P4 Golden, spoilers for all endings, including Accomplice. MC POV. In your first life, you're an asshole. There's no other way to describe it; even you would call it that.
In your first life, you're an asshole.
There's no other way to describe it; even you would call it that. You don't have much practice in talking to others. You've never had to. There's never been anyone useful enough to call a friend. There's a clinical definition to be memorized - companions who are connected through affection - but in your experience, that attachment is all one-sided. Some people add value. Most don't.
Even with your uncle and cousin there, Inaba's just like any other place you've been to. It'll be just like any other place you'll leave. There's no reason to make acquaintances, especially with a murderer around, because in the end, the only person you can count on is yourself.
You spend the months like you always do: in self-improvement. You search out part-time jobs and fold envelopes for pay. You're the only thing you can rely on in a world that's always changing, so the best use of your time is spent on making yourself better. Tougher, smarter, more adept at wrapping words back and forth around your tongue. You know how to lie; you know how to fake sincerity. Both are important when teachers ask, so how are you fitting in with your new school?
Other students try to invite you out, and sometimes, you agree. You join the sports club, limpidly; you join the drama club, but you're turned off by the very nature of the people who are participating. So outgoing, so loud. So - so dramatic.
It's by coincidence that you run into your uncle's partner outside of class. It's even more strange when you strike up a conversation that actually catches your interest. Adachi's kind of goofy, but he's unexpectedly cynical, rankling at being stuck in a small town and not handling it well.
You offer to cook for him on a whim. He comes over for dinner. You like it; you're not sure why you like it, except that Adachi's the same as you in so many ways, floating along and out-of-place and mismatched to everyone around him. Other people are jagged puzzle pieces that refuse to fit right, full of concerns you don't understand, complaints you just don't get.
Your mutual lack of connections, ironically, is a common bond. Like a wedge, it drives you to pry open his life and find more. You're not sure what it is you want to discover from Adachi - it just feels comfortable to be around him, around someone who doesn't seem to care if you don't have the expected reactions of a high-schooler, the stereotypical interests you occasionally fake. Adachi lets you be honest, in ways that you've never had the time for before, so busy thinking of the right words. Whenever you slip up and don't react correctly, he doesn't criticize. If anything, he only laughs.
The grip Adachi has on your thoughts is a power you can't explain. He stirs up your brain, inciting you to look for him on the streets of Inaba at night, in the corners of Junes. He makes you want something - something that doesn't make sense, that you don't have a definition memorized for yet.
Something new.
It's hard to tell.
The murder investigation continues. Thanks to inertia, you're carried along. Somehow you were elected leader of the Investigation Team by virtue of being the person with the fewest external issues - not even your Shadow wanted to show itself - so everyone looks to you for guidance.
You shrug. You tell people to calm down, but they don't really listen. You suggest pleasanter topics when you have the interest to perform, but all their problems seem remote: far-off histrionics performed for their own benefit, not yours. You don't understand them. You don't get why you should care.
Eventually, your cousin ends up targeted. It's awkward; you know already that you'll be able to save her, because you're good in a fight and determined and all the puzzles in the TV World are nothing compared to your exam questions, but you've never figured out how to really talk to her. All the members of the Investigation Team seem to like Nanako more than you do, seem to get along better with her and have actual conversations. Everyone's bizarrely devoted to her. She's everyone's darling but your own. You don't have a relationship; your only tie is blood.
Thankfully enough, the rest of the Team makes up for your indifference, which really makes no sense at all, considering they've only known her for a few months, and aren't even related. But everyone's overenthusiasm conceals your lack, which you gladly welcome right up until you're all in a hospital room overenthusiastically discussing murder.
You stop them, but weakly, mouthing words about proper punishment.
The truth is that you don't believe that either. But the Team hears what they want to hear, filling in your gaps for you, attributing virtue to your words because they need someone to look up to, someone they can believe in. Even if they have to create that person themselves.
