Persona 5: Daywatch

Monday, 15 August 2016. Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

As he buttoned up his Sunday dress coat, already not looking forward to going into the heat in such formal clothes, Akira heard his phone buzz on the shogi board on the table set up in front of the couch. He finished buttoning and answered, "British Doorman, Isaiah Olchap."

Makoto gave a frustrated groan. "Do you answer like that every time?"

Akira straightened a sleeve, holding his phone between his shoulder and ear. "Nope. I was thinking of trying for Unlikely Travel Agency coordinator Ann Tartica next."

"It's Antarc—you know what? I'm not going on this tangent." She huffed. "Can we talk seriously? And is Morgana with you?"

Akira waved to the team leader setting up materials for making lock picks. "Question from Makoto." He paced closer and put the phone on speaker. "We're both here, what's up?"

"I'm sorry I forgot to say anything yesterday, I was trying to get ahead on my responsibilities," Makoto said. He could hear the cringe through her tone. "But since Hifumi-san hasn't logged into Group Chat, could I ask for the day off? Today is Obon."

Morgana gave a nod. "We can always wait until tomorrow to return to Togo's Palace."

Akira knew he'd heard the word before, but couldn't dredge up the meaning. "What is Obon?"

Makoto launched straight into Reciting Student Council President, "A holiday celebrated primarily by Buddhists that involves reflections on the walks of life and prayers to one's ancestors. Traditionally it includes revisiting ancestral graves, but Dad's family was from Kyoto and I know it's too far to go for a single observance. The day also involves a summer dance and making offerings at household altars, which I was planning on doing for Dad and Mom…"

When she trailed off, Akira mentioned, "Sounds like Kyuu Bon up in Shinjou. Would you just be able to dust off the family shrine and set it up in the den or something?"

"I couldn't find it. Sae said there was no need to keep sentimental talismans, so I'm afraid she left it behind in the move, but it isn't right to just forget them. Mom taught us to keep up the household, and Dad raised us to believe in justice that could overcome the weakness in society. After Mom died, he used to bring Sae and I along to some Joudo-shuu celebrations with others in the police force. He provided for us, taught us to tell the truth and guard our honor…" Her voice trembled as she trailed off.

Morgana peered up at the transfer student. "There's got to be something we can do."

Akira nodded. "Listen, Makoto-san. Today's the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary so I've got to get up to Mass. I'm hoping Hifumi will be there, but even if not I think the liturgy is only an hour. Do you want me to call you as soon as it's done? I did promise to help you figure things out when you asked about the student body."

She coughed once and still sounded a little shaky when she replied, "Thank you, Akira."

Monday, 15 August 2016
Noon
Kanda Catholic Church

As soon as the Father gave the benediction, Akira took to his feet. Despite his hopes, another sweep of the sanctuary only confirmed a lack of the red omamori-style hair knot or those beautiful green eyes. After waiting for a parishioner asking for prayers of protection from Medjed, Akira asked the priest, "Father? Have you seen or heard from Hifumi-san?"

Father Sugiyama gave the kind of strained smile of somebody trying to think of a way to deliver bad news. "I apologize, Son. She's normally such a diligent parishioner, and she so enjoys the chance to test her skill over a game, but I haven't heard from her since last weekend."

His stomach squirmed and Akira wished he could blame it on the overabundance of food Ryuji forced on him yesterday. He bowed, "Thank you, Father." He paused in the narthex to check his texts. His private texts all sat unread and she hadn't posted anything to the group chat. He crossed himself and prayed for her safety, but this wasn't unexpected. Her mother had taken her phone for days on end before.

He took a deep breath in, then long breath out and called Makoto back. "Mass just finished. Are you all right?"

A beat passed before she said, in her controlled President of the Student Council voice, "All right. Hm. I never realized how complicated a question that could be to answer before. Physically I'm fine, but mentally… This day has brought on a lot of things I haven't thought in years. I could use someone to talk things over with."

"I'm just a few minutes from Suidobashi Station. Where do you want to meet?"

"I was going to pray at Zoujou Temple in Shiba," Makoto said. "It's in Minato-ku, not far from Shujin."

