Persona 5: Daywatch

Thursday, 23 June 2016
After School
Shibuya, Madarame's Atelier

Akira led the walk across the street to the run-down hut covered in tin plating. He could even see rust stains running across the sidewalk from the joints in the plates. Overgrown bushes choked the limited space between the building's walls and street and sun-faded drapes closed off the windows. "Uh, Ann? You wanna double-check the address?"

Makoto slipped ahead to peer at the door plate. "The plate says 'Madarame'." She looked at the intercom, the brittle plastic faded from decades in the sun. "I'm almost afraid if I touch it, the whole thing will fall over."

Morgana scanned the roof line. "Nobody sneeze."

Ann shifted her weight from her right to her left foot, finger twirling through the tip of a pigtail. "I am a little nervous about modeling for a painter. Do I need to do anything?"

Akira crossed his arms, holding his chin in his fingers for the classic pose. He snapped his fingers. "Cover yourself in paint."

Makoto rolled her eyes. "I'm sure he'd have given instructions if he needed anything from you, Ann-kun."

Ann let out a breath and shared a small smile. "True, Senpai. After all the terrible fates which happened to other apprentices, I'm more worried about something happening to Kitagawa than what's coming from him."

"Well, since Ryuji's not here to goad into it…" Akira stepped up to the door and tapped the intercom button. The plastic ring around the button fell into the shrub beside the door and Akira danced back like he expected the rest of the building to follow.

Kitagawa's voice emanated from the scratchy speaker, "I'm sorry, Sensei is—"

"It's me," Ann pressed the speaker button, twirling a finger on her other hand through a pigtail. "Takamaki."

"Stay right there!" He said in one breath, then the speaker went silent.

Makoto craned her neck to look up at the old building. "It's just so hard to think of a great artist living in a dump like this."

Akira stepped back and folded his arms. "I know. Who would use plaid for curtains?"

Ann eyed him with an arched eyebrow. "That's what you focus on, with all the things falling apart?" She swung her arms back and forth. "Is this building even habitable?"

The door burst open and the apprentice artist stood inside, wearing a paint-stained brown apron over a white shirt. The instant his dark grey eyes fell on Ann, a faint smile slipped over his face and he let out a relieved breath. Then he spotted the transfer student and student council president, and his posture shot from relieved to guarded. "I do not recall inviting you or your significant other."

"She's not my girlfriend." Akira crossed his arms and mirrored the apprentice's suspicious stance. "We're here to make sure nothing happens to Ann-san."

Makoto nodded. "It is unusual to hire a model without going through her agency. Freelance models are frequently taken advantage of."

Morgana popped his head out of the transfer student's bag and bared his teeth. "That's right. I've got my eyes on you, you duplicitous silver tongue."

Kitagawa turned his nose up at the class president. "Perish the thought. I seek only to convey true beauty to the masses. To one day grace mankind with another Sayuri." His dark eyes centered on Ann. "And in you, I am sure I can do so."

Swallowing, Ann glanced at the others, then inside. "So… do you have a courtyard or something where we do this?"

"Ah," he said, stepping back. "Please, come to my studio." He turned and led the Phantom Thieves inside, down a turn, then through a sliding wooden door on shiny new rollers, while the rest of the worn wood looked as old as the Second World War.

While the artist busied himself setting aside a painting of three-ringed orbs, Makoto perched on an overturned bottle crate for lack of any proper seating besides the stool. "We were curious about your teacher. How long have you known Madarame?"

The apprentice spared a glance before battering a brush in a paint can filled with water. "All my life." He dragged a plastic bucket from the wall and sat a brown towel on it. He gestured Ann at it.

Ann brushed at the paint-flecked towel, then sat down and crossed her legs. She tugged at the sheer black vest over her cream-colored blouse. "Is this okay?"

Kitagawa gave a sedate smile. "I could not have chosen better."

Akira checked the notes on his phone. "So how many apprentices has Madarame had?"

"Something like twenty," the artist said, before retrieving a blank canvass from the corner of the room.

Makoto picked at her straight skirt. "Keep in touch with any of them?"

