Literally: like two drops of water
Meaning: similar
Rough English equivalent: like two peas in a pod

"Stop messing with them," Sumire weakly protested, then turned to the group: "She knows what's happening and who you are."

"Not by name though," Kasumi added. "Just as a group."

"There are some new faces," the gymnast said. "Did I see you before?"

"Most of us go to Shujin," Ann decided to step in and introduce everyone in bulk. "In order," she pointed at the relevant people: "Ann Takamaki, Ryuji Sakamoto, Yusuke Kitagawa, Morgana, Haru Okumura and Goro… he's kinda between two surnames."

"Akechi. We are all on a first name basis, no honorifics required."

"Same on my end. 'A copy of the dead Kasumi' is a mouthful, so just call me Kasumi," she said, grinning innocently. "I assume the one with bleached hair is the remorseful assassin?"

"No!" Ryuji and Goro protested in unison.

"Can we get in?" the detective added. "I don't want to discuss those things in the open."

"Yes, of course. Lead the way, I'm new here."

The eight marched upstairs to the club. "To avoid any more misunderstandings in the future:" the detective said under his breath, "I am the remorseful assassin. If you are bothered by my presence-"

"You are staying here," Ann butted in, before glancing at the other twin. "There's no reason to feel uncomfortable around Goro. He has proven both his loyalty and his willingness to atone for his mistakes, he just won't admit it to save his life."

"Literally," Sumire muttered under her breath.

"I woulda said something about his lack of tact," Ryuji added, "buuut I don't think it's gonna be a problem."

"You are aware that if we succeed, you will cease to exist, aren't you?" Goro asked.

"Will it hurt more than being hit by a speeding car?"

"...I don't think so?"

"Then I'll manage," she replied, maintaining her inappropriate cheerfulness.

The club was empty, barring a bored-looking bartender by the counter. Goro reached for his wallet, but Haru was faster. "I'm paying for everyone," she announced.

"Ooh, there's darts!" Kasumi marched up to the boards standing by the wall. "You wanna play with me, Goro? 501, double in, double out."

"Eh, sure. Why not."

The princess put some notes on the counter and the bartender handed over a set of three darts.

"Ryuji and I will take the other board then," Ann announced, and got another set of darts.

"You wanna keep an eye on them?"

She gave the athlete a pointed glare. "You're not supposed to say that out loud."

"Like either of them minds."

The other four stayed by the counter to ask for billiard balls, as Ann, Goro, Kasumi and Ryuji set themselves up by the dartboards. The detective and the other twin played rock-paper-scissors to decide who should start, and threw rock and scissors respectively.

"You know-"

"Quiet, please." Goro placed himself on the line and aimed carefully, focused. The first dart went into the bullseye, the second and third into the triple-20 section. "You can talk now."

"You know, you sound like an interesting guy," Kasumi remarked, as he walked up to grab the darts and handed them over to her. "From what Sumi told me about you, you're this dark brooding hitman trying to atone for his crimes." Unlike her opponent, she didn't put too much thought into her throws, just waved her hand and bang, bullseye. "And there's this thought I can't get out of my head:" Triple-20, as effortless as the first throw. "How does a man like you turn good? Like, what happened to change who you are inside?" Triple-18.

"That's an incredibly personal question," Ann butted in again.

"I am supposed to trust him with my little sister," Kasumi countered, picking up the darts. "I want to know what makes him tick."

Sumire, hearing herself invoked, put away her pool cue and moved towards the dartboards. "I can give you my word that I will not let her get harmed… beyond what healing spells can fix, at least," the detective reassured the other twin.

"And how much is your word worth?" The innocent smile on her face did not match the line that just left her mouth. "I mean, Sumi mentioned that there was this friend of hers you sold out to the cops."

"That is between him and us," Ryuji barked.

"And your us now includes Sumi."

"You know what?" Goro spoke up, not content with the others fighting his battles. "There was one particular moment I could personally call eye-opening. I'm going to tell you about it, under one condition."

"Okay, what do you-"

"Wipe that fucking smirk off your face," he snarled.

"Fine, fine, geez." With visible effort, she assumed a more neutral expression. "Now, what did you want me to do?"

"...that was it."

"Oh." She chuckled before catching herself. "Serious Sumi mode active, for real this time, go on."

