Chapter Three: With or Without Us


It comes to her as soon as they sit on the bench overlooking the wheat fields a short walk from the train station: Yukiko, for a good while there, forgot it was Valentine's Day.

Even if she couldn't forget for a second it's a miserable one.

"I never thought I'd be in a place even quieter than Inaba."

Naoto looks over the scenery like it's a painting. "Yes, it's certainly a noticeable change."

But that just makes Yukiko think that anywhere without a 10-story building minimum is a quiet place to Naoto, town or farmland. Yukiko figures the big-city – big-world – life had a way in broadening a person's horizons, and Naoto's mental horizons always seemed boundless.

"Do you think we'll see any cows?" Yukiko asks, knowing Inaba's notoriously high stray cat population.

"Undoubtedly," Naoto replies without tearing away from the landscape.

Maybe they could find one, and even chickens. They could find some trees, and pick some apples, and –

"What are we doing?"

Naoto looks at Yukiko. "…Discussing?"

Yukiko shakes her head, then drops it into her hands. "No, we're – I don't know. Running away? We'll have to go back soon, they've probably already noticed we're gone!"

Naoto says nothing.

"I'm sorry. This just – " Yukiko wants to shout feels so stupid, but she's suddenly too tired to bother. She sighs a single, "sad."

"This, or you?"

This time, Yukiko remains silent.

It doesn't keep Naoto quiet. "I've been told that…giving distance to a problem helps you see the bigger picture of it."

Which Yukiko can imagine Naoto hearing often – especially on those nights she would slave away staring at casefiles in the police station until past dawn.

"We could – discuss it, if you'd like."

Except Yukiko mostly doesn't, because she's not sure what else to say besides what she already has. She's tired – she has been since standing against that Inaba fence – and the sadness grips her throat whenever she tries to think of words to fix it.

So Yukiko shakes her head. "No thank you, Naoto-kun."

There isn't a word between them after that for at least a full minute. When Yukiko lifts her head, she sees Naoto staring her down… crossly? Indignantly, Yukiko decides. Naoto is looking at Yukiko as if she stepped on her hat.

"Is there something wrong?" Yukiko can't help but ask.

Naoto looks back at the field and crosses her arms. "No."

It's clipped and stiff, and sounds like boy-Naoto. Yukiko is perplexed at the change is behavior. "Are-are you sure? You sound angry."

"I'm not angry," Naoto drones crisply. "It's just – " she hesitates. "I don't appreciate being played the fool."

"What?"

"You bring me here, away from my work, you make me tell my story, and you refuse to return any of it."

Yukiko pauses, and almost begins to laugh it off – because sometimes Naoto can be so mature and juvenile at the same time – but she turns it into a cough because, honestly, she's in no position to be making the situation any worse.

"Naoto-kun, I'm – I didn't mean it like that." She chooses her words carefully. "When you asked me to come with you, and when I asked about your parents – I didn't mean to burden you."

And in that moment, Yukiko thinks that both their quieter shortcomings – the things overcoming their Shadows should have fixed – are laid out in front of them: Naoto being useful only until someone else decides otherwise, and Yukiko being a hindrance to the people she loves.

It's easy to fall back into old habits – old selves – but then it's hard to change in the first place anyway.

Naoto sighs, loosens up, and levels Yukiko with a softer look. "I simply lost my temper for a moment. My apologies."

Yukiko wants to point out that they heard about Naoto 'simply losing her temper' at a police officer during the case, but decides it'd be a bitter thing to say.

She briefly wonders if she's going to become a hostile person when the sadness ebbs off.

"I don't want this to change me like that," Yukiko finishes aloud, if only at a whisper.

Naoto prompts her with a hum.

"This feeling," Yukiko says louder, and she decides if she can't think of the words without losing them, she'll say them as she goes. "These feelings. The happy ones, the sad ones. The warm ones. It's like, when one doesn't work out, they all mix up and it makes me – makes me a bit crazy, I guess."

"I wouldn't say – "

"We jumped on the back of a train going from the middle of nowhere to the beginning of nowhere."

She doesn't answer that, but Yukiko thinks Naoto's refraining from saying something like touché – like a French person – simply by manner.

"I just – you're right. I wanted distance, I thought it could fix this. But I guess these things aren't that simple."

"What things?" Naoto asks.

It takes Yukiko a while to answer, for many reasons: she doesn't exactly think saying "heartbreak and betrayal" is the most mature, especially in front of Naoto, and she also gets the feeling that hearing herself say it will cement the whole thing in, cement her in.

