Sokila was calmly drawing pictures of a crimson ocean.

"...how much longer...?"

Igor smiled genially.

"Your time, and that of your guest, will come soon."

Sokila looked over her shoulder with longing eyes.

"Mister Ikari feels...different, somehow..." Skipping over to one of the canvases, she proceeded to paint a giant purple titan, grappling with an orange giant. "...how is it possible to be scarier, yet not at the same time...?"

Igor chuckled at her query.

"It is the way of man: often times, they advance by facing their contradictions, and forming a third way from the resultant clash..."

Sokila pouted, drawing exaggerated eyes on the violet monster.

"...I guess...I'm getting...imp...im-pay...im-pah-scent...you know, like Elizabeth-senpai?"

"Impatient."

"Yeah, that's the one!"

The faint haze of blue began to brighten-

xxxx

/Saturday: August 29, 2015/

/Courtyards, Hakone Academy/

Shinji Ikari continued reading from The Tragedy of Hamlet, if only because it provided a decent distraction from his strange dreams...and gave him something to focus on other than Kensuke's pending meeting with his father.

Still, the scene he was on was...phrased rather oddly. "HAMLET said, 'Lady, shall I lie in your lap?' OPHELIA said, 'No, my lord.' HAMLET said, 'I mean, my head upon your lap?'" Shinji frowned. "Isn't that just saying the same thing? OPHELIA said, 'Ay, my lord.'" Shinji blinked. "Wait, what changed...? HAMLET said, 'Do you think I meant country matters?'" What did the countryside have to do with anything? "OPHELIA answered, 'I think nothing, my lord.' HAMLET said, 'That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.'" Shinji blinked confusedly, feeling as though there was some...unsaid innuendo being spoken.

(June the 12th: on the way to classes, he asked his roommates and Mayumi Yamagishi what exactly the line about 'wearing a beaver up' meant.)

That memory elicited a heavy blush. Come to think of it...there probably is something like that, he thought, being just knowledgeable enough to know that much about Shakespeare. Hence, instead of texting Yamagishi-chan for a potential explanation, he chalked the dialogue up to 'the author's using dirty wordplay again' and continued on.

xxxx

/Yamagishi Apartment, East of Lake Ashi/

Mayumi Yamagishi watched quietly as two men ferried out boxes full of books, gradually emptying out her room to fill the moving van parked alongside her apartment complex.

Right now, she was just...trying to take it all in.

(Misato Katsuragi, in her boundless wisdom, had recruited Mana Kirishima and Toji Suzuhara to raid the refrigerator of anything perishable that had yet to spoil, if only to not let the food go to waste. Stuff with a bit of a longer shelf life was set aside into a smaller section of the refrigerator to be transported to her apartment.)

("...what exactly are we going to do with this stuff?" asked Toji, looking nervously at the hodgepodge of ingredients.)

("Kid, so long as you have the right amount of spices, you can throw it together and make it edible!" Misato exclaimed, putting a big crock pot onto the stove.)

("My Big Sis was much the same," remarked Mana with a confident nod.)

(Toji blinked nervously. "...shouldn't we at least try a little harder...?")

Kensuke Aida was sitting on the other side of the couch, staring intently at nothing in particular. "...what are you going to do with this place?"

"...I haven't decided yet," she admitted, because there would be a sense of finality to such a move that she wasn't ready for yet. (Or was she?) "I...suppose that's something I'll need to discuss with Katsuragi-san and Niijima-san..."

"I guess." Kensuke glanced towards the door leading to her parents' bedroom. "...have you looked in there yet?"

"...I haven't found the nerve," she honestly admitted. Talking about her difficulties with this matter was...simpler, with her peers from Team Statherós. (Because they understood. They understood.) "It has...ramifications."

"...I guess it does." Kensuke scratched at his hair, wearing the expression of someone who desperately wanted to avoid something. (She knew, because she had seen it on her own face in the mirror.)

"Are you concerned about meeting your father today?" she asked.

Kensuke nervously smiled. "Am I that obvious?" Sighing tiredly, he added, "already let my dad know that I'll be showing up for dinner...I imagine that's when it'll all go down."

