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Cities never really slept at night. Makoto knew this as a resident of Tokyo, of course, but she mostly knew that fact from the comfort of her bed, far secluded from the nightlife she would only see from the lights that shone against her window shades. As she steps out of the Phantom Thief RV to catch a breath of fresh air, she realizes that, once again, experiencing something yourself is different. Their vehicle is parked in an ordinary lot away from the busiest sidewalks, and yet if she just peeked past the corner, she could see the bustling crowds that seem to be even bigger and rowdier than the ones that roamed when the sun was up. Maybe over a year ago, the person she used to be would have thought nothing of the opportunity before her, but the person she is now did dream of daring to walk out there herself if only to soak in the sights and sounds.
Instead, she allows herself to wait and relax. The rest of her friends are out and about in that concrete jungle, each of them scrambling to make last-minute preparations. Of course, once everything was in place, arguably their craziest calling card operation yet would begin. She could understand wanting to be prepared.
They’ve been through this situation many times already, Makoto likes to tell herself, but it’s hard not to feel nervous when you break some laws to make an outrageous and daring public statement. She may have grown past her “strictly by the books” part of herself, but ripping the books and setting them on fire would make anyone nervous. She let the absurdity of everything gather in her lungs and prepared to let out a freeing exhale when she heard someone else beat her to the punch. With an eyebrow raised, she carefully peeked over to the front of the RV where the daredevil leader of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts looked anything but as he leaned back with both elbows against the front of the vehicle, his posture slumped, and his face pointed skyward. His eyes closed as the rest of his sigh stumbled past his lips.
It was a rare sight to see. He told her that being serious and put together all the time in front of them was partly a conscious effort. Makoto decided to let him have these few moments to himself before making her presence known. She glanced over his person, making note of the slight details here and there that stood out to her in a way that only she would know. How his leg bounced and stopped erratically, a concerted fight on his part to keep himself from moving and barely containing it. The way his left hand tightened into a fist for just a moment before loosening completely, a destressing tactic he told her he liked to do. She knew Ren could get nervous before big missions, he’d confided in her before many times, of course. But his energy was a bit more off than the usual nerves, she felt. His eyes opened and stared at nothing in the sky, a slight melancholy filling his features.
“Not much to look at up there, unfortunately,” she finally started as she moved closer to him, giving him a warm smile. His body snapped toward her, another sign that he was off his game. Ren loved to tease her that she could never sneak up on him. He took it in stride though, as the sight of her seemed to give him some positivity and a small smile took to his face.
“I think this shade of dark blue is quite fascinating, actually,” Ren said, his face turning back towards the sky. “Very different from the one in Tokyo.”
“Oh?” She played along as she’s grown to love doing with him and looked upward with him.
The sky, slightly illuminated by the city lights, was vast as always, the dark canvass devoid of stars and clouds. It was beautiful in its own way.
A sprawling, beautiful sight that was absolutely and positively identical to the one in Tokyo.
“You might be onto something,” she said with completely serious thought.
He gave a weak laugh, and she giggled with him. They both looked at each other then, and Ren lifted the arm at his left side a bit wider. He shot a quick look at his hips, and she noticed that his phone wasn’t on him, nor was his bag that a certain cat took residency in. Alone, just the two of them for the first time in a long while on this summer trip. Makoto took his invitation and sidled up to his side, his arm wrapping around her as they both leaned into each other’s warmth. Finally letting out that sigh she had stored up, she relaxed a bit as her head settled against him, his face nesting itself comfortably atop her head.
“Osaka’s a busy place,” Ren mentioned aimlessly, continuing to hold on to their precious mundanity for a moment longer.
“Mm. Different and busy than even the other places we’ve been before,” she said. “You think the others are fine by themselves here?”
“Oh, they’ll be fine. I told them to stick in a group, and Sophia can pull up a map back to this spot. Besides, the detective is on the case there to wrangle them together. ”
“You really think he can handle them?”
The question hung in the air for a moment.
“It could end up becoming a cold case.”
That did manage to make her laugh. They springboarded off that brevity to talk about anything and everything about their trip so far. Makoto mentioned that the watermelon smashing was her personal highlight of the journey. Ren told her of the various restaurants that he made note of across their journey. “Just for the two of us someday,” he added smoothly, the idea filling her chest with a giddy feeling that she secretly hoped she’d never grow out of. It was all well and fun, a moment for just them that she’d been wanting.
But as the talking died down, and the silence and severity of their situation sunk back in, Makoto found it appropriate to tackle what she’d been meaning to in the first place.
“Anything on your mind?” She tossed the question out there, an open invitation. She found that it was easier for him to speak if you present it as such. Even then, she was met with silence. She could feel him fighting to keep his knee from moving for a moment. “We’re going to be okay,” she whispered.
“I know,” he answered back with forced nonchalance. “We always are.”
