11: Norway of the Year

There's love and then there's nothing, and it took my breath away
like a hand around my throat, or like a pistol
pressed to my head, is how I am remember it.

—Bruce Weigl, The End of My Career in Dance

Everybody thinks that November third is the last operation.

The night before, they each give their own little motivational speeches, trying to cheer each other and themselves up. As if big words meant anything. As if teenagers can offer profound words to begin with.

You don't get a 'last' of anything. That's not the worst thing in the world, actually, as you look at the beanie smoothed out on the kitchen counter like a relic.

-.-.-

Hello Takaya, hello, Jin.

They are the ones ultimately responsible for Shinjiro's situation, but somehow, you blame them less than Ken, or even Shinjiro himself. These bad guys, you feel, you actually feel sorry for. If you take their perspective—well, you still wouldn't stick with those pills, but what can you say, you who let Shinji slip away in your arms, over and over again. But still, their actions make sense. And if it's just pure selfishness, you can forgive—but not needless sacrifice and petty vengeance. Those are stupid.

The difference between natural talent and pill-forced bravado is significant. You should not indulge them—to show them even the glimmer of equality to just fuel their addiction more. But you have a cruel sense of humor, so you call out Alice, in her indigo doll dress and white-frilled petticoat, white stockings that blend into her white skin, and a matching white hairband. She taps her left foot as she calls out "Die for me!" and the thin heel of her black patent Mary Janes click on the cement of the bridge. Her smirk mirrors yours as the Queen of Heart's soldiers rain down from the sky.

Despite having a Fortune arcana, Takaya is hit the first round.

"Whoa," Junpei remarks as he side-steps an attack and jumps beside you, "you look scarily like that creepy persona of yours."

"Nonsense," you give him a toothy grin, "she's got much paler skin."

Jin holds on for a couple more rounds, miraculously surviving Alice's Die For Me. He is gasping, barely able to regulate his breathing, yet somehow still immune to darkness. You frown, and Alice clicks her shoes together, like Dorothy. Her black shoes don't take her home, but you send her to the back of your skull, where she belongs. You whisper Odin, but before the one-eyed, violet-skinned god can spin his spear to bring Thunder Reign on Jin, Akihiko beats you there.

He calls on Caesar, and you can't help but feel like he is somehow betraying Shinjiro by doing so.

Jin all but crumbles to the ground, but with his last bout of strength, he stops Takaya from shooting his head once more, and flings the both of them off the bridge, into the red waters below.

You take a moment, and lingers even after Mitsuru reminds the group of their mission. You salute to the sea, and although you know this is not the last of Strega, you still feel like you witnessed death. You feel Thanatos stirring, and stroke his armor. Not yet the time, you tell him, and he compliances, furling his shields into a smooth curve again.

Up ahead, the very literal rendition of the Hanged Man is, well, hanging.

It's a longer battle than you remember, for some reason, but a later end still means an end, and you watch the Hanged Man disappear.

Victory, albeit temporary, is beneficial for morale. Your team—your peers, your children—are ecstatic, and the manifestation of that is a plan for sushi. Because yes, the best time that these people can imagine is eating sushi. (Although you do like sea urchin very much. That, and a bit of salmon roe, with tomago and pickled vegetables over rice—your stomach growls.)

You say farewell to Pharos, and cuddle him against you, pulling him on your lap. When you see him again, you won't be able to do this.

The next day—the party day, the celebratory day, the day where the truth shatters the shelter of these innocent kids—comes quietly.

You follow the events obligingly, without a fuss, and flex your calf muscles against the cross that Ikutsuki pinned you on. Aigis is staring straight at you, and you smile at her.

She won't shoot you. You know, unerringly. This is one of the few staples that never, ever changes in all repetitions: Shinjiro's love for you, Junpei's love for Chidori, Aigis's love for you, and you acing the finals.

You could, technically, have saved Mitsuru's father, as you watch him bleed out on the floor after a gun-down with Ikutsuki. In fact, you vaguely remember trying once, when you were going after the girl's heart and bed. He didn't believe you—of course he didn't, why should he trust a teenage emo kid over his long-time partner? He said he would take precautions—and his precaution was to carry a gun around. Which he would have brought, anyway, for whatever reason.