There was a brief part of Mayumi that bitterly lamented the fact that Kensuke still had the privilege of a living parent; the rest of her knew that such a privilege could very well be a curse, depending on how their discussion unfolded. "Is that why you pulled Suzuhara-san into coming along?"

"I mean, the more people for this, the better, you know? It's easier to deal with this stuff as a group...even if Toji and I are pretty much only comic relief."

Mayumi huffed with disappointment at the blatant self-deprecation. "There's no need to put yourself down...you, Suzuhara-san, Ikari-san...you're as much my friends as Mana-san is. We all have our own problems...so don't think that, just because I've lost my mother and father, that you have to feel unconcerned about how dinner with your father will go...it's important to you."

"...that means a lot, Yamagishi-san," admitted Kensuke with a weary grin. "Makes me feel more comfortable admitting that I'm trying to buy as much time as possible before I have to head back home..."

Mayumi looked over her shoulder towards the kitchen. "Well..."

("It shouldn't be bubbling like this!" yelled Toji with a panicked tone.)

("It's perfectly fine," insisted Misato, staring at the frothy concoction with a confident voice.)

("No it ain't!")

("What, are you a chef? Do you have professional experience?" retorted Misato.)

("...I don't think you need to be a chef to know that sort of smell is bad news," grumbled Mana, holding her nostrils shut with one hand.)

"...there are certainly worse places to bide your time than here," she mused with a small smile.

xxxx

/Hakone-Kintoki Station, Tokyo-3/

It was sometimes strange to think about how human society and civilization could seemingly erase the scars of the past.

Nearly three months ago now, Hakone-Kintoki Station had been the site of a traumatic episode of Angel Syndrome; where, to the public's ignorance, Shinji Ikari had uncontrollably manifested his Evangelion in a state that could only be called incomplete...yet still possessing enough power to fatally wound Sachiel and destroy its Acolyte.

Hikari Horaki knew none of that; she could only recall how, shortly after the beginning of June, the local news had reported that the station would be temporarily closed due to an incident of Angel Syndrome. Customer rail traffic from Gotemba had been rerouted to the more southerly Hakone-Mikuni Station that served as the terminus for the Iwanami-Hakone Line. She could, even now, vaguely remember students complaining about the longer transit times it had created for parents and relatives that commuted to Tokyo-3 for work. Then, after a relatively short period of time, the station had opened back up, and traffic between Hakone and Gotemba resumed as if nothing had ever happened.

Looking around, she would never have known that a train car had exploded from the inside on June the 6th, and that there had been a period where a cognitive void had rendered the station inaccessible to human thought.

(Even if the damage had been repaired...nothing would erase the fact that people had died on that day.)

(No matter how hard your family tries, the past will never be forgotten.)

All of this rumination curdled within her subconscious as her little sister Nozomi gave tearful goodbyes to Kodama; their father, Bunzaemon Horaki, was watching the display with a tired smile: clad in slacks and a button-up shirt with thin brown hair and plain glasses, he cut a rather simple yet respectable image.

(When her father quietly stepped out of his bedroom that morning, she reminded him that his stubble was showing. "Ah...right," Bunzaemon had said, quietly heading for the restroom to grab the the electric shaver.)

Sometimes, the act of being an eternal reminder was...difficult.

(Yet it kept him going. That was preferable, right?)

As Nozomi stepped away from Kodama, her father stepped forward, putting on a somewhat wider smile. "It was good seeing you again, Koda-chan," he said, using an old pet nickname for her. "You keep up with your studies, okay?"

Kodama quietly nodded, stepping forward to hug her father around the shoulders; however, Hikari was at an angle to see Kodama whisper into her father's ear.

'You don't have to keep pretending.'

Something spiteful and hateful briefly raged within Hikari's heart; she ruthlessly tamped down on it, folding her hands so that no one could see how hard her grip was.

Kodama stepped back; the decrease in her father's expression to its previously tired form didn't go without notice. As her older sister turned to say goodbye, Hikari briefly gestured with her head to step a bit away from the train platform. "Ah...a little private girl-on-girl stuff," loudly said Kodama, reading her intentions for what they were. Stepping several meters away from otousan and Nozomi-chan, the two eldest sisters stared intently at each other. "What is it, Hikari?"

