January 3rd, 2015
Yosuke wasn't exactly sure when he'd fallen asleep, but he was definitely sure that it was at least a half hour after Jude had fallen asleep. It probably would have been easy enough to wake Jude up, or even to get a spare blanket from his closet and crash on the floor for the night. But a small portion of his brain, a masochistic part, had completely overtaken his sense and convinced him to just sleep in his bed. Next to Jude. Nothing happened, no, but no matter how many times they stayed up until the wee hours of the morning watching movies, the visitor was always careful to leave before he fell asleep.
Between the two of them, Jude was the last one he expected to break that trend. It didn't matter, though. It wasn't like falling asleep in the same bed was a sordid affair to remember. Not that you'll forget it any time soon, his brain teased.
When Yosuke woke up at around ten a.m., Jude wasn't awake yet. Maybe he should have done something, woken him up, but it wasn't common for Jude to sleep in anymore. Usually, Jude was out the door before Yosuke even woke up in the morning, since he needed to be to work at six, so the fact that he was actually allowing himself to sleep in? Yosuke couldn't bring himself to ruin that.
Gently closing the door, he walked out into the living room, and was both surprised and not surprised to see that everyone was awake. Teddie was watching TV, Rise was reading a magazine and Naoto was typing something on her laptop... and a stack of pancakes sat on the counter. They looked normal. I just hope Naoto made them... he mused inwardly.
"Morning, Yosuke!" Teddie's cheerful voice rang throughout the room when he spotted Yosuke from the corner of his eye. "Naoto made banana pancakes!"
With a sigh of relief, which elicited a glare from Rise, Yosuke walked over to the counter to get himself a plate. "Thanks, Naoto," he said. She didn't miss a beat on her laptop when she nodded and smiled. "So, have any of you heard from Chie, Yukiko or Kanji yet?" They hadn't really set a time, but knowing Chie, she was probably shoving Yukiko out the door. Kanji would get there whenever he felt like it. That was just how he worked.
Teddie nodded excitedly. "Yuki-chan texted Rise right before you came out here. They're on the road and they just passed Moel, so they should be about fifteen minutes," he said with a mouthful of pancake.
With a slightly anxious, apprehensive look on her face, Naoto spoke up. "Kanji-kun said that he's going to leave as soon as he fills up his motorcycle, so they'll probably get here around the same time." It wasn't until right then that he realized... Naoto was actually wearing makeup. With a hard blink, he tilted his head in surprise at her.
But Naoto blushed and looked away. Rise looked up from her magazine with a beaming smirk on her face. "Oh! You noticed?" she asked excitedly. "Naoto wanted to get all made up for Kanji! She hasn't seen him at all since last year, so..." With a shrug, Rise peered down at her magazine again. "I helped her while you guys were still zonked out."
"Rise..." Naoto's voice was very obviously embarrassed by the whole situation.
It was amusing that, two years later, she was still under the assumption that no one knew about the unresolved feelings between her and Kanji. For an ace detective, though, she still needed a lot of work with hiding her emotions. Yosuke found himself smirking in spite of the situation. Some personality aspects stuck around forever.
Yosuke sat at the counter to eat, and no sooner had his fork hit the plate when Rise stood up and turned around excitedly. "I'm gonna go get Jude. He'll be bummed if he misses when the others get here!" she said seriously. And without another word, he started down the hallway, toward Jude's room.
Wincing, because he knew exactly where Rise's mind would go, he chewed on his lip. "He's not in his room, Rise..." he muttered quietly. "He's in mine." His voice was quiet, but still above a whisper.
The whole room went quiet, and he could almost hear Rise put on the breaks from around the corner. Yosuke blinked and looked away from the three pairs of eyes that were on him. Teddie's expression was shocked, Naoto's was expectant, and he couldn't see Rise's right away. But as soon as he found himself wondering, she peered back around the corner with a significant look on her face.
"Oh-ho!" Rise exclaimed. "You mean you-"
Yosuke shook his head no, cutting her off before she was able to put any ideas in Teddie's head. God knows, if he got the wrong idea, they'd never hear the end of it. "Nothing like that!" he insisted, his face heating up as he looked down at his plate. "It wasn't!" He blushed deeper against the doubtful glances his friends were giving him. "We couldn't sleep, so... so Jude came in and watched movies with me. And he just fell asleep and..." he trailed off. "S-stop looking at me like that!"
As expected, Naoto was the first one to look away. She was still smiling, though. Teddie still stared, long after Rise turned back down the hallway with a crafty little smirk on her face, and Yosuke felt like his face was going to burn off, with how red it was. Of all the nights for Jude to fall asleep in his bed, it had to be the one where the ace detective, the perceptive idol and the nosiest bear of all time were at their place. Probably payback for all the hell I gave them back in high school, he thought to himself, focusing too hard on his plate and trying to ignore Teddie's intense gaze.
With his pancakes half-finished on his plate, he stood up. "I... think I'm going to go take a shower before the others get here." Anything to get away from the nosy-bodies.
