Persona 5: Daywatch

Friday, 17 June 2016
After School
Shujin, Class 2-D

When Mishima joined the first wave of escapees at the sound of the bell, Akira shrugged and took his time packing up. The class rep was still the Phantom Thieves' best investigator, so maybe he had a good reason.

A scant minute later, a shadow fell over his desk and he looked up to see Ann there with her school satchel over one shoulder. She glowered for a moment at the now empty seat the class rep sat in before. "Dammit, he's always gone when I want to talk to him."

Akira turned in his seat. "Everything okay?"

Thumb fidgeting with her strap, Ann's eyes darted around for a moment before she let out a breath. "Shiho's got another physical therapy session today. I was hoping on… straightening a few things out with Yuu-kun on the way."

Morgana's tail twitched from his hiding space in the transfer student's desk. "What a terrible class rep to leave Lady Ann in the lurch."

Akira opened his lips to offer to go, and in an instant his lungs felt small and mouth parched as the Ghobi Desert. He smacked his lips once, cleared his tense throat, and said through a cracking voice, "Want me to come?" He coughed into his fist once, feeling less under the influence of a terrible curse once he got some words out. "I mean, she's not my best friend and I don't know if there's anything I can do but moral support—"

"Yes," Ann said, weariness and gratitude both etched in the lines of her face. "I think you'd have been fast friends, too, if… the hospitalization didn't happen."

Akira lowered his voice at the team leader, "You coming too?"

The tip of Morgana's tail twitched. "W-would it be okay, Lady Ann?"

Her already thin smile strained, but Ann nodded. The group packed up and pushed their way through the chaotic mess to the train. No open seats awaited them, but Ann and Akira found side-by-side hanging straps to hold onto.

She hadn't said anything, but Akira noticed the lines in her neck. He knew the signals of chronic stress, his old bastard was an expert at inflicting it. Trying to take a page out of Hifumi's book, he planned ahead and tried out some lines in his head, but nothing ever felt real. At last he spit out, "Everything okay? You're looking like you're carrying a safe."

"Huh?" Ann's frosty blue eyes met his for only a moment before she looked away, her shoulders slumping more. "It's nothing." She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, breathed in, then opened her eyes. "I feel like I'm juggling knives. Study, homework, modeling, and then trying to get up to Shiho three times a week. I feel like whoever I am is getting lost in there, but if I give up any of those things, I still lose."

From within the transfer student's satchel, Morgana let out a melancholic sigh. "Plagued by your own kindness and concern. You're such an amazing person, Lady Ann. You shouldn't neglect yourself."

Akira was tempted to point out how strange it was for a guy who looked like a cat to hit on Ann, but discretion won out this time. He tightened his hold on the strap above. "He's got a point. Even if you've got a posse to back you up, you still need to take care of number one."

Ann's face twisted like she bit a lemon. "I hate when people say that. 'Take care of number one'. It sounds so… I only hear it when people are trying to excuse being a jerk."

The train slid to a stop and a new batch of passengers boarded, making further conversation impossible until they got off at the stop for Shiho's physical therapy clinic. Once they got out of the crowded station, the street wasn't much better but allowed Morgana to poke his head out. "Lady Ann, you said modeling was like juggling knives. Is there somebody causing problems there? Like a heart we might need to change?"

"What?" Ann said, her pale blue eyes widening. "No!" The little shadows of small muscle tension returned to her neck. "I mean, there's a lot of personalities, but it's mostly the complications of subbing. They're all set up and usually only have the makeup and wardrobe for the intended models, so there's a lot of running around." She fidgeted with one of the straps of her school satchel. "It might be easier if I got scheduled more, but I'm still not sure how big I want modeling to be. It's nice while papa and mama are away because I feel a little less distant from them."

Akira strode around an old guy quizzing a beat cop on directions. Without a problem child to go after, he had no idea what advice to offer the model. "What about with Shiho?" he managed as they came to the physical therapy clinic.

Pausing at the door, Ann's eyes stared into the frosted pane of glass. "We… There are things we have to not talk about now. And as much as I'd like to…" She fidgeted. "I have to help her first." She pulled the door and stepped in before the pair accompanying her had a chance to speak.

