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It was starting to pinch.
Makoto sucked in a deep breath through her teeth, letting it inflate as much of her lungs as the fabric constricting her chest would allow. She wasn’t sure how, but whenever she entered the Metaverse wearing her binder, she was still wearing one when she donned her biker fit.
It’d been a couple of weeks since she finally gathered up the courage to buy one and only a week or so since she’d gathered up the strength to put it on. When Makoto had bought it, she’d used a lot of smoke and mirrors to avoid Sis from knowing, lest she had to explain to her sister why she wanted to start binding her chest. She hadn’t told the Thieves either—not that she was really worried what they’d say, they were all some form of gay themselves—but because saying it out loud meant admitting what she’s known for a while now, and what awakening to Johanna made her sure of it.
Makoto wasn’t a girl.
So she’s kept her binding a secret. If her friends or Sae had noticed, they hadn’t mentioned it.
It hadn’t been a big deal when she wasn’t thieving, as school didn’t require her to do any strenuous activity and she could always duck into the bathroom to take it off if it was really becoming uncomfortable, but thieving was proving to be rather difficult. So far (as far as any of them have seen) there have been no bathrooms in any of the Metaverse places they’ve been to and, even if there were, she wouldn’t want to risk it.
(What would a Metaverse bathroom even look like? Do Shadows use the bathroom? Questions for another day.)
Besides, Makoto isn’t even sure if the binder in her Metaverse attire is a separate article of clothing or part of the suit entirely. Maybe one day she’ll figure it out, but she hopes she never has to.
The Thieves themselves were in Mementos today, working through the backlog of requests they had saved up when running through Kaneshiro’s Palace. Makoto had taken her rightful place in the driver’s seat, fulfilling her second (unofficial) role of the Phantom Thieves: legal driver. Ann was beside her while the boys took up the middle row of seats behind them. It was the best pairing they’d come up with after a bunch of trial and error—Ann couldn’t sit with Ryuji (they squabble too much), Ryuji couldn’t sit next to Makoto (he distracts her too much), and Yusuke couldn’t sit by himself (he gets lost in thought and forgets where he is).
So, Ann sits with Makoto with a barrier of seats between any heated conversation her and Ryuji might get into, Yusuke sits next to the window to be able to daydream, and Ren sits in the middle of the two boys to keep them in check.
Makoto won’t say how many times it took for them to finally figure out this seating arrangement (or how long it took) but needless to say, it was enough.
Currently, Ann was exercising her odd but occasional right to silence when Makoto noticed Ann shift at Makoto’s deep breathing. Out of the corner of her eye, Makoto watched Ann tilt her head to the side, eyes wide and doe-like.
“You alright, Queen?”
Makoto glanced at Ann. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. You just sighed really heavily.”
Wasn’t a sigh, Makoto thought. Just breathing.
Makoto gave her a small reassuring smile. “I’m fine, Panther. Thanks.”
Ann nodded and then turned around at Ryuji’s incessant poking on her shoulder from the middle row of seats. Odd but occasional right to silence forgotten, Ann dove headfirst into the conversation of manga review (apparently, Shiho had borrowed one of Ryuji’s mangas in the hospital and he hadn’t been able to get a hold of her but Ann and, I mean, you can see where this is going.)
Prying eyes on her occupied, Makoto worked another deep breath in and out of her lungs. She’d been on the frontlines a lot today and it was starting to wear on hed. Rolling her shoulders back and forth, she sighed at the cracks that issued from her aching joints.
She was taking the steamiest bath after this. Maybe some tiger balm, if Sae still kept any hidden in the bottom drawer of the bathroom cabinet.
Makoto tapped her fingers against the steering wheel, enjoying a rather leisurely drive through a distorted Tokyo subway. It wasn’t until her fingers stopped tapping out the OST to a shonen anime she was currently obsessed with when she felt someone’s eyes burning into the back of her head. Her eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror.
