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Chapter Text

It is a cold night in December, and it is the heat and shame of a lie that keeps him warm. Yu huddles with his friends in their coats and their scarves pulled up to their noses—they both look a little miserable, but even he knows it is not because of the weather.

“I can’t think of anyone else at all,” Yu says again, as if to make a point. Yosuke shakes his head and Naoto sighs besides him.

“There’s more to this case. I know it—there’s still something off.” Yu can tell she’s frustrated, but she doesn’t push back against him fully. Before Naoto thinks a minute too hard about it, he suggests they go back in to the warmth of the restaurant.

“There’s nothing we can do about it,” he says. “It’s in the police’s hands now.”

...

Ever since they’ve turned Namatame in, Adachi seems to have more free time than ever. They text throughout the day about meaningless things, but the occasional buzz in his pocket scratches an itch. Yu likes the stretch of time that is the wait—he asks him, so, what’s for lunch? And, inevitably, Adachi will answer his anticipation: your uncle had this, I had that. It doesn’t even matter to him, eventually, the answer itself, but that he always seems to get a response out of him, this busy detective.

Yu doesn’t think Adachi meant for this to happen when he first gave him his number, in those early days when he was still adjusting. Ostensibly, it had been for his own safety.

“Inaba’s a rather dangerous place now, isn’t it?” Adachi had said this to him then. In Yu’s mind, he had a twinkle in his eye. Perhaps he was just seeing things.

Yu supposes neither of them intended for it to be this way, but now it feels like he texts him more than he used to. When the quiet of the house—Dojima away at work and Nanako bedridden—takes a toll on him; when the humdrum of Inaba life without the excitement of the case is a bit too heavy, his hands find their way into his pockets without too much thinking.

The response that comes nowadays is: well, why don’t you bring something over? Vaguely, he has a sense that Adachi is using him for his cooking, but it’s not like he has anything better to do. His friends avoid talking about the case, and they avoid going back into the TV even more stringently. So, he brings whatever he’s made in the silence of Dojima’s kitchen and he stays for dinner.

On his walks back, Adachi texts him with requests and complaints. Too salty, too sweet—could you add pickled vegetables next time? Yu feels his phone buzz in his pocket, but he tries not to look at them until he gets home. In the dark of his room, when he flips his phone open, he makes his way through his hard-earned collection of trite, little responses in a focused silence. And, always the same final message:

thanks anyway though
get home safely

It’s a meagre thing, Adachi’s niceties. Yu lives on them though, until March comes in a blur and his things are all packed away in neat cardboard boxes.

It’s the day before he’s to return home, and he feels altogether a little unsettled. Dojima’s at the hospital again, as he usually is, and Nanako hasn’t gotten well enough to come home. The silence hangs a little heavier than it usually does, and he has gotten a little too used to the habit of texting Adachi whenever he feels this way.

Are you at work, he asks—yes, he says. He reads an invitation that is perhaps not there, and he shows up at the police station in the late afternoon. The sky is already grey as the fog prepares to drift in for the evening.

Adachi opens the door to the interrogation room that the other officers have placed him in with a puzzled look on his face. As for the rest of the station, they had all looked at him with indifference. But, it was also true that he was Dojima’s nephew, and none of them were quite ready to offend him over something they could easily resolve by giving Yu what he wanted: the smallest sliver of Adachi’s unimportant time.

“What are you doing here, Yu-kun? They’re working me to the bone, really, I’ve not got the time, at the moment…” He pauses when he sees Yu’s face, somehow a little more stoic than usual.

“Adachi-san. I’ve wanted to ask you something for the last few months.” Adachi chuckles and scratches the top of his head awkwardly—a habit of his, Yu notices.

“Well, why haven’t you?” He asks a rather strange question. Yu wonders if he already has a hunch as to what’s going to come out of his mouth.

“Did you do it?” He wants to add: did you know that I knew?

...

