Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 4 June 2016
After School
Shujin, Front Gate

Akira waved good-bye to Ann as she jogged through the crowd to the station. He felt a pang of disappointment at not being able to spend more time with the second person to really believe in him since arriving in Tokyo, but she had a job and it would have been selfish to jeopardize that. He adjusted the school satchel hiding Morgana and kept a steady march next to Mishima until Alliance Force Assemble sang out of his phone.

Pausing to give the class representative a wave goodbye, Akira peeled off to the inner edge of the sidewalk to answer. "Appointments and scheduling, Stu Early."

The blissful sound of Hifumi chuckling floated out of his phone. "I'll take that as the right number this time. You're certainly the joker."

From his satchel, Morgana grumped, "It's getting hard to tell if that means you've broken cover like Reaper's always doing or not."

Akira scratched the nape of his neck, his face heating in embarrassment and his eyes averting despite not having anyone to look at. "Sorry. Old habits."

An undercurrent of suppressed laughter wove through her tone. "Despite your jocular nature, you never demeaned me and my embarrassing habit during games. To be honest, after the initial shock wore off, I liked how you picked it up and used that same passion yourself." She cleared her throat. "But to the point, cram school today's been canceled due to teacher illness. I promised to help you with math, but mother's been keeping me so busy I couldn't spare an hour earlier in the week. Would you like to study together?"

"Y-yeah," he said, his heartbeat speeding up. He mentally kicked himself for throwing out such a lame, casual answer. Ryuji may have been laid-back enough to accept that, but Hifumi was too smart and proper. "I mean yes. Definitely."

"There's a table in Ueno Park. Papa would stop there and we would practice before he had a match."

Akira slid the call to one side to bring up the map function. "Ueno Park… so… the place next to the flea market?" He didn't want to come out and say he didn't want to meet in public places, that might make him sound like a creep. But between the press of crowds and the noise, he didn't look forward to meeting someone unless it could be a more sedate, secluded place. "There a good, quiet place around?"

She hummed, and though the traffic helicopter circling above his head made it hard to hear he thought he heard her humming play through musical notes. "It might be harder to find such a place that also has table space for books. I-is that all right?"

Akira worked his jaw, feeling his mouth go dry at being put on the spot. "You're the one taking time to tutor me. I'll make time."

She let out a short giggle. "You're certainly easier to work with than the photographers and wardrobe mother schedules me with." She fed him some directions and he took the train.

Ueno Park

With the sun still up, it took much less time to push his way through flea market to a series of court of eateries and food carts. It took only a minute to find the girl with prim posture and the red knot in her hair. Her blazer shone blue in the daylight, the bright colors a stark difference from the masses of people throughout Tokyo all dressing like they didn't want to be noticed. Just before he could greet her, his phone buzzed. He left it to focus on the girl he came to see. Akira bowed, "Queen Togo?"

She jerked in her seat, looking up at him with wide eyes, shoulders shooting up and a touch of pale on her cheeks before the deep green of her eyes locked onto his. Her pink lips twisted into a smile and she closed the news article on her phone. "Akira-kun. You took a little while."

Setting down his satchel, Akira took the seat across the corner of the steel grate table next to her. "Thanks for waiting." He tapped Morgana. "I need my math book, your highness."

Morgana stretched before he hopped out. "It's not my fault the train rides are long."

Hifumi stood and leaned to look around the corner of the table, then clapped her hands together with a bright smile. "Your school lets you bring your pet? That's so cute!" A distant quality entered her gaze. "I pictured you as a dog person, though."

Morgana's tail stood straight up, the tip twitching. "I am not some pet. Tell her, Joker!"

His phone buzzed. Akira gave the team leader an arched eyebrow before pulling out his notes and homework with one hand. He spared a moment to look at his phone to see Ann, Ryuji, and Makoto speculating on what was in the gold briefcase Ann still had stashed under her bed. He spared a moment to text them that he was busy with a tutor today and slipped his phone back in his jacket.

Hifumi tore out a sheet of paper and clicked her pen open. "Let's start by finding out exactly where you stand."

Early Evening
Ueno Park

Dotting the last sentence, Akira flipped through his new pages of math. "Yeesh. These are more notes than I've taken over days of class."

Hifumi brushed eraser dust from the papers in front of her, her posture as prim as ever. "Examples to put the theory to practice are necessary for retention." She dropped her pencil in a pencil case and tilted her head at him. "Doesn't your math teacher go over examples like this?"

Akira flopped back in his chair with a disgusted sound. "Usami-sensei wanted to be a software engineer. She is constantly using weird computer examples that make no goddamn sense to me."

