One of Those Funny Little Punctuation Signs
He'd fucked up.
"I'm telling you all to just shut up for one second here!"
He couldn't fault Yosuke for being who he was. Cheer, brightness and optimism had always been in his nature, even after all that had happened at the beginning of the year. It just so happened that, in all the schools he'd been at previously, it was that sort of person who always nagged away at his nerves. As the year went by and he met more and more people, the distance between them just kept growing. It started off slightly – sorry, I can't make it today, how about tomorrow – but by the end of the year, they hadn't talked about something that wasn't the case for close to a month.
"No. Sorry, partner, but I can't agree with you on this."
If anything, Chie had been even more zealous than Yosuke. Hey, it's been a while since we went into the TV, hasn't it? I think we need to go in tomorrow to train! Of course their ideals would have clashed. He had always been the one to advocate calm and forethought, even when every one of his instincts were screaming for murder and bloody vengeance. Jumping in and taking unnecessary risks weren't his style. Training could always come later, when they were all prepared. It wasn't surprising that they'd never really connected.
"I don't think I even know you! How can I just stand here while you're speaking no sense?"
When Yukiko had joined, he'd found someone who felt more like a kindred spirit – more of a blue oni than a red one, even with her dress sense. That was probably why he'd ended spending so much time with her. Nothing serious – a shopping trip one day, a chat on the roof the next, that sort of thing. At least, that was what he'd thought. It wasn't her fault that he'd never made it clear from the start. He still remembered the tears she tried to hide in vain, as she quickly hurried away from the shrine. Afterwards, it was never the same.
"I'm sorry, but… I can't help you…"
To put it simply, he had never even tried to approach Kanji. It had started after the experience of the bathhouse, when he felt like anything he said to him would result in getting smashed in the head by a folding chair. The completely different spheres of interests, the rumours of bullying floating around, the run-ins with the police, and everything else had fed that feeling. There had always been a wall there, and he'd been content to just let it stick.
"Tsk. I don't have to deal with this shit."
While he would be the first to admit that him and Rise hadn't been best friends or anything, he had at least found her presence tolerable. They had just been having a casual conversation, talking about nothing in particular, when her agency pulled the plug on her. No warning, nothing. Without thinking, he had pulled her into a warm embrace. He hadn't meant anything – looking at her on the verge of breaking down, he simply thought that she would want a shoulder to cry on. Later, though… what do you mean, it didn't mean anything? Are you saying… I thought you were better than that, sempai! The hurt, the sadness, the betrayal… it was like with Yukiko all over again.
"No, senpai."
Retrospectively, he probably could have made a friendship work with Naoto. Dealing with the inner workings of some sort of mysterious thief had actually been quite interesting. Of course, that was before everything went to hell. He had been on edge that day – of course I'm on edge, my sister's just been fucking kidnapped – but even so, all she had wanted was someone to talk to. It hadn't been her fault that, when all she wanted were a few more words about the thief, he'd snapped completely. He'd ranted and raved for far too long that day, and he didn't even remember what it had been about.
She hadn't said anything as she turned and left.
No, none of the fault rested on them. All of it was on him.
All that was left in the room were two broken men and a TV.
"Welcome back to the Velvet Room…"
All he could do was nod as he slumped into his seat. With Nanako and Dojima gone, the house felt haunted and lifeless. This was the only place where he still felt like he had some sort of place.
He forced the words from his throat. "I failed."
Igor only drummed his fingers. "It would seem that way, yes."
Silence filled the room.
Igor finally let out a sigh. "We still have options, you know. We could…"
Before he could finish, he was cut off by a brutal scream, fuelled by an entire year's worth of frustration and pent-up rage. "And do what? Just go back another week, like before? One week isn't enough time to fix everything I screwed up. What else, then? Going back further? Restarting this entire year? Nothing's going to change. Yosuke's going to be the same, Chie's going to be the same, everything is going to be the exact fucking same. Nothing's going to change. Everything's going to fail, just like this time."
A pause.
"How can you be sure if you don't try?"
"Forget it. I'm done."
Another silence, only broken by more irate screams.
A completely new voice, one which he's never heard before, breaks the deadlock.
"I believe I can offer some assistance."
He looks up, and sees a boy, about his age, lounging next to Igor. The old man looks amused. "My, how did you come in?"