He is convinced by the smallest of Adachi’s gestures—a warm touch on his shoulder, a meaningful look, and for the briefest second, the brushing of Adachi’s hand against his own. He feels a little like a bull egged on by the sight of something red. Maybe it’s that tie he wears—a gift from his uncle, he recalls from some deep recess of his mind. Ultimately, he’s wondering how Adachi will respond. What will he say to this?

He burns the evidence, a flimsy piece of paper he’s not sure could be used as evidence at all. Adachi laughs at him, a little hysterically at first before even that burst of emotion fades away. In the end, Adachi just looks a tad perplexed.

“You’re a strange kid. Is this your idea of truth? I can’t make sense of it at all, I mean… I can’t make sense of you.” Adachi sighs and looks away from him: thinking, tapping his foot on the floor. Eventually, he pulls out his phone and seems to look over the messages Yu had sent him—banal and mundane, the lot of it, nothing special at all, and yet…

Yu fidgets in the silence. Whatever it is Adachi sees, he doesn’t say. He returns his phone into his pocket and looks at him with a blank face Yu can’t read either. He says, in the end: “You’ll pick up when you see a call from my number. We’re partners now, aren’t we? I like a reliable partner, and you better not forget what I’ve got on you.” It sounds half like a demand and half a request.

It is worse when he adds: “Not that it’s difficult to get a hold of you anyway.”

Adachi walks past him to leave and touches him lightly on the shoulder—he says, now you better head home, and he leaves him alone. Yu does as he is told. He returns home before the fog makes it too difficult to do so safely on foot.

...

Their texts continue as normal for the rest of the day, as if nothing’s happened. Yu stifles a deep urge within him to say something—but no, it’s better this way. All is as it was and should be…

The police are working overtime on the paperwork of Namatame’s arrest, Adachi texts him, casually. Also, the bento place the police station orders from has gotten worse—no, Adachi is sure to add, it’s not that your cooking is better, just that these eggs are a little mushier than I remember.

Does that bento place deliver?

yea but probably not to you

Yu tries to deduce which bento place Adachi might be talking about, but as far as he’s aware there are several small ones near the station. That’s another mystery unsolved, he supposes. He orders dinner and eats by himself, legs crossed at his usual spot at the table. The TV he leaves on throughout—its jingles and its news anchors jabber at him—and he lets it soothe him until his eyes glaze over. After a shower, he shuts himself in his room, looking more now like a storehouse than a place to live in. The sound of footsteps from below lets him know that Dojima has returned home, but he can’t find it in himself to make conversation. His uncle will call for him, he tells himself, if he needs him.

Before he turns in for bed, Yu can’t stop himself from checking his phone again: this was a terrible habit of his, that was all this was. Not a crime, a sin, or a mistake—no, just a habit. He texts Adachi when his train is to leave, and he asks, will you be there? A few minutes pass.

maybe
go to bed its late

Yu wonders where he is. He can’t shake the curiosity, and he can’t shake the sense that there are other things he should be thinking about instead, on his last day of Inaba. It’s only that he can’t seem to focus on anything else, and he feels horribly restless. He sleeps poorly, which he had assumed would be the case, and he wakes up with a heaviness in his stomach. Today was the day, and the morning looked no different than it did yesterday or the day before.

Dojima tells him preemptively, as if sensing some wave of disappointment off of him, that Nanako still wasn’t quite well enough to send him off. Yu looks out of the window of the car to avoid looking into his uncle’s eyes.

“I was hoping she’d come.” He stops himself from saying anything more than that.

“Just a little more,” Dojima says, “she just needs a little more time, that’s all.” He seems to believe it, and Yu lets him, for both their sakes.

In retrospect, Yu dimly realizes that he’d been a rather poor cousin. Ever since he and Yosuke had discovered the world buried in the depths of their TVs, he’d become a little more secretive, a little more reserved. He had less to say when Nanako asked after his day, and he had his guard up so much when he was around his uncle that even Dojima started to notice. You’re not getting into trouble at school, are you, he had asked, and Yu had his stellar grades, lined up neatly in a row, to fend him off.

