Chapter Text
“Go over what you’ve got so far again?”
Naoto sighed and rolled her eyes before beginning her spiel from the top.
"The strikethrough could have been either intended by the riddler, or added later. And even with the latter possibility, it may or may not have been the riddle's author who edited it. On the other hand, if we assume that everything written is true, then it seems that the person who seeks my heart and the person who supposedly stole my heart are in fact one and the same. Meanwhile, when we step back, the first two lines seem to ask the name of the person who seeks and/or has stolen the heart of 'the detective,' by which we assume the author means me. As for the second stanza, it seems to be directions for what to do next. The first line, 'count the days till youth's in prime,' is probably referring to summer, the time of youth. Speaking for the second line is more difficult, as… Yosuke-senpai, please. I really do need help with this.”
Yosuke looked guiltily up from his phone.
“Oh—! Sorry. Yu…”
She sighed again.
“Carry on…”
He bit his lip and went back to texting.
Naoto looked out at the Samegawa. Today was Thursday, July nineteenth. It had been two days since she'd become resolute in her plan to tell Kanji her feelings, and she was spending—it was starting to feel like wasting, really—her time uselessly picking away at the riddle. The end-of-semester exams were nearly upon them, and she'd studied herself stupid and tutored Kanji and Rise until they begged for mercy the sweet release of death a rest. So, once again, she was forced back to the god-forsaken riddle.
It almost seemed that she was going through stages of grief over the damned thing. Denial had been in the days after she’d first found it. Anger, for sure, was next. Bargaining… Perhaps not so much. Depression, the couple of days before and after she'd called Yu. But now… Acceptance, in all likeliness. That was it. The death of her pride was complete.
Apart from the nonsense with the riddle, she was working up her nerves, determined not to let Yosuke spill the beans. She wanted to at least let the cat out of the bag on her terms, even if it would be impossible to herd once it was free.
It could have been any evening. Naoto lay curled up beneath the covers on her bed, biting her lip, tears slowly dripping across the bridge of her nose and onto the sheets. I can't do this. Why is it so difficult? None of it is logical at all. It's like being dropped in a foreign country, no resources, no translator, nothing. I'm going to fail utterly, and he would have every right to turn tail and run. How can I be loved if I don’t know how to love? I can't. It hurts too much. There’s no imaginable circumstance in which I could be loved like this. How can I be loved if I don’t know myself? How can I be loved when my body is so wrong? I’m so abnormally small, my physical attributes neither feminine nor masculine. And those feminine attributes that I do have, I desperately hide. How weak, Shirogane. How pitiable you are. Just a terrified child, desperate for recognition. Begging for love. Yet you hide behind a stern face and a cap, sealing your true feelings within a great stone wall. Perhaps your heart truly is just a pebble. A tiny, shriveled stone. Cold. Undersized. Completely insignificant. Helpless as it's tossed out to sea, to sink down into the uncaring depths. Alone.
It could have been any evening. Kanji sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees and hands gripping his hair tightly. His eyes were pinched shut, and his breath trembled with each inhale and exhale. The hell're you thinking, Tatsumi!? Just drop it. You seriously think a punk like you’s got a chance with Naoto of all people?! No way. Nooo way. She's gonna laugh in your big, dumb face and walk away. Don’t even try, dude. Not a chance. What a stupid idea. Stupid, stupid, stupid, just like they all say!! You're not a man. Not a bit. The hell would she see in you? Nothing! She’s got nothing to gain from you. She’s all logic. She’s got it all worked out. She’s got a plan for her life, and it doesn’t include you or anyone else. You’re such an idiot for still following her like a limping puppy… God, what a mess…
“I swear to god, if those two don’t confess already I am going to rip this fucking pillow in half!!”
“Jeez, Rise-chan, calm down! I mean, I’m all for them to give it a shot, too, but just. Chill!”
“I can't calm down! If I have to spend one more second listening to either one of them pining over the other, I'm gonna scream!!”
