Souji awoke the next morning to the sharp smell of something being fried. After changing into a fresh set of clothes, he headed downstairs and found Fuuka in the dorm's kitchen, wearing an apron. Koromaru, who Souji did not allow in the kitchen, had his eyes glued on the spatula she was carrying; the dog didn't so much as glance in Souji's direction when he opened the door. "Seta-kun!" Fuuka greeted him with a smile. "Good morning... Do you like eggs?"
"Sure," he said, but perhaps he sounded a little unsure. He tried to gauge Fuuka's cooking talent by her progress so far. She appeared to be cooking eggs, Western-style. Everything smelled and looked good, but he knew from experience that the senses could be misleading.
"I haven't cooked for anyone other than myself in a while," she admitted.
"Would you like any help?" Souji offered.
She shook her head. "I think I have this."
"You might want to flip it, now..." he suggested mildly.
"Oh-oh!" She flipped the eggs and they sizzled in the pan. She looked at him sheepishly afterward. "Thank you..."
They ate breakfast in a sort of awkward silence, unused to each other's presence. The omelet she'd made for him was edible, but it seemed to have a little too much pepper on it. He didn't let it deter him and ended up clearing the plate without sneaking anything to Koromaru. She seemed pleased that he'd done so.
"Seta-kun, is there anything in particular you'd like to have for dinner?" she asked with a shy smile.
"You don't have to cook for me," he replied. "I know how to cook myself. I could make something for you, if you'd like." He wondered what her favorite meal might be. Sukiyaki, maybe. Or sushi. Yes, sushi was always a good standby.
"Oh, I couldn't ask that of you..." Fuuka seemed a little embarrassed.
"It's no trouble. Or, we can cook together," he offered.
"M-maybe," she said, blushing a little. "There was a time when I tried to learn how to cook… because I wanted a way to repay my friends and it seemed like a hobby no one would question... But I grew out of that idea to focus on my skills with electronics."
She seemed very tech-savvy—he noticed that she kept her laptop nearby. It was currently on the kitchen counter displaying a screensaver composed of dancing lines. He sensed that Fuuka and Naoto would get along well, and began to think of ways to get them to meet. The mystery of Apathy Syndrome might appeal to the detective… He thought about it the entire way to school, but then remembered that the last he'd heard, she was several hundred miles away, working on a case.
Souji originally planned to eat lunch alone—after enjoying Fuuka's breakfast, he hadn't had time to cook anything of his own, so he only had a bento box from a vending machine, nothing worth inviting anyone to share—but after seeing Keiko-san chewing down her fingernails all morning in class, he changed his plans. He turned to her. "Keiko-san, would you—"
"WHOA!" Haruka shouted. He flinched at the decibel level she employed. "When did you get on a first-name basis with Tomo!?"
"Sorry. Tomochika-san," he amended. "Would you mind having lunch with me?"
"Nyehh," said the girl in question, which wasn't exactly a yes or a no.
Haruka looked from Souji to Keiko and back again.
"Call me whatever you want," Keiko-san grumbled. "I don't really care."
"You don't want to give me a blank slate," Souji warned her, thinking of his desire to use 'Ken-chan' all the time around the boy. He just couldn't help it. "Is 'Keiko-san' all right?"
"They only call me 'Tomo' because last year there was another Keiko in the same homeroom. It's just become a habit."
"Wow, Tomo!" Haruka declared. "I didn't know that! Can I call you Kei-chan, now?"
Keiko-san sighed.
In the end, Souji just decided to eat at his desk, since that was what both Haruka and Keiko-san were doing, and passed the lunch period with them. Haruka was always a bit silly, but by the end of the period, he thought he could see Keiko-san's underlying worry over Kenji relax at least a little.
When Souji returned from school, Fuuka had news for him. She was seated in the lounge, the laptop computer in her lap. "Umm, Seta-kun. I've come up with a list of the current Apathy Syndrome victims. I thought you might like to see it." She handed him a piece of paper.