"You will need some context beforehand." Goro pulled up a chair from one of the nearby tables and beckoned Sumire to come closer. "It all started a few years ago," he sat down, "with a half-baked vengeance plan. Help a sociopathic backbencher gain power he desired by sowing chaos and disposing of people he wanted disposed of, and then pull a rug from underneath him, revealing both our crimes and… other shared history."

"What do you mean by that?" Kasumi asked.

He sighed. "I was his illegitimate son, conceived when he had raped a sex worker."

Her cheery demeanor cracked a little bit. "...that's rough, buddy," she blurted out.

"It did not have to go on for as long as it did," he continued, "but… well, when you cannot get genuine affection, you settle for being conditionally tolerated, as long as you remain useful. I kept doing my… thing undisturbed until a few months ago." He gestured at the group, "Then, the Phantom Thieves of Hearts entered the picture. Led by one Ren Amamiya, known to his friends as Akira Kurusu. Nom-de-guerre: Joker. Currently relaxing in his home in Fuefuki."

"Oh, that guy," Kasumi commented. "Sumi kept banging on about how her 'Akira-senpai' is flawless and perfect and attractive in those fake glasses of his."

Cue another sigh. "I hated him so much."

"Oooh, a twist. Why was that?"

"Envy." He winced a bit, ashamed. "I was jealous of his overall," air quotes, "'effortless' superiority." His voice was dry, devoid of any emotion. "How could such a worthless piece of trash be more special than me?"

"Oof."

"It's a quote," he lowered his head. "I have told him that nearly verbatim."

Kasumi failed to suppress a giggle. Of course, how could she not laugh, it was so, so pathetic in hindsight. "Come on, stop it," Sumire elbowed her. Haru, Yusuke and Morgana put away their cues and approached the rest of the team.

"But it's so… edgy!"

"H-he's opening up to you and you're mocking him for it!" the gymnast protested. "Apologize, Kasumi!"

"Fine, fine." She looked at Goro, who was now intently staring at his shoes on the ground. "I am sorry, please continue."

A moment of silence followed, finally broken by the detective's mumbling: "When my… when my…"

"Your handler?" Haru suggested.

"Yes, thank you, when my handler suggested getting Akira arrested, killed, and framed for all I've done up to this point, I stupidly agreed. Hell, I…" He gripped the edge of his seat. "I fuckin' volunteered to put a bullet in his brain." Pause. "And I did it. I killed him. Or so I thought – the Thieves anticipated my betrayal and prepared for it, and I was none the wiser."

"How do you make someone think they killed someone?" Kasumi asked, confused. "Is that related to the heart-stealing and Palaces Sumi told me about?"

"Indirectly. Let's not dwell on the details," he waved her off. "What's important is that a random remark made by someone managed to snowball into me finally realizing I was duped. Tracking down the Thieves with that knowledge wasn't hard. They were infiltrating the Palace of my handler."

He paused for a moment and visibly tersed up. "You can stop at any time," Ann reassured him.

"You don't owe Miss Foot-in-Mouth your life story," Morgana added.

"I've almost gotten to the point anyway," he muttered. "Stealing a heart… forces the target to reevaluate their actions without their distorted desires influencing them. Previous targets of my handler's caliber ended up confessing to their crimes in public, letting themselves get arrested." Pause. "In short, for me to achieve my vengeance, I could just step aside and let the Thieves do their thing. But that would require me to admit two things - one, that the hundreds of victims and dozens of corpses I left behind were for nothing, and two, that Akira was better than me."

"Wait," Kasumi asked, "why couldn't you steal your handler's heart in the first place? What stopped you from doing that if that was an option?"

"I didn't know it at the time," he replied. "And when I was informed it's possible… it was too late to back out. Expecting to either win or die, I confronted the Thieves in my handler's Palace. I pulled no punches, used all the tools I had, and got my ass kicked anyway because there were eight of them and one of me."

The shift in his voice startled Kasumi a bit. "Sooo, then they killed you?"

"No!" half the room protested.

"Then what happened?"

Goro finally lifted his head and stared her square in the eyes. There was something vaguely smirk-shaped on his face. "Now, here comes the fun part: in Palaces, you can find cognitions – the copies of real people as perceived by the Palace ruler. And right after that fight, when I was goading the Thieves to finish me off… cognitive Goro Akechi enters stage left." Pause, slight head tilt. "And do you know what he did?"

"I'm not guessing."

"He started fucking monologuing!" The detective mimicked a mouth with his left palm. "'Blah blah I am a smug blowhard with delusions of grandeur.'" He turned the palm towards himself. "'Oh, and by the way, you've outlived your usefulness.'" He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Can you believe that took me by surprise? A guy solving every problem with murder wanted to solve a with murder, what a twist!"

