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Goro is standing on the platform at Kanda Station, waiting for the last and longest of the three trains he has to take to get back to his apartment from Odaiba and wondering why Maruki’s pipe-dream lab Palace couldn’t have been literally anywhere else, when his phone buzzes with a text.
From: Sumire Yoshizawa
5:41 PM
>> Good evening!
>> Are you free tonight? If you’re not too tired from the Palace, I’d like to get dinner or go somewhere ☺️
...She can't be serious, can she?
To: Sumire Yoshizawa
5:42 PM
I’m afraid you sent this to the wrong person. <<
This is Akechi. <<
Goro’s phone is barely back in his pocket before he gets a response.
From: Sumire Yoshizawa
5:42 PM
>> I know!
>> I don’t mind if you’re not up for it, though. Just thought I’d ask.
Truth be told, Goro isn’t up for it. Maruki’s Palace is long and monotonous, none of the Shadows seem to have any weaknesses to exploit to save time, and he thinks he’s been hit with the whole gamut of status ailments and then some. All he wants is to go back to his apartment that he has no logical reason to have in this reality and sleep like the dead man he is until he has to do it all again.
But Sumire hasn’t said a word since everyone returned from the Palace, after they all watched Maruki quite literally steal her identity in crisp high definition that wouldn’t be possible to achieve on a real-world VHS tape. For once, he wasn’t the first one to leave. That only makes the fact that she's reaching out to him all the more concerning.
And he supposes that if he has dinner with her, he doesn't have to resort to a convenience store meal for the sixth night in a row, which is far more appealing than it should be.
To: Sumire Yoshizawa
5:43 PM
I can get dinner. <<
Sumire responds with enthusiastic thanks and asks where he lives so he doesn't have to go far—near Kichijoji—and what he wants to eat—he couldn't care less. She proposes a beef bowl chain just outside Kichijoji Station, nothing special by any means, but his post-Palace stomach rumbles at the mere idea of it, and he doesn’t think he could pull off the kind of performatively immature brattiness he used to with Sae anymore even if he wanted to. It’s not like he can think of any better options.
The train pulls up to the platform as soon as he pockets his phone again, packed with the rush hour crowd. Somehow, a seat opens up right next to the doors and directly in his path when he gets on, as if Maruki is taunting him to take it, to take advantage of the opportunities this reality has given him or some bullshit like that. He stays standing.
By the time he gets to Kichijoji, the sky is pitch black, bringing with it a bitter chill that cuts through right to the bone. He holds back a shiver as the train leaves him behind on the platform, the artificial wind mussing up his hair in its wake, and rewraps his scarf even tighter around his neck in a futile attempt to keep warm. He’s always run cool, a blessing in the summer but the bane of his existence now.
Sumire is waiting for him outside the beef bowl shop, her scarf bundled up to her nose and the tips of her ears bright red where they peek out from under it. She waves when she sees him, barely lifting her hand and keeping her elbow glued to her side. Amidst the sea of people who seem to think they’re in some soap-opera winter wonderland, it’s refreshing that she looks just as miserable as he is.
“Good evening, Akechi-san,” she greets once he catches up, with a bow approximately 30 degrees too formal for the situation. Her voice is barely above a whisper. “Thank you for—”
Goro holds up a hand to stop her before she can say anything else. “Inside first, it’s fucking freezing.”
Sumire giggles under her scarf, trying to cover it up with her hand anyway. “Of course. Lead the way.”
The restaurant is nearly empty even for what should be the peak of the evening rush hour, with only a few office workers in suits scattered around the counter and a trio of high-schoolers at one of the tables. They’re barely in their seats for ten seconds before two hot teas are placed in front of them by a server who looks almost bored. Does he know things aren’t supposed to be this way?
“Thank you for meeting with me,” Sumire says after they place their orders, stilted and awkward like this is a business meeting and not...whatever this is.
Goro takes a sip of his tea. “What, was Akira-senpai busy?”
“No!” Sumire quickly and pointedly looks down at her cup, no doubt to hide the furious blush coming to her cheeks. “I mean, I don’t know if he’s busy. I didn’t ask him.” She lets out a breath. “Believe it or not, I actually wanted to see you.”
For a second, Goro is convinced he didn’t hear her correctly, even though he knows he did. “...Why?”
“What do you mean?”
“This is about what happened in the Palace, correct?”
