(Warning: Dark. Quite dark. And slight AU.)
COBALT
Naoto does not particularly enjoy red.
Red marks denote mistakes. Red food denotes copious amounts of spicy flavoring. Red signs denote peril.
She does not own red clothes and she does not buy them. She prefers blue by a significant margin; blue, the color of serenity, of intelligence, of inscrutable waters and the abstruse firmament.
Yes, blue. Blue is a color superior to any other.
::-::
Logically, it should make no difference. Colors are merely the eye's perception of particular wavelengths. Colors are unable to have any impact upon the physical realm.
...Why, then, does the navy blue of Kanji Tatsumi's skull-patterned tee seem directly correlated to her heart rate?
::-::
She glances down at her red coat. She does not know what possessed her to wear so much red. Blue. She likes blue. Why a red coat?
::-::
It comes to her when she is savoring the most exquisite of cafeteria lunches on the school's rooftop.
Ah. It is not the blue shirt that is scrambling her mental facilities... but its wearer.
Under ordinary circumstances, she would seek immediate neutralization of any source that hinders her cognitive faculties—but these are hardly ordinary circumstances. As a detective and a civil servant, she can hardly lower herself to murder.
For the first time, Naoto Shirogane cannot rationalize the optimal course of action.
::-::
A pool of red slicks about her feet. She steps in it, experimentally, as any inquisitive detective might.
It squelches and overlaps her shoe, licking at her ankles like tiny snakes.
She cannot comprehend as to why anyone would enjoy this color.
::-::
The logical option, when faced with unmitigated ambivalence, is simply to do nothing.
Or so Naoto Shirogane thought.
::-::
She has seen red before. None in her profession have been spared from its perpetual appearances.
She attempts to never spill the cursed hue herself. The world hardly needs more red.
::-::
She takes to examining him from afar. The way he slouches, the exaggerated yet candid expressions on his angled face, the intonations of his (occasionally vulgar) diction, how he eats and studies and sleeps—only at school, of course, she won't stoop to that level.
Rise notices it first. She raises an eyebrow, flashes an arch grin, and lowers her voice to a confidential whisper.
"You like Kanji?"
"Absolutely not." The words tumble out of Naoto's mouth in prepared self-defense. "Merely examining. For investigative purposes."
"He has a crush on you, too."
Naoto is very rarely left wordless.
Apparently, this occasion is very rare.
::-::
Her eyes blankly fixate on the lanky body of Kanji Tastumi at her feet. His contorted limbs are heavily lacerated; red pools about his head; and yet, there is nothing on his face but peace.
It is a privilege, really. To be surrounded by such a color and be at peace with it.
::-::
But just as she musters her courage to mention the perplexing topic, the opportunity has fled.
Souji Seta pins the culprit and they are in the TV world and suddenly they are fighting—
—there are Personas everywhere, fire, ice, lightning—
—she hears a voice screaming her name, primal, panicked—
—she turns around right as a large body leaps in front of her—
::-::
Her eyes fix on a single red tie, and the Touru Adachi who wears it.
A blank smile tugs at the end of her lips. Absent. Detached. Her insides are cold. Blue, if they were a color.
She does not like the color red. No, not at all.
(A/N: Oh? Did you think Naoto killed Kanji there for a moment? ...No, not quite.
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