She moved from beneath his face and turned to him completely. She met her worried gaze, his face filled again with that pensive sadness from earlier. He sighed and looked away.
“I’m sorry,” he started. “I’m not worried about the mission. Honestly. I’ve just been… thinking about some things that I haven’t thought of before, that’s all.”
“What do you mean?” She believed him about the mission, but the idea that something has been weighing on his mind enough that it hung over him like a cloud worried her, doubly so with the idea that she hadn’t noticed until now.
Ren gave a questioning grunt as he began to ponder his thoughts. Makoto let him gather himself as she watched him purse his lips before breathing in deeply and sighing.
“There’s a part of me that undeniably likes this whole Phantom Thief business,” he began. He spoke aloud, his words coming out slowly like an introspective confession. “Admittedly, when this whole trip started, and I got put in a situation where I could use my Persona again, some part inside of me was elated. The rush, the action, the investigating, beating up on shadows, and the thrill of it all amounting to concrete change. I felt like I got a part of myself back.”
He had a guilty look in his eyes, but Makoto nodded in agreement. “I understand the feeling,” she reassured him. “The feeling of freedom that being a Phantom Thief gives us. I know that Johanna is always a part of me, but manifesting her and seeing her is different. I know that we can make changes outside of these cognitive worlds. But fighting shadows and changing hearts with the power we have… It makes us feel like we can take on the world. Like we’re…”
“Invincible…” he finished, his voice sounding almost reluctant to say it, the word trailing off.
Silence overtook them again, Makoto patiently allowing Ren to steel himself before continuing. They looked up at the blank sky together, the background noise of Osaka’s nightlife filling in the dead air. She knew that Ren was a person who tended to bottle up his problems before even thinking of bothering someone else with them, so she needed to listen, to let him be comfortable enough to vent and worry and complain as he’d do for any of them. Like he did for her.
“But… despite all that,” he started again, “despite all the power and thrills and action… there’s another part of me that was kind of… content letting that all go after the last time around. Another part of me that was fine with losing all that power and letting life be… normal again.” A wistfulness permeated his voice, and Makoto was beginning to understand. “I didn’t realize it until I was just lounging around in my bed doing nothing, but life had been kind of a whirlwind ever since I had to move to Tokyo. Going from convicted criminal planning high-stakes heists and worrying about if the things we were about to do would get us killed or not to just… living a normal life, talking to the friends I love about things that didn't matter… I didn’t realize how much I liked that more.”
“Oh, Ren…” Makoto’s heart ached as she saw Ren put his stoic mask down for just a moment and let the vulnerability and despair emanate. She leaned in close to him again and embraced him. He reciprocated, but a rough frustrated sigh escaped his mouth.
“I’m sorry to dump that all on you. I don’t know why. But it’s been on my mind ever since we got here and…”
“Don’t be sorry,” she told him earnestly, never wanting him to feel like being vulnerable to her was anything but okay. She held him as tightly yet gently as she could, the boy doing the same. When they moved apart, she watched him run a hand through his hair, his face looking much less like that of their fearless leader and that of a teenage child with a weary edge that was beyond the years a boy their age should have.
“I guess I just can’t help but wonder if it’s always going to be like this,” Ren laid out bluntly. “That we can’t have a ‘normal’ life anymore. That something will always pop up and stop us from living our lives, you know?”
It was a frightening possibility that Makoto pondered once or twice but never really paid mind to, instead taking that energy to deal with the tasks at hand. Now, with the idea hanging in the air around them, the weight of it affecting her friend's mind, it was certainly something that Makoto felt like she should have pondered over more.
“It’s a bleak thing to think about,” Makoto admitted. “We’ve gotten so used to it that we forget that what we see and what we do is extraordinary, not the norm.”
“Mm. Fighting giant monsters and demons in a world only we know, calling the shots, taking the risks we do, and nearly getting killed over it time and time again… It’s a lot to deal with when you really think about it.”
“You’re not wrong, but... I don’t think I have to remind you, but it’s not exactly something you have to agonize over by yourself.”
She could see him nod his head slowly, a small noise leaving him like he’d just caught himself repeating a habitual mistake without knowing he had been doing so.
Makoto ran the problem through her head several times over in another bout of silence. She understood the dilemma of their situation, the eternal paranoia that could cloud their lives forever. She imagined that future for them. She imagined that pain, that anxiety, and that sacrifice. If she were one to worry like she used to, she could imagine the thought of it turning her hair gray, the inevitability of it all causing her to hopelessly resign to her fate, accepting it as if it was a curse.
But she was different now. Her outlooks were different. Her beliefs and her identity are more sure of themselves. A change she owed to her friends and her experiences, a belief that she owed to the boy that showed her what she could be. When she thought of what such a future would entail, she did not see a life of doom. What she saw was something she has seen ever since this boy and the Phantom Thieves came into her life.
She saw an opportunity to do good.
