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It's an unusual group that's clumped together inside the Peace Diner in Yumesaki District. Four high school students--three from Seven Sisters High School and one from Kasugayama--along with two women that look just old enough to seem out of place in this group of teenagers. The six of them are huddled together off to one side of the restaurant, sort of out of the way but not quite out of the way enough to stop the girl behind the counter from asking them to 'prithee take themselves away from this place' three times already.
They've ignored her all three times, ignored or possibly not heard, because from the looks of it they're so deeply involved in their conversation that it's entirely possible that they aren't hearing anything else. Five of them--everyone except the first year Sevens girl with the blue feather in her hair--are serious. Nodding along as she chatters and gesticulates her way through a story that ends with, "And that's how I heard that you can buy weapons at Time Castle. They're cheap, but they're also not very good. You get what you pay for, I guess." She beams around at all of them. "Was that the kind of rumor you were looking for?"
"Sounds like it'll help!" says one of the women. "Thank you, Chikarin." When she smiles smiles, like she does now, it makes her face look younger. There's just a hint of worry behind it, but she hides it well--she almost looks like any other woman in her early twenties, hanging out and listening to some gossip. If it wasn't for her clothes very obviously not adhering to any high school's uniform, she might have looked like she was a classmate of the younger members of their little huddle.
"No problem," says Chikarin. She smiles too, and her smile is completely genuine. No worry there at all. It goes al the way to her eyes, unlike with the woman's, and if anything she seems to be enjoying herself as she leans in close and starts with, "And did you hear," all over again.
"We don't have any more stories to trade for another rumor," says the Sevens boy.
"This one's on the house then, Tatsuya," Chikarin says. She almost seems to jump at the chance to tell the story, turning on him with such bright eyed enthusiasm that Tatsuya actually takes half a step back. "Anyway, you've probably heard it already, everyone's talking about the girl who fights with death."
She says this with the practiced dramatic delivery of a true rumormonger, and pauses just long enough for it to be an invitation for one of them to jump in and ask her to keep going--clearly she sees this as the kind of story that no one could possibly be able to resist, and her attention darts from one listener to the next, waiting for one of them to interrupt and ask for the rest of the story.
But when the interruption finally comes, it's just the boy in the Kasuguyama uniform scratching his head and saying, "What, like--she's sick? Is that some kind of euphemism?"
"Obviously not, Michel," says the second Sevens girl--a second year with blonde hair and (at the moment) an expression of exaggerated annoyance. She hadn't seemed particularly interested in Chikarin's story so far, but now that Michel has taken an opinion, she jumps straight to the opposite one. "What kind of a rumor would that be? Go on, Chikarin."
Chikarin, who had looked momentarily disappointed by the half-hearted reception she'd gotten from her opening, does her best to pick back up again. "Well," she says. "I guess--it was a little ambiguous, but Lisa's right, I didn't mean she was sick or anything like that. I mean she's literally fighting with capita-D-Death! She's a new student, she just moved to Sumaru, and people say she stalks the streets, summoning an avatar of Death, fighting anything that gets in her way."
So far the last member of the group, a woman in a beanie and holding a camera, has been quiet. Now, though, she straightens up and asks, "You say she's been summoning this... Death avatar?"
"Oh!" says the other woman. "Yukino, do you think--"
"It doesn't not sound like a Persona, Maya," Yukino says, with a little nod. "I don't think this is a rumor we're going to need to spread around if everyone's apparently already talking about it. But we might want to see if we can find her."
"That's true," Maya says.
"Hey," Michel says. "Chikarin, is she a Sevens student?"
"Must be," Chikarin says with a little shrug. "That's what everyone's saying, since Cuss High is an all boys school."
"Yeah," Lisa says. "Obviously, Michel."
"Hey," Michel snaps back. "I was just asking!"
Tatsuya sighs. "Let's just go find her," he says. "If she's a Sevens student, we'll start looking for her there."
Chikarin waves to the other five as they head out, and within a few moments she's turned her attention to a new friend who's just shown up for a gossip.
-//-
In the end, they don't find her at Sevens, but at a Satoma Tadashi when they drop into the drugstore to pick up supplies. She doesn't look much like a terrifying summoner who fights with Death itself, Lisa thinks, and the group almost doesn't notice her. Lisa's the one that finally does, sidling up to Tatsuya while he's juggling an armful of antidotes and whispering, "I think that might be the girl Chikarin told us about. She's wearing a second year uniform, but I don't recognize her. So she's probably a new student."
"You know every girl in your year?" Tatsuya asks, blankly.
"Of course," Lisa says. "Don't you know all the third years?"
"No?"
Boys, Lisa thinks. Fanna, but even the cute ones can be so oblivious sometimes. But she smiles at Tatsuya, and continues as if he'd agreed with her. "Anyway," she says. "I know I've never seen that girl before, so I think she was probably the new student from the rumor."
They both look over at the girl, who is crouched down, looking at something on a bottom shelf.
"She's buying bandages," Tatsuya says. "A lot of them."
"Almost as many as we are," Lisa agrees.
This seems to convince Tatsuya, because he nods. "You might be right. If she's been fighting, she'd be getting hurt as much as we all are." His expression doesn't really change, but Lisa thinks he sounds a little bit worried as he adds, "Probably more. At least there are five of us, and she doesn't have anyone to back her up."
"We should go talk to her," Lisa says. "Quick! Before she leaves." And then before Tatsuya can say anything, Lisa squares her shoulders and makes a beeline straight toward the girl. Behind her, she can hear Tatsuya putting most of his antidotes down, and then following her.
