A/N: Since I can't message them - a quick thank you to the people who commented last time but aren't registered on this site. Appreciated your comments and ideas nonetheless. (Same goes for all reviewers, of course, but I try to respond to each of you individually)

Story so far: The team defeated Namatame, but were left struggling with the aftermath - which, for Kanji, meant an unexpected and very oddly timed visit from Naoto.

In this part: Naoto's night does not improve - but at least there's always Featherman.

Returning to her apartment was the smart course of action. Never leaving it in the first place would have been a smarter choice still.

Naoto had begun to tell herself this as she left the shrine, continued doing so after Kanji persuaded her to walk the short distance to Tatsumi Textiles - and, as she watched him mutter curses and fumble with the shop's locked door, wished she could actually believe it.

The lock finally clicked. Kanji pulled open the door and glanced over his shoulder. "You're gonna come in, yeah?"

She stared at him, knuckles white around the handle of her raised umbrella.

Go home. She would go home.

Unfortunately, Sukuna-Hikona did not agree. An insufferable buzzing began in the back of Naoto's mind, all revolving around how she had walked over here in the middle of the night already exhausted and was in no fit shape to walk back again. Naoto wondered if her Persona had been responsible for her coming here to start with - then realized Kanji was now staring at her and waiting for an answer. She gave a slight nod.

Kanji broke into a nervous grin, his relief palpable. Preferring not to consider the reasons why, she closed her umbrella and followed him into the store. Despite the darkness inside, he strode to the back of the shop without trouble and switched on the overhead lighting. Naoto's eyes were still sore from when she'd been- -from earlier, and they took a moment to adjust to the light.

This was her fourth visit to Tatsumi Textiles, more than enough to construct an accurate image of its layout. As she placed her umbrella in the stand, she subconsciously ticked off items in her mental catalogue: the display tables covered in blue cloth, the shelves and racks of fabric against the right wall, the hats and scarves hanging from pegs on the left. Everything was as she remembered - except for the shelf of stuffed and knitted animals barely visible behind one of the tables.

When Kanji had first told her about his sewing hobby - or rather, she'd hassled him into honesty - he'd requested she keep his secret. Naoto had obliged, and yet a month later the dolls were on open display in his mother's shop. Something had clearly changed.

"You - I, uh, I can get a towel." At the sound of his voice, Naoto looked over to Kanji. He gestured to the door at the back of the shop. "So you can get dry."

The drizzle was still falling outside. Drying herself off prior to walking home in the rain would be pointless. Coming here had been and continued to be pointless.

Naoto had just opened her mouth to speak (absolute refusal was the only sensible course) when the rear door opened. Since Kanji was standing in front of it, she couldn't see who'd walked through, but the voice made it immediately clear. "Kanji-chan, what on earth are you doing still up?"

Kanji pivoted. "S-sorry, Ma, I was - Naoto and me went out, s'all."

"Naoto-kun too?" Tatsumi-san peered around her son and met Naoto's eye. "It's far too late for you both to be wandering about."

"Ah. Tatsumi-san." Naoto tipped into an abrupt bow. "I sincerely apologize for the disturbance, I was just on my way- -"

"Home? At this time of night and in this weather?" Tatsumi-san clucked, ushering Kanji aside. "Don't be silly."

"B-but I-"

Her expression was gentle yet reproachful, a mixture that made Naoto feel like a five-year-old. "I can't imagine why you were out there to begin with! You boys have no common sense." She turned to Kanji. "Kanji-chan, go pull out the spare bedding. Naoto-kun, do you need to let your parents know where you are?"

A vague sense of panic had set in. Naoto floundered. "No, th-they aren't- -Tatsumi-san, I truly appreciate your generosity, but I - I -" Think, Shirogane! "I - don't have any bedclothes. S-so of course, I must return to - "

As excuses went, it was terrible. Tatsumi-san remained unfazed. "Oh, Kanji-chan has plenty of pyjama sets." She looked Naoto up and down. "They'll be quite big on you, but it's only one night. Now, let's go upstairs, hmm?"

Naoto could devise another, better excuse. Dozens of them. But for all her lack of social understanding, she'd been raised with good manners. Genuinely refusing such an offer would be impolite…and even when Tatsumi-san had been scolding them, her eyes had looked kind. Kanji's own incongruous gentleness now made far more sense; an observation Naoto immediately shoved aside in favour of nodding and following Tatsumi-san up to the second floor.

