Doing His Memory Justice

Disclaimer: The following is a work of fiction. I do not own "Persona 3" or any of the characters or locations featured in the game.

Chapter 1: March 6th, 2010

"E-Excuse me," a brunette clutching a small bouquet of violet flowers spoke out nervously to the receptionist, watching her through her deep brown eyes from behind her glasses. Chihiro was in the hospital, visiting someone very important to her who fell into a coma during the graduation ceremony a day earlier.

The woman in her forties turned to the girl from the computer with a look of mild annoyance on her face. Taking a glance at Chihiro, the woman looked at the notepad beside her keyboard, where a room number was scribbled on.

"Take the elevator to the fourth floor, take a left and look for room 4-23 on your right."

"Huh? I mean… S-Sorry?" Chihiro was flustered, having not remembered mentioning the patient's name to the lady.

"Trust me, that's the room you're looking for." The receptionist gave looks between Chihiro and the bouquet before busying herself on the computer once again.

Giving a hesitant nod to the receptionist, the bespectacled girl walked gingerly to the elevator and entered it. She looked to the flowers in her hand and sighed, wondering it visiting him was a bad idea. She thought back to the moment when almost the entire Gekkoukan student body watched him get wheeled out on a stretcher. She thought about all the girls who cried and consoled one another as he was careful pushed into the back of an ambulance. Did she feel threatened by them? Was she waiting just before the end of visiting hours just to avoid them?

The ding of the elevator brought her back from her wistful state as the doors slid open. With a heavy heart, Chihiro followed the receptionist's instructions and turned left down the hallway. With each step she took, her feet grew heavier, fighting to stop herself from finding the truth for herself, but she ignored them and pushed on until she made it to room 4-23.

With a shaky hand, she grasped the door handle and pushed the door open. Her heart sank as she laid eyes on the pile of bouquets, many of them bigger than her own. As she entered the room, Chihiro could see the notes attached to each batch of flowers. Seeing names on the notes like Yukari Takeba, Mitsuru Kirijo and Fuuka Yamagishi made her feel slightly nauseous.

Placing her own flowers at the top of the pile, she looked to the boy lying idly in the hospital bed. His cold, clammy skin looked no different from that which belonged to a dead man. His chest was barely moving as he took shallow, drawn-out breaths with the help of the oxygen mask attached firmly to his face. Even when he was in such a poor state, the boy's face didn't fail to make Chihiro's heart flutter.

After a brief moment of euphoria, the direness of the situation hit her with full force, making her heart ache even more. She walked past the bed and sat in the lone chair positioned beside the boy's pale face. Chihiro took her time, mustering the courage to speak to him, even if her words were likely to fall on deaf ears. During this time, she tried her best to reminisce over the quiet moments she had shared with the boy, whether it would be when he would walk her home or when the two of them read manga together. However, the slow but consistent beeping of the heart monitor kept interrupting her thoughts.

"S-So…" Chihiro nervously fidgeted in her seat as she failed to think of some small talk. After spending quite some time in agonising silence, she decided to go straight to the reason as to why she visited him.

"I-I know this isn't my place to worry, but…" Chihiro sadly looked at the pile of flowers on the opposite side of the bed. "I couldn't help but notice that you have a lot of admirers." The sound of the heart rate monitor dominated the room again as the former freshman tried to get her words in order.

"Saying that you've been a big help to me would be an understatement, and I don't want you to think that this will take anything away from that, but I need to ask you..." She gulped. Even if Chihiro was most certainly not going to get anything from the boy, she had to at least try to get an answer to her most burning question. "…was I special to you in any way?"

Chihiro's eyes remained on the boy, shaking slightly due to her struggling to keep her emotions bottled up. She waited a long period of time for an answer to miraculously present itself before her, but the boy's condition was unchanging.

