The Mystery of Ren Amamiya - Lightning99

Stream 1:

Ann Takamaki

Good luck, Ann. I'm sure you'll do great.

Ann Takamaki read Ren Amamiya's simple text message a fifth time, her chest fluttering from the accompanying red heart. The screen faded to black, but she didn't see her smile nor her eyes reflected at her. Instead, she saw his face in her mind's eye, Joker's sly grin curling his lips but Ren's soft eyes that seemed to stare straight into her heart, aflame with the passion he masked behind his cool front. She dropped back into her pink gaming chair, let her phone fall against her chest and closed her eyes, expelling a trembling sigh that pulled all of the tension in her arms and legs with it.

'Thank you, Ren,' Ann whispered into the empty room, hugging her phone like a child did their teddy at night.

But she didn't reply to his message. If she had a stressful day at work, an ice cream sundae would be on the dining room table when she stepped through the door. If she didn't want to exercise one morning, Ren would drag her out on a run. And if she needed to rant, he always listened. At this point, thank you had probably lost all meaning. She decided, with a wide smile, that a kiss when he returned from LeBlanc later would be more than satisfactory.

And, honestly, another part of her didn't want to remove the message from her lock screen.

When Ann opened her eyes, she looked at the clock in the corner of her computer. Five minutes to seven. Five minutes to the start of the project she had been organising since Futaba had discussed live streaming during idle chatter at LeBlanc one weekend.

She rolled the chair closer to the desk, placed her phone on the corner, and leaned over her keyboard. She started hitting keys and clicking the mouse, triple-checking her settings. Satisfied that everything was in order, Ann then clicked on her second tab that displayed her social media. She dragged the mouse to the post icon, but as she went to click it, she stopped. She let the cursor hover there for a few seconds, then flicked the scroll wheel instead.

All of Ann's previous posts rolled down the screen. The newest was from a week ago, with a short paragraph confirming when she would start her stream. She clicked on the comments and read through the first few, all of which proclaimed each person's excitement in their own ways; the first used slang, the second a copious amount of exclamation marks, and the third used all caps and emojis. She felt the ghost of the smile she had worn a week ago return to her face and scrolled on.

The next post was a photograph displaying the spare room in her and Ren's apartment, which she had converted into her new workspace. It was an average-sized room, slightly longer than it was wide, with a view into a park to her left. It was decorated with a miscellany of items: on the wall to her right hung a Rise Kujikawa poster just barely poking into her camera shot; neon, multi-coloured lights hung, not yet glowing in the dusk light, across the walls and atop the bookcase in the corner; a couple of Yusuke's paintings, souvenirs from their road trip, and gifts she had received from friends filled any empty space. A long red poster of the Phantom Thieves' logo hung behind her monitor.

Ann smiled and nodded, stretching herself out, her legs dangling in the space beneath her desk where she had tied the wires from her set up into a neat cable tray. Despite the hassle she and Ren had endured to make it so, the room was perfect.

After scanning a few comments, Ann clicked off the picture and looked at the time. She scrolled back to the top and typed a quick alert that her stream would start soon. As she made to post it, her hand hovered and stiffened over her mouse once more. She looked again at her phone and, after a few contemplative moments, clicked the mouse, sending her message off into the ever-sprawling void that was social media. She wondered how many screens it was about to pop up on.

Ann turned her attention to her second monitor and to the five-minute timer bolded in the centre of the screen, accompanied by a sticker of a Chibi Ann eating some sweets – generously created by Yusuke for this very moment. With another click of her mouse, the pink numbers flicked from 5:00 to 4:59, each second adding to the speed of Ann's heartbeat in her chest.

It was about a minute into the countdown, while one of Alice Hiiragi's songs was playing, that people started joining. Usernames appeared in the chat bar with messages adjoined to each one, exclaiming and proclaiming various things. At first, Ann could read everything, and it was as if a perfect Patra hit her right where her apprehension had been:

AnnFann101: It's finally happening! OMG!

Golden_Guy: Ann!

DynamiteKitten142: Hiiiiiiiii!

Featherman616: Yooo, let's goo!

PhantomThiefRai: I can't wait. I've been up since five in the morning.

HiiragiInWonderland: Alice Hiiragi song? Crossover when?

Messages along the same vein continued popping up in the chat box for a minute or two more, and then about a hundred people crept up out of nowhere, and Ann could only read every few greetings. Even so, she fumbled with the mouse, scrolling back up and scanning the chat as fast as her eyes allowed.

The countdown finished. As Ann clicked her mouse a few times more, swapping the countdown for her camera view neatly nestled in a pink and red border, the chat sped up even more. She realised it would probably be a good idea to increase her proficiency for future streams.

This time, every message was pretty much 'Hi' with a varying number of 'I's, capitalisations, exclamation marks, or interspersed with random letters and symbols. Ann responded the only way she could think of: she greeted as many people as she could in return, by name, with a smile and a loud, clear voice punctuated by giggles.

Then the chat slowed down, and the actual messages started appearing. She saw complete sentences, questions, and comments with varying degrees of grammatical accuracy.

Ann smiled through all the comments about how beautiful she was with not a single skipped heartbeat or a flushed cheek. She had been complimented that way all of her life, after all. The only time such comments flustered her anymore was when Ren said them; he had some sort of flair when he did it, a genuine, loving timbre to his tone that forced her to blush.