Hikari had positioned herself so that neither her father nor her younger sister could see her talk. "...why would you tell father to stop pretending?"

Kodama sighed, unable — or perhaps unwilling — to hide her look of disappointment. "Pretending doesn't do anyone any favors. To see him put on airs...to give off the impression that he's happy or content...it's so fake."

"That's easy for you to say-"

"You were too young to remember what father was really like, before mom died. No matter how hard I try...I can't forget." With a somber frown, Kodama briefly adjusted her glasses; sorrow lingered in her eyes, faded from the passage of years yet still fresh. "I'm not going to pretend that he's the same man he used to be."

That's easy for you to say. You don't have to live here. You left.

(Kodama had left when she had gotten the chance to do so.)

(She left YOU behind to deal with it...she abandoned all of you...)

Hikari, with a stern frown, constrained her words with admirable restraint. "You're not around often enough to see him on a daily basis. You don't know-"

"He's not an idiot whose hand needs to be held. Father and I talked more than once while you and Nozomi-chan were asleep...and he's rather frank." Hikari resisted the urge to feel violated at Kodama's impropriety (and why would it be so? They were family...they were...even if the edges were frayed...). The elder sister added, "He isn't ignorant, but his sense of duty is too strong...how do you think he feels about you trying to mother him all the time?"

"...I'm not going to give up on him, Kodama-neesan." How long had it taken for her to help provide some semblance of structure so that her father could live like a functioning human being? How often had she tried to make sure that Nozomi-chan talked to him about her days, to keep him involved in their lives? There were countless other examples that she wanted to throw in Kodama's face. (But she wouldn't. That would be...out of bounds.) "I won't." I can't.

"You're just a child; it shouldn't be your responsibility in the first place," retorted Kodama.

(When had been the last time she had even felt like a child? So much was riding on her.)

(A burden you never asked for. A burden you never wanted.)

"...I'm glad you had the whole month with us, Kodama-neesan," murmured Hikari, wrapping her arms around Kodama's torso. "Even if you don't think so...father was happier." I know he was.

Kodama, apparently unwilling to continue this old debate of theirs, simply returned the hug. "...take care of yourself, Hikari." Kodama brushed at her long skirt, waving with a forced smile at Nozomi and Bunzaemon before carrying her luggage onto the train.

The Horaki Family watched as the train pulled away. "And there goes neesan," chirped Nozomi, kicking at the ground with her toes. "Why can't we ever visit her?"

Hikari smiled at her little sister. "Well, her university is all the way in Shikoku; it would take us several hours by train to reach Matsuyama in Ehime Prefecture, and that's without counting the military checkpoints...and she lives at a women's dorm, so we'd need to rent a hotel...really, it's just more economical and practical for neesan to visit us, instead of the other way around."

Bunzaemon looked quietly at her with an expression that was both weary yet fascinated. "Always so mature, aren't you Hikari-chan...?"

"Just being responsible, otousan," replied Hikari with a cheerful smile. "So...we had lunch already; is there anything you'd like to do?"

"Nothing in particular," replied Bunzaemon, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "If you want to go home, I'd be fine with that..."

(He didn't have work today; keeping him from calling it early and going to bed would be...harder.) "...Nozomi-neechan, is there anything in particular you'd like to do?" asked Hikari, looking towards her younger sister.

"I wanna see about that new game that got released!" exclaimed Nozomi, pulling her Danbai WonderGoose out of her backpack. "I've heard good things about Lord of Battlers XIII, Pocket Edition!"

Hikari nodded, taking the opportunity for what it was. "We can walk to the game store, then! The weather's wonderful today..." Turning towards Bunzaemon, she added, "if that's okay with you, otousan?"

"...whatever you like," he replied with a smile that was more tired than enthusiastic.

(She didn't let the lack of vigor damper her spirits; doing something was better than nothing.)

(To sit back and do nothing...you would rather die than be so despicable a creature, wouldn't you?)

Hikari forced herself to usher them along with an ease that could almost be called professional.

