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1.
It was with numbers and formulas swimming into an unrecognizable soup in front of his eyes that Ryuji surrendered.
He slumped back into his chair with a groan, distinctly aware of the two sets of eyes that immediately focused on him intently.
Still, there was kindness in Makoto’s gaze and her words when she said, “Well, we have been working for a little while now… maybe we should take a break.”
Ryuji sat bolt upright again, shaking his head. “Nah, it’s okay. Seriously.”
Haru tilted her head to one side, frown gentle, and Makoto arched an eyebrow in return, but Ryuji forged onwards doggedly. “It’s just… I’m the one who asked you guys to help me out, so I don’t wanna waste any of this time. I know you’re busy ‘n all, so…”
Makoto sighed, but it was fond, and Haru hid a giggle behind her hand and said, “We’re here because we want to be, Ryuji. You don’t have to worry about wasting our time at all.”
If he was honest with himself, that made Ryuji feel much better. It had taken everything he had to ask his senpai, now off at university most of the time, to help him with his studies. It had taken everything he had and then some to admit, somewhat sheepishly, but entirely earnestly, that he wanted to make something of himself now that their time as Phantom Thieves was over. Baring his soul like that, asking for help like that–it had felt so much like a trust fall.
But, of course, Haru and Makoto didn’t let him fall.
“Still,” he said, running fingers through his hair with a bit of a self-conscious grin, “I need all the help I can get. So let’s keep going. Uhhh… can you walk me through this one again?”
It’s after a few carefully explained formulas and some absolutely merciless drilling by Makoto that it finally clicks for Ryuji, and he leans back in his chair with a small grin despite his exhaustion as Makoto checks his work and proclaims his answer correct.
He feels like he could drop here and now, more exhausted than he’s ever been after his runs, but he feels… pleased, too. Maybe like this, he won’t be left behind by everyone else.
Still, he can’t help but think–
“This would be so much easier if Sophia was here, ya know?”
Haru smiled at that, and Makoto tilted her head to one side, eyebrow arched. “Don’t tell me,” she said with a sigh, “that you would’ve had Sophia help you cheat?”
“What? No!” Ryuji’s squawk was offended, and Makoto lifted her hands up apologetically and placating. Sure, maybe the thought had crossed his mind briefly–but only briefly.
“I mean… she could look up all sorts of problems for me to practice on, right? And she was always so good at cheering people up when they were havin’ a hard time, too.”
Haru’s expression softened at that. “You really miss her, don’t you?”
Ryuji blinked at her blankly. “Uhh, yeah, ‘course. Don’t we all?”
Both of his senpai answered in the affirmative, but they also shared a secret sort of smile that Ryuji had no idea how to interpret, not with his brain filled to the brim with math and numbers. So he didn’t bother trying, trusting they’d tell him if it was anything important, and bent down to tackle the next problem.
“... Hey, d’you think Sophia would know any shortcuts to getting these math problems done easier? –O-okay, I’m sorry, I’ll learn how to do it the long way, just stop glaring at me like that!”
–
2.
It was official.
Ryuji was a masochist.
There was no other explanation for how he’d ended up in this situation.
Futaba’s pleased cackling didn’t abate even though it was her seventh win at Punch Ouch, and this was after Ryuji already waved the white flag after a few painfully one-sided matches of Mighty Crush Bros.
Definitely a masochist.
Ryuji sighed, head dipping and controller dangling from his fingertips. He’d been hopeful that playing a more retro game would help even the odds a bit, since he’d gotten so much practice playing with [Akira] before he went home–but he should’ve known better when it came to Futaba.
“Mweheheheh! Do you yield?”
Ryuji sighed again. “Ugh. If Sophia was here, I bet we could beat you.”
Futaba craned her head around so that she could peer at his face, expression amused. “What, you planning on having her install some cheat codes for you?”
Ryuji’s face burned. He hadn’t expected her to see right through him.
But Futaba just seemed amused as she pulled back again, leaning back against the attic couch. Of course Boss had left the place just as Akira had left it–for when he’d want to come back again. It made for a good hangout spot for the rest of the Phantom Thieves, whenever they could get together. And the foot traffic kept it from getting too dusty, and feeling too unlived in.
Futaba pointed at him dramatically the moment he lifted his head.
“Next time Sophia’s around, just try it. I bet I can beat you even with whatever cheats she can search up!”