Kitagawa unfolded another easel and put the blank canvas on it. "Not anymore."

Akira finished typing. "Not even Nakanohara? I'd think the oldest apprentice would leave some kind of impression on the others."

Holding his arms out at full length, Kitagawa looked at Ann through a rectangular frame made by his thumbs and index fingers. "He was a fellow student, but did not invest himself in art as a true artist must. He was often busy with a part-time job or gallivanting with friends."

Akira scanned the windows. "Feels kinda warm in here. Hasn't Madarame had the windows re-sealed?"

Kitagawa took a short side-step, his fingers still making a tilted frame. "If you are bothered by the temperature, the only window AC unit is in the upstairs workshop."

Makoto cleared her throat, fingers gripping her skirt. "How many of his ex-students left of their own volition?"

Kitagawa paused to look at her with a guarded expression for a moment, before his eyes re-focused on Ann. "All of them. They would still be here otherwise."

Straightening his glasses, Akira arched an eyebrow. "Not a single one of the twenty got kicked out?"

The apprentice kept his eyes on Ann. "Art looks easy from the outside, but it is a harsh world."

Akira nodded. "Harsh enough for Sawamura to commit suicide by train?" When the artist just shifted another side-step around Ann, the transfer student continued. "For Tokunaga Rin, Misora Kotani, and Ueda Hiroshi to slit their wrists?"

Kitagawa paused. "As I said, the art world is harsh and some people—"

"For more than twelve people?" Akira retorted. "There's only one thing in common between all of those bodies."

Lowering the finger-frame, Kitagawa shot a glare at the transfer student. "Are you trying to insinuate Madarame is secretly some sort of serial killer?" He waved a hand as if to ward away a bad smell. "Utter nonsense. Art is a cruel field, he does his best to protect us from it."

Makoto looked left and right. "Us? How many other pupils does Madarame have?"

The intensity of Kitagawa's dark grey eyes faltered. His balance rolled back to his heels, but after a blink, he stood firm, chest puffed out.

Akira knew that look from so many glimpses in the mirror. Pride masking fear. He knew he looked like that the night Director Isshiki asked if Houzan laid a hand on him. He should have said 'yes'. "He ever get hands on?" Akira mimed a backhand.

Kitagawa barked a laugh. "Now you try to malign Sensei's care?" He sniffed, looking down his nose at the sitting transfer student. "My mother died of a seizure. If Sensei hated children, he would have shipped me to the first available orphanage. Instead, he adopted me into his own abode, even taught me the ways of the greats." He snatched a pencil from a chipped mug. "Most of Sensei's apprentices have been children like myself."

Makoto held up a hand to placate the apprentice towering over them. "We were just concerned, Kitagawa-kun."

Akira sat down and glanced to Makoto, then the artist.

Clenching her jaw, she stared at him and flicked her eyes up to the artist.

Akira tipped his head to the boy sitting down in front of the blank canvas.

Makoto pursed her lips and took in a long breath. "Has he ever presented one of his student's work as his own?"

Standing, Kitagawa's dark eyes narrowed and slid to her with a heat threatening to combust the student council president. "How dare you."

Akira stood up to interpose between her and the artist. "And surely, you wouldn't cover for him…? No matter how many of his ex-pupils leave and somehow never work in the art world again?"

Kitagawa's soft pencil dropped to the easel. He stood, his gaze as fiery as before as he whipped around at the transfer student. "You would come into my home… into the abode of Sensei, and hurl such slanders?"

Akira opened Firefox on his smartphone. "Even with statements online—?"

"Slander from jealous fools!" Stepping closer, he bumped the easel, knocking the pencil clattering to the floor. "You will rue the day you mocked—"

The front door banged open and heavy footsteps rushed down the hall. Madarame called out from the doorway, "Yusuke? What's wrong?"

Beads of sweat glistened on Ann's brow and she gave a terrible fake laugh. "O-Oh, nothing!"

Fists still curled, Kitagawa ground his teeth. "These cads slandered your good name!"