Hifumi said nothing, but something about the cant of her shoulders and attentive but neutral look in her face made him wonder if she didn't believe him. "Well, you are sounding a little spent, so let's take a break. Hone your mind on something else."

Akira felt his heart rate rise and a grin split his face. "Anywhere, any time."

She shared a smile leaving a hint of teeth, reached into her school bag, then drew and set up a shogi board. The firm but sedate girl transformed into the impassioned queen. Like all the rest of their games, her magical kingdom chased his robot army around the board and smashed them. "Checkmate."

A small yawn floated out of his schoolbag, followed by the sound of tiny jaws clicking together.

Akira smiled. "Your highness has deigned fit to join the land of the living."

Morgana held out a paw. "Guess how many claws I have, just for you."

Hifumi leaned to get a better view of him and giggled. "I guess it must be interesting owning a cat." Piano notes emanated from her phone and she pulled it out.

Morgana's tail stuck straight up. "Nobody owns me, and this isn't my natural form."

Akira looked his rival and tutor in her deep green eyes, the spark of a queen still burning within them. "One more match?"

She tilted her head, lips pressing together in an attempt to show haughty impatience, but the corners of her lips turned up. She checked her phone and her shoulders fell. "I would love to, Akira-kun, but mother already booked a venue."

He pulled out his wallet. Her eyes squinted and the muscles in her neck tensed, but he couldn't think of a way to press her about her running to something she hated. "Fair enough. How much do I owe you for the…" Akira glanced at his phone, "two hours?"

Finishing packing up her game, her eyes had the wideness of surprise when she looked back at him. "Oh, you don't have to pay."

His features hardened and an unpleasant tension seeped into every muscle in his body. "Yes, I do. You're taking time to share your expertise with me. A man shouldn't take what he does not contribute to." He drew a five thousand yen note, then another. "Five thousand an hour?"

Hifumi's pretty lips thinned. Her deep green eyes hardened. She held up a hand to ward off the money, but gears whirled behind her eyes for long seconds, her eyes twitching back and forth in the subtle movements he knew of a person arguing with herself. "I…" Her jaws clenched together. At last, she snatched the notes. "I suppose this is a better way of contributing to household financing than those interviews."

He was about to ask what that meant when she hefted her school bag and walked into the crowd coming and going from the flea market with the same bold confidence as Ann or Ryuji. It took several minutes longer for Akira to brave the same action.

Saturday, 4 June 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc

The bell rang out from the corner of the door as Akira strode into the small cafe. The transfer student paused just past the door when he spotted Sojiro wiping crumbs from one of the booth tables.

Sojiro glanced up, crumbs in his cupped hand. "Oh, it's you. Good, my back's killing me. I'm calling it a night early. I need to sit back if I'm going to be in condition to make dinner."

Akira pointed at the limited kitchen. "You don't just sit back and grab a plate of curry?"

The restaurateur came to a stop at the compost bin and brushed his hands clean. "Curry's… not always an option. Oh!" He jerked a thumb beneath the counter. "Mail delivered a package with your name on it. You can open it as soon as you finish the dishes."

"Thanks." After doing the dishes, Akira retrieved the paper-wrapped box and sat down at the counter. It weighed very little, so it couldn't be his rolling closet kit. He tore off the wrapping to find a box for the board game Carcassonne.

With Sojiro gone, Morgana hopped up onto a stool next to Akira and looked over the delivery. "What is it?"

A wide grin spread over Akira's face, chuckles bubbling out before morphing into laughter. He held up the box as if displaying a trophy. "Soon, victory shall be mine!"

Morgana let out a sigh. "It's for your math tutor isn't it? You're still stuck on her beating you at shogi."

Akira let out a breath but held the pose. "Really? Not a peep? Not even a chuckle?"

Morgana shook his head, ears flapping. "You really are a joker in every sense. Code names are meant to be a disguise. If I knew yours would be so close on so many levels, I would have picked something more circuitous."

Akira flashed a wide grin. "You could've named me for my Russian tactics, Pikup Andropov."

Morgana bonked his head on the counter.

Akira took the box in both hands. "You know you love it."

The guide trapped in cat form rolled his eyes, but the corners of his lips curled up. "As much as life is a fight for you, you always get back up."

Akira swallowed, feeling a tightness in his throat. He turned for the stairs and started up. "I… It's nothing."

Reaching the top of the stairs, Morgana hopped to the table and sat. "That much humility, you must have stolen it from me." When the transfer student just rubbed the back of his neck, the leader stood. "You really don't know what to do with a compliment, do you?"