The boy shrugs. "You gave me a key, remember?" He turns back to him, and he takes in his appearance. Long straggly blue hair strings down his face, covering one of his eyes; piercing silver gleams out from the other. A pair of headphones dangle around his neck; aside from that, he's dressed in a largely normal school uniform, of a place hauntingly familiar but which he fails to remember.
The boy smiles, seemingly trying to calm his mood. "Hey. I'm… actually, that doesn't really matter. The point is, I can help you get out of this predicament you're in."
He stares at him, and a thousand emotions flash through his mind. Hope, that maybe everything could be fixed. Doubt, that the mess he built himself can even be fixed. Despair, that even if he tries to fix it, it will all end up doomed to failure again. Distrust, that this stranger could even do such a thing. Fear, that this is all some dark hallucination, and that he'll wake up in the morning in a dead house in a dead world, and have to comfort his uncle while they bury his dead sister under six feet of silent clay…
"Don't worry." The boy runs his fingers through his hair, briefly exposing his other eye to the world; just the simplicity of it is enough to restore a modicum of calm. "I get that you're not the sort of person who wants to leave all of this unsolved. If you could, you'd want to get to the bottom of this. Am I right?"
He nods, unsure of the direction of conversation.
The boy smiles approvingly. "However, I also get that the circumstances set for you at the beginning of your journey weren't exactly suited to your character. If we chuck you back with everything else the same, chances are that everything's going to fall to pieces again. Do we agree on that?"
He nods again, still unsure of where this is going.
The boy claps his hands together, as if signalling some moment of revelation. "Well, then. The solution should be clear. We chuck you back in time, to the beginning of the year, but we also institute a couple of parameter shifts so that your relationships with your co-workers don't all spontaneously degrade into decaying piles of meat and offal. Right?"
He stares at him, now completely unsure how to respond. "…What?"
The boy sighs. "Maybe that wasn't the best way to put it. You know how in video games, after you beat the final boss and get the good ending or bad ending or whatever, there's the New Game Plus mode? Think of it as kind of like that, except you replace the plus sign with an asterisk. Or a hashtag. Or an ampersand, or a tilde, or a dollar sign, or any one of those funny little punctuation signs on your keyboard that you never use. Do you roughly get what I'm talking about?"
He remains silent, still unsure.
The boy sighs again. "Give it some thought, okay? Maybe you don't want to deal with anything like this ever again. That's also fine. There's nothing stopping you from leaving this room and going back to the big city. You can forget that anything like this ever happened. But can you really walk away from all of this, without having really gotten to the truth? Give it some thought. Do what feels right."
Silence fills the room again. This one, though, is much more pensive, as he ponders the boy's words.
He was right. This weird, mysterious, silver-eyed, blue-haired boy was right. Yes, he wanted to run away from Yosuke and everyone else – at least until he could deal with them at his own pace, instead of being forced to interact inside of a TV. But he also couldn't leave the killer go free – Namatame had kidnapped his sister, and probably a whole bunch of others, but he still couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. He needed to fix it.
"What do you need me to do?"
The boy smiled, satisfied that he'd swayed him. "Not much. I'll need you to sign something, and then you'll wake up on the train to Inaba at the start of the year, just like you woke up from some really weird dream. Things will be different, of course. Just how different? I'll leave you to find out."
He nodded. "Is there anything else I should know?"
The boy thinks for a while. "Well, bending timelines is a tricky business. The only thing which you can take with you will be your brain. Your memories and social skills will go through fine. Everything else you worked for, though? All gone. Your money, your equipment, your bonds with others… all gone. Hell, even though they're part of your mindscape, I'd be surprised if your Personas remained unscathed. All of those things, you'll have to start again from scratch."
He paused. Everything gone. It was a great sacrifice, but for the chance to do it all again, it was worth it.
"If you have no more questions, then sign here, please."
The boy slid over a pen and a sheet of paper. On it, in delicate, archaic handwriting, a single line was written.
I, Yu Narukami, will do everything in my power to seek the truth and prevent the coming tragedy.
"One last thing. Who are you?"
The boy smiled. "That's a long story, and there's not enough time to tell it. Suffice to say, I used to be like you, but then a lot of complicated stuff happened. As of now, I'm an outside observer of sorts, trying to make sure that humanity doesn't end up blowing itself up."