"It's just that… you mean a lot to me, and I couldn't be any happier to hear that you feel the same about me. I thought you did, but now that I'm hearing about how much time you spent with other girls… I… I just don't know what to think." Looking back over the last 12 months, Chihiro couldn't believe how oblivious she was the amount girls he was seeing. He lived in a co-ed dormitory with many of the girls, but that was something she had always made herself overlook, telling herself that it wasn't worth worrying about. It was like she was willfully blind of almost everything he did, purely because she wanted to delay coming to terms with the fact that she wasn't the only one.

No longer able to contain herself, a tear started to creep down Chihiro's face. As she went to wipe it away, another one started to form in her other eye. As the tears dampened her face, the girl started to sob as she tried in vain to hold back the tears. She struggled to breathe, letting out choked-out cries as the grief overwhelmed her.

After finally being able to take in a deep breath, Chihiro straightened herself out of her slouched position and looked at the blue-haired boy.

"I'm sorry… that was really selfish of me…" The girl was not able to tell whether she was crying about the boy's condition or about the fact the truth had finally got through to her. Either way, she felt an overwhelming sensation of guilt.

"I don't care if you liked other girls… or even if you were in a relationship with any of them… I just want to mean something to you." Chihiro leaned forward in her seat, believing that it would make her words reach him. "I want to know that I matter and that I could live for someone other than myself." A real sense of urgency was reflected in her voice as the tones from the heart rate monitor began to hasten.

"More importantly, I want that person to be you!" Chihiro raised her voice to prevent it from being drowned out by the machine. "I love you! I love you so much! You mean the world to me so, please… please tell me that I'm worth something to you!"

At that precise moment, three doctors rushed through the door with a defibrillator. While the first two doctors started up the machine and prepared to administer the first shock to their patient, the third doctor quickly approached her. The man's words were incomprehensible like there was a giant body of water him and the startled girl and the sounds he made were completely scrambled. When Chihiro didn't respond, the doctor firmly grasped her arm and ushered her out the door.

Alone in the corridor, Chihiro pressed her back against the wall and slid into a sitting position, listening to the discussion between the doctors as they worked quickly to get the boy's heart beating back into its natural rhythm. A definitive 'clear' followed by the sound of a strong electric discharge could be heard through the walls for minutes on end.

After what must have been dozens of shocks, the doctors went quiet. Chihiro could just make out the long, dead tone coming from the heart rate monitor before it was switched off. Shortly after, the doctors quietly exited the room with the third doctor turning to face her.

"I'm sorry, but we weren't able to bring him back." Chihiro's eyes didn't move from the floor as felt as though her body had turned to stone, not making even the smallest of moments. If the doctor was still talking to her but at that point, she was no longer able to listen to anything that was said. Eventually, the doctor turned away and followed his co-workers down the hallway.

With a vacant look in her eyes, Chihiro pulled her knees towards her in a state of emotional distress. She wanted to cry out but her throat was parched and sore, and she no longer had any more tears to let run down her face. She remained sitting in the hallway, unable to move or have any thoughts apart from the same two words running through her mind.

'I'm worthless…'

Chihiro had lost track of time well before she was lead onto the streets. The girl was still in shock over witnessing his death and didn't say a single word as she was escorted by the hospital staff. They acted as though they were concerned, giving Chihiro words of comfort and suggesting that she should catch a taxi home, but she knew that they just wanted to get her out of their sight as night begun to loom over Tatsumi Port Island. The feeling of being cast aside like an old glove still stung, even with the overwhelming numbness that weighed over her feeble shoulders.

Whether it be due to her desire to spite herself or carry out a stupid idea to act of defiance against the hospital staff, Chihiro began the long trek to the train station by foot. The scenery, cars and people that passed her by felt artificial and lifeless as she moved through the city absent-mindedly. All the while, the storm of emotions bottled within her continued to stir, but she was incapable of showing any of it out of fear of completely losing control over herself.

