Rumi entered Maruki's flat, thinking about how little it has changed since the last time she was here. The same small cupboard with a sink in the kitchen, the same couch and coffee table in the living room, the same cluttered desk tucked into the corner.

The two walked into the kitchen, as Maruki poured a bit too much water into the kettle and put it back on the base, turning it on with his thumb, then reached into the cupboard and pulled out two small mugs and a tiny jar of matcha powder. "Uh, you can sit down on the couch and wait for me," he offered.

"Or I could wait here," Rumi replied. "I have a question or two, but so do you, I guess. I'll let you go first." Maruki could've sworn there was a faint smirk on her face. "I barged into your flat uninvited after all."

There were less 'questions' and more 'unbaked thoughts scrambling in his brain' and what came out of Maruki's mouth first wasn't a question: "I- uh, I shouldn't have- I'm sorry for mucking with your cognition."

"You don't have to be," Rumi replied. Judging by the tone, she wasn't just saying that to be polite. "I was a barely functional mess, one wrong word away from taking a bath with a toaster. The whatchamacallit you put in my brain gave me a few years of peace."

"But it's gone now, isn't it?" Maruki asked, pouring two teaspoons of light green powder into each cup. "Did someone or something remove that overlay?"

"Looks like it. It must've happened last night, because I remember going to bed convinced my parents died when I was little, and woke up remembering you and…" She lost a chunk of her confidence. "And what really happened back then."

There was a few seconds of silence, with the only sounds being the water beginning to boil, and the kettle turning itself off with a loud click. Maruki poured the water into cups to let the tea brew. "Are you… are you okay now?"

"Mostly?" she shrugged. "I mean, I'm still kinda grieving, and it's all hard to wrap my head around, but compared to how I've been right after it happened, I'm the model of mental health."

"Right." Maruki stirred the tea and handed one mug over to Rumi. His curiosity had just barely overcome his shame. "So, if- to reconstruct the timeline: you woke up this morning with the overlay removed, processed your current state of self, and came here looking for answers."

"Well, it didn't take me the whole day," Rumi replied. "I was working first shift today, and I don't think my boss would accept an identity crisis as an excuse. And I came back home after work to change from my job clothes, reflexively checked my mailbox…" She reached into the handbag hanging from her shoulder, "and found this in it."

She pulled something out and displayed it to Maruki. It was a small device, made out of white plastic, with a card attached to it. The card was bearing the Phantom Thief logo on one side and had 'For Rumi' printed on the other. It looked just a little bit like the voice recorders Maruki occasionally used in the Metaverse.

"Erm, what is this?" he asked, not willing to make guesses.

"You've heard of these Phantom Thieves guys?" Rumi asked.

Maruki somehow managed to keep a poker face. "Vaguely."

"According to this message, they removed your overlay." After a pause, she asked: "Do you want to hear it?"

"Go ahead," he said, bracing for whatever was coming.

She pressed 'play' and turned the volume up, and a digitally altered voice came out of the speaker on the side: "Greetings. You don't know me and I don't know you; pardon this infringement upon your domicile. A shared acquaintance mentioned that in order to help you deal with overwhelming grief, he had your cognition partially overwritten. I temporarily gained access to power that allows me to help you process said grief in a more healthy way. You should not require the overwrite anymore, and be able to move on on your own terms." There was a sigh. "And on a more… personal note: a few years back, said acquaintance did what he did to try to help you, and it was the best thing he could've done at the time. Don't hold a grudge against him. He's… he's a good person."

The recording ended and Rumi put the device on the countertop. "The way that guy or gal sounded, you're friends with them or something."

Despite everything, despite the last line of the recording stuck in his brain like a meat hook, Maruki managed to keep his composure. "I… know more about the Phantom Thieves of Hearts than the public does." He decided to go with a half-truth. "I don't want to say more. I know people have died for knowing less than I do. Me being alive is sheer dumb luck."

Rumi remained curious. "Is that related to that conspiracy that was uncovered last month?"

"Yes. And that in turn was related to my research into cognitive psience."

"You didn't change the placeholder name?"

"Well, it stuck," Maruki shrugged in an exaggerated manner.

There was a moment of silence. Maruki deemed his tea cooled down enough to drink, and picked up his mug.

"The Thieves left a message for you too."

He almost spilled the drink on himself. "What?"

"There was another of these voice recorders on your welcome mat when I came," Rumi explained, reaching into the other compartment of her handbag and pulling out another device. It was identical to the one she had gotten, except the card on it read 'For Takuto'.

That was the last straw. Maruki's facade of confidence gently but visibly collapsed on itself.