Ryuji couldn’t help the way that that lit a fire in him, even if he knew that any time Futaba was confident, it was bad news for anyone challenging her.
“You’re on!”
It’d be fine. He’d have Sophia on his side, right? And the power of the internet, too.
Right?
–
3.
As with most situations that involved Ann, Ryuji had no idea how he had gotten himself into this situation.
Ann flitted from store to store in Harajuku while Ryuji followed, one of her bags in his hand and a sense of awkwardness far heavier than the clothes on his shoulders. Despite the ease with which Ann moved around the fashion stores, Ryuji always felt completely out of place and out of his depth, and it didn’t help that Ann had the sort of looks that drew eyes to them.
Not that he disliked that about her–he didn’t, and it wasn’t her problem where people looked anyway–but today he could feel those watchful stares keenly.
Ann popped her head around the rack of clothing she’d been thumbing through, brow furrowing as she looked at him, before she grinned.
“Well, don’t just stand there.”
With her usual complete lack of concern with his personal space, Ann came closer, slinging an arm around his shoulder. “We’re not leaving without a piece of clothing for you, too, you know.”
Ryuji looked around, both at the clothing and the chipper, trendy crowd, and felt his shoulders hunch a little despite himself.
As close as she was, Ann could absolutely feel that. She blinked, tilting her head. “What’s wrong?”
Maybe Ryuji would’ve tried to keep his insecurities to himself, but… well, this was Ann. She would just nag at him until he told her anyway, and she did not forget that shit.
“‘S just… don’t you think this stuff doesn’t really suit me?”
It was all so trendy, and Ryuji was many things, but trendy he was not. Sometimes the fleeting thought had crossed his mind that he would enjoy looking a bit more like–well, like Akira, but in the end, he felt like he’d just be way too tryhard if he changed it up to look more like him.
Ann inspected him for a moment, considering that, before she finally let go of him and shrugged. “I think… you’re thinking too hard.”
Ryuji frowned at that, but Ann plowed on before he could respond. “I mean, fashion is all about wearing what you feel good in. Forget all of that stuff about wearing what suits you or whatever–that only matters for things like magazine shoots.”
Ryuji rubbed the back of his neck. Even if he thought Ann was probably right… he wasn’t sure he had the confidence to try something so new, at the same time.
Ann propped her hands on her hips, and then straightened as an idea hit her. “How about this. If you let me pick something out for you–that you have to wear--then I’ll let you pick out something for me to wear too. And I’ll wear it!”
The potential for chaos and picking out something insane for Ann to wear warred with the fact that that actually increased the pressure–this was freaking Ann they were talking about, after all, and he’d feel like shit if he made her look dumb. But she looked so determined that Ryuji folded, sighing a little as he dropped his hands to his sides again.
“Fineeee–but don’t pick out anythin’ dumb!”
“That should be my line!” Ann retorted, but it was with a smile, and Ryuji couldn’t help but smile back as he followed her into the shopfront.
(In the end, Ann picked out a pair of wide-legged pants for him in a style that he’d never tried on before in his life. Ryuji didn’t know what to make of them, but he had to admit that they didn’t make him look dumb, at least.
And for Ann, he picked out a big, soft, white sweater. She’d arched an eyebrow at him, but took it nonetheless, and he thought it looked good on her, at least.
When she texted him a picture of her wearing it, stylized with black jeans, her text said,
How do I look? Can I pull off the Sophia look?
and then it all made sense why he’d been drawn to it.)
–
4.
Ryuji really couldn’t say when it became a habit, but by this point, taking Yusuke out to lunch once a week was part of the schedule.
Perhaps it had been one too many comments about what he was eating (or wasn’t, more likely), maybe Ryuji still felt responsible for the Phantom Thieves as his teammates despite the fact that they were all a little more split up than they were before…
Either way, every week, Ryuji found himself here.
This week, they were at the beef bowl shop; it was cheap, filling, and Yusuke certainly wasn’t about to complain.
Still, Ryuji looked up from inhaling half his beef bowl in one go (he was a growing boy still, he needed those carbs and calories!), to find Yusuke carefully arranging his beef, rice and noodles.
He couldn’t help himself.
“You doin’ some sort of artistic shit again?”
Yusuke shook his head, unperturbed, as he reached out with his chopsticks to carefully snag a little more ginger. “Not this time.”
Ryuji tilted his head, and Yusuke continued, “Actually, I am attempting to create the perfect ratio of beef to rice to ginger.”
