Work Text:
Spring
Your name is Futaba Sakura. You are eighteen years old. You’ve recently graduated high school, and the college you get accepted into for cognitive psience (or, maybe, technically, psychology) is prestigious. It’s also in Kyoto, which is a two-hour train ride from Tokyo.
In theory, you probably could have commuted, if you really felt like it. It would be a pain in the ass, though, and so very not worth it if it only means you’re going to fall asleep in class, but you think you can live on campus, so you don’t mention it. You promised you’d try, at least, anyway, with a promise list and everything.
It’s just a quest, you think. A long quest, but no different, fundamentally, from anything you did in high school.
The first step of your quest is packing. You rope Akira into helping you with it, partly because he’s always around now and partly because you’re still trying to make up the time you lost to that year he had to leave Tokyo when you started high school.
It’s gonna be weird, not having Akira around again. It’s gonna be even weirder, actually, when you don’t have Sojiro around, either. Sure, maybe in the grand scheme of your life you haven’t been living with Sojiro that long, but other than your mother, he’s the only real parent you’ve had. His absence is going to stick out.
“Are you sure you need to bring your Featherman figures to school with you?” Akira asks, peering into the box you’re packing.
“Uh, yeah,” you say. “What else would they do, languish in here? Without me? My babies, Akira.”
Akira glances up at you like he wants to say something, but he keeps his mouth shut. You narrow your eyes at him. He smiles cryptically back.
“Anyways, yes, they’re coming with me,” you say. “They’re important.”
You don’t mention that you’ve had some of them just about as long as you’ve been with Sojiro, how they’ve turned into a key item in and of themselves, but you don’t think you have to.
It takes the two of you hours to get together everything you’re bringing. Most of the monitors are staying here, only in part because they’re attached to the walls, and you’re leaving all of the furniture in place because the apartment you’re renting out is already furnished, and you obviously aren’t bringing everything you own, but even with all of that still in place, it feels… deserted, somehow. Empty. So much of you has been sucked out of it and sorted neatly into little cardboard boxes which sit in the corner of your room.
It makes you sad, for reasons you aren’t sure you could put into words.
Akira must be able to sense that something is wrong, because he wraps an arm around your shoulders and squeezes and says, “It’ll be fun.”
“You have no idea if it’ll be fun,” you say. “You never went to college.”
“You could still ask Haru,” Akira says, “Or Makoto, or Yusuke, or—”
“Okay, okay!” You shove your shoulder into his side and he smiles. “I get it! Besides, I’m gonna see Yusuke all the time, he goes to my school.”
“So you’ll have at least one familiar face there.”
“It’s Inari, though,” you grumble, with no real malice. Yusuke, for all his… Yusuke, is still a good friend. It’ll be nice to see him more regularly.
Assuming he remembers the rest of the world exists long enough to see you, that is.
“And I’m sure you’ll get along fine with Hirata-chan,” Akira says.
“I hope so,” you say, a little more nervously. “Akira, she’s gonna be in my space.”
“You’ve been getting along with her already, right?”
“I mean, yeah, but it’s different living with someone.”
“I’ll be okay.” Akira squeezes your shoulders again, and you lean against his side with a little frown.
“I’m gonna miss you,” you whisper to him.
He doesn’t say anything, just hugs you tighter, setting his head against the top of yours.
The second step on your quest is to load everything into the van that you all borrow from Makoto and her sister and to drive to Kyoto.
By car, Kyoto is six hours away from Tokyo, give or take. Six hours is not, to some people you’ve met online, a long drive. However, the last time you drove anywhere near that far, it was a much more intense road trip during the summer you started high school, and Sojiro’s never gone on a road trip that long, as far as you’re aware, so it feels a lot longer.
You split it into three two-hour chunks, stopping for lunch or to pick up more snacks on each rest stop. Sojiro isn’t used to driving for that long, so at one point Akira takes over, leaving Sojiro to sit in the passenger seat and navigate. You sit in one of the backseats the whole ride, trying not to feel crowded by your boxes all around you.
Kyoto, when you get there, is familiar. It hasn’t changed much since you were last here, and though you admittedly didn’t see a huge part of the city, you see a few familiar landmarks as you get closer to Kyoto University.
You aren’t sure what you’re expecting from Kyoto University. You looked at pictures online, obviously, and you saw it on a map, so you feel like the size shouldn’t shock you as much as it does, but it’s different actually being here versus seeing images on your screen. Everything feels bigger, somehow, more looming than you were expecting it to.
You have one last snack break before Sojiro takes over driving again to find parking behind your building, and all at once, the nervousness starts to build up. For most of the car ride, you were excited about this: it’s a new adventure, after all! But now that the reality of the building is staring you in the face, you aren’t so sure anymore.
Is it too late to back out and say I want to commute? you think, but you don’t say it because Akira is already swinging his way out of the passenger seat to start unloading your things.
“Don’t be nervous,” Sojiro says, twisting to look at you in the backseat. “I know it’s scary now, but you’ll have a nice time.”
“Of course I will,” you say, trying to inject as much confidence into your voice as you can. Sojiro doesn’t look entirely convinced by your show of courage.
“Don’t forget, you can always call us for help,” Sojiro says. “We aren’t abandoning you down here. You know that, yeah?”
“Yeah,” you say. “Of course not.”
This is just your big quest, is all.