With countless steps being taken, the sounds of the city died out and the voices in her head started to scream out at her again, exhausting her. When her heavy legs forced her to stop, only the light breeze that drifted between the towering buildings was indicating that time was still advancing as she reached a quiet side street. By not having any awareness of her surroundings, Chihiro had been walking in a different direction to the one that would have led her right to the station. After merely letting out a sigh, the brunette took refuge in a nearby alley and planted her back against the wall. Her unmoving eyes remained on her feet as Chihiro let her head hang limply from her shoulders. Finally, finding herself in dead silence, a comprehensible thought crossed the grieving girl's mind.

'I guess… this is it for me.'

She slid down the wall as her legs gave way, eventually curling into a ball when she couldn't get any lower. Tears welled up in her eyes as she remained on her dark train of thought.

'If there's no use for me, I'm better off disappearing.'

It was then when Chihiro felt something sticky under her boots. The girl had to blink a couple of times to force her mind back into focus. Shaking her feelings of despair briefly, she looked at the liquid slowly converge around where she sat.

Even without much light reaching the alley from the streets, Chihiro could make out the red tinge of the recently-found substance. Gripped with curiosity, her eyes traced the flow of the liquid to find its source. It wasn't long until Chihiro saw a person lying face down on the ground surrounded by glass shards, not much further towards the back of the narrow alley.

After the initial shock, the bespectacled girl was surprised how calm she was after noticing them. It was almost as if the shock had forced a reboot of her mind and dispelled any unnecessary thoughts that would have otherwise been plaguing her. She was quick to crawl to the person, a teenage male, through the pool of blood and pieces of glass. Chihiro reached the vulnerable boy and kneeled over him as she shook him by the shoulders.

"Hello? Hello! Are you awake?" Chihiro hoped for a response as she kept a firm hold of the person, but only the tense silence filled her ears. She didn't wait for long before the thin girl tried to roll the boy on his back. The larger body of the victim made moving him difficult, but Chihiro managed to pull boy towards her, letting his head rest on her lap. It was to the girl's relief that the boy was still breathing, but his pale, clammy skin indicated that he had lost a lot of blood.

"Nrrg…" A barely audible sound passed through the boy's lips as his eyes lids started to flicker. Chihiro could feel him tense up as he started to regain his consciousness. Within a few moments, his breathing started to quicken to the point when he was hyperventilating as he started to panic.

"I-It's okay." Chihiro's voice came out uneven as the development took her off-guard. The boy weakly lifted his right arm. It was then when Chihiro noticed the abnormally large gash down the boy's forearm below the folded sleeves of his white shirt. Seeing the blood ooze out of the deep cut made her feel nauseous, but she made herself focus on the dark-haired boy. He looked to be in a lot of pain as beads of sweat formed on his brow below his combed-back hairstyle.

"Please try and calm down." Not certain about whether her voice was getting through to the boy or not, she placed her hand gently on his chest through his blood-soaked shirt. The boy was still in shock as his chest continued to move rapidly with her touch.

"Don't worry! Everything will be okay. I promise." The boy seemed to hear her as his pupils focused on Chihiro's face for the first time. His blue eyes remained on her brown eyes for what felt like a lot longer than the fleeting moment that it had lasted for. Despite the boy's tired figure, Chihiro could feel a sense of warmth within her as she held his head in her lap. When his breathing slowed to normal, the injured boy let his eyes rest. He was far from peaceful, but it was an improvement from earlier.

Chihiro turned her attention to the cut on the boy's arm. It was impossible to prevent any more blood loss without medical help, but if she could put pressure on the wound and slow some of the blood flow, it could buy him more time before help arrived.

Carefully lowering the boy's head to the pavement, Chihiro took off her jacket and got to work slicing through the sleeves of the thick material with one of the sharp pieces of glass. The cold night air sent chills through the girl's body and she even cut herself several times while handling the glass, but it did little to slow down the making of three makeshift bandages before tying each of them across different sections of the wound as tightly as she could. Fuelled by the desperation to save the unconscious boy, Chihiro put all the weight that she could on the wound with her left arm while dialling the emergency number on her mobile.