(Now if only your traitorous heart would stop troubling you...)

xxxx

As the sun descended toward the horizon, Kensuke Aida found himself staring quietly at the apartment blocks sitting on Lake Ashi's western shores, arranged in tight, orderly blocks. The uniformity of their design didn't sit well, mismatched as they were for the unease and tension in his heart. "...kinda wish I had backup," he murmured.

(Shinji Ikari, alas, had had missions to attend to. Katsuragi had taken Kirishima and Yamagishi for a special training session. Sakamoto had pulled Toji for a job involving Shadow pacification, to gauge his 'diplomatic' abilities.)

(If only you could be there for the latter, because it sounds HILARIOUS.)

...well, waiting isn't going to do many good. Nervously steeling himself, Kensuke ascended the stairs to the apartment that had been the home of the Aida family for literal years. With trepidation, Kensuke reached for the door; it was unlocked (because he was expected, why wouldn't it be?), so it opened with unsettling ease. "Um...I'm home," he called out.

"You're on time," seamlessly responded his father from the kitchen, out of sight from the front door. "Dinner's ready."

Grimacing, Kensuke pulled off his shoes and socks, walking with bare feet out of the main hall; he looked towards the dining table, where Seigo Aida was putting down a second bowl of savory udon with tempura chicken. "...that was Mom's favorite dish," he murmured.

"It is," he calmly replied, pouring warm tea into a cup. He didn't elaborate further...which was just so typical of him, really.

Kensuke valiantly fought to tamp down his instinctive impulses; he noted that his father had set the second bowl in front of the chair to his right. Where I used to sit when Mom was still around. As their relationship had cooled over the past few years, Kensuke had taken to sitting in the chair opposite of his father's by default. The man had never protested or made note of it...but perhaps it had been a mistake to not look deeper into it.

(Who are you trying to fool? The 'Kensuke Aida' from before June would never have even considered looking that deeply into Seigo Aida's actions.)

They both quietly said "Itadakimasu" before digging into their food, slurping in relative silence. As they ate, Seigo would occasionally ask questions about the more...lighthearted parts of his summer vacation: what was the Okayama countryside like; how had it been meeting the cast of a classic Featherman team; had Zenkichi Hasegawa been professional as far as Anti-Terror Task Force agents went; and so on and so forth. It brought to mind old memories of when his parents would ask about events at school...and when Naomi Aida would relay tales of her 'wackier' missions as an A.T. Agent. (A more cynical part of him wondered if this was intentional...but his sense of childlike optimism basked in the nostalgia.)

Finally, his father placed his chopsticks down. "Your youthful excursions are at least more...typical. The wording of Dr. Akagi's reports had a tone indicating that you went from one tribulation after another."

Kensuke frowned. "Well...the Doc tends to focus more on the 'big picture.' She thought that the whole summer vacation was a waste of time."

"Given what all occurred, clearly it wasn't," dryly said Seigo, pouring more tea into his cup. "I would like you tell me in your own words about more...troubling incidents."

And here we go. Kensuke sighed, leaning back in his chair. "What exactly do you want me to talk about?"

"The Ai Ferry. The terrorist attack by Strega in Okayama. The Kuchisake-onna. The Angel during the August New Moon. Your battle against the mysterious girl who called herself Minako. Your actions during the Fog of Desolation at Tokyo-2."

"...that's a lot," admitted Kensuke.

"The exact sequence of events is something I'm less interested in than in how you were specifically involved: what you did, what you felt, what you experienced."

"...that's still a lot."

His father shifted his eyes towards the microwave clock, which read 06:13 PM. "We have ample time."

"I know. It's still a lot." Sighing, Kensuke sipped the last of his udon broth with gusto that was both real and feigned simultaneously. "So. On the Ai, I was challenging Toji in the ferry's game room when we suddenly shifted into the Metaverse..."

Kensuke's tale of the events didn't so much as go into hard details as they did into more...esoteric matters, such as what he had felt like at the time, what stuck out to him the most, what had given him the most cause for fright. It made for a more meandering 'debriefing' than Kensuke was used to, having worked for the analytical and detached Dr. Akagi for the past couple of months.