Ren’s joker mask stared back at her, his normally grey eyes glowing a sharp red she’s only ever seen when he’s analyzing enemies or scoping out possible treasure.
Her eyes snapped back to the road—tracks? driving along a subway tunnel was weird—feeling her chest constricting again. Pseudo-deep breathing wasn’t working much anymore, and her shoulders and lower back were really starting to take the brunt of her aching. Having Ren’s notice was almost worse than having her sister’s—they both had the same intense, detective stare, but unlike Sae’s, Ren wouldn’t get distracted as easily with another more pressing challenge. He wouldn’t stop until he could help, which was a blessing as much as it was a curse.
Hopefully, the next platform was a rest area or, better yet, the end of this section of Mementos. She could feign illness while still keeping her secret a secret and they could all go home. It probably wouldn’t be enough to throw Joker off the scent, but it would give her enough to formulate a plan on how to tell him (because she really should , he would understand) when he inevitably asked to hang out the next day after school.
That, and it would that she could rip this binder off. Just the idea of it off had her shoulders loosening somewhat, and she let the image work as a salve to her squeezed ribs.
After a few minutes, though, her heart sank. Right up ahead, shrouded in black smog and lumbering along the tracks, was a Shadow. A dangerous red energy crackled through its body.
“Joker?” she called out. “Shadow up ahead, looks pretty strong.”
The car quieted down immediately as Ren leaned forward, his eyes flickering that shade of bloodred. Makoto slowed the engine to an imperceptible hum as they stalled on the tracks. After a second or so, his eyes returned to grey.
“Alright, let’s go. This one’s gonna be a fight.” His gaze flicked to the rest of the group. “Fox, Skull, Queen—you’re with me. Panther and Mona, you’re on backup support. Same as before.”
“Affirmative.”
“You got it, man!”
“Sounds good, Leader!”
“Queen?” Ren leveled her with a stare, and she nodded. Her heart thudded heavily beneath her sternum.
“Hold on everyone.”
Adjusting her grip on the wheel, she slammed her foot on the gas. The Monabus rocketed forward, crashing into the Shadow with a large jolt that sent every Thief in the bus lurching forward.
The Shadow melted into an Orthrus, hulking and vicious above the Monabus, which dissolved immediately, spitting out Ryuji, Ren, Yusuke, and Makoto.
Ren hit first, summoning a Sandman to do a minuscule amount of wind damage. A gust of wind issued forth from the Sandman, ruffling the fur of the beast and sending it reeling. Before the Orthrus could get in an attack, Ryuji struck next with Captain Kidd, calling forth a bolt of lightning that made Makoto’s hair stand on end and left the taste of ozone in her mouth.
As Yusuke got ready to attack, Makoto clocked the way the Orthrus’ body language changed—it backed up imperceptibly, its ears flattening back against its twin heads—and shouted, “Fox, it’s weak to ice damage! Hit it with all you’ve got!”
“Received!” Fox shouted in return, before calling forth Goemon to release a barrage of icicles against the beast’s fur-covered body. The two heads cried out in pain as it stumbled on its legs, its tail whipping back and forth violently.
“Nice work, Fox,” Ren said, unsheathing his knife. “Everyone, all-out attack!”
Now, up until this point, Makoto had been doing fine. Not great, but fine. She was hanging back while the boys did all the work, content to stay behind while they all called their Personas. In the back of her mind, she knew Ren was going to want to say something to her afterwards, especially if you coupled her lack of enthusiasm in battle with the odd way she’d been acting in the Monabus earlier, but that was something Makoto could’ve lived with. One more hit from Yusuke would’ve done the Orthrus in, and they’d have been fine.
But then their leader called for an all-out attack, and there was no way she could slack that.
Sprinting forward, she ignored the pain in her chest and the little air in her lungs as she slammed fist after fist into the Orthrus with her companions. Each connection of knuckles to raw muscle was like a defibrillator gone off, except her heart was beating a little too much, and she couldn’t get enough air for it to slow down.