The curse of Cassandra, you muse. You could try harder—and you did, the next cycle, not just trying to convince him of Ikutsuki's guilt, but also pleading for his daughter's health wellbeing. He took that to heart, and wore a bullet vest. He survived the night, and Mitsuru was grateful towards you. The problem wasn't that though—Mitsuru still grew, although almost a month later, but you didn't need her manpower at that point. No, it was that Yukari felt betrayed by you—by the team—and Fuuka, quiet, peace-loving Fuuka, took Yukari's side. Cold war broke out among your team, and when Akihiko snapped at both Yukari and Fuuka one night, Ken stormed out, claiming that both he and Shinjiro were just hardheads who refused to listen to other people. Fair enough, really. Junpei jumped to Akihiko's defense, being the fanboy he was, and Mitsuru, the source of all this fighting, went out to get Ken, but not soon enough. Ken was hit by a car that night, and a piece of steel did what Shadows could not do.

That was the final straw—the team disbanded, and you led the new SEES group, with only you, Junpei, and Akihiko. Mitsuru was there in name, but she couldn't shake off the shackles of guilt, and Koromaru stood over Ken's grave much like he did for his previous owner's. Life went on, or so you thought blindly, until the day of deliverance came, and you failed, because, you realized for the first time, these people are not only pathways to personas, but a power that Nyx recognizes.

The next time, Mitsuru's crazy father went and confronted Ikutsuki straight up, and Ikutsuki killed him right there.

Then the next time, Ikutsuki overheard Takeharu talking about you raising suspicion, and suspended you from that month's mission. One can imagine how well that cycle went.

Then you stopped trying.

What do people call this? A synecdoche.

Aigis lowers her firearm, and says your name. You respond by calling out hers, and the two of you lock gaze like star-crossed lovers in one of Yukari's crappy romance flicks. Aigis doesn't understand what is happening, and you understand her: because the more you live, the less you are able to understand people, and more you start to feel like Aigis. Or at least, what you think Aigis must feel.

The indestructible Mitsuru pours over her father (who actually was shot to the side of his chest, left of his heart—he probably had a punctured lung, but there is an exit wound, and if the bone fragments don't travel to his heart, he might survive, maybe). You catch Akihiko's eye and tilt your head, telling him to go pick her up. You pull Yukari aside and tell her to call an ambulance (because Fuuka turns into a weeping bundle of nerves, and Junpei stutters when he's stressed, yet Yukari is surprisingly stoic in the face of shock and death). You go over to Aigis and make sure she's properly disarmed.

"You're so brave," Ken whispers as you take his hand to herd him out.

Kid, it's easy to front indifference as courage.

-.-.-

Theo asks you to show him your school, so you bring him to Gekkoukan. You don't need the Red Muffler, but you like bringing him to this place. He treats it like it's new every time, despite you knowing that he retains the memory and knowledge as much as you do.

He asks for a school lunch, just like he always does, and the vendor gives him a pre-packaged ham sandwich. He is surprised—and immediately looks at you.

You shrug and pretend like you didn't give the vendor to give it to him, and that he doesn't know that you did that.

"Thank you," he says, digging into his bottomless wallet to pay for this small kindness, and it is unclear to whom the gratitude is directed towards.

Is this Theo being shy, you think to yourself, as you take him up the flight of stairs to show him the classroom that he had seen so many times.

"What's my favourite food?" you ask him, standing on the podium.

"Uni ikura don," he answers expertly.

"What's my favourite color?" you continue to grill him.

"It changes every few years, but lately, glaucous blue," he goes on confidently as well.

"My favorite perfume?"

"You have four—the fruity saffron leather one, the sweet oud one, the simple white floral notes one, and the milk gunpowder one."

He hit them perfectly. "My favourite book?"

"That's a trick question."

"My favourite person?"

"Does Aigis count as a 'person'?"

"No," you say, because he is right but you want to hear who he names next.

He pauses, "Then Junpei, although you wish it's Shinjiro."

"You've gone from having a lot to learn about me to knowing me inside out," you admit.

"I can never learn enough," he says humbly.