It was July thirty-first, and Yukiko, Chie, and Rise were lounged in Rise's very pink bedroom. Rise sat on her bed, limbs wrapped around her pillow. She dug her fingers further into the pillow as her phone, which sat beside her, emitted a plink-ing notification tone.
“And there's Naoto again, asking if she can call me!” The device played a somber piano piece and she groaned loudly. “Uuugh!! Just… I’m just gonna let it ring… I can’t take any more from these two…”
“That's a bit rude…” Yukiko countered hesitantly.
“I don’t even care at this point! Chie, what're you—”
“Hi Naoto-kun!” Chie said cheerily, before tapping the speaker button. “You've been talking Rise-chan's ear off lately! That’s not like you, what's up?”
There were several seconds of silence before Naoto cautiously spoke.
❝How much… Do you know?❞
“Oh, not much,” Yukiko said lightly. “We just know you need some counseling!”
❝To what end?❞
"To the end of you not torturing yourself with your lovesickness anymore! You should bounce on over here to Rise-chan's place, we can—"
❝My apologies, I’m a bit busy. Another time.❞
"She hung up,” Chie said, looking crestfallen.
“Well, yeah. People don’t react well when you tell them you know about their secret crush.”
“Yeah… But still, it was rude to cut me off like that!” The green-jacketed girl puffed out her cheeks in frustration.
Yukiko giggled and Rise rolled her eyes.
"Well, anyways,” Chie continued, “we should talk to Kanji! He totally likes her back!”
“I know, I know…!! Hey, maybe you should talk to him! Speaking of jocks who like girls they think are out of their league…”
“SHUSH!!” Chie dove at Rise, slapping a hand over the idol’s mouth. “I toldja not to say anything about that!!” Yukiko, still clueless, collapsed into a fit of laughter.
“Anyways,” the younger girl eventually said, pushing her senpai fully off of her, “he's not the only one who needs help right now. Have you seen the dance Yosuke and Senpai are doing!? If I can’t have Yu, then Yosuke should, but those two are determined not to admit the mutual affection!!”
“Seriously! We were just talking about them the other day,” Chie said eagerly, gesturing to herself and Yukiko. “And Yukiko put it really well! She said that Yosuke has been acting like a shy little boy, and Yu has been acting like the little girl he's chasing around!”
Rise guffawed heartily.
“That's so accurate, oh my god…!!” She suddenly fell quiet again. “But you know… For both couples… They're running out of time. If they don’t act soon, it’ll be too late, and the moment will have passed…” She looked down, fretfully fidgeting with her hair. Soft sounds of agreement came from the other two girls.
The camera zooms out of Rise's bedroom window to a ¾ bird's eye view of the shopping district. It then zooms down to just outside Kanji's bedroom window, through which we can see him furiously sewing.
A slight pan across the window leads into a zoom back out, and subsequently a swing around to the neighborhood where the Hanamuras live. After another zoom, we get a view through Yosuke's bedroom window of him sitting on the edge of his Western-style bed, staring frozen at his phone in his hands. It displays the contact information for Partner, and his finger hovers, shaking, above the call button. Seeming to gather all his resolve, he presses down on the screen and lifts the phone to his ear. The call is answered almost instantly.
“H-hey, Partner.”
❝What's up?❞
“I, uh… I gotta… We gotta talk.”
The camera zooms out to the street, then flies along above the roads until it arrives at an apartment building. It slowly zooms into the second-to-last window on the second floor, where we find a very anxious Naoto stiffly speed-walking back and forth through her apartment. Suddenly, she comes to an abrupt halt before the door. She stares at it with quickly hardening resolve in her eyes. Marching up to the shoe rack, she secures her feet in her favorite platform shoes before opening the door, shutting it, and locking it. The camera slowly zooms out and we see a blue scooter speed out of the parking garage soon after.
The camera swoops down to the street level and races after the scooter. At some point, their paths diverge and the camera begins to ascend, until eventually, we are again watching Kanji. He paces his room, looking around wildly, at an utter loss for what to do with his nervous energy. He wipes sweaty palms on his jeans.
The doorbell rings and he gives a tremendous start. Remembering that he is home alone, he jogs downstairs to the side door which serves as the front door of their home. With a shaky hand, he opens the door…
"Hello, Kanji-kun.”