“Why don’t I help you bring your stuff up,” Sojiro says after a beat, and you nod. You both get out of the car, and you go to get your key while Sojiro and Akira unload the van.
It’s only a little confusing, talking to the landlord, but then you’re opening the door to your apartment with Akira and Sojiro behind you and suddenly it feels like you’re finally an adult with the key in your hand.
The apartment is clean, and feels open and bright. The windows are open, and the furniture is simple, and you slip off your shoes on the small genkan before you step up into the apartment, box in your hands.
“Who’s—”
The woman the voice belongs to turns the corner. She has dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, and dark eyes that glitter in the overhead lights, and a soft face that brightens when she sees you.
“Futaba!” she says, and you smile back.
“Tsukiko, right?” You say, and Tsukiko nods.
“I’ve been so excited to meet you in person,” Tsukiko says. “Here, let me help you guys. You’re Futaba’s family?”
“Sure am,” Sojiro says, and Akira nods.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Tsukiko says, bowing. “I’m Tsukiko Hirata.”
“Sojiro Sakura,” Sojiro says, inclining his head. “Thanks for agreeing to room with Futaba for the year.”
Tsukiko waves a hand.
“Think nothing of it,” she says. “I’m just as happy to room with her. She seemed really cool from our online chats.”
With Tsukiko’s help, it takes you even less time to get all of your boxes to your room than it took you to load them in the first place. When you’re done, Akira sits on your bed and stares out the window.
“Your roommate seems nice,” he says, and you nod.
“Tsukiko is cool,” you say. “I… think it’ll be nice to live here.”
“I think so too,” Akira says. “See? Nothing to worry about.”
“You haven’t even left,” you say, and Akira snickers.
“You can call me whenever you want,” he says. “It’s not like I’m going to disappear forever.”
He’s not. And you know he’s not, that he’s still going to be around and accessible, but you almost feel like as soon as he’s out of your sight he’s going to stop existing anyway. Moving out like this feels final in a way his moving out hadn’t. Maybe it’s because you knew, the whole time, that he would be coming back.
You wonder what their drive back to Tokyo is like, one person and a lot of boxes fewer.
Classes start. It’s different from high school.
Your classes are all in different buildings, for one, and you find yourself having to rush from place to place. Homework is looser than it was in high school, too, different on a class-by-class basis. You find that you have to use your computer a lot more for this homework.
You and Tsukiko don’t share any actual classes, but that doesn’t mean you don’t sit in the living room together and work on your homework side-by-side. It’s honestly kind of nice. You don’t have to say much of anything if you don’t want to. Tsukiko doesn’t press for it.
You invite Yusuke over for your study sessions, occasionally. You remember how much he ate back in high school, so you make sure you have snacks around the apartment for him when he visits.
The first time he comes over, he stands in the genkan and looks around.
“It’s very nice,” he says. “Very bright.”
He makes a frame around you standing in front of one of the windows. You roll your eyes but smile anyway. It’s nice to see him being the same-old Inari.
“It’s good to see you too,” you say, and Yusuke smiles that serene smile he has.
“It’s always good to see a friend,” he says.
Tsukiko is studying literature, and you’re studying psychology, and Yusuke is studying art, so between the three of you, you manage to cover a lot of information. If only you had one friend doing hard sciences here, you think. Then you’d really have all your bases covered.
You discover that a lot of psychology is old European scientists arguing with each other, which probably shouldn’t surprise you all that much. You wonder when you’re going to get to turn your attention to psience. You know it won’t be in an introductory course, but you still find yourself jittery with excitement.
It feels real, now, in a way that it hadn’t felt real all through high school. Sure, you’d been working toward it that whole time, but it had felt like some sort of distant dream. You’re actually at college now, though.
It’s thrilling. Even if the day-to-day is fairly boring.
You’re going to make it, though. You can do this. You’re Futaba Sakura, after all. You’ve done so much already.
Summer
Yusuke sits in your living room while you do homework. You’re not sure when he started spending more time here than in his own studio, but you’ve gotten used to the occasional sprawl of his art supplies over the available surfaces in the apartment.
The first time he’d brought over all his things, paints and brushes and canvases, Tsukiko had pulled you aside and asked you, “Is he usually like this?”
“What, Yusuke?” You’d said, and nodded. “Yeah, pretty much.”
You’ve all gotten used to each other by now, though. Sometimes you joke that Yusuke is an honorary third roommate, jokes that he takes with grace and a smile.
Right now, he’s sketching, which doesn’t take a whole lot of supplies for him to do. And it’s quiet, and nice, you think, to do your homework near him.
It’s no Leblanc, though.
In high school, you’d gotten used to doing your homework in one of the booths during the day while Akira or Sojiro or both worked the counter. Occasionally, you’d get customers, and those customers would usually pay the small girl with her schoolwork out in the back-corner booth very little attention.
There’s no customers passing through your apartment, though, and the scents of coffee and curry aren’t here, and it’s just you and Yusuke right now.
You wonder what Akira would have to say about what you’re studying right now. He may not have gone to college, but that doesn’t mean that he stopped being interested in learning. You think your mother would have liked him, if she’d ever gotten a real chance to meet him. You don’t count the January when things got weird.