Adachi had seen them too, one time, and he seemed to have gained a little respect for him.

...

The weather is poor now, even early in the day. He can barely see his friends’ faces until they’ve parked the car and walked up to them, all smiling a little sadly. We’ll miss you, they say in echoing unison, and Teddie is nowhere to be seen.

“It’s been an adventure,” Yu says. It’s the truest thing he feels he could say out loud. He resists—and fails—to take one last look around the station, looking, looking… It’s empty, besides them.

“Are you expecting anyone else?” His uncle asks, in that distinct tone of his that suggested that he’d like to be helpful.

His phone buzzes in his pocket. “No. I just wanted to take a final look around.”

“It’s not like we’re all going to disappear, you know! You can always come back!” Chie says this with a rather admirable show of bravery, and he acknowledges it with an encouraging nod on his part.

“I’ll see you all again soon,” he says, and he steps onto the train.

He feels tired the moment the doors close behind him. His bag isn’t too heavy—they had sent some of his things ahead of him—but he slumps a little resigned against the train’s metal walls. So, that was that, then. He wants desperately to look; what did Adachi text him this time? Would he see him, if he looked outside the window again?

He looks, and his friends wave kindly back at him. Yu feels a little as if he were cornered. He takes the seat furthest away from the station platform and he fiddles with his thumbs. One… two… three, could he look now?

He places his bag at his feet, and pats his coat pockets frantically—yes, there it was.

goodbye, partner
don’t forget what you’ve done
that was evidence, you know
text me when you get to the next stop

Black text glowing on a white screen. Yu stares at them, and he nods mindlessly as he processes the words once, twice, and again. It was a little comforting to know what was expected of him. This was straight-forward, he told himself, this was understandable. After a few moments, he snaps his phone shut and slides it into his pocket once more. He dozes off in a strange state of calm, the train rocking him to sleep, and he keeps his hands folded over where his phone lays tucked away.

...

When he awakes, the sun is shining brightly through the train windows. It had been a while since he had seen that much natural light, with the fog hanging over Inaba for the last few months. He looks out the window to see where he might be, but the greenery seems not too different from where he had called home for the last year.

Ah, he thought to himself, I was supposed to text when I had hit the next stop. How long had it been? He flips open his phone and he stares.

April 11th, 2011 15:35

Yu closes his phone shut and blinks. What now? He opens it again and sees the same date flashing at him; it is now 15:36, his phone informs him. Shamelessly, he moves immediately to his Contacts list—Adachi’s number is nowhere to be seen. Messages?

Meet us outside Yasoinaba station at 16:00.

Yu remembers this. He remembers it from a year ago—his uncle Dojima was to pick him up; it had been arranged. He remembers his mother telling him gently: Dojima has a sweet little daughter you should become friends with. They’ve been through so much, the two of them.

The train rumbles along, and Yu finds himself completely unable to make sense of what’s happened. Was this the fog’s doing? Where had the fog been coming in from anyway? He feels the same curiosity that had driven him to burn the letter kick in, but this time there isn’t a decision for him to make, an action for him to take.

Next stop: Yasoinaba, Yasoinaba. The doors will open on the right. Please watch your step when exiting the train.

I’m here, Yu thinks, I’m here again. Or rather, he hasn’t gone anywhere at all. Upon a closer look, the bag he had brought with him looks a little newer, a little less beaten up. He wonders if he looks the same too, younger, more fresh-faced?

...

It’s strange to see her again: Nanako. She hides behind her father’s legs, and Yu smiles at her, reassuringly if not mechanically. He remembers the gestures, the moves, all they had said. Dojima introduces himself, and Yu wants to leap out of his skin. I know, he wants to shout, I know, and do you know? Do you know where Adachi-san might be, right this moment?

“I’ll need to drop by the gas station first, if you don’t mind. Then we can get you all settled in.” Dojima tells him this not unkindly, and Yu notices this time the slight circles around his eyes and the fact that he’s nicked himself on the right side of his cheek while shaving. So he’s been like that for a while, Yu muses, and he follows him into the car.