He hesitated to reach out for the door and the sweltering heat. "I'm familiar with it. Isn't it basically the HQ for Pure Land Buddhism in Kanto?"

"Right," she said, some hesitance creeping back into her voice. "It's also the location of the Taitoku-in Mausoleum. Dad and Mom weren't particularly strict practitioners, but we visited there a few times before Mom died. Dad asked them to officiate Mom's funeral."

He glanced at his black, formal clothes. "I'm probably as appropriately dressed as I can be."

Monday, 15 August 2016
Early Afternoon
Minato-ku, Shiba Park

Akira wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. Today was such a strong heat wave the local weather app included a warning for the elderly to seek shelter or stay indoors, but going back to Yongen might not have helped much. He'd have been able to pick up Morgana and change out of black, but the green of Shiba Park helped cool the urban heat sink. The pictures of Zoujou Temple gave a poor sense of the scale or austerity of the large complex. A twenty-one meter main gate towered over the surrounding park, and monks maintained a small water station for the many older visitors coming to the temple for part of Obon. While he could hear music from more lively festivities elsewhere in the park, the people here maintained a peaceful quiet.

"Akira-san!" Makoto called out from behind. She jogged over the concrete park path, her sneakers the only concession he could see to modern convenience. She wore her white, floral-patterned yukata from Marine Day. She again eschewed the braided headband, this time for a white elastic band that wrapped around her head like a crown and held her bangs up and away from her face. The yellow obi with a white tie added a splash of color that brought new heat to the transfer student's cheeks.

"Oh, hey, Makoto-senpai," he stumbled over his words. "Sorry, is this a traditional gown only event?"

"Oh, no. I'm sure that's fine. Thank you for coming." Makoto came to a stop next to him and looked up at the big, red-painted gate. "It's been years. Father's funeral was held at the police station. So many people came, it felt like a big, overwhelming affair."

Akira switched the empty water bottle from a station concession stand to his other hand. "I've never actually been to a funeral before. One of the my classmates at Inuri committed suicide, but the school never told us how or why."

She nodded. "I remember the guidelines for student council at my middle school were to avoid the topic so as to not encourage it." She fanned herself with her hand, then gestured off the path to the shade of a tree where fewer of the trickle of pedestrians would pay attention to them. "Not talking about it doesn't make it any easier to process, though. Sae was never that close to Mom, so after her funeral, she just… studied and went into law. It never felt like it was a thing to talk about, to her or to Dad."

Akira flexed a shoulder, unsure what he should say. "Did you guys give up a lot when your mother died?"

"It feels strange to say, but not really. Mom worked hard and taught us so much, but…" The corners of her lips turned up. "Dad was always the fixture of the family." A frown crept across her face and she hesitated before her gaze slid to his. "I saw… a lot of your mother in Futaba's palace. It's hard to fathom such polar opposites between my mother and yours. Neither really sought the spotlight, but… Before Big Sis moved us into the new place, every time I turned a corner at home I kept expecting to see Mom there. Folding laundry or scrubbing a pan or something like that. She was always there. I could always talk to her."

"Sounds like somebody comfortable with home life," Akira said. "Were the troubles you were mentioned earlier, perhaps, thoughts that you took her for granted until she was gone?"

"No!" Makoto slipped her hands in her sleeves. "Well, now that you bring it up, I don't think I appreciated her as much as she deserved. But she never seemed unhappy. Not with us." A beat passed and when their eyes met, she explained, "There was tension with Dad in the final years. I think she didn't like how much time he spent on the job. He'd take her out to nice dinners more and more often, but as time went on, instead of cheering her up they just made her worse."

Akira scratched his head. "Really? That sounds awesome. Getting to go out, visit new places, eat new things."

"Big Sis called it bribery, but she was entering her stubborn, independent streak at the time." She gave a small smile. "I agree with you, though. At least ever since awakening to Johanna, getting out and experiencing new things sounds so much more enthralling than sitting in and studying next month's lesson."

Akira fought to keep a smirk from his face. "More enthralling?"

"What?" She squawked. "Learning new things is fun, too!" Her cheeks took on a shade darker of pink and she looked away. "Before, it felt like everything was a grey. Food, music, night, day. It all blended together and the closest thing to satisfaction was finishing the checklist so I could go to sleep."