"Really hope this is the right girl," he mutters. Lisa ignores this--she's sure it is.
"Wai!" Lisa calls, squatting down next to the girl. "Hi, I'm Lisa."
The girl, who had been very seriously considering the merits of a box of Featherman bandaids, looks up at Lisa. Her eyes very quickly take in first her smile and then her uniform, and then she smiles back. "Hi," she says. "I'm Kotone. It looks like we go to the same school."
"Yeah," Lisa says. "Did you just transfer?"
Kontone nods. "I just moved here to stay with family," she says. Then she sits back on her heels, looking exasperated. "I didn't actually get a chance to go to any classes, though. Literally my first day, and all these demon monster things started showing up all over town."
"Yeah," Lisa says, and she can hear relief in her own voice. It's just so much easier to lead into this when Kotone starts the conversation. Otherwise, she has no idea how she'd have managed to get the conversation around to demons and Persona. She leans forward a little, eager. "Look," she says. "We've heard rumors about a new student that's been fighting those monsters. And it looks like that might be you?"
"Well I had to fight," Kotone says, immediate and defensive, like Lisa is accusing her of something. "They were going to hurt people!" There's a flash of righteous indignation on her face, but this is followed almost immediately by a kind of sagging, as she admits, "And also I was terrified. Have you seen those things?"
"Yeah," Lisa says. "We've been fighting them too." And she kind of gestures, back at Tatsuya--who is watching this conversation in silence from where he'd stopped a few feet away--and then at the other three beyond him, still apparently unaware of the conversation playing out between the two of them. "But like I said, we heard that there was a new student at Sevens going around fighting demons with some kind of death power. If that new Sevens student is you, do you think you might want to join us?"
"Sevens?" Kotone asks, sounding slightly confused. "I'm not sure."
"Seven Sisters High School, I mean," Lisa says quickly. "Sorry, I know you said it was your first day, you probably aren't used to hearing the nickname. But anyway--" She gestures at Kotone's hands, which are scraped and raw behind the box of bandages she's still clutching. "It's a lot less dangerous to fight with other people than all by yourself, right?"
"Oh." Kotone very quickly drops her hands, not out of sight but at least lower, where Lisa would have to make a point of keeping them in view. "No, these aren't from--these are really old. I was in a car accident when I was... a kid." She stares at her hands, and the box of bandaids. Lisa, despite Kotone's attempts to keep her scraped up palms out of view, drops her own gaze toward them. They don't look very old. Maybe she'd torn open some old injury in a fight?
She's obviously not very excited to talk about that, either way, so Lisa changes the subject. "The point is that we're getting used to fighting together," she says. "And if you really have death summoning powers, it sounds like you'll fit right in."
"Why?" Kotone asks. "Can you summon too?"
"Yep!" Lisa says. "We all have a Persona that we use. Mine's called Eros."
"And you can just...." Kotone makes a gesture, shifting her bandaid box to one hand so she can use the other one to mime a kind of poof, appearing from nowhere gesture. "To make Eros show up?"
Lisa nods, and this seems to satisfy Kotone. She nods along, and says, "Well mine's called Thanatos. I don't know anything about him being death, but--he is really cool."
Lisa glances back at Tatsuya, not exactly for approval, but because if anyone's the leader of their weird little group, she's pretty sure it's him. How exactly the quietest out of all of them had ended up in charge is anyone's guess, but here they are. In an amazingly short amount of time, she's gotten used to looking to Tatsuya whenever they start making decisions that are going to affect the whole group.
He nods, and Lisa bounces up to her feet, offering Kotone a hand up with her. "Let's go meet everyone else first," she says. "Then we'll probably run into some demons soon enough." She rolls her eyes. "We can't seem to keep away from them even when we're trying."
"Yeah," Kotone agrees. "They're hard to get rid of." She takes Lisa's hand, then looks down at the bandaids in her other like she's just remembered they're there, and says a little awkwardly, "I wanted to buy these, but I'm, uh--I don't think I have enough money."
"Oh," Lisa says. "No problem, we can just throw it in with our stuff." They're buying half the store as it is, between antidotes and medicines and whatever else looks like it might help. "You haven't been picking up money from the demons?"
"I guess," Kotone says, a little reluctantly. "I just--haven't really been keeping track of it, I guess."
She won't quite meet Lisa's eyes as she says this, and Lisa can't help thinking that it seems a little strange. What's she been spending all her demon money on, if she doesn't even have enough for a box of bandaids.
Lisa checks the price, out of curiosity. The branding makes it about three times more expensive, but still cheaper than a lot of the stuff they'd been planning to buy anyway. Unless Kotone has absolutely zero ability to hold onto the money she's been getting from demons, she should definitely be able to afford this. "¥2000," she reads aloud.
"Is... that a lot?"
Weird question, but Lisa shrugs and answers it anyway. "It is for a pack of bandaids," she says. "But what the heck, right?" They're fighting actual demons with something that sounds more like science fiction than real life. Featherman is kind of a kid thing, but what's wrong with that? Didn't everyone beg their parents for fun bandaids when they were a kid? If they're fighting monsters that wouldn't hesitate to kill them, what's wrong with crossing that off the bucket list?
"Are you a fan of Featherman?" she asks Kotone, to tilt the conversation away from the heavy direction her thoughts are starting to turn toward.
"Yeah," Kotone says with a shrug. "The show's fun."