Kanji was standing at the top of the stairs, clutching a stack of folded bedding and taking up most of the narrow hallway. "Where am I puttin' this?"

Tatsumi-san waved at the door immediately to her left. "Your room, dear."

Naoto blinked.

Kanji, ashen-faced and wide-eyed, appeared in danger of passing out. "My-my room?"

"Yes. You boys can share, can't you?"

After two abortive attempts at forming sentences, Naoto settled for the most eloquent response she could manage. "N-nonothat'snot - I'm- -"

"Naoto snores," Kanji blurted. "Bad. Like, rattling the windows."

This was a complete lie. Naoto almost launched into an instinctive denial, before she realized that Kanji's mother appeared to be taking him at his word.

"Well, you'd better use the spare room, then," Tatsumi-san said, with a quiet sigh and a dubious expression. "Though it isn't as tidy as I'd like."

"I-I'll take care of it tomorrow," Kanji stammered. He made a sharp gesture toward the end of the hallway. "Go to bed, yeah?"

She slowly shook her head, an oddly indulgent smile playing over her lips. "Very well. Goodnight, dear. Sleep well, Naoto-kun," she added, then turned and walked down the hall, Kanji and Naoto both watching in silence.

It wasn't until the door to Tatsumi-san's room clicked shut that Naoto rounded on Kanji and leveled him with the sternest glare she could muster. "I do not snore."

"S-sorry. Hadta think quick," he said, voice low. He shifted the blankets and sheets under one arm, freeing the other to open the door to Naoto's right. "She doesn't know you're - - y'know."

Exactly how Kanji's mother didn't know was a mystery that even Naoto couldn't fathom. Anyone running a small-town shop had to be privy to the rumour mill. Perhaps Tatsumi-san simply chose to believe what was easiest; precisely the attitude that had enabled Naoto to convince so many people for so long.

She shrugged her shoulders in an effort to relieve their tension. "I assume she'd be offended if I left."

"Prob'ly." Still standing in the doorway of the spare room, Kanji had fixed his gaze on what seemed to be a fascinating spot on the opposite wall. "And…I-I don't think y'should, anyway."

Naoto's stomach did a flip worthy of a gymnast. She glared at his socked feet. "…Why?"

Silence. An uncomfortably long one. Naoto refused to look up, but imagining his flustered expression was no challenge - except for the fact that she shouldn't be imagining Kanji Tatsumi at all. She tugged down the brim of her cap, simultaneously frustrated at the flare of heat across her face and grateful that Kanji's feet were unlikely to notice it.

Finally, he found a response. "Well…y-you ain't slept all night, dammit, and it's still raining. Don't worry, Ma won't bother you, I won't either - uh, n-not that I'd- -"

"Of course not," Naoto cut in.

"Yeah." He stepped inside the room, put down the bedding, and opened a cupboard on the far wall. "Lemme get this set up."

It was a task she could have easily performed alone. She wanted to tell Kanji as much, but swallowed the impulse; she was a guest. There were certain behaviours she needed to follow. He might take offence if she intervened in his preparations, improbable a prospect as that seemed.

Besides, he was being very thorough. Naoto had grown accustomed to sleeping on Western-style beds during her travels and chose to continue the trend in her Inaba apartment, but watching Kanji lay out the mattress and futon reminded her of earlier years spent living at her grandfather's estate. She'd made only brief visits there after turning thirteen; the heavy caseload she'd taken on since then precluded unnecessary distractions.

…Kanji was unnecessary. And very distracting.

The bedding assembled, he stood up. "Done. You need anything else?"

At some point, Naoto had begun biting her lip. It seemed suddenly important to say…something. "Kanji - -"

He frowned down at her, grey eyes wary. "What?"

Tired. She was tired, and emotional, and a hundred other things a professional detective had no business being. She cleared her throat. "You're supposed to lend me pyjamas."

"Oh! Right. Wait here a sec." He walked out into the hallway and opened his bedroom's door.

Not wanting to pry - or at least not wanting Kanji to catch her doing so - Naoto perched on a wooden chair in the corner of the room and rested her elbows on her thighs.

This entire night had been horribly disorientating. The shrine, most of all. Why had she asked Kanji to accompany her? If she'd gone there alone, nobody would have seen that she'd - - how tired she'd been, and was, and how perhaps such tiredness could make people behave in ways they normally didn't. Unprofessional ways which no-one else ought to witness. But Kanji had seemed like the best choice; the one person other than Souji whom Naoto could trust not to judge her. More than that, he was- -

Naoto sat up and ran her hand over her face. She was sleep-deprived. Everything would make sense in the morning.