Other than the comments about her looks and modelling, people asked how she was and what she would be talking about today. Ann did not see one negative comment. Even if there were any, she supposed that Futaba, as her moderator, would slam the ban-hammer on them faster than Ann could see them.

'Hi, everyone!' Ann said, choosing that moment to address the chat at large, waving to the camera with a grin that may as well have been the new resting position for her lips. 'Since you're here, most of you probably already know me, but I'll introduce myself anyway. My name is Ann Takamaki, and I'm a model. You may have seen me on the cover of Vague a few times or in some fashion shows if you're into those.'

Ann readjusted herself in her seat, fiddling with the hem of her t-shirt – well, it was Ren's t-shirt, evidenced by how it was slightly too large on her, but it was still hers.

'Before we properly get started, I'd like to address one question everyone's been asking up to today. Why I'm starting a stream.'

Ann paused for a moment.

'As I said, I'm a model. I love modelling. I think of it as a way to inspire other people, to show them that they're beautiful, inside and out. It's not just about looking beautiful. It's about expressing who you are and letting the world see that. I… like to think I can be a ray of light to other people through my modelling, and I have already seen some evidence of that. I've seen people discuss me and my impact on social media, I was invited to the news, and there are even fan accounts out there. It's more than I could have hoped.

'But recently, I've realised I don't have the kind of fan interaction I would like. People sometimes come up to me in the street and message me on social media, and I love that, but it isn't enough for me. Call me greedy, but I want more, and this stream is exactly what more is. In my opinion, at least. Through this stream, I want to chat with you a bit more, get to know you, and answer any questions you might have.

'That was all I wanted it to be at first, but then I decided that I might not be able to sustain a few hours talking about the same things every time.' Ann paused, then chuckled to herself. 'No, actually, I probably could. I love to chat. But I don't want you to be bored, so every so often, I will ask a friend of mine or an acquaintance, maybe someone important in society, to drop in and chat with us. That way, you can ask them questions too, and we can cover a wide range of topics. Of course, I will only be able to stream when I have a break from modelling, but I'll try my best to stream as much as I can. How does that sound?'

Ann paused again, watching as the chat became a wall of thumbs-up emojis, interspersed between which were a few other assenting comments. She clapped her hands together.

'Great! It sounds like we have a plan, then. It'll just be me today, so feel free to ask away. What do you want to know?' After a moment, Ann added, 'Within reason. I'm not going to tell you where I live or anything.'

And so, the questions flooded in, different people asking different things, different personalities blending in the chat into something special. Ann didn't stop smiling as she read through comment after comment, giggling and rocking a little in her chair when some viewers posted messages she found particularly funny. Then, when she saw one message in particular, she laughed louder than she had yet. If the unusually accurate username hadn't been there – which was marked with a badge to show that they were somehow already the highest-level member – how they addressed her was telling enough of their identity.

Morgana: Hi, Lady Ann!

'Hi, Morgana. How are you typing?' Ann asked.

Morgana: I'm borrowing the laptop in LaBlanc.

'I see,' Ann said, nodding, then laughing again at the image she conjured in her mind of Morgana using a laptop like a human. 'Did you get permission for that?'

Morgana: Just who do you think I am?

Ann rolled her eyes. 'That's right. Sorry, Morgana. What do you think of my stream so far?'

Morgana: It's purrfect, Lady Ann! Will you take me out for sushi when you've finished?!

'Oh, of course, I will, Morgana, you flatter me,' Ann said, swiping her right hand down in what, to her mind, was the action of someone much posher than she was.

Morgana: What was that supposed to be?

Before Ann could respond to his comment, another one popped up, and that image, too, made her laugh.

Morgana: I'm now receiving death stares from across the café…

After her brief back and forth with Morgana, Ann returned her attention to the rest of the chat. She explained and answered as many comments as she could, from describing her goings-on that weekend to a brief breakdown of her morning routine, from her favourite food – which took far too long to decide – to her exercise routine. Several capitalised, exclamation-marked messages appeared in the chat when she explained that her routine was more sporadic than they seemed to have anticipated. She pretended not to see the few people asking, 'are you single'.

Other than a few comments that were a little too invading and a few deleted ones, every message Ann read was supportive and kind, inquisitive but respectful.

She continued chatting to her fans as the light through the windows dimmed to black, and her glowing monitor and lights were the only things illuminating the room. She continued chatting after that, too, long into the evening because she had finally found it – a way to interact with her fans properly.

Her dream to become a beacon of light to people seemed closer than ever.

Hi! Thank you for deciding to give this first chapter a read! I just want to say a few things going into this little story.

Persona 5 is my favourite game ever, so I'm excited to finally explore the world with my writing. Not that I explore the world much but... Essentially, my idea for this is to be a funny, upbeat 'where are they now' story, looking into where I think the Phantom Thieves could be a few years on, as well as tackling how normal, everyday people would view Ren Amamiya, our protagonist. There's no huge plot, just a bunch of fun and goofiness with the characters. Rated T because, well, paranoia and perhaps a word or too that are 'inappropriate'.

For this story, I upload two chapters a week, Monday and Friday. It's all written, so it's just about getting it out!

I hope you enjoy! :)