When Ren called them back, she was hoping that they had done enough to bloody it into a black sludge and that she could excuse herself to sit down, take off her binder, do anything but stand here and let it suffocate her.
Unfortunately, it was still alive and unfortunately, it was coming after her.
Before Makoto had even a chance to react, the Orthrus lashed out with both its heads, their sharp teeth salivating at the thought of catching her head between their jaws. She was slow, slower than usual, and the Orthrus bit down, leaving two pairs of teeth marks left in both her legs like twins themselves.
Makoto hadn’t been keeping track of how healthy she was going into the fight. She didn’t realize—albeit foolishly—how the problems with the binder might’ve started her off with a deficit at the beginning of the fight. She didn’t know how a major blow like this would’ve altered her ability to breathe properly.
All she knew was that the Orthrus bit her and she saw stars. So many stars. Stars like Ren’s attic room ceiling, or Jose’s hideaways. Red, blue, white, and yellow. So many colors for so many stars.
She felt the pain next, rocketing up her legs and arresting what little breath she had left in her throat. Collapsing to her knees, she gasped, choking.
Makoto thought she heard Ryuji ask, “Queen?”
She thought she heard Yusuke shout, “Does anyone have a bead?”
She could’ve sworn she heard Ren yell, “Panther! We need you over here!”
She knew their voices were all pained, like they’d been bitten themselves.
The last thing she saw before everything went dark was Panther sprinting toward her, her red outfit a beacon in a sea of black.
“Queen? Queen! ”
Makoto’s eyes shot open, her breath exhaling rapidly. Above her, she saw the unmasked faces of Ann and Ren looking at her; Ann was near close to tears and Ren held a concern uncanny for his usually impassive face. She was still breathing heavily, despite—or maybe because of—the fact that her chest felt looser than it normally did. She noted that everyone, including herself, was still in their Metaverse attire.
“Hey, hey, relax,” Ann said, placing her hands on Makoto’s shoulders. They glowed a bright green, and a sudden a gentle iciness spread through her veins, shocking her heart to a steady state. Dia, Makoto thought lamely. She’s using a Dia. “Just breathe.”
“What—happened?” Makoto got out between breaths. “I just—remember every—thing getting d—dark.”
“You passed out mid-battle. Mona and I got you out of there while the boys finished up. Luckily the next floor was a rest area.”
Makoto’s eyes shifted to Ren, who hadn’t said anything since she woke up, but whose shoulders had noticeably loosened. He wasn’t meeting her gaze. Makoto looked back to Ann, who was so focused on healing her, it could’ve been construed as worry if Ann wasn’t such a bad liar.
When Makoto took in a deep breath, she felt the full capacity of her lungs at work.
Ah. So that’s why.
“You took it off?” she asked, not sure whether to feel relieved, worried, or scandalized. On the one hand—thank God . It was really starting to hurt, and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could’ve kept it on.
(Apparently not much if she passed out just however long before.)
On the other, she’d kept the secret from the Thieves for so long, she had no clue how they'd react. Sure, they’d defeated a mafia boss together and were now trekking through the psyche of a devastated teen, but Makoto was still relatively new to the team; what if she’d broken their trust for good?
And then, there was the obvious fact of how they got it off. You’re not supposed to wear bras under binders, so Makoto wasn’t, leaving her bare-chested beneath the tight material. Maybe that’s why just Ann was here; Ren was there because he was the leader, but he obviously wasn’t there when Ann took it off, right?
Makoto felt her face flush when Ann’s went scarlet.
“We, uh, cut it. To loosen the pressure on your ribs. None of us wanted to, ah…”
Makoto nodded, both parts mortified and relieved. That made her feel better, at the very least, that none of her teammates had seen her bare chest.
“How did you cut it?”
Ann studied a spot on the wall to her left. “Joker’s knife.”