In a way, it’s almost like he’s got a sort of cheat code rattling around his head. He asks, after a few niceties, if Nanako’s got any suggestions for places he should check out?

Hesitatingly, at first, she says: yes, well, I can think of one… and then it’s easy sailing from there—oh, a place called Junes? Really? What’s so great about Junes? Nanako tells him all about a place he already knows so intimately, and she hums the Junes tune for him too. How familiar, Yu thinks, and maybe even a tad comforting, if he didn’t think about what awaited him.

The journey’s the same and yet not, for Yu knows this place now, in and out, its people and its places. He catches a glimpse of Kanji on the street, his dyed-blonde hair sticking out like an eyesore. Kanji, who he knew liked to sew and who he knew had a soft heart, was being inconspicuously avoided by everyone who crossed his path.

When they pull into the gas station, Yu jumps out to help, as he did before. The same gas attendant from last year, if he could call it last year, approaches them with a polite smile.

“You’re new in town, aren’t you?” Yu looks up to respond but sees the attendant looking at him with a rather bitter face. That was… new, wasn’t it?

“Yes, I’ve just come to live with my uncle for a year,” Yu starts, before the attendant sidles up to him, hand on his shoulder. He can feel their breath on his ear.

“Do you even know what it is that you want, Narukami Yu?” The sound of his full name takes him rather aback.

“Sorry?”

“Another chance, young man. You, your detective, and one other.” Yu turns to look briefly at his uncle and the attendant seems to laugh—at him, specifically.

“No, not him. You know who I mean, don’t you? Your unsolved mystery… when you finally see through him, what will you do? What is your heart’s desire, human as you are?”

Yu sees his uncle wrapping up and he realizes that there’s no point beating around the bush—keenly, he feels the need to know.

“Is this my chance to…” Yu pauses. He’s not sure what should come after. The word “save” tickles his tongue like a joke—could he really stop the murders by himself, early and on his own? That seemed an impossibility, so what was left? The idea that he was to spend the next year watching it all play out again—play out wrong, the attendant seemed to think—made his fingers twitch. He wanted a distraction, but his little habit had been swept out from under him. He’ll hear the buzz of his phone in his dreams and, for the better, nowhere else.

The attendant makes a disapproving noise at him—tsk. “It’s not for me to decide. Your fate is in your own hands, Narukami Yu. Don’t dawdle now, your uncle’s waiting for you—and the other two won’t sit idly either.”

The mention of him brings him back to his senses. Quick now, he thinks, I must get all the information I can gather: “Will he remember too?”

The attendant smiles at him, mouth half open as if they were about to laugh. “I said the two of them, didn’t I? Who do you mean?” Before Yu could clarify in a flustered hurry, the attendant stops him with a wave of their hand. He supposes it is a kind mercy.

“No,” they offer, “I don’t think he wanted to. Though, who’s to say he won’t change his mind?”

...

The day is long, and he must be the politest he can manage. He smiles at Nanako, nods at his uncle, and helps with his luggage when it is brought in. He feels himself sleepwalking through remembrances, and he’s exhausted when he finally collapses onto the futon at the end of a long… day, he supposes. A day where he’s gone nowhere—even the boxes seem not so different, piled up as they were when he was about to leave. Vaguely, he realizes the first murder is playing out somewhere—where, he doesn’t know—and it makes him feel even more powerless.

And now: a whole other year. He flicks open his phone and stares at his contacts list: no one, no one from the life he had just lived in this very same place. He supposes he should see it as an opportunity—and he knew that it was—but the attendant’s words haunt him. You, your detective, and one other—his detective… and what was he then, to him?

...