As Chihiro brought the phone over her ear, she looked at the boy's face once more. He was still taking shallow breaths, though his chest was now moving at a much slower rate. With the pressure that Chihiro kept on the wound, the flow of the blood from his arm was slow enough for her to believe that an ambulance will be able to arrive in time to save him. The brunette started to calm down before she noticed the beauty mark below the boy's left eye. The more she focused on his individual facial features, the stronger the sense of familiarity she had for the boy.

"119. Are you in need fire or medical?" Chihiro jumped as a professional-sounding person spoke through the phone's speaker.

"M-Medical please." Chihiro subsequently remained on the line while she explained the situation and waited for the ambulance to arrive.

After a hasty arrival of the ambulance, two of the paramedics were quick to attend to the injured boy while another one took Chihiro aside to tend to the cuts on her hand.

"Did you touch the patient with your hands while your cuts were open?" The woman, in her thirties, quizzed Chihiro as she cleaned her wounds with a sterilised cloth.

"N-No…" Chihiro gasped in pain as the cloth was wiped firmly over her cut. It was only when the ambulance arrived that her hand become immobile from the pain. Looking over the woman's shoulder, Chihiro saw the boy get placed on a stretcher by two younger male paramedics and get wheeled into the back of the ambulance.

"He's lucky you found him." The paramedic got a clean, white bandage from the small bag strapped to her waist and went on to wrap it around Chihiro's hand several times over. "Any longer and there might have been no hope for bringing him back."

"Will he be okay?"

"He's lost a lot of blood, so we will need to get him to the hospital as soon as possible." With the cloth cut from the roll and the bandage secured over Chihiro's wound, the paramedic was ready to meet up with the rest of her team. "Do you want to come with us as we take him there?" The schoolgirl paused briefly before shaking her head.

"I should head home. My mother would worry if I'm not back soon."

"Be sure to return right away then." The paramedic didn't hang around for any longer than she needed to, quickly jumping into the back of the ambulance before the vehicle took with sirens blazing.

The blaring noise continued to echo off the faces of the towering buildings as Chihiro remained standing outside of the blood-filled alleyway, her eyes locked onto the intersection where the white vehicle made a turn before leaving her field of vision. The events that followed from finding the boy went by so quickly that Chihiro hardly had any time to think about anything other than his wellbeing.

Looking down at her firmly bandaged hand, she recalled the boy's appearance. Swept back black hair, steel-like blue eyes and a beauty mark on the left side of his face. As it all came together, Chihiro remembered that face belonging to one of her seniors at Gekkoukan. He'd helped at the student council on occasion, despite not being a member, before leaving by the end of the year. The boy was a good friend of… His. The two of them seemed almost inseparable while they were still at the school.

"Mochizuki-senpai… was it?" With the flooding of emotions from earlier in the night returning as the sirens faded into the distance, a physically and emotionally exhausted Chihiro forced herself to move through the lit streets of Port Island towards her home where her bed and an almost-certainly worried mother was waiting for her.

February 1st, 2011

Silence…

Since waking up just hours ago, that was all that surrounded him within the white wall of the room he found himself in. The sun had just started to rise over the vast ocean on display outside of the hospital window to signify the start of a new day.

Feeling too weak to move from his hospital bed, the boy had to feel his face so he could familiarise himself with his own body. When he grew tired of that, he chose to watch the sun as its glow grew stronger.

The peaceful moments the bedridden boy experienced were broken by the turning of the door handle on the opposite side of the room to the window. Still dazed after the long slumber, the boy was slow to turn his attention to the man that just entered the room. The visiting person had a head of neatly-comb grey hair wearing a white coat and a stern face. The folder he held firmly by his side suggested that he had some business that he needed to handle.