Akira felt a curling sensation in his gut. That was how he felt for months on end with his mother. He didn't understand it until Father Motoori called it the false feeling of nothing to live for. After enough days without… "There is no sun. There was no sun."

Makoto straightened, her gaze flicking to the shadows playing over the tended park ground. "Summer says there's definitely sun."

Straightening his glasses, Akira took a breath. "Sorry, it's a partial quote from The Silver Chair. Some kids get lost underground for so long, a witch tries to convince them there never was a sun to try to make them fall to despair. That's probably what you felt like when everybody around you kept piling up burdens they expected you to live up to, and never treated you like a person who was carrying too many things."

That pink returned to her cheeks. "Thank you, Akira. But you were there to help me out."

He broke eye contact. "I was also there to pile them on. I should have been the first person to know the rumor mill was full of shit and given you the chance to show on your own who you were." He took off his glasses to wipe sweat away from an eye. "I should have known better. I should have been better. I told Father Motoori I would be when he asked if I was ready for baptism."

Her smile didn't go away, but frustration leaked into her visage. "You're certainly not either of your parents. You care about not only what you do, but the consequences of your actions." Makoto took a breath and the corners of her lips turned up. "It reminds me just a bit of Dad. Dad was the center of the family. I don't remember a specific incident as much as the hundreds of nights where he'd be the one to initiate every exchange of stories around the dinner table. Everybody would make one thing to bring to the table." She gave a chuckle. "Though Dad's was always the rice." Makoto looked up at him. "What about your father?"

Akira tensed, but forced himself to breathe and unclench his hands. "I will never call that man father. A father teaches and empowers, like Father Motoori or Sugiyama." He straightened his glasses and looked her in the eye. He clapped his hands together, crinkling his empty water bottle. "My old man never once ate with me. His version of helping me study was locking me in an empty patient's room with my books so I would study instead of running away." He huffed. "He'd usually send staff members to look in on me, but they'd leave me alone when I was reading. They never checked to see what I was reading as long as it wasn't manga."

"That's why you're a reader?" she squawked. When a handful of children with a woman walking past stopped, Makoto brushed her bangs back and pointed to the temple gate. "I apologize for tying things up out here in the heat. And bringing up negative memories. My mom taught me how to cook, the closest yours came was telling you to make brown rice with hot sauce."

Akira wiped a droplet of water from his brow. "You can say it, Makoto. Mother drank. The rice was supposed to be a hangover cure." He turned to the looming gate. "You can't play a hand you're not dealt." He led the trot to the inside of the Buddhist temple complex. A mix of solemn pedestrians and skipping celebrants milled around the stage in the center of the courtyard for the night's dance. Lantern-studded lines stretched from the square pillar on the center of the stage to the rooftops of the surrounding buildings.

Makoto let out a hum before she hastened back alongside. "No chance to play an ace up your sleeve when you're not at the table, hm?"

The transfer student tripped on an uneven stone in the tile-paved road lined by trees and turf. He caught his footing, but felt like his brain took a moment longer to catch up. "You're the last person I'd expect to be familiar with gambling metaphors."

She tilted her head. "Why? Dad always played poker at the police ball. It's not illegal, there's a lottery stand right at Station Square."

Akira blinked. "Gambling's against the law. I remember Officer Ichijou getting pissed 'cause she had to stop lecturing me to help book an illegal chinchirorin ring."

Makoto rolled her eyes. "Well, men can get rowdy over dice. It's different when it's basically family around the table, with gyoza and tonics at each one's elbow."

A man in the yellow and orange of a Buddhist monk approached from one of the side paths, nodding at the two Shujin students. "Good day, young ones. Is there anything I can help you with?"

Makoto pressed her hands flat together in front of her face, and bowed. "Good day, Master. I came to pray and offer some incense to my parents, but can't afford the time to travel to the ancestral graves."

The monk – or priest, Akira wasn't familiar enough with Buddhist trappings to know if they had different uniforms – bowed his head back to her, then gestured to a roof peeking up over trees to the right. "The cemetery is behind the main hall. If you don't have your own incense, there should be a stall right before the entrance until the night dance."

