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A large woman with a large mop of black hair chases him, her feet landing less than an inch behind his heels as he sprints down a track, racing a bunch of other talented boys. Despite the incredible, creepy proximity, it's not uncomfortable to have her breathing down his neck, instead it's motivating, the ghost acting as his own personal cheerleader.
‘There are angry Shadows behind you, Ryuji! The castle is collapsing, Ryuji! Kamoshida is weeping, Ryuji! There's one piece of yakisoba bread left, Ryuji!’
“Got it!” the former Phantom Thief flies across the finishing line in first place.
Rin didn't want him to change schools and move away to a different part of Tokyo. She didn't say it, but she didn't need to, her expression and voice told him. Ryuji may not be the smartest, but he's not that stupid. Not that oblivious, although he was oblivious enough to spring it on her at the same time as he sprung it on everyone else, like she and him weren't best mates, and closer to each other than they were to any other member of the group. And he'd just promised that he'd finally be there for her after she'd spent an entire year being there for him. Shitty, Ryuji. Real freaking shitty.
Getting his leg on the way to being as good as new feels awesome, but losing daily access to his mate does not. Quiet as she is, he only realises what a massive presence Rin is when she's no longer absorbing all the light in the room. Huh, that sounds like she's a drain. She's not, she absorbs the light and sheds it in a gentler, less dazzling form so that the sprouts growing in her shade aren't burnt by the blaze. In her absence his new school feels empty no matter how many students attend it with him. Even though he makes new friends, it's not the same. There isn't that deep click between two people cast out onto the edges of society, struggling to survive in a hostile environment, fighting to change things. Plus, Rin is simply unique. They say everyone's unique and special, but that's not true. Most people go with the flow. She doesn't, she'll tell it like it is, without being unkind. She'll go the ends of the earth for you, without advertising it.
The void in his life where she used to be eventually leads to Ryuji speaking to himself one day on the walk to school. Talking to himself, but really talking to her.
“We don't have any Kamoshida’s here, dude. Or at least I don't think we do. But even if there is some, I'll be able to deal with it properly this time.”
‘No throwing fists?’ asks Rin, walking beside him like she so often did, her eyes obscured by her hair.
“No throwing fists. I promise.”
That's a little bit of wishful thinking, because he's still a hothead even with his new grasp on self control, but when he gets in a fight with some bullies attempting to torment a couple First Years, Rin again shows up to calm him down, emerging as Joker out of thin air in the middle of the quad.
‘Calm down, Ryuji. Try words first, and fists second.’ she says, while loosely holding her gun in her right hand and her dagger in her left, her ghost more solid than the reality around her. Behind her mask her eyes fix on him. She's not a persona, but boy does he wish she were. That would be epic.
“Hey! Leave those kids alone!” Ryuji barks, his voice and blazing eyes enough by themselves to scatter the loser bullies, who skulk away like kicked dogs, all hunched shoulders and lowered heads.
People think he's weird, he can tell, even the First Years who shuffle off across the grass after thanking him. But people weren't part of the Phantom Thieves like he was, people weren't right hand man to the Trickster who shot not one but two false gods in the head. You can't come back from something like that the same as you began. Sticking his hands in his pockets, he slouches off to class, the straight backed apparition of his best friend following, the rustling of her leather coat audible to no one but him.
For the rest of the week she sits beside him in class, prodding him to come up with the correct answers, explaining things, making dry or dark jokes, crafting lockpicks and bombs. He even imagines a cat meowing. He and she never attended the same class in Shujin, so this is a definite improvement on the past. After school she gets on the train with him, taking it to his house, Ryuji chatting to her all the way.
“Who are you talking to, sweetie?”
Ryuji looks up from his manga magazine, into his mother's face. An undercover expression of concern lingers there because this is not the first time she's caught him speaking out loud to someone who isn't there.
“Rin, mom. I'm explaining why this plot twist is super crap.”
The look of concern on his mother's kindly face dispels itself by at least fifty percent. Rin, yes, she knows her. A good girl, if scary. Good for her son. “Oh! Isn't it about time you paid her a visit?”
It is. It's been six months after all. Accordingly, on Saturday Ryuji sends a message, and on Sunday he takes a train across the city. Rin hates trains with a furious passion, but she still offered to meet him halfway. He demurred, because Makoto told him why his mate hates trains. Mate? Soulmate, really. Not in a romantic way, a better way than that.
Stepping foot back in Yongen-Jaya violently turns the clock back, giving Ryuji severe deja vu, so much so that he leans against a lamppost while the tidal wave of feelings wash over him. Time, it scares him. What if he can't relate to Rin anymore? She is still where she was when they first met, but of them all she's taken the largest leap forward, like a baby skipping the crawling phase she's gone straight to full adulthood from adolescence, doing everything she said she would…but he guesses she always was way more mature than any of them. Ryuji still dresses like a delinquent boy for Pete's sake.
Cafe Leblanc has had a makeover, no longer looking rundown and tired, no longer using Comic Sans or whatever for its signage. Ryuji makes sure not to stand in front of the glass door while he hypes himself up, hopping up and down and shaking himself as during a warm up. Beside him his cognitive companion laughs, spinning her dagger round and round a finger.
‘Walk in. No one is going to bite you.' she says, like it's that easy. Rin sounded normal via text, but she might be pissed secretly. She doesn't attend school anymore, so moving back wouldn't even solve the problem, if there is a problem.
The door opens and a stream of happy customers emerge into the open, passing Ryuji but ignoring him.
‘Come on. Come on. Come-’ the ghost is too much like reality. He has to do what she says or she'll keep up that litany, never tiring, forcing the world to change, forcing people to cease their bullshit.
But before he reaches the doorway, the owner steps into it, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed.
“Well, what do we have here?” asks Sojiro, warmly. Like his cafe he has had the clock turned back on him, some of the premature wrinkles and lines disappearing from his face, caused as they were by stress and sadness, some of his hairline regrowing as well.
Ryuji doesn't have time to leap into a stuttering conversation with the Boss, because another figure arrives to fill the rest of the doorway, her arm resting on Sojiro's shoulder. Like him Rin wears an apron, a black one with a red trim. Like him she smiles warmly at the newcomer.
“Coke or fanta? Or have you finally gotten into coffee?” asks Rin, jetting cigarette smoke out of the corner of her mouth in the old supercool style.
The ghost disintegrates the instant the eyes of the original land on Ryuji.