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Finding those poems forgotten on the seat of the Velvet Room had been amusing for Margaret, but this… She was trying so hard not to cackle that Igor was shooting her a look.
“Margaret,” he hummed, happy to find a small crack in the monotony of life in the Velvet Room, “I’ve never seen you with that book before. What is it?” He craned his neck so that he could get a better look at the cover. In response, the now openly laughing Margaret clutched it to her breast protectively.
“Oh, nothing, nothing!” she reassured him. “It’s rather juvenile, I must admit. Just a… ah… A book of unsavoury jokes! Yeah, that’s what it is. And let me tell you, it’s bad.”
“Oh?” An intrigued gleam took over the old man’s eyes. “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind sharing one with me?”
Crap. Margaret looked down at the page she was on in Marie’s diary, pretending like she was looking for the best joke to share with her employer amongst the handwritten lines. “Hm… How about this one?” Improv was never her strong suit, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Looking up from the worn leather journal with an innocent smile, Margaret asked, “What is the difference between a blonde and a mosquito?”
He grinned mischievously. “I don’t know, what?”
“The mosquito stops sucking when you smack it!!”
“HA!” Igor wheezed and slapped his knee. The music stopped immediately as Belladonna and Nameless could be heard cracking up, too. The woman cringed inwardly at seeing the Velvet Room so lively. It was… uncanny, to put it simply. He seemed to be satisfied, however, and let her keep reading after that. Today must have been the luckiest day of her damn life; not only had she actually found Marie’s diary, she was getting away with reading it right in front of Igor! And if that weren’t big enough, she now had an excuse as to why she was laughing her ass off while reading it.
And let me tell you; by the time she got to the more recent entries, Margaret was thanking every lucky star in the night sky that Igor wasn’t suspicious of her, because by then she wouldn’t have been able to suppress her laughter if her mouth had been shut with super glue.
Take this entry, for Instance:
15/9/2011
My dreams last night were pretty weird, probably because I spent all day with Yu yesterday– AHHHH!! I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT I’M ACTUALLY CALLING HIM THAT INSTEAD OF NARUKAMI!!!! AAAAH!
I think I might have forgotten to write about what happened yesterday with me and him, so let me tell you now.
(Margaret noted slyly that the penmanship was far less neat beyond this point.)
It all started when I pointed at the weird white thing with two weird wheels in front of Yu’s house and asked what it was. He called it some weird word I’ve never heard but it sounded like Mutter Sickle or something. AND THEN HE SAID, “wanna go for a ride with me” and I said where and he said to the beach. My heart started beating a little quickly because I was imagining sitting with him by the sea during the sunset just him and me holding hands so I said yes. But what i didn’t know is that WHEN YOU RIDE THAT THING YOU HAVE TO PRESS YOURSELF UP AGAINST THE PERSON RIDING IT!!!!!!! IT WAS LIKE I WAS GIVING HIM A HUG THE WHOLE TIME OH MY GOD!!!
I hope he didn’t hear my heart beating, because it sounded really loud to me. I was squeezed up to him pretty close, so I’m crossing my fingers that he didn’t
So anyways, me and Yu were walking down by the beach, right? And what do you know the sun’s going down and I’m right there with him and its quiet and HE ASKS IF I WANT TO SIT WITH HIM!!! OH MY GOD!!! IT WAS SO ROMANTIC so of course I tell him yes and we’re sitting right next to each other and I was kind of just sitting there getting nervous because I was thinking about maybe resting my head on his shoulder or putting my hand on his like I saw in the movie he took me to the other day.
But you see it was then that I got a great idea, I said I was cold and that I needed to get closer to him so that I could warm up. NOT ONLY DID HE LET ME, HE ALSO GAVE ME HIS JACKET!!! IM SO IN LOVE WITH THIS BOY AAAAAAH!
Oh, and let me tell you about my dream I had about Yu. I was sitting in the bathtub when he came in the room with just a towel on and he–
“To see you laughing so hard, Margaret… My, but there really must be some good ones in there! Would you mind loaning that joke book to me sometime?”
“PWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA— OH MY GOD– Oh, uh, huh? Yeah, yeah, sure, just when I’m done reading it. It’s just a lot to take in, you know.”
There was the first truthful thing she had said all day. Indeed, as funny as it all was, it was a hell of a thing having all of her budding suspicions about Marie and the boy being confirmed right there. I mean, sure, she and Igor had privately joked once or twice that Marie may have had some extra reasons for being so eager to leave the Velvet Room more often once he started showing up, but this… A bathtub? Really? And that’s not even mentioning the pages upon pages of poetry and drawings in the book, all of them with things like “in sanguine amour my wits elude me” and other such bosh written in them.
Oh, this was just perfect! Seeing Marie get so flustered at her poetry being revealed was funny, but just imagine the guest seeing this! Imagine—
Margaret got an idea.
Yosuke walked right up to Yu’s desk with a big dumb smile on his face. As weird as he thought it was that his friend was only in his shirt today, he didn’t think enough of it to make a big fuss. “Hey, guess what I just heard!” Yu looked up at him with a curious expression. The brown-haired boy continued, “When they’re sitting in back of you, it’s like a squeeze play!”
The boy sitting down asked, “What? As in, when you’re putting a baseball team together?”
Yosuke pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head disappointedly. “Er, no, not that kind of squeeze. How do I put it? I guess it’s more like, smooshing? I guess what I’m trying to say is, like, how when a girl’s sitting behind you on a motorcycle, they press right up against your back!”
At that point, Yu instantly got what Yosuke was trying to say, because he had just had this exact experience with Marie the other day. He didn’t really know what he was expecting when he had offered to take her for a ride, but he had suddenly realized what he was getting into when he felt the ‘they’ Yosuke was talking about right now. He was surprised that Marie didn’t seem to notice or care that he had almost crashed the moped a couple times because he wasn’t paying attention to the road.
Ever humble, though, Yu kept his usual deadpan face and played dumb.
“Huh? I don’t really know what you’re saying.”
“Come on, bro!” said the exasperated Yosuke. “Don’t make me spell it out– You know, just… just nevermind. Uh, you wanna go to the park and just chill?”
Yu finished packing his bag with a smile and stood up from his desk, politely shaking his head. “Sorry, but I got something important to take care of tonight.”
“Homework?”
“Nah, I was actually planning on using the vending machine over and over so I can cheese the roulette mechanic and get infinite drinks for free.”
Yu Narukami casually speed-walked out of the classroom, leaving his bewildered friend in the dust.
Ka-chink, Plunk. Ka-chink, Plunk. Ka-chink, plunk.
Yu looked down at the flood of soda cans at his feet and decided that even if it wasn’t his best haul, this would probably be a good cutoff point.
Quietly, calmly, he bent down and methodically stuffed his three hundred and forty two Dr. Salt Neos into his backpack and shirt so that he could carry them off to the Dojima house. The boy had put about half of the cans away when he realized that he would probably have to make two trips. Cursing his pants for not being just a little bigger, he undid his belt and stuffed what few cans could fit down his waistband before waddling off down the road to the house. Escaping the concerned looks Dojima and Nanako were giving him, the boy dumped the cans on the counter and started sprinting back to the drink machine when the shining blue portal to the Velvet Room caught his eye.
“Hm.” He thought about the Personas in his arsenal and how badly Shadow Teddie was kicking his ass in the last palace. If he didn’t want an embarrassment like that to happen again, it probably wouldn’t do to only be using slime.
Thinking about what persona he wanted to fuse, Yu stepped into the portal and was greeted to a sight that he was now beginning to accept as familiar: Igor and Margaret placidly sitting at their places with Marie being totally absent. Usually, when this happened, there was a scrap of paper on the floor with some poetry…
Yu looked down onto the floor and was greeted by a well-used book. It was soft-covered, made of chic black leather, kind of like Marie’s boots. A ribbon that acted as a placemarker was stuck on the spine for easy page-keeping.
