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AT: Has anyone heard from Ren yet?
FS: No... He's still being really quiet in the attic. All he's told Sojiro is that he wants to be alone.
HO: I'm worried about him.
RS: Yeah, me too. He should be fine, but it doesn't feel right.
MN: I'm concerned as well. Hopefully he'll feel better soon.
MN: Unfortunately, we don't have long before we'll have to return to Shido's Palace, with or without him. The treasure won't steal itself.
RA: You're right.
AT: Ren! Are you feeling better?
AT: Ren?
FS: Mona's worried about you, Ren...
YK: As are we all.
RS: Whoa, Renren! You're on!
RS: ...Or not? You there?
RA: Just tell me when the next meeting is.
RA: Oh, and it'd be good to know who's in charge now.
RS: What? Of course it's you!
YK: Yes, of course. There's no reason that should change, unless... are you still feeling unwell?
RA: You can all drop the act.
MN: ...
HO: Ren, we all still want you to be our leader. We trust you.
RA: Bullshit.
RS: Hey. We wouldn't lie to you.
RA: But you did.
RA: Arsene told me everything.
AT: Not everything. We didn't have a chance to explain ourselves to him, Ren. Let's talk this out, OK? We made a mistake.
RA: Which part was the mistake?
RA: When you figured out the keywords?
RA: When Futaba sent me to Akihabara as a distraction?
RA: When you decided I made a good target?
AT: We weren't targeting you!
RS: None of us want to hurt you, man.
HO: We were scared of you being hurt if we didn't investigate...
RA: So your mistake was scaring Arsene to give up his half-baked rebellion before you could steal the Treasure.
RA: Then, thanks for screwing up. It was getting old not being able to summon him.
RA: So what was my calling card going to say?
FS: sstopl itt
RA: You won't tell me? You were going to have to eventually.
FS: Fuutbas cryying
MN: Morgana, please put the phone away if she's getting upset. We can't expect Ren to be calm right now.
RA: Would you be calm, Queen?
RA: Maybe you would be.
RA: This was a strategic decision, right? My coping skills were less than optimal. I wasn't operating at 100%. And you couldn't just talk to me when I was being so irrational, so the only option was to beat Arsene into submission.
MN: I...don't even know what to say to that. We might have been in the wrong, but you should know that wasn't my thought process at all.
RA: Right. Forgot the "beep boop".
RS: Damn it, we're sorry! We tried asking you what was wrong, but you wouldn't tell us!
Morgana fumbled with the buttons on the phone's side until the screen went dark; the last message he saw was Ryuji's frustrated apology, but the dots appearing and disappearing beneath Ren's icon weren't promising of anything other than a tirade. As much as Morgana wanted to understand Ren's thought process after their...apparently disastrous reconnaissance of his Palace, Futaba had been on edge as soon as Ren stated he knew what they had done. Once he'd mentioned her part in that day, the girl had crumbled. She was now curled up on her bed with her face pressed into her knees. "He hates us," she wailed. "He ha-hates me, and he's st-still... Hi-his sh-shadow wasn't right..."
"It wasn't violent, at least," Morgana mumbled, but that was the only reassurance he had to offer. Ren's shadow hadn't been like any of the other Palace rulers. He hadn't taunted them that they'd never be able to take his treasure like most.
Rather, the instant Ren's shadow spotted them, he'd been terrified. "Why...why did you come here? What did he do wrong?"
The way Ren's shadow shrank away from them had thrown everyone off; even Futaba's shadow hadn't been so plainly afraid. Makoto had stepped forward, trying to reassure him that Ren had done nothing wrong, that they were just alarmed he had a Palace, but the shadow had been too agitated to hear her out.
"So what? You want to send me back to that prison? I won't go! I'll..." The shadow had stumbled in its words, then laughed, trembling. "I'll go back to my real self... is that what you want? He was right, after all."
"Right about what?"