There's no point in acting out vengeance. The police have their own jobs to do. Closing the case requires a criminal to blame; it'd be selfish to just try and bury the guy in a television, right? That's what justice is really about. Right?
Even if it is or not, you don't care. Justice is a value that people talk about at length, but it's empty to you, hollow. You're as detached from it as you are from the other members on the Investigation Team, people you're already preparing to leave once the year's over. The only reason you're even participating this far is because you're curious how the story will end.
The sole person who makes you hesitate is Adachi. Even when you realize that he's the real killer, you can't bring yourself to condemn him in front of everyone. Not after all the talks you've shared. Adachi's the only person who's really like you out here in Inaba; he understands looking at life from the outside. Yosuke comes close - city boy stuck in the country - but Yosuke's also desperately hoping to be liked by you, which you could have told him is a losing battle, if only he'd see you clearly enough to listen.
You burn the letter. You keep Adachi's secret. And - rather than shove you into the television right then and there, to follow through and kill you with none of your friends around - Adachi rejoices. He howls in manic glee, as if you had set him on fire instead, turning him blistered and raw with unexpected sensation so brilliant that it shocks like a knife in his chest, a finger on his throat, your hand on his mouth.
As his voice merrily taunts you, echoed through the phone - sinister and cruel and delighted, so delighted - you finally can grasp the feeling that's been clawing away at your sanity for the last few months. It's there, reflected back in Adachi's face as he stares at you and hungers.
When Adachi calls, he wants you to pick up.
He wants you to always pick up.
The train jostles beneath you as you depart Inaba, pummeling vibrations into your bones. You can see the future as clearly as a spread of Igor's cards: a lifetime of you and Adachi together, of his purring whisper in your ear. Even if he gets transferred away, he'll have you handy for Inaba trips - so convenient that you have relatives there, easy excuses while you help clean up the mess. You'll have to hide from Teddy when you use the Midnight Channel to dump the bodies; you'll have to hide your face from everyone while Inaba's reputation dwindles into a place of fog and strange corpses, Yukiko's inn business becoming more and more sparse.
A lifetime spent with Adachi testing you, toying with you, over and over - and, over and over, he'll be surprised each time you follow through. You're the only one who knows what he's like, and yet you're still willing to protect his secrets. Impossibly, someone like him wanted to connect with you. And - equally impossible - someone like you welcomed it.
Now that he has you, you're his. He's yours. You're tied together, and neither one of you show any signs of wanting that to end.
This is your bond.
You run your thumb absently across your phone. In the gesture, you can feel the echo of thousands of other little touches that will follow you throughout the years, on holidays and late nights, Adachi's voice in your ear. It's time to clean out your contact list, deleting your classmates in Inaba just like you've removed other places wholesale. Hanamura. Amagi. Satonaka. Kujikawa.
But not this one person. Not Tohru.
He won't let you leave him behind.
After a while, you close your eyes.
"Are you awake?"
You blink at the long-nosed man. Your attention must have drifted away somehow; the car is warm and stuffy, blurring the line between awareness and dreams. The train - the car must have lulled you asleep. Time's passed while you dozed; your body feels stiff, and you try to discreetly stretch your legs. Stray impressions flit through your mind like fragments of an interrupted conversation, falling away like the shriveling petals of a drying flower: black hair, red skirts, a mole beside an eye.
The strange man - Igor - goes on about a decision, a mystery lost in the fog. The story is unsolved. He asks if you're prepared to let things end there, if you're content with the outcome. The answer should be obvious: you're always satisfied with how things end up, because you don't really care.
But something tickles at your mind, even as you ready yourself to answer with a shrug. The sensation isn't regret. It's a hunger, barely in its infancy, a craving for a flavor you briefly had a chance to sample before it was snatched away from your plate.
A memory, maybe, of calling out into emptiness and hearing someone else calling back. Someone like you. Who saw you in full, and was pleased for you to be there.