What more is there to know about you? "Let's go see the track field next," you tell him instead.

-.-.-

Bebe is kind of a cool person. You don't say that enough, but he really is—a person cannot break the bounds of gender more than that kid, and the moment you think you can put him into a box, he breaks out of it and asks you out. You are both flattered and confused, although in a good way. You think he is too strange for the world, and you are right.

In a way, all of you are too strange for this world.

-.-.-

Ryoji.

You know he is coming today, but still the sight of him—windswept black hair shocking against his pallid face, his blue eyes burning, his scarf wrapped so tightly around his neck that it looks like it's strangling him—makes you gasp and have a sinking feeling and yet long for something vague and unnamed.

"Pleased to meet you," he says to the class, while looking at you in the eye.

You've been waiting for him to show up. You take his hand, but not in the way that people shakes hands, instead wrapping your palm around the base of his hand and squeezing it a little, like the way you used to take Pharos's hand to surprise him.

His eyes widen, but very quickly a grin spreads over his face.

-.-.-

Akihiko wants to see you after school, though, and you brush off Ryoji's suggestion that you show him around. He already knows his way around, the cheeky bastard; and there will be time, time for you to show him, time for you to talk, time for you to look at him and tell him that he is a little bit of you.

But now was the time to go to Akihiko.

(Besides, Ryoji needs to live a little himself, no?)

Akihiko is already at the top of the roof, leaning his elbows against the railing surrounding the edges, looking into the distance, either pensive or constipated.

"I thought I was strong enough," he says, to himself or to you, it was debateable. "Or at least, I thought I was beginning to get strong enough. I have to get strong enough, stronger, strong." The last bit is definitely to himself. He punches over the balusters of the roof, mimicking the motion of boxing like he's in the rings right now.

Charlie Chaplin, you know, killed himself because he realized that his art about the alienation of the everyman is entirely too true. You are glad, however, that Akihiko does not think so much, and never realizes that his training is just as menial and meaningless as folding paper cranes a hundred thousand times. There is no satisfaction because there is no end to be reached, but the idea of one keeps him going.

You secretly think that Akihiko is kind of dumb like that—not dumb in the sense of bad grades, but definitely no self-awareness, and no introspection. Shinjiro is so much more intelligent of a soul, and sometimes you think Shinji can pierce through your affected blasé attitude and see the girl who just hates everybody. Not Akihiko though, and maybe that's why you like him.

He has stopped punching, and is listlessly staring into the distance. You feel like part of a documentary, the way his gaze seems to hold such intensity.

You've always liked Akihiko, more than the other ones. You have dated every single one of them now, collecting their hearts and drying them between pages like a preserved flower. In some cycles, you are even a boy, and you have felt Yukari's trembling on lovers' lane, the creamy smoothness up Mitsuru's thighs, the electric buzz at the back Aigis's neck, the foreign coolness of Elizabeth's nails, the sweet dimple on Fuuka's back…

You've find yourself gravitating toward Akihiko though, more and more, until every story is now the same, the one where you flip the boxing champion on his back and he lets you.

Your timing is always off though—he is either in love with Shinjiro (in many different ways, the least painful of which being he's just plain gay), with Mitsuru (who has always been a little in love with both you and Akihiko, attracted to strong yet fragile figures like a baby to its pacifier), or with his dead little sister (who apparently had the same liquid brightness in her eyes as you do, fuck that). Even when he is in love with you.

But then again, you're always a little in love with Ryoji, and allows Theo too close to you, and loves Shinjiro just a little too close to your heart, so you suppose it's only karma.

Ha. Karma.

"Shinji used to come up here," he says all of a sudden, marking the beginning of a long story of reminiscence. Sometimes, this bothers you, but this time, you let the words slip out of his mouth and into the air in front of the both of you, slowly lolling into the distance, the future, as if talking about this guy can keep him alive.

"You have to understand, he was always better," he says emphatically, as if it's a particularly difficult or important concept.

You don't disagree with him.

"I've never been better than Shinji at anything. Anything. Including crying the loudest at the orphanage, or getting more pudding smeared on me. The only thing that I had managed to best Shinji was being born a solid seven minutes before him. At least, according to the caretaker at the orphanage."