"Uh. I got 'em." Kanji walked back in the room and practically threw at her whatever he'd been holding.

She looked down, inspecting the bundle that had landed in her lap. Pyjamas, as expected. Naoto hadn't, however, anticipated the bunny rabbits. White ones, hopping across the blue fabric of the shirt and pants - both of which looked far too big. But Kanji had over thirty centimeters and at least as many kilos on her; any clothes he could provide would make her Shadow's lab-coat appear custom-tailored.

"Oh. Thank you," she said.

For some reason, Kanji did not appreciate the response. "Don't laugh, alright?" he muttered, folding his arms and shooting an irritated glare at the futon. "S'hard to find stuff that fits me an' I had the fabric anyway an' I figured you like blue and - -"

"No, it's the size. They're too large, I'll look ridiculous."

"No you won't," Kanji blurted, then flushed a spectacular shade of red. "I-I mean, they're - just pyjamas."

…This was intolerable. Trapped in someone else's house, being forced to borrow his clothing, when just being around him inexplicably made you feel secure and uncomfortable at the same time and didn't that mean- -

Naoto shot up from the chair, pyjamas clutched to her chest. "I-I appreciate the loan, nonetheless."

"S'fine. I-I don't wear that stuff often anyway. Shorts and t-shirts are easier and- " Midway through recounting his choice of bedroom attire, Kanji stopped short and attacked his hair with one hand. "Uh, yeah! So thass cool. G'night." With that, he turned to leave.

"Kanji-kun, wait."

He stopped in the doorway and turned halfway, one hand gripping the frame. "…Yeah?"

There were many possible responses here, such as please assist me in escaping out the window or I preferred my empty apartment to your insane mother - but Naoto, exhausted and resigned to her fate, settled on the simplest. "Um...thank you. For - for earlier."

Kanji gave a strange sort of smile; nervous and pleased and awkward, all at once. "S'nothing," he mumbled, and left the room.

The floor was littered with bodies. Corpses. An investigation was therefore required.

Naoto stepped carefully around the first (face-down, silver-grey hair soaked scarlet) while keeping a careful eye on the second and third (small, a child in a stained pink dress; long-limbed, metal piercings barely visible under blood).

There were others, too (four, five, six) but they were dangling in the air like puppets. Two of them were clutching broken corpses of their own. Presumably they were conducting separate investigations. Naoto raised her hand to tip her cap - a sign to them that she would not interfere - and realized she was still holding her revolver.

The grip felt warm. The barrel was still too hot to touch. She opened the chamber; three bullets were missing.

Something sharp and terrible seared through her chest, as if a spike had been driven clean through.

Why had she -

Seta. He'd deserved it. Seta was everything: competent, calm, charismatic. Controlled. Naoto's sudden flare of anger almost - almost - overwhelmed the guilt. Seta had no Shadow, Seta had never been unraveled in front of his peers, Seta had - - been trying to help her.

Unwilling to look at him any longer - and equally desperate not to acknowledge the other two bodies at all - Naoto turned around.

There were two figures behind her (footsteps, she should have listened for footsteps). Both were vague and shapeless, but as the fog cleared and the smell of scorched flesh filled the air, they somehow became achingly familiar. Her mother and father. They could fix this.

...But why were they burning?

Of course. The car had caught fire after the crash. Careless of her not to remember, when she'd enacted the scene so many times in her head.

Head spinning, Naoto tried to focus on each of them in turn, uncertain whether they were burned beyond recognition or she could simply no longer remember their faces. The one on her left - her mother? - was the first to speak. You failed, Naoto.

Naoto's throat felt impossibly tight. Why had she failed? Where had the fault occurred? She could untangle and trace back the threads, isolate the most significant factors – procrastination, distraction with trivialities, her pathetic attempts to ally herself with others -

- -But in the end, they all led back to the same conclusion.

Her father - shriveled flesh on scorched bones - gripped her shoulders, and his fingers seared through her uniform. You were never good enough.

The barrel of the revolver was still too hot, burning metal pressed against her right temple. Naoto stared up at her father, her finger on the trigger, and -

She couldn't move. It was unbearably hot, she kept hiccuping and shaking, Sukuna-Hikona was squawking so loud she could hear nothing else - and her limbs refused to move. Disorientated, Naoto took an embarrassing long time to realize she was simply tangled in the blankets.

