One of the readers pointed out it looks like a Ken x FemMC story and I thought to myself: Fuck it's way too early for that. Besides I actually remembered what I originally planned. I forgot sort of after I published the second chapter.
In any event, I think I can still stick to my original plan.
"Have any of you seen Hamuko?" Minato asked, while Junpei, Yukari, Shinjiro and Ken were present.
"Not since yesterday." grunted Shinjiro.
"She wasn't in school." Junpei pointed out.
"Maybe she's sick." suggested Yukari.
"Nah, she wasn't on the girl's floor or in her room." Minato pointed out. "Mitsuru, Fuuka and Akihiko didn't see her either."
The group began discussing the subject a little, except Ken who was silent the whole time, reading his history book.
Minato noticed this and restrained himself from face palming. It was happening again.
"Maybe she's more shaken from yesterday than she lets on." Yukari suggested.
Minato took another look at Ken. This has happened before. "Yeah maybe..." he mumbled.
"Something wrong?" asked Yukari.
"I think I have an idea where she could be. I'm off for a bit. Sorry Yukari."
She waved off. "No problem. She's your last family member after all."
"Yeah, the last..."
xxx
Hamuko had been sitting under the moonlight bridge, watching the waves and ignoring the faint smells of garbage.
"Mitsuru is gonna execute you, you know?" she heard Minato behind her. She looked back and smiled at him, a sad smile.
"It's not like she can actually hurt me."
Minato decided to get to the point immediately.
"You know you have to decide one day." he said. "You can't really love every guy you befriend with." he scolded.
"I don't love Bebe, you know!" she huffed.
"You got enough attraction to open up a man-harem. You even got Shinjiro, Hidetoshi and Ken. I mean, a ten year old?"
"Are you here to scold me of who I fall in love with?"
Minato chuckled. "Of all of them, Ken is the one I would accept the most. It's just you have to hold your hormones under control."
"Tch, suddap. Before you met Yukari, you ALWAYS had a harem running. Or is your harem now more secretive?" she asked in a mocking tone.
Minato sighed. "Did you actually confess this time?"
"No, Nemesis did a scene."
"What?"
Hamuko looked up angrily. "Are you dread or something? Ken's persona made a scene. By passers actually heard her, so I had to ask our parents to remove their memories, since I still don't completely know how to handle our powers."
Minato face palmed. "Ken knows now too?"
"He knew beforehand. That's why he wanted to stay back yesterday. I think...he..."
"You think, he thinks we'll lead SEES to their doom, right?" Minato asked.
"Yeah... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..."
She let out a really deep sigh.
"You should have heard Nemesis. Spoke of all those moral things, how I should be more mature and so on. I snapped and...I...I slapped Ken-kun."
Minato sat down beside his sister.
"He's going to tell them. He'll tell them and we'll be all alone again. The shy Hamuko and the womanizer Minato."
"No we won't." Minato said sternly.
Hamuko looked to the side, her head still hanging down. "Are you claiming this because of our so called social links or because they need us. Or is it because ones they'll throw us out, Nyx and Erebus are going to kill them?"
'She said Nyx and Erebus instead of our parents.'
"Thirty seconds ago you were referring to them as our parents and now all of the sudden they're simply two gods we know?" he asked.
"Tch, they're the ones who left us alone for two years."
"You shouldn't let your frustration out on them."
"For fucks sake, I know that!" Hamuko shouted and stood up. "What gives you the right to interfere with my love life anyway?! It's none of your fucking business." she shouted.
"I..I can't help myself. They're all so kind in their own way...I just...just..."
Minato pulled his sister into a hug.
"You think you fall in love with everyone because no one has ever been so kind with you, huh?" He sighed. Despite Hamuko looking so cheery, she had been actually pretty shy because the way boys kept looking at her. To say they haven't lived in the best parts of the world so far explained it all.
"Maybe what you feel is love or maybe you just like bonding with people. You have made a 180 ever since we got here. Now just don't throw this all away."
Hamuko laughed. "You know maybe it was my entire fault. I tried my best to impress and slightly seduce everyone. I helped Hidetoshi with his work and even defended him, when he continually accused people of something. I did some extra training with Akihiko to appear as a strong girl. I cooked with and for Shinji. And Ken...I tried to be an older sister and flew with him one time, when I sneaked out to go to Tartarus alone. That was the time he found me."
Minato sighed. "Apologies to Ken and everything should be alright."
"It won't be that easy. Nemesis she...she said that I was a succubus and..." her face fell.
"Yeah, you can think of the rest of it huh? I bet Ken thinks I'm just a bitch."
"You're NOT a bitch, got it?"
Hamuko laughed dryly. "Well at least one person I don't need to worry about anymore weather he finds out my secret crush or not."
Hamuko turned around and looked up. "Please let me alone for a bit more, 'kay? I...need to figure out my own feelings. Tell Ken...I'm sorry about yesterday."
"You should tell him that yourself."
'They're watching after all.' Minato told his sister mind to mind.
'Let them watch all they want. I don't really care at the moment.'
'You never cared.'
Hamuko smiled and left towards who knows where. Minato sighed and placed himself at the spot where his sister had been sitting before.