“Woah. Ok. That’s…” Not even realizing that Igor and Margaret seemed to be waiting intently for his reaction, Yu picked up the book and flipped to the page being marked by the ribbon. The first thing he noticed was that everything was hand-written. The hand-writing was the exact same cursive script that usually appeared on the poetry scraps. Even the black pen used to write the words seemed to be the same. The second thing he noticed…
Oh, and let me tell you about my dream I had about Yu. I was sitting in the bathtub when he came in the room with just a towel on and he…
His heart dropped. A part of him wanted to sink into the floor and disappear. The other…
I mean, how could I have said no when he put it like that? With that face he was making… God, how I wish I was as brave in real life as I was in my dreams. But I was still able to ask him for that hug, so I’m making progress!
“His face is priceless.”
“Yes, it definitely is. He’s probably surprised that we know how to have fun.”
And he started splashing the water on me, and that was when I noticed that there were rose petals floating on the bubbly surface of the bath. I picked one up with my mouth and I just went for it…
This… There was no way. How the hell did Marie even know what… What THAT meant?
She was… her what was how?!
Yu realized that he was almost at the end. He read quicker and quicker, more than ready to be done with this.
So I know that usually when I write about my dreams I do a little analysis, but I’m pretty sure I know what this means. God, I really do wish I was braver. Maybe one of these days… I mean, I just keep waiting for the perfect time, but a part of me knows that there’s never going to be a ‘perfect moment.’ So, I guess there I’m sort of conflicted. I just don’t know how I’d even bring that up.
It was then and there that every iota of his disgust and confusion vanished. In its place was an overwhelming sense of understanding and… was it pity? No, pity was a horrible word to describe it. What he felt was compassion for whoever wrote this. And if the little nod to him loaning his jacket away was anything to go off of…
Yu turned to the interior cover. In the same neat, handwritten letters, it read, ‘This book belongs to Marie. If found, please leave somewhere at the Inaba Central Shopping District.’
There it was.
His mouth gaping open, the guest looked up at the Velvet Room’s dwellers. “Is this…?”
“What do you think?” asked Igor, his usual grin taking on a sly cast. Margaret had a similar look on her face and was winking, as if to say, ‘play along and keep this between you and me, alright?’
Sadly for her, though, Yu was in too much shock to even notice.
“I just… I can’t believe… Is this really what she thinks of me? How long have you two…”
The humour vanished from Igor and Margaret’s faces. The latter noticeably stiffened and started signaling for Yu to cut it out.
Igor’s mouth curled unpleasently. As mild a gesture as it was, the old man’s unusual features made it seem like a piercing glare. “Show me the book.”
Suddenly, the Aria of the Soul stopped playing. Belladonna and Nameless must have been watching, too. Margaret started cringing as if she had opened a box of cookies only to find a dead wombat within it. Narukami gingerly placed the book in Igor’s lean, outstretched hand.
The man inspected the cover and then went to the saved page to see what his guest had just read. When he saw it, his expression tangibly darkened. His eyes grew wild, maddened with the indignation of having been tricked. Not only was he furious at his assistant, he was furious at himself. He could not believe that he had allowed this to happen.
A blue light shone on them, and Marie stepped into the room. Ugh. They were all looking at her poems again.
The black-haired girl walked up, ready to give her usual speech about how they shouldn’t read her stuff, when she saw a book in Igor’s hand; a book with her handwriting, her words that had been written by her black felt-tipped pen. Margaret wore a regretful frown. Igor’s mouth was open with disbelief and shock.
Yu was looking at her.
It took Marie a second to realize what was going on. It would take her even longer to accept it. There was just no way, right? Not even in her worst nightmares did anybody– let alone these three– read through her diary.
Her diary, where she had written down every little thing she felt about Yu.
Every little thing that she felt.
Every.
Little.
Thing.