Lisa has the vague idea that she'd gone through a Featherman phase herself, but that had been when she was way younger, and the memories are nothing but fog now. Even so... she catches herself looking down at the stamped design on the bandaids, and quirking a smile. Probably just goes to show how easy it is to fall back on childhood comforts when things get rough.
"It's not bad," Lisa allows, and taps her finger against the picture of the Feather Pink bandaid printed on the box. "Anyway, I call this one."
"What?" Kotone demands. "You can't call yours already!"
"I already did!"
So they're both laughing as Lisa leads Kotone back to the rest of the group to introduce her.
-//-
Kotone is a weird girl, Michel thinks. She's nice, and she has a kickass Persona (Thanatos looks like he belongs on an album cover), but she's also hard to actually talk to. There's something hard to put his finger on that seems to stand between her and the rest of the group, and Michel doesn't really get what it is.
Maybe it's the way she never really seems to open up--when the rest of them spend the time between fights to talk about school, or parents, or friends, or any of the other normal life things that are starting to feel farther and farther away, Kotone just gets quiet. Even Tatsuya, who's so quiet he rarely puts more than two sentences together at the same time, has told them stuff about school, and once complained to them for almost five whole minutes about his cop brother.
Kotone just kind of seems like she has nothing to talk about.
Yeah, sure, she'll talk, sometimes a lot, but it's about stuff that doesn't feel important. Like she'll chatter about the demons they're fighting, and she has opinions about where they should stop for food or to shop for weapons and whatever. And she seems interested in everyone else's lives, but whenever they ask her about her own, she just shrugs.
That's probably why Michel doesn't really talk to her one on one for a while. They barely talk at all until they get tricked into the Bomb Shelter under his school, and are stuck wandering around and around in circles for ages because of that stupid rumor that there's no way out. Everyone is getting a little tense, and starting to snap at each other a little, and Lisa is really getting on Michel's nerves (more than usual, even), and so Kotone sitting down next to him when they stop for a break is a relief.
"So Lisa says you're called the Undie Boss?" she asks.
So right away it stops being a relief.
"She says a lot of dumb things," Michel says.
"I heard that!" Lisa hollers at him from the other side of the room.
"Yeah?" he shouts back. "Well stop listeni--"
"Guys," Tatsuya says, from where he's practically facedown on the floor. The last couple fights had been especially brutal, and he'd taken a couple of hard hits. He looks exhausted. "Just like--five minutes," he says. "Please."
Michel exchanges a look with Lisa. The look isn't particularly friendly, but neither of them says anything, and she even gives him a little nod like she's agreeing to the ceasefire. Michel nods back, and pointedly turns back to Kotone.
Who says, "So, Undie Boss?"
Michel grits his teeth, and sideways glares at Lisa, but doesn't want to start an argument. So he just says, "Yep." He does add, "But she's the only one that really calls me that," though, because he does have a reputation to protect.
"Why?" Kotone asks.
Michel sighs, and... does his best. "Look," he says. "If you're going to be the Boss, sometimes you have to show the other guys who's in charge."
"What does that have to do with--" Kotone's expression quirks up into a smile. "With undies?"
"Well," Michel says. "Sometimes when a guy's really being a dick, and like... bullying other kids, you have to beat them up, right?"
Kotone nods, like this makes perfect sense, and Michel goes on, emboldened.
"Okay," he says. "And sometimes, with some guys, just kicking the shit out of them isn't enough, you know?" Kotone leans forward with obvious interest, and Michel finds himself picking up steam. "You gotta really show them you mean business!" He says. "You have to pull down their pants and show the world their underwear."
Kotone, immediately, bursts out laughing like this is the funniest thing she's ever heard. It might have been insulting, except that it's such genuine, happy laughter that Michel can't actually make himself feel offended. Kotone laughs like they're sharing a joke, and like that joke is a good one, and Michel finds himself smiling too, and even laughing a little bit along with her.
"Underwear," Kotone chokes out, around her laughter. "Oh, I love it! Is it okay if I call you Undie Boss too?"
It's such an earnest question that Michel finds himself nodding before he's really thought his answer all the way through. When Lisa says it, he knows she's making fun of him. When Kotone says it, she makes it sound more like they're sharing a joke. He doesn't really think he minds.
They get moving again only a couple minutes after that. It hadn't been a very long break, and they're going straight back into more fighting, but Michel feels a lot better after being able to share a laugh.
As they move through the Bomb Shelter, and even after, when they manage to find a way out and actually escape into the real world, he finds it easier to start conversations with Kotone. She doesn't want to talk about her life outside of all this demon fighting? Fine, sure. Maybe it's none of his business, and anyway she's always up for a dumb joke.
And, somehow, it makes it a little easier to get along with Lisa, when Kotone is calling him Undie Boss too. Not a whole lot easier, sure, but--it helps.
-//-
The Aerospace Museum is a disaster. Yukino is old enough, and has fought enough Shadows in the past, to know that things in Sumaru are starting to get really bad, now. They've been falling apart for a while, obviously, no one can say that the Joker rumors--or rumors coming true at all--are good things.
But now they've been lured into a museum that's being slowly set on fire, with Maya fighting her fear of fire with every step, and enemies on their heels, and a class of grade school kids here on the worst field trip imaginable.
It's the kids that really make things bad. Partly because of the casual cruelty of putting so many helpless little kids in danger, because what kind of person would actually do that? And also because if it had just been the six of them fighting their way out, they probably could have gotten through it without too much trouble. But now they can't just get out, they can't just run, because the whole building is full of terrified six and seven year olds that they can't just leave behind.