"Is spying on your friends some kind of hobby of yours, Ken?"
The boy came out from his hiding spot about thirty seconds later.
"Minato-san...I..."
"Save it." he said. "Whether you tell the rest or not is up to you. You got Koromaru as back up, so it should be no problem."
"B-but, what about you two?! Is it true, you have been..."
"It's a little longer story. Sit down." He motioned towards a nearby rock in front of his own.
Ken did as Minato had told him.
"So, where to start...I guess it all started with the so called death of our parents." He took a deep breath.
"I guess you know how children act, when they suddenly lose their parents."
Ken nodded. He had closed himself out from everyone else and the first few days he just stared against the wall.
"But that was not all. Even after we overcame the initial shock, people were intentionally avoiding us."
"What!? But why?" Ken shouted.
Minato closed his eyes and smiled a mixture of amused and sad.
"I figured that one out a few days ago. It was because of what we are."
"Of what?"
"Well, we're not humans, as you know. We're the children of two beings who are supposed to destroy the world." he pointed out.
"But still, that's no reason to avoid you."
"That alone maybe not, as long as no one knows about it of course. But think about it: we were kids who just lost their parents and had power."
"But Hamuko said you didn't know yourself." Ken pointed out.
"We didn't and that's why there hadn't been more victims."
"More...victims?!"
"Well, our parents never told us anything about being gods. Still we had the power from the beginning. We couldn't really control it. The first thing was some kind of intimidating aura, which is the harmless of the things. There were accidents that happened all the time around us."
"Accidents?" Ken asked.
"Exploding cars, various malfunctions with electric equipment, I remember one time we were on vacation with the orphanage and one of the kids fell down a cliff."
"That was...you?!" Ken gaped.
"I think so. Because the accidents always happened to people or kids who bullied us, made fun of us and so on."
Minato made a little pause.
"It stopped after a while. Either we somehow managed to get control or it was because we stopped caring. As for the rest of our lives, in every school we got, I dated every girl in the class, while Hamuko kept her distance from people in general."
"But...that's not like you two at all."
"I'll come to that now. We transferred every half a year until we came back here. At first it looked like it should be all the same. I played the role of the mysterious transfer student, while Hamuko was the same as ever."
He took another breath.
"But then we had this dream...about a place called the velvet room." He looked directly into Ken's eyes. "It is a place where Hamuko and I can fuse new personas or summon old ones."
Ken swallowed the information.
"People in there told us about social links. Basically the power of our fusion results comes from friendship." He laughed. "What a cliché. It feels like betrayal."
Ken didn't say anything.
"You know there's a tarot card and a number in our head for each person. Each person with a different arcana. You obviously justice."
"I am..."
"Only to Hamuko. I have another justice-link. We share some of the links, but some differ. You know we have the wild card ability, we can change personas. And that's what changed. This ability draws people to us. Our first link was SEES the fool. Still not satisfied we experimented and it worked. Hamuko's personality made a 180 degree. We actually had real friends thanks to that. The link-rank can reach towards 10, the maximum. Between 7 and 10, well...there is the only chance to become lovers. I think around that point is Hamuko's and your link."
Minato sighed.
"She's so excited with that all ongoing, I barely held her back to declare love to every boy. I'm afraid she really is in that state. Either that or she doesn't know her own feelings."
"These...links..."
"Think of us what you want. I for my part don't think it is all about power and neither does Hamuko. But if you think we're just using you guys, then there's nothing I can say."
Ken was silent. He sat at his spot for five more minutes and then left.
"You're still here, Yukari?" Minato asked.
The pink girl had had a different hiding spot from Ken. She had followed Ken, as he had followed Minato.
"Is it...true? Everything?" she asked.
Minato kept sitting with his back towards her.
"I won't blame you if you want to break up or tell SEES that I actually am not a human."
Minato was holding his over-human senses back. He heard some footsteps and then felt a hand on his shoulder. Yukari placed herself on his lap and placed a kiss on his lips.
"You know you can tell me everything. We promised each other to not have any secrets, did we not?"
Minato placed his head against her chest. "For ones I wish I'm someone weak, someone who relied on others."
"You can rely on me. You just told Ken you're relying on everyone, did you not?"
xxx
Hamuko felt like dying. As tempting as this wish was, it wouldn't bring anything good to anyone. She had made a special request to Igor and he had complied. She would stay the night in the velvet room. She had texted everyone, just they would keep calm. She knew she'd get grounded by Mitsuru, but Hamuko didn't care.
She was in one of the guest rooms and sitting on the very comfortable bed.
Elizabeth came in at one point and brought her tea.
"Thanks Liz. Sorry about everything."
"No, no Hamuko-sama. We're actually quite surprised ourselves we're serving a god and a goddess. It is quite the new experience for us all and we try our best to-"
"You don't need to treat me anything special okay?" Hamuko interrupted.
Elizabeth kept her smile. "As you wish. I bid you goodnight Hamuko-sama."
"Night, Liz."
Hamuko enjoyed the tea. One thing she liked about the velvet room was it stabilized her soul. It was necessary for all the times she changed personas and received new ones. Maybe when everything was over she would take a job here? Sure having a goddess working for the velvet room would be good advertising.