The smell of rubber gloves and analgesic creams hit and he wondered if his place would smell like this if he ever got to open a practice of his own. Eggshell blue paint and posters of the back, elbows, and knees covered the walls. A reception desk window and row of seats along one wall reminded him of the lobby in Takemi's clinic. A family with a curly-haired eleven-year-old sat at the end. Ann checked in with the receptionist, then led them to a narrow hall stretching quite a bit further back than the exam room in Takemi's clinic.

Ann knocked at the next room.

A moment later a man in a green striped button-down shirt opened the door. He smiled. "Takamaki-chan, good to see you." His eyes drifted over to the transfer student standing behind her.

"They're friends too," she explained, pasting a smile too wooden to look real. The clench of her hand on her school satchel's strap only made her seem more awkward.

"Hurry up!" a familiar woman's voice snapped from further inside. "Just three more and you can go back walking today."

Green Shirt abandoned the door to slip inside, though he left the door open. The students took that as an invitation and stepped in as he beseeched the mother, "Restoration of previous strength and range of motion is bound to take time, ma'am. It's important to pay attention to feedback from the body."

Following Ann inside, Akira looked around the same eggshell-blue walls. A big inflated ball sat in the corner, with four plastic chairs on the opposite corner where Suzui's mother sat. Parallel bars jutted out of the short wall, bisecting most of the eggshell-blue room. One poster of the skeleton and several of tendons in the major joints drew his eye.

Shiho sat back in a wheelchair next to a row of plastic chairs. She held a triangular, padded grip, something like a bungee cord stretching down to the other end held down by the foot of a man in a sweater vest. Beads of sweat rolled down her face and veins stood out at her temples, but the light in her eyes shone dim as a smoldering ember.

Green Shirt looked down at the straining, stretchy cord. "Just a few more seconds, Suzui-chan." When her grip on the padded handle failed, he smiled a little wider than his tense stance indicated as he picked it up. "Good, that's still progress." He nodded to the bottle next to her. "Take a few sips and rest for a bit before we do our final exercise of the day."

Ann sat down in the plastic chair next to the mother. "Hey, Shiho."

Akira left them to catch up and approached Green Shirt. He held his hand up to his jacket. "Akira. I'm studying to go into physical therapy myself. What… exactly is this clinic's specialty?"

"Sawano," Green Shirt responded with a nod and gesture at himself. "We deal with upper and lower-torso injuries here. Most of our patients came from long hospital stays and just need to recover muscle mass." Sawano's dark eyes swept over the transfer student for a moment, narrower than he might have been intending to betray. "Are you a friend of the family?"

"Just a…" Akira's mouth drifted open, but he couldn't make himself say he was Shiho's friend. He was there to soak in her praise and kind words, but wasn't in time to stop the filthy bastard who drove her off the roof. He closed his mouth, swallowed, then tried again. "A classmate." His eyes flicked to the three girls chattering away. "Physical recovery often has a different length of convalescence than psychological trauma. Is she…?"

Sawano straightened his sleeve. "Even if that was something we dealt with at this clinic, I wouldn't be permitted to discuss that with anybody outside her family."

"Of course," Akira said with a shallow bow.

Sawano approached the girls and clasped his hands. "How are your joints feeling today, Suzui-chan?"

She shot him a hooded glare. "They feel like they're holding up sacks of ball bearings." She flashed him a grin so sharp it could cut. "Which means they're far better than my legs."

Ann and Shiho's mother flinched.

Sawano set the stretch tool in a cubby-hole built under the table next to her. "Suzui-chan. People have died from falls of only two meters. Your fall was considerably higher than that. Lumbar surgery can only do so much to replace cartilage, scaffold bones, or stitch tendons back together. In the end, it always comes down to you and your body's ability to heal. So let's give it the best chance possible."

Akira slipped his hands in his pockets, memorizing the way Sawano sidestepped her frustrations and redirected her. He wondered if he'd ever be that dexterous in conversation. He also noticed Ann and her mother nod before Shiho did.

Sawano stepped over to the parallel bars and her mother pushed the wheelchair to the end. Ann helped her stand up to the bars, but the physical therapist motioned her back after Shiho came to her feet. He wrapped a padded-belt harness around her hips and just under her arms, but left slack in the plastic strap connecting to the back.

The pretty, black-haired girl wavered on her feet a moment, steadying herself with a firm grip on both bars. Shiho took a deep breath, then moved her left foot forward.