But it’s all… very boring. You aren’t sure why you expected it to be more exciting, but as the semester has settled into a rhythm, you find yourself bored more often than not. You know a lot of what the professors are teaching already, at least in your psychology classes. The homework is easy, and it’s mostly annoying in that it’s time-consuming and feels pointless a lot of that time.
The door swinging open shakes you out of those thoughts as Tsukiko gets home. Yusuke doesn’t even look up from his sketch.
“Hey, guys,” Tsukiko says as she shuts the door and slides off her shoes. “Guess what I found at the store today!”
“What?” You ask, even though you know she’ll tell you anyway. She’s got a big smile on her face, so whatever it is must be exciting.
“Fresh peaches!” Tsukiko announces, holding up her bag. “I got a bunch of them. I thought we could make something with them, maybe.”
That does sound like a fun idea. You haven’t really tried to make any sorts of desserts yet, in your limited forays into the kitchen, but you have no doubt that Tsukiko has some sort of recipe ready and waiting to try out already. She’s a lot better at finding good ones than you are.
“Ah, peaches,” Yusuke says, finally looking up from his sketch. “One of the most delicious parts of summer.”
“Want one?” Tsukiko asks, walking past Futaba in the kitchen. “I got plenty.”
Tsukiko keeps talking as she starts to put away the groceries she’d gotten: “I was thinking we could make a pie or something with some of these. That would be good, right?”
That would be good.
“Could I help?” you ask. You’ve never… tried to make a pie before, but you don’t think it could be that hard, not with help, right? Tsukiko knows what she’s doing better than you do, at least.
“I’d love the help,” Tsukiko says. “You want any part of this pie action, Yusuke?”
“Alas, I fear I may be one too many cooks in the kitchen,” Yusuke says. “I wouldn’t mind trying it once you’re done, however.”
Yeah, that’s about what you expected from him.
“I just need to make some actual progress on this paper first,” you say. It’s not hard, it’s just that you’ve actually found something interesting to do with it that wasn’t strictly what the assignment called for, and it’s been taking up your whole week trying to get the research together for it to make sense.
But it does make sense, and it’s technically what the assignment asked for, even if you have your own spin on it.
“No rush, no rush,” Tsukiko says. “I wasn’t thinking about starting now. I’ve got homework to do, too. But, like, later this week. Before they go bad.”
How quickly do peaches even go bad? You were sort of under the impression they lasted for a while. But you don’t, admittedly, know all that much about fruit, so you might be wrong. A week seems like a short amount of time for food to last, somehow, even if you know most of the leftovers you have here and that you had back in Tokyo were gone before that point.
“Aye-aye,” you say anyway.
It’s not like you’re doing much else besides school. You’ll have time.
The paper is proving… Annoying.
You’re not sure what about it is so bad. Most of the time, it’s fairly simple to get the research citations you need for whatever project you’re working on in class. You’re kind of a whiz at that sort of thing. You’ve been lifting data from questionable, defended servers for years, finding publicly-available articles is nothing in comparison.
You’re not sure if it’s you that’s the problem here or not.
It’s a midterm paper, though, so you have to do a good job on it. You have fewer grades in college than you did in high school, but that just means that every individual one counts for more. It matters more that you get them right.
You’re up late tonight because you were busy all day helping Yusuke out with one of his big midterm projects (you spent most of the time helping him haul things around. You feel, personally, like there should be less hauling things around in art, but you guess that’s part of why you’re not an artist) and you’re trying to be a good friend. There’s a paragraph that just isn’t coming together. You’re not sure if it’s just because you’re tired or not.
Tsukiko gently knocks on your open door, and you look up at her from where you’re sitting criss-cross on your bed, your laptop in front of you. You realize that you forgot to turn the lights on earlier, so it’s really just you sitting in the dark with a computer screen, which is something you’re used to but you’d told Sojiro you would try to stop doing as often because it’s bad for your eyes, or something.
“It’s two in the morning,” Tsukiko whispers. “What are you still doing up?”
“…Homework,” you say, as though that’s a reasonable answer. “What are you doing up?”
“Woke up,” Tsukiko says, and doesn’t elaborate. That’s fine. She doesn’t have to elaborate. “Go to bed soon, okay?”
For a moment, you’re annoyed—she’s not actually your parent. But she’s just looking out for you, because it’s two in the morning and you’re still awake doing homework, and you shouldn’t get mad at her for doing it.
“I will,” you say, and Tsukiko nods and disappears from the dimly-lit doorway.
You don’t go to sleep for another hour, and you’re no closer to actually finishing your paper, too determined to find the perfect article for your topic.
Sojiro isn’t in frame.
“Move the camera down,” you say, adjusting your headphones. All you can see is the roof of Leblanc and the top of the bean shelf.
You’re calling with them because that’s what you do, but usually it’s just phone calls. Akira had apparently finally convinced Sojiro to buy a webcam so they could use Akira’s old, half-functional laptop (you have no idea where he got it from, but he’s had it since you were the Phantom Thieves and apparently hasn’t bothered to replace it) to video call.
“Like this?” Sojiro says as he adjusts the camera. It’s still angled up at the ceiling. You can barely see Akira off to the side, standing and trying not to laugh.
“Sojiro, Sojiro—” Akira says, covering his mouth with his fist. “Let me do it.”
“I never got how to make these things work,” Sojiro gripes as Akira steps forward and angles the camera down. You can finally see Sojiro standing at the counter, frowning slightly. You wave.