Marie’s eyes shot wide open.
She no longer felt real.
Would she faint? Die right there from a stopped heart?
Yu turned to face her. “Hi… Marie.”
She stepped back, shaking her head.
A big balloon of emotion was inflating within her chest, clogging her throat. She wanted it to asphyxiate her so she could die without having to live knowing the full extent of what they had seen.
“Marie? Hey! Marie!” he took a step towards her, and she shot back involuntarily.
“Don’t come close to me! Don’t… Don’t…” A gut-wrenching shriek left Marie’s throat. Tears flooded out of her eyes.
“Are you alright? Hey, hey. It’s okay. Do you want to take a walk?” Nameless’ voice.
Marie wanted to scream ‘no,’ but she could not. She couldn’t do so much as take a coherent breath. She was hyperventilating. Tears ran down her cheeks, one after another racing like a violent stream. The girl, now openly weeping, put her face in her hands. She could not bear to see the others, now trying to shut her up and just push her out of the way like they always had.
“It’s okay… It’s okay… deep breaths…” Belladonna.
A powerful shove sent the chanteuse stumbling to the other side of the Limo. Someone yelled something. Something broke or fell– she didn’t know and didn’t care.
Her head in her hands, Marie ran out of the Velvet Room wailing.
“Marie! Hey!” Narukami was about to run out in pursuit of the girl, but the second he got to the door he realized that Belladonna was currently on the floor nursing her ankle. He ran up next to Nameless, who was taking a look at it. “Hey, are you alright?”
Grimacing, she nodded unsurely. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I am. I’m okay. Hey– Damn! Do you have to press so hard?”
“I’m trying to see if it’s sprained or not.” started Nameless calmly. “Thankfully, that doesn’t seem to be the case. We probably just need to get some ice on it.”
“You can’t just cast dia or anything?” asked Yu to the blindfolded man.
“No, unfortunately not. I do not have a persona.” he replied.
Margaret sheepishly walked over to the trio. “Don’t worry, Yu. They can take care of it. How about… Why don’t me and you go try and find Marie–”
“He will go alone,” Igor snapped. The tall woman immediately straightened up, her face flushing. “But I–”
“You have done quite enough. He will go by himself. You are going to stay right where you are, Margaret.”
Silently, she nodded and stood there. Igor turned his head towards the boy, who was still crouching next to the piano player and singer. “Please, go find her. Perhaps you can find her somewhere else to sleep tonight, too?”
Yu nodded. With a newfound sense of determination, he stood up and entered the portal back to his world.
The night air of Inaba engulfed Yu like a wave, hitting him all at once as he stepped onto the pavement. His heart was racing, he felt alive in a way he couldn’t articulate. Was it good? Bad? He didn’t know. He had to find Marie before she did something rash.
Would she even do something rash?
An image suddenly filled Narukami’s head, one that made his stomach feel sick. He wasn’t going to wait and find out.
He rushed into the night, towards the Dojima Residence.
Some time had passed; enough for her to stop crying. Nevertheless, her eyes were red and puffy, and her striped arm-warmers were still soaked through with her tears. Down by the riverbed, the only sounds were the lazily-flowing water and an occasional hiccup or sniffle. Here or there some small bird of the night chirped before taking flight in a flurry of wings. Marie wished she could fly away like that– fly away from mean people, from boys who made her act wrong, from life’s questions and the tough answers that they would bring.
God damn it all, even after doing so had got her in trouble so many times, she was still writing poetry in her head. She longed for a pen, a scrap of paper, the book that Igor and the others had been disturbed by; longed for two arms to hold her, a warm shoulder to–
“Damn it!” she moaned in frustration. Why couldn’t she just stop writing poetry? Better yet, why couldn’t she stop feeling the things that made her pen flick across the page? That would make her life much easier, not being able to feel things. Tears of frustration threatened to make their return to Marie’s eyes. She tucked her knees to her chest and curled up into a ball. All she wanted was to die then and there, and for everyone to forget about her.