Sumire hesitates for a second before she nods without a word, still staring down at her tea.
“That’s what I thought.” Goro sets the cup down. “Look, if you want a pep talk, you can find someone else. I’m not putting either of us through that.”
Sumire purses her lips and stays silent, hunched over the counter like she’s trying to hide from the entire world. Given the circumstances, Goro wouldn’t be surprised if she is.
A second passes. Ten seconds. A minute. Their bowls are set down in front of them, faster than even a chain like this should realistically be able to manage.
“Who says I want a pep talk?” Sumire finally asks, barely audible. The steam from the bowl fogs up her glasses.
“What do you want, then? The pleasure of my company?” Goro scoffs. “I didn’t take you for a masochist, Yoshizawa-san.”
“Sumire,” she corrects, then tacks on, “I insist.”
“...Okay.” Goro supposes it’s the least he can do.
“Thanks.”
They stop talking to eat after that—not that there was much of an expectation of conversation between them to begin with. He’s surprised that they’ve made it this far, even though she still hasn’t actually told him anything. He hopes he isn’t wrong to assume that she values his time enough to do it before they’re done here.
“Sorry,” Sumire says, as if reading his mind, her bowl already half empty, just the same as his. “I never answered your question earlier.”
Goro looks at her out of the corner of his eye. “And?”
“I—” Sumire sighs and puts her chopsticks down. “I thought it would be easier to talk to you than anyone else.”
“You thought it would be easier to talk to me ,” Goro repeats.
“...Yes.” Somehow, Sumire brings her voice down even quieter. “I figured that since you already look down on me, I wouldn’t have to worry about that.”
Oh. So that’s what this is about. At least they’re getting somewhere.
“Is that what you really think?” Goro asks.
“Huh?”
“That I look down on you. Do you actually think that?”
“I mean—” Sumire bunches up the fabric of her skirt in her fists. “I was weak. Why wouldn’t you?”
It’s hard to deny that she was—in the video, at least. But that seemed to be the entire point of the damn thing, for Maruki to parade her around at her most vulnerable as his little charity case. Look at this poor girl, look how lost and helpless she is, don’t you want her to be happy, I can make her happy, I can save her, it’s better this way . It’s nauseating. Goro takes far more issue with that than the fact that she was vulnerable in the first place.
And clearly, she’s concerned with much more than just the video, which only complicates the matter further.
“I think,” he starts, “that you may be putting words in my mouth.”
“Oh?” Sumire finally looks up at him. “How so?”
Goro swivels his stool towards her in return. “What makes you think I hate you so much?”
Sumire all but squeaks at how direct the question is. Good, that’s the entire point. “Well, I’m inexperienced, for one,” she says, quickly rattling off the words. “I make a lot of stupid mistakes in battle, and you’re always the first one to yell at me for them.”
All of those things are at least mostly true, and yet—”Have you considered that I’m telling you what you’re doing wrong because I don’t want you to die?”
“I—” Sumire opens her mouth but for a good few seconds, nothing comes out. “...I suppose I never thought about it that way.”
“You’re making mistakes precisely because you’re inexperienced,” Goro points out. He exhales sharply, something approximating a laugh, as a string of words come to his lips that feel completely unfamiliar. “I sure as hell did.”
That seems to pique Sumire’s interest. “You did?”
Goro nods. He has no interest in showing her, and he doesn’t want to take his coat off in this weather anyway, but his skin is littered with faint scars from years-old wounds that even leaving the Metaverse couldn’t fully heal. Distantly, he remembers standing in front of the mirror in his then-new apartment, freshly sixteen, covering up the bruises with a skillful combination of makeup and long sleeves and high necklines before leaving for school.
“How long ago was that?” Sumire asks, quiet and tentative like it’s something offensive.
“No one told you?”
Sumire shakes her head.
“Almost three years ago.” God , it’s strange to say that out loud. It’s one thing to say he was fifteen then and eighteen now, but assigning a number to the range makes it feel so much more real, heightens his awareness that the time has actually passed and that he wasn’t just sleepwalking through it. “I awakened to my Personas right when I started high school.”
“...Oh my god,” Sumire blurts out, eyes wide, before she regains her composure with a nervous smile. “I—I don’t know if I should apologize or not.”