Akira set the box on the workbench. "I'd like to just accept one, but my parents taught me there's always a string attached. The only time my old bastard would say good job was to see how I would react… and only when I had an EEG strapped to my head." He sat down on the stool and ran a hand through his hair. "That's why I let it grow out in middle school."

Morgana hopped down, then onto the workbench. "Just to make sure, you know your old man was exceptional? And not in a good way?"

Akira opened the box and dug around for the instructions. "A beaten dog knows to avoid the stick, but that doesn't mean he knows where the dog run is."

Ear flicking, Morgana gave him a raised eyebrow. "You have something special. Why does it seem that you never want to accept a compliment?" His eyes fell on the tabletop game boxed up in the transfer student's hands. "Does that have to do with why you hate losing even if it's a game?"

Akira slumped and folded the instructions back into the box. "I thought you were asleep that whole time." He closed the box. "I just… everywhere I go, someone's always better than me. Just once in life, I'd like to have parity. To be equal rather than constantly playing the game of one-upsmanship."

Morgana stood and shook out a kink in his back, tail flicking. "Think about all we've done. You and Nightrider were at each others' throats, and now you're both Phantom Thieves. Fighting side by side." His tail settled into a slow swish. "She even has a motorcycle-shaped Persona. I guess I feel a sense of kinship because I can turn into a car."

Akira stood there, box in his hands. It had been a while since Morgana talked about who he was or wondered where he came from. "Maybe you're a Persona?"

Morgana's tail stood up. "A person." His eyes fell to the side and the tip of his tail switched. "Take… since Nightrider awakened, it's like there's been something on the tip of my mind, but I can't gather enough of it to say it. Something important that I'm supposed to do." He shook his head, then looked up at Akira. "Something special, like you."

Akira looked away, feeling heat in his face and a tightness in his throat. He set the box aside and walked to the table set up in front of the couch to collect his homework. "Don't praise me for being lucky. Luck can run out."

Morgana hopped up on the couch as the transfer student slid the box under the workbench. "With all the talent we're collecting, just you wait. And it's only a matter of time until Kaneshiro's heart changes."

Finishing changing, Akira sat down on the bed. "I hope so. There's a lot of people who will die soon if it doesn't work."

Morgana hopped down and paced to the circular cushion Akira set on the bottom of the bookshelf for him. "Hey, Joker?"

Akira slipped under the sheet. "What's up?"

"Kaneshiro hurt hundreds of people. He had a whole network of people making others suffer."

Despite the leader's statements, it sounded like he had a question. "Yeah, those have always been the worst people in history. Not the ones who kill or poison directly, but the ones that set up a network of fear to force others to do the same thing, and typically go on until rot within allows something to crumble them from the outside. The KGB. The Kenpeitai."

Morgana sat down, eyes distant with thought. "But with so many people to see the terrible things, why doesn't anyone stop it?"

Akira leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head. "Oof, that's a complicated one. My old bastard said humans are naturally assholes. Both my parents are case examples, really. Hell, look at us. We went after Kaneshiro in the Metaverse where we have Personas to fight him, but we did everything we could to avoid him in the real world." He set the Casserone box on the shelf and started changing. "But… I don't know. That doesn't feel right. I think that's part of why I felt so strongly about what Father Motoori said in the intensive care unit of that hospital. He spoke to me about a whole side of humans I never really heard about. I just wish I could be sure that isn't just another human weakness."

"Humans are… weak?" Morgana's ears twitched. "No, that just doesn't feel right. There's too much potential. If humans were bad at heart, society would be all horrible all the time. Even if most people just want to get by, that's still a way better place than everyone wanting bad things."

"You sound like Father Motoori," Akira said, pulling the sheet up. "Go to sleep."

Sunday, 05 June 2016
Morning
Kanda Catholic Church

The final benediction came to a close and the parishioners shuffled out. Waiting for the crowd to clear out, Akira read on from the last day's reading of Jesus interrupting a funeral procession in Nain. After the majority were out of the sanctuary, he stood up.

Hifumi stood there at the second pew, a glint of expectation in her eyes. "Good morning, Akira-kun. Ready for another match between the Legion of Steel and Togo Kingdom?"

His heart shot into the same fast, steady rhythm as when the class lined up at Shujin's field for sprints. He closed his Bible and set it aside, a wide grin forming as he bowed in his seat. "For Queen Togo? Anywhere, any time."

A skip to her step, Hifumi sat down and set up a standard game.

Akira straightened his glasses. "No special set-up today?"