A rumbling sound, distant but loud, startled the girl out of her reverie. It died with a click. It came from above.
A rocky clicking became the soft crunch of shoes on grass. Shyly, gingerly, like a child peeking out of the covers for a monster, Marie raised her head up and away from her knees. Their eyes met; hers and the boy who was literally of her dreams. The thought brought a defeated blush to her face.
“Hey.” He was smiling. “There you are, I’m so glad I found you.”
“Hi,” she spat.
His steps slowed as he approached. He stopped right behind her back, which was turned to him again as she avoided eye contact. “May I please sit with you?”
She was silent for so long a while that Yu was getting ready to repeat himself. Right as he opened his mouth, Marie curtly said, “Do whatever you want.”
He did as told without a word, and it stayed that way for long, long minutes. He sat by her, watching the dark water of the flood plains as it strutted on into the night. In its own strange, humble way, it was beautiful. It reminded the boy of the girl he was sitting with.
“Marie, I–” he heard her breath catch and paused. “You alright?”
“Yeah, everything is fine. Everything is okay.” She sounded like she was starting to cry again. Just how was he supposed to approach this?
“You know what,” he started, “That was a dumb question.”
“It was.” Her face pressed to her knees again, Marie glimpsed at him with a tearful eye. It was heartbreaking, but no matter what he had to be the strong one here.
“But then again…” Yu sighed and continued, “You know what, it’s not important. I guess what I really should be saying is that nobody’s mad at you for what happened back there.”
“You’re wrong– Nobody likes me. Nobody cares about me and that’s why everyone was happy that they got to laugh at me. And now they’ll never like me because I shoved Belladonna.”
“...Is that the singing lady?”
“Yeah. It is. And I pushed her and now nobody will ever like me because I’m a pervert who hurts people.” She started to sob quietly again, but oddly enough, the silver-haired boy felt a smile grow on his face.
Narukami sighed. “Wha– Pervert? You? You’re not a pervert, Marie! How could you–”
“You saw what I wrote down in my journal. You all did.”
A beat of silence passed between them. How could he have made this better? She was right; he had seen what she really thought of him when he opened the journal. But the truth was that in a strange way, he was happy to know the truth.
Yu turned his gaze to the running water before them both. “You know, you were right. There never really is a perfect time to talk about this kind of stuff, is there?” He took her silence as a ticket to continue. “Especially not when you like someone. So maybe me finding out how you feel wouldn’t have gone well either way. God, what am I saying? I sound like an idiot…”
From out of the corner of his eye, he saw Marie looking at him openly. Her face was still sad, but she seemed to really be thinking about what he was saying. “No,” she muttered. “I get it. I get it.”
Another moment of silence. The girl took off her hat and toyed with it instead of looking at the boy.
“So, I guess… What did you think?”
“About how you feel about me? Well… Well, I kind of didn’t expect it. I always thought you kind of were annoyed by me, to be honest. But you know what, Marie?” In place of words, Yu spoke with his body. In a single swift motion, he put his arms around her and pulled her into a warm embrace. He could hear her breath hitch; feel her heart speed up. He couldn’t see it with his eyes, but Narukami felt that her eyes were probably as wide as saucers.
They only got wider as he raised his head from her shoulder and planted a kiss on her scruffy black hair.
The loud squeal she let out made him chuckle. “I guess you could say that I'm a little intrigued by you."
For the second time in this singular night, Marie didn’t feel real. Her heart was soaring and she felt light, as if she really could take off and start flying like a bird. She looked down and saw Yu Narukami’s arms around her. Not knowing what to do, she mimicked the gesture clumsily– had she ever really hugged anybody before? Nevertheless, her arms slowly coiled around his neck. Everything was warmer now tonight.
Warm… On second thought, it was damn near freezing out here, even with the bubbly high the black-haired girl felt within herself. She made an uncomfortable noise. “Cold…”
“Hm?” Narukami pulled away from the hug and looked at her shivering self. “Cold,” she restated, louder this time. He smiled.