The Ai Ferry had evoked feelings of...confusion, bewilderment, and ultimately stunned disbelief at the lengths to which the old government had gone to claim Shinji Ikari and Mana Kirishima, as well as how horrifically things had gone wrong.

The fight against Sho Minazuki in Okayama, on the other hand, was a complex casserole of complicated convictions (a metaphor/alliteration combo he was privately proud of): naive determination at wanting to stop Strega; tired fatigue from fighting with not just cognition, but also body and soul; detached anxiety from how closely Minazuki had come to killing him, had it not been for Shinji's newfound power to extend his A.T. Field; finally, a sense of dissatisfaction at how Minazuki had cut and run when Rei Ayanami had made it to Okayama, punctuated by disgust at the sight of all the bodies at the Olympic stadium's ruins.

The ordeal with the Kuchisake-onna, by contrast, had been blessedly simple: through running and sheer effort, he had saved a girl from a wild Archetype in the Metaverse. The dread, exhaustion, and despair he had felt back then seemed very mild in retrospect.

The battle against Armisael...well, the one feeling that stood out, more than all the others, was triumph: a whole horde of Archetypes had been defeated; even the attempted corruption by the Angel had been halted by Shinji's epic 'Poetry Interrupt', leading directly into how Mayumi Yamagishi had awoken to her Persona in an explosively dynamic fashion. Even with the awe and lingering terror that had taken root when the Angel had transformed into a monstrous chimera, the sensation of scaling a giant whilst hanging onto Gilgamesh could only be deemed 'awesome' in retrospect. Mayumi's tearful and cathartic euphoria following the battle had only papered over the more terrifying moments in his mind.

It was strange, then, to go from that to Minako. Despite being a single human, she had defied easy categorization, given her ability to summon multiple Personas at once. In light of her combat prowess, her utter domination and seeming invincibility, plus the belated shock at how she had killed two of their own...the only feelings that Kensuke could use to describe that battle were fear and hopelessness.

The Fog of Desolation, despite its much higher human cost compared to all of those other events, was strangely...light, going by Kensuke's retelling. Despite the mystery of the yellow fog, he had coordinated quite effectively with Toji and Ryuji Sakamoto, bringing down shadowy monsters and assisting other A.T. Agents at Matsumoto Castle. Even the revelation of Tohru Adachi's actions in murdering Kenshiro Morooka hadn't put a damper in that; by the time the fog had faded, there had only been a strange...ambiguity, where the realization of just how many people had died in Tokyo-2 was learned in a manner that was mostly intellectual.

"And you are troubled by that?" asked Seigo, sipping from his third cup of tea.

"...I feel like I should be," admitted Kensuke, wondering what exactly was going through his father's mind. "But...compared to Ken Amada and Junpei Iori...or even Kenji Tomochika? It's...hard to get worried about them. Beyond the visceral impact of seeing dead bodies in person...I've been able to move on."

"Is that a fact?"

Kensuke wished he could tell what his father was feeling; his stoic mannerisms made it hard to tell. (Like always.) "...do you not agree?"

Seigo folded his hands and rested them in front of his mouth, leaning on his elbows; his father looked at him with a severity that was intense yet...not angry. "It is a sentiment that has been spoken of often enough by others: that the quality of human suffering seems to decrease as the quantity of humans grows. The pain affecting a single life can hit us harder than the deaths and tragedies of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people. It is one of the oddities of mankind..." Pausing briefly, he added, "NERV has numerous mental health professionals on its payroll. On Monday, you will undergo a screening to determine if you require therapy."

Kensuke's face fell. "Aw, come on-"

"What reason do you have to deny it?"

Youthful petulance and simple defiance warred to come out first; their mutual stalemate allowed Kensuke to think about his words. "...no good reasons," he admitted.

"Then it's settled."

"...it's not like Mom ever went through it."

Seigo's eyes narrowed a smidge. "Not that you were aware of."

Kensuke blinked. "Seriously? I mean, I know she probably sanitized some mission details that were more messy than normal...but she never mentioned seeing a shrink."