“I can see you now!” you say. “Hey!”
Sojiro’s frown melts away and he smiles.
“Hello, Futaba,” he says. “It’s good to see you.”
Akira sticks his tongue out at you behind Sojiro. Sojiro doesn’t notice.
“I’m glad we got it working,” you say.
There were issues downloading it, but you’re pretty sure that’s because Akira’s laptop sucks and is old. You’ve tried to convince him to get a new one multiple times, but he keeps saying it works fine for what he needs it for and refuses. You’ve offered to buy him a new laptop yourself and he’s still said no. You don’t get it. You miss your setup at home, with your PC tower and your monitors. It’s weird only having the two.
“How’s school going?” Sojiro asks.
“Good,” you say. “Boring. I already know all this stuff.”
A lot of it, anyways. You’re not actually going to claim that you know everything in all your classes already, but…
Maybe if you were taking a literature class of some sort you’d be struggling more. You always had trouble with those in high school. Akira always had to help you with your assignments, and if he wasn’t around you’d suck it up and go talk to Sumire. Ann and Ryuji would offer, but…
Their advice wasn’t very good.
“At least you’re not struggling with your assignments,” Sojiro says. “College isn’t easy, Futaba. You’re an exceptionally bright girl.”
“Yeah,” you say. “I know.”
You don’t mention the ways your perfectionist tendencies have been rearing their heads. It wasn’t much of a problem when you were just teaching yourself the information from textbooks lifted off the internet, but there weren’t any stakes when you were just teaching yourself. You have grades for this stuff now.
It was a problem in high school, too, but at least you had Akira there to remind you not to get too wrapped up in it. Akira isn’t there during your lonely one-in-the-mornings where it’s just you and your laptop, searching for the ideal wording and getting stuck.
You know your mother was like this, too. You remember your mother being like this, not being able to stop a task until she’d done it perfectly. You remember the ways it made you both miserable when she’d get trapped in a cycle of searching for perfection.
It’s making you miserable now.
You don’t mention it.
“What’ve you been doing that hasn’t been studying?” Akira asks. You chew your lip.
“Tsukiko’s been teaching me how to cook,” you say.
“How’s that been going?” Akira asks, almost laughing. You stick your tongue out at him.
“Fine, for your information,” she says. “I haven’t ruined anything I’ve made.”
“Maybe I can teach you some of my recipes,” Sojiro says. “Next time you come up here, we’ll work on it.”
Next time you come up here hangs in the air. You haven’t gone back as often as you would have liked.
It’s a little bit your own fault. You know you won’t be able to focus if you’re in Tokyo, because you’ll be too busy catching up with Sojiro and Akira. You also just… Forget.
You lose track of time. It’s always been a problem. You know neither of them are going to hold it against you.
“Maybe I’ll go up there next weekend,” you say, and you all know that you might and you might not.
“If you decide to, we’ll be here,” Akira says.
“What about you guys?” you ask, wanting to change the topic. “What’ve you been up to? Has Akira picked up another job?”
“I don’t have that many,” Akira says. Sojiro raises his eyebrows. Clearly, that’s not true. You snicker.
“How many is it, then?” you ask. Akira fiddles with his bangs.
“…Six,” he says. “To be fair—”
“’Kira, dude, that’s so many,” you say.
“They’re part-timers,” Akira mutters. “And Leblanc.”
You wonder how Akira even fits them all without losing his mind. You think it’s only a matter of time. You’re exhausted just with your classes.
It’s nice, talking with Sojiro and Akira, getting to see them. You miss them. You miss just getting to be around them. You really should go visit them.
You have to clear time eventually. Your assignments aren’t even that hard, you’re just getting stuck on trying to make it good. You can’t half-ass your assignments the way Tsukiko can. You have something in common with Yusuke in that, at least. Neither of you can stand to do less than your very best.
You’ll figure it out eventually, you’re sure.
You pass the fruit bowl sitting on the counter and you can see that Tsukiko brought more peaches. You pick one up and toss it between your hands. Maybe it’ll make you feel better to eat some fruit.
You take a bite, and forget how messy peaches are to actually eat, and you carefully retrieve a napkin from the cabinet. You don’t even like peaches that much, you think as you slide into one of the chairs in the kitchen to eat your messy peach. You don’t know what you’re doing.
You throw away the pit wrapped in your used-up napkin and your mouth still doesn’t stop feeling sticky until you shower.
Autumn
You spent your break back in Tokyo, and for some reason, you don’t feel particularly refreshed when you get back to campus.
Usually summer break makes you feel better. Usually, you return to school feeling re-energized. You’re able to work better, you procrastinate less, you sleep normal amounts instead of far too little or far too much. But you don’t feel better this time.
“You should sleep,” Tsukiko says while she sits in the kitchen and lets Yusuke sketch her. Yusuke looks up from his sketchbook and looks at you, too.
“You do look exhausted,” Yusuke says. “Perhaps a nap wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
You don’t have any homework to do to justify being awake. You still don’t want to sleep, though, because you spent most of your summer break passed out on the incredibly-uncomfortable couch in Leblanc’s attic and you’re sort of tired of sleeping.
“I’ll be fine,” you say.
“Are you sure?” Tsukiko says, frowning slightly. You nod.
“I’m just out here to get a snack,” you say. Your box of crackers you keep in your room is empty, and it’s been empty for the last few days, and you just haven’t gotten it together to replace it yet.