So they run through the museum, searching every burning hallway and holding their collective breath every time they get to another set of stairs. The sound of crying kids haunts them on each new level, and Yukino doesn't think they've ever been more on the same page as a group than they are right now. They have to get these kids out to safety.
All of them take a turn at trying to calm the kids down enough to leave the rooms they're hiding in, and run for the exit. Some of them are pretty good at it, and Michel is... trying his best, but Kotone is easily the most effective at getting the kids to calm down and head for safety. She always seems to know exactly the right thing to say to a terrified little kid, which to Yukino raises some concerning questions about what her own childhood had been like. One of the very few things they've learned about her life is that she'd been in a car accident with her family when she was about that age, but she never talks about what else had happened around that time.
Based on how quickly she seems to be able to suss out which kids need to be cheered up or cheered on, and which ones need a hug before they'll move, Yukino has a bad feeling about Kotone's childhood. The experience of being a scared kid that needs those things--cheering up and cheering on and tight little hugs to the kids that seem to want to cling and never let go--seems like it's still very fresh in her memories, and it makes Yukino feel sad for her. She's noticed that Kotone struggles to relate to her classmates, not just to herself and Maya as the adults in the room but to other teenagers, but talking to these kids seems easy for her. Old traumas, she thinks. The kind that are hard to outgrow.
What is it, she can't help wondering, that seems to attract so many teenagers that have been through too much to having a Persona?
(Assuming Thanatos actually is a Persona, or the same kind that the rest of them have)
(Yukino isn't actually suspicious that Kotone has anything malicious going on, but Philemon seems amused by her, and Igor in the Velvet Room keeps giving her these strange, searching looks, and also Yukino remembers fighting something called Thanatos when she was in high school)
(...there had been an awful lot of eyeballs and tentacles, while Kotone's Thanatos mostly has coffins and teeth, so maybe it's just a very odd coincidence)
They finally clear the building of children. The last room they empty out also has their teacher sheltering in it, a clearly panicked woman only a few years older than Yukino. While the rest of the group hurries out of the room after the kids, spurred on by the fact that they can't hear anymore kids calling for help, Yukino lingers with the teacher to double check.
"We've been through the whole building," she says, straining to raise her voice over the sound of alarms and crackling fire, fighting the urge to cough and choke on the smoke on the air. "We've gotten forty two kids out, does that sound right?"
"Yes," the teacher says, choking on her own lungful of smoke. She raises her hands and wipes at tears on her face, tears that might have been there because of the smoke or because she's afraid, Yukino can't tell. It's a clumsy, shaking movement, either way, and Yukino thinks--this is a normal reaction to everything that's happening here, this is what most people would do. Is it a good thing that they can keep fighting through it? Or is it sad, the same way Kotone reliving her childhood or Maya shying away from the flames is sad?
"It's everyone that came," the teacher continues, pulling Yukino out of her thoughts. "Thank you, we can't--" More tears, this lady is obviously so overwhelmed. "We've already lost one student recently, with how strange things have been, and now this? We can't just lose more of them."
Something loud crashes behind them, and Yukino thinks shit, what is that? Part of a roof, or an exhibit? Is the way out still clear? But before she can get a warning out, the teacher spooks at the sound and goes rushing out after her students. All Yukino can do is hope she makes it, and go rushing out after her own friends.
The things that teacher had said aren't as easy to leave behind, though. Yukino remembers how afraid she'd been, and the beaten down way that she'd talked about how strange things have been, and losing a student--to demon attacks, presumably, although she hadn't specified--and how she had seemed afraid but not surprised to be caught in another disaster.
There are bombs going off in the city, and this isn't the first building to be burned to the ground. Honestly, when the group has finally put the museum in their rearview mirror, Yukino isn't even sure when they're going to be able to put it out, considering the fact that the fire department had been burned down days ago.
She doesn't talk about much of this to the others. Once, she mentions it in passing to Tatsuya, explaining what she'd heard from the teacher on the basis that he's become their de facto leader, and maybe it'll help him to know a little more about how the rest of the city sees everything that's been going on. They don't have much time to really talk, around all the other disasters, but they at least cover it quickly. Might have come back to it later, too.
Except that before they get the chance, Yukino's world turns upside down.
-//-
Although she means to, Maya doesn't have a chance to talk to Kotone for a very long time, after Yukino leaves the group. They're... busy, to be fair. Yukino watches her mentor die. Her maybe more than mentor, if they'd ever talked about it--Maya has watched the chemistry between them at work, just waiting to see which one of them would crack first and make the confession that had only finally come too late, right at the end.
And then Yukino leaves, she's hurting in a way that has nothing to do with demons or Persona, it's nothing they can cure, and Maya prays that time will help. She's replaced by Jun, who is quiet and sad and shy, now that he's free of being Joker, and is a kind of novelty in Maya's mind. The same way most of the rest of the group is, now that they're starting to remember their childhood days together. Tatsuya, Jun, Michel, and Lisa are starting to feel a little bit like coming home, and she can feel them all pulling closer to each other in response to getting their memories--and Jun--back.
But Kotone is still here, too. Still fighting with the rest of them, and more and more often doing it with a smile on her face. Maya is a positive person, and she likes to se other people be able to match that positivity even when things get tough, but Kotone's smiles have cracks in them. She wouldn't be surprised if the younger girl is using them as a way to hide whatever she's really feeling, and that's a very different situation.