Goro has no idea how to respond to that. Until very recently, the Metaverse was the best thing that ever happened to him, certainly not worth anyone’s sympathy. But now that it’s all over, now that he knows why — “Don’t,” he says simply. “It’s not your apology to make.”
Sumire nods. “Right.”
Goro picks up his bowl again as silence descends back over them. It tastes much better than it probably should for how little it cost, but somewhere between the bone-deep exhaustion and going back and forth between worlds, food always tastes better after coming back from the Metaverse. It’s an admittedly nice perk, even though he never takes enough time during meals or eats anything nice enough to really appreciate it.
Maybe he should. It doesn’t mean anything now, of course, but he has plenty of Shadow money and nothing better to do. If he’s only alive—”alive”—for two more weeks, why shouldn’t he blow everything he has on expensive sushi every night and spend hours savoring it like the food critic he pretended to be?
He knows he won’t.
“So,” Sumire says, cutting through the quiet like a knife once she finishes her bowl. “You don’t hate me?”
“No.” It’s a surprisingly easy answer, mostly because when he really thinks about it, Goro doesn’t care nearly as much about hating people as he used to. Maybe dying put everything in perspective, or maybe he’s just exhausted—probably some combination of both—but he hates Maruki and he’ll always hate Shido and that's about where his energy runs out. The rest of the Phantom Thieves are annoying but generally not worth his time, and he’s pretty sure he doesn't hate Akira anymore. Assuming he ever did in the first place.
So no, he doesn’t hate Sumire. She doesn’t even get on his nerves the way the others do. She’s quick on her feet and quicker to learn, especially considering she’s only been fighting as herself for a little over a week, and she's a stronger fighter than he ever would have expected. He respects her, at the very least—he wouldn’t have bothered to show up here if he didn’t.
He doesn’t know why. Like the rest of them, she seems to take for granted the fact that she has a team behind her to heal her or pick her up if she falls. But with her, it somehow doesn’t bother him as much.
“Oh. Um, okay.” Sumire freezes, seemingly unsure of where to go from here, like that wasn’t the answer she was expecting. To be fair, Goro hasn’t exactly given her any reason to think so before today. “Thank you.”
Goro smirks. “You’re thanking me for that?”
“I don’t know what else to say!” Sumire splutters, averting her eyes again. “It just means a lot that you...believe in me, I guess.” She shies away further, curling in on herself. “After everything you all saw today, I didn’t think anyone would.”
She moves on quickly, before Goro can even begin to process that information, looking over at his empty bowl on the counter. “Are you done? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize—”
“It’s fine,” Goro interrupts. He should be used to being fussed over, he got plenty of it last year from a constant flurry of agents and stylists and production assistants, but he isn’t used to it being so genuine. “Are you?”
“Am I—ah.” Sumire nods as she realizes what he’s actually saying. “Yes. I’m fine.” She neatly places her chopsticks and napkin next to her bowl on the counter before she stands up. “Let’s go. I know you have places to be.”
Goro doesn’t have anywhere else to be tonight. He hasn’t had anywhere else to be besides Maruki’s Palace and Mementos since the year started. He doesn’t say that out loud.
He rolls his shoulders back and reaches out to grab his receipt, but Sumire swoops in and takes it for herself before he gets the chance. “My treat,” she says.
“Are you sure?”
“Mm-hm.” Sumire smiles, holding the receipt close to her chest along with her own. “I invited you, it’s only fair.”
Goro doesn’t argue with her after that and lets her go, waiting by the door as she walks up to the register. He’s not enough of a gentleman to go through the whole “Oh no, you shouldn’t have” song and dance for a free meal that was willingly offered to him in the first place when he doesn’t have to, and he’s sure she knows it. Not to mention she still looks so nervous that she would have backed down if he so much as thought about pushing back.
Sumire half-jogs back to meet him at the front once she’s done, putting her wallet back in her bag and steadying it over her shoulder as he adjusts his scarf for a third time, trying to cover as much bare skin as possible even though he knows it won’t do anything in the long run. She takes a breath, bracing herself for the cold that’s already seeping through the doors, before they walk out together.
“Which train are you— shit ,” Goro hisses, the wind somehow even worse than he was expecting as the doors slide open. He starts over. “Which train are you taking?”
Sumire laughs, which Goro pretends not to notice, even as she rubs her gloved hands together to warm up. “None of them, actually,” she answers. “I live nearby, too. Just off the JL tracks a little ways west of here. I guess it never came up.”