“You should leave your room more often,” Yusuke says pointedly, pointing at you with his pencil. “You wouldn’t want to fall back into old habits.”
You scrunch up your nose.
“Point taken,” you say, even though you haven’t really felt the urge to lock yourself in your room and avoid everybody since your Palace collapsed. You’re just… Busy, most of the time, and your side-projects are all on your computer, and you can’t really move it. You’d use the laptop Haru bought you as a starting-college gift, except you use it exclusively for your class assignments and it doesn’t have the sort of space you’d need for your big code projects, anyway.
You open the fridge. You stare at the blueberries you’d bought last time you were at the store and consider them. You pick them up and shut the fridge.
“Have fun,” you say, and disappear back into your room.
The blueberries taste sour. You don’t know if you’re a fan of that.
You’ve been getting good at cooking.
That’s probably what leads you to deciding you can cook curry on your own. You miss it, and your course load this time is a lot worse than it was before, mostly because of the literature class you have to take. You call Akira and get him to send you a version of Sojiro’s recipe and you type it up and print it out. You pick up all the ingredients you need. You even have to buy a pot for it, because you don’t have one big enough.
You have everything you need.
“Do you want help?” Tsukiko asks from the island. You shake your head.
“I’ve got this,” you say. And you feel like you do, at least. You hope you do.
You have all your ingredients laid out on the counter, the pot on the stove. You have a set of bowls to put your ingredients in after you’ve prepped them, the way Tsukiko showed you.
“I believe in you,” Tsukiko says.
She hangs out with you anyway while you cut everything up. It’s a lot more time-consuming than you were expecting it to be; an hour passes, and you realize you’ve only gotten through maybe half of your prep work. Why does curry have so many ingredients?
You sort them all into steps: you put the apple with the potatoes and set the bay leaves on top of the carrots in their bowl and you make sure you clean off your cutting board after you cut up your chicken. The onions make you cry, and Tsukiko reminds you to take a break before you have the opportunity to hurt yourself because you can’t see.
You stretch when you’re done cutting everything and you finally turn on the heat for the pot.
You can see bits of onion that didn’t get cut up as small as you wanted them to be, and it bothers you, but it’s too late to do anything about it now. You try to cut them in half with your spoon anyway, because you know it’s going to keep bothering you.
You add the chicken. It starts to smell like garam masala. Tsukiko disappears to the couch to do her homework. You can’t hear much of anything over the sound of things cooking, not until you add the liquid parts and the noise stops almost all at once.
Once everything’s added, you realize you don’t know how to tell if it’s simmering versus if it’s boiling. There’s a label on the stove for simmer, though, so you turn the heat down to it.
You make the roux, panicking slightly through the heat being on. You set it aside. You start the rice.
And wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Tsukiko makes instant noodles and goes to bed. You sit at the counter and hold your head in your hands. Is it just too cold? You don’t know. You turn up the heat. It’s so late. Your eyes hurt from staying open.
It finally cooks. Your neck hurts as you mix in the roux. It’s so late. It’ll be worth it. You miss Sojiro’s curry so much. You add in the last pieces. You stir until the chocolate is melted for sure.
You set up a bowl. You sit down. You take a bite.
It’s—
It’s not the same.
It doesn’t taste the same as Sojiro’s. You push your glasses out of your face and press the heels of your hands into your eyes and try not to cry. It doesn’t taste like Sojiro’s, it doesn’t taste like Akira’s, it tastes different and you miss them—
You push your bowl out of the way so you can lay your head on the counter and cry. Tsukiko is asleep. It’s just you in the kitchen. You want to go to sleep. You have homework to do tomorrow. You should have started earlier. You should have just gone home and gotten curry there. Why haven’t you just gone home? Because of your homework? Who cares about your homework—
You care. You care about your homework. You think if you screwed up this semester just because you missed your family’s curry you’d really break down. You just… You miss…
You miss your mother tonight.
You miss going to see Sojiro with her. You miss heating up leftover curry and rice with her late at night after she’s just gotten home from work. You miss sitting in the kitchen with her while she cooks. You miss her, you haven’t missed her this badly in so long but tonight you feel like you’re fifteen in your room haunted by visions of her again. You almost feel like if you lifted your head, you’d see her looming over your shoulder, her work badge still on the way those visions always were.
But that was your Palace, and that was years ago, and she’s not there when you look, obviously.
You should call Akira. He’d answer, even if you woke him up with it. You know he would. You don’t. He should sleep too.
You should just sleep here at the counter. You should at least finish eating, even though it’s not the same, even though it sucks.
You pick your spoon back up and you finish eating. You put the lid on the pot. You don’t feel like putting it away right now. You’ll do it in the morning. You don’t even unplug the rice. You make sure the heat is off on the stove and you go to bed.
You dream about your mother for the first time in years.
You buy apples. You mean to do something with them, but the thought of cooking makes you feel terrible.
So the apples sit in the fruit bowl, and every time you look at them all you can think of is Maruki’s fucking garden and your mother holding your hand that winter and how you hadn’t wanted to listen to Akira when he’d come to tell you about her, and you regret buying them.
They rot in the fruit bowl, melting day by day. They would stay like that, too, if you lived alone. As it is, Tsukiko notices and takes it upon herself to deal with it.