"Oh no," Kotone says, when Maya corners her, and voices her worries. "I'm okay! It's nice to see you guys all getting to remember your friends again."
They're doing a supply run, and Maya had suggested splitting up to get it done a little faster. Tatsuya and Jun had left so quickly it was almost funny. Maya's pretty sure they're not going to do anything more exciting than make awkward smalltalk over weapon shopping while they take turns staring at each other when the other one isn't looking.
(Still. Good for them)
Lisa and Michel had gone to get some helpful rumors spread at the detective agency--Michel had volunteered first, Lisa had insisted that he'd mess it up, Michel had shot back that she'd mess it up, and they'd gone off together, having too much fun arguing with each other to even listen to Maya when she suggested that they might not both need to go.
(...good for them too, probably?)
This at least leaves Maya alone with Kotone, who she drags off to the same Satoma Tadashi where they'd first met Kotone.
"Oh hey!" Kotone says, as soon as they're inside. "This is my favorite one!"
"Your favorite Satoma Tadashi?" Maya asks. "They're all pretty much the same, aren't they?" Same products, same look, and only the name of the specific sister behind the counter changes.
"Yep," Kotone says. "It's the best version of the song."
She points up at the speakers on the drugstore ceiling, which are piping out the same jingle that plays in every Satoma Tadashi. Maya is vaguely aware that each location plays a different style of the song, but she doesn't know anyone that actually pays attention to it.
"I guess I never really noticed," she says.
"Really?" Kotone asks, and she grins at Maya. "I always do. I know all the words."
"To the store jingle?" Maya asks, and Kotone nods like tis is the most natural thing in the world, so Maya decides to just leave it and move on.
They just shop for a while. Every time they stop for supplies, the list of things they need gets a little bit longer, and Maya is almost starting to wonder if they're singlehandedly keeping the chain in business, while the city is getting more and more dangerous around them. This time, they buy medicines, antidotes, tranquillizers, sweepstakes magazines (Maya's still not used to this being anything other than a waste of money, but--well, thanks, rumors), and of course a box of Featherman bandaids. Kotone's contribution, originally, but it's enough to get a smile out of any of them by this point. After all, the rest of them had bonded together over their Featherman masks, and the games that had come out of that.
Remembering that long ago summer also reminds Maya of why she'd wanted to get Kotone on her own to talk to her, and she says, "Hey, Kotone?"
"Hmm?" Kotone is fully absorbed in studying a pack of Miracle Soda, and when she looks up at Maya it's only to ask, "Do you think this is too expensive?"
Maya glances at the price and can't resist a snort. "Practically highway robbery," she says. "But we need it, so I guess we'll get it anyway."
"Got it," Kotone says, hauling the sixpack up into her arms, juggling it awkwardly for a second before managing to find a comfortable way of holding it. "That's everything, right?"
"Uh..." It is, but Maya doesn't want to head back to the others yet. "Hang on," she says. "There's something I want to check." Kotone shrugs, and after what feels like an appropriate amount of time, Maya asks, "So how have you been holding up?"
"Fine," Kotone says. "It's been a lot of fun getting to know everyone!"
"It's been nice getting to know you too," Maya says.
"I just wish I'd met you all earlier," Kotone says. "I guess I'm a little jealous of you all for getting to be friends when you were younger."
There it is. Maya's wondered how okay she really is with being the odd one out, among the five remaining fighters. And sure, Kotone's voice sounds just as upbeat as ever, but if she's bringing it up, maybe that's what she's upset about after all.
"We're all getting to be friends now, though," she says, careful and not completely sure if this is the right thing to say. Still, it's worth trying, right? Kotone is one of them now, even if she hadn't been there wen they all met.
"Oh, I know," Kotone says. "I'm not upset or anything, don't worry!"
Anther bright smile.
"It would be okay if you were," Maya says. "I mean, Yukino wasn't there back then... either... Kotone?"
She trails off as, just for a second, Kotone's smile slips. For just a second, she looks crushed.
"I'm fine!" she insists, recovering almost fast enough to be convincing. "Totally fine, you don't have to worry about me."
"I don't have to," Maya agrees. "But I want to. You're a friend, Kotone. Do you want to talk about Yukino? I know it was horrible how she left, but if you want to talk, I promise we're all here for you."
There's a long silence. It goes on for so long that Maya starts to really think that Kotone isn't going to say anything at all. Then, all at once, her face crumples.
"Why did her boyfriend have to die?" she asks. "It's not--we fought so hard to try and get to him in time, and he--he still--"
She folds up, crouching right there in the middle of the floor, cans of soda clanking onto the tiles next to her as she buries her face in her hands.
"Oh, Kotone," Maya says, and she immediately crouches next to her, abandoning her own basket on top of the now audibly fizzing soda cans so she can wrap the teenager in a hug that Kotone accepts with surprising speed. This isn't what she'd expected Kotone to be upset about at all, and she feels awful for assuming. Just because the person that died wasn't someone that the others knew very well, it doesn't mean that seeing the death can't effect them. She should have thought to check in on them more. "I know, it's really awful."
"I hate when people die," Kotone says, around tears. "I hate it! And I keep thinking about the accident my p--my parents died in." She pauses, taking a deep gulp of air.
"You've mentioned a car crash," Maya says. "From when you were little. But you didn't say that your parents died."
"My brother too," Kotone mumbles, her face pressed into Maya's shoulder, tears still obscuring the words. "I didn't want to talk about it, but I've been thinking about it so much lately, and it's--it's really dumb."