Her hands were trembling, so disentangling herself completely proved impossible, but she managed to free her arms. She curled up on her side, mind racing - Where was she? Why wasn't she at her apartment? Why was she still hiccuping? - and tried to calm Sukuna-Hikona. She soon realized he was attempting to do the same for her, buzzing answers to her questions: she was at Kanji Tatsumi's house, she'd walked here in the night to talk to him, and the hiccups were actually sobs.

The final answer was accompanied by a sick rush of alarm. Naoto tensed, blinking furiously, and tried to force her breathing under control.

…Why was she crying? Sukuna-Hikona refused to answer, and as vague images of blood and fire flashed through her mind, he grew increasingly panicked.

Clearly she'd been dreaming. More than that, she'd been sobbing in her sleep. Naoto's typical response would have been a harsh self-rebuke - but instead she pressed her palms against her eyes in an attempt to stem the tears. They were finally easing up, a less agitated Sukuna-Hikona possibly aiding the process, when the door to the room creaked open.

She froze, hands still covering her eyes.

"Hey...Naoto." Kanji's voice was rough, low, and unwelcome. "You okay?"

Naoto wasn't sure what was worse: the fact that she was so distressed over a dream she couldn't even remember, or that Kanji would witness her crying twice in one night. Feigning sleep was the best solution - but when another hiccup visibly shook her, she gulped and tried to steady her voice. "F-Fine. Why are you here?"

"Thought I heard somethin', thass all. Don't get fussy."

"G-Go back to bed," she muttered, curling up even tighter. The click of the lamp and creaking of the wooden chair suggested that Kanji had done completely the opposite.

He'd have to leave soon. Unlike his mother, he was under no illusion about Naoto's physical sex, rendering his presence entirely inappropriate. She kept her eyes covered, ignored the tears still leaking from them, and waited for the sound of footsteps.

Almost a full minute passed before he broke the silence. "I-I was dreaming bad stuff earlier." Naoto heard him grunt and shift in his seat. "Hell, the others prob'ly are too. Rough night. So you ain't the only one, right?"

"I w-wasn't," she shot back, but the tremble in her voice made the lie sound absurd even to her. Besides, he deserved better. "I-I mean - I was - but it wasn't that bad."

When Kanji spoke again, after a protracted pause, his voice was even lower. "In my dream, we were all fighting Namatame again. Was like before, everyone gettin' hit by that beam, only Yosuke and Rise got zapped too. Souji-senpai and me had t'take all of you down. Lightning, fire, the whole deal. Except - w-we couldn't get any of you back up afterwards. Nothin' worked." The last part was little more than a choked whisper, and Naoto felt an unfamiliar pang of sympathy. "Senpai, he just kept saying it was all my fault, I'd gone too far. I-I remember tryin' to explain, but he - he wouldn't even look at me. Then…I woke up."

"Oh."

"So, yeah. Shitty dream." Kanji let out a long breath. "Not trying to get you to spill yours, just - - y'know."

...Continuing the conversation with her hands over her eyes would be unproductive. Naoto used them to untangle herself further from the blankets, enabling her to sit up, which left her directly facing Kanji. He didn't meet her gaze. Looking closely, he'd tangled the long sleeves of his t-shirt in his fists.

"I strongly doubt the others blame you for what happened during the battle," she insisted. "I - I don't. You prevented me from -" The sentence stopped short. Her mouth was open but her lips refused to work, until she swallowed and forced herself to finish. "F-From killing Souji-senpai."

"An' you helped me do it, 'cause you didn't wanna hurt him. Not for real." Kanji leaned forward, pressing his palms hard against his knees and drawing her attention to the vivid bruises on his calves. "Nobody did."

Naoto wanted to believe him. But she remembered too well what Namatame's light had done, the white-hot rage and bitter jealousy it had ripped out of her - and despite Sukuna-Hikona's best efforts to hurl them aside, the jumbled images finally clicked into place. This was what she'd been dreaming about. Hating Souji even as he and Kanji and Nanako all lay dead at her feet, knowing it was her fault - and then her parents had- -

The squawking this time was closer to screeching. Naoto clapped her hands over her ears and pressed them hard against her head. Kanji was saying something, she couldn't make out what - and then he was kneeling down opposite her, grey eyes wide with concern.

His unanticipated proximity distracted her and Sukuna-Hikona in equal measure. As her Persona quieted, Naoto dropped her hands to her sides.

Kanji was studying her. "You alright?"