Her knee wavered as she took her first step forward, but her fingers clenched white on the steel bars. A sheen of sweat made her skin glisten.

Shiho took another step down the bars, every muscle in her arms clenching taught.

Arms straining, she took another step, shorter than the last one.

Ann stepped closer only to be blocked by the physical therapist. "Come on, Shiho! You can make this."

Shiho's hands clenched white on the bars, but she took a longer step and sucked in a long breath. Droplets of sweat fell down her face and neck. Another step, then another passed as she clamped her hands down on the bars to keep herself from wavering to one side.

Akira clenched his teeth when her arms started to tremble.

Shiho took another shallow step, her jaws set but her arms trembling as she tried to move forward.

"Go on," her mother demanded. "You need to get stronger to get back to school."

Sawano cleared his throat to get the girl's attention. "You've been making very good progress, Shiho-chan. You're already stronger than last week."

Straining to keep up with both feet on the ground and hands on the rails, she snapped, "No I'm not! I can't do all of this."

"Yes you can," Akira blurted with sudden strength. He ignored the stares of the others and held all of his focus on her. On the one girl at Shujin with the strength to show kindness despite Kamoshida. On the one person to make him feel like this new try in Tokyo might be something he could survive. On the first girl to smile at him in years. She shouldn't be the enraged, drugged-up girl howling at her boyfriend. "You've always been the strongest of us. Now come on, if not to show yourself then to show up that smug bastard who thought you wouldn't be able to get back up."

Shiho looked at him, tears building in her eyes from the strain. Her teeth ground.

She took one more step.

Her shaking hands slipped and she stumbled, Sawano catching her with the strap just before she hit the bar. The physical therapist looked to Ann. "Get her wheelchair." She nodded and jogged to fetch it as Sawano helped Shiho back to the start of the parallel bars and into the wheelchair.

While they disengaged her from the harness and settled her in the wheelchair, Shiho's mother straightened her cardigan and leveled a glare as intense as a laser on the transfer student. "I didn't mind Shiho having friends for moral support, but if you paid attention you'd see how badly you almost hurt my girl. You're as bad as that mousey little boy she insisted on playing around with. Never should have let that little cretin in my home."

Ann shot upright. "Don't you talk that way about Yuuki!"

"Get out!" Her mother's hands clenched on her leather purse, lip twitching and fingers worrying the velvet lining the top.

The transfer student came up alongside Ann to back her up, but Sawano shook his head. "Kids, this isn't a family counseling center. Technically we only allow friends as a nicety. Whatever issues are going on, you can solve them out there."

Ann shifted her weight to one foot, then the other before she turned around and stormed out.

Akira dashed to get her school satchel, forgotten in the corner, and followed her outside. As soon as he could get her attention, he handed her bag to her.

Morgana beat him to the condolences. "Are you all right, Lady Ann?"

She took her bag and whirled on the diminutive team leader, tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes. "Would you put a sock in that lady shit!"

Morgana retreated into the satchel, his ears and tail both low.

Ann bit her lip.

Akira lifted an arm around her shoulder and directed her through the sparse crowd in the opposite direction. With nobody paying then attention to start with, he decided they had as much privacy as they were likely to get without a hide-away. "I get that emotions are running high and rough edges are out everywhere, so I don't hold any of what happened in there against you. Shiho and her mother are both scared they'll never be able to live like they were before, but I think they'll both settle down."

Ann choked out a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. She dug in her satchel for a moment before tearing a tissue out of a battered packet and dabbing at her face. "I… I hoped that all this would be settled by Kamoshida's confession. I mean… we got more than we ever expected from that. But Shiho…"

Akira tightened his grip on her shoulders. "Hey, just because you're no longer racing into the woods doesn't mean you're out of them yet. The body and mind have their own healing times. Sometimes the mind comes to clarity while the body is still broken, and sometimes the mind holds onto an emotional crutch when the muscles have knitted back together." He gave her a moment to process and respond, but after blowing her nose she looked back at him like she expected more. "For a three-story fall, Shiho is doing really well. Hell, I'm surprised that she'll ever walk again. She could be dead."

Morgana thrust his head back out of the satchel. "Hey, stop scaring her! That's not how you make a lady feel better."

