Chapter Text
In hindsight, while Minato’s not sure any of this was his fault, he thinks he might have made different choices if he knew it would turn out this way.
It started with a normal school day, or as normal as he was ever going to get. April twenty-third, clear blue skies, people separating into their little groups to go home for the day. As this was a second year classroom, most of those groups were pre-existing.
Being one of the new transfer students, Arisato Minato didn’t have one of those groups yet. Not really.
But his new teammates sure were trying. “We should all go get some ramen,” Junpei declared, attempting to flick the brim of his cap and missing. “What do you think?”
“Sorry, I have archery today.” The direction Yukari took on her way out was not the quickest route to the gym, but if no one was going to say anything, Minato wouldn’t, either.
To his credit, this didn’t dampen Junpei’s enthusiasm in the slightest. “So…”
“I’m down for ramen,” Minako agreed. “The place in the strip mall?”
“Yeah, they have the best ramen. And they have some really big bowls, too- imagine ramen the size of your head.” He could see the moment the two of them clicked together, drifting off simultaneously into the world of noodle dreams.
He wasn’t about to say they were going to go on a date- he wanted to believe his sister had better taste than just picking up the first guy with a Persona who looked in her general direction- but he was already starting to think of himself as a third wheel. Not a good sign for his ability to enjoy himself.
“Did I hear you talking about ramen?” It was one of their classmates, whose name Minato didn’t think had come up yet. Or it could have happened when he fell asleep after lunch. “Junpei, are you seriously hogging the transfer students?”
“I’m not hogging anything! If they wanna come with me, that’s their decision!” …Maybe he’d been spending just a bit too much time around Minako, lately, if people were already thinking of them as a monolith. Usually, wandering off to their respective extracurriculars would solve that, but sport clubs didn’t open for registration until tomorrow, and other clubs would take even longer.
He’d have to break it up in a slightly different way. “Koko wants to go with you. I never said anything.” Minako and Junpei gave him twin looks of betrayal. They were definitely on the same wavelength. “If you have any other ideas, I’d be glad to hear them.”
“Well… um…” Their classmate wasn’t looking anyone in the eye now. “...Actually… ramen sounds good.” In this case, the right thing to do would probably be to fold him into the group and just not talk about anything that was supposed to be a secret.
But Minato could feel the prying gaze of the rest of the class trying to merge him and his sister into one entity. A bit of extra physical distance- say, a separate table at Hagakure- would work wonders to prevent that.
And thus began his association with Tomochika Kenji.
Separate seats. Separate groups. Most of the restaurant didn’t even know they were related.
They couldn’t even see each other from where they were sitting.
He still knew he was going to have to justify this to her later.
But he did know the guy’s name was Kenji now! That meant he could officially say they were acquaintances. If he still remembered that name in a week, he might even be able to start calling them friends. That tended to be a good way to measure it.
The other thing he knew about Kenji was that he was very invested in whether he enjoyed the food or not. “Well? What do you think? It’s the best, right?”
‘Best’ was a strong word. Minato had eaten at so many ramen places over his life, he could no longer keep a solid rating list. The physical copy had gotten lost between moves when he was twelve, anyway. “...It’s good,” he said cautiously.
“Right? You know, the guys back in middle school always said ramen was for nerds, but they don’t know what they’re missing.” What kind of middle school had he gone to? Did anyone actually think seriously about these things?
…Maybe he needed to talk more with people about things that weren’t just art. He hated having to admit people were right about that. “I wonder what they’d think of my sister, then.” …No. This was not the right way to go about it. He was spending time with this guy to avoid inevitable comparisons with Minako. “She’s probably the sportiest person I know.”
Was that saying much? Not really. Kendo was an entirely different beast from team sports, unless you were planning to do it professionally. The members of the club at his last school had not been aspiring professionals. He’d been the best one there, and he’d only joined up to have something to do with his hands that wasn’t moving a paintbrush around.
He enjoyed it, swords were fun, but it wasn’t really a serious thing.