He nodded, acknowledging he wouldn't get him to divulge any more information. He picked up the pen and fluidly printed his signature.
The boy smiled as he folded up the contract and tucked it into a pocket. "I hoped you would come to that decision. I doubt we'll meet again – at least, not until this is over – but Igor will take it from here. I bid you farewell."
A snap of the fingers, and everything turned to black.
When he woke up, he hadn't fully believed it. Yes, a check of his phone and several confused text messages from people he now barely remembered had confirmed that he was, indeed, back in early April, heading to Inaba, but it still felt surreal. Part of him still expected that all of a sudden, everything would collapse and things would go back to the way they were.
No. He couldn't think about it that way. Things were going to be different. He didn't know how, but they would. They had to.
The train slowly ground to a halt, and he pulled together his belongings and got off. Everything at the station was right as he remembered it – cherry blossoms blooming on the trees, light scent of petrol in the air, gentle breezes cooling his skin, distant sounds of engines ratting in the wind –
One thing which was markedly different was the presence of an unfamiliar girl.
Without realising it, he had completely looked her over. Dark eyes, neatly cropped dark hair, set against almost ghostly pale skin. A small choker around her neck, set above a tight-fitting sleeveless shirt, leaving few curves to the imagination. Chequered skirt, loose black tie, long gloves and stockings – an overall stylistic tendency towards the gothic, though not overbearing to any degree.
He quickly broke out of his analysis, before she noticed he'd been staring. If she'd been here last time, he doubted whether he'd have said anything, or had any reason to approach her. This time around, though, he was more than that. "Hey. I'm Yu Narukami. I'm new to town. Pleased to meet you." He reached out a hand.
She stared at it incredulously for a moment, and shrugged. "Whatever." She didn't seem to have any inclination to shake it.
He was about to make a comment about this, when a loud call interrupted him. "Hey! Over here!" He couldn't help but smile at it.
He turned, to see the two most familiar faces in his life. Heavy stubble in a grey shirt, followed by a tiny girl. His uncle and sister, the closest family he'd ever had.
The man gave out a hearty chuckle. "Huh. You're more handsome than your photo. Well, welcome to Inaba. I'm your uncle, Ryotaro Dojima."
And of course, they didn't remember anything about him.
Dojima frowned. "Are you okay? You don't look great."
He forced his head clear. Dwelling could be done later. "I'm fine, uncle. It was a long journey. It's been a while, hasn't it?"
Another chuckle. "You're telling me. The last time I saw you, you were still in diapers."
And, just like that, a silence fell. It was exactly the same sort of silence that he remembered from last time – two people, bonded by blood but little else, coming together with little common ground, unsure of angle of approach. Sure, he knew a lot more about his uncle than the other way around, but what could he say? Hey, uncle, have you found who killed your dead wife yet?
He could bear this. He had to bear this.
Then, with a light cough, the silence shattered like broken glass, as a young girl fidgeted from behind her father.
He didn't need to listen to his brief introduction. Nanako. His little sister, quite possibly the person in the entire world he cared about the most – who, right know, looked completely terrified of him. "…llo," she mumbled, barely audible.
He couldn't let it get to him. It was heart-wrenching, but he had to act as natural as possible. Weird explanations would just make things worse.
At the same time, though… it was Nanako. Didn't he at least owe it to her to try? Mentally crossing a pair of fingers, he knelt down to her, albeit still keeping some distance. "Hello, Nanako-chan. Now, I know you've only just met me, but I can promise, this year, I'm going to be the best big brother to you as I can. Is that alright?"
Whoever it was, I'm not going to let them get you again.
There was barely a response. Eventually, she sort-of squeaked something that might have been affirmation. At the very least, it wasn't a solid no. Nervous as she might have been, she was open to the idea.
"Big brother, huh?" Dojima seemed to have packed his most upbeat mood. "Having someone like that sure would be a help. Anyway, we should be going. You're tired from the trip, and school starts tomorrow, right?"
…School. School. That would mean Yosuke and Chie and Yukiko and everyone else would be there and I was meant to be a leader and I failed them and I failed and…
No. Don't focus on that. The blue-haired boy said so. Things are going to be different. Things are going to be better. Focus on the differences. Speaking of which… he got back to his feet. "Alright. By the way, who's that girl?"