She sounds like she wants to say something worse than dumb, but Kotone never swears, not even when things get really tight in a fight. She'll come up with a shoot or a darn it, but nothing stronger than that. If Maya didn't think it was impossible to get to high school without knowing any strong language, she would have honestly guessed that Kotone doesn't.
"It's okay," she says. "You can say it's fucked up if you want to."
Not normally her language either, to be fair, but Kotone looks like she might actually need the outlet of being able to curse at her parent's deaths.
Kotone only makes a noncommittal noise, and whispers, "It happened such a long time ago. It happened when I was six. It shouldn't still feel like it just happened. That's why Thanatos showed up, I think. The first time I saw a demon, I just thought I was going to die, and everyone around me was going to die, just like my family, and I feel like--like maybe if I hadn't been so scared, he wouldn't have come, and..." She curls up a little tighter. "And why does it hurt so much that summoned a Persona?"
"Sometimes things that hurt just keep hurting," Maya says. "You don't have to be okay with it just because it's been a long time."
"Mmmph," Kotone says, into Maya's shoulder, and they stay like that for a very long time.
When they finally get up off the floor and go to check out, it's not so much because Kotone seems better, as it is because she insists that the others are going to get worried and come looking for them soon. "And I don't want them to know," she tells Maya. "Please?"
"I won't tell them," Maya promises.
They check out. When the sister behind the counter gets to the end, she reaches down behind the counter, and adds what turns out to be a few packages of Featherman branded candies to their bag.
"Oh," Maya says. "We didn't--"
"You look Featherman, don't you honey?" the woman asks, looking right at Kotone. "I heard a little bit of what you were saying earlier, and--"
"You heard?" Kotone asks, looking devastated. Of course, they hadn't exactly been keeping quiet, but it's still something she very clearly doesn't want anyone to have overheard.
Maya, as quick as she can, jumps in. "You mean about how this is Kotone's favorite Satoma Tadashi?" she asks. "She likes this version of your song the best?"
For a second, the woman looks uncertain. But then she seems to catch Maya's frantic please play along expression, and nods. "Oh yes," she says. "Of course, that's what I meant."
Kotone sniffs, and wipes at her face, but gives her a genuine smile. "Thank you," she says, and when the woman gives her a kind smile in return, Maya decides that this is her favorite Satoma Tadashi too.
-//-
"Do you ever feel weird about coming here?" Kotone asks Jun, when the whole group stops in at Ramen Shiraishi after a particularly tough series of fights.
He hadn't even realized she'd slid into the seat next to him at the back of the group, so he jumps a little and doesn't answer right away.
"You heard about the rumors, right?" she asks, apparently mistaking his surprise for confusion.
"A rumor about this place?" Jun asks. "No."
"Oh," Kotone says, and Jun thinks she looks distinctly unhappy about being the one that has to explain. "I guess that makes sense. I didn't hear about it until after we'd come here a couple of times either, the others spread it around before I joined too."
"I'm guessing it has something to do with the lady here selling weapons under the table?" Jun asks. He's seen plenty of rumors like that since he joined the group. It doesn't seem too unusual.
"Yeah," Kotone says. "But usually the rumor's just like 'oh hey! Did you know this random clothes shop also sells real armor? It's super expensive, but great quality!'"
His interest piqued, Jun asks, "But not here?"
"Not here," Kotone agrees. "The rumor was that she sells weapons because she used to be some kind of secret agent. And now she talks about being a secret agent all the time, whenever we come in here. Like--last time we were here, I heard her telling Tatsuya how she was involved in some revolution in Russia. But she wasn't, she just thinks she was because of the rumors, and it really makes my skin crawl thinking about how she was forced into this whole other life that isn't really hers."
Jun listens to this with horror, and he can feel his skin starting to crawl a little too. It's apparently pretty uncomfortable for Kotone to be watching something like that happen from the outside, without having any first hand knowledge of being forced into living another life. But Jun has rumors to blame as much as anything else for his descent into Joker-fueled madness, and he hates hearing that it had happened to anyone else. "That's awful," he says.
"I know," Kotone says. "I think it was the first rumor they spread, or maybe almost the first one. So maybe they didn't think it was real, but it still..." She trails off and shrugs, blowing out a long breath of air before saying, "I think it's awful."
"It is," Jun says, and she looks at him with surprise before understanding gets through.
"Oh right," she says. "I almost forgot the Joker thing."
Jun has no idea how she could have. He feels it like a weight between them whenever they have to talk, because he doesn't know how she could possibly be okay with him in the group after what he did. The rest of them he can kind of understand, even if he wouldn't have blamed them at all for hating him. But they have a shared history, and a childhood when they'd been friends. Kotone hadn't even lived in Sumaru before demons started showing up, according to her. She doesn't have any reason to forgive him, she just... had.
"What's it like?" Kotone asks. "Being forced to be someone else because of rumors?"
Jun thinks about it for a long minute. Then he says, "Like wearing clothes that don't fit. Except the clothes are your whole life, and your brain, and just--everything."
"Hmm," Kotone says, and she turns her attention away from him, and back onto the newly made ex-spy behind the counter. She's not eating anything, Jun notices, and his own food tastes a little bit like ash in his mouth after what she's told him. "I think I can imagine that," she says quietly. "I feel a little bit like that, sometimes."
-//-
Tatsuya makes a mistake, at the end.