"Souji-kun things," Yukiko decides to say. She isn't sure if it's enough until Naoto nods slowly.

"I don't pretend to understand 'these things'," Naoto says carefully, "but I know 'these things' – these times – are hard."

It's not helpful to hear, but Yukiko tells herself it's not really wise to expect a few words in such a short time to change much.

"So no advice?" Yukiko asks, because it's the Detective Prince she's talking to: some part of her believes Naoto always has a right answer.

Naoto mouth goes into a flat line frown. "Advice comes from wisdom, which if begotten from experience. The most experience I would have with these things is a criminal incident, in which case I would advise you not to take a violent, vindictive approach in the future."

Yukiko wants to laugh. She plays with her fingers instead. "I'm sure you wouldn't let me get too far."

"I won't be arou-" Naoto stops, then says, "I won't need to, I'm sure."

It comes to Yukiko surprisingly quick, that Naoto had almost said she wouldn't be around for too long, or something like that. Because Naoto has other cases to chase, and a bigger world to defend in small ways.

Part of Yukiko tells herself that there's real suffering and anguish out there in the world, and she shouldn't hang herself up on small things, but the rest of her argues that nothing is ever gained by comparing miseries.

"I don't know," Yukiko says breathily. "I really – I just don't know. Well, I know what's fact and what's right, but I just can't-can't come to terms with it, I guess."

She watches Naoto, who seems to be processing everything over slowly, as if looking for a clue. Naoto finally shakes her head, and she's – she's almost laughing?

"Well, that's the reality of most things," Naoto says with a stale humour. "We know what happens, and some part of us knows what should be done, but it seems harder to reconcile with something that knocks you off your feet. When my parents die– "

Naoto stops like she just noticed the red light, and for a long moment doesn't say anything. Finally, in a quieter voice, "When I came to the conclusion of my parents' affair, I knew it was just something in the past, something that didn't concern me, and it shouldn't be more than a negligible fact.

"But…I couldn't let it go, for a long time. I always held my father to the highest degree of honour and – " she pauses to smile, looking a bit sheepish at her honesty " – and heroism, and my mother was the most upright and gentle of women in my mind. And suddenly, that changes. Or-or I think maybe it never was how I thought it was at all."

Yukiko thinks of herself, thinks of herself and Souji, and some sort of certainty and reliability. She thinks of finding out that she saw things differently than he did, than how they were. It reminds her, oddly enough, of being thrown into the television for the first time: the feeling of the ground disappearing beneath her, of falling until she feels sick to her stomach, of going blindly and naïvely.

She knows Naoto went through that as well, and maybe know she knows they've both gone through it twice.

"And then what?"

Naoto looks down at her hands and fidgets a bit. "And then nothing, I suppose. I stewed away, and it didn't make anything better. I kept myself busy – but I had the advantage of being single-mindedly focused on forwarding my work."

Yukiko smiles, because she can absolutely imagine Naoto pushing away the things that bother her like she pushes aside paperwork.

"I guess I could keep myself focused on the inn. It gets busy this time of year."

Naoto clasps her hands and shakes her head. "I never meant my ways of approaching things as guidance; the opposite, really. You'll drive yourself to the ground before you learn to hate what you do."

"You didn't,"

"I can be… tenacious, I'll admit."

Yukiko smiles, because Naoto really has to be stubborn if she can't admit it easily. Naoto catches her eye, and smiles as well.

The wind passes between them, pushes through the wheat stalks, makes them sway. Yukiko tries to see the end of the farm, but the fields seem to go on forever.

She wonders if anything really does.

"Amagi-san?"

Yukiko snaps back, and knows what's happened by the way Naoto frowns. "Sorry, I didn't hear. It's just – there's so much wheat out there."

"There's so much world," Naoto adds. She stands up, and rubs her arms. "We may as well walk and see more of it."

Some part of Yukiko is disappointed: she thought, somehow, that she'd have an answer, a way to go, before leaving the bench. She makes one last attempt, and it sounds softer than she thought it would.

"What do I do?"

Naoto looks warily out ahead, then back at Yukiko. "I don't know – and that's harder for me to admit than it seems. All I know is that between the two of us, you'd know better."

Yukiko believes the opposite, but Naoto doesn't seem to let up.

"You're better equip to assess emotions and people – especially people. You're sensitive, and understanding, and you have a way of…letting loose," Naoto defends, and she never says I think at any point. "Besides, you are the senpai."

