Prologue
Minato looked down at Mitsuru curiously, wondering why she thought he'd be able to do anything with the console in the Chairman's office. He couldn't recall ever claiming to be a mechanical genius. But, he respected Mitsuru so if she thought he could be of some help, he could at least try. He nodded and told her he would have a look at it.
The late afternoon sunlight caught the dust motes in the office and made them shift and float in strange suggestive patterns that vanished as soon as they were formed. The spines on the many books all held imposing titles. Minato walked past them and sat down in one of the chairs by the console. He didn't really even know what he was looking for. Cautiously, he tried a few controls that didn't look like they would do anything catastrophic. Then something came on the screen all of a sudden, asking him if he wanted to view a recording.
Everything that was to happen later had its genesis in that moment.
At first, Minato would just go back and check the recordings every once in awhile. The computer picked up innocent things…trivial things. The Chairman thinking up horrible jokes. Yukari playing with a maid outfit. Junpei horrified to see Mitsuru and Officer Kurosawa in his room. He saw Shinjiro's hidden kindness and Akihiko's insecurities. He watched Fuuka wrestle with one of Tanaka's bogus products and Ken practice with a mop. But when he saw a recording of Mitsuru walking around her room in a towel, still wet from her shower, he started to wonder…
…what if I could see more?
Now he began to really study the machine. It clearly had recording capabilities. He thought about just setting it to record nonstop and direct it to store the data somewhere it wouldn't be noticed, but he supposed it would use up a lot of space that way and that would be noticed. That left another option.
He could watch things as they were happening.
That way was risky, too; someone could come in while he was doing it, after all. But after going back and forth on it, he knew he couldn't just let it go. It wasn't just titillation, it was the way he felt seeing the secret sides of everyone, the things they didn't want the others to know. He had eaten from the tree of knowledge and now he couldn't go back. And so, one night after they had all returned from Tartarus, Minato waited…and then he silently crept up to the Chairman's Office.
He didn't turn on any lights. The screen, the only glow in the room, faintly illuminated his face with blue. One by one, he pulled up his friends' rooms, feeling a sense of power from knowing who was sleeping and who couldn't. Little by little, they all began to reveal themselves to him.
And Minato…watched.