When he turned to greet another family coming to celebrate Obon, the two Shujin students made their way through the crowd to the main hall looming over the courtyard, he taking a beat to buy a fresh water bottle. The crowd forced them to separate until outside again, where he found the upperclassman in a lane of the graveyard lined with short, stone statues. Makoto fiddled with a stick of incense, her eyes on the decorations. Knit caps and scarves created a sense of lively color that clashed with the dark stone and gloomy atmosphere. A small handful of people lingered here, one a middle-aged woman kneeling and crying before another statue.

Akira took off his glasses to wipe sweat away from his eyes, then settled them back on. "Have any family that died in childbirth?"

"No, I was just thinking about children," Makoto said, clasping her hands in thought. "Dad and Mom never really talked about it much. I guess having us was the family obligation and after that, neither really tried again. Their work and the existing family kept everyone really busy. Is child-raising viewed much differently in Catholicism?"

A flicker of Hifumi and him trying passed through his mind, but Akira shoved the dirty thought away. "God commanded us in Genesis to 'be fruitful and multiply', but that's about as specific as it got. I wasn't a member of the parish under Father Motoori for long enough to get a really good sense of the culture there." He slipped his hands in his pockets. "What about you?"

She shook her head. "To be honest, I still feel like I have trouble keeping my head above water just with school and…" Her eyes darted about. "…us. I can't imagine I'd be a good mother."

Akira reached out to straighten a blue yarn cap on the child-statue in front of him. "This is the first time you've asked for a break from… work. You're an innately organized person, I doubt you'd have trouble adapting to raising your own family if you set out to do so."

She switched her incense to her left hand. "Thank you." A warm summer breeze flowed through the cemetary. "What about you. Do you think kids are in your future?"

The cold that shot up his spine was so strong it brought on a full-body shiver. "I'd never want to be a father. Did you not take in anything about mine?"

Her crimson gaze rose to him. "Really? You're supportive, structured, knowledgeable about theory and practical life, even seem to enjoy improvising. I thought that would have been a life goal for you. Every man I've heard talk about it said how proud their kids made them." The corners of her lips turned up. "Even Dad did that at the police balls. Sure, it was a career thing too and he spent plenty of time chatting it up with various section heads, but he told most of them about Sae and I. It was like our high grades were his accomplishment with as much as he'd preen."

Akira slipped his hand back in his pocket. He'd never once heard his old man praise his grades. Granted, he had plenty of demerits from skipping school. "No matter how high I scored on my tests, my old man would just say that's what he expected. 'Superior genes should produce superior specimens'."

Her face twisted as if she bit a lemon. "Even my dad, as busy as he was at the precinct or out on the streets, took Mom out and made her candle-lit dinners." She giggled. "Though she was the cook, so it tended to be candle-lit convenience store bentos."

Another gaggle of mothers turned the corner from the temple's central building, so Makoto and the transfer student moved on to the dense, standing headstone section of the graveyards. She came to a stop at a nook with a few standing picture frames of men in police uniforms. She set the stick in a stone bowl with ashes from numerous prior incense, lit it against an already smoldering stick, then clapped her hands together and bowed in silence for long moments. After she came up she stepped back, hands clasped in front of her obi. "Sorry for making you take so much of your time."

"It's fine," Akira said, wiping sweat from his brow. "But when they celebrated Kyuu Bon up in Shinjou, most people would head to the family home and pray at the family shrine there. How come you decided to come here?"

She let out a long breath, her eyes drifting back to the frames, then the trees well behind. "I think I was trying to reconnect with them." Her gaze fell to the graveyard's paving stones. "Until today, I hadn't realized how angry Big Sis still was at him for dying. Or how much I wanted to talk to him. To remind myself of Dad and Mom." She fidgeted with her fingers. "Before I called you, I was trying to remember some of the bed-time stories Mom would read us, and… I drew a blank. I could recall which stories she'd read, but not how she read them. What she sounded like. I was still in grammar school when she died of an aneurysm, but…" She pulled in a halting breath. "Sometimes I'm afraid I'll forget Dad, too."