Slowing her pace, Ann dabbed at her nose and put the tissue into a small bag of trash in her satchel. "It's okay, Morgana." Her frosty blue eyes came up to him, still shining with more tears, sending his stomach into knots. "I think I understand what you're getting at. It's just… well, even in there you knew Shiho was always the strongest of us. The one Yuuki or I could always go to when Shujin was getting to be too much." She drew another tissue and blew her nose into that.

Akira maintained his grip around her shoulders. The brushing of her long, pale blonde hair tickled, her makeup smearing from the emotional tumult at the clinic. "It seems to me that you're doing better, too. I know all this hit you pretty hard."

She blushed and an embarrassed smile crept across her lips. She peered down at the satchel hanging on his shoulder. "You accidentally jump into the wrong satchel, Morgana? I think we picked up an Akira from an alternate dimension."

"Hey!" Akira withdrew his arm. He knew she was joking, which should mean she was doing better, but he couldn't let that barb go uncontested. "I'm supposed to be a chiropractor. That kind of physical therapy is exactly what I'm going to be doing one day. And it's not like knowledge of psychological therapy can hurt."

Morgana sat up, head poking out of the satchel with a wry smirk. "You can't be picking up this kindness from school, that's for sure. Someone is sure making a good impression on you. Did you meet a therapist out there?"

Akira clutched a metaphorical dagger at his heart. "E tu, Brute?"

The team leader and model laughed, the oppressive gloom hanging over them breaking up. After a few moments, Ann looked down at the team leader. "Could… you give us a few minutes, Morgana?"

He tilted his head at her a moment, but puffed out his chest. "For my lady? Anything." He hopped out and trotted back towards the clinic.

Ann wiped at her nose and put away the dirty tissue. She crossed her arms and, after glancing to be sure none of the swift-walking crowd paid them any mind, turned to look straight at the transfer student. "I know you noticed my outburst back there. About Yuuki. Shiho was still angry, but I…" She swallowed. "I think about him all the time. Is… isn't it wrong?"

Akira opened his mouth to tell her that he had dreams about her too, but suspected telling her she chased him in a dream inn wearing nothing but an obi would just result in a slap. "You all were pretty close friends. Did he and Shiho date and do that romantic stuff together?"

"No," she said, a small amount of surprise in her voice as she tightened her crossed arms. Her eyes searched the pavement for a few moments. "Not dates exactly, they were always so careful not to be seen by someone from school." She uncrossed her arms, then put them right back. "But… one movie night at my place, they were sitting against each other on the couch watching Masquerade. Hand in hand. It made me feel a little sick inside." She blushed and her gaze drifted to the ground as a bitter chuckle came out. "Some friend I am." She shifted her weight to her other foot. "When I'd walk in on them while they were together, playing with each other's hair…" Her blush deepened. "Don't you think that's romantic?"

The first image to jump to mind were two women fighting on TV, both pulling each other's hair. A moment of a laugh leaked out before Akira could get control of himself. "No," he said, regaining his serious composure. His mind could conjure images of hair pulling, but not whatever this romantic hair thing that people kept alluding to.

Ann took a shallow step away. "At first I thought I just wanted to do those things with a boyfriend of my own." She shifted to her other foot. "But…what if I wanted to do those things… with him?"

Steamy thoughts about Ann leaped into his mind and Akira felt his own face heat up. He coughed into his fist. He took a step further away, though the crib store behind left little room to retreat. "Well… I don't think those sound like bad things. You like him and he likes you and there's clearly some bloody spikes between he and Shiho right now." He lifted a hand, but after a couple seconds without anything wise coming to mind let it fall. "I'll see if I can track him down, maybe get an answer out of him."

Morgana's voice reached up from behind him, "Shiho and her mother left. Can I help with your dilemma, Lady Ann?"

She let out a long breath with a bit of the tremble of a growl to it. "I'm actually feeling kind of tired right now. I think I'm gonna head home from here."

Friday, 17 June 2016
Evening
Akihabara, Electric Town

With the afternoon fast fading into the evening, more people crammed the roads of Electric Town and the more Akira wanted to be anywhere else. His promise to Ann to track down Mishima and get an answer out of him warred with his desire to just breathe. The growing bustle on the sidewalks pushed at him, a forest of elbows jabbing him.