The golden eyes of Ren's shadow had looked so hopeless as he stared at them.
Someone buzzed the Sakura residence's buzzer, and Morgana's ears pricked up as Sojiro answered. He hoped that in the time Futaba had held onto him and cried out a mix of guilt, worry, and fear, Ren had calmed down and was now willing to talk. Morgana was more than willing to apologize. They'd only wanted to help him, but it was obvious they'd made a misjudgment. A serious one.
But the voice that answered Sojiro wasn't Ren's, and Morgana's heart sank. He still pulled himself out of Futaba's loose hold. "Come in," he told Yusuke after the boy knocked on the door to Futaba's bedroom.
"Futaba, are you--ah." Yusuke stopped momentarily as he registered that the girl in question was asleep, loosely sprawled out on the top of her bed. She snuffled weakly in her sleep. "I was nearby and thought I should see how Futaba was coping. It would appear the answer is that she's not."
"Give her a little time," Morgana murmured. "We were all holding out hope that this would still be a normal change of heart." They hadn't known what else to make of Arsene fleeing back to Ren of his own volition, not even attempting to defend his Treasure, and the brief radio silence afterward had seemed to fit the pattern of previous changes.
Now Morgana had to wonder if Ren had asked for space because he couldn't stand the sight of him.
"Is Ren still...?"
"Seething?" Yusuke finished for Morgana. Closing the door behind him, the lanky artist took a seat in Futaba's computer chair. "I imagine you'll be staying with Futaba for a few more days, at the very least."
"The very least, huh..." Staying at the Sakura residence wasn't actually all that bad--it might even be considered a step up from having been cooped up in the attic with Ren, since he could talk all he wanted and roam around a larger space without worrying about customers--but Morgana didn't like the thought of Ren being all alone, especially when he'd been neglecting himself in recent weeks.
And the thought that it was because Ren hated him was a miserable one.
"If I have any good news for you, it would be that Ren seems to be willing to continue working with us for Shido's change of heart." Yusuke fished his phone out of his pocket and flicked his thumb over the screen. "However, he is adamant we consider him an ally for this mission, and this mission alone. He is not a member of the Phantom Thieves, let alone its leader, because if he were, the rest of us wouldn't have broken one of our fundamental rules."
"The unanimous vote," Morgana muttered, his ears drooping flat. "We thought it might be dangerous to upset him by telling him about the Palace... it might have even triggered the calling card effect too soon."
"Haru and Ann tried to explain the concerns we had to him. Several times," Yusuke said flatly. "He's unwilling to hear it. ...With the way Arsene returned to him, I have to wonder. It might be that he couldn't believe us even if he wanted to."
"...I don't know," Morgana admitted. "After Akechi, we know that someone can have a Persona while still acting in a distorted manner...and it sounded like Arsene had come to an agreement of sorts, with Ren..."
"Even my closest friends aren't safe."
Morgana winced. A contract based on suspicion and paranoia of others couldn't lead to anything good. Yusuke gave a humorless chuckle. "So rather than eliminate a harmful distortion, we confirmed it in his eyes with our intrusion. We were careless with the heart of our leader.... now we get to pay the price." He took a deep breath and sighed. "He has every right to be angry. Not only did we break the rule of the unanimous vote, but Ren was the only victim of the distortion we know of. He may have been distancing himself from the rest of us, but we've no ground to claim harm, no matter how upsetting we found it. As both the sole victim and a Phantom Thief, Ren ought to have been consulted."
"He might have gotten upset with us then, too. He might have told us not to go."
"And it would have been his right. Respecting his choice and privacy might have led us to a better outcome."
Morgana couldn't argue that. The path they had chosen had led to this disaster. More than a miscalculation, they had seriously hurt Ren. He kneaded the blanket on Futaba's bed for a minute, thinking deeply. "...How do we make it up to him?"
"...I don't know."
