is going to trust him. He does, even if that's a daunting prospect.

But it's not a matter of trust. At least, not for this situation, when Futaba isn't here to say it for herself. It's a matter of protecting the Phantom Thieves, and it's a matter of protecting words that Futaba should be the only one to speak.]

We stumbled across some things related to her and her research, you could say. [If it's a wordplay that only Akira gets, he can live with that right now.] But that was before we realized it was tangled up in something a lot bigger than us.

[Too much, but still not enough. It's serviceable. At the least, he knows now there aren't additional avenues to pursue by asking Maruki about her... or at least, after one additional thing he'll be done pursuing that.]

Did you ever encounter any roadblocks during your research?

[It seems... almost bizarre, that another researcher of cognitive science would not have come up in Akira's version of reality. Shido worked so hard to steal Isshiki's research for his own, after all, and anyone else in the field was practically unheard of. A suspicion curls at the back of his mind that he immediately has to push away, not think about, not right now.

Later, however, he will turn it over and over in his head.]