He passed by Jude in the hallway, noting the completely embarrassed look on his face. Yeah. Rise had definitely given him the third degree. Possibly even the fourth degree, by the way she was grinning wildly as she walked down the hall in front of him. But why was she grinning like that? Nothing had happened, right? So... she had no reason to look so smug. Yosuke gave Jude an apologetic look. He'd make a point to actually apologize later.
Fortunately, any outward awkwardness dissipated before the others got there. God, if they caught wind of this? He'd never hear the end. Yeah, when he left the bathroom and let Jude take his turn, he got another third degree of questioning—("you're sure nothing happened?" "Nothing happened, Rise..." "Well, you're both acting like something happened." "Maybe that's because you won't leave us alone about it!")—and finally the topic slowed a little bit. Thankfully, the line of questioning ended completely, shortly after that.
Before too long, there was a soft knock on the door, followed by a significantly louder voice.
"Yukiko, they're not going to hear you if you knock softly like that!" There wasn't a bit of malice in Chie's voice, and the laugh that followed was lighthearted and good natured. "You gotta put some feeling into it!" She knocked louder, rhythmically and eagerly.
Yukiko laughed a little bit from the other side of the door. "Right! Got it!" she said eagerly, then repeated the rhythmic knock, in spite of the fact that Yosuke was already on his way to the door. Everyone in the room laughed.
Before Yosuke reached the door, he heard Kanji protesting and stopped in his tracks. Sometimes hearing things like this was better than any greeting. "You didn't need to do it after her, Yukiko-senpai," he teased. High school was over, and he still insisted on calling them all senpai. It was both nice, and weird, all at the same time.
As much as he wanted to allow the conversation to devolve a little further, because everyone was definitely laughing, he pulled the door open and gave the three visitors an amused arched eyebrow. "What are you guys, the Three Stooges?" he asked in lieu of a traditional greeting. "I half-expected to come out here and find you all hitting each other over the head with inflatable hammers." But as he finished talking, he stepped out of the way so they could come into the apartment.
The girls both laughed, but Kanji had a slightly unimpressed expression on his face, likely at being called a Stooge. Yosuke was about to turn and walk into the room when he felt Yukiko's arms wrap around him in an eager hug. "It's good to see you, Yosuke-kun," she said softly.
Chie echoed her sentiments, and hugged him right after Yukiko finished. "This place is a lot cleaner than I expected." Her frank comments hadn't changed, and honestly, Yosuke was glad for that. "I thought with you here, Jude would be at his limit cleaning, and it'd be a disaster area." Chie would always be Chie.
It wasn't like they didn't see each other often. Yosuke was in Inaba almost every day. But when they did see each other, it was always short. Yosuke had some work errand to do, or Yukiko was just stopping by to get some extra ingredients for dinner at the inn. Chie would come by to get ingredients for Yukiko to practice cooking, too; but they were never really together for long enough to catch up. The last time he'd really spent any extended period of time with them was at last year's summer festival, so it was definitely good to see them now. Even with the teasing and scathing comments from Chie.
Yosuke laughed a little bit. "I help clean sometimes too, you know."
With a laugh from behind Chie, Kanji extended his hand for one of those awkward man-hugs. "Bet the only reason it's so clean is because they knew they were having company." He crossed his arms after the man-hug broke and looked over at the couch. "Bet if you look under the couch, you'll find underwear and all the magazines they don't want you to see."
That was all Teddie needed to hear. He was on his feet, laying flat on his stomach on the floor, greeting hugs completely forgotten in the face of potentially nosing into his friends' privacy. "Aw, Kanji!" he called from the floor. "You got me all excited for nothing! There's no magazines, no pictures... no bear bottoms of any kind down here! It's totally clean!" he said desolately.
From the other side of the living room, Jude's voice came clearly as he returned from his shower. "Boy, I sure picked an interesting time to come back into the conversation..." He stood wide-eyed, looking down at where Teddie lay on the floor.
"Jude!" Chie called excitedly, and bounded up to Jude to hug him just as tightly as she'd hugged Yosuke.
As Yukiko hugged him, after he said his hello to her, he looked around the room. "Do I even want to know what you were talking about before I came back out here? And why Teddie is apparently looking for bare bottoms under the couch?" he asked.
Yukiko giggled and shook her head no. "The less you ask in this case, the better, I think. Let's just say that Kanji-kun was putting ideas in his head, and you know how Teddie is with ideas..." She wasted no time going to the rest of the group and greeting them, too.
"Sorry 'bout that," Kanji said with a wry grin on his face that said he wasn't sorry in the slightest. He walked up to Jude and gave him a handshake-hug, too, then walked around the rest of the room.