"Um…" went Yusuke.

"And that's not all!" Goro sprung up from the chair. "Because after monologuing about how we will all die because his master wants it, he didn't try to attack them, he put a gun to my head!" He put a finger gun to his temple to underscore his point. "I was too beaten to move, clinging to consciousness out of spite, but this thing was stupid enough to focus on me and not on anyone actually threatening!"

A pause. There was something in his eyes, Kasumi thought. Some unspecific sort of anger, about to be released at whoever happened to be in the way, at whoever was deemed deserving of it at the time.

And then it faded.

"At that moment," Goro poked himself with the finger gun, "something clicked in my head, figuratively speaking. This was me. This was an accurate depiction of who I was and what I was representing – an overconfident moron, wrongly convinced of his superiority to the world around him, playing the role of an obedient pawn so well it was indistinguishable from genuine devotion. All my idiotic decisions flashed past my eyes, and the thought that I could have avoided this fate if I chose differently… not even good, just differently, more pragmatically… that was a thought I couldn't rationalize away. But it was too late. The last thing going through my head before it gets blown off will be that I'm an idiot that deserves to go out like this."

"And then he killed you?" Kasumi repeated.

"The bartender is listening." Yusuke announced.

Everyone present turned to the worker by the counter, staring at them intently and munching on some peanuts.

"God-fucking-dammit," Goro cussed.

"Look," he said, "there are no other customers around and nobody would believe me anyway. Don't mind me, just finish your story. I wanna hear the ending too."

"I'll pick up from here," Ryuji piped in. "No, the fake Goro didn't get to shoot the real one, 'cause we finally processed what's happening and blasted him to bits."

"The real Goro passed out from his injuries," Ann continued, "so we casted a healing spell and moved him somewhere safe."

"No matter his crimes," Yusuke gave the detective a brief glance, "and no matter his opinion on the subject, he didn't deserve to be unceremoniously silenced."

"He ended up going into hiding with me, Akira and one more team member who didn't snap out yet." Morgana said.

"Despite some… dissenting opinions," Haru looked elsewhere, "our leader insisted he could do something good for a change. And he did, beyond everyone's expectations."

"I ended up helping with some stuff when things escalated," Goro picked up, "both out of guilt for having caused this mess in the first place… and out of gratitude towards the Thieves for sparing me. It wasn't smooth sailing, I did not expect it to be, but… but…" He finally put away the finger gun. "...but someone finally wants me around." He turned to Kasumi. "Was that a satisfying answer? Do you have any more questions?"

To Kasumi's credit, she recognized that she had overstepped some boundaries and was genuinely remorseful about it. In an attempt to make things right, she attempted to give Goro a hug.

She got promptly headbutted and pushed away for her trouble.

"Not a touchy-feely type of person?" she said, feeling blood on her upper lip

"Not a surprise glomp type of person." Goro replied, guard clumsily raised.

She touched her nose and hissed in pain. "Dang, you broke it in one blow." Even then, she managed to squeeze in a smile. "I'm gonna go to the ladies' room, set it back and wash the blood off. Maybe get my foot out of my mouth while I'm at it," she chortled, then handed the darts to her sister. "Finish my game, Sumi."

"I'll show her where the toilets are," Haru offered. The two walked away, Morgana and Yusuke returned to the pool table, and the remaining four decided to continue their game.

"Um, so…" Sumire asked, "what are your and Sumi's scores?"

"331 for me, 337 for her."

"Wait," Ryuji piped up, "are you Sumi or is she Sumi?"

"Depends on which one's talking." The gymnast smiled. "Sharing a nickname seemed like a funny little gag, and then… you know." She stood on the line and took aim. "I'm sorry for her behaviour."

"Was the re-" Goro bit his tongue. "Was she like that… before?"

"Yes," the gymnast sighed and threw the first dart. Triple-5. "Insensitive, domineering, and better at everything we tried together. That thing you've said about senpai's 'effortless superiority'?" The second dart landed in the 20 section, between the double and the triple. "It… wasn't that far from what I felt about her. I-I didn't want her to die," the third dart just barely hit the 18 field, "but I… resented her."