Kenji Tomochika
Kazushi Miyamoto
Yukari Takeba
Nozomi Suemitsu
Isako Toriumi
Shachou Tanaka
Maiko Oohashi
Bunkichi Kitamura
Mitsuko Kitamura
Chihiro Fushimi
Mamoru Hayase
"How did you come up with it?" he asked her.
"Connections," she said with a sly smile.
Souji didn't press further. "Takeba-san is on the list?" And... was that TV Tanaka, too?
"Yes," Fuuka murmured. "I was surprised, too. We were close friends when we lived here... She asked me to look into the Kirijo Group, and then Mitsuru-san caught me..." Her eyes closed, and the smile on her face was reminiscent.
"Mitsuru-san caught you?" Souji frowned and thought of Yosuke. He wondered if Kirijo was now keeping tabs on his friend. He assumed so—but that was probably unrelated to his Internet searches. Yosuke had been intrinsic during Golden Week due to his trust in Labrys.
"And then Mitsuru-san asked me to continue. It was strange, but I was happy that my skills were important to her..."
"Strange" and "It's complicated" were becoming common phrases when people referred to the events of three years ago—though Souji knew he shouldn't complain: the TV World and the dungeons it had crafted could be described the same way.
Souji returned to the task at hand. "What do all these people have in common?" he mused.
"You think there's a connection? In the past," Fuuka said, "Apathy Syndrome was random... There wasn't any pattern to it except the moon's cycle."
Souji asked how it related to the moon, and Fuuka explained that when she was in SEES, large and troublesome Shadows appeared on the evening of the full moon. "The closer it was to a full moon, the more Apathy Syndrome victims there were. And once we defeated the Shadow, many victims returned to normal."
"The next full moon is at the end of the month," he noted.
Fuuka nodded. "I'll be scanning every night, but... If we're going to find a Shadow, we'll likely find it then. Mitsuru-san plans to be with us that night." She turned her attention to her laptop. "I could seek a connection. Some of these names are very familiar to me—it's very strange."
"I think that would be very helpful," he told her. "Some were students who used to go to Gekkoukan. I'll ask around at the school."
She nodded at him, her hands already typing rapidly. "That sounds like a plan."
A silence elapsed before he decided to ask a question that had been on his mind for some time. "Yamagishi-san... You used to live here... Why is that room on the second floor locked?"
"Oh!" she said. She clutched her long braided hair nervously, her other hand steadying her laptop. "That was... I suppose Aigis-san keeps it locked. Umm... I'm sorry, Seta-kun... I'd rather not talk about it." She smiled at him, but, as with Aigis, the smile did not reach her eyes.
Souji retired to his room, reading over the list Fuuka had given him and committing the names to memory. Then he folded it carefully and put it in his pocket for safekeeping.
He was hard at work on an essay on Edo Neo-Confucianism and how its ideals contrasted with Zen Buddhism when his cell phone rang. It was about time he heard from Yosuke.
"Hey partner..." his friend mumbled in greeting.
"Mm? I was thinking of you earlier, actually," Souji told him, smiling even though he knew his friend couldn't see it.
"Yeah...?" Yosuke's voice was low and world-weary. It lacked his normal enthusiasm.
"Is everything all right?" Souji asked, smile turning into a small frown. He moved from the desk to his bed and reclined against the pillow, knowing the call could be a long one if his friend was feeling down, so he might as well make himself comfortable. Well, not too comfortable; he didn't want to accidentally fall asleep with the phone still at his ear. The last time he'd done that, Yosuke had hung up and called him back just to startle him awake.
There was a heavy sigh from the other end of the line. "Yeah, partner. It's just... I've been thinking about what happened at this time last year. You know."
"I know," Souji replied with a sigh of his own. He didn't really want to remember. The empty, empty house he'd lived in... "How is everyone else doing?" He tried to keep the nagging worry out of his voice. No one has gone into a coma, right? He pulled the list of people with Apathy Syndrome out from his pocket, unfolded it, and stared at it. It couldn't be contagious. There had to be a connection between everyone. He just couldn't see it...!
"Fine as we'll ever be without you, I guess," Yosuke said. Souji blinked. Was there bitterness in his friend's tone? "Well, Yukiko got sick."
"Wh-what?" Souji shouted. He clenched his fist reflexively in alarm, crumpling the list.