"Huh?" A puzzled expression passed over his uncle's face. "What girl?"
"The one right…" the girl had disappeared. "Never mind. Someone was here when I arrived, but they're gone now." Inaba was a small town. Chances were that he'd run into her again at some point.
The trip home – no, he shouldn't call it that; it wasn't home yet – passed exactly the same as he remembered it. Get in car, stare out of the window, stop for fuel while Nanako went to the toilet, listen to a somewhat inane lecture from the attendant, get offered handshake, blah blah blah blah blah, et cetera.
At the very least, this time he didn't have to deal with an abrupt migraine. He politely declined Dojima's offer for some time to stretch his legs, and they were off again.
No conversation was made, but he didn't mind. Even if they didn't know him, he still cherished how he could simply sit in a car with them.
Everything had been going well. A simple and nondescript arrival, a quick trip upstairs to deposit his things, back down to see Dojima touching up a sushi platter (bought from Junes – it was the thought that counted), getting a few cans of juice from the fridge, sitting down around the table, giving thanks for the food, Nanako casually turning on the TV, as she always did…
"Our top story concerns the latest developments in the Mayumi Yamano scandal."
Fuck.
How had he forgotten?
The world suddenly felt cold, as the reasons he'd come back came crashing down. Mayumi Yamano. It had been the first day of school, hadn't it? Walking around an unfamiliar town, and coming across where a body had been. It had been jarring, to say the least.
School started tomorrow.
Fuck.
"Are you okay? You don't look so good."
The drone of the news moving onto the next story told him how much time had passed. He hadn't realised he'd spaced out completely. The two of them were both looking at him, concern evident. He tried to put on a reassuring smile. "I'm okay. Just… got a bit of a lingering headache, that's all."
"My sister always said that she never travelled well," Dojima sighed. "Drink plenty of water, and don't be afraid to turn in early. If you need them, there are some pills in the bathroom upstairs."
"Don't worry. I brought some of my own. May I be excused for a moment?" He nodded, and he got up. It was a lie, of course, but it had to be done.
It took all his composure to not dash wildly up the stairs. Slowly, measuredly, he walked up, step by step, and forced his breathing to even. He calmly gathered himself and entered his room, all attention focussed on the TV.
He'd come back to find the truth. With that said, he couldn't leave someone to die. He gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, and reached for the screen.
…Glass. All he felt was glass.
Fuck.
Yes, the first time around, he hadn't been able to jump into the TV straight away. He'd become so used to it, though, that he'd assumed the possibility was always there.
What other options did he have? He could try find another TV. But the one downstairs was out of the question, and he doubted that Dojima would let him out. In fact, that alone limited his options. He couldn't go to the Velvet Room for advice; he couldn't go to the inn to see if Amano was still there, just in case; he couldn't do anything. He could simply wait for the Midnight Channel – the first time he'd been sucked in had been just after watching, right? – but what would that accomplish? The fog always set in right after midnight. It would be too late.
"Hey, Yu? Are you alright up there?"
"I'm fine, uncle." No. No, he wasn't.
Mayumi Yamano was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Sullen and sombre steps took him to school the next day. Maybe it had been foolish to expect instant change, but with almost everything going exactly the same way… one girl, likely there by coincidence, wasn't enough to spark his hopes.
For everyone else, it would be a morbid surprise. Not for him. Just a morbid truth.
He still forced himself to appeared more perked when he reached the faculty office. King Moron. A complete bastard, no question. And yet, when the time came, did he deserve to die?
…Where was King Moron, anyway? He should have been here, waiting for him. Clearly, he wasn't.
One teacher was still there, though. Female. In an Egyptian headdress. Queen Tut. Not much more to say about her.
She looked up from a stack of papers as he entered. "Can I help you?" Nothing in her voice. No judgement, no scorn. Much better than King Moron. Probably one of the most tolerable among the school's eccentricities.
And, right here, right now, she was a teacher. That was all he needed. "My name is Yu Narukami. I'm a transfer student."
Queen Tut's eyes lit up in understanding. "Oh! Sorry, I just didn't expect you this early." A term's worth of lectures about promptness from King Moron did do that to people; Kashiwagi hadn't helped. "My name is Kimiko Sofue, and I'll be your homeroom teacher this year. You'll be in class 2-1."