You don't understand why yet, but it feels like a door has opened in you somewhere, wrenching a gap wide open in all your walls of disinterest. You want to hear that call again. You want to feel that tug on you, that sensation of someone else latching on in ways that you no longer mind.
Let me try again, you say, not certain why you should reject how things turned out, or even how things have turned out when they haven't happened yet - except that the possibilities are churning in the back of your mind, making you restless with the conviction that there's something that you want, something that you need to explore. Something - you don't know.
Something new.
I'm not finished yet. Let me try again.
There are faces already printed on the pages of the strange woman's book.
She - Margaret, the name is Margaret, and you think you remember her formal introduction but aren't sure if you already knew before that - doesn't react as if their presence is odd. The longer you stare at the shapes inscribed in lurid colors on the papers, the more they seem familiar. The more everything feels familiar, even though you've never been to Inaba before in your life.
The train station. The car. The gas station attendant. The fog.
Your uncle's partner - Adachi, you know his name too - claims your entire attention when you first meet him. You're not sure what he reminds you of, but the sheer fact that he feels so close to you already leaves you wary, as if he resembles a character from a favorite manga series so dear to your childhood heart that you'd let him sidestep in for your wallet without even having your guard up. Dangerous, much too dangerous. No one's ever done that to you before.
Adachi's phone number shows up in your contacts list from the very first day. Your uncle must have programmed it in for you when he was adding his own. You stare at the digits so long that it feels like you've memorized them, but you never call.
There's not as much time to talk with Adachi as you'd like. You're chasing down that phantom sensation that haunted you from the very outskirts of this town - but you're also still struggling with grades, with club practice, with figuring out how to cook the right lunches when you're not even sure why you want to feed people to begin with. Trying to balance your studies with your classmates means you keep dropping things left and right, forgetting commitments or exam schedules or entire conversations they've had with you, pouring out their hearts while you're half-afraid you've mistaken them for someone else.
You're too cautious to talk to some people, too distracted to follow up with others. You mean to return Naoki's handkerchief, you really do but there are so many other things going on. Emptying out your pockets one day, you see a wad of cloth tumble into the trash, and grab for it - too late to catch. Not too late to fish it out, but as you're staring into the maw of the trash can, you're tired, so tired of having to keep trying, keep wearing yourself down remembering everyone else's quirks.
This person's beliefs, that person's. Everyone has different values, and you keep trying to remind yourself that it matters to yield to them, because otherwise, you'll never figure out why you want to try so hard in the first place.
You're scrambling all the way through the months, trying to figure out how many days you have to rescue the latest TV victim and still set aside room to study for your classes, work at your jobs, meet people as promised instead of forgetting about them for weeks on end, and then Nanako disappears while your back is turned, and then -
And then -
Before you know it, you're back in the car again, as if you've never left - but now, you remember your dreams.
The next time around, you don't speak quickly enough. You didn't think you were that short on time. You didn't think everyone would ignore what you tried to say.
You didn't know how fast someone could fit through a television screen, until the Team did it to Namatame.
You wake up from your doze with a sense of dread and frustration, as if a nightmare had chased you all the way up from sleep and is lurking in the car beside you. But alongside that hesitation comes determination: you nod to Igor before he's even finished talking, and tell him you want to investigate further.
Inaba isn't too difficult of a town to learn. The routines are easy to fall into place; you know most of the test questions without cramming. Adachi is still cause for concern; you're drawn to him, but force yourself to shy away before starting any long conversations. Like a fire that you only had to touch once to burn yourself on, you appreciate him even as you hold yourself apart. You want to spend time with him - some part of you can never shake the feeling that you've known him for longer than Inaba has even existed - but there's so much to get done with everyone else first, and you can't risk getting too close to him when you're not completely ready.
And maybe you still don't feel the sincerity that you mimic, but the more that you practice, the easier things become. As the months slip by, your acquaintances become that much easier to understand. Rise's haunted by her idol role and the perceptions attached to it. Yukiko, by the ongoing desire for freedom; Yosuke struggles with mixed resentment and jealousy. It takes a while to keep track of Chie, but even her motivations click for you. Naoto had been daunting to approach once, but now you barely blink as you hand over the card, and start up long conversations by the Samegawa.