"You look shocked," Rumi pointed out. "Did your relationship turn sour or something?"

With a sigh, Maruki took the device from her hand. "I think I'll let the Thieves speak about what happened," he announced, then pressed 'play'.

The recording started, judging by the faintly audible white noise, but only after a few seconds the voice came out:

"Uh, hey, Takuto."

It was Akira's, no doubt about it.

"I hope you're alright. I thought I should've given you a day or two, but I kinda have to get in touch with you ASAP and, uh, leaving this message for you seemed a good compromise." A sigh. "I'm sorry for things getting ugly… back then. Like, just 'cause you messed up doesn't mean that I get to lash out. I really should've kept my cool more over the past few months." A pause. "So, uh, you might've noticed how I kinda sorta don't like breaking friendships. Maybe I'm clinging to people for longer than I should've but… honestly, fuck it." A brief chuckle. "I'm Joker of the Phantom Fucking Thieves, I've shot a god in the face, you're not even in the top five of my biggest problems. Like… my point is, don't be a stranger. You've got my phone number, hit me up. If you want to meet on neutral ground, there's this bar club thingie in… Kichijoji, I think? Jazz Jin, a lovely place, with cool virgin drinks. A friend recommended it. Let's meet up, drink cross-cups or something, and put it all behind us."

There was the sound of the recording ending, but only for a moment, like Akira had pressed the 'stop' button, then remembered something and pressed 'record' again: "Dammit, almost forgot. I stole Rumi's heart last night. That's why I'm contacting you now and not in a week. You, uh, you never told me about that whole mad-with-grief rigamarole and when I found out, I thought 'hey, it worked with Sumire'. I know it doesn't really, uh, prove you wrong or anything, but… I think it's a good way to end this mess, y'know? I'll leave her a message like this one and, uh, try to explain that you did the best you could, but ultimately, how she reacts… Well, I can't force her to be gentle. But based on her Shadow, she's an alright woman. She'll understand. Well, that's that, I guess. Joker, out."

The recording ended, for real this time. Rumi glanced at Maruki. "You hoped he'd include more details in his message, didn't you?"

Maruki exhaled air through his nose in response.

"It sounded like a touchy subject to me," she said. "If you don't wanna talk about it, we don't have to. And it's apparently dangerous to know too much…"

"That was a half-truth. The risk was present, but now as far as I know, the main perpetrators are either in custody or dead." Maruki paused for a moment. "And looking back at everything, your… your case ended up inspiring me to do… what I've done over the past year or so. If there's one person that deserves to know the whole truth, it's you."

"That sounds ominous," Rumi pointed out.

"It's a story of how I… let's not mince words, how I went on a power trip and almost messed up reality itself." He paused. "I'll leave the choice to you: do you want to listen to it?"

Rumi briefly considered shaking her head, denying, and moving on, but with that intro, curiosity won over by a long shot. "Well then, whatever you say won't leave this room. Tell me everything."

Maruki gestured at the couch. "Please sit down. It's a long and implausible story."

And so, Maruki told her everything. How he got expelled from university. How he overwrote one high-schooler's cognition to stop her pain. How he ended up hired by Shujin as damage control. How he met that one kid on probation in Shujin – "Joker, from that recording" – and how he ended up inspiring him to finish his paper. How Joker ended up losing his composure right before getting arrested and killed. How a chance meeting with that one celebrity – "Crow" – revealed that Joker didn't die after all, and it all went higher than he could possibly imagine. How he figured out that his work was deliberately suppressed and went to confront his former university professor. How on that day he awakened to his Persona, and then used it to reshape reality itself. How Crow and that high-schooler from the very beginning, "Gree-, no wait, Violet", ended up breaking out of the comfortable illusion, and then so did the rest of the Phantom Thieves, how he resorted to more and more drastic measures to try and stop them, and how, in the end, he was defeated and forced to admit that they were right all along.

He did not sugarcoat, make excuses, or otherwise downplay his role in this whole affair. At the same time, he did not wallow in self-pity over his own sins. Rumi listened intently. She reacted to some revelations with a brief gasp or a hm, asked a follow-up question or two, and barely touched her matcha throughout.

"...and then I woke up at home, and," he gestured at the TV, "absentmindedly watched sitcoms for the past few hours."

"Hm." Rumi had her hands on her knees, her fingers tented. "I'm going to be direct: what do you expect me to say to all that?"

"To be fair, I expected something to the tune of 'you goddamn megalomaniac'."

"Honestly, it's kinda hard to wrap my head around," she admitted. "You rewrote the whole reality to something quasi-utopian, then you tormented a bunch of teens that protested against it, sometimes not deliberately, and then you shot one of them in the back of the head with the revolver of that hitman kid. Like, what the fuck do I do with this knowledge?"