"I see that you're finally awake." The man claimed the chair positioned by the bed as the boy only watched. "I'm Doctor Iwase. I've been supervising your condition since you arrived." He spoke in an utmost professional manner, not once showing any concern, annoyance or any feeling that didn't hold any relation to his job.

"What happened to me?" The boy's mind felt to have been shrouded in heavy fog, leading him to automatically ask the first question that came to him.

"You were found unconscious in a back alley, bleeding heavily from a cut in your right forearm. You were brought here almost eleven months ago." While the curt response was appreciated, it was a lot for him to take in.

'Eleven months…' The boy struggled to think back to how he ended up in such a bad way, bad enough to be out cold for just short of a year.

"Now, if you don't mind, I was hoping to ask you some questions about the events that led to your coma." Without a reason to decline, the boy was prompt in his response to the doctor's request.

"Go right ahead." The doctor opened his folder and gave it a quick glance before his gaze bore into his patient.

"Can you recount what you were doing before you passed out?" The boy tried to mentally recreate what happened that day in his head, but he only drew blanks. Small drops of sweat started to form on his head as the doctor watched him expectantly.

"… No sir." After another quick look at his papers, the doctor readied his next question.

"What about your cut? Do you have any idea on did that to you?"

"..." The boy looked down at the large scar running down the entire length of his forearm. He had noticed it not long after he awoke, but it held no memory for him. "I'm not sure." A feeling of sickness started to bubble up inside of him as the dull pain in his head appeared. Covering his eyes with his hand, the boy breathed deeply in an attempt to ease the uncomfortable sensation. "I can't get myself to think straight. I don't think I can remember anything that would help you."

"I see…" The doctor closed his folder and leaned forward slightly as the boy cautiously returned his gaze after settling himself down. "How about we start with your name. Can you remember it?" After a few passing moments, the boy sadly lowered his eyes. Interpreting this as a resounding no, the doctor spoke up again.

"We were able to identify you as Ryoji Mochizuki. Can you confirm that that is your name?" The boy blinked as the doctor's words triggered something in his mind. As the name sunk in, it felt as though the cloudiness in his mind cleared up slightly.

"Y-Yeah… That sounds right."

"Good. It seems like you just need a bit of a push to regain your memories." The doctor nodded in approval, but his pokerfaced expression didn't give anything else away. "Does Gekkoukan High School ring any bells?"

"I… went to school there?" Ryoji didn't sound confident in his answer, leading the doctor to look at him with doubt.

"Do you know this for sure?" With heavy arms, Ryoji rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

"Not really… It does sound familiar though."

"You attended the school before your accident. Your parents have been working overseas since you started there."

"I see…" Ryoji looked down at his lap. The feeling of discouragement returned to the teenaged boy as no further memories returned to him.

"I won't be much longer. Just one more question before I let you rest." The doctor went through his folder one final time before pulling out an A3-sized photo of a boy. Judging by the boy's age and the uniform that he wore, it was likely taken for his high school photos. His dark blue hair fell over the right side of his face, covering his eye of the matching colour. He bore a stoic expression on his face and had a disinterested, almost sad, look in his uncovered eye.

"Do you remember anything about this boy?"

"Nothing…" Ryoji was truthful in his response, though an uneasy feeling started to arise as he continued to lock eyes with the image. "Is he a friend of mine?" The doctor put the photo back into his folder and stood out of his seat, brushing off the patient's question.

"Don't push yourself. Take as much time as you need to recollect your thoughts. I'll have your breakfast brought to you shortly." The doctor averted his eyes from Ryoji as he made his way out.

"… Okay." With the shutting of the door in his room, Ryoji found himself alone once again. This time, however, his mind was racing as the questions in his head started to multiply. Aside from his name, Ryoji started to question everything about him as his forehead started to heat up. His vision started to blur as he was suddenly consumed by his tiredness.