Goro shoves his hands in his pockets. “That’s awfully convenient.”
“Isn’t it?” Sumire says. “Maybe we could walk together, if you’re going the same way.” The words are barely out of her mouth before she backpedals. “If you want to, of course!”
Goro has every reason not to. He doesn’t want to give Sumire any impression that he’s gone soft with her, and he lives more north than west, anyway. While he wouldn’t be going backwards, the train tracks are certainly out of the way, especially in weather like this.
But this conversation clearly isn’t over. For either of them.
“Sure,” he says.
“Really?” Sumire quickly swallows down her shock. “Okay. I promise I’ll walk fast.”
She does, at first, so quickly that it catches Goro off guard, even with his height advantage, and his muscles ache from the cold as he tries to keep up. Neither of them say anything as they push through the buzzing evening crowds near the station, through salarymen discussing which bar to decompress at after work and teenagers like them who only have to worry about making their train home.
But once they’re a little farther away, once the sidewalks become an afterthought lane painted on the side of the road and then nothing at all, they mutually decide to slow down. It’s quiet, save for the occasional rumble of a train on the tracks above or the automated jingle from the doors of a nearby convenience store.
As they pass a second Triple 7, Goro thinks he should probably turn up to his apartment. He doesn’t.
“May I ask you one more question?” Sumire asks, barely breaking the silence under the sounds of side-street traffic. They’re walking side by side now.
“Shoot.”
“I get the impression that you’re more...familiar with the Phantom Thieves than I am,” Sumire says. She notably takes a few seconds to choose the word, and avoids referring to either of them as part of the group, even though by this point, the others would most likely say otherwise. “Am I correct?”
Goro supposes he did spend a good few weeks working alongside them, despite everything. At the very least, he knows how they work. “You aren’t wrong.”
“Okay, um—” Sumire exhales, her breath fogging up in front of her. “Do you think they’re disappointed in me? After watching that video?”
“Do you want my honest answer?” Goro asks back. He barely has to think about it
Sumire nods.
“They don’t care.”
“They—” Sumire stops in her tracks. “What?”
Goro shrugs. “If they’re still letting me run around with them, you have nothing to worry about.”
He still isn’t sure how much Sumire knows about him, if Akira ever pulled her aside to explain that the country’s former golden boy who used to be on her dad’s TV show all the time actually tried to kill him twice and killed dozens more before that. That’s a funny thought.
Sumire looks up at him curiously, but she doesn’t probe any further in that direction. “Are you sure?” She asks instead. “Because from what I can tell, the whole idea behind having a Persona is being true to yourself and knowing who you are, and I...”
She trails off as a car passes them on the street, the low hum of the engine filling the silence she left as the headlights illuminate the red of her hair. It's not hard to deduce what she was about to say.
“You’re reading too far into it,” Goro says, half because she is and half because he doesn’t want to think about if she’s right, and what that makes him. Being true to yourself doesn’t seem too conducive to what Futaba told him on Shido’s ship, after all. “None of that is important to them.”
Sumire’s next question is quiet, cautious, but something more lingers just under the surface: “Is it important to you?”
“You shouldn’t care about what I think.”
“Please.”
For a second, before he remembers that it really shouldn’t, the firmness in just that one word catches Goro off guard. “The short answer is no,” he says after another moment, “It isn’t important to me, either.”
“And the long answer?”
“The long answer is that it’s entirely irrelevant .” Goro takes a step back, away from the street and into the corner next to a vending machine, leaning back against the metal. “Why do you think all of these videos exist in the first place?”
“They’re all important memories to Dr. Maruki,” Sumire answers, almost immediately.
“Exactly. All of them contributed to this shitshow.” Goro vaguely gestures at the... everything around them. “With that in mind, why would the moment he rewrote your cognition be one of them?”
Sumire frowns in thought. “...Because it was successful?”
“Successful and intentional ,” Goro corrects. “After what happened with his girlfriend, I think he used you to see if he could do it again. And after he ‘saved’ you, he dragged your corpse around for months to convince himself that he was doing the right thing.” Sumire flinches in front of him, but he doesn't back down. That would be a disservice to her. “The video was never about you. That’s what I think.”