Maruki lowered his head in shame. "...the revolver was part of his costume," he muttered.

"Hm?"

"All Persona users in the Metaverse get a costume dependent on their personality," Maruki explained. "Crow's costume, for one reason or another, came with a functional seven-shot revolver. But… when it came to the last act of our final confrontation, he had exhausted himself to the point of the costume disappearing… but the revolver remained."

Rumi raised an eyebrow. "What, you think it imprinted itself on you or something? Reflected your desires somehow?"

"Something to that effect, yes."

"I'unno," she remarked. "It could be just a coincidence. No offense, but your field isn't an exact science. Or p-sience, whatever." After a pause to think, she asked: "Are you able to pull off this utopia stunt again?"

"No, I don't think so."

"If you were able to, would you?"

"Fuck no," Maruki replied emphatically. "I have thoroughly demonstrated I cannot be trusted with such power."

"Dunno who could be trusted with it, to be fair. Now tell me, is there any tangible evidence proving that you rewrote reality?"

Maruki thought about the answer for a moment. "I don't believe so. The paper on cognitive psience that I wrote only proves I have theoretical knowledge of it. The closest you would get to tangible proof is potential testimonies from the Phantom Thieves themselves."

"Considering their experience with authority figures, they'll take it to their graves," Rumi said. "And based on what you told me, Joker wanting to bury the hatchet is genuine on his end." She turned to him. "So, you're in square one."

"To be fair, the plan for the foreseeable future was to watch some more sitcoms."

"Right." Rumi paused for a moment. Maruki reached for the last few drops of the tea in his cup. "You wanna go on a date?"

Maruki looked at her with confusion, then swallowed the liquid in his mouth. "I, uh, beg your pardon?"

"I mean, we're obviously not engaged anymore," Rumi elaborated, "so it's more of a second first date. I'm curious about that Jazz Jin pla-"

"Wait wait waitwaitwaitwait." Maruki got up from the couch. "I just confessed to you that I tried and failed to take over reality itself, and you… ask me out?"

"Yep."

"Why?!" he asked, confused.

"Well, it might get you out of your slump, so that's nice."

Maruki sighed, disappointed. "I am an adult, Rumi. You don't need to hold my hand so I brush my teeth and stuff."

"I know," Rumi replied, stretching the last syllable a bit. "I just wanted to get the jokes out of the way before the serious reason."

Maruki slumped back down on the couch. "...eh?"

Rumi dared to move a bit closer to him. "Back when we were an item, there were a lot of things I liked about you. But…" She lost a bit of steam. "But the best thing for me personally, was your drive to help people. As many of them as you could, as best as you could."

She allowed herself to put her hand on his.

"I will not deny that your reality takeover attempt is… concerning, on a personal level. But you obviously learned your lessons and won't repeat that mistake, even if you were able to. And besides… the previous year, the chain of events that led to it all, demonstrates that in some form, you are still the man I fell in love with." She smiled at him – it was a warm, pleasant smile, one he had missed for so long. "So, now that we're both back in square one… you wanna roll again?"

After a pause, Maruki gently retracted his hand away from her. "Can I… sleep on it, a day or two? I… I feel I need to take a good look in the mirror before doing anything."

"If you say so," she said, letting his hand go. "Though I'd prefer that you get dressed and go out, with or without me. The way you described it, there isn't much you can do to-"

She was interrupted by Maruki's cell phone ringing. "Excuse me for a moment." He got up from the couch, walked to the kitchen and picked it up. "Hello?"

Someone on the other end of the line spoke. Rumi couldn't hear the details.

"Speaking."

Another pause to let the other person speak.

"Yes," Maruki scowled. "I've heard about some of them."

Pause.

"Kinda?" Maruki said without conviction. Rumi was sure he was lying. "I don't follow politics that closely."

Concern flashed on Maruki's face as he listened to the caller talking.

"Um, how is that relevant to me?"

Long pause, probably with a detailed answer to that question.

"I see."

Another long pause. Rumi briefly considered getting up and getting closer to try and listen to the conversation, politeness be damned.

"Uh, a day or two, perhaps?"

Pause.

"Got it. I'll wait for further information. Is that all?"

Short reply, probably a variant of 'yes'.

"Very well then. Goodbye, have a nice day."

Maruki hung up, walked back to the room and slumped back on the couch.

"Who was that?" Rumi asked, concerned.

"The prosecutor's office. They want me to speak with 'Crow', to evaluate the worth of his testimony." He adjusted his glasses. "Looks like I can't postpone reaching out to Joker."