"Dude, it's just a cold, man. November chills. It's even colder out where she lives, you know, at the inn. She'll be fine."
Souji wiped his brow. "Oh... Oh, good. I thought... I'm not sure what I thought."
"Well, anyway, that's about all that's happening over here." There was a pregnant pause, one that Souji could tell Yosuke would continue after. "How's... how's Tatsumi Port Island treating you, partner?"
Souji opened his mouth and then closed it.
"I talked with Naoto," Yosuke went on. "Well, actually I talked to Chie, who talked to Naoto for me, but... yeah. We know you're living down there now."
There was a silence in which Souji could have answered, but he didn't.
"I got kind of suspicious," Yosuke admitted, "when we talked on Culture Day. You're really interested in that place, and, well, I didn't want to interrogate you on your holiday, but..." Another pause. "You could have told me."
He should've known that Yosuke's natural curiosity would push him into figuring out what his partner was doing. Souji didn't know what to say; it was difficult to gauge someone's emotion by their voice alone, especially over a tinny cell phone. Was Yosuke mad at him, or maybe disappointed, and to what extent?
"I'm sorry, Yosuke," he tried. "The Kirijo Group offered a scholarship for me to go to Gekkoukan High. This place is strange and it's not home and I really wish I was in Inaba right now, but I really don't have much choice. I didn't want anyone to worry about me, so I didn't tell you or anyone else."
"Worry about you? Dude, you know me—I'm going to worry no matter where you are." Yosuke barked out a laugh, and Souji imagined that his friend was sheepishly scratching the back of his neck. "After what happened over summer... and now you're in the Kirijo Group's clutches? Are you sure we're gonna get you back when you graduate? I mean, they took Labrys-san away and made all those promises, but I haven't heard from her at all and... S-sorry..."
Yosuke couldn't handle being out of contact with any of his friends. It was part of why he called Souji at least every week. Souji had planned to ask Mitsuru about Labrys on his behalf, but he'd completely spaced it out due to the Apathy Syndrome incidences. "It's all right, Yosuke. I'm sure she's fine," Souji said. He trusted that the Kirijo Group hadn't locked her away somewhere. They hadn't done anything like that to Aigis, after all. "And the Kirijo Group is leaving me alone, for the most part. I just go to school like normal."
"Man, you're just too easygoing, sometimes," Yosuke muttered. "Trusting them just like that..."
Souji assured him again that he was safe. "On the bright side, the dorm they provided is co-ed!" Souji told him, hoping that would distract his friend and maybe cheer him up.
"Oh, yeah?" Yosuke certainly sounded more like himself. "Tell me about it!" Yes, he definitely took the bait.
"There's a girl—woman," he hastily amended, since Fuuka was older than he was. "She's staying right across from me. Her voice doesn't match her face, but she's very sweet. She cooked breakfast for me."
"And did you volunteer to take the trash out?" Yosuke teased. "Sounds rather domestic already!"
The conversation devolved from there, but at least he'd smoothed things over between him and his partner.
Souji felt restless just waiting for the full moon to come. He'd asked around at school, but most people hadn't known the students who'd attended a few years before, and he especially didn't want to bring up Kenji around Keiko-san, so his progress was mostly a bust.
The teachers were somewhat helpful—he learned at least that Aigis, Yukari, Kenji, and Kazushi had been in the same homeroom class back in 2009, and it was news to him that Aigis had been a student. He recalled she once said that she had been more robot than human back then. She must have learned fast to be able to go to school without being caught. He'd only known that she was a robot after meeting her during the P-1 Grand Prix because she'd shot bullets at him from her fingers.
Lacking any other plan for the moment, he decided to go fishing again after obtaining advice on what lures and baits to use for the area. This time he brought Koromaru with him so that the dog could get some fresh air. The park by the shrine was nice, but Souji really liked the smell and feel of the sea breeze. Koro-chan didn't seem to be picky, however—anywhere was nice for a walk!
Souji was casting his line when Taishi showed up. "Souji-kun! You're back at it, huh? Any luck this time?" His glasses glinted off the afternoon sunlight, almost blinding Souji.