…Eh?
"Are you alright there? You look confused."
"I'm fine. Just getting used to the place." Even from guesswork, saying that things would be significantly changed felt like an understatement. Simply being in 2-2 had started all of it. Chie, then Yosuke, then Yukiko… everything had spiralled out from there. Now, he doubted whether any of that would happen.
No matter what, though, it was a relief. The school wasn't large, so he'd inevitably run into them again (at the very least, he had to make up for how he'd failed them), but right now? Having the time to recollect his thoughts by himself would be a blessing. Thank you, strange boy.
"I'm pleased to meet you. I hope this year will be enjoyable." Certainly, he hoped it would be better than his last.
The homeroom quickly fell silent as he entered, following the queen. "Hello, everyone. If you've forgotten me, then I'm Kimiko Sofue, and I'll be your homeroom teacher this year. Additionally, we have transfer student joining us." She briefly gestured for him to take the lead.
Ordinarily, he would have been content to keep the introductions brief, like he had last time. It was just his way. This time, he considered trying to make more of an impression, but there was little he could go on. A long introduction didn't feel right, and while calling out King Moron as a bastard would have been easy, pointing out what amounted to a special hat didn't have the same impact. He picked up a piece of chalk and flatly wrote his name on the blackboard. "Hello. My name is Yu Narukami. I transferred here from Tokyo as my parents moved abroad. Pleased to meet you all."
A brief silence hang in the air; the students had expected him to say more. "He seems like the quiet type…" "He's just met Queen Tut. What do you expect?" "Better than King Moron, at least." He could agree easily with all of them.
To dispel the rising voices, the queen cleared her throat. "Ahem. Settle down, class. I'll try to be a more lenient tutor than some other members of the faculty, but there are still rules that need to be followed. Before you do anything, I want you to ask yourself: what would Ramesses the Second do?"
Ah, yes. The eccentricities, coming out to play.
The spiel was interrupted by a hand being raised at the back of the classroom. "Hey, sensei. Could Narukami-san sit here?"
"Hmm? I don't see why not. Please take a seat next to Ichijou-kun. Now, as I was saying, if you can think of adversity like a thousand Hittites sweeping down to assault your citadels…"
He zoned her out, and took a seat next to a familiar face. He received a smile as he sat down. "The first day's the roughest. What d'ya think so far?"
"It's okay. I've had worse."
A smirk escaped his lips. "Well, hate to break it to you, but Queen Tut is one of the more normal ones here. Anyway, I'm Kou Ichijou." He stuck out a hand, and he took it. "Pleased to make your acquantaince."
"Likewise." He'd known Kou. Granted, he hadn't known him well, but he knew him. He'd joined the football club instead (after a long discussion with Daisuke over whether it should be called football or soccer – it was a goalless draw), so most of his interactions with him had been in the background. Still, he knew him. Blue hair, grey eyes, slightly upcurved nose. Shorter than him – not the size expected for a basketballer, but that didn't stop him. Thin, almost but not quite scrawny, highlighted by his uniform – all buttons done up, nothing hanging out. He was exactly as he remembered him.
"Anyway," Kou began, returning him to the present, "I'm guessing you haven't seen much of the town yet. Am I right?"
"Sort of." Guess what? Even though I've been here for less than twenty-four hours, I already know that it takes exactly fifty-seven steps to walk from the food court to the electronics department in Junes. Not exactly what he wanted to say. "I've had a look at a few maps of the place, but I haven't walked around the town yet."
"Well, that's more than what most people do," he chuckled. "Come on. When we're done, I'll show you around the place."
"That sounds good." He was sealed it with another handshake.
"Could all staff members report to the faculty office immediately. All students are to remain in their classes until further notice."
They'd found the body.
"They're keeping us here? Urgh." Halfway through the day, the door to the classroom door had swung open, and a girl had strode into the room. She'd ignored all the attention she'd created, brushed off all the teacher's attempts at questioning, sat down in the other seat next to Kou, and started adjusting her nails. She hadn't changed. Ai Ebihara: blonde, rich, attractive, popular, and still just materialistic and dismissive of everyone around her as ever.