"It was nothing so crass," calmly remarked Seigo. "She considered it a normal part of her work routine. She deemed it her duty to keep the darkness away from our household; much like how she thought it her obligation to keep me informed of her more harrowing missions...and how she believed it necessary to leave the rest for you, so that you would have a role model to look up to." As he finished the last of his tea, he poured a fourth cup. "If your mother believed it to be a necessary step, then who are you to deny the same?"

Kensuke, irritatingly, couldn't find a way to retort. So he changed the subject. "...after all these years, you've avoided talking about Mom. Why?"

"Children have enough problems of their own without adults adding to them," his father answered with a straight face. "What would be the point to me sharing pain that wasn't meant to be yours? For me to indulge in such selfishness would have been unsightly, and an insult to your mother's memory. I didn't have the right."

Kensuke stared flatly at Seigo, trying to reconcile these words with the longstanding state of affairs in the Aida household. The back of his mind cheerfully said 'overflow error!' before he asked, "But what if I wanted you to talk about it? It would have hurt less than just watching you pretend like she had never been a part of our family!"

Seigo calmly observed him with a flat expression, carved from proverbial stone. For the first time in a long while, the awkwardness that had dominated their mutual conversations was absent. It allowed him to actually look at his father without the preconceptions he was used to.

(Or maybe his father was making more of an effort than normal?)

(Or maybe...your experiences have allowed you greater understanding.)

Regardless, his father looked...tired. Not as an athlete, who had just completed a marathon; nor as a warrior, who had just triumphed in battle; rather, he was an Atlas in miniature, who had carried a weight for far, far too long.

"I've never been the emotional sort," he murmured, folding his hands and resting them on the table. "And I was always fine with that; Naomi emoted enough for the both of us. I...appreciated that, about her. So when she died...it was as though a warm fire had been suddenly snuffed out, in the dead of winter."

"...you were awful quiet, after her funeral in 2012," murmured Kensuke, thinking back to those days with a grimace, at how a pall had fallen over their home. "Whenever I wanted to talk about her...you just said nothing. And then, one day...when I got home, all of the pictures of Mom were gone, put away into storage...everything except her old A.T. Task Force badge, sitting on the picture mantle..."

"The memories I carried were painful enough. Once enough time had passed, I resolved...to be open, to any requests you made of her old things. But as the months rolled by...you seemed to have moved on. You were hanging out with your friend, Suzuhara-kun. You had seemingly developed a hobby related to computers and hardware engineering, which I was happy to encourage. I thought that you had chosen to move on, to keep living life...displaying a strength that was admirable. I didn't want to ruin that...but the thought that your obsession with Naomi and her heroism had simply turned inward...it never occurred to me. Not until it turned out that you had taken her old badge and used it to construct your own portal into the Metaverse." Seigo huffed, looking utterly disappointed in himself. "More the fool, me."

Kensuke didn't know what to think. So his mouth blurted impulsive words, fit for the turmoil in his heart. "Is that all it comes down to? Us not...knowing how to talk to each other? Is that seriously it?" Old pain demanded to be released, even if it was ugly. "I mean...you're my dad; you're supposed to know about this sort of stuff, aren't you?! How could you not know...?"

Seigo took the verbal lashing rather admirably, all things considered. "You wouldn't know of your grandparents: my mother and father. To say that they were controlling and heavy-handed with raising me would be putting it...mildly." The slight narrowing of the eyes, the minor downturn of his lips: they were enough to communicate his displeasure at those unspoken memories. "I resolved not to subject you to the same experiences, to let you develop and grow as you desired. So long as I provided a home for you to return to, and paid for the tuition that would open the doors of adulthood...I was content, with that. With the friendships you had forged with your peers at the Academy dorms...I was satisfied, that you would be fine. But that was merely looking at the surface, and not seeing any further. And now, here you are: involved with climactic battles the likes of which Naomi would have been flabbergasted by...and excited by, in equal measure."

"...you still mad, about it?" he wondered, thinking back to when he had entered the Metaverse, dragging Shinji along out of a mistaken belief that he had secretly been some kind of superpowered badass.

(That Shinji had ended up becoming one was besides the point.)