"H-hey, uh, Naoto.”
Naoto shifted slightly, looking uncomfortable, passing her cap back and forth between her hands. She cleared her throat and erred a bit before forming a sentence.
“Erm, ah, might I, er… Is it possible that I might humbly request your accompaniment on a stroll through town?” She cringed at how awfully stilted she sounded and quickly added, “there are some matters which… Which we must discuss.”
Kanji blinked several times, surprised. Some part of his brain made him nod numbly. Autopilot got him over the threshold and got the door locked. His delayed reaction said,
“Y-yeah, uh… I got some stuff I gotta talk ta you about, too.”
Naoto flinched and hastily tucked her cap back on and over her eyes.
“Let us reserve the bulk of our conversation for a more… Secluded setting. Perhaps the overlook?”
He nodded again and they set out.
After twenty minutes of each desperately avoiding looking at the other, they reached the—mercifully deserted—overlook. The teens sat down opposite each other at the pavilion, and commenced staring at the tabletop.
“S-so, uh… You first. What'd ya wanna talk about?”
Naoto took a deep breath, tugging her cap down over her eyes.
“Forgive me if I… Stumble at all. This is not something I’ve ever had to discuss previously.”
“Uhh… Okay?” He felt slightly nauseous with nerves, so he doubted he’d hear much of what she said anyways. True to character, she launched into a monologue full of words he'd never heard and would probably never learn. Meanwhile, his brain was a nervous wreck. He was surprised he could still hear her talking, even if he wasn’t taking any of it in.
Naoto wasn’t at all conscious of what she was saying; she was simply rambling, building a wall of words to hide behind. Spouting hollow sentences without a point. Attempting to explain that she couldn’t explain why she couldn’t explain what she had to explain.
Eventually, with a tremendous amount of effort, she shut off the flow of her logorrhea. She suddenly couldn’t breathe. She felt so tiny. The summer breeze raised hairs on the back of her neck. Birds swooped and sang brightly above the pavilion roof. She was choking on inexplicable terror. Her chest felt horribly constricted, surely not helped by her binder. Had she done it up tighter than usual today? She couldn’t remember. Why… Why was she here again? Why was it so hard to breathe!? She could feel the breaths she wasn’t taking quickly increasing in frequency and getting shallower and shallower, she was panicking, she could only hear the ringing of tinnitus in her ears now, she shut her eyes tighter than she thought was possible; she couldn’t let the tears get out. A nearly inaudible cry, a whine of unadulterated misery escaped her clenched throat, and tears of—embarrassment? Fear? Frustration? She couldn’t, she didn’t know—forced their way out from between her eyelids.
All of this happened to Naoto within five seconds, during which time some part of Kanji's brain lurched back into action and ordered him to seize the opportunity that her unexpected silence offered.
“N-Naoto, I…”
She was suffocating on words that she didn’t know—
“I love you,” she choked out.
His joints ground to a halt. He had subconsciously leaned forward, as if begging her to hear words yet unsaid. Naoto was frozen both physically and mentally. The silence was only disturbed by the rushing of leaves in the breeze. The birds had departed.
“…love… You,” he finished, not entirely processing her meaning. “Hang… Hang on. Wha…” What? I thought I was the one confessing here. Wait, what? Woah, woah, waiwaiwait. Back up. No. She didn’t just… No way. “Hold up. What did you just say?”
Naoto… Couldn’t hear him. Keep it together, keep it together, keep it together, Shirogane… He hasn’t said anything yet; why hasn’t he said anything yet? Oh, Heaven help me… But even Heaven can’t shield me from the truth… I suppose I should at least pull myself together and take the blow with dignity. She didn't realize that she had her fingertips pressed into her ears.
Kanji did realize this, however. Apprehensively, anxious of invading her personal space, he reached over the table and nudged her hands away from her ears.
“Naoto…?” Kanji watched as she coughed out a sob, then made an odd sound that might have been a badly disguised sniff.