Hifumi twitched, her hand dropping the last tile out of place. She snatched it and put the silver general down. "O-oh, I don't want to make you feel like I'm only exploiting you for my own scenarios. It's important to give back to something you take from. My father always phrased it, 'what's good for the whole is good for the one.' I thought we'd start with a standard game. U-unless you wanted—"

"No. It's okay, Togo-san," Akira said, reaching a hand towards hers but drawing back before getting halfway across the board. He settled back into his regular posture, then glanced at her prim pose and straightened. "You won the last game, so I'll start with the usual battle droid." He moved up a pawn.

She set one of her own pawns forward. "Lothlorien's rangers are at home in the forest."

A rapid back-and-forth settled, with him capturing almost as many pieces as her until she called check for the second time. He ran a hand through his frizzy hair, trying not to grind his molars. "Well that went as bad as last time."

Her head tipped forward and lips pressed together just a bit, with an adorable pink pout that refused to let him look away. "Nonsense. You're more of a challenge every time. It's clear you're practicing between our sessions." She tucked her long, dark hair over her ear, but missed a couple of strands.

The confessional opened and Father Sugiyama stepped out, helping the old man down the stairs to the congregation pews.

Akira couldn't stop from staring at those two strands of hair. Couldn't stop thinking how badly he wanted to reach his hand out and brush back those strands. Just imagining touching her made him wonder how soft her skin was.

Heat blossomed over Akira's face and he jumped to his feet. "S-sorry, Father Sugiyama's expecting me. Seeyoulater." He snatched his study Bible and raced to meet the Father lifting the stole off his shoulders.

"Son," the middle-aged man said with an acknowledging incline of his head. "I hope you weren't distressed by having to wait."

"What? N-no, everything's fine," Akira blabbed, his heart refusing to slow down and the sensation of heat lingering on his face at the mental picture of brushing his finger across Hifumi's cheek. Or wondering how it would feel to cup her face with his hands…

He rubbed his head, forcing himself to think back to the problem with Mishima, Ann, and Shiho. "Okay, everything is not fine. But it's not her fault," he said, twitching his head back at her without having the guts to look back Hifumi's way.

Father Sugiyama gave a polite nod and led the transfer student to the side door leading to parish offices. After settling down in front of his desk, Akira clasped his hands and fiddled with his thumbs. "I tried reading about what the Bible said about loyalty, but there was so much." His eyes fell to the floor. "I… what if I met a girl and things got serious? If I promised to always be with her and help her? Then asked her to meet me and stood her up, and she got hurt because she was where I told her to be?"

After leading them into his office, Sugiyama drew a pair of thin-framed spectacles from a case inside his desk and settled them on his nose. "I think, son, that the past is a thing which informs our present, but should never be allowed to hold tyranny over our present or future."

Akira closed the door and scratched behind his ear. "Even if she blames me? How would I make it right?"

Father Sugiyama stood and paced to the bookshelf to his left. "Well, there's no one easy answer. How did you meet the lucky lady?"

Akira swallowed. Mishima deserved some good answers. "Volleyball practice."

The priest's eyes widened for a moment and he pulled a book off the shelf and returned to his office chair. "Is Shiho still hurt?"

Akira squirmed, the padded chair much less comfortable for some reason. "She's… still in the hospital. Hasn't finished physical therapy." He sat back against the chair. "How'd you know?"

Father Sugiyama smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "'My friend has this problem' is very close to 'I have this problem'. And I suspect you'd be at the thanksgiving offertory right now if you found a serious girlfriend." He rubbed the bridge of his nose for a moment before returning his spectacles to his nose. "What did she say in the last visit?"

The transfer student tugged at his dress shirt lapels, unable to meet Father Sugiyama's bespectacled gaze. It took Akira several days to ask Ann about Shiho again after the shock of her explosive rage. Ann had to beg the class rep to come the first time, and Mishima got jittery and self-effacing every time he or Ann poked him to visit Shiho again. "He hasn't gone back. And somehow what he's saying makes sense, but I don't understand it." Might as well see what response, if not answers, the Father had to Mishima's excuse. "Says she was hurt because of him. That going back would just dredge up all her pain again. No matter what Ann or I say, he said he doesn't have that right." His mouth tasted bitter. It didn't make sense that Mishima wasn't battering down every door between himself and the girl he wept over.

Father Sugiyama's head tilted just a little, focus leaking out of what little slipped beyond his composed mask. "Our lives are defined by what we sacrifice for. If he wants to rebuild the relationship, he needs to go to her. And in my experience of couples' therapy in the parish, the sooner you reconnect the better. Even if you have to include intermediaries. No relationship becomes serious without a multitude of factors bringing two people together. What drew them together?"

