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Sometimes, Ryuji would forget that he isn’t really as strong as he’d present himself as. Sometimes, he isn’t able to realize when he’s reached a certain point where he has to remind himself of what he’s done in order to ground himself. Sometimes, whenever he would think of the future, he would find himself agonizing over the past, despite his will and desires to move forward. All of the times he had turned his eyes away from what he had caused, out of fear for what else he would screw up, would come to haunt him each time his leg would ache in pain. Sometimes, he’s forced to remember that, deep down, he’s still as broken as the day when he let his own mother down.
The first time his Persona, Captain Kidd, had appeared, Ryuji had been forced to reflect on all that he had been ashamed of. Kidd gave him the first chance to fix what he had ruined. Or, at least, it gave him the opportunity to try. To him, his abilities as a Persona user became the physical representation of what divided him from himself in the past and himself in the present. He had the power to change the very hearts of those “rotten adults” he had so despised.
That’s why when Joker gave him the reality check he needed, he felt so ashamed of himself.
The ideal world that Dr. Maruki had presented to Ryuji had, in some innate, unrecognizable way, been unnatural to him. For a second, for a single, fleeting second, everything spun. This spontaneous moment of vertigo made him nearly forget everything about the Phantom Thieves, and at the same time, nothing was forgotten at all. A contradiction existed that he couldn’t even begin to process.
… It was Christmas Eve, and he and the others somehow did something miraculous, whatever it was… they were the… Phantom Thieves?
Then, a voice appeared in the back of his mind, persuading him to just stop processing it.
You have gone through so much, and you have persevered through it all, it told him. You are well deserving of restitution. Of reward.
He agreed. He didn’t bother to think too hard about it, and just agreed that he did deserve something. He suffered through the selfish acts of those so-called rotten adults, he did… something to save the world, something to save people, something to reform people… whatever it was, he did it. And he should have been rewarded for it. It only felt right for him to have been rewarded.
Looking back on it now, he realizes how selfish his thoughts were. True, he had voiced similar sentiments early on during his career as a Phantom Thief. But he had thought that he grew past that, that he matured enough to realize that his powers and abilities should be used selflessly.
To think that he hadn’t matured at all, that he was still the try-hard delinquent from the past, made him feel so vexed. And all those feelings of self hatred and doubt came crashing down all at once when Joker helped pull him back out of this false reality.
“So… I don’t know, it just,” he scratches the back of his head, “it feels like I let him down again, y’know?”
Haru gives him a sympathetic smile. Ryuji drops down to the floor and crosses his legs to sit. “Anyway, how you been?” he asks. “It’s been a long time since we’ve hung out alone, right?”
“Yes, it has,” she answers.
Awkward silence fills the air.
“So… uh, you ain’t too uncomfortable in my room, are you?”
With an uncharacteristic blush of embarrassment, Ryuji sighs. “You visited so suddenly that I didn’t have time to clean up.” Admittedly, he probably wouldn’t have cleaned up that much, but he would have at least tried to get all the clutter piled on the floor out of the way. Especially since he knows the kind of environment Haru had been raised in. Ryuji was afraid that she would be grossed out, but surprisingly, she hasn’t been judgmental about it. Though, that was probably due to her kind nature as a whole.
Then Haru says, “You don’t need to apologize! I like your room, truly,” which catches him off guard. Seeing his confusion makes her giggle. “It is quite cramped, but I think it feels homely because of that. Besides…”
She winks at him with an alluring smile. “I prefer to consider it as ‘intimate.’”
Watching Ryuji blush deeper gives her such an indescribable feeling of satisfaction. Nearly two weeks without having seen him has made her long to tease him again. His panicked reactions are a very vital part to her happiness.
“D-Damn, I seriously can’t keep up with you,” he stammers, only making Haru smile wider. “But…”
Ryuji stands up from the floor and walks towards her, sitting down on his bed alongside her. “I guess it’s part of why I like you so much,” he says, a bright smile plastered on his face.
Haru’s cheeks suddenly feel much warmer now. She leans her head on his shoulder, allowing the warmth to grow. It spreads through her face and slowly envelops her body. The days since Christmas still felt cold and lonely, so to be with Ryuji at this moment is a blessing to her.
All the more so now that her father had been taken away with the false reality.
Hearing Ryuji lament about his own selfishness helped her better understand the seething hatred welling up within her. The hatred directed entirely towards herself.