Ryuji’s eyebrow arched. “More ginger’s the answer, yeah?”
“Not exactly,” Yusuke responded, a gleam in his eye. “Sophia informed me that there is such a thing as an absolutely perfect ratio, determined from her analysis of hundreds of online reviews and recipes. I wish to experience such a thing for myself!”
Ryuji couldn’t help the way he grinned a little. Ah, right. He couldn’t expect anything else from the unholy, far-too-literal team up of Sophia and Yusuke, could he? Still, even Ryuji could see a problem with this plan.
“How’re you gonna know if it’s perfect or not?”
Stricken, Yusuke, dropped his chopsticks–and all of the ginger they’d been holding, directly into Ryuji’s lap.
“Dude!”
–
5.
Ryuji stretched as he stepped into the late afternoon sunlight.
Fiiinally, the day was over; he was beginning to think that his final period’s class was never gonna end. But now he was free, which meant he could book it over to the grocery store and get back in time to cook something for himself and his mom for dinner by the time she got home from work.
Ryuji’s fortunes honestly hadn’t changed much since becoming a Phantom Thief–and subsequently losing that power. He still wasn’t well-liked by his classmates, though they tolerated him a little better with Kamoshida gone and a year between them and the trauma of that year. And with Akira back in his hometown and Ann chasing modeling gigs and Makoto and Haru off at college, high school was back to being a little… well, lonely.
But Ryuji had changed too, and he shook off that thought with a faint snort. Even if the other Phantom Thieves weren’t around as much, that didn’t mean they were gone and that he was alone. They were always a text or a phone call away, and that’s what really mattered.
So Ryuji allowed himself the luxury of one more stretch before he suddenly turned and nearly ran into a classmate.
“Oh, hey, sorry, dude,” Ryuji said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. His classmate–he recognized the guy, they were in the same homeroom–shot him an uncertain smile but waved off his apology, and then gently tugged along the young girl clutching to his hand. They made their way down the sidewalk, and Ryuji watched them go with his head tilted to one side.
Huh.
For some reason, that felt so… nostalgic.
He shook himself out of that, slapping his cheeks with both hands (and startling a few more of his loitering yearmates), before he started to jog towards the train. He had a meal to make!
–
For some reason, even while metaphorically neck deep in half-made tonkatsu, Ryuji’s brain is still on his classmate and his little sister. It had to have been his little sister, right? They looked similar, and he was holding her hand and guiding her forward while she trailed along like a trusting little duckling.
Ryuji couldn’t even remember the guy’s name, so there was no reason for the sight to stick in the crevices of his brain like this, sticky like toffee, and equally sweet.
He fished out a piece of tonkatsu from the pan carefully with his chopsticks, setting it aside on some paper towels and frowning a little at the dark brown of the panko. Dang. He’d been practicing more complex recipes, trying to channel Akira’s skills that he’d shown off over the course of their summer road trip, but it wasn’t coming together as easily as he would’ve liked.
Well. He’d eat the slightly burnt one. His mom could have the ones that turned out better.
Lip held lightly between his teeth in concentration as he added a freshly breaded piece of pork to the oil, Ryuji firmly tried to shove his drifting thoughts away, at least long enough to make a successful dinner.
Still…
Even as he set the rice and sliced cabbage out, even as he pulled out his mom’s favorite glass and dug around their fridge for (hopefully not expired) tonkatsu sauce, he kept thinking about it, musing on the feeling that it brought upon him. He wasn’t sad, not exactly, but… wistful, that’s what it was.
But Ryuji was an only child, and always had been, so…what gives, he asked himself with a huff.
His mom, when she got home and settled in to dinner with exuberant praise for his more adventurous cooking, picked up on his mood quickly. Not one to hide things from her, Ryuji explained the afternoon’s brief encounter, and the way he’d been feeling.
His mom watched him for a long moment, before she propped her chin on her hand with a smile. “Could it be that you’re missing someone that reminds you of that sort of relationship? A lot of your friends have moved on lately, haven’t they?”
Ryuji stared at her, mouth open, and she laughed at him, clacking her chopsticks at him with a teasing, “You’re catching flies, Ryuji.”
“Aw, ma, it’s your fault to begin with,” he huffed back, but obediently he closed his mouth and tucked into his dinner properly. It saved him from explaining himself further, while he examined the absolutely earth-shattering thought.
He missed Sophia. That was no surprise. He missed all of the Phantom Thieves, and she was a treasured companion of theirs.