Akira took off his glasses to wipe a faint smudge on the lens, certain the temperature in the room went up when the thought about pre-incident Shiho. "She was kind, beautiful, insightful. She possessed a calm, but somehow drew the eyes of everyone around her without ever needing to raise her voice or be extravagant. She had the patience to look at me. To decide to look past the rumors and give me a chance to be an Akira who wasn't a criminal, who wasn't a broken twig away from whipping my knife out, who wasn't an asshole. For Mishima, she was all that and affectionate." Putting away his microfiber cloth, he set his glasses back on his nose, eyes down as jealousy roared within that she couldn't have been his. "And that smile…"

Sugiyama's composed mask slipped just a bit, the corners of his lips turning up and a glint in his eyes before he opened the book and traced down the table of contents, then flicked through the pages. "It's clear this girl is dear to you, as well. Sadly, without speaking to the boy I can't be sure what factors are central to his relationship. But I can give general relationship advice. Go with him if he needs a steady shoulder, he needs to repeat those things he loves of her and seek the things she loved of him."

Akira straightened and took in a deep, centering breath. "Well, the situation got… complicated. Her best friend – who is amazing, supportive and beautiful to the point of being distracting. Like… she catches girls' eyes." The image of Ann in her hug-every-curve Panther suit sprang to the fore. He cringed, and in the privacy of his own mind kicked himself for thinking of his friend like that. Mother would think of people like that. He shook his head. "A-anyway, she was talking to Mishima and… whether it started as an accident or not, they kissed."

Sugiyama spread his hands over the pages to flatten the book, but his eyes remained on the transfer student. "Well, a little incidental contact by teenagers in school isn't breaking marriage vows."

Akira worked his jaw, sympathy for and anger at Mishima both for being so close to two beautiful women. "It wasn't a short kiss. Breath ran out. I feel dirty just looking at Ann out of the corner of my eye while thinking of Shiho, I can't imagine how painful it is for Mishima who was going steady with her."

The priest folded his hands together on his book. "Well, anxiety can whittle down our patience as well as dampen our wisdom. If Mishima is concerned about loyalty, we can help understand what we value by what we set time aside for."

The transfer student rubbed the back of his neck. "To be honest, Mishima's been avoiding both of them. I understand shock – Shiho floored me with how angry she got at Mishima. But he's been overworking himself trying to 'make up for it' and hasn't ever gone in to see her since Ann and I dragged him that one time. At first I thought that was a good thing, because he tried to kill himself the day Kamoshida confessed. At least by working he's got something to live for." He blinked, then took off his glasses to wipe a fallen eyelash from his face. "But since he told me about the thing with Ann, he's been avoiding her too."

"Hm." Father Sugiyama ran his finger down the page in a familiar speed-reading technique, turned the page, and kept going for a little ways. "People tend to avoid problems, hoping to avoid the discomfort of confrontation, but that rarely makes things better. It's one of the reasons why the Catholic Church is so firm on its stance of forgiveness. It doesn't just help those sinned against by restitution, it helps the sinner by opening our lives back up."

Akira felt himself leaning just a bit forward in lieu of being able to step into the verbal confrontation. "Doesn't it make just as much sense to try to balance the scales so you can go back into the world?"

"When there is an objective weight to measure against," Sugiyama said, pushing back and reaching to a statuette of an archangel holding a set of scales. He set the statuette down on the desk, facing the transfer student. "If my driver backs up into your mailbox, causing five thousand yen of damage, it is a simple enough matter for me to pay five thousand for restitution. But what about if I accidentally lose the last photograph you have of a dear departed grandfather? Six hundred yen may be the cost to buy a set of photos at a mall photo booth, but what could compensate for the treasured memories you and your grandfather shared? What if I lost my own photograph of my dear departed grandfather? Would I not increase the tally of the sin every time I thought of it, even though I had but the one sin?"

Akira looked at his hands in his lap.

"You said this young Mishima blames himself for what happened to Suzui-chan," the Father said, leaning back in his chair. "Do you believe he would ever decide he has done enough for either hurting or allowing hurt to the person most precious to him?"

Akira took off his glasses to clean the lenses. He hated being stumped. "I didn't really think about that."

He folded his hands together again and looked the transfer student in his bespectacled eyes. "It is rather common for the virtuous to think more highly of others than we think of ourselves. The first thing you can do is be a reliable friend so he feels grounded enough to go forth."

That made sense. Akira picked up his study Bible and bowed. "Thank you, Father. I should go get started."