“Futaba,” Tsukiko says gently as she washes the fruit bowl out after the apples had semi-liquefied from your negligence. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s fine,” you say, even though you sort of feel sick all the time now. You’d been up all night, proofreading an essay you’d already proofread three times. There’s only so much homework you can do, though, so many ways you can distract yourself from the pit in your stomach that had opened up sometime over the summer.
Break, sleeping in your Tokyo room all day and seeing Akira and Sojiro in the brief stretches you were awake, feels so long ago now.
“I haven’t seen you in a few days,” Tsukiko says. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” you say. You technically still have some homework you could be working on. You don’t know why you’re sitting here in the kitchen today. You could have just taken your breakfast back to your room with you, but Tsukiko had already been here, and you just…
Tsukiko gives you a disbelieving look. She sets the fruit bowl in the drying rack and shuts off the water, reaching for the dish towel hanging on the oven handle.
“You know, if something’s wrong,” Tsukiko says, and you shake your head.
“It’ll really be fine,” you say. “I’m just busy.”
“If you say so,” Tsukiko says doubtfully. “Hey, there’s going to be a hot chocolate night down by the field tomorrow, if you wanted to come with Yusuke and I.”
You appreciate the extension of the offer.
“Sorry, I have homework,” you say, and feel only a little bad for the way Tsukiko’s face falls.
“Yeah,” Tsukiko says. “No worries. I still want to see you more often, though, Futaba. It’s not… good to stay cooped up in your room all the time.”
You know. You know better than most people.
“I’ll come hang out more often,” you say. You mostly mean it.
You don’t actually know if Yusuke is still coming over or not.
You think he probably is, because you think you can hear him sometimes through your headphones and he and Tsukiko get along, but you haven’t actually seen him in weeks. You think that’s probably bad.
But that’s kind of whatever, because you’re pretty sure you’re near the top of your class, and that’ll look good later, when…
When what?
You know you’re doing all this for a job in cognitive psience, but what does that even look like? The field is even smaller than it was when your mother was alive, courtesy of Shido. No one is going to take you seriously. This is all a mess. What did you think you were even going to accomplish with this? It’s not like you’re ever going to get the thrill of the Phantom Thieves back.
You could always just go back to hacking. You wouldn’t need a real job if you did that. You could just… take whatever you needed.
You sigh. No. You should see this through. You’d have wasted the whole time you’ve been here otherwise, and you can’t stand that.
You just… miss everybody. If you think too hard about it, you’ll just be sad about it.
You get back to your homework instead.
Winter
You go back to Tokyo for winter break, short as it is. You celebrate Christmas with Akira and Sojiro, the way you have for years now. You sleep through most of it, the way you’d slept through most of summer break, and you hate it. You only have so much time with your family, and you’re just—wasting it.
“Hey, are you doing okay at school?” Sojiro asks you. You look over at him, frowning.
“Yeah,” you say. “Why?”
“You’ve just been…” Sojiro pauses, visibly trying to put his words together. Instead, he sighs. “I’m just worried about you, Futaba, you know that.”
Yeah. You do. Sojiro has always worried about you, and it’s sweet, seriously, you’re just… tired. You’re not sure what he could do for that. You’re not sure what Akira could do for that if he asked, either. It’s not like there’s a Metaverse to enter anymore. If there were, you’d just…
You don’t know, actually, what you’d do if the Metaverse was still around. It would make going into cognitive psience much easier, you think. You wonder whether there’s even anything in the field for you to study without the Metaverse around. You wonder whether there’s a point to what you’re doing.
“Well, I’m doing okay,” you say. “Sorry to worry you, Sojiro.”
Akira’s got the same concerns as he drives you to the train station.
“I know how hard it can be to move,” Akira says. “And I know you said you were adjusting fine back during the summer, but I just wanted to ask again, since you’ve been out of it the whole time you’ve been home.”
Have you? You hadn’t really noticed, but on the other hand, you’ve mostly been asleep. That’s not exactly ordinary behavior from you anymore. You’re actually active now; it’s been years, actually, since you falling asleep for days was a regular thing. It’s been years since you felt this tired all the time, like you might pass out and not wake up until days later. It’s… a weird feeling, actually thinking about it. You’re not sure when it settled its way into your bones like the cold that’s permeated the air, or when you got used to it again.
You don’t remember how you got rid of it last time.
No, wait. Yes you do. You can’t do that again, though. It’s not physically possible. There’s no Metaverse for you to go into, no Shadow to come to terms with, no Persona to awaken to. It’s just you, and your thoughts, and your feelings. How do normal people get rid of it?
You think Akira might know what it feels like. You remember the first year he was back home with you and Sojiro, the way he’d been barely animated, laying in bed and staring at the ceiling for hours. But you’re still able to do things, you’re still doing great in your classes, you’re just… also so exhausted by it.
As long as you’re focusing on your schoolwork, though, you’re not focusing on how bad you feel. It’s easier to become something outside of your physical experience, to just sink into the distance that work gives you, whether it be your actual homework or your code projects. It’s part of why you picked up coding and hacking in the first place. It was easier to ignore the way your family members treated you if you weren’t really there.
“Futaba?” Akira asks, and you shake yourself out of your thoughts and glance at him.
“Sorry,” you say. “Lost in thought.”
Akira frowns slightly, keeping his eyes on the road.
