Chapter Text
It never got any easier. It probably never would either, Yosuke mused bitterly to himself as he checked the calendar on his phone. April 11, 2011 or as he knew it by heart, the day that Yu first arrives in Inaba. He can't interact with him yet, but just the thought of Yu set Yosuke's heart a flutter and made his chest feel tight. He lightly tossed his phone onto the bed before he laid down, throwing his arm over his eyes. He was going to get it right this time. No matter how much it hurt to smile and go through the usual dialogue, he'd do it. Just like he'd done so many times before now. All of it for Yu's sake, he'd even die for him but the times he's tried that he'd wake up back here on April 11th as though nothing had happened in the first place. Especially with what happened last time around.... That last image of Yu's lifeless form flared up in his memory. Thus dredging up all those times before, all the various corpses starting to pile higher and higher in his minds' eye.
He needed to stop this train of thought otherwise he was gonna make himself depressed again. With a sigh he pushed himself up to a sitting position, holding himself up with his arms behind him palms down on the mattress. Leaning back a little he grabbed his phone and opened it up, scrolling to where Saki's name was in his contacts and sent her an email seeing if she was free this week at all like he was supposed to. Yosuke certainly still held some feelings for his sempai, however the knowledge that she was destined to die made those feelings rather bittersweet in retrospect. While he'd been spacing out his phone buzzed in his hand telling him Saki-sempai had responded. Opening the email, Yosuke's face scrunched up in confusion. It wasn't the same as the past times, which that signaled to him that something was very wrong with this timeline already. Or at least something like that.
It simply read:
Hey Hana-chan, is everything alright with you? I mean we can talk about the tickets some more tomorrow just because I'm busy right now. But you just seemed kind of out of it this last week is all. Just take care of yourself alright?
-Saki
Yosuke reread the message at least five times just make sure he wasn't reading it wrong. He carefully sent off his reply saying that he was fine and blowing it off cheerfully enough. Maybe he should figure out a better way to deal with all this, since it seemed like cracks were starting to show in his mask. That couldn't be good. Especially since there was no way he could face Yu if he was like this.
Yep there was that pain again. Always Yu. No matter what he'd figure out how to end up together with Yu and have things go right. The memories that started to come back from that timeline had Yosuke fall back onto his bed and curl up on his side. The memory of Yu's smile, his laugh, the way the two would fuss over eachother, the way he looked illuminated by the moonlight that streamed through Yosuke's window as sweat shown on Yu's brow, all of it brought the painful stinging feeling in his heart to blossom fully. In the back of his mind he heard those familiar thoughts of Dude you are so fucking gay for him just admit it. There's no way he'd fall for you again. But he said he loved me then so why not now? You know why he wouldn't now. Your hardly the same person now as you were then. It's probably from all those times you fucked up and just won't admit it dumbass. Oh would you just shut up already! Yosuke rolled over in frustration and caught himself on the edge of his bed before he could fall off and faceplant.
Oh god did he need to get a hold of himself already.