Often, Yukiko forgets that; forgets that Naoto's younger, and probably seems otherwise by habit-dying-hard.

Yukiko doesn't know if she'll forget the sadness, but she thinks – she knows, to some degree – that she'll become greater than it.

"Well, I can't tell I'm the senpai when you won't say it," Yukiko says with a laugh that doesn't feel heavy. She stands up beside Naoto. "Shall we?"

Naoto holds a hand out ahead of her. "After you, Senpai."

Yukiko smiles and takes the first steps down a long and winding road. But she has company, and while she doesn't know what's on the path, she knows it's less lonely now.


"And I had always assumed Satonaka-san's love for steak was exaggerated," Naoto says, shaking her head in a mix of disappointment and amazement.

Yukiko's trying to tell Naoto that the Steak-athon is only the half of it, but she's laughing to hard at just the thought of Chie single-handedly protesting against the closing of Souzai Daigaku for its lack of quality food contribution.

Naoto watches Yukiko with a happy fascination that's a rare and pleasant change of face. Maybe she notices this, because she hides her smile behind a bite of Vegetable-Roast Skewer – a local exclusive featuring fresh harvested foods and an open fire.

"-and-and – hahahahahaha – she uses the – haha – the skewers as swords – pfftahahaha!"

Naoto looks over the skewer, then back at a bearded man standing over a fire. "Good sir, is this wine-soaked?"

"We don't need that sort of fancy flavourin'," he calls back, grinning. "Our food ain't so bad that you gotta drink it outta yer mem'ry!"

Naoto looks back at Yukiko, her eyebrows raised. "He knows my lineage, and he just attacked it."

Yukiko drops her head on the table, because heaven knows she's going to pass out anyway with all the air she's lost laughing.

"It must be the atmosphere," Naoto mutters in a 'deducing' tone. "That's what it was last time."

Yukiko's too busy trying to breathe to ask what Naoto means. She doesn't know if it's the change in air, or if it's the food, or if she's trying just a bit too hard, but for the first time in what feels like so much longer, her throat isn't held tight with worry.

When Yukiko finally reels herself in, she decides to leave the stories to Naoto, knowing – with no offence – that they'd hardly send her into a laughing spree.

She enjoys her non-meat skewer as she listens to Naoto explain how to prepare a mousse dessert – with helpful tips from their server – and watches her, because it isn't very often anyone gets to see Naoto so casual, and Yukiko thinks she won't get the chance again anytime soon.

When they finish, Naoto gets directions back from the man – who Yukiko has half a mind to offer a position at the inn if he didn't seem so content with his simple life – and the trek the path back to the train station, evening upon them.

"It gets darker here faster," Yukiko says as Naoto purchases their tickets.

"Perhaps." She hands Yukiko a paper. "I enjoy evening strolls; it's quiet and calming. It helps me collect my thoughts."

Yukiko puts that down on a mental to-try list, because if today is anything to go by, she'll have a lot to think about for a while coming.

"It's funny, but I think I'm going to miss this place," she muses, watching the scatter few people step off the platform.

"It will stay here," Naoto says, leading them to the train.

Yukiko shrugs, even if Naoto's ahead and can't see it. "But I won't."

"You can come back."

"I will," Yukiko says, and wonders if, by then, she'll be able to look back a better – bigger – person.

They choose a seat, and Yukiko takes the window again, but this time to watch things pass by to remind herself that things pass by.

Yukiko looks over her phone – she texted her mom to let her know she was fine, just out with a friend but not in that way mother please – and then back at Naoto. "Today's over, isn't it?"

"Yes."

Yukiko feels sad, undoubtedly. Getting away from it only gave her space to think. It didn't bring her closer to Souji, and it didn't change the way she feels.

But it gave her a place to start, a way to go.

And, just like the day and the train, she'll go on, come rain or even more rain. There's no easy solution, but there's always a future, and Yukiko thinks that thought is what will keep her going for the next while.

"I'm surprised no one said anything about – well, us," Yukiko says, looking at her texts again.

Naoto straightens just a bit, and tugs her hat down. "They – erm – did. The man at the skewer stand had some…recommendations."

Yukiko is both worried and intrigued. "Recommendations?"

"Leave it be," Naoto says quickly, looking away as the train comes loudly to life.

Yukiko wants to talk about it a bit further, maybe ask Naoto why she didn't have plans for today anyway, but she thinks it's a fine line that's a little too far to cross right now.