Madarame gripped the sliding door to steady himself and let out a long breath, the shadows making the wrinkles and lines in his face seem longer. "Well, a cranky old coot is bound to make an enemy or two. I'm sure they didn't mean it, m'boy. Some people will say anything to be part of another's popularity." He let out a breath, his shoulders slumping even more. "I hope you don't hold it against him, children."

Ann hopped up from the towel-covered bucket. "Oh, not at all, Madarame, sir."

The old man held a hand against his back. "I'm very sorry to bother you, but the police moving back my exhibition has led to a lot of scramble. I'm afraid I'm not as young as I once was, so I need to take a lie-down."

Kitagawa bowed. "Of course, Sensei."

Madarame slid the door closed and shuffled to the stairs. An awkward silence descended over the four teenagers.

Makoto fidgeted with her hands before looking in the apprentice's general direction. "I'm afraid that still leaves us with unanswered questions. Madarame can't have done all those paintings. Some of those styles use mutually exclusive techniques."

After several suffocating seconds, Ann sat back down on the towel-covered bucket. "That painting I pointed out to you at the exhibit."

Kitagawa picked up his pencil and sat back at the stool, his eyes on the canvas and not Ann. He gave a momentary gesture at Akira. "The one you said reminded you of him?"

"Mm-hm." Ann fidgeted with the brown towel. "It's yours, isn't it?"

Reaching his pencil up to the canvas, Kitagawa went still.

Akira stood up. "C'mon, why are you still defending him? I know his type. People who use up others like tools and discard them. Tell us what's really up, and we can take 'im down."

The artist's hand clenched around the pencil. "Not even a minute after Sensei argued for patience on your behest, and already you rail against him. You nurse a grudge against the great Madarame, but unable to prove anything yourselves, you come to draw me into your web of selfish deceit?"

More certain with the apprentice's every protestation, Akira ground his teeth together. "How long's it got to go on until somebody has the guts to stand up and speak the truth? How many people does Madarame get to chew up and spit out?"

Kitagawa's teeth clacked together. "Be gone from this place! I invited her here to model, I never asked for you or your significant other."

Makoto grabbed Akira's arm before he could raise his fists. "Morgana, say something." Her eyes widened a little and searched down around the corners of the room. "Morgana?"

Ann held up her hands to placate the artist. "Wait, we just want to help."

Kitagawa thrust a finger at the two Shujin students sitting back against the door. "You will leave this house, or I will call the police to have them drag you out!"

Makoto clenched her jaw. "Isn't that escalating too quickly?"

The artist let a snarl slip through his mask of calm control. "You are the one who started the character assassination!" He dug through his pockets for his phone.

Ann stood up. "Hold on—"

Kitagawa's thumb hovered over a saved number. "You will leave this atelier and never come near it again, or I will have lawyers destroy you!"

Makoto's hands closed into fists. "You can't just try to ban us from the whole neighborhood!" She lowered her voice to hiss, "Think of all the students who died."

"Leave this place," the apprentice ground out, his shoulders hunching, "and never return to bother myself… or Sensei again."

Ann slumped, but reached for the door and slid it open. She almost jumped when Morgana peered up at them from the other side. "Where have you been?"

"You have to change his mind!" Morgana pleaded, hopping up and batting a paw at her. "This place is his Palace, and I don't think it's extensive enough for us to get in anywhere but right here."

Kitagawa shot a narrow gaze over them all, pausing with a brief arched eyebrow at the cat. "I made my invitation to Takamaki to be my model, but all three of you have besmirched the man who raised me. If I see any of you again, I will sue for harassment and causing a disturbance."

The upper-classman's crimson gaze shot between the two boys, but it was Ann who jammed her fists on her hips and protested, "Wait a second! What about giving humanity another beauty like the Sayuri?"

Kitagawa's posture faltered, but his thumb shifted position to hold his smartphone. He turned part-way from them and closed his eyes. "I will not report you all… only on one condition."

Ann brightened, the tension in her shoulders relaxing. "What?"

Kitagawa stood, his chest thrust out but his eyes still closed to them. "You shall help me create the greatest nude painting ever!"