As a group--though it didn't feel like it, when they were missing one of their founding members, their leader--they decided to tell Sojiro about the situation the next day, at the Sakura residence. He already knew something had happened, given Ren's recent desire to hole himself up in Leblanc's attic, and they were all feeling a little lost and hoped he might have some insight, since Ren was still talking to him.
The cafe owner seemed to take their account in stride. It was a point in their favor that they had helped Futaba change her heart by infiltrating her Palace, had helped her recover from suicidal depression and hallucinations, and he knew they wouldn't intentionally hurt Ren. He stroked his chin and listened as Ann and Ryuji explained how they'd tried and failed to get Ren talking about what was eating him in recent weeks; Haru recounted their shock when Ren's name registered in the Metanav by accident, and the horror that had swept through them when they realized the same accident might come to pass on Akechi's Metanav as well if he discussed Ren's supposed assassination with one of the conspiracy, and the considerable danger Ren would be put in; and Makoto laid out their thinking in infiltrating Ren's Palace, as well as the oddness of their encounter with Ren's Shadow. How it had led to the quickest collapse of a Palace they'd ever seen, and with them having barely ventured into it to get any further understanding of its keyword: "thieves' den".
Sojiro listened to them calmly, nodding along, asking a few questions at first before he let them just talk, taking it in...and then, as Makoto finished speaking, he said, very matter-of-factly: "You're all banned from Leblanc. For now," he added when a clamor immediately started in response.
"Even me?" Morgana asked before turning to Haru. "Wait, Futaba! He can't ban Futaba!"
Futaba fidgeted where she stood, looking like she was holding back on the urge to drop down and curl into a ball. "Dad..."
"Just...I need you all to be quiet and listen," Sojiro said, looking pained. "I'm not banning you as punishment. I believe you kids wanted to help him. Futaba, I'm not angry with you," he said directly to her.
She nodded, still not able to look him in the eye, but with some of the tension leaking from her small frame. It was Haru who spoke up next. "But, then..."
"Listen. When Niijima-san brought him back to Leblanc looking half-dead, announced as a suicide, I knew I was in well over my head. Hell, what you kids just told me, part of it's still over my head," Sojiro sighed. He sighed, slouching with his arms crossed, one hand rubbing at his temple. "I decided the one thing I knew I could do for him was give him shelter, a place where he's safe. And that's what he gets. Leblanc is the one place I can give him. If he doesn't feel safe since you...went into his brain, christ, then I'm asking you all not to come around the cafe for the time being." The older man paused. And then pointed at Morgana. "This goes for the cat, too. He understands me, right?"
"I understand," Morgana muttered, ears flattened.
"He does," Makoto echoed. "But, Boss--there's no reason for Ren to be afraid of us. It's irrational--"
"I don't care," Sojiro retorted.
The student council president's mouth immediately shut at his sharp tone, and she straightened her shoulders; even Ryuji straightened up in the seat he'd been slouching in.
"I don't care if it's irrational. He has enough 'rational' things to be afraid of, I'm not going to tell him he can be scared about this and not that. If he told me tomorrow that the smell of coffee gives him nightmares, well... Leblanc would probably go under, but that would be that. How am I supposed to defend this to him, anyway?" Sojiro asked. "Didn't you have rules like voting because you realized changing people's hearts could go too far?"
Makoto looked at the others. Some were staring at the ground too hard to even realize she was glancing their way; the few she caught--Ann, Yusuke--looked ashamed. "Yes," Makoto answered reluctantly.
Sojiro nodded and leaned back. "You broke your own rules. You went too far. You need to accept that and back off, now," he told the group. "Give Ren space. You're lucky he's still willing to work with you; don't screw that up. And after you've changed Shido's heart, if all goes well...the conspiracy is no longer out there...he has fewer 'rational' things to be scared of...then I will try persuading him to give you guys another chance. Maybe he'll have decided to on his own by then. I sure hope so."
They hoped so, too.