(How fitting, that you couldn't see past the surface to see who Shinji really was...truly, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, in terms of faults...)

"My anger burns bright, but quickly...or so your mother liked to remark, once upon a time. I think it was disbelief, more than anything else, that kindled my anger...not just at you, for doing something so dangerous behind my back...but also that I had been blind to the truth."

It was utterly bewildering, how frank his father was being. Reassuring...yet scary. "...what brought all this on? Why change, after all this time?"

His tousan quietly sipped his tea, gathering his thoughts. "I've had weeks, to think about our last conversation, before you left on your road trip: to think about my mistakes, to think about what Naomi would have done, were she still around...and realize that it wouldn't matter, because I'm not her, and never can be. That memories wouldn't have been enough for you...seems obvious, in hindsight. Yet I cannot change my errors." Bowing his head, he quietly asked, "It would be presumptuous, to ask you for your forgiveness; yet ask you I must."

Okay, life's stopped making sense. "But...why?" Kensuke asked with wide eyes.

"Children can be wronged as easily as adults can be," he explained matter-of-factly, as though he were teaching a simple, self-evident lesson. "Restitution is simply a matter of justice, which everyone is due...regardless of who they are." Finishing the last of his tea, he remarked, "That's one of the reasons why Naomi took to her duties with such vigor, after all: those who were subjected to the ravages of entities that could attack the human mind directly...had no recourse, and no means of setting things right. It was her chosen method of balancing the scales."

Balancing the scales. Kensuke mulled over those words in his mind, thinking about what they entailed in light of everything he had experienced since he had become a Persona-user. Scales...are kept in balance, only if the weights are equal. His father could fix the weights on his end...and they would mean nothing, if he didn't do the same. "...I think I need your forgiveness, more than you need mine," he said, trying to sound contrite. "I...I never considered the idea that you still remembered Mom. I never considered the idea that you dealt with the pain of her passing in a way that I couldn't see." His immaturity and tunnel vision were, admittedly, more forgivable flaws in a teenager than the faults his father had displayed as an adult...and yet, that fact alone didn't absolve Kensuke. "I'm...sorry."

Seigo didn't react visibly to his apology. Instead, he switched gears without warning. "I suppose the question now...is what you're going to do?"

Kensuke blinked. "Huh?"

"Given what you've already endured, warnings about the likelihood of dying will mean little to you," his father dryly observed. "Am I wrong?"

"...no, you're not." Kensuke leaned back in his chair, wondering where tousan was going with this. "Are you going to tell me to stop?"

His father sighed, adjusting his glasses in a manner that Kensuke had felt himself do in the past. (It was strange, how many similarities one could pick up on.) "There would be little point. Notwithstanding your internship at NERV, I'd wager that you've experienced too much as a Persona-user to turn away from it now. That ship has sailed; trying to fight the tide at this point would be an exercise in futility. What would I accomplish, other than alienating you and exhausting my own patience?"

"...you don't have to sound so grumpy about it," murmured Kensuke, impulsively grumbling.

Seigo shot him a stern expression. "Is it so small a thing, to consider the death of a son? Especially when it involves the same line of work that ended the life of my wife, your mother?"

...me and my big mouth, thought Kensuke with a grimace. "...I get it, but-!"

"But you are committed," interrupted Seigo. "I realize that. It's...a strange thing, to understand my own impotence. With Naomi, I could only provide...a port of call, where she could rest and recuperate, before venturing back out into the world. And now, it seems that I am to serve as the same for you."

Kensuke frowned, because reality was still out of whack, and it needed to get back in order. "...I'm kinda used to being the self-deprecating one. You know, when Shinji isn't around. But...you're still my dad. It's not like I wanted all of this confusion and awkwardness and emotional...bleh." That was a good way to describe it.

Seigo arched an eyebrow. "'Bleh', hm?"

"You get what I mean! I...gah, I've been thinking all week about how to phrase this, and it still feels weird." Emotions sucked. "I...I miss coming back here and feeling like I'm at home."

"...I suppose that's not too much to ask for," his father admitted, before suddenly in the direction of where the front door would be. "We have company."