Akira ducked into a tiny concrete nook sharing space with a steel utility pole. He hadn't seen Hifumi in a while, it would be nice to hear that sonorous voice. Maybe invite her to an online game of Kriegspiel if she had time but not travel options. He brought up Queen Togo, but his thumb hesitated over the open call button. If she was at all busy, it would go straight to voice mail and hers always seemed to be full. He backed out and sent her a text instead. [Have any time today?]

He tapped his foot a few times, but the outgoing message remained dark. He tisked. With Morgana 'out scouting' when he realized Akira would be crowd running, he didn't have the diminutive team leader's eyes to help him scope out the crowd. Of course, he could also crowd-run to his heart's content.

A flash of familiar, messy dark hair stood out of the mass of drab combed hair that might as well have come out of a factory. This had to be divine intervention.

It's not like his luck was ever that good.

Akira tossed the rubber phone casing to the counter and dashed outside, weaving through crowds with a left-right-left reminding him of swimming. "I gotta thank Ryuji for introducing me to this."

He clapped a hand on Mishima's shoulder the instant they both got to the far side of the street, in front of an art and detailing shop. The class representative turned with a widening of the eyes and pale face, his gasp audible despite the low roar of the crowd. He slumped when he spotted the transfer student. "Geez, Akira-kun. Don't do that. What are you doing here anyway? I thought I said I was…" he glanced around, "…investigating."

Akira kept a firm grip on the class representative's shirt and part pushed, part pulled him to the building edge of the sidewalk. He slipped closer so he could read lips without worrying about an idiot getting between them. "Ann said you were avoiding her. Mishima, I thought you were going to deal with… problems after the whole bank thing. That was over a week ago."

The shorter teen shifted his weight from foot to foot, his gaze low. "I, uh… Well, I have to help you guys with this slimy new art apprentice guy—"

Akira pushed up his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. "Mishima-san, I get the temptation to put things off. Ann can be scary when she wants to be. But she's our friend. You probably more than me." When the representative looked away, Akira stepped closer. "Putting off treating a wound doesn't stop the bleeding. You need to put on the bandage for that. Hell, we're not even going after a palace right now. Ann's worried about you all the time. Shiho's going stir crazy in—"

Mishima shot back a step, his eyes drifting to the concrete. "You saw what happened the last time I did something to her. I have to make up for—"

"How many times?" Akira shouted. A handful of nearby pedestrians slowed and stared at him. His phone buzzed and Akira pulled it, but caught the class rep try to slink off into the crowd. The transfer student moved after as he checked the text from Hifumi.

[Sorry. Busy with errand for Mother.]

Akira growled but forced himself to send a thanks for the acknowledgment before slipping his phone away and catching up with the class rep, grabbing him by the elbow to dissuade his attempt to lose him in the crowd. "Mishima, I don't understand why you're working so hard on tracking down all these people but not talking to ones in your own class."

Mishima's phone buzzed and he pulled it out to scroll through an email app. "Listen, Akira-kun. I'm really not in the mood to get yelled at right now. I was meeting with some contacts before about a theft ring, and now I need to go meet that reporter so I can help you guys. It's the only way I'll ever make up for what happened." He opened a map app and turned away. "I just need to find this Crossroads place she wants to meet at."

Akira fell in step next to the class rep. "It's a bar and night club in Shinjuku. If you promise to talk to Ann, I could show you exactly where it is." He glanced down at the other boy, noting he wore a nondescript white shirt and had changed into dark brown trousers since the end of school.

Mishima gave him a squinty-eye. "No more lecturing?"

Akira let out a dramatic sigh. "I'll give you a reprieve today. But seriously, dude. I spent an hour with Ann and Shiho fighting through physical therapy and they're both hurting. Just promise me that you'll deal with this. I'll even do whatever I can to help out, but don't leave them out in the cold."

Mishima broke eye contact. "Fine. But later. First, Ohya-san's meeting."

The two walked to the train station where Akira changed out of his Shujin uniform for nondescript dark grays that made him look as boring as all the other adults trudging around Tokyo. The trip to Shinjuku took less time than he expected the journey from Akihabara, but once there the crowds streamed like tempest-tossed waters through the streets.

Mishima stood next to him. "You all right?"

"I'm fine!" Akira snapped. He stepped against the wall to get a moment's reprieve from the number of drunkards stumbling around, and rubbed his fingers against the sides of his head. "I hate crowds. They're just a symbol of everything in excess. Too thick, too undirected, too noisy, too stupid."