Beneath the brim of her cap, Naoto blinked furiously to rid her eyes and lashes of excess moisture, stretched her face to check that her tears had dried, and softly cleared her throat. She swallowed and straightened up, adjusting her cap's position over her eyes. She then softly spoke.
“I… I l-love you.” She had to force out the second word. It hurts only a little less to say the second time, she noticed. One would think… That once the deed is done and it's been said, it wouldn't be so hard to say again. Not so, apparently.
Kanji was slowly shaking his head. He felt quite dizzy.
“No, no… I’m either dreamin' or hallucinating, or yer lyin'. And I 'unno why ya'd lie about this, so tha' means I’m either sleepin' or I’ve finally gone round the bend.” He pinched some skin on the back of his hand and twisted it. He grimaced at the pain. “Yup. Guess that's it, then. Jeez, Naoto, ya finally drove me crazy. Almost wanna congratulate ya, but, well, if yer not real I guess there ain’t much point, huh?”
Naoto peeked out from beneath the brim of her cap. Kanji was staring off into the distance, over the valley that Inaba was nestled in. She had to somehow prove to him that it wasn’t a dream, that he wasn’t just seeing things, that she was really there.
Cautiously, she brought up her left hand from her lap and inched it across the table. When her fingertips brushed up against his, he jumped slightly. He didn’t resist, however, as she slipped her fingers between his and lifted his hand up off the table. His fingers bent to match hers, so that their hands were folded together. They both stared at their joined hands, fascinated.
Why would he think… That the possibility of my confession is only that in a dream…? Because that would suggest that… He reciprocates… She swallowed hard and tried again.
“Yes... Yes, I love you, Kanji-kun… I do, and I do not know why, nor for how long. I only know that I do, and… That I would be quite thrilled if… If you were to reciprocate the feeling.”
“Are you sure? 'Cause… If y'are… Then… I absolutely do. Reciprocate.”
Kanji and Naoto were the two members of the Investigation Team who were most reserved and reluctant with their smiles. Kanji laughed easily with friends, but he almost never smiled. His brows were always knitted, his jaw always set—he had a façade to maintain, see? Meanwhile, the stoic Detective Prince rarely smiled, even around her grandfather. When a smile did appear on her face, it was always small and fleeting, with a hint of sadness in it; she invariably closed her eyes and lowered her cap when the corners of her her mouth turned upwards.
But in this moment, both young faces were relaxed. Both sets of eyes were open wide, both pairs of lips barely parted. And gradually, as if they were sharing some emotional warmth through their clasped hands, the corners of both mouths were gently pulled upwards.
“I believe… That…” She shook her head, then tried again. “I confess I do not understand how things are generally expected to progress from this point. I do not know how to express my feelings, nor do I have any past experience to hold up as a reference. However… I believe I am ready to learn. From what I have seen in others, the road is not always a smooth one, but… It is worth it. So… What say you, Kanji-kun?”
"I-I, yeah, I mean—Totally!” Kanji's face was suddenly split with a grin, and he gently squeezed Naoto's hand. “Guess it's good we were both able ta get that off our chests!” He laughed.
“In-indeed.” Naoto was pink-cheeked and smiling faintly. “Th— Shall we go?”
“Y-yeah, guess so." He stood up, then seemed to remember something. "Oh, an', uh, Naoto?"
"Yes?"
"Y... Y'ever work out tha' last riddle?"
She sighed heavily.
"No, indeed."
"Heh..." He laughed nervously and rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, uh... I guess I should come clean 'bout that. It was me, the whole time. With the... The riddles, an' all."
Naoto hid a broad smile beneath her cap.
"Aha. So, I was not far off the mark in my suspicions."
"'Course not. Yer a million times smarter'n me, should a known ya'd figger it out."
"I'm not so sure about that. You don't give yourself enough credit, Kanji-kun."
"Eh. Dunno 'bout that. But hey, le's get goin'. I need some serious help with tha' homework from Kashiwagi."
Naoto frowned, but dropped the issue.
"Very well. Shall we?" She paused, then nervously, hesitantly, offered him her hand. He smiled down at her and took it.
"Totally."