"Not yet, but I'm confident," Souji told him. He reeled in the line just a little.
"That's right! Keep at it!" The boy seemed enthusiastic. "Hey, is that your dog?" Koromaru had stopped chasing a seagull to stand by Souji's side when Taishi approached and was now curiously looking at the newcomer.
"He is, actually, yeah. If you'd like, you can take him for a walk down the pier and back," Souji offered.
"Haha, well..." The boy rubbed the back of his neck, flustered at the suggestion. Koromaru nudged Taishi's legs until he started walking and then ran ahead. The dog barked at him to follow. "O-okay, then!"
Souji smiled to himself and turned back to his fishing. He thought he felt a nibble during that exchange, but it must have been the wind because the line soon slackened.
Taishi was panting by the time he returned. Souji offered him some water from a bottle and he accepted it. "Thanks. Man, that dog knows how to run! He made me chase him around and around..."
Koromaru barked happily.
"Now I'm beat..." He rested against the railing. "Huh, still no luck?"
"One thing fishing teaches you is infinite patience," Souji said with a sigh.
"Yeah, I see."
They stood in companionable silence for a bit. Souji hoped Taishi wasn't waiting for him to catch something. That could take a while...
A seagull crashed into the waves and came up with a piece of bread that someone had tossed in from farther down the pier. At least it hadn't come up with a fish.
"Umm, hey..." Taishi began. He was scratching his thumbnail on the railing. "They say Ms. Toriumi has Apathy Syndrome."
"Yeah," said Souji. She and many others...
"...I'm scared."
Souji set his rod down carefully against the railing to turn to Taishi and give him his full attention. His classmate wasn't looking at him, though, just staring over the railing down into the sea below them.
"I told you I was sick, right?" Taishi looked at him from the corner of his eye. "...Yeah. It was Apathy Syndrome."
Souji tried to show as much compassion as he could. Keiko-san had said it wasn't polite to ask, but... Now that he knew it was Shadow-induced, he wanted to learn as much as possible. "Will you tell me about it?" he asked quietly.
"I got it in October, 2009, or so I'm told. I don't remember at all what happened when I came down with it. Is that even the right word? I don't know..." He paused. "It's like sleeping, I suppose. I wasn't aware of anything at all while I had it, but I remember hearing something call my name in a creepy voice..."
A Shadow, perhaps?
"And then I 'woke up' in January. It was the middle of the night. I was in my bed... My parents had been keeping me there. They took care of me the whole time. Can you imagine that...?"
Souji shook his head and wondered darkly what his parents would have done in that situation. He cut off that line of thought rather soon.
"I'd been in bed so long that I couldn't really walk. My muscles were all screwed up, I guess..." Taishi took some time to stretch. He reached his arms down to touch his toes and then straightened up. "I'm not going to worry. The news hasn't said anything about it. I haven't seen anyone in the city with it. Hopefully our teacher will wake up soon... Everyone got better eventually, and most of the cases weren't even as long as mine."
The success of Mitsuru's mission must have ended it... But if she had indeed been successful, why was it coming back?
Mitsuru returned to the dorm on the night of the full moon. She wasted no time, immediately setting Fuuka to scan once again in the command room. The computer console's main screen was set to show a digital clock and it was currently 22:00.
"Nothing at all…" Fuuka murmured from within her Persona.
"We'll try every half-hour," Mitsuru said. Fuuka nodded, determination etched on her face.
During the downtime before the next scan, Mitsuru turned to Souji. "Seta, I must inform you. Yukari Takeba is another victim. She has Apathy Syndrome as well."
"Yes, Yamagishi-san showed me a list of the current victims."
"Good. Then you are aware. To have one of our own afflicted… pas bon. Perhaps we're dealing with a Shadow that can mask its presence."
There were as many types of Shadows as there were fish in the sea, it seemed sometimes. Well, maybe that was a poor metaphor since he'd still caught nothing in the sea around Tatsumi Port Island. "I don't recall encountering such a thing myself, but it's not impossible," he supposed.
"If that's the case, our job will be much more difficult." She sighed and tightened her lips.