“This is sorta what I was talking about,” he says. “Seriously, if there’s something up…”
“I’d tell you, doofus,” you say, even though you haven’t been, because you have to be fine, at the end of the day. You have to be able to live more or less on your own, to be independent, because, because…
You don’t want to have to rely on Sojiro forever. You want to give back some of the endless well of patience and care and love he’s given you ever since he rescued you from your uncle. You know you don’t have to, and that he’ll love you forever regardless, but you… you want to prove it. You can’t do what Akira did, set himself up to help with the shop and funnel money from his infinite part-timers into it and into their lives, but you can do this. You can get a degree. You can. You’ve done—insane things already. You can’t have peaked before you even got into high school.
So it doesn’t matter if you feel bad, and distant, and weird and numb and a little like you did when you had a Palace. You can push through. You pushed through that.
“Uh-huh,” Akira says. You shove his shoulder, and he goes, “Not while I’m driving—!”
“Seriously,” you say, and feel only a little bad for sort-of lying to him. “I’d tell you.”
“Okay,” he says, and doesn’t push any further.
You wave him off at the gate and he watches you until you turn a corner and leave his field of vision.
You can’t do this anymore, actually.
You find yourself in your room, staring at your computer screen as words blend into each other at three in the morning, hands digging into your hair. Nothing on the page is making any sense. You should sleep. You can’t sleep, you need this reading for tomorrow. But it had taken so long to even get here when you’ve been having more and more trouble dragging yourself out of bed for class every day, more and more trouble doing your homework, doing your own projects, even.
Is this really how Akira felt, that one year? Is this really how you felt? It’s different, now, knowing you already fought your way out of this pit once and that now you’re back.
You’re back, you’re back, and what’s even the point of trying if you’re just going to end up here over and over and over again? When it’s so fucking hard to drag yourself out of the pit? When it had literally taken a magical second world to do it last time?
You need to get up. You can’t stare at your screen anymore. This reading isn’t going to get done, and you’re going to have to bullshit your way through class tomorrow, but it’ll be fine. It’s just one assignment out of many. But you know if you let it that’ll stack up and up and up, less from personal experience and more from listening to Ryuji talk about his own missing assignments. And if you do badly enough, you’ll fail classes, and you can’t do that, can’t afford to waste money like that.
Maybe a drink will help you.
You drag yourself out of your seat and to the door and open it. It’s dark in the hall, light from your room spilling against the opposite wall. You don’t turn on the hall light as you pad out to the kitchen.
The lights are on there, dim but on; you wonder momentarily if someone forgot to turn them off before you see Tsukiko in the kitchen, pacing a circle between the counters. You pause in the open space. She doesn’t seem to have noticed you yet. You could just go back to your room, give up on your quest for a glass of water, but before you can make the decision to retreat Tsukiko looks up and sees you and jumps.
“Oh,” she says. “Futaba. You scared me.”
“Sorry,” you say, rubbing your arm. “What are you doing awake?”
“I was about to ask you that,” Tsukiko says. “Are you good? You look like you’re about to cry.”
“Yeah,” you say, rubbing your eyes under your smudged glasses just in case. “Sorry, trouble sleeping. I was just coming to get some water.”
You sound weird to yourself. Maybe it’s because you haven’t had any real reason to talk for a while. You’ve mostly just been in your room, or silently going to class to take notes. You haven’t seen Tsukiko in… a week? Something like that.
Wow. You lost track of time. Yusuke had warned you, but you hadn’t actually thought it’d get this bad again. At least it’s not longer. You don’t know if you could have come back from longer on your own. You hadn’t been able to before. You walk into the kitchen proper and get one of your mugs from the cabinet.
“I haven’t seen you in a bit,” Tsukiko says, echoing your thoughts. “Seriously, everything okay?”
You put your glass under the sink and turn it on. The sound of water filling your cup is the only noise for a minute.
“Yeah,” you say, and stare at your mug. You can see the bottom, enlarged and warped. “Just… tired, I guess.”
“You should get some rest,” Tsukiko says gently. You shake your head.
“No, it’s,” you start, and then your voice catches in your throat.
“It’s…?”
“Fine.” You turn to go back to your room. You don’t feel better. You feel worse, actually, you think.
The mug slips from your hand, and hits the floor, and breaks. You yelp. Tsukiko jumps back. Water covers the floor along with cracked bits of ceramic.
Your breath hitches in your throat and you feel tears well up in your eyes. The mug itself wasn’t anything special—it’s kitschy, actually, some silly touristy mug from Tokyo that Akira had slipped into your box with a wink and a smile and a, “To remind you of home.” Maybe that’s why it’s upsetting. Maybe it’s just because it broke, and it feels like you’re about to, and there’s water all over the floor and your mind is blank on how to fix it even though you’ve handled spills before.
“Sorry,” you say, pushing your glasses up out of your face and wiping at your eyes. You take in a rattly breath. “I’ll—”
“No, it’s okay,” Tsukiko rushes to say. “Here, I’ve got it.”
Everything feels too much, feels choked-up and heavy. Tsukiko picks up the broken mug and sets it on the counter. You feel frozen in place as Tsukiko cleans up your mug, shards of ceramic on the counter and a towel set on the floor to mop up the water. Tears spill hot and unbidden down your cheeks, and then they won’t stop.