Then, quietly and then rapidly, he says "It's Shinji who made me. He first showed, in his utter, selfish defiance towards the nun who led the orphanage, what it means to be human. I first met him when he got in trouble with Mother Francine because he got—either picked up or stole—a bag of garlic rolls, and he refused to share it with the other kids—including me. She thought—Mother Francine—well, Francine, I guess—that it was an early sign of the devil. She starved him in an empty, dark room. I snuck into his cell to share my bread with him, but he pushed me to the ground and ate it all. I thought that enormously unfair, and we fought. He beat me to the ground. It wasn't even an actual fight. It was just him beating me up. But for some reason, I started following him. I guess I was always drawn to power and strength."

You are surprised—you haven't thought Akihiko to be so self-aware. (You have a tendency to think the worst in people.)

"It took on from there. He beat me in everything he or I attempted. He was taller, and grew taller for every inch that I grew. He had a taste in music and art and the world, even if it was disdain, before I would even hear the name of the band or the artist or the political scandal. He found out about jerking off before me, and had to tell me how it wasn't wrong, and how to avoid chaffing. He failed the private lessons the nuns gave us spectacularly whereas I passed as average, and he got all the attention, polarized between the doting and the disapproving. He ran quicker when we got caught making trouble. He had nimbler fingers that could pass cheating notes in exams and fix loosened buttons. During the summer, he got tanned—I know it's hard to believe with him now, paler than some feminine beauty product advertisement—but he got tanned and my skin peeled."

You wonder: is this Akihiko in love with Shinjiro?

"It was Shinji who made me. He walked out of the confined space of his punishment that day, and clapped me on the back. It was he who brought me up to women—grown women—and said to them that I have a large dick. It was he who gave me a desire to please women, because it seemed like he could do it so easily. He who made me strive in class, because without exceling, I would never shine more than his failure. Who is lying in white sheets dying right now, making more of a statement than me, fighting my way through a Tarturus that's not even the Tarturus that I imagined. Who gave me my first smoke. Who turned on the television one day and it was that match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. Who laughed at me when I asked where children came from—who later that night laughed with me when we got kicked out of a college bar for being painfully underage and out of place. Who was a better big brother to me than I was to Miki, because he didn't even like Miki, even with her big, wide eyes that seemed to—she was quiet, but her eyes weren't. He thought that she was too boring—he thought everybody was too boring, probably including me. But he still took care of her, better than I could, because he knew I wanted to but didn't know how to. It was he who introduced me to girls who thought I should treat them better because they were girls, and who got upset when I didn't, and told others lies about me and attacked me—or I think they were lies—that I was cruel, that I was stupid, or slow, or too quick, and I hadn't even begun to fully understand what these allegations meant. I hated them, until I started hating myself. It was Shinji who then taught me to divide the world into 'them' and 'us."

Is there such a clear distinction, you think, between in love and loving? Or at least a need for a clear line? Because you think you won't get it, and you don't think you should care.

"He had sex first—long before I even came close. He moved out of the orphanage first, before he could convince me to run away as well. He got accepted into school first, with a scholarship for the underprivileged. He had ideas first, scoffing at Kerouac and imitating Amory Blaine before I even knew Great Gatsby. He got into fighting first, bringing home his first underground pay check—five hundred measly, bloody yen—before I even started boxing."

Is that how—was that—man, they had it rough, you think. You haven't really ever wondered about their pre-SEES days. You have never really worried about money, not since, what, the third cycle, and that is too long ago for you to remember. It's like trying to understand how people have trouble getting oxygen or something—it's just so there. But yeah, you guess they had to have some sort of income before Mitsuru swooped in with her third-generation nouveau-riche generosity. Huh. You are a bigger asshole than you realize.

"He got broken ribs and healed before I could even bring a fake ID real enough to get through the hot dog stand front of the boxing ring. Even then, he brought home the rent and I brought home the sweets money. Until one day he threw down the gloves and told me to keep going."

He looks at you, quizzically, and you remember that your bright, vivacious expression never suggests any authentic feeling. You bring the nuance of empathetic sorrow to your voice as you say, "Go on, I feel like I am understanding him better—and you."

