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Ren couldn’t tell what had happened.
The last thing he remembered…he was on the train ride home, after a year at Leblanc. A year full of adventures with the Phantom Thieves, a year of treasures and palaces and desires, of defying reality and slaying gods. But here he was, an uncomfortable feeling of deja vu taking him over.
This can’t be right. This is the train I first took to Leblanc, Ren thought. It looks, feels, sounds the exact same. The people around him all looked mildly familiar. The sights didn’t evoke the feeling of anything new. And in a bit of a panic, he looked down at his phone, reading the date to himself.
April 9th…!?
Nearly dropping the device out of complete shock, the trickster clenched his fists and closed his eyes. What the hell?! What kind of joke is this?! Unable to distinguish his own emotions between anger, frustration, sadness, and fear, Ren decided to start working backwards, to see if he could piece anything together.
Last thing he remembered…the train ride home. The taxi ride with Maruki, the final chance encounter with Sumire…seeing the rest of the Phantom Thieves pull up in the van for one last goodbye.
A voice echoing as they drove away…
“I’ll text you, okaaaaay?”
His eyes immediately shot open, a wave of anxiety overtaking the once unshakable leader of the Phantom Thieves.
Futaba…!
Ren frantically opened his messages app. She said she’d text me! She’s gotta be in here…!
Nothing. The list was empty. He went back to the home screen to try and find something, completely ignoring the fact that the Meta-Nav had returned.
Contacts? Right. Contacts. I’ll just reach out to her myself. and… Hoping to find any evidence of the past year, he crossed his fingers. Ryuji, Ann, Futaba, hell, he’d settle for Sojiro at this point. Anything that could prove his past as Joker.
But, still, the search turned up blank.
The trickster put his phone down, and started rummaging through his bag. Not even stopping to process the fact that Morgana wasn’t in it, his fingers danced through his belongings, trying to feel for anything unfamiliar, trying to find something - anything. Anything to hold onto the life he knew he lived.
Anxiety filled the boy. His breaths started to become more sporadic, unpredictable. The world around him shrunk, his arms and legs becoming less and less stable by the second. His own vision started to blur, as time stopped for Ren Amamiya, and a thousand thoughts entered his brain all at once. There wasn’t anything else in the world right now. Nothing else in the world mattered. The world was on pause for Ren Amamiya, because he needed to know what happened to Futaba Sakura.
All it took was the crinkling sound of paper to bring him back to reality.
He felt it around for a moment, the soft crackling sounds bringing a level of calm over him. It was thin paper…the edges frayed, as if torn from a notebook. It was definitely used and written on, as he could feel the indentations of scribbles all over it. As the world resumed its course, he slowly pulled it from his bag and inspected it. A list of checked off items, tick after tick, with just one entry left uncompleted.
☐ Be OK without you around.
His eyes darted back and forth all over the list. Everything that she had accomplished, every fear she had overcome. All the progress she had made…was it all for nothing?
He closed his eyes, once more, and thought back as much as he could. What should have been a week ago, he had taken her out for White Day, and it had been one of the most special moments of their lives. Staring out over the city, the lights lining the beautiful night sky, reflecting perfectly into Futaba’s alluring brown eyes. Her flowing orange hair, a lovely compliment to the red on her cheeks.
“You’re not a phantom thief anymore, but I guess you’ve still got a knack for stealing hearts, cause…um…you stole mine.”
It may have been the cheesiest line anyone had ever come up with, but he couldn’t stop replaying it over and over in his head. Just like in the Metaverse, he let that voice navigate him, wherever he was. That voice was all he needed to wake up in the morning, to carry on - every day was just one step closer to seeing Futaba again.
He gripped the list tightly, tears starting to form in his eyes, his fake glasses fogging up. All he wanted, then and there, was to break down and cry. To let the emotions overtake him for a moment, to give himself a break and to just…process, all of it. But, in true Oracle fashion, her voice filled his head at just the right time, with just the right words.
“You better not cry! I won’t, and you won’t, and we’re both gonna be just fine!”