Overwhelmed, Ryoji rested his head on the pillow and closed his eyes with the thoughts about his forgotten past and the mystery boy haunting him before continued his long slumber.

Within the same building, hidden away from the public, a young woman sat alone in a monitor-filled room. Cameras throughout the hospital provided the redhead with vision from every room in the building, but the girl's keen eyes were solely fixed on one screen.

Mitsuru was slow to accept that Ryoji Mochizuki had returned, yet there he was. Aside from the tired face he wore as he tossed and turned beneath the sheets of his hospital bed, he looked every bit like the boy who turned out to be Nyx's avatar.

Sometime after Ryoji drifted into a shallow slumber, the very doctor who was tasked with interrogating the boy entered the restricted room. He bowed to Mitsuru with a stern look on his face before speaking.

"It's just as you hypothesised. He doesn't have any recollection of Nyx or the Dark Hour."

"That wasn't all that he forgot." The woman's red eyes didn't stray from the monitor as she spoke. "His memory seems to have been wiped clean. Even the false story he held when he originally appeared wasn't retained."

"What are your orders, Kirijo-sama? Perhaps ridding of him while he is out the eye of the public would be the best course of action?"

"We can't risk it. If Nyx were to descend soon, killing the avatar won't stop her. We'll have to monitor him closely. If the avatar reawakens, we need to be able to act swiftly."

"Understood. What shall we do with him in the meantime?" Having thought hard about it after hearing about Mochizuki's regaining consciousness, Mitsuru already had her answer.

"We'll use his own cover story to integrate him into society." The young head of the Kirijo Group turned her head to look firmly at the doctor. "See that enrols in Gekkoukan High School as a senior. Also, make arrangements for his living quarters. We'll have actors to play the role of his parents if he is to try and contact them."

"Are you certain, Kirijo-sama? What if we were to hold him here so we could save resources. There also wouldn't be any risk of losing sight of him that way."

"Unless I see evidence suggesting otherwise, Mochizuki-san is a regular citizen, just as you are." Mitsuru's gaze grew cold, taking offence that she would even consider the option. "Imprisoning him against his will would be a federal offence. It's out of the question."

"O-Of course, my lady." The usually stoic servant of Mitsuru started to sweat as the intimidating glare rattled him. "I'll see that the preparations are made for his release once he is fully rehabilitated."

Mitsuto let out a tired sigh once she was left alone once more. Letting Mochizuki free might not be the wisest move considering what was at stake, but she couldn't allow for him to be locked away like a criminal. She couldn't deny that interacting with him in the past and seeing him befriend the former members of SEES could have swayed her towards sparing his freedom.

"Mochizuki-san has returned, yet the Dark Hour hasn't occurred since The Fall was averted…"

To Mitsuru's understanding, the avatar was absorbed by Nyx after SEES did battle with it. After their leader became the Great Seal in order to stop Nyx, Ryoji should have been sealed away with her. Instead, he appears a month later in Tatsumi Port Island, unconscious and amnesiac, and wakes up after the first anniversary of what was predicted to be The Fall.

"What does this mean?"

Given the unexpected arrival, Mitsuru felt that she would have to fast-track the progress of the Avatar Project. In the meantime, she'll have to keep a close eye on Ryoji. If Nyx had somehow found a way to circumvent the Great Seal, His sacrifice would have been for nothing.

A/N:

Hi all! I hope you've enjoyed the first chapter of what is now my second fanfiction. For those of you who don't know, I have another on-going work that goes by "Persona: A Matter of Time". If you like what you've read so far and haven't done so already, I encourage you to give it a look. It's also worth mentioning that, like with my other story, Sraosha has agreed to act as a Beta-reader for Doing His Memory Justice to help pick up the odd silly mistake in my drafts. Please show your appreciation by checking out Sraosha's own stories on the site: Persona: Duality and the currently ongoing Persona: Gnosis.

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you in the next chapter!