It’s hard to let go of the past. For a short time, Haru had fooled herself into believing that she could. Allowing her father to succumb to a mental breakdown and losing him as a result had sent her into a state of misery unlike anything she had ever felt. Or, at least, it should have. But Okumura Foods had been left in her care in the wake of her father’s death, and it forcefully seized all her attention away, leaving very little time to grieve. Without even recognizing it, Haru had burdened herself. Not with the responsibilities she had to uphold as the daughter of the former CEO, but instead without the time to process everything that had happened. After all, she had become a member of the Phantom Thieves.
She had to help Makoto reform Sae’s heart. She had to patiently wait as Akechi failed to kill Joker. She had to stop Shido from fulfilling his corrupt ambitions. Then she helped defeat Yaldabaoth, and…
And then her father was alive, as if nothing had ever happened. Only, nothing ever actually did happen. At least, according to Maruki’s falsified reality.
When the thieves had confronted Maruki in his palace not too long ago, he took away their ideal world from them. Haru’s father had been taken away from her just as abruptly as he came back. Losing him twice was something she never thought she would ever experience. Yet losing him the second time made everything worse. She couldn’t distract herself from grieving.
Right now, even by Ryuji’s side, she is still grieving. Still coming to terms with herself and with exactly what she should be doing for herself. Yet even with a clear goal, to stop Maruki and prevent him from distorting the world and shackling everyone’s futures, she felt distracted by the whirlpool of emotions inside her.
Amidst the rage and sorrow is overwhelming guilt. Guilt for her selfishness. Guilt for indulging in her dreams while Joker and Akechi both fought to make things right.
She wanted to quash that first and foremost. Haru is happy to know that Ryuji shares the same desire.
“We gotta make it up to him somehow,” he says as he rubbed his temples, “but it can’t just be some lame ‘sorry’, or else it wouldn’t mean much…”
Haru holds her hand up to her chin in contemplation. The two sit in silence, simply thinking about how exactly they could go about apologizing to Joker. Then, Ryuji’s eyes widen, and he claps his hands together in satisfaction.
“What if we do squats in front of him! As like, a punishment! And we stop only when he says so!” His words carry such a clear, confident tone in them, as if Ryuji had just come up with the smartest idea he’s ever had. The goofy smile on his face only amplifies the feeling. His rambunctious confidence rubs off on Haru, instilling this strange, conflicting form of assurance within herself. She knows his idea is insufficient, to say the least. Yet, upon hearing his words and seeing his smile, her mind fails to pick up on how pointless his idea of an apology really is.
Unable to keep a straight face, Haru giggles softly, causing Ryuji’s expression to shift from pure joy to one of confusion. Her soft giggles soon turn into poorly stifled snickering, which then only erupts into a howl of unbridled laughter. Haru Okumura laughs directly in the face of the boy she loves, out of enjoyment and complete astonishment at him. The normally poised, graceful girl fails to suppress herself from falling onto her back. She rolls over on the bed to try and smother her face into the sheets, hoping it would lower the volume so that she can regain her control, but finds that closing her eyes only made Ryuji’s words echo out again and again in her mind, further escalating their absurdity.
“W-Was it really that bad of an idea…?” he asks, embarrassment clear in his shaky voice.
Without warning, Haru pulls him down with her, causing him to yelp in surprise. Her seemingly endless laughing fit clouds her better judgment.
“Of course not!” she exclaims. “It is the best idea!”
“Y-Yeah? Yeah, of course it is!”
Almost as if it is the most natural thing, Ryuji joined her in her near-hysterical laughter, filling up the room with a joy that neither of them had ever shared before.
Love is an emotion both of them still have yet to fully grasp. Moments like these, however, were what slowly teach them how to want one another. How to long for one another.
One had suffered through the consequences of his own immaturity. One had suffered through abandonment and inadequacies out of her own control. Being able to fight against those insecurities, both metaphorically and literally through their powers as Persona users, helped solidify a path to some sort of “redemption” for them. The two of them had led staggeringly different lives up to this point, but they share an important aspect. For a very long time, both of them had to live their lives by using a finely crafted yet fragile mask. They endured a silent form of suffering while trying to ignore that pain altogether
Facing that pain, facing that past, would have been a lot harder had they not met one another.
“Ryuji?”
“Yeah?”
Haru grasps his hand in hers. “How well versed are you in the affairs of the upper class?”
His eyes blink twice in confusion. “I think you know the answer to that,” he whispers with a blank expression. Ryuji groans as Haru giggles once again. She tightens her grip on his hand and smiles.
“We will need to fix that in order for you to stay as my lover. First thing first, however…”
Eventually, Ryuji and Haru would, in fact, apologize to Joker by squatting until he told them to stop, just as they had planned. They were genuinely shocked when Joker said “This is a little weird.”