Sumire’s hands ball into shaky fists at her sides as she takes a shuddering breath, refusing to break eye contact even as she doesn’t say a word. The Triple 7 door chime rings out into the night again from the corner behind them.
“But I wanted it,” she says eventually. “I wanted to become Kasumi, it was my only choice.”
The words start a chain reaction somewhere in Goro’s chest as he remembers every time he thought the same thing. When he approached Shido in the first place. When he saw what happened in the real world after he killed Wakaba Isshiki’s Shadow. When he closed the interrogation room door behind him after shooting Akira in the forehead. He doesn’t mention any of them. There’s no use dwelling on it now.
“Don’t tell me you thought that was actually possible before it happened.” He crosses his arms. “You trusted Maruki to do his fucking job, and instead he took advantage of your grief to fuel his god complex and manipulate you for almost a year. No amount of good intentions or having whatever the hell he sees as our best interests at heart is going to cancel that out. I hope for your sake that you realize that.”
“I—I do.” Sumire nods, emphatically enough that Goro believes it. “I just...”
“Do you still want to be Kasumi now?” Goro thinks he already knows the answer, if her little display in the Palace the other day is anything to go by. He just wants her to say it herself.
“No.” The word is out of Sumire’s mouth before she even seems to be aware of it, but she means it just the same.
“Then I’m not sure what else I need to say.”
Sumire looks confused for a moment before her mouth quirks up into a half-smile as she realizes what he’s really saying: What she does now is up to her. “Okay,” she says, and it looks as if a weight has been taken off her shoulders. “I understand.”
“Good.” Goro pushes himself off the vending machine. “Shall we?”
“Yes!” Sumire quickly follows his lead, steps quick as she starts down the street again. “I shouldn’t have stopped when it’s so cold outside, I’m sorry.”
Goro shrugs it off. He thinks he’s been seriously apologized to more times tonight than in the entirety of the last year. He doesn’t know what to make of it.
They keep walking, following the main road as it crosses under the train tracks to the other side. The sounds of lively conversation trickle out from an izakaya as someone opens the door to come in, and somewhere down the street, a child shrieks excitedly to let the whole neighborhood know that their father is home from work. The sky is perfectly clear overhead. It isn’t even that late, but between the darkness and the calmness of it all, it feels like four hours later. It’s like something out of a TV show, the kind that plays reruns in the middle of the night for the sole purpose of putting people to sleep, where every episode wraps itself up in a nice little bow by the end with no tension and barely a plot in sight.
Goro doesn’t think he minds the cold anymore. It may just be the only thing keeping him sane.
“This is my street,” Sumire announces a few corners later, glancing down the row of houses. “I hope I didn’t detour you too far.”
“You didn’t,” Goro says, even though he isn’t actually sure. He’ll check after she leaves.
“Oh. That’s good. Um—” Sumire drops her head in a bow far too deep for the situation. “Thank you. For spending this evening with me. I was really embarrassed today and just talking about it like this really helped.”
Goro lets out a sharp breath. “Embarrassing the hell out of yourself in front of them is basically a rite of passage, get used to it.”
Sumire tilts her head quizzically. “...Akechi-san, what—”
“Later,” Goro cuts her off. He can’t wrap his head around the fact that they apparently didn’t tell Sumire anything , but outside on a January night is not where he wants to have that conversation.
Sumire smiles. “I guess we’ll just have to meet up again sometime, then.”
Goro shrugs. He isn’t going to be the one to ask, but he’s substantially less likely to say no to her than almost anyone else, and he thinks she knows that by now.
Sumire doesn’t look like she needs a response. “Well,” she says. “I’ll see you...tomorrow, probably.”
“Probably.” As big as Maruki’s Palace is, Akira’s been tearing through it at an admittedly impressive pace; they’ve gone in for the last four days in a row, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to let up anytime soon.
They linger there for a second, and in the cool glow of the streetlight, Goro notices the exhaustion under Sumire’s eyes. But there’s something else there, too, a spark that wasn’t quite there before.
The moment ends just as quickly as Sumire takes a step back into the darkness. “Goodnight, Akechi-san. Thanks again.”
Goro does the same. “Goodnight.”
When he reaches the next major cross-street, where the sidewalks jut up from the pavement again, he stops to get his bearings. It’s a diagonal, the same street his apartment is on, though he’s farther away than he thought he was.
He bundles up his scarf once again and starts walking.