You take up tutoring effortlessly, already a master of all the material - both the schoolwork, and what to say to your pupil. You encourage Sayoko, help Eri reconcile with her stepson. You navigate through Ai's facade and keep your Sundays free for Hisana whenever possible. You even manage to support the Fox, hunting down request after request until the shrine is respected once more.
Margaret smiles knowingly when she presents you with a list of Personas to display, and you summon them one by one from the Compendium, already perfectly tailored to her standards.
The work is simple. There's plenty of time to see everyone. Conversations with people are always filled with the right thing to say. You watch the effects your words have, and choose answers you know will help.
This time when Christmas rolls around, you don't tell Naoto to change voices. You don't tell Naoto to change clothes. You let Naoto make the decisions, and you listen to what you're told.
As you shake off sleep in the car, finally paying attention to what Igor is saying, you find yourself impatient to begin. The scattered impressions in your mind - too vivid to have not been real, at least in some fashion - lay out like a spread of cards, full of faces and shapes and landscapes, rippling and wild. Inaba. Namatame. The Midnight Channel.
Everything's too straightforward to be mere coincidence. You already know most of the pages in Margaret's book when she offers its sections to you, finding creatures that slot perfectly into your mind like form-fitting armor, weapons smoothed down by your grip. You're not sure how long you've been doing this - going around and around in the car, listening to Igor offer a thousand chances - but you can guess that it's been a while. Long enough to know what you're doing. Long enough to have figured out how to win.
This time, you're going to do everything right.
Everyone in Inaba is easy to understand. You know what people want to hear, but even more importantly, you know why they want to hear it, can see through their words to the motivations beneath. Rather than become jaded, the connections spur you on: loneliness, fear, hope, ambition. The ability to affect things is addictive; you don't always nudge things in positive directions, but each interaction counts, and you're fascinated that you've resisted trying this for so long. You rehearse lines that contradict themselves in nature - you like children, you hate children, you're completely neutral to them altogether - and don't mind the hoops you have to jump through to remember who believes what.
Because - now that you've worked at it, now that you've learned how - with the right encouragement, people unfold themselves like flowers in the sun. They tear off their own chains, finding the courage to resolve fears that have preyed upon them for years, discovering the strength they've had all along to search for a new path. They look for other options. They find fresh roads, and redefine themselves.
You never thought it would have been possible before, but you're different too, pushed forward by blunt determination until you stopped stumbling and began to run. By taking action, Inaba itself has changed. Everyone's had a chance.
Everyone, except one.
You've been traveling this road long enough. It's time to go back to the very first bond that started this all, the one that set you on this endless loop in Inaba, wanting something desperately for the first time in your life.
Adachi yells at you when you go to see him by yourself in the TV World. He talks about how you only made friends with a storybook facade, how you were fooled into seeing only what you wanted to see. And his words are true - you can feel their truth, because that's the mask he offered up, just as you've done the same thing to all of your friends in turn.
Adachi handed you what you wanted to hear. But what you want is the entire story this time, and he hasn't stopped telling it yet.
He pulls the trigger. You smell the gunpowder.
But he doesn't hurt you. Other than the ringing in your ears that makes his words muffled and blurry, Adachi leaves you untouched. Instead, he sends you away, and demands that you bring all your friends along if you want to try and stop him.
The gateway refuses to reappear. Adachi shuts down every option you have to pursue. He won't let you through on your own to fight him.
You stare at the golden window, the light shining through it in a muzzy haze, and you understand.
Adachi won't let you throw yourself at him alone; he's too strong. He's guaranteed to kill you that way. He knows what he'd do to you, just as he knows that you'd try anyway.
So he won't let you even make the attempt.