Makoto didn’t know what to say to that. What do you say to your friends who just sliced your binder in half with your other friend’s knife? Thanks but next time just let me die? Hope you didn’t see something you didn’t want to?
Ann must’ve taken her silence for anger, because she quickly turned to Makoto and said effusively, “No one saw anything, I swear! And I’ll pay you back for the binder! Promise.”
“I’m not…” What was she exactly? Because relieved and mortified were just not cutting it anymore. “I’m not mad. I just…” It was then that Makoto realized she was still lying on her back. “Wait, let me sit up.”
Ann and Ren helped her up against one of the rest area’s bench seats. It was easy to maneuver her with the binder cut, seeing as it opened up her upper torso for a wider range of movement again. Instead of sitting on the bench above her, Ren and Ann chose to sit on the subway ground with her; Makoto didn’t know if the Metaverse kept their subways tidy, but the idea of sitting on the ground was already prickling at the back of her mind, urging her to stand because oh my god there are probably so many germs you need to leave and disinfect yourself—
“Queen?” Ann had her hand on her shoulder. Makoto’s head snapped to her.
“I’d understand if you were mad at me,” Makoto blurted out. “And I’d understand if you don’t trust me anymore.”
“What do you mean?” Ren asked. It was the first time he’d spoken and, if Makoto wasn’t mistaken, there seemed to be a bit of incredulity in his voice.
“I lied to you all. I kept the fact that I was wearing a binder a secret and I put the whole team in jeopardy. I mean, I’ve been wearing it for a while now and today’s been especially awful. I couldn’t breathe for the latter half of this Mementos trip and I didn’t tell you, even though it was in the interest of the group to know. And then you had me on the frontlines because most of these enemies have been weak to nuclear attacks, so I couldn’t very well leave you out to dry. I should’ve known that Orthrus would’ve attacked me, I went particularly vicious on my attacks to him.”
“I noticed that,” Ann said with a small laugh. Makoto laughed in response, though hers was noticeably subdued and quite shaky.
“Queen,” Ren started, completely serious, “you have no obligation to share with us anything about your personal identity. That being said—” A corner of his mouth quirked up. “I think the whole team wouldn’t mind ending early if you weren’t feeling well, even if you withheld the reason. If you don’t mind me asking, how long have you had it on?”
Makoto thought for a moment. “Well, I had to run a few errands before we went into Mementos, and then the entirety of the time we’ve been here, so… seven hours? Maybe eight?”
Ren’s face remained impassive, but there was an almost righteous anger to it. An indignant squawk came from her right, and she turned to see Ann’s face as red as her costume.
“Makoto! ”
“Panther,” Ren chided.
“Oh, come on, give me this one,” she said to him, then turned back to Makoto. “You can’t leave it on that long.”
“I know.”
“I mean, that could cause serious damage to your ribcage!”
Makoto sighed. “I know.”
“Not to mention you passed out—“
“Panther,” Ren scolded, shooting her a look. She gave him an equally withering one in return.
“I know all about the dangers of binding for too long. Trust me, I spent weeks doing research on it.”
“How long have you been wearing one?” Ann asked.
“A little over a week. I wasn’t able to bring myself to buy one before then. I had to lie to Sis and tell her I was buying a new blouse for my uniform just to use her laptop, then I cleared all my history. The day the package arrived I kept waiting for a text from my sister, asking what I ordered. Apparently, she’d been working late that day and didn’t even know we’d gotten mail.”
“Is that why you looked like you were gonna be sick the entire day?” Ann commented. Makoto nodded.
“The last way I want Sis to find out is through accidentally happening on my mail or browser history. When I tell her, I want it to be the right moment, or at least on my terms.”
“If you ever need help with that, I’m here, alright?” Ann said, taking Makoto’s hand and squeezing it. “I know a thing or two about coming out.”
“And you know I’m always here to help out,” Ren added. “Just a text or phone call away, yeah?”