Fine, Naoto intended to say. Instead, everything she'd been thinking tumbled out at once. "It's - Souji-senpai, he's - I don't know if I can face him. I've let him down so badly, Kanji, I failed to help Nanako-chan and then I tried to -"

...What was she doing? She bit her lip hard and tried to make a mental note to avoid any and all human contact while sleep-deprived, but Sukuna-Hikona kept buzzing in disapproval. "I'm sorry. I'm repeating myself."

"S'okay. And your lip's bleeding again." Before she could respond, Kanji stood up, opened one of the dresser drawers and pulled out a handkerchief. Kneeling down again, he handed it to her.

Naoto pressed it against her lip and managed a muffled, "Thank you."

He shrugged aggressively. "Don't want blood on my pyjamas, thass all."

…Of course. What other reason would there be? Naoto stared down at her borrowed, over-sized shirt, absently counting bunnies - then paused.

As always, she'd taken off her binder to sleep. It was impossible to breathe otherwise. But that meant -

She quickly drew her knees up to her chest and huddled into the blankets.

Kanji frowned at her. "Cold?"

"No. You can go back to your room now."

"S'almost six already. Ain't worth it. Uh, unless you think you could sleep?"

A well-delivered lie would get rid of him. He had no right being here to begin with, especially not when she was stuck in clothing that made her look and feel nothing like herself. She would simply - -

(don't-fight-always-fighting-always-do-things-we-don't-want)

Naoto's first mistake was bothering to listen to Sukuna-Hikona. The second was looking Kanji in the eye.

She shook her head.

Kanji responded with a firm nod. "Not worth leavin', then."

Sukuna-Hikona buzzed again, now sounding content; possibly even smug. Naoto let it slide, unwilling to upset him again after such a trying night.

Though the need to calm her Persona was new, she was no stranger to nightmares. In recent years, they'd centered around the more disturbing cases she'd worked on; Kobe in particular. Given her dire performance so far, Inaba risked being added to the list.

The night terrors she'd had as a child after the loss of her parents had been even more intense and frequent. Discordant flashes of an accident she hadn't even witnessed, of her mother and father dying in a tangle of fire and metal - and later on, images of her grandfather's cold disdain if he ever found her out. Detectives - more importantly, Shiroganes - did not wake up shaking and crying from nightmares. Naoto, five years old and already stubborn, had vowed to never tell him.

But Yakushiji's rooms had been directly below her own. The first time he'd heard her sobbing in the small hours of the morning, he'd walked up to her bedroom, sat with her until she'd calmed down to quiet sniffling, then picked one of her Featherman DVDs from its shelf. With the dreams occurring so frequently, this had soon become a ritual; one which she had made Yakushiji promise not to divulge to Grampa. Featherman rangers - and Shiroganes - weren't afraid of anything.

In an absurdly childish moment, Naoto wondered whether the show might be on now.

"The White Kestrel," she muttered.

She'd spoken without thinking. Kanji looked rightfully confused. "Uh?"

Naoto hesitated, but opted for honesty. "A while ago. You - you asked which Featherman ranger I wanted to be. I wanted to be the White Kestrel."

After a brief pause - as if he were seriously evaluating her response - Kanji shrugged. "S'cool. I mean, he was on the wrong side at first, but he got it right in the end. Gave the Red Hawk a run for his money."

...Kanji clearly had more than a passing knowledge of the franchise. Naoto glanced down at her shirt again, briefly debating whether to tell him that Junes sold Featherman pyjamas which were of acceptable quality and very comfortable - then shrank into her blanket, hoping the light was dim enough to hide her blush.

Kanji didn't seem to notice. "Hey…one of the shows might be on right now. It's Sunday, they put all that kinda stuff on early in the morning."

It was a simple, stupid suggestion - there was no point in watching a show made for small children, at least not with witnesses - but something in it caught Naoto's attention, and looking at Kanji suddenly became impossible. "No, it's fine," she insisted. "But I - I appreciate the suggestion."

"Okay." Naoto couldn't gauge his expression, being preoccupied with staring at the floor, but he sounded disappointed.

"We could go downstairs and make tea," she suggested. "I'd - prefer to sit somewhere else."

Kanji's eyes widened, as if he'd just realized exactly where he was, and with whom. He jumped to his feet and backed out the door. "Y-yeah! Good idea. You - uh, I'll go get it started!"

He didn't bother to tread softly. As he crashed downstairs, Naoto wriggled out of the blankets and picked up her folded school uniform, hoping Kanji's mother wasn't a light sleeper.