But also–
He considered Sophia his little sister.
And that was a wild thought for him to think over.
Later, after dinner and washing up for the night Ryuji lay in bed and texted out his absolutely boggling realization to Akira–only to toss his phone across the bed at Akira’s response.
You just figured that out? You treated her like your little sister from the time we met her
.
Ryuji could easily picture Akira’s amused grin, even from hundreds of miles away.
–
+1
Ryuji wasn’t sure of many things about what was happening, but he was sure that none of this shit was his fault.
One moment he’d been running to catch the train, and the next, he’d heard a garbled voice coming from the phone in his pocket, and then–
Instead of stepping into the train, he’d stepped into what seemed to be the Metaverse. Maybe not a Palace, and maybe not Mementos, but it was weirdly familiar, in a way that he didn’t know how to describe and kiiiind of gave him the creeps.
It was the deja vu, Ryuji finally decided, striding forward with his yellow-gloved hands curled into fists, as he tried to distract himself from the fact that he’d never been in a situation like this without Akira’s confident form there to help guide him. Deja vu–because for some reason, even though his surroundings were glitchy and fuzzy, he felt like he’d somehow been here before. Still, in lieu of a goal, clear landmark or large, flashing quest marker like in video games, Ryuji couldn’t do anything but stride forward, taking comfort in the familiar presence of Seiten Taisei in the back of his mind.
If nothing else, he could still open a can of whoopass on anything that jumped out at him.
That was better than nothing.
… But nothing jumped out at him, and Ryuji almost felt sheepish for hyping himself up for nothing. He just huffed under his breath a little, and kept on walking, skirting what seemed to be a chunk of a golden statue. Then he needed to avoid a table with a whole tea set on it, only to find his path blocked by a set of sci-fi-esque shipping crates.
It was only after he slipped on an unexpected patch of ice and snow in the middle of nowhere, landing on his ass, that it all clicked. Ryuji stood with a groan, looking around himself with new eyes.
Wait. These were pieces of the Jails they’d taken care of the previous summer, weren’t they? But all jumbled up and glitched out, like they were a piece of corrupted software. He had no idea what that meant, but if the Jails were back, that was serious, and Ryuji needed to find Akira and the other Phantom Thieves stat (if they were even in here, a voice in the back of his mind muttered)--
“Skull!”
Before Ryuji could begin to panic, a familiar voice shattered his thoughts, and he whipped around on automatic, and just as automatically reached out to catch Sophia as she slammed into him with all of the enthusiasm of an AI in her rare physical form.
“You’re here!” She beamed, still clinging to his neck with all of her strength.
Ryuji answered automatically, “Well, yeah, ‘course I’m here.”
Then his brain caught up with his mouth. “Wait, wait, back up. Where’s ‘here’?”
Sophia finally let go of him, dropping to land neatly next to him. Her expression grew solemn, but the way she rocked back and forth from toe to heel gave away just how excited she still was.
“Oh.” She tilted her head. “How strange. I thought you came here on purpose to help me fix this.”
Ryuji arched an eyebrow at that, straightening. “Pshaw, of course I’m gonna help ya now that I’m here.”
It didn’t really matter that he still didn’t know where “here” was, or what the problem she needed help was either. It was Sophia, after all; if she needed him, that settled that. She brightened in response, grinning at him.
“Yay! I knew you would!”
She reached for his hand to tug him onwards, chattering exposition easily as she went. “This is what’s left of the Jails. You can kind of think of it as obsolete legacy code. The Jails are gone, but some of EMMA’s coding has been left behind. Ichinose-san suggested we should clean it up before it causes any problems for the real world, so… here I am!”
“All by yourself?” Ryuji couldn’t help the concern that crept into his tone. Sophia was more than capable, he knew that, it was just… “You shoulda called for us. You know we woulda come.”
There was something in the way that Sophia tilted her head to look at him, bright and trusting and confident, in him, as she said, “You did come! I didn’t even have to call for you, and here you are, just like–bwam!”
There was something in that that melted Ryuji from head to toe, and he couldn’t help but smile, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. Yeah. He was here. And now that he was here, he could make sure she didn’t try to do everything on her own.
“C’mon,” he said, face fixed straight ahead to hide how embarrassed and pleased he was by her confidence in him. “Let’s go find everyone else. Then we can fix this shit together.”
Sophia chirped her assent, and together they strode off into the glitchy mess.