Work Text:
One step.
Two steps.
Four steps, and a voice behind you. Beyond you.
Naoto’s voice, “Senpai, wait!”
Yosuke’s voice, only part, “-man’s gotta do on his own-“ before lost to the snow and fog.
“-make any sense t-“
And they’re gone.
--
You walk into the snowy night. Each step takes you farther away from your friends, from the light and warmth and laughter of Aiya. Not your laughter, not theirs, but laughter nonetheless.
You can’t remember the last time you laughed. More than a month ago, surely.
The thing is, the farther you walk away from that light, the more you can see in the dark. You can see a small, dim light in the distance, buffeted by snow and wind. You don’t know what it is, what it means, but you go to it.
--
Your phone’s been ringing. You ignore it each time. The wind’s picked up into a howl, snow dancing around your face, chilling you to the bone. The little light in the distance is faint but steady.
You wonder, vaguely, if trying to reach it is your smartest decision.
You hear a muffled shout to your right. You look, seeing one of your neighbors. She smiles bashfully and says, “Oh, it’s just you!” You nod, barely breaking stride to acknowledge her. You must have startled her. What a relief it must have been, to see someone familiar when you expected to see a monster.
Your feet slow to a halt.
To see someone familiar….
The light in front of you flares, jumping from snowflake to snowflake, lighting up the night.
As both the light and the snow fade, you feel the knowledge settle into your chest. Like a new persona, but wrong at every edge. You understand, now, why you couldn’t find the culprit. You were asking the wrong question. If you’d wanted to know the truth, you shouldn’t have asked if people remembered anyone suspicious around Yamano or Konishi.
You should have asked if they’d seen anyone around them at all.
--
You’re standing down the hall of his apartment now. You saw the inside once, helping him bring home groceries. The new piece in your heart, settling in nicely despite feeling so wrong, says he’s home. Of course he would be on a snowy night like this. You should be home.
Home is a place you can’t go. Home is with your uncle and with Nanako. That’s not a place you can go anymore. Then again, you also can’t bring yourself to move down the hall.
A hundred voices cry out in your mind, personas of all arcana begging to turn back, tell your friends, to speak, to run.
A few more whisper, “go to him”.
Four steps.
Two steps.
One step.
The voices of the other personas fade. They’re beyond you now.
You knock on the door.
--
It’s a funny feeling, lying to everyone you meet for the rest of your life.
The three and a half months you spend in Inaba after that are carefully navigated. They are months of throwing people off the trail. Of worrying Naoto really will keep looking into it and ruin everything. Of spending hours in the hospital holding Nanako’s hand, willing her to get better with every passing day.
She’s not better by the time you leave. Your school friendships fare well, thinking your distance is just worry. The team sees you off at the train station. Yosuke tries to keep the mood up, and it’s lighter than you thought it would be. You thought it would be harder to say goodbye, but the words fall from your mouth effortlessly before you turn your back and board the train.
It starts down the track and you wonder how many steps down the adjacent road you’d need to take to get back to where you were before.
You think you see someone in front of the train, then beside the train, then you’re in a tunnel and there’s nothing but darkness. Nothing except a small, dim light behind you at the start of the tunnel.
You grip your phone tight, close your eyes, and let yourself be carried away from it.