Akira stepped closer and nudged her with an elbow. "Hey. Your father is part of the reason you became who you are today. You can't lose that. You've got pretty fair judgment now and excellent planning skills. He passed those lessons on to you and I'm damn sure they'll always be with you. And you still cook, right? That's more of your mother that you're not letting go of."

She smiled, then stepped out of his arm to fan herself. "Thank you, Akira. You're a lot more considerate than you first appear."

He thumped her arm. "Don't kid yourself, I'm just as much of a jerk as I first appear."

Monday, 15 August 2016
Early Evening
Shibuya, Protein Lovers' Gym

Weights behind the resistance machine clacked in the steady rhythm as Akira counted his repetitions. More clicking, straining, and groans both of composite plastics and people sounded around the small gym. Sweat gathered into beads on his skin, but unlike outside the cool and steady blowing of air conditioning provided much-needed relief as he began the long process of working himself to exhaustion. His talk with Makoto seemed to help her out, but just left him feeling even more out of his element than before. It was hard enough trying to push away his lewd thoughts of Hifumi, but thinking of himself as a father just triggered fear at every intellectual level. His father betrayed him on a fundamental level, how could Akira be a good father when he only understood a bad one?

Alliance Force, Assemble! sang out of his phone and the weights slapped together as he ended the movement. He wiped his hands on his threadbare black shirt and pulled his phone out, surprised to see Yuuki on the caller ID. Had he found a new emergency request? "Practical Joke Specialist, Dietrich Iznotulaff."

"Kurusu?" His class representative said, sounding a bit out of breath. "I-I mean, Akira-san?"

Akira paused to make sure his own breathing was under control. "Here. What's up, Yuuki?"

"We hafta' talk! The Phansite's going crazy," he exclaimed. "There's flamers and panic everywhere. I even had to drop researching requests for you guys to try to keep the dumpster fire under control and I…" His voice cracked.

Akira sat up. "Hey, slow down and take a breath. We'll meet and strategize. Where's good for you?"

"Uh," the class representative said, sounding pained. "Home, but I don't think I'm up for leaving Minato-ku."

Akira looked around. He pre-paid for an evening of intense exercise, but it had been quite a while since he heard from Yuuki and it sounded like the guy was on the edge of an episode. Like hell would he walk away from someone in that situation. "Then I'll meet you. Either send me your address or somewhere close by you feel comfortable meeting at, I'll be there as soon as I can."

A few seconds of mumbled stammerings that didn't collect into a clear word passed before Yuuki hung up. For a beat, the transfer student was afraid he just pushed over yet another invisible boundary before the class rep posted a link to a seafood cafe on the group chat.

Just to make sure he knew, Akira texted, [I'm on the way.]

Monday, 15 August 2016
Evening
Minato-ku, Maguro Fish Market

Akira slid onto a chair with a new cushion glued to what could have passed as structural lumber reclaimed from a flood. He shifted left and right, but when he didn't feel the chair give he decided the battered wood look of the place was an aesthetic choice.

Across from him sat the class representative. Dark circles stretched under his eyes and he looked like he'd lost at least two kilograms since their last meeting. His thumbs tapped away at his phone, no sign he ever had food despite holding the table for ten minutes. His dark eyes remained transfixed on his phone. When the transfer student snapped his fingers, the Phansite creator jumped in his seat. "Right! Sorry, I got busy moderating. There are a lot of flamers saying the Phantom Thief can't or won't stop Medjed. And the deadline is coming up pretty soon."

Akira rubbed his temple. "Yeah, I know. Medjed's been taken care of, but we're busy with another Palace so we haven't had time to let Futaba take the couple of days off it would take to hack Medjed's site. Maybe I should've predicted something would happen and had her start yesterday."

A squeaky-voiced college kid who looked like he'd had one too many donuts stepped up with a pad of paper in hand. "Good evening, honored customers. What can Maguro's Fish Market get for you?"

Yuuki spared the waiter just a moment. "Not hungry." He went back to typing.