"Don't be like that, Ebi…" Kou sighed. He sympathised. Last time around, dealing with her had been exhausting. Indeed, it was so exhausting that he'd eventually taken the easy way out and given up. He was willing to give her a second chance, but he admitted those doubts still lingered.
"What?" She put on a look as if offended. "It's not like anything interesting ever happens in this town. Whatever it is they're doing, they're just wasting our time. Right, Narukami?"
He brushed aside the lack of honorific. She didn't know how wrong she was. "I don't know. If they're calling the entire faculty together, it can't be just nothing."
"Or they could be talking about us while we're not there." She made sure she had the final word by pulling a small vanity out of her pocket and looking over her makeup.
The silence she created did not linger long before it was filled again. The school's speaker system cracked into life. "Attention all students. You have been dismissed for the day. Please leave and return to your homes immediately."
"Finally." Ai rolled her eyes as she stood up and shook out her hair, before turning her attention to Kou. "Well? Didn't you say that you were giving him a tour of the place?"
Kou blinked. "But didn't we just get told to… nevermind." He gently shook her head. "Well, Narukami-san, please excuse the girl tagging along. Would you like the tour to start?"
He nodded. "Sure." Further words weren't needed.
They were leaving the classroom, Kou attempting to start his tour with some history of the school, when a blue-haired girl interrupted them. "Excuse me, Ichijou-kun," she spoke, voice distinctly cool and calm. "Will you be stopping by later?"
"Hmm?" Kou stopped to think for a moment. "Sorry, but I don't think I will. Somehow, my grandmother's going to find out I was meant to go home straight away, and she's going to be all over me. Maybe tomorrow?"
"Sure." The girl gave a small bow, and was about to turn and leave, when she paused. She looked at him, curious. He looked back.
It pained him to say it, but he couldn't actually remember the girl's name. He knew they'd been in the same homeroom for a year, but her identity completely escaped him. Similarly, while he remembered her face from several places in town, he couldn't recall what those places actually were. Neck-length hair, a small crown braid, red clips, brown eyes, on the shorter side, normal uniform… nothing about her triggered a sudden flash of inspiration. Her name was on the tip of his tongue, but it refused to come out.
On the other hand, to her, they were still complete strangers. "I don't think we've met before, have we?" she asked, unaware of his thoughts.
He shook his head, to reply in the negative and to shake his head clear. A new slate. A new start. "I don't believe we have. My name's Yu Narukami, and I'm a transfer student." He reached out a hand in a gesture of friendliness.
"Pleased to meet you, Narukami-san," she calmly replied, taking his hand into hers. "My name is Aika Nakamura, and my family runs a restaurant in the shopping district. Come visit when you have the time. Your patronage is important to us." She finished off by giving a warm smile before walking away.
It was that smile that made him do a double-take. Aika Nakamura. Of course; riding around the shopping district at night, making deliveries right and left – that was where he'd seen her. They'd never actually talked, but he'd seen her from a distance. That was the issue, though: from what he'd seen of her before, she'd always seemed… distant. Aloof. Almost emotionless, to the point of the uncanny. Above all else, not quite normal.
And she had smiled. Right now, she was a normal teenage schoolgirl. What had happened? Or, what would happen?
His thoughts were interrupted by a playful jab to his ribs. "You've been looking at her walking away for some time now, Narukami-san," a grinning Kou teased. "Is she your type?"
He put more effort than he would have liked into keeping his face straight. "No comment." He didn't have a type, but he was willing to admit to himself that Aika certainly wasn't bad-looking. In some ways, she was quite cute. That didn't mean he was interested.
Tears fall like leaves from the trees and sorrow cracks her delicate façade, and her raven hair splays in the wind and he wants to console her and apologise and try make this right, but before he can she disappears with the faintest breath of air and all there is is him and the shrine and the sound of twisting metal as the Social Link reverses…
He found himself gasping for air and clutching his head. No. No. he wouldn't let it get to him. He wouldn't. He couldn't.
"Are you alright?" someone asked. He couldn't tell who it was. Silently, he waited for his head to clear before speaking again.
"I'm fine. Just… some old memories." At his response, Ai and Kou looked at each other, something unreadable on their faces, but they didn't say anything. He preferred it that way. This was his cross to bear.
The tour was exactly the same, but completely different.