Kensuke blinked as his father rose, heading towards the front door. "Company? But who would be coming over-?" His question was interrupted by the sound of the door being opened.

"Ikari-kun. Suzuhara-kun."

Kensuke's eyes widened. Wait, what? Scrambling to look around the corner, he saw Seigo looking down upon an anxious-looking Shinji and a stubborn Toji.

"Oh, um...is Kensuke here?" asked Shinji nervously.

"He is," remarked Seigo. "What brings you by at this hour?"

Toji, being his typical self, plunged straight to the point. "Well Aida-san, I finally got Sakamoto-sensei to let me off, and I wanted to drop by for moral support, and then this guy," he said, pointing at Shinji, "decides to just warp out of nothing in front of me!"

"I'm sorry Suzuhara-san, I was trying to get back from Okinawa as fast as I could-"

"Still didn't mean you had to give me a heart attack!"

And just like that, normalcy reigns supreme, thought Kensuke with a grateful smile.

Fortunately, his father seemed keen on playing along. "You boys must be tired. Have you had anything for dinner, yet?" Right on cue, the stomachs of Shinji Ikari and Toji Suzuhara gurgled. "I'll take that as a 'no.' We have some udon left...and I would not be opposed to you two spending the night. It's dark out, after all."

Though the presence of Shinji and Toji had brought the father-son conversation to an abrupt end, the overall mood in the air had become...less oppressive, and more optimistic. It was why — after Shinji and Toji helped themselves to some homemade udon soup, relaying details about what they had done that day to a curious Seigo Aida — Kensuke found himself thanking the two.

"What for?" asked Toji, unrolling a futon onto a blank spot in the corner of Kensuke's room; with it being as late as it was, the thought of returning to the dorms was...distasteful.

"Well...for giving me the pep talk I needed to finally get this over and done with," he admitted with some level of bashfulness.

Toji snorted. "What are ya talkin' about? I just schooled you in a fighting game for the most part."

Kensuke narrowed his eyes. Aaand my good will's been exhausted. "Okay fine, kudos to Shinji for the pep talk. Kudos to Toji for being a jerk."

"Should've focused on getting good, then!" retorted the jock.

Shinji, apparently sensing a banter-fest incoming, simply replied with a polite "You're welcome" before turning over into his own spare futon.

The comic retorts and exaggerated argumentation continued for at least another thirty minutes before tiredness finally claimed them all.

xx

Later that night, after everyone else had gone to sleep, nature called; after relieving himself in the restroom, Kensuke trudged into the kitchen to grab a glass of water.

The sight of an old cardboard shoebox sitting on the kitchen table distracted him from his evening refreshments. A sticky note had been left on the lid: 'A small start,', it read. "A...small start to what...?" Confusedly, Kensuke opened up the box...only to stare, agog, at the contents. "What the...?" They were old pictures of Naomi Aida: some were family photos featuring her, himself, and father; others were solo shots; a few featured some A.T. Agents that she had commonly worked with...but they were pictures of Mom. "How..." Had father pulled them out of storage without saying anything? "...what...a freakin' awful way to present this stuff," he whispered to himself, feeling hot liquid building up in his eyes. "No time to prep at all..." So typical of his father, to adopt a 'rip the bandage off' approach to something as precious as family memories.

Yet...he wouldn't be Seigo Aida, otherwise.

As such, Kensuke gave himself plenty of allowances for emotional catharsis, because dadgummit he deserved a bit after the harrowing experience that was 'being honest with your father.'

Thus did the bespectacled boy sob quietly into the night.

xxxx

END OF 8/29/2015

xxxx

Author's Note: As we see further setup for Hikari Horaki's own mini-arc, the one for Kensuke Aida's (and his Social Link in general) is coming to a close. Magician is now at Rank 9!

The exact nature of what Bunzaemon Hikari (hat-tip to Rebuild 3.0 + 1.0 for finally giving us a canonical name for Hikari's father) is suffering from hasn't been made explicit...but I'm sure eagle-eyed readers can guess, based on what's been shown thus far.

And of course, continuing the Persona tradition, "Lord of Battlers" is an expy of "King of Fighters." :V