He decides that you are genuine—and who says he's wrong?—so he continues, "So you have to understand, that he has never been anything but the best, at everything, until the day that I—we found out that I had… that he couldn't… There are people, very rarely, but there are people who are sentient during the Dark Hour, but for some reason can't… Shinji is one of those. For whatever, he can't conjure a facet of his personality strong enough for a persona."

You nod, because you understand what it's like to have the very basis of your world pulled out from underneath you.

"All of a sudden, I was the one with potential, the one that people counted on. The one that people looked at with both awe and fear and a little jealousy for the utter, mindless passion I had for it. Mitsuru certainly was jealous, because she was past the point of treating it like an adventure and I was still all Narnia about it. But that wasn't Shinji. At least… it wasn't that Shinji was jealous of me as much as he was disappointed in himself."

He shouldn't be, you think wistfully, and you wish there is—was—some way that you could have conveyed that to him. He is still the best—better than Pharos, despite being part of you; better than Akihiko, even though you love him; better than Ryoji, although you always have trouble resisting him; better than Ken, who's not even a man yet; better than Theo, who cannot begin to fathom the variety and depth of your emotions as a full-fledged human; better than Junpei, despite your unconditional and almost motherly love for his stupid self.

"It was I who made Shinji," Akihiko says, unwittingly poetic about it, "And I have to take full responsibility for it."

He stops talking, and you never began talking, but you lay a hand on his arm and he leans towards you, and you close in to kiss his hairline and he turns to kiss you on the mouth and somehow, between the lines, you tell him that he is in love with you and he agrees.

Never once has it been perfect yet, but it's good to have something to strive for.

-.-.-

Ryoji calls you, even though you never gave him your number.

You are careful of touching Ryoji. There's always a bloodthirsty voice in the back of your head that just wants to crush his thin, artistic hands to a pulp and grind his bones to ashes. You know you can, physically at least. So when he says that this is a forbidden love, you stay away and watch as his eyes fill with a disappointment that you feel all too keenly, close to your heart.

"Being lovers means there's nobody else in the world that you care more for, right?" he asks you, and his voice is bright and nauseatingly innocent.

He's wrong, you know—not lovers, not just lovers, not even usually lovers—but you don't know how to explain it.

He takes your silence for agreement and touches your hand.

-.-.-

Oh right, there's a school trip to Kyoto.

You understand that the Bahamas is a little long to fly to, but just once, you'd like somewhere that's not boring Kyoto. Or, you know, one hot springs trip where the dude don't spy, and you have to deal with the aftermath.

It's not that you even mind them peeping—peeping toms are much more manageable, in your mind, than Kenji, who simply fantasized about peeping, the creep. I mean, Yukari's rack is the best you've ever seen, but Mitsuru's legs are just to die for, and Fuuka might need a bit more development, but her waist is barely a handful. And of course Aigis is a robot, so she is perfectly proportioned to the Golden Ratio. You don't really understand why anybody's upset, but then again, you're the only one who has seen all of them naked (and therefore be seen naked).

Well, except Junpei. But Junpei barely counts as a sentient being half the time.

Mitsuru calls on Artemisia and freezes the guys—in her fit of anger, she forgets that she had told everybody that it is both impossible and life-threatening to try to use personas in real life. Lies upon lies—but you don't care. Persona use is strictly prohibited outside of the Dark Hour and Tartarus, but what is the point of having superpowers if you can't abuse them? And Yukari and Fuuka don't even question it, so used are they to receiving everything Mitsuru does as god-given.

Ryoji allows himself to be frozen by a mere small ice Bufu, whereas Akihiko freezes before the Bufu even hits him. Who would have thought, you tug your towel tighter and flick your wet hair, that you would go for such a guy.

Not that you have a better choice—a comatose corpse and Death who faints from too much steam, of all things.

-.-.-

Chidori dies, in Junpei's stead.

It is today that you lose Junei, not to death, whose sweet, embracing touch is gentle and unbiased, but to the voice inside his head, to the Chidori who proclaims to love him and want to be with him forever.

And she does. Forever.

Which isn't even that long of a time, really.