Maybe when they come back to this beginning of nowhere.

"Thank you, Naoto-kun," Yukiko says instead, and it's one of the most honest things she's said in a long time. "For everything. The coat," which Yukiko still sat snugly in, and isn't sure she could return it easily after their bonding, "the skewers, the stories. Everything."

This time, Yukiko can see Naoto blush and shift self-consciously. "The honour is mine, Amagi-s-senpai. But the idea wasn't entirely, if I'm frank." She frowns, but not unhappily. "Perhaps Hanamura-san has a soft spot for you."

Yukiko giggles, and thinks maybe it's too soon to think of Yosuke and also too soon to write him off. Then she remembers who Yosuke is and can't help but laugh again at the idea.

"I-I don't think so," Yukiko says.

Naoto shrugs. "Well, he sent me after you if only by excuse, and he is close with Seta-san. He may be more than we credit him for."

Yukiko hums in agreement, because she's stating to get the idea that everyone is more than what they seem.

The ride home is peaceful and full of sleepiness, and it fills Yukiko up with a melancholy that's separate from the heartache.

When they finally arrive back, well into the evening, and Naoto walks Yukiko back to the inn but declines staying over, Yukiko takes up the pace and makes her way to her room. When she lays in bed, and feels the thoughts creep up on her while she stares at the ceiling, she curls herself into her blankets.

It's a road that, like any, is walked one step at a time.


"You're lying!" Chie says firmly. "No skewer is better than Steak Skewers!"

Yukiko dusts off her plaid skirt. "Maybe…maybe not."

Chie throws her hands on her hips. "Okay, challenge accepted! Bring me the competition, Steak Skewer's gonna win, landslide victory!"

Yukiko smiles – Chie's enthusiasm will always lift her spirits somehow – and almost suggests they go together to try it someday, but decides that there should be something just she and Naoto share that wasn't a bad habit or experience.

"But still, I didn't see you yesterday," Chie says, fixing her shoe on. "Anything special?"

Yukiko knows the answer is yes, but she doesn't want to bring back all of it again – even if the days to come will do that anyway. "Just walking around, I guess."

"You should join me on my morning jogs. They're great for the body and soul."

Chie's suggested it before, and Yukiko's usually too busy to consider it.

But Yukiko thinks it's a good idea to break the routine once in a while. "You know? I think I will, every once in a while."

Chie pumps her fist up in victory, but the cheer is short-lived when they reach their classroom. Yosuke is leaning on his desk and chatting the morning sun away with Souji.

Yukiko doesn't hear what Chie says as they walk inside, even if Yukiko feels like she's watching her normal day like a stranger on the outside.

Souji smiles, as usual. It still warms Yukiko up, even if it brings a pang of hurt.

"Morning," he says, like normal. And it's normal, Yukiko reminds herself. Different, and normal. Changing, and normal.

"Good morning," she replies in kind, back in her own shoes.

The four go one talking for a few minutes longer before their teacher comes in and they file in their seats.

Before Yukiko settles in, Yosuke passes her and says, "Hey, by the way, did you give Naoto her chocolate?"

"I've got it today," Yukiko says, smiling. She isn't sure if she'll get the chance to give it, because Naoto is eternally elusive, but she has a good feeling about it.

She just hopes the quality of the inn's chocolate is good enough to put past the fact that it was meant for someone else.

"Well, she's probably loaded after yesterday, so I can take it off your hands," Yosuke says, grinning.

Yukiko shrugs, and doesn't really plan it when she says, "Maybe."

Yosuke looks surprised for a minute, then snaps back into grinning even wider before jumping into his seat.

Class starts then, on time, as usual. And while Yukiko tries to focus, her attention is pulled away by Souji, by sadness, by pushing past all of it.

Yukiko wonders – and she wonders a lot now, though it doesn't feel entirely like a bad thing – how long she'll feel this way. She wonders what moving on will come with, and what will come ahead. She wonders if she'll one day have the sort of whirlwind escapade Naoto would scold even if it reminds her of her own parents.

Sitting at her desk, in her hometown, where everything is as normal and the future never stops coming even when it feels like it's taking forever, she wonders.

Yukiko wonders, and continues on with the world around her.


A/N: That went way longer than expected. It was at first just a song reference - originally titled How Soon Is Now before I decided to go with Well I Wonder, because - looking at the chapter titles, it now reads: Well I wonder, but I'll never know, and that's the way life goes – with or without us.

Anyway, it's at an end now, and I'd love to hear what you think of it.