The trickster wiped his tears away, shaking them off as best as he could.
I won’t let you down, 'Taba. I promise.
He slid the note back into his bag, carefully tucking it into a pocket for safe keeping. Along the way, he noticed one other thing he was sure he didn’t pack when he first moved.
He slid out a pair of headphones. A black headband, red earcups, and a silver “AKG” printed on them. A pair of headphones that would have been unmistakably Futaba’s, if she hadn’t given him an identical pair at Christmas just a few months prior.
Being as gentle as he could, Ren lovingly held the headphones in his hands, analyzing every square inch of them. But his tender moment with the gift wasn’t just out of reminiscing or nostalgia. After Futaba had given them to him, the couple marked little symbols into each other’s pairs - Ren on Futaba’s right headphone, and Futaba on Ren’s left. And, sure enough, there it was - a tiny little heart, right above the left earcup.
The boy both formerly and yet-to-be known as Joker couldn’t help but crack a faint smile upon seeing the small sign. He rubbed his finger over it, feeling the grooves and imperfections against his skin - it really was the girl’s handiwork. There was no doubt about it.
He turned them on, going through the mildly tedious process of syncing them up with his phone. But before he could pick something to play, the train stopped, and the doors opened, the sound of the speakers muffled by the cans.
“Yongen-Jaya. This is Yongen-Jaya.”
Ren stepped out of the train, and took a moment to become more aware of his surroundings. This was, in fact, Yongen-Jaya - the one he had spent the past year in. He was wearing his Shujin uniform, like he was the day he first stepped foot in Leblanc.
Guess I really am back to square one, huh…?
He adjusted the headphones, moving the headband from the top of his head to behind it, like the girl who gave them to him wore them, before exiting the station and heading towards his old new home.
He could’ve gone right to Leblanc. He knew where it was, and he knew that’s where Sojiro would’ve been. He knew, logically, that Leblanc was the only place he needed to be right now.
But, as much as he knew, his body stopped listening to his brain. He passed the cafe, his legs taking on a mind of their own. Slowly picking up the pace, the tap, tap, tap of footsteps speeding up until it became a full sprint, stopping itself right in front of the gate of the Sakura residence.
The boy looked up towards the window. Curtains drawn, with only very faint flashes of light escaping.
“Futaba!!!”
The name lodged itself in the back of Ren’s throat. He tried to scream her name. He tried, but no matter how hard he thought about it, how much he wanted it, nothing in his body could muster the energy to call for her.
He knew she was there. He knew that the girl he had cared for, the girl he would have died for, was right behind those curtains, burying herself in her screens to run from a false trauma.
He knew he could help her. He could steal her heart, just one more time. But for all he tried, there was nothing he could do. For the first time in what felt like forever, the powerful Joker was powerless.
He had half the mind to see if he could use the Meta-Nav to enter her palace, then and there, but quickly dispelled that idea. After all, if this really was a do-over of the past year, then accelerating the timeline too much could easily cause problems - maybe even create a world where he and Futaba had never gotten to properly meet at all.
He shook his head in frustration, before walking back over to Leblanc, to try and make some sense of his life. As Futaba would have called it, a new game plus.
Inside the Sakura household, hidden behind half-a-dozen bright displays, shrouded in darkness, sat a certain Futaba Sakura, the screens reflecting in her glasses. Her room was a mess, and she had barely left it for any extended period of time. On her desk, sat a pair of headphones, their red earcups starting to show wear and tear. She took a glance at them, the tiny cat face marked just above the right headphone.
Though she found herself lost in thought, the headphones leading her mind, wandering away to a past life, she quickly snapped herself out of it, as a small notification popped up on her desktop.
“Oh, right, that’s today,” she said to herself, a small smile cracking her face. With just a few keystrokes, a live feed of Sojiro’s cafe presented itself front-and-center on her monitor. A quick glance was all she needed to find what she was looking for.
The messy black hair. The dorky glasses. And the pair of K845BTs that rested atop his ears.
All she had to do now was wait until July.
“…welcome home, darling. ♥”