When the world has ended, and Maya has been killed in front of them, and Philemon offers them the chance to go back and fix things, he should have jumped at the opportunity. The cost was for all of them to forget meeting as children, and that's not a bad price, is it? It's not too costly of a choice to make. Everyone else had agreed, after all.
(Well--all of them except Kotone)
(When she asked what about her, Philemon had dismissed her out of hand, telling her that she doesn't get a choice in this because she hadn't been there, and has nothing to forget)
(He just brushes her off, continuing his habit of treating her like a child, just because she hadn't been there when she really was a child)
Tatsuya should have said yes, too. Should have said take my memories, let me forget my friends, that's a fair choice as long as everyone gets to live.
He hadn't, though.
In the last second he couldn't, and that's why the whole world is falling apart around him all over again. Things are so different, and his friends don't remember him, and he hurts all the time from feeling even more alone than when he hadn't known he had friends out there, because now they're in danger all over again. And they can't fight, and they can't remember him, and he can't even tell them how important they are to him.
Things don't go wrong all at once. They start small and build up, and Tatsuya recognizes the pattern from the last time this had happened. As soon as he starts to realize that things are going down the same, sad path (because he'd chosen wrong, because he still remembers), he stops going to school, stops going home, and starts fighting his doomed fight to fix things alone.
Only once does he allow himself to think that maybe there's something he can do.
Kotone hadn't gotten a choice, so... maybe it doesn't matter if she remembers. Maybe he can find her in this world, wherever she is, and remind her, and maybe he won't have to be alone. Kotone hadn't been there when they were all children, but she'd been there when they all saved the world. She's a friend, and he's sorely in need of those right now.
He watches for her at Sevens, and doesn't find her. He asks around, checks with the rumormongers to see if any of them comparatively innocent rumor of a new student transferring in. None of them has, and Tatsuya starts to wonder if things have changed enough in this new world to keep her away from Sumaru altogether. Maybe the accident with her family had never even happened--maybe she's living happily with her parents and her brother back in wherever they'd lived before she came here.
Completely by accident, he finds out that this isn't right.
It's early in this world's march toward its own destruction. The first demons are only just starting to show up, here and there. Tatsuya keeps an ear out for any rumors of them he can possibly find, and goes after the demons with absolutely everything he has in him.
One morning, early, after a night of no sleep, he hears a rumor of demons outside the elementary school. And of course he goes running right there, because these are kids, and he still sometimes has nightmares (when he can make himself sleep) of the sound of kids crying and shouting for help in the burning Aerospace Museum, he doesn't need any more of that.
So he goes to the school. And what he finds there, in the yard outside, is an empty space where all the children with the sense to run from monsters would otherwise have been, and one terrified little girl curled up on the ground and sobbing in outright fear as a mob of demons moves in on her.
Tatsuya moves too. He's moving even before she raises her head, and faces the oncoming demons with an unspeakably miserable expression, and he recognizes her. Recognizes the look on her face too, because how many times had he seen it, in the world where they'd fought together. In their most desperate moments, when they all had to keep somehow finding the strength to summon their Persona anyway, he'd seen her face like that.
It's...
This little girl, no older than six, is Kotone.
He knows who she is, and as soon as he knows that, he runs. He charges into the fight, desperately shouting for Apollo and his desperation to summon his Persona before she can awaken hers.
And he's just in time to stop her from reaching in desperation for Death, and calling Thanatos into being. Had this been how it happened last time? Had she been surrounded by demons, too scared and desperate and stubborn to do anything but call for help to the only thing that would listen?
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
The rumors had said that it was a new student fighting, and they'd felt so clever in figuring out that she couldn't have been a student at Kasugayama that they'd never stopped to consider the fact that Sevens isn't the only other school in Sumaru. It's the only other high school, but new student could have meant middle school student, could have meant elementary school student, as it obviously does.
Rumors had made her sixteen. The rumors that they'd helped to spread, gossiping with Chikarin like they weren't hurting anyone by doing it. And it's no wonder, suddenly, that Kotone had been so excited about things like Featherman, that she never really learned how to swear, why she let everyone else handle the things she didn't actually know yet, right down to the money whenever they went out on supply runs.
No wonder she'd hated going to Ramen Shiraishi, where the proprietor had been living a life no more real than hers was, and loved going to Satoma Tadashi, where she knew every word to the store's song.
(Because who even would take the time to learn that, and be proud of it, other than a six year old?)
But all that had been in another world, and in this world Kotone is still herself. She's not the girl who fights with Death, because there's no reason for her to fight. Tatsuya is there, he'd gotten to her fast enough, before she ever had a reason to say Thanatos's name.
When the demons are gone, and Tatsuya has a chance to drop to his knees in front of her and check that she's okay, Kotone lunges forward and hugs him tight around the neck. "Thank you, mister!" she says, and her voice is so small and so high that Tatsuya hates himself a little bit for not realizing the first time, and putting this tiny child in danger with the rest of them.
"It's okay," he tells her, letting her hold on tight for another few seconds before easing her back and running his eyes over her, looking for injuries. "Did you get hurt?"
She shakes her head no energetically, back and forth, hair whipping with the strength of her denial. "No!" she says. "Those monsters were going to attack me but you stopped them."
"I did," Tatsuya says. "And I'm happy I was able to help you. But I'm going to tell you something very important, okay?"
"Okay," Kotone says, and looks up at him with wide eyes.
"There's going to be more... monsters," Tatsuya says. "And I can't always be here to protect you." And he can't stand the idea of adding her voice to his memories of the children at the Aerospace Museum, not when she's someone he knows. "So I need you to get out of Sumaru," he continues. "Do you think you can do that? Can you convince your family to take you somewhere?"