Kenji blinked. “...Is it a thing where girls with ponytails are into sports?” He wasn’t even going to begin to try to figure out that thought process.
“I think it might be the other way around…” He knew people who tied their hair back so they wouldn’t get paint in it. Same basic principle. “I guess you’re not into sports?”
“Not really. I watch the tennis team practice sometimes, but that’s about it.” Huh. Tennis. What an odd coincidence. “They say it could be a way to pick up girls, but have you seen the girls at this school?”
He had. He’d already written off the idea of walking home with Akihiko for the foreseeable future. “Is there something wrong with them?” Besides half of them having a strange obsession?
“I mean, I guess they’re not bad-looking for their age… but they’re all just so childish.” …That was a weird sentence. Minato was going to try not to put too much thought into it. “You get what I mean, don’t you?”
“The constant squealing about Sanada-senpai?” That had to be it, right? “I’m not really into that, either.” He wasn’t entirely sure what he was into, aside from how Minako once gave up on a game in frustration and he took a liking to the witch character, but it definitely wasn’t that.
It took just a few minutes after that to decide it might not be anything Kenji was into, either.
And then the universe took that moment to announce he would be blessed when creating Personas of the Magician Arcana. So, whatever he might or might not have been into, Minato was apparently stuck with him.
By the time they were ready to leave, Minako and Junpei were long gone.
Minato’s plan, such as it was, was a success. He and Minako now had separate Social Links for the Magician Arcana. It wasn’t what he’d been expecting when he made his plans for the afternoon, but he could work with it.
Minako… was less than impressed. “Toto, you don’t even know that guy.”
“I know his name is Kenji, and his Arcana is the Magician.” And having a Persona apparently wasn’t a requirement for having an Arcana, which wasn’t something he’d been wondering about, but it was nice to have confirmation. “And he thinks Senpai’s fangirls are stupid.” At least, he assumed it was about the fangirls.
There was still room for him to be wrong, but he wasn’t ready to consider the implications of that.
“There may be hope for him yet.” Was she going to judge everyone he talked to, or just the Social Links? “Still, we could have had a nice team building exercise if you hadn’t wandered off like that.”
Whenever the words ‘team building exercise’ came up, Minato could only think of that time back in winter their cousin’s job was doing an activity out of town and he got home a day late because his coworkers ditched him at the bar and he missed the last train. That was a place they’d chosen to leave on their own, so if it happened again, it wouldn’t be their problem.
Besides, Iwatodai had started calling out to them.
Answering the call had put them in a really weird situation, but things were going to be weird with or without that. At least here they could do something about it. “If we’re going to do a team event, we should do something better than ramen.”
“Like what?”
“I dunno. But Kirijo-senpai has money, so we could do so much better than a place in the strip mall.” Had he spent half the money he’d picked up in Tartarus on gum? Maybe. He wasn’t the person who needed to be planning this. “When was the last time we had good sushi?”
“I think that’d be the aunt from the JSDF. She had the salary for it.” ‘Had’ being the operative word. She’d been accused of consorting with demons- there were relatives where that wouldn’t have surprised him, but she wasn’t one of them- and that was the end of that. Even if a different cousin from the other side of the family was the one making the claims.
If any of the involved parties realized that connection, Minato was sure it’d be a bloodbath.
“So we could get sushi. Or something else expensive. Cater a buffet with a chocolate fountain, or something.”
“...Or we could not be obvious mooches?” Or they could do that. “I wonder if there’s anything we could do to get everyone together without going to Tartarus…”
Did they want that? It didn’t feel like they got along well enough for that. He just had to look at how Yukari was around Mitsuru or Junpei to know they weren’t ready.
“Well, don’t burn yourself out trying to think about it.” …Just saying that by itself wasn’t going to work at all. He needed to say something else. “After all, you want all your energy for when you introduce yourself to the tennis team.”
“...Oh, right, that’s tomorrow!” She disappeared upstairs at an almost inhuman speed. Minato watched her go, then shrugged and returned to his room. He had an online art store to go to and a lot of canvas to order.