"Is the past tense because you don't resent her anymore or… uh…"

Sumire glanced at Goro. There was something endearing about his awkwardness. "After the Thieves stole my heart, I ended up talking with our dad and coach about who Sumi really was, not who I thought she was." She picked the darts from the board. "Apparently to her, it was just a friendly rivalry between sisters. She was just… inept about the 'friendly' part." She handed the darts over to the detective. "And now that she's… around, because of Maruki-san, I realize I shouldn't emulate her one-for-one."

Goro took aim and threw the first dart. Triple 20. After thinking for a moment, he threw the second one, hitting the middle of the upper 1 section.

"Am I still useful to the Thieves?" Sumire asked.

"That came out of the blue." The detective's third dart went into the lower 12 section, again, roughly in the middle.

"I mean, there used to be just the two of us and you thought nobody else will want to stop Maruki-san, but now everyone but Akira-senpai's here-"

"Two people are missing," Ryuji corrected. "Futaba, our navigator and hacker, and Makoto, the nuclear people puncher."

Sumire raised an eyebrow. "Makoto Niijima? The student-"

"The student council president, yeah."

"I cannot weigh in about Makoto," Goro yanked the darts from the board, "but I would recommend leaving Futaba… undisturbed." He turned to Ann. "Igor claimed she won't remember anything from Maruki's reality when we're done, correct?"

"That's how I understood it."

"You didn't answer my question," Sumire said.

"Honestly?" The detective turned to her. "You've got more rights to be here than I do."

"I can't believe I'm saying this," Ryuji growled, "but toot your own horn a bit, please."

"Sakamoto-senpai is ri-" The gymnast noticed the athlete wince. "Are you going to object to being called 'senpai' too?"

"I mean, it's kinda cool," he admitted, "but I don't want to make you feel like you're below me. Just call me Ryuji."

"Okay then," she continued, "Ryuji-san is right. I didn't see you at your worst, Goro-san, but they did, and they're sticking up for you, so unlike me, you must have done something right."

"You're too harsh on yourself," Ann spoke up.

"Am I?" Sumire looked elsewhere. "All I've done over the past few days is get myself and two others captured by Maruki-san and slit Goro-san's throat right after my Persona awakening."

Ann and Ryuji stared at her, uneased a bit, then realized in unison that the Phantom Thievery really desensitized them to stuff like this. "I mean," the athlete blurted out, "Goro's a great fighter, so you getting a good hit on him like that has gotta count for something."

"I was completely restrained at the time," the detective said. Noticing the two giving her disapproving glares, he elaborated: "I made a remark unintentionally alluding to her sister's tragic death, and she slashed blindly, doing more damage than she wanted to." After a pause, he added: "I'm perfectly fine with her staying, for the record. That incident was a result of an awakening-related power rush and my own insensitivity. Don't hold it against her – I don't."

"Thank you, Goro-san," she muttered.

"Well, if Kenny McCormick doesn't mind…" Ann shrugged, then glanced at the gymnast. "And you, don't get discouraged. We all made mistakes, and we've learned from them. I'm sure there's something unique you'll bring to the team."

"I'm a great cook, will that be useful in any way?"

"You bet!" Ann's smile widened. "Akira was making us curry for regeneration during Metaverse trips, you could make us something too."

Sumire didn't expect that answer. "...you're pulling my leg."

"She's one hundred percent serious," Goro smiled as well. "I, for one, look forward to eating whatever you prepare for tomorrow."

She gasped. "Tomorrow?"

"I mean, I will need to run past the rest of the team," he elaborated, "but I think we've unwounded enough that we can retry infiltrating Maruki's Palace the next day."

"Don't rush it so badly," Ann insisted. "We've played one game of darts, kick back some more." She glanced towards the toilets. "I'm gonna go and check up on Kasumi and Haru, make sure the other Yoshizawa didn't make dead dad jokes or something."

She marched away, as Ryuji drifted towards the billiards table. Goro remembered that he still held the darts in his hand. "One incomplete game of darts. Do you want to finish it, Yoshiza-"

"Call me Sumire," she interrupted him. "I mean, everyone else is on a first-name basis already, I don't want to stick out."

"Got it. Do you want to finish the game?" He handed her over the darts. "It's 258 for me and 284 for you."

"Will you stop missing to spare my ego?"

"Okay," he said, and made a mental note to aim less carefully to give her a sporting chance.

The gymnast stood on the line and threw the dart. By luck, it landed on a triple 20. She smiled, satisfied.

"Sumire?" Goro said.

"Yeah?" she replied, aiming with the second dart.

"The Thieves made me feel welcome. You'll fit in just fine."