A/N: True End, doesn't take P4G into account. An AU of a sort, even though the events are all the same.
the art of losing touch
April 11, 2011
By now, you know how it goes. You will give the standard introduction, smile politely, make small talk with those curious classmates who approach you in the first few days. As the school year passes you will collect names and faces and cellphone numbers. At the end of the year there will be farewells - which might even be sad ones - and promises to keep in touch, which you will gently allow to be broken. The cellphone numbers stay in your phone for a few months afterwards, just in case.
It's no one's fault. Nothing to blame but geography, and time.
June
It's an old trap. You make acquaintances despite yourself, care more than you should; that is, at all. And yes, the school camp's a mess, one travesty after another. But in the moments in between, you find laughter, fondness, something growing into familiarity. The stakes are low, here: no one to save, no bizarre television worlds. Just Yosuke's grumbling, Chie's temper. Yukiko's laugh. Kanji's awkwardness.
You'd like to think of this as just the Investigation Team, but it's more and less than that. You're friends, at least for now.
It's ordinary. Difficult. But - as you tell yourself - it's nothing new.
August
Nanako smiles. Dojima smiles back, relieved. The watermelon juice runs cool down your wrist.
Kanji turns back to his slice first. Then Rise does, then Chie, and you hear the murmur of conversation start up again behind you, inside the house - Teddie's excited voice, Yukiko's laughter, Yosuke's theatrical sigh.
In this moment, in this summer heat, with your friends around you, speaking happily of a 'next year' they believe will arrive - you're happy. You know that much. And you tell yourself that knowing that it will not last, that none of this will last, doesn't make this happiness a lie.
October
Autumn comes, as always.
You know what some of them think, sometimes; not least Naoto, who watches you with an interest not yet blunted by admiration. Sometimes - perhaps on a dungeon run slightly too long for mere practice - they wonder if there's something you're trying to suppress, some darkness you've painted over. A shadow yet to be found. They look for it in the line of your mouth as your hands curl around your sword, or an expression kept carefully neutral.
Is there even anything to find? They never ask. So you never have to come up with an answer.
December
You feed the cats. They, at least, don't expect anything else of you.
February
Some things have ended. Others haven't, including the routine of school life: classes in which you still try to pay attention, lunchtimes on the roof, Yosuke coming round to the Dojima residence so you can do your math homework together.
This afternoon, Yosuke's been quiet for a long while - you'd assumed he was stuck on a particularly tough problem - until he says, suddenly: "Souji. Don't forget us, okay?"
It's not surprising, even though it should be. Your pencil pauses, mid-equation. You don't look over at him. That's never been the problem, you want to say. Or maybe, Same to you.
It's not a lack of courage that stops you from picking either choice. Maybe it's the knowledge that it wouldn't change anything, or the sense that saying it would be too cruel. Whatever it is, you settle eventually for: "Why'd you think that?"
Yosuke laughs, a little uncertain. "Nothing. Just..."
You let the silence stretch, allow yourself to finish that equation, and wait, pencil still in hand.
Yosuke sighs. "Don't laugh, okay? But sometimes I feel like, I don't know, like all this was always about me, about my stupid problems and- my feelings, or whatever. As if that's all we ever talked about. It's like. Like you got to know me, but I never really got to know you."
You don't laugh. The page before you blurs in and out of focus: scalars connect two points, indifferent between them; vectors only move in one direction. Yosuke's saying something else, a little hurried, already embarrassed: "Sorry, sorry, I know it's stupid, I just..."
"It's okay," you say. You glance over, finally, and smile because that's all you can think to do.
He smiles back, relieved, and doesn't push the issue. You're not sure if that disappoints you.
March 21, 2012
Do you look happy enough, in that photograph? You suppose you do. Enough, at least, for that image to serve as a reminder. There's something reassuring about its solidity under your fingers, a moment captured and preserved; sealed off from the present. We were happy then.
You smile - for no one's benefit but yours - and put the photograph away. The train rattles onwards. Behind you, under an insistently blue sky, Inaba recedes inexorably into the distance, already becoming memory: disappearing mile by mile into the familiar fog that is the past, a fog you have never learnt how to lift.