And that's how you know what you still mean to Adachi, in that thread of need and scorn that's tied you both together from life to life, Inaba to Inaba, repeating until you finally uncovered the roots of even more mysteries than you ever expected from Igor. The relationships your friends have with you - they're with an illusion as well, a picture of you that revolves around whatever you've given them to help them grow. The jokes have been customized for them, the phrases have been carefully prepared. Everything's orchestrated just right.
But the relationships go both ways. You're equally attached to the friends you've chosen: you fight for them, protect them, cheer them on when they succeed. You care. You want to keep the way they're already past your defenses, even if it makes you vulnerable to being seen.
Just like Adachi.
You want them to always pick up.
You still understand his perspective. Adachi's disdain, his motivations, his contempt and isolation - you still can find that in him, because you can remember it in yourself as well. The bond between you hasn't been lost. When you refused to join him on his side of the fence this time, Adachi chose to show you more anyway, despite the risk of alienating you permanently. He gave you honesty, and now he's waiting to see if you'll run away.
A dumbass. That's what Adachi tells you as his means of farewell, a simple letter in the food court that encourages you to keep searching. A little bit of help from prison, a reminder that the game isn't over. You and he aren't the only players on the field.
You're a dumbass, he says - and that he's grateful. Something's shifted in his balance, enough to make things that were once worthless into experiences he values now. He's still the same person at heart, just like you are: nothing about your natures has been altered. This isn't a fairy tale; real life isn't as convenient as that.
But you can interpret what he's saying, through the layers of meaning that count as much for what they don't express as what they do. You can read between the lines. After all: you live there.
After finishing Adachi's letter, you nod reassuringly to your friends as they start to regather their thoughts and focus on the crime. There's a far greater threat lurking in Inaba, one that threatens to undo all your hard work so far. The culprit who's been behind the fog and the Midnight Channel is waiting for the Team to uncover them, and you'll have to, or else the murders will continue.
When it comes to you, however, you've already made the discovery that counts.
The real truth is: you're saying only what you think your friends want to hear.
The real truth is: you're saying it because you want your friends to hear it.
There's value in that. There's value in all of it, understood or not. You're important to your friends, and that bond goes both ways. They've helped you fight, helped you study for school; they've gone on trips and have clustered in Dojima's living room to share dinner, and have cared during all the times when you couldn't, filling in your spaces with their fervor and anger and desperation instead.
You'd fail if you tried to be exactly like them. But you don't need to. That's not what they're asking for from you.
Your friends are by your side as you head into Yomotsu Hirasaka with its endless gates. The ground lies in shattered paths that twist forwards and around, chunks of red stone barely afloat in the fog. You tear through floor after floor, all the way down to the goddess who waits at the bottom of it all, and who reaches out her talons to claim you.
As the life seeps out of you and Izanami-no-Okami's fog starts to numb your body, you don't even think of Igor offering you yet another chance. Instead, other voices trickle in through the pain. Everyone you've met in Inaba, everyone you've helped and listened to - Izanami-no-Okami has her grip on you, but so do they, and they're dragging you back. They won't let you go. It's their turn to say what you need to hear to get you on your feet again, no matter what.
When you hear Adachi's voice among them, you smile.
Packing your things is routine as always. You have it down to a science of rolled clothes and boxes to ship, train schedules to check and fare money in hand. There are the standard farewells, with lunches shared and memories savored. Photographs taken, emails exchanged, a few souvenirs for remembrance. Promises. Lots of promises.
You check your phone as the train out of Inaba begins to pick up speed, coughing along the tracks. There are so many entries stored in there now, a full town's worth of people you made sure to learn about. You scroll up and down, marveling at the novelty. The delete option goes untouched.
Club members. The sports teams. Others who didn't have a phone, or who have left Inaba behind already. The line of people feels endless, but you take your time panning slowly through it. Each name belongs to someone who helped you get out of the fog, and you want to remember that, to keep this list intact forever.
Classmates. Friends. Your uncle and cousin.
And there, at the very top - still starred and protected - is Adachi's number.