Ann shot three steps back, forcing Morgana to leap out of her way. Her hands clenched together and her face paled, her breathing turning shallow. Her hoarse voice spoke just above a whisper, "Nude?"

Kitagawa held out a slender-fingered hand. "If you come here and bare everything to me, I can put my heart and soul into the creation the best nude painting ever, and I will forgive all of you your slander today." He turned until only his narrow profile faced them, though his eyes were distant and shoulders hunched. "If I don't submit another painting to Sensei, there shall be…"

Makoto took a step between them and the artist, her hands balling into fists. "What you're asking is totally unreasonable!"

With the model's breathing continuing to speed up, Akira reached out a hand to touch her arm. "You okay?"

The instant his fingers brushed her sheer over-shirt, Ann bolted for the front door.

Fists curling, Akira rounded on the artist with his teeth clenching together. "You bastard…"

Makoto took a short step at the door, but stopped. She grabbed Akira's arm. "No, Akira. Don't do anything." She looked up at the artist. "We'll leave."

"No," Akira hissed through gnashed teeth. "We're not." When her hand tightened, he jerked away and pulled out his phone. "Go help her," he shot at the upper-classman, "I don't think she wants to see another guy for a while." His steely gaze slid over to the artist as he typed for the Maiasa newspaper. "But you…"

Makoto held her grip, but her eyes flicked to the team leader, then hall. "Akira, things are already tenuous with you. Don't make anything worse."

He yanked his hand from her grip. "I swear by God I won't touch him. Now go make sure Ann's okay."

"I'll watch him," Morgana said, hopping up on the overturned bottle crate.

Makoto gave him a tense glance, but jogged for the front door, her footsteps fading fast.

Kitagawa's eyes narrowed and he lifted his phone. "I told all of you to disperse."

Akira looked down at the online Maiasa website, and searched for Ohya's article on Kamoshida. Finding it, he opened the article and held it out. "Read this, you sick bastard. Maybe next time think before you try to blackmail an innocent girl into sexual favors."

Kitagawa hit the Open Call button on his phone. "I—"

"Read it!" Akira snapped.

Eyebrow raised, Kitagawa took the phone and his eyes scanned the headline. Then the next line. Then the next.

"Touji, Takeda, and Seta Law Firm," a nasally voice came from the artist's phone.

Eyes still on the article, Kitagawa said, "I'll call back." He hung up and slipped his phone into a trouser pocket, then took the transfer student's phone and scrolled down. His dark grey eyes widened as he read.

When the artist reached the end, Akira snatched his phone back. "By trying to force your desires on a girl extorted by Kamoshida, you put yourself on the same level as him." He slipped his phone into his uniform jacket and stormed out.

Thursday, 23 June 2016
After School
Shibuya, Subway Station

Before he even reached the base of the escalators heading down to the various subway line branches, Akira spotted Makoto browsing the job advertisements. Spotting him out of the corner of her eye, she replaced the pamphlet on flower shops and joined him in the flow of people descending to the transitways beneath Tokyo. "Akira-kun. What did you do in there?"

"You'd be proud, Rider," Morgana said from the transfer student's satchel. "He reminded that snake of Kamoshida. I'm positive he'll back off that terrible request against Lady Ann."

Makoto crossed her arms, stepped two paces away, then two paces back. "I talked to Ann before she went home. She needs some time, but I think she'll be okay." Her crimson eyes flicked down. "The thing is… not that I support what Kitagawa-san did, but I can see why he did it. He doesn't know us, and we come in, gunning for the man who raised him." Her arm-crossing tightened. "And what about him?"

Akira slipped his hands into his pockets. "The dude with twelve dead apprentices? You were with us when we were reading up on them on Monday."

"We looked him up on the Metaverse Navigator," Morgana reminded her. "He's got a Palace, and it's there."

She turned an exasperated look on both of them. "But does having a Palace necessarily mean evil?"

Morgana looked away. "Strictly speaking, no. All we can know for sure about the Palace from the outside is the person has strong, distorted desires."