Makoto nodded, smiling. There was a familiar burning sensation in her throat, but she didn’t quite care. She was loved, she was cared for, and she was so stupid to think that the Thieves—the people who have gone through Hell and back, who took her in and understood her when no one else would—would be anything less than supportive.
Speaking of the Thieves—
“Where are Fox and Skull now?” Makoto asked, suddenly remembering the absence of her other friends. She knew it was too quiet in here.
“I sent them back to the entrance,” Ren said. “I told them they were welcome to go home if they wanted, but they were adamant about waiting for you. Ryuji was offended that I even suggested it.” He shared a knowing smile with Makoto. The thought of Ryuji and Yusuke parking themselves on a bench at the entrance to Mementos, wiling away the minutes like family members in the waiting area of a hospital wing, had fondness blooming in her chest like sakura trees.
“Mona is with them,” he continued. “I’ve got a Goho-M we can use whenever you’re ready.”
“And don’t rush!” Ann added. “We don’t want you overextending yourself any more.”
Tears pricked at the corners of Makoto’s eyes. There they were, Ren and Ann, here with no strings attached, just because they love her, with more people just beyond who didn’t leave because they were worried .
How did she get so lucky ?
The tears fell—without warning or permission—like raindrops, trailing down her cheeks and dripping onto her clothes. Hastily scrubbing at her eyes with her gloves, she sniffed and tried to laugh off her emotions, saying, “Sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying.”
“Stop being sorry,” Ann scolded, though the lightness in her expression assured Makoto that it was only good-natured.
“As your Leader, I command it,” Ren added. A sideways grin tugged at the right corner of his mouth.
Makoto raised her eyebrows in his direction, watery laughter bubbling up her throat. “Pulling the ‘Leader card’? Whatever would Mona think?”
“He’d probably like it. He thinks I baby you too much.”
“My agency already gets on my case about exercising,” Ann said, exhausted. “I don’t need some cat screeching at me to do push ups from the rafters.”
Makoto’s eyes widened. “ That’s what that chair is for?”
Ann burst into laughter, which caused Makoto to laugh, because Ann’s laughter is the most infection thing since tuberculosis, and Ren ducked his head—his form of laughter. They sit like that for a few moments—three teenagers in weird cosplay-like costumes in a subway station rest area dreamt up by the Tokyo public’s cognition—and Makoto’s chest finally felt weightless. When her laughter subsided, she sucked in a long, deep breath and held it for several seconds before letting it out, pleased she could do such a thing.
Perspective has a funny way of changing your cognition, after all.
Ren and Ann helped Makoto stand and they all used a Goho-M to return to the entrance, scaring the shit out of Ryuji in the process (to Morgana’s infinite pleasure). After several minutes of the boys doting over Makoto and making sure she was fit to travel (“like, are you sure you’re okay, Queen? Because I’ll run you to the hospital right now” “Skull, please don’t”), the Thieves left the Metaverse and went their separate ways.
When Makoto got home, she was surprised to find the binder she currently had on was unharmed, though less tight than it was before. Still, she shed it quickly and replaced it with a large sweatshirt stolen from Sae’s closet (which was probably stolen from her Dad’s), old and worn and smelling of expensive perfume. Hanging up the binder neatly in her closet, she let it fall back into the various collared shirts and skirts of her casual wear and school uniform, disappearing from view.
One of these days, she would tell Sae. One of these days, she’ll finally cut off her hair like she’s been dreaming of doing. One of these days, she’ll test out using different pronouns, just to see how it would feel.
But for now, she was happy.
On the nightstand by her bed, her phone buzzed three times in quick succession. Walking over, she opened up her messaging application with a smile.
ANN: hey!! i hope you got home safely
ANN: AND TOOK YOUR BINDER OFF >:(
ANN: anyways there’s a store a lot of the male models I work with go to in Harajuku that just updated some of their stock
ANN: wanna go shopping tomorrow? we can get crepes beforehand!
Makoto’s smile grew.
MAKOTO: I’d love to.
Yeah. She was happy.