"I don't know," Kotone says, and she looks miserable. Probably, Tatsuya is a little surprised to realize, because she doesn't want to disappoint him. "I'm staying with my aunt because my mom and dad are..." She trails off, and looks down at her scraped up hands, and when she picks up again her voice is quieter. "We were in an accident, and I crawled out of the car, and my hands got all scratched up from the glass but they never... they didn't come out of the car. I just moved here. I don't think my aunt is going to listen to me." She sniffs a little, but wipes her eyes, and looks up at him as steadily as she can. She might be only six but she's still Kotone, and if the rumors couldn't tell her to not like Featherman, or teach her how to swear, they definitely couldn't change how strong she is. That's already there, and it's because Tatsuya can see it in her eyes that he feels kind of okay about what he says next.
"Then run away," he tells her. "Run as far as you can."
She's six. There are all kinds of dangers outside Sumaru that have nothing to do with demons.
But they're not as bad as the dangers here. And he doesn't want her to be forced to fight all over again.
"Okay," Kotone says, and Tatsuya resists the urge to hug her again. She doesn't know him, and he doesn't want things to be weird.
Instead, he reaches into his pocket, and pulls out the box of Featherman bandaids that he'd made sure to buy, even though no one in this world gets why it matters. Seeing it, Kotone's eyes light up, and when he says, "Let me see your hands," she holds both palms out immediately. Tatsuya puts every single Featherman bandaid over the cuts on her palms. They're still not enough to cover all the cuts, but Kotone wears the delighted look of being allowed to have the cool bandaids that is universal to all six year olds that have ever existed, and when she hugs him again, Tatsuya doesn't fight it. He hugs her back, and says, "Take care of yourself, Kotone."
"I will!" she says, right in his ear. "But... how did you know my name is Kotone?"
He sighs, and with reluctance lets go and stands up. Ignoring her question, he just smiles and walks away.
"Hey wait!" Kotone calls. "Mister! Come back!"
He doesn't.
Walking away from Kotone, sending her away from Sumaru, is the best thing he could possibly do for her. And even as Kotone raises her voice plaintively, he doesn't turn back. He's giving her a whole, long life without Persona or demons.
These shouts, he's pretty sure, aren't going to haunt him the same way the kids from the Museum do.
-//-
On July 27, 2009, Kotone looks up from the conversation she's having with Junpei and Yukari--moaning over their recent finals, and debating whether Mitsuru's going to buy we were busy saving the world as an excuse for not studying enough--in time to catch a snippet of the TV Show Akihiko is half-watching on the other side of the dormitory lounge.
It's Who's Who, a weird little show profiling a genuinely random collection of people. It for some reason hasn't been canceled despite what Kotone assumes has to be horrible ratings, and today's random profile is someone that makes Kotone's heart stop for a second when she sees him.
"I know that guy," she blurts, and jumps out of her seat to join Akihiko over by the TV. "What's it saying?"
"What?" Akihiko asks. He'd been working on something in the little notebook where he tracks his training schedule, and frowns at the TV. "I wasn't really paying attention. I think they were saying something about him being a policeman."
"Huh," Kotone says.
"Where did you know him from?" Akihiko asks.
"I..."
She hesitates. There's this really old memory, from right after when her parents had died, and everything had still been kind of a dark blur of grief too big for her to understand. But she definitely remembers this guy's face, and out of the distant fog of childhood memories, she manages to grab onto a couple of key facts. "I ran into him once when I was six," she says, firm in her conviction of this remembrance. "He gave me a whole box of Featherman bandaids, and told me I should run away from home."
Akihiko, Yukari, and Junpei all look over at her like she's just said something crazy.
"What a weirdo," Yukari says, eventually.
"Yeah," Kotone says. "Probably, but he also--" This part is a little more vague. She'd been very scared at the time, and not even old enough to be remembering tings reliably. "He beat up some bullies that were picking on me, and I thought he was really cool."
"Why did he tell you to run away?" Junpei asks.
"No clue," Kotone says. "But I did, and I made it like two whole days before the cops picked me up." At which point her aunt had decided she was too much trouble to bother with, and surrendered guardianship to the next relative in line. Guardians one and two in a long series of distant relatives that hadn't really wanted her around--she'd never even made it back to Sumaru to pick up her stuff.
"Cool," Junpei says, looking impressed.
"He sounds like a terrible influence," Yukari sniffs.
"He isn't," Kotone says, and the words come out a little bit sharper than she'd meant them. "He's a hero."
(They all were, a tiny voice in the back of her head volunteers. We all were)
(It's not loud enough to make her question who they are, though--she pushes it down and ignores it instead)
Nobody seems to know what to say to this, but after a few seconds Akihiko says, "Mitsuru's not going to think Tartarus is a good excuse for failing your finals, by the way. She got first in our year."
Junpei groans loudly and flops back onto the nearest sofa, and his announcement that he's doomed (followed by Yukari's snarky comment that it's completely his own fault) derails the conversation entirely.
Kotone glances at the TV one more time, but Who's Who has gone to commercial, and they'll probably be profiling someone else in the second half of the show.
She wishes, as she goes to break up the fight between Lisa and Mich--between Yukari and Junpei, where had those names even come from--that she'd caught the show from the beginning.
It might have been nice to remember a little bit more of what happened back then. She doesn't know the full story of what had happened before he stepped in to help, and something buried deep in her mind is sorry that she doesn't.