Akira jerked his hands out of his pockets to throw them in the air. "Would you two look at the evidence? He's got more bodies in his wake than some of the world's serial killers. He's using his apprentices, and even if he's not slitting their throats with his own hand, he's blacklisting them from the only passion in their lives. After raising them in it." He lowered his hands. "Hardly matters if it's done with a sword or pen. When a man dies, he still dies. Hell, he might even make like Kaneshiro and put extra pressure on them to make sure it happens. It's what my old bastard would do. As far as I'm concerned, he's no different than Toyotomi, killing people to make himself look good."

Makoto her hand against her face. "Have you ever considered the possibility you're working with a biased sample? Clearly, you hate your father, but not everybody had such bad figures in their formative years. Ann and I both had fathers who loved us. They protected us and taught us. How do we know Kitagawa didn't have the same?" She shook her head. "As for Madarame… I just can't see him as a Palace holder at all. Kaneshiro was nasty in both worlds, and even Kamoshida was arrogant and power-tripping now that I've opened my eyes." She brushed back a lock of hair. "But Madarame? He talked Kitagawa-kun down and asked him to forgive us. He was so kind."

Akira pulled out his phone and brought up Madarame's incomplete bookmark on the Nav, shoving it at her face. "Hello…?"

"She's got a point," Morgana chastised from the satchel. "The reason most of us are doing this is to prove those guys from the TV show wrong. To find and expose a hidden evil in society. Palaces are dangerous, so we can't choose our targets lightly. Just imagine losing a Phantom Thief in a Palace for…" One ear folded back. "…I don't know, a guy afraid of getting old."

Makoto crossed her arms. "I agree, and I know Ryuji holds exactly the same position. Kaneshiro almost killed us. Our objective is to prove our justice to society. This is a simple matter of risk versus return. We can't afford to expend that much energy on a change which would only impact one heart."

"What if he needs that change?" Akira bellowed.

A couple of the passers-by stopped to stare at the arguing teens. Makoto tilted her head in at one of the lines and once the pair of students got started, the crowd went back to its churning, discordant normalcy. They proceeded to her line home, but hung at the back of the station platform to finish the discussion. She glanced around to be sure nobody listened in, then resumed. "I'm just saying, we need to be selective. It's the only logical choice."

Akira crossed his arms and grumped. "I'd have helped you if it was changing just one person's heart."

Makoto's face turned red, but before he could question why, air roared through the platform as a new train pulled up. She shouted, "See you later!" before racing onto the train.

Thursday, 23 June 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

The bell rang and Sojiro looked up from the cash register. He set down the newspaper crossword puzzle. "About time you got back. Here, the mail delivered a parcel for you." He ducked behind the counter, then came back up with a brown-paper-wrapped box. "Getting more comfortable with Tokyo?"

"It's an unforgiving city," Akira said, Makoto's voice still nagging in the back of his mind. He took the parcel and set it aside to help Sojiro close up. Once the bell rang for the restaurateur heading out, the transfer student took the parcel upstairs and unwrapped the box for Labyrinth the Board Game.

Disposing of the packaging, he set the board game with others on the bottom of the bookshelf, then sat down to get some homework done.

Friday, 24 June 2016
Early Morning
Aoyama-Itchome Station

The train trundled away from the station, but with the cacophony of the many students and workers heading into Aoyama, there wasn't enough peace for Akira to hear his own thoughts. A forest of elbows and knees churned around him, half the people too absorbed in what was on their phones to pay attention to whose toes they trod over. Air came in thin wisps.

Akira pulled off to the side as soon as he got to the streetside where he had enough room to do so. His heart hammered his chest like the end of a long run, but without the satisfying feel of effort in his tense muscles. When Alliance Force, Assemble! sang out of his phone, he reached for it but missed his pocket the first try from his shaking hands. He took another long breath in and out before taking out his phone and swiping to open the call. "Izzy Bakyet's courier service."

"Akira," Ann snapped. "What did you do to Kitagawa?"

Morgana's ears perked and he popped up onto the transfer student's shoulder. "Is Lady Ann okay?"

Sharing the team leader's concern, Akira tensed against the concrete wall. "You all right?"

