This AU hinges on a few points of canon divergence:
1) the protagonist is a girl
2) Chihaya Mifune is the protagonist's guardian instead of Sojiro Sakura
3) Lavenza exists as her own entity and not as Caroline and Justine
4) the Phantom Thieves are comprised of a different, smaller group of people
cross-posted from Ao3
Akari Kurusu wakes to the tinny sound of her phone alarm two hours after she leaves from Miyagi Prefecture — an irritating pop tune from an old Muses concert from one of the group's overly commercialized reunions. It's just annoying enough to be impossible to ignore, and her phone is bright and loud enough that other passengers — nearly double the number from when she'd first left — are starting to stare. She rubs her eye sleepily and apologizes to the passenger next to her for leaning on them too much, her voice still thick with sleep. Everything seems hazy and blurred at the edges of her vision. The world feels slightly off-kilter.
The girl sitting next to her, small and demure with her deep blue dress and her gloved hands clasped together in her lap, turns her head delicately to look up at her with piercing golden eyes. Her mouth moves with words that Akari can't hear.
Then there's a deafening screech as the train suddenly lurches violently to one side. Akari's head snaps forward as passengers cry out in alarm, but the girl calmly grabs Akari's sleeve and steadies her as gravity shifts and everything falls.
She doesn't pass out — it couldn't be that easy. Nothing hurts and she can still move just as well as she could before, but her heart won't stop hammering in her chest and it's hard to breathe past short, panicked gasps. When looking back on the incident, she wouldn't be able to remember much of what followed: not the paramedics shining a light in her eyes and patting her on the cheek a few times, not the ride in the ambulance to the hospital when she fails to respond to their questions. She remembers the nurses whispering of patients that had been lost, of other passengers that had been hurt too badly to ever hope to return to their normal lives. She remembers the doctors telling her that it had been a miracle that she escaped such an awful accident with almost no injuries to speak of.
Still, Akari is three hours late to her meeting with her new guardian. A woman sits at the side of the road in Shinjuku, with long hair and a black band fitting around her head like some sort of halo, her brow furrowing and recognition plain in her eyes as Akari sits, uncomfortably, in front of her at her table. "The Tower showed up in today's reading," she says. "Well, Akari Kurusu-san… tell me about this Tower."
One of Chihaya Mifune's regulars is a man in his forties named Kawamoto. As far as clients go, he's one of the more normal ones — he comes when he needs to make an important decision and too many people are pulling him in too many different directions. He's one of the better regulars because he doesn't stare at her for too long, and he always pays the full amount when he doesn't like what she has to say.
He comes to her in February and sits down at her table with a long, weary sigh. "How are you doing today, Kawamoto-san?" Chihaya asks him politely, though she already has a vague idea of what his answer will be.
Kawamoto stumbles through a few incredibly awkward minutes of meaningless pleasantries before cutting to the heart of the matter. "It's my friend, you see," he says. "His daughter has just about ruined his life."
Chihaya begins shuffling through her cards, and hopes Kawamoto will be quick. "Oh?"
"She was arrested sometime ago," Kawamoto explains. "They say she propositioned someone — a public figure, no less! — and later assaulted him. I just… I can't imagine how someone like him could have someone so horrible for a daughter!"
Chihaya smiles, a mask sliding seamlessly into place, as she begins laying out cards on the table. "And this concerns you how, Kawamoto-san?" she prompts him.
"Well…" he mumbles, drawing a handkerchief from his pocket to dab at sweat on his brow. "She was expelled from her high school. No other school near her hometown would let her transfer — with good reason, I'm sure — but recently a school here accepted her. I'm worried my friend will ask me to… to…"
To be a good friend to someone who is clearly going through a hard time? Chihaya wants to ask him. "Let's consult the tarot to see if your paths will cross," she says instead, and flips over three cards before him.
The Hierophant, upright.
The Hermit, reversed.
The Temperance, upright.
"I don't think you need to worry," Chihaya tells him. "Whatever that girl's fate may be here, it has very little to do with you."
Immediately, the tension that hikes his shoulders upward leaves him at once. When his expression softens, Chihaya knows that this is the answer he wants to hear. "Thank you, Maiden," he says. "Thank you so much." Kawamoto pays her a bonus to her standard fare — he always does, when she guides him to the answers he wants to hear.