Time passed. Fuuka worked at her laptop and Mitsuru stepped out of the room several times throughout the night to use her cell phone, sometimes calling and sometimes receiving. The one time she seemed not to be busy, Souji took the opportunity to ask about Labrys.
Mitsuru smiled at him despite the current situation. "I was surprised it took you this long to ask, Seta. In fact, the reason I arrived so late here tonight was because Aigis and I were at the lab checking up on the situation there."
"The situation?" Souji asked. Was something Shadow-related happening elsewhere while they were here at the dorm?
"Our scientists are hard at work upgrading Labrys's infrastructure so that in the future, any enemy will have a much more difficult time in hacking her system," Mitsuru explained. During the P-1 Grand Prix, Labrys had been hacked and forced to attack Yosuke. Labrys had been powerful, too, with her massive ax; Souji couldn't deny that a repeat of that incident couldn't be allowed to happen.
Still, it had been over half a year ago. "Well... How much longer will it take?"
"Our technicians wouldn't hazard a guess, but some time still, I suspect. Labrys is an older unit, so it might require additional work. I'm sorry that I cannot explain it in a more satisfactory way. The science of robotics is not my forte." She uncrossed her arms to wave her hand in a helpless gesture. "Aigis has remained behind this evening to contribute her own knowledge to the cause."
"Fair enough," Souji said. He didn't know much about that sort of thing, either, and it sounded like it made sense.
Mitsuru's phone rang once again, and she excused herself to take it, effectively ending the conversation.
Souji stifled a yawn. He'd become accustomed to going to bed at a decent hour. As the clock ticked towards midnight, both Mitsuru and Fuuka seemed to become more animated. "Midnight is when the Dark Hour struck," Mitsuru explained. "If we'll have any luck at all, it'll be then."
Midnight… It made Souji think of the Midnight Channel. It was interesting that midnight was relevant to both teams' experiences. Knowing that Shadows came from human emotions, maybe humanity's mysticism regarding that hour had forced it into being as important as it was. If he was interested in psychology, maybe he'd look into that…
A minute before midnight, Fuuka summoned her Persona once again, planning to continuously scan during the change into the next hour. They watched her carefully. Mitsuru's only sign that she was nervous was how she kept her arms crossed, one hand toying with a curl of her silky red hair.
The clock on the monitor changed to 00:00.
A sudden, blood-curdling scream forced Souji to cover his ears. Mitsuru jumped to her feet.
It had come from Fuuka. Her Persona flailed around her and she collapsed to the floor in a crumpled heap. The Persona dissipated.
"Yamagishi!" Mitsuru cried, and Souji rushed towards her.
He turned her over. Her eyes were glassy, unseeing, and her face blank. "Ahhhh…"
Souji caught Mitsuru's eyes. "Apathy Syndrome?"
"Artemisia!" Mitsuru shouted, taking out her Evoker and aiming it at her temple. Her Persona appeared before her, a feminine figure in a blue dress with coppery armor plating. A red mask covered the upper half of its face. "Nothing… Nothing!" Mitsuru hissed in irritation and cursed in an unladylike fashion. She continued scanning for several minutes, but to no avail.
Souji cradled Fuuka's head in his hands. He was reminded of Yukiko, somehow, even though they looked nothing alike...
Mitsuru didn't speak except to give a terse explanation to the paramedics. After they left, taking Fuuka with them on a stretcher, she scowled and fingered her Evoker. "We're dealing with something we aren't prepared to handle."
"What are we going to do?" Souji asked her.
"I..." she began, and her scowl deepened. She crossed her arms and tapped her foot against the ground as she thought. "Yamagishi is an important asset. I should have brought her in sooner. That makes two former SEES members afflicted, and another Gekkoukan High graduate. Is someone targeting our friends? Ikutsuki is dead, but perhaps he had allies that we are unaware of. Forgive me, Seta, but I have to think."
"It's late," Souji said. "Maybe you should rest."
"I used to stay up hours past midnight fighting Shadows," she snapped. Then she saw the concern in his eyes, and her expression softened. "No, you're right, and you have school tomorrow. I'll be in contact," she promised.