Yes, the route they took was, by chance, identical to the one he'd taken a year earlier. While he hadn't memorised the path, all the landmarks meant that it couldn't have been anything else. They even came across where Amano had been found dead at around the same time, complete with light scolding from Dojima and pile of vomit from Adachi.
And yet… nothing was fully the same. All the buildings looked more worn and battered. There were signs of badly-covered graffiti, shattered doors and windows, even of an arson attack or two. He involuntarily shuddered as he walked past the broken remnants of a house by the outskirts of town. "What happened here?" he found himself asking.
Kou nervously scratched his head. "Well… remember that whole Nyxism thing that happened about a year ago? That kinda spread out here as well. It was pretty bad."
Behind him, Ai let out some sort of guffaw. She'd been largely quiet, letting Kou do most of the talking; while she had said a few interesting things about the state of the land, the condescending remarks she mixed in still made it hard to warm up to her. "Bad? Come on. Kou, you wouldn't know a bad situation if it hit you in the face."
Kou responded with a resigned sigh. "Okay, so it wasn't as bad as it was in the cities. It was still bad. I mean, look at how sleepy this place is. Nobody expected any violence. Nobody expected anyone to die."
"People… died?" That… he remembered the Nyxist incident as something relatively minor. He'd been living right in the heart of Tokyo, and all that happened were a few dozen injuries and a lot of vandalism. Serious, sure, but nobody had died. But here, if death had come to people here in sleepy Inaba… just how bad had it been?
"Yeah. Actually… it's got something to do with the last thing I wanted to show you." They'd gone beyond the outskirts and into the fields, when he noticed a stone pillar by the road. He knew he hadn't seen it before. It looked like white marble, gleaming in the evening sun; around it, beds of flowers were planted in intricate yet tidy patterns, intermixed with cards and children's toys.
He had no doubt as to what it was meant to be.
"This would have come up eventually," Kou quietly spoke; Ai looked completely respectful for once. "The scars are fresh, and still painful, but I thought you should know."
He took the last steps to the memorial by himself. It felt more appropriate. Symbolic. Coming to grips with a broken past, hoping to bounce back and make a better future, but never remember what had to be given up to do so. Silently, solemnly, he stood straight and began reading. 'In loving memory of those who departed from us during the Nyxist Uprising. The world is darker from their loss.'
His eyes scrolled over the first name, and he froze completely. What…
Half-dazed, half-numb, his eyes scrambled over the rest of the names. Some were unfamiliar. Hiroki Takahashi. Fumiko Anzai. Izumi Iwashita.
Others, though…
Yuuta Minami. Shu Nakajima. Ayane Matsunaga.
He'd known them. He'd been friends with them. He'd used two weeks of paycheques to buy Yuuta the Neo Featherman figure he'd always wanted, he'd celebrated Shu's birthday with him when no-one else would, he'd even taken Ayane to the Summer Festival… and they were dead. All of them.
Why? What did they do to deserve this?
Other names were less ingrained to his soul, but were still punches to the gut. Hanako Ohtani. Noriko Kashiwagi.
Chisato Dojima.
One name at the bottom of the list looked like it had been added later than the others, and fairly recently at that. He read it, and felt cold. Daisuke Nagase.
It was all he could do to not collapse into a gibbering wreck. Dead. All dead. Strangers, associates, friends… they were dead. He saw their faces, of people he'd laughed and cried with, of people he'd passed by in the corridors, of people he'd never met… dead. And yet, above all else, one name stood at the forefront of his mind.
When the blue-haired boy had said that things would be different, he'd underestimated just how different that had meant. The homeroom change had suggested it. The other names had highlighted it. That one name confirmed it. He'd assumed too much. The one person whose role he'd counted on being the same, the one person he'd counted on to answer his questions, the one person he'd counted on simply being alive, was completely and utterly dead. He'd been dead for a year.
As he walked away, barely keeping the mask of composure on his face complete and intact, that name lingered in his mind. It stayed well into the night, until fitful and unrestful sleep took him to another place.
This was the name that buried into the core of his being:
Taro Namatame.
A/N: It's been a long time since I wrote anything, much less something I was actually happy to submit to the world. Still, this has been sitting on my hard drive for close to two years now, and with Persona 5 just released, now feels like a good time to throw it out and see if it sinks or swims. Think of this like a pilot episode of sorts, for something I might finally get around to writing in the future.