“Oh, that’s right.” He stood up and offered out a hand. “Igor told me that it’s okay if you don’t go back to the Velvet Room for tonight.” With that singular sentence, Marie felt a tremendous weight suddenly be lifted off of her soul. “R-Really?”
“Yeah. So how about you come to my house for tonight? Or, I guess it’s my uncle’s house, and it’s not much, but it sure beats sleeping out here, don’t you think?”
A tiny smile grew on the girl’s face. Rubbing her eyes tiredly, she took his outstretched hand gently and helped herself up, taking care to wipe the grass off of her backside.
“We walking?”
He smirked a little. “You’ll see.” Together they walked up the steps to the street, where the plain white moped that Dojima had gotten for him was waiting. When he saw her flustered look, all he had to say was, “Don’t worry, it's fun for me, too.”
Bleary-eyed and ready to chew out that good-for-nothing son of his sister, Dojima did his best angry cop voice when he heard the motorbike pulling up in front of the house. “You're late. What the hell are you thinking? What, you think this is some kind of– Woah.”
Instead of Yu at the door, some girl was taking her combat boots off and setting them by the door. Out of the ten thousand questions running through his head, one was answered as Yu casually walked into the house like it was just any other night. “Hey, Uncle Dojima. Sorry if it's a little sudden, but this is Marie. She’s in a little trouble with her family, so I really hope you don't mind if she stays the night in my room.” Noticing his uncle’s unreadable expression, he simply said, “If anything happens, I take full responsibility for it” and showed the strange girl to his room.
Sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose, Dojima turned off the TV, went to the fridge, and got a beer.
"What the hell am I gonna do with you...?"
Marie stood still as she took in the shabby little room. Unable to read her expression, Yu motioned to the blue sofa under the window. “I’m sorry, it’s not exactly much but I usually don’t have guests.”
“Oh, uh, no, no. It’s fine. Th-Thank you. This is… It’s more than enough.”
A very awkward silence stood between them as the boy shuffled around the room in search of a blanket for Marie to cover herself with. “So, yeah, unfortunately you’ll be sleeping on a couch tonight instead of a bed, but… Ah, hold on, there might be something I can get for you in Dojima’s room–”
The girl set her blue bag and hat down at her feet before testily curling up on the couch. “You know what, I like it.”
“Oh! Well, that’s good then.”
She turned towards him. “What about you? Where will you be sleeping, Yu?” Suddenly realizing that he hadn’t thought about that at all, he looked down at the carpeted floor. “Well, just pass me a pillow and I’ll find a spot.”
“On the floor?”
“Yeah. Hey, no need to look so sad. It’s just for one night, there’s nothing–”
A creeping blush grew on Marie’s features as she visibly struggled to make eye contact. “I think… I think I’d like it better if you stayed on the couch… with me.”
A second of silence.
“You would?”
“Yeah, I… Can we sleep… together? I– uh, not like in any weird way, though, but– so–”
In place of a reply, he simply crawled onto the tiny sofa and wrapped his arms around that curled-up ball of emotions in such a way that they were spooning like lovers might. “Thanks.” Her whisper was almost inaudible.
They lay just like that for an unmeasurable length of time. Before either of them knew it, Marie’s breath had slowed and steady. Yu could feel her gently going through the motions of sleep in his arms. He raised himself slightly so he could watch her and saw what was perhaps the most peaceful expression he had ever seen on anybody. Her perfect lips were subtly raised at the corners, like the faint beginnings of a smile. It was perfect.
Seeing her face, the silver-haired boy couldn’t help himself; he wanted to feel her. He curled an ebon bang around his finger, played as sleep started to call to him– it had been a long night, after all.
For the second and last time that night Narukami put his lips on her hair and kissed her gently. “I’ll see you in your dreams, okay?” Lowering his head back down onto the cushions of the couch, sleep found him.
Marie stirred a little bit as if in reply to his words.