Logically, Chihaya knows that it's unprofessional of her, to dwell so much on a girl whose name and face she doesn't know. Logically, she knows that the chances of meeting this girl are slim: there are already a lot of people in Tokyo, and the number of new people that come to the city climbs higher every day.
And yet — and yet, it's unfair to that girl, that Chihaya doesn't know the full story. It's unfair that the only part of it she knows is from a man so panicked at the prospect of crossing paths with this girl that he felt the need to seek a fortuneteller's services. She wonders, insanely, how many people have called that girl a monster lately — whether it's to her face or behind her back is irrelevant.
Logically, Chihaya knows that what she is even thinking is irrational — and yet, she draws three cards for herself and flips them over one by one. It might not be that man's fate to cross paths with that girl, but maybe it's hers — maybe fate has guided her to this moment, and it's why she's trying this at all.
The Wheel of Fortune, reversed.
The Empress, upright.
The World, upright.
Chihaya lives in a traditional Japanese house that would look right at home in a sleepy town in the countryside, but looks out of place in the hustle and bustle of modern Tokyo. It's one story high and it has two bedrooms, one of which is filled with Akari's moving boxes. The walls are a faded beige that cracks at the edges, and the table takes up too much space in the small living room.
(The place belonged to one of Chihaya's regulars, an old man named Saito who passed away without fanfare in a hospital, surrounded by machines and unfamiliar doctors and nurses. Like clockwork, he would come to her table every Wednesday after his office job and pay the full amount, even though he didn't always ask for her services. Sometimes, he'd buy Holy Stones from her and bring back bentos of food he'd made for her, salted to perfection. Most of the time, he just liked to talk — about everything, about nothing in particular, about matters that had nothing to do with fortune telling, about Chihaya's favorite foods and favorite places from her hometown in the countryside. He said she looked like his daughter, Chitose, who refused to speak to him after he made a few too many mistakes some decades ago.
Then, one Wednesday, he didn't show up at her table. The World, reversed, showed up in her reading. By the time she finally tracked down the hospital where he stayed — lied to the nurses that she was his daughter because who else would come to see him? — all he could do was clasp her hands in both of his, call her "Chitose," and thank her for forgiving him.
Chihaya didn't tell him that there was nothing to forgive — not for her, who was not his daughter — but it was his fate to never know this. In his will, written when he was more lucid and not as close to death, he left almost everything to Chitose but his house to Chihaya.)
Akari doesn't tell her about the accident. It sounds like an excuse, no matter how she tries to phrase it in her head, and she keeps silent as Chihaya goes about explaining what living with her will entail — that Akari will need to be home by a certain time every day, that she will need to find a part-time job to occupy herself while Chihaya works. She's only half paying attention, as the announcer on TV, slightly muted because Chihaya has deliberately kept the volume low, speaks of mental shutdowns and horrible train accidents that should not be possible in this day and age.
Chihaya turns to the TV as Akari fidgets uncomfortably, and says: "Oh. There's the Tower."
"Um." Akari startles at the sound of her own voice, curling in on herself in a way that makes her look smaller, more easily breakable. "Th-They made me go to the hospital," she says. "We all had to. I'm not hurt, s-so…"
Chihaya smiles, tilting her head slightly to the side. "That's fine!" she says. "The Tower is a card that signifies great upheaval in your life. Your moving here was by no means sudden, so it didn't make sense that the Tower would reflect that. I knew it had to be something else." Chihaya bows her head, and touches the pendant hanging around her neck. "It was fate, you see. There's nothing you could have done to avoid it."
Well… no, that's not entirely true, Akari surmises. There were a lot of things she could have done differently: she could have taken a later train, she could have gotten off a station or two early and walked the rest of the way, she could have come a day prior or a day later, she could have forgone coming to Tokyo altogether and taken up a job somewhere close to her hometown instead of transferring high schools.
(She could have just continued walking, when she heard that woman scream that night. She could have called the police immediately instead of waiting for the man to come to his senses or for the woman to successfully squirm out of his grasp. She could have just stayed home that night, or stayed back at cram school a little later, to avoid this incident altogether. She could have taken those pills from the back of her mother's medicine cabinet and ended things after she was released from the detention center, so that she wouldn't have had to deal with any of this.)
Chihaya gestures towards the croquettes on Akari's plate with her chopsticks. "Eat," she says, not quite ordering her to do so but somewhat reprimanding all the same.