“It is scary,” Makoto reiterated, breaking the silence. “And it feels unfair, doesn’t it? Wondering if normal lives aren’t in our cards anymore. But being treated fairly wasn’t something we all have been granted much, isn’t it?” She could imagine the questioning look his face shaped into as she pressed onward. “I think we’re owed the feeling of letting this all go. You, especially. That was what we thought we’d do last time. And the fact that we’re right back in the thick of it makes you wonder if this is just how it’s going to be from now.”
There was a small chuckle as Ren processed the harsh future that he himself had been mulling over. “I didn’t think I’d ruin your outlook like this,” he joked weakly, but with a slight squeeze, he urged her to continue.
“Do you ever think of why we’re the Phantom Thieves of Hearts in the first place,” she asks him.
“Adrenaline rushes? Claims to fame? Societal reform?”
“To help people.” The simple statement comes out of her and hits Ren, whose quipping facade slowly retreats as a genuine one takes its place.
“Yeah. To help people,” he repeats in a near-hushed tone, saying more to himself than to her.
“I don’t know if I can tell you honestly that things will ever go back to normal forever,” she says. “But when the first signs of trouble appeared and when the realization hit that things weren’t normal sunk in, the first thing you did was jump into it all over again without asking. And something tells me that down the line, if something like this ever happens again, you'd do the same thing. Over and over. Because you help people. It’s in your nature.”
“Our nature,” he interrupted meekly. “You guys jumped in with me.”
“Exactly.” She took his left hand into her right and interlocked their fingers together. “Maybe life will never be normal for us again. Bad things might always happen and disrupt us. And despite that, you’ll jump in to help because there is a part of you that can’t shy away from what needs to be done to make things better, and you’ll take that sacrifice because there’s good in you, Ren. Just one thing out of so many that I love about you.” She feels his hand tighten around hers strongly, his grip tightening like the muscles in his face forcing back emotion. “And whenever you do jump in, we’ll be right there beside you like always. Because for however scary it might be that we’ll never get that normal life again, that we’ll always be at risk of pain, I know and you know that we’ll take that sacrifice if it means that we can help people. We’ll hurt, we’ll bleed, and we’ll sacrifice even if it's unfair, even though we'll worry you, even though the thought of it could worry you so much that you consider giving up, we’ll be right there to pick you up. I will always be there to pick you up. And when you’re ready to stand again, we’ll stand with you, and we’ll face it all side-by-side, no matter how many times it has to be, together.”
She speaks her words earnestly and with confidence, her emotion coating them from the first word to the last. They had spilled out of her in a way that words only can when you speak from a place of deep within you. It was silly, she thought for a moment, that the only words of comfort she could give him seemed to be a resignation of their fates to a life filled with inevitable, recurring strife, but it was not a statement of concession. It was an acknowledgment of their reality that seemed hellbent on putting the world on their backs. It was her honest truth, a truth from her to him that they will stand tall despite that unfair reality, that they will fight against it again and again, and that they will do it together.
They will win. Because that’s what they have always done from the moment they became Phantom Thieves. And they will live that truth. Because that’s what they have always done ever since they met each other.
Ren separates himself from Makoto just a bit, the boy opting to fully turn and face her. She does the same and sees a face filled with so many different things.
Pain. Anxiety. Sadness.
Yet in the midst of those, she sees things filling his face that shine.
Conviction. Happiness. Love.
They all mix and meld and come together to form the face of the one she knows and loves. In his eyes, the melancholy takes a backseat to that familiar look she knows all too well.
A look that seems to pulse with determination for all of them.
“I think… you give me too much credit,” he says, a voice that starts shaky and grows steady by the end. He had taken both her hands into his, his thumbs caressing the top of her hands. As he peers back into her eyes with that look, he whispers one more thing. “Thank you.”
It was an atmosphere warm enough to keep her in bliss forever, a comfort and warmth that she hopes to share all of with him as she kisses him, soft and gentle.
They’re back to leaning against the hood of the RV, staring up at the spotless, dark blue sky.
“You know, I was serious about those lists of restaurants that we’ll go to someday,” Ren said. “We’ll dedicate a whole trip to it, just like this.”
“A culinary journey across Japan. That would be fun,” Makoto mused. “And very expensive.”
“I’ll put in the work. I’ll even route the whole thing.”
“And if something inexplicably supernatural pops up and ruins our plans?”
“We’ll skip lunch then,” he says slyly, shooting her a wink. “And we’ll make it back in time for dinner.”
The whole thing is enough to make her smile with glee.
“I look forward to it, then.”
The mood seems right for them to push themselves closer, but the cacophonous sound of a group of lively teens bends the corner into their lot, their rowdiness and their excitement drowning out the incessant pleas of an unfortunate adult trying to keep them quiet.
Joker nods his head in their direction, and Queen understands it all.
“Showtime,” he says to her, ready to jump back in.