"Well, look at how the individuals in it are managing," Mishima said. He pointed at a young girl with her dark hair in a sloppy bun, wearing a skirt-and-suspenders uniform in an eye-searing bright pink. "See? Like her. She's treating the crowd as just more environment to navigate." His eyes lingered on her neon pink skirt.

A beat passed before Mishima shrank in on his stance. "Look at me. I can't even go an hour without looking at girls besides Shiho. Now that's even more I have to make up for."

Akira grabbed the class representative's elbow. On the one hand, she was cute. On the other, he could also understand a good guy staying loyal to his girl. That wasn't just some admirable quirk, it was the only right way to live. "Let's just… get through this. Bar's that way." He led them through the churning crowd choked with shouting, laughing, and lewd calls. At last, he slipped them into the Crossroads bar and night club. Despite the thudding music here on the first floor, the relative humdrum level of conversation felt peaceful against his ears.

Mishima stared at the wet bar to their right. "Looks like a night club. With alcohol!"

Akira smirked, feeling more like Joker and less like a hamster kicked in a ball now that he wasn't fighting a directionless crowd. "With a full selection of mixed drinks for your perusal."

An overweight woman in a blue kimono patterned with various fish chuckled. "But not for young lads like you." She looked over him, then the boy whose arm he still clenched. "I didn't think you swung both ways. You're a fearless hunk, aren't you?"

The two boys shot apart and the bartender laughed like only a lifelong smoker could. Mishima turned all the way from the transfer student and scanned the crowd before he stepped around an empty stool to the bar. "I'm supposed to meet a reporter here. Ohya-san."

Lala waved a hand at him and laughed. "I should've guessed, coming in here with that naughty boy over there. She's upstairs." Movement beside drew her attention to the one other person rushing around behind the bar, a snifter glass in each hand. One filled with something red, the other a bright yellow. "Kaho-chan, is that Ichiko-chan's?"

The waitress lifted the red glass and nodded. "This one, Lala-san."

Lala pointed to the class rep. "Customer there's expected. Go show him up." After the frazzled waitress and rep departed for the stairs at the back, the man at the stool next to him slumped over and started falling.

Akira caught him before he could slide off his stool, hauled him up to center him on his seat, and held him steady.

Lala gave him a nod and pulled back his quarter-full beer glass. "I'll call you a cab, Torahito-kun."

Her voice somehow cut through the alcohol-induced stupor and shot to his feet, stumbled, and jerked his arm out of Akira's grip. "Ya don' need ta drive me home. I'm jus' a lil' tipsy."

Akira stepped closer, but decided not to touch the glaring man. "It's just to help you out, Torahito-san. You don't want to bump your head and have a bruise for the guys at the office to make fun of, do you?"

Torahito twisted back and forth with exaggerated motions before he stumbled back to the bar, grabbing it for support. "Well, I s'pose I wouldn' wanna hear about it at work." He slumped back on the bar and let Lala call him a cab, then paid his day's tab with a five thousand yen bill. A moment later, she returned with a hand on her earpiece and nodded. "Right, I'll send him right out."

"Where's my Ricky, Lala?" a woman in a wrinkled dress shouted from further down the bar.

Akira stood. "I'll get him to the front." He took the middle-aged office goon with as gentle a grip as he could and guided him to his feet. "Upsy-daisy, Torahito-san. You hear that?"

The drunk looked right and left with confusion. "No."

"It's the cab, for you." Akira guided him to the front, and into a waiting white cab.

Torahito stumbled into the cab, only keeping up by virtue of Akira's strong grip. After the help sitting down, he slurred, "Yer…not so bad, lil' guy." He reached into his pocket and fished for a moment, then slapped some coins into the student's palm.

Akira considered shouting at the office nobody for being cheap as well as a drunk, but the still churning night crowd drove him back inside. When he glanced at the coins, he noticed three five hundred yen coins among others. Not so bad. He pocketed them and returned to the bar.

Lala-san gave him a weary, grateful smile. "Thanks, kiddo."

Before Akira could respond, a man trudged around him from the front door. He wore a sharp suit with the jacket unbuttoned and his red tie loose around his neck like he couldn't decide if he wanted to wear it or take it off. He slid onto a bar stool as if his body was too heavy to hold up a moment longer and held his head in his hands. "Whiskey tonight, Lala-chan."