Akari chokes down about a quarter of her first meal in Tokyo, and the croquettes that Chihaya worked so hard to make sit in her stomach, nauseatingly, like a heavy weight.
(Some months before she moves to Tokyo, instead of heading straight home after cram school like she usually does, Akari stops at the convenience store with some friends for ice cream. There's only one vanilla left, and she has to beat one of her friends, a girl named Mayu who's been in the same class as her on and off throughout the years, at jan-ken-pon to win it. She feels only a little bad when Mayu sticks her tongue out at her as she goes for strawberry.
So, when Akari parts ways with them a few blocks away from her house, her thoughts are occupied with formulating a believable excuse to her mother for coming home so late. Sakurada-san from the house with the red roof has regular shouting matches with his son and can be rather loud when scolding him about test scores and university prospects, so Akari doesn't think too much of it when she hears yelling from that house's general direction. It isn't until she gets closer — too close to just walk by quietly and make it look like she hadn't seen or heard anything — that it occurs to her that the voice she hears yelling isn't Sakurada-san.
"Just get in the car, damn it!" an unfamiliar man in a black suit shouts. His hands are large, veins prominent as he lunges for a woman that looks so much smaller than him. The woman, terrified, brings her hands up to shield her face.
Akari stops because— because it is the right thing to do, because that woman needs help and Akari is right there, so she should be able to do something. "Are you okay?" she asks the woman, even though she knows it's a stupid question. Of course the woman is not okay.
It's enough to divert the man's attention away from her, though. The man turns, slowly, and looms over Akari. He's so very big.
He's yelling at her, now, but the words don't register; what does is his hands on her shoulders, so very large and squeezing so tightly that it feels like she'll shatter into a million pieces if he presses any harder. She doesn't mean to hurt him — but he's hurting her, and it's all she can do to push him away. He stumbles back and goes down, and it's only then that Akari smells the alcohol.
There's— there's not that much blood, really, but it looks bad. There are too many lights — police car lights, flashlights, street lamps, lights from the houses on the street flickering on to see what the commotion is about — and all of them seem to focus on Akari as the man covers his face, his shoulders trembling with rage as blood drips slowly from a cut on his forehead.
"Damn bitch… I'll sue!")
After Akari introduces herself to the principal of her new school, Chihaya takes her out for crepes. There's nothing to celebrate, but she doesn't refuse when Chihaya insists on paying, and orders herself a strawberry crepe. Chihaya orders herself a vanilla one, and then they head to a nearby park.
Chihaya pulls out her tarot deck and begins shuffling it while Akari chokes down her crepe, trying to aggressively not think about how the principal had stared down his nose at her and how her homeroom teacher looked at her like she was an inconvenience — and how the smell of Chihaya's crepe is making her feel nauseous. Logically speaking, this is something she should have expected: the open disdain, the people who claimed to be on her side treating her like a criminal when she wasn't just another checkbox for them to prove how progressivethey were by associating with her. She should have expected it, but it wouldn't have made it any easier.
(She couldn't even get on the goddamned train. All she could do was stand at the platform, frozen in place as the doors slid open and precious time ticked away. It was Chihaya who had to drag her in and force her to sit down — the way she'd grabbed her arm to steady her was the same way that the girl from the train had, earlier — the one in the blue dress. Maybe, Akari wouldn't have looked like such a blithering idiot in front of her principal and homeroom teacher if she'd at least planned what to say beforehand — but no, all she could do on that goddamned train was count slowly as she measured her breaths, because the last thing she needed was Chihaya growing irritated with her for not being able to do even that much for herself.)
Chihaya holds the deck out to her expectantly. "Lesson number one," she says, "single card readings. Draw one, please."
Hesitantly, Akari rests her hand on top of the deck. They really are very nice cards — deep blue with an intricate golden design, smooth under her fingers. The topmost card slides off easily, its edges perfectly in shape and not at all fuzzy from overuse. On the other side is what appears to be a goblet of some sort with shimmering silver liquid bubbling at the top — upside down?
"No, don't do that!" Chihaya snaps when Akari tries to turn it right-side up. "Every card has a meaning, both upright and reversed. Let's see…" Her fingers are cold as they brush against Akari's to retrieve the card, and she smiles sadly. "The Ace of Cups reversed… that makes sense. You've made a lot of changes lately, haven't you?" Akari wants to laugh at the obvious understatement, but it doesn't look like Chihaya will find it funny at all. "What this card suggests is that you're exhausted. Emotionally. All these changes in your life have made it difficult for you to maintain that balance you need to deal with stress."