Yosuke noticed, with both concern and slight amusement, exactly how awkward Kanji's greeting with Naoto was. They said their hellos, and he did hug her, but the awkwardness seemed just as strong as it was in high school. Kanji stared at Naoto in wide-eyed wonder, which was understandable, considering this was a very far cry from the Naoto he probably remembered, physically. Honestly, Yosuke couldn't remember the last time the two of them were at an event like this together. Had he seen her at all since they'd graduated last year? It was a distinct possibility that he hadn't, so seeing her looking more feminine? Yeah, it was probably a surprise. Shockingly, though, he managed to keep himself together enough to say hello.
Finally, the whole group of them was together. This... yeah, this was nice. Busy, and very exciting, but nice.
By lunchtime, things had settled down considerably. Everyone was settled into the apartment now, and they'd all fallen back into easy, casual conversation. Rise was gushing to Yukiko about how pretty she'd look in some of the clothes that she bought, and somehow, Chie had challenged Kanji and Teddie to a beef bowl eating contest at Aiya when they got back to Inaba, and now they were trash talking. Naoto was in the kitchen, helping Jude put lunch together for the group. Yosuke, for his part, had been floating between groups, enjoying the better parts of each conversation; really just enjoying having everyone together.
As soon as Jude and Naoto came back into the living room and set the food in front of them, Chie took it upon herself to put the whole room into an emotional whiplash, though. "So, did you guys hear?" her voice filled the room and everyone jumped to attention. The expression on her face said that she'd been about to burst. Like she'd wanted to bring this up since she stepped into the door and holding it in for another second would kill her.
"About?" Yosuke asked, arching an eyebrow.
Naoto looked like she knew what was coming, which was slightly odd, but she didn't say anything. Instead, Chie kept speaking. "Back in Inaba, people have been saying that the Midnight Channel has been coming back on. It's weird, though." She paused for a second to grab a few pieces of tempura beef. "No one's been on it, from what I've heard,." She didn't bother to stop talking once she put a piece of food in her mouth. "It's just been static."
Yukiko nodded her head. "We heard about it yesterday afternoon, and we watched it last night." She leaned toward the table, filling a small bowl with some shrimp and rice. "We were going to call you if it came on, but..." She shook her head no. "Of course, it wasn't raining, so we wouldn't have been able to see it anyway." She bit her lower lip.
"I'd heard some rumors about it, too, though. Last month, when I was in town visiting with my grandpa," Naoto said seriously, stirring her mirin dipping sauce with her chopstick. "About people just seeing static. I checked it then, too, and it was snowing, but nothing happened."
Scratching a hand through his hair, Jude took a seat next to Yosuke on the floor. "So, what... are they just rumors, then? I mean..." he shrugged his shoulders. "It's not completely out of the realm of possibility that people would just spread things like that around just for the sake of it, right?" And he was right, it wasn't.
Yosuke shrugged and spoke with a half-full mouth. "Inaba will be Inaba," he stated plainly. "When people get bored, they start rumors, right? And sometimes they recycle old rumors." At least, that was how it had been in his experience. Still, it was a little strange to be hearing about it again with radio silence for so long.
Naoto shrugged her shoulders and finished chewing and swallowing. "I honestly don't know," she answered. "It's hard to say without having seen it myself. And there's still so much about the Midnight Channel in general that we don't understand, right?"
At that, Rise gave an earnest nod. "Like where it even came from. And how personas automatically meant that we could enter." She took a sip of her drink and sighed.
It was funny. He hadn't really thought too much about that question since the case had closed. Most of his thoughts concerning the case three years ago were about the fighting. About how he missed it, and how sometimes he wished that he could just go back into the TV and blow off some steam. But that simple statement from Rise brought all those unanswered questions right back to the forefront. There were still a lot of answers they didn't know.
"It bugs me," Kanji started, "thinkin' that the TV world's still there. Like, was it there all along, even before all that shit three years ago?"
Teddie nodded. "It's always been there, yeah," he told them. Sometimes it was easy to forget that he'd actually come from that world. "It probably won't go away without some kind of bear-acle." He just shrugged and continued shoveling food into his mouth.
The silence that filled the room as soon as Teddie finished speaking was kind of heavy. Yosuke had to admit, he was tempted to suggest that they just charge into the TV, look around and see if there was anything going on. It wasn't like they couldn't get right back out if things went wrong, right? But the group of them storming into Junes like that just because of a rumor spreading around Inaba that had no real basis... it didn't make a lot of sense, did it? Maybe I'm more mature than I thought, he thought with an inward chuckle. Because two years ago, there would have been absolutely nothing that could have stopped him.
Yosuke sighed through a mouthful of fried rice. "I guess the most we can do now is just pay attention. Now that we all know that it's a possibility..." he turned to look at Naoto, who nodded her agreement. A part of him wondered if she'd looked into it at all herself.
His attention turned to Jude, who flashed him a halfhearted smile. Jude knew, more than the rest of them, how much Yosuke was tamping down his instinct. After all, Jude was the one who heard about all of his wistful memories about fighting inside of the TV. Admittedly, even with such little information, this felt kind of like the beginning of something. The information seemed baseless at this point, but something in the pit of Yosuke's gut told him that this wasn't the last they'd hear about it.