Author's Note:

We have a snow day today which means I get to write and be lazy and be warm and then go sledding and make snowmen and it is going to be such a blasty blast.

ALSO HELLO MY BELOVED GUEST welcome back, and I love all you other reviewers as well. You're all so great and wonderful. This is a request from ReachingOutFES, in which Akihiko sees Minako with her hair down for the first time.

Twenty-Five Hours
a Persona 3/Portable (© ATLUS) fanfiction

The Sixteenth Hour

Opening Song: "Her Morning Elegance" - Oren Lavie

He always got stupidly embarrassed when she invited him into her room.

They'd been dating for months now, and it wasn't as though they did that every time he was in there, but it still made his cheeks turn pink and his heart race. He could tell she enjoyed it too, with the way she giggled and squeezed his hand and gave him sympathetic (probably pitying) kisses. Most of the time he sat in the rolling chair at her desk to keep his thoughts (and hands) in control, but today she nudged him onto the edge of her bed.

"W-wha—"

"Relax, Senpai," she said, wearing a teasing smile. "We're up here to relax and take a break, remember? No studying, no talking about Shadows or Tartarus or creepy hippies trying to bring the apocalypse; just relaxing." His shoulders, which he didn't realize were so tense, slackened. It'd been hard lately, especially with trying to balance school with the problems that arose, and it finally occurred to him how tired he actually was. "We can watch a movie or something if you want."

Akihiko nodded and pulled her box of movies out from underneath the bed. "Is there anything specific you wanna watch?" he asks, purposely skimming over the rom coms and chick flicks.

"Nope. Choose at your leisure." While he inwardly battled with the genius of Jackie Chan or one of Junpei's tacky horror movies, Minako sorted through her dresser. "I'm gonna change," she said. In her arms were cotton pajamas with different colored cows on them. "I'll be right back."

He wanted to tell her that she could change in here and he would leave, but she was already out the door. "Okay," he mumbled, more to himself than to anyone else, and continued his hunt for The Perfect Movie. After settling on a classic that they'd watched approximately fifteen times together, he got up to put it in the DVD player. He paused when his eye caught something interesting: a framed photo he'd never paid much attention to before.

It was a younger Minako, maybe twelve or thirteen, in some foreign (probably European) land. She was standing with a group of friends in from of some monument, dressed in a cute sweater and plaid skirt and wearing the grin he'd come to love. Something was a bit different, though he couldn't put his finger on what it was.

Minako came back in, dressed in her beloved pajamas with her uniform folded not-so-neatly in her arms. "Alright, I'm back—! What're you looking at?"

Akihiko jumped up as though he were a criminal caught in the act. She laughed at his frantic reaction, which he tried to downplay by casually holding up the picture. "I was just looking at this," he said. "Where'd you take it?"

She peeked at the image from over his shoulder; he hoped she couldn't feel the warmth radiating from his face. "Oh! That's when I was in Paris. We were on a tour around Napoleon's tomb, so naturally we stopped to take a picture and smile in front of some dead guy's resting place."

"Ah." He glanced down at his Minako, older and beautiful and bright, then at younger Minako who had all the same qualities aside from being older. And then he recognized what it was. "Your hair's down in this picture."

"Hm? Yeah, it is. That's when it was shorter so it was easier to handle when it was down. Now it just kinda gets everywhere…" She idly fiddled with the ends of her hair and mumbled, "Geez, my split ends are getting really bad…" While she played with her hair, he wondered what it would look like now if it wasn't in her usual ponytail. "Welp, what movie did you pick out?"

"Huh?"

Minako raised an eyebrow. "The movie…?"

"O-oh, right." He laughed nervously before naming the movie, at which she squealed and hopped over to press the play button. She bounced onto her bed, pulled him next to her, and set up the pillows so that they could sit comfortably. It was probably a little weird that their cuddle movie was one where Jackie Chan beat the crap of five guys per screen, but he thought it was an appropriate representation of their relationship.

After he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, his fingers found the ends of hair, which brushed against the collar of her top. She didn't seem to notice. "Her hair's really soft," he thought. It fell out of his grasp when she leaned her head against his shoulder, and for once he felt vaguely disappointed by the motion.

Halfway through the movie, she shifted again, though it was so that she could slide off the bed. "Sorry," she said, her voice quiet despite the fact that both of them new every line to the movie. "I'm gonna get more comfortable." He watched her movements out of the corner of his eye, waiting with baited breath as she pulled out out her bobby pins one by one. Finally, she withdrew the black band from her hair, allowing it to fall over her shoulders and down her back. It wasn't too long, just a little passed her shoulders, but it was thick and auburn and beautiful and framed her face in such a lovely way.

Minako smiled at him when she realized he was staring. "What?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said. "You're beautiful."

She blushed before falling on top of him and burying her face into his chest. "You can't just say things like that," she muttered, her words muffled by the material of his vest. "But thanks, Aki."

As she laid on his chest, he ran his fingers through her hair, allowing them to tangle in the tresses. "You're not supposed to thank me for saying the obvious," he replied. She laughed, which warmed and reverberated through his chest.

Closing Song: "Fairytale" - Alexander Rybak

Snow days are my favorite days.

xx, der kapitan