"I'm fine," she answered, her tone still terse but her breathing even. "But what did you do to Kitagawa? He just called, and he sounded on the verge of a total breakdown."

Morgana's ears drifted down in shock. "Lady Ann is worried about that perverted artist?"

"He just looked shocked when I left him," Akira explained. Mishima tried to jump off the roof, but he looked like he had nothing to live for. The apprentice artist never had such a look of resignation. "Why?"

"Are you forgetting the whole context that drove us to go there in person?" Ann snapped, her breathing quickening. A pack of young, male chatter faded into and out of her side of the phone, her voice silent as the boys passed. "Those victims we already discovered with Yuu-kun in the Newspaper club? Akira, think. We show up on his doorstep, uninvited, and then barge in harping on the person taking care of him for as long as he can remember. And Madarame was as kind as Papa. How could we not look like the bad guys?"

Morgana's ears pressed back against his head. "T-That's ridiculous. We only tried to get at the truth! We're there to change that master artist's heart of whatever his distortion is."

Akira nodded. "We're trying to fix Madarame's distortion."

"At what cost?" She snapped back, a tremor in her voice. She paused to pull in a breath loud enough for him to hear through the phone, but spoke in a whisper harder to make out from the sounds of chatting students jogging down the road on her side. "Akira, listen to me. We can't fix one heart by breaking another. That's not what the Phantom Thieves are about."

Akira's breath fled his body.

Morgana puffed out his chest. "He held himself back more than that unscrupulous apprentice deserved, Lady Ann. Joker showed that no-good artist the Maiasa article on Kamoshida."

Akira shook to get the team leader down. "I didn't lay a hand on him. All I did was drop the truth on him with that Maiasa article. Why?"

Long moments of the chatter of students running by came from her side of the phone before Ann spoke again. "He called to apologize, Akira. I didn't need to see it – I could hear him choking back tears. He said he was so torn he hadn't eaten or slept, and canceled that threat he'd call the cops if he saw us up there again. He was freaked out but couldn't tell me what about. Something's going on there, and I'm afraid something you – or we – did pushed him over the edge. And he doesn't have anywhere to go."

Morgana poked his head out the front of the satchel, ears pressed against the back of his skull. "You only showed the truth about a lady haunted by a pervert. If that artist didn't want to feel bad, he shouldn't have tried to blackmail Lady Ann – even if he wasn't planning on going through with it. Him being in a bad situation isn't an excuse to do whatever he wants."

Akira pushed up his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. "What do you want us to do, Ann?"

"Let's go back and make sure he won't hurt himself," Ann said. "I said I'd do this because I want to help people. I…" Her voice cracked. "I couldn't bear the thought of me being the reason someone…"

Akira's hand tightened on his phone. "What about him trying to blackmail you? Are you really going to say that didn't bring back flashbacks to Kamoshida?"

She took a shaky breath. "I'm not going to say this isn't an emotional roller coaster. Yes, he reminded me of Kamoshida pressuring me for my phone number, but now I'm scared for Kitagawa. At least twelve of his fellow apprentices died. We have to go there and make sure he won't hurt himself."

Morgana let out a frustrated sigh, but gave a nod to the transfer student.

Akira straightened his glasses and plotted out a route into the churning mass of humanity heading towards Shujin. Would any of them have done like his father by throwing the first convenient stranger under the bus for a shot at personal benefit? "Okay, Ann. I'll text the others and we'll head up there again today."

AN: It always pissed me off how the game, less than a month after changing Kamoshida's heart and freeing Ann from a predatory adult trying to blackmail her into sex, turned around with whiplash speed to turn blackmailing her into sexual favors as a joke. If I had been there instead of Akira? I'd have decked Kitagawa as soon as he said it. I STILL want to slap the game's writers for such a crude, hamfisted joke when a real person would still be recovering from that trauma.

If you didn't like Ann, just supporting your friend should have been enough to do just like he did for that woman against Shido to stand up and stop it. And if you were going the romance angle for Ann? "Get away from my girl" should've been just another opportunity to put that shit to a stop right then and there.