You lean against the counter and let out a shaky sob, loud only in the relative silence of the kitchen. Tsukiko’s head whips up to you.
“Oh, no, I’m sorry, did I—”
“No,” you say, taking your glasses off and putting them on the counter next to the broken mug. “No, it’s not—not about the mug, I don’t know what it’s about, I’m sorry.”
Which isn’t entirely true, you sort of know what it’s about, but, whatever, honestly. You just…
Tsukiko looks at you sadly, like she knows.
“Hey,” Tsukiko says. “What do you say we ditch classes tomorrow and go on a big long walk? I heard that helps.”
Helps with what, Tsukiko doesn’t say. She doesn’t have to. You sniffle.
“Yeah,” you say. “Okay.”
“We’ll get Yusuke to come,” she says. “I don’t think he has any classes tomorrow, and he’s been talking about getting out to that park nearby to paint anyway.”
You nod. That sounds nice, honestly.
“Yeah,” Tsukiko says. “Let’s do it.”
You set aside the broken pieces of your mug along the back of the counter. You’ll… put it back together later. You’ll pick up some superglue on the way home and piece it back together and it’ll be like it never broke in the first place.
That’s not true. But maybe it’ll be okay, anyway.
The park is nice.
It’s the middle of winter, so there’s not many leaves on any of the trees, and there’s weird clumps of snow in the shadowed areas from that storm you got last week, but it’s nice. Yusuke carries a canvas and easel under one arm and has his bag of art supplies slung over one shoulder. You wonder how he’s going to set any of it up in the mud. Tsukiko is wrapped up in her nice coat, a to-go cup of coffee in her hands.
“It’s chilly out here,” Tsukiko says. You nod. You haven’t really felt up to talking all day. It feels a little bit like back before high school, when you’d gone quiet sometimes and not been able to come back. Sojiro had always been patient with you when you got like that, even the occasional time it happened in high school, and Tsukiko is no different.
And it really is nice out, other than the chilliness. You’ve got your jacket zipped up and everything for it for once, gloves on your hands. Yusuke seems unbothered, but Yusuke hardly ever seems bothered by the weather.
They set up somewhere halfway along the trail, and Yusuke sets up his supplies, and you sit around with him on a tarp that Tsukiko brought along and you tear apart a pomegranate between the two of you as you watch him paint. Something settles weirdly in your chest as you take in the scene. They’re… your friends. They really are. You aren’t sure what you were worried about. You aren’t sure why you were so scared to talk to them in the first place.
You should… you should call Sojiro. You should visit. You shouldn’t do what Akira does, that frustrating thing where he pretends he’s fine all the time even though everyone knows him better than that.
Yeah. You think you’ll head up to Tokyo this weekend and see them.
“Hey,” Akira says as he picks you up from the train station. He catches you in a weird side-hug, and Morgana chirps from his shoulder an annoyed, “Let me say hi, too!”
“Hi, Mona,” you say, patting his head. He puts his paws on Akira’s shoulder and flicks his tail.
“Something change?” Akira asks as he drives you back home, looking up at you in the rearview mirror. You shrug, petting Morgana on your lap.
“Not really,” you say. “Just… I guess I had a wake-up call.”
“Wake-up call,” Akira echoes, eyebrows raised. You look away.
“That I might not be doing as well as I thought I was,” you say. Akira hums in understanding.
“Moving’s hard,” he says, like that explains it all, and it doesn’t, and it does, and it’s confusing and weird but you think he gets it, anyway, even if he doesn’t really say it.
You make your way back to the house, and you set your bag down on your bed and stare at your monitors across the room. Akira’s at Leblanc right now, and Morgana’s with him, so it’s just you here for the moment.
It feels weird being back here during the middle of the semester. You have homework you have to do while you’re here. You don’t want to do it. Maybe you can do it with Sojiro and Akira while they work. You sit on your bed next to your bag and lean on your elbows and heave a sigh.
You’re exhausted. You think that’s a fair place to start. You’ll figure out the rest with your family.
Later, you head to Leblanc as Akira and Sojiro are closing. You pass their last customer on the way in, and you take a moment to just breathe in the scent of coffee and curry and to feel the warmth of the cafe through your jacket. You slide into one of the seats at the counter and watch Akira finish doing the dishes.
“Let’s just do dinner over here,” Sojiro says as he sees you. Akira looks up, between Sojiro and you, and nods.
“Mona’s gonna be upset,” you say. Sojiro snorts.
“Your cat is spoiled enough as is,” he says. “He can wait a little bit for dinner back at the house.”
“He’ll complain,” Akira seconds. Sojiro waves him off, and Akira fails to hide his grin. You find yourself smiling, too.
“I vote curry for dinner,” you say.
“Of course you do,” Sojiro says, no actual heat to his voice, just pretend gruffness that makes your heart feel warm with familiarity and love.
Akira slides around the counter to sit next to you as Sojiro plates up curry for you three, and as Sojiro walks around the counter to sit on your other side, he pulls you into a side-hug that turns into a ruffle of your hair.
“Good to see you home for a little bit, Futaba,” he says. Akira nods, mouth already full.
Yeah. It’s nice to be back.
You’ll figure out school tomorrow. Tonight, it’s just you and Sojiro and Akira, and life feels more or less okay. That’s what’s really important to you, right now. Everything else can come later.
You smile, and eat with your family.