"Two simmered rockfish," Akira said. One of Japan's classic whitefish should get the class representative eating. When the waiter bowed and departed, Akira pulled out his phone, but kept his focus on his quarry. Since finishing Futaba's palace, Akira ignored the media's fear-mongering about Medjed since Futaba corrupted the offending hacker's computer. It looked like the only thing happening was pundits and people safe in their jobs whining. Looking at the class rep, that might have been a mistake. "So walk me through it. How did things get to… this?" he said, spreading a hand out at the overworked site manager.

Yuuki finished typing something, but at least glanced up at the transfer student for a moment. Then back to the Phansite. "I think Kaneshiro primed it. When Maiasa printed that exposé about Madarame, with pictures of the calling card, traffic to the Phansite increased exponentially. What used to be a couple of trolls I could nip in the bud by banning them a couple times a day turned into thousands of new posts per day. Some are afraid and want to vent, but some are coming just to stir up trouble."

"That level of spam makes people abandon email addresses. I remember my old man having to create new business emails every couple of months because somebody kept signing him up for junk." Akira paused, his eyes rolling up. "Now that I think about it, I wonder if Futaba was involved." He pulled up the group chat. [Hey, mistress of computers.]

Her always-on ID winked underneath his text with three dots. [That's Computer Queen, tyvm.]

[There's only one person I'll call queen,] he typed before he realized this was on group chat and Makoto would be able to see it. Queen never seemed to fit her anyway, that would just represent an inversion of the domination power dynamic she was a part of earlier. A continuation of the cage she was in before, just with a different coat of paint. She was a brawler, a fighter learning to hold nothing back, but stood beside the rest of them. He instead sent, [Yuuki's got spam problems with the Phansite. How do you deal with it?]

The server returned with two plates of fresh, pan-simmered white fish. Akira thanked him and dug in. The group chat buzzed with Futaba and he read over what ended up being an essay that flew over his head. "Hey, Yuuki. What's an 'IP ban'?"

"Internet protocol," he said, finishing some typing before glancing up. His hair hung lower, and was it just the lighting in this restaurant or did it look greasy? Those brown eyes flitted as if in time with the small thoughts inside. "It's possible a lot of the flamers are the same people just re-registering or rotating internet connection." He swiped the Phansite aside and brought up the group chat. "Natural language moderation bots? I don't know how to program something like that!" He typed in something to that effect to the group chat.

Futaba replied in a second, [They're easy! I used them when I had zombie farms hack universities for traces of Mom's research.]

Akira arched an eyebrow. "Zombie… farms?" He lowered his fork. "Is that an internet joke?"

Yuuki shook his head. "Zombie means a different thing in computers than pop culture. Both basically hijack the hardware of something else to serve a different purpose, but a zombie farm is a method of hacking that uses other people's computers to run certain automated tasks, sometimes without even knowing their computers are being partially appropriated. Anonymous used them in the switch from Low to High Orbit Ion Cannons after the FBI arrested a couple of their members."

Akira blinked. "You just went from talking about computers to orbital weaponry. I didn't think those were real."

Yuuki pinched the bridge of his nose. "No, not… literal orbital ion cannons. The name comes from Command and Conquer. It's just software for information requests to overload a website." He looked back down at his phone. "I doubt the Phansite is high-profile enough to be worth that much effort, but now that she brought it up, I guess it wouldn't take much. I'm fine with web coding, but the most I could do with bots is writing auto-moderators to take down posts with key phrases associated with flamers."

Akira texted, [Would you be willing to help write a few bots to stop flamers on the Phantom Thief fan site?]

[EZ peasy. Which one?]

Akira blinked. [What do you mean which one?]

She texted back, [Akira, there's a couple dozen Phantom Thief fan pages. There's this new one in Kyoto that even does a podcast.]

[He means mine,] Yuuki texted, followed by a link to the Phansite.

[Leave it to the master! I'll have those trolls crying by morning.]

Makoto's ID winked in. [Futaba, try not to work through the night, it's bad for your health even if we aren't going into a Palace tomorrow. And NO MELTING ANYBODY'S COMPUTER.]

[Spoilsport.] A beat later Futaba added, [Where's the fun in toasting hard drives and leaving perfectly good power supplies and CPUs?]

Satisfied, Akira set his phone down. "There you go, Futaba will be assisting. Now eat."

AN: Thanks for reading and reviewing!