That's… right, actually. It's not something she's ever been able to put into words, but it fits. Akari nods, and curls into herself to make herself look as small as possible.
Chihaya slips the card back into the deck before placing the entire stack back into her satchel. "Tell me, Akari-san… what were you thinking, that night?"
"What?" Akari says eloquently. It takes a moment for her to get it, but there's really only one night of which Chihaya would care to know the details. Looking back on it, she can't remember that man's face — but she can remember his eyes, shining amber through the hand that covered his face as he glared at her — his voice coming to her immediately as if she'd heard it moments instead of months ago.
Damn bitch… I'll sue!
"That woman needed help…" she says finally. It doesn't feel right, because she should probably be saying more — but what else is there to say? There was someone who needed help, and she volunteered to be that person. That's all there was to it, and yet—
"I see," Chihaya says calmly, serenely. "Did you ever think that, maybe, it was that woman's fate to be in that position?"
"But—"
"A powerless woman and a man with too much power at his disposal… it was that woman's fate to be used by a man like that, and it is that man's fate to continue to use people to such an extent. To interfere in that is to unnecessarily put yourself at risk."
There's an unspoken statement in there — that, maybe, it was Akari's fate to be used by that man too. It makes the crepe she's eating suddenly taste like ash. "But she was…"
Chihaya gets up to throw her now empty plate away, and then sits back down before Akari. "I'm going to tell you something I don't need the cards to confirm," she says. "If you want things to go back to normal… if you want this year to go well, then you should seriously reconsider the way you approach these things that have already been preordained."
It's… a little hard to believe, to be honest, but Akari knows better than to tell her that to her face. Chihaya doesn't say anything more on the subject, but maybe she's silent because she knows what Akari is thinking — and she already knows so much, without Akari having to tell her. Akari chokes down the rest of her crepe and tries to look less nauseous than she feels, before they leave. Chihaya has to hold her arm again before she can bring herself to get on the train.
On the first day of the new school term, Akari has to wait a few minutes after getting off the train for her heart to stop pounding and the staticky white noise that no one but her seems to hear to fade. Chihaya doesn't accompany her, because what high school student needs the adults in their life to hold their hand when they're too scared to do something that comes so easily to everyone else?
It's raining. She didn't notice it, before, and she doesn't remember hearing about it on the news that morning — but she doesn't remember hearing much of anything at all before leaving Chihaya's house. Logically, she knows she has everything she needs for the first day of school — notebooks, pencils, her student ID — and she's double- and triple-checked the train schedule so there's only a small chance she'll be late getting back again — but it's hard not to think about that horrifying screech as the train lurched to the side two days ago and ran off the tracks. Chihaya told her to draw a card before she left: the Chariot, reversed.
She doesn't remember the way they came yesterday. It's not like she was trying to not pay attention, but thinking on it now, all she can remember is walking for a bit after getting off the train. It doesn't count for much, because she can't remember the direction she walked in.
Someone bumps into her shoulder, and Akari startles for a moment before composing herself. There's another student there, who could have either just arrived now or have been standing there for a while without saying anything — foreign-looking, with blonde hair that doesn't carry the same artificial shine as boxed dye and light blue eyes. "Sorry," the girl says without really looking in Akari's direction, as she pulls her white hood down.
"It's okay," Akari replies quietly, though it feels unnecessary after the words have left her mouth.
A car slows down before them, too deliberately for it to be a coincidence. The front window opens, revealing a man with curly black hair, wearing a red tracksuit. He leans over across the passenger seat and grins at them, his eyes crinkling with laugh lines. "Good morning!" he greets them enthusiastically. "Need a ride?"
The girl with the blonde hair stiffens, her shoulders hiking up ever so slightly as she lifts her head in some semblance of confidence. Her eyes flicker to Akari once, before she forces a smile and running forward towards the car. The man makes room for her as she slides into the passenger seat, but still leans over her to wave at Akari. "Come on in," he says. "Can't be late for our first day, can we?"
Akari swallows and nods, before heading into the backseat and patting down her uniform where she could feel the rain hit it on the way over. The girl with the blonde hair stares at her in the rear view mirror with an unreadable expression as the man's arm slinks behind her headrest as he turns to face Akari. "Kurusu-chan, right? I'm Mr. Kamoshida. Welcome to Shujin!"