The bartender only had a moment to smile and nod before her eyes unfocused. She pressed a hand to her clip-on earbud, then pulled out an oval tray, glasses, and small array of booze bottles. She poured the first glass, added ice, and set it before the suited man whose tie hung like a severed noose.

As the bartender busied herself with the large order on the tray, the suited man slumped back against the bar and sipped. His dark eyes met the transfer student. "You seem a bit young for bars or clubs. You trying to get away from your neighborhood too?"

Akira shrugged, his eyes flitting to the narrow stairs leading up to the semi-private rooms on the second floor.

Not to be dissuaded, Suit held up his hand holding the whiskey at the student. "The diet just voted on another bond infusion to cover the national debt." He gave a huff of a laugh and lifted the glass at the student again before bringing it to his own lips for a sip. "Can you believe that? We're already in debt and they're trying to solve it by borrowing more money."

Akira thanked his social study teacher from Inuri for forcing the class to go in detail on the economy. "I think Japan is doing a decent job diversifying, but not enough to draw in young workers or ease the process of transition from unskilled to skilled labor. The demographics are really more of a threat than the economic prospects. We're expected to drop from one hundred twenty million to eighty million before 2050."

Suit finished a sip and scrutinized the transfer student. "Hey, that's actually a nuanced answer. You're smarter than you look, kid. They say it's an emergency measure to restore the economy, but the emergency was debt to start with. You think burdening the citizens is a good strategy for economic revitalization?"

Akira shrugged. "How much of our debt do we owe to overseas entities?"

Suit's eyes rolled up and he took a drink. "About half a percent."

Slipping his hands in his pockets, Akira gave up on waiting for Mishima to get back quick and gave the older man his focus. "I heard Greece is still considering defaulting on their debt to the EU."

Suit took a sip. "They'd go right back into recession from the hit their credit rating would take. No way. Besides, they may be part of the EU, but they owe money to different member nations. It's a completely different debt situation."

Akira's phone buzzed and he jerked it out. Instead of the update from Hifumi he hoped to see, a text from Iwai asked him to stop by for work tonight. He sent a reply about being busy across town and promised to stop in tomorrow. That done, he returned his focus to the financial guy drinking next to him. "I think I read that our debt just exceeded the gross national product. Doesn't that mean we both owe a lot?"

After a deeper gulp, Suit slumped forward against the bar. "No, kid! Ninety-nine point nine percent of our debt is to Japanese, in yen. If inflation goes up or our credit goes down, it's all still for us and to us." He chuckled and brought his glass up to his lips for another sip. "I guess that means we ain't so bad. We don't owe debt to other people in a currency we can't control." He tipped his glass back and drained half of the remaining glass, going back and forth on economic policy and debt hawk talking points as Lala left to deliver drinks upstairs, then returned to serve more bar patrons.

Words slurring, Suit paid for his drink and departed.

Lala popped a paper mini-umbrella in a bright yellow drink and handed it to another customer, then scrutinized the transfer student. She waved to the stairs and the class representative approached. "You're a surprising lad, you know that? Nagai-san is a pretty high-level banker. Confuses most of my staff, but it looks like you were able to keep up the whole time."

Akira shrugged. "Topic conversations are easy. When you don't know the topic, most subject matter experts love educating you on it even before the whiskey." He looked at his haggard fellow student descending the stairs. "You look spent. Ready to go back?"

Mishima nodded.

Lala waved the hand holding a polishing rag before the transfer student could turn away. "A big part of bar life is listening, and it looks like you can hold your own. If you're looking for a place, I could always use a steady barhand." Her dark gaze narrowed just a bit. "As long as you can keep your hands off alcohol. I take my license seriously."

Akira lifted his hands. "All I needed to learn not to drink was to see people who do."

AN: I understand why the developers put Shiho on a bus, but that really denied a lot of closure and I felt left her personal thread frayed and opened. We know she didn't leave with bitter feelings to Ann or Akira in canon, but don't have a good idea that she's really recovered herself. By adding that cord between Shiho and Mishima, that not only drew him and Ann closer but provided me the opportunity to get into more of Shiho's conflict and the true resolution of it. Leave your questions and thoughts in a review, and thanks for reading.