I am nothing yet. He should have reminded himself of this, when he saw Adachi speeding across the first crime scene, hand clutched over his mouth. It feels familiar, feels nostalgic, and he wants so much, wants something—though he doesn’t know what—from this man who doesn’t know him anymore. Driven on by instinct and what he supposes he must call frustration, he found himself moving to touch, to place a comforting hand on Adachi’s shoulder.

“Are you alright, Adachi-san? I’ve some tissues if you want, oh, and water…”

Adachi flinches beneath him and reminds him of his place. He spins to face him at impressive speed, and when Adachi sees that it is not Dojima who is acting so strangely—so very oddly tenderly—the sheepish apology he had rehearsed dies in his bitter mouth.

“Uh, who are you?”

“Narukami Yu. But just Yu is fine.” Yu watches his face—he wonders if his name will come with any sense of recognition. A blank stare answers him, and he concedes: “I’m Dojima’s nephew.”

Briefly, without his usual filter, he says: well, you’re not very alike! Yu smiles at this and places the packet of tissues in his hand into Adachi’s own.

“Take them. I doubt Uncle has any on hand.”

...

The discovery of the TV world plays out with less bombast the second time around. He lets Yosuke and Chie react for him, and he sticks his hand into the Junes TV without any fooling around. Hurry along now, he finds himself thinking. He knows how this will play out if he were to act just as he did the last time. He had been deemed wanting, somehow. Of what, he was not sure. He hears the words of the gas attendant in his head: Do you even know what it is that you want?

He doesn’t, but he does find himself wondering incessantly: what could Adachi have wanted, what does he want now? Adachi hadn’t wanted the memories that he had held onto, whether stubbornly or desperately, in a more shameful way. If curiosity could be a wish, a form of desire, perhaps he would be happy to let it lead him. He watches Teddie summon their way back, the usual tower of TVs, and climbs in without hesitation—you’ve some balls, he hears Yosuke shout from behind him, and he forgets to look back to check if they’re following.

After he returns, he showers and hides in his room. This was to be a solo investigation, then. Legs crossed on the floor, Yu has a notebook open in front of him. For now, it was blank, but he knows where to start:

April 12th – Adachi-san will find the body of his first victim and run towards me, walking home with Chie and Yukiko.

That was true so far, he thinks, but what then? This time, he supposes, he has done something different.

I gave Adachi-san a pack of tissues. I called him by his name before we were introduced. Will he notice?

...

A few days later, Yu watches Yosuke wave his weapons in the Junes court, and he does his best to cause a commotion too. He remembers this—they’ll get taken to the station, and then again, as if it were a coincidence…

“Adachi-san,” Yu says to the figure passing them by, “I hope you’re feeling better now.”

Adachi looks at him with a flicker of his eyes before they widen. “Ah! You’re… Yu-kun, was it?” He looks at the officer before him and Yu watches him stifle a laugh. “Oh no! You’ve not done something wrong, have you?”

Yu smiles at him and his affected concern. How like him, how familiar. Yu chooses his words carefully: “I didn’t think I did, but I don’t think I’m in a position to say otherwise.”

They pass each other in the hallway again after Dojima’s lecture—to think you’d do something so ridiculous, he had said, pointing at Yu in particular—and Yu waves at Adachi again.

“Adachi-san.” He says his name too often, too familiarly, perhaps. Yu can’t quite tell yet if he wants to be as conspicuous as possible or if it were better to let some suspicion seep in.

Adachi raises an eyebrow at him, and Yu smiles at him as he did before: “It seems I’ve done nothing wrong after all.”

...

At home, Dojima slides a new packet of tissues across the table at him. It’s not the same brand, but Yu already has a hunch as to who it might be from before Dojima tells him, a little quizzically: “Adachi told me to give these to you. You do know who I’m talking about, don’t you?” Of course, Yu says, and he pockets them without offering his uncle any more than that.

“I guess I must have introduced you and not remembered it…” Dojima mutters this to himself, and Yu pointedly ignores the question in his uncle’s words.

“I hope the two of you haven’t been working too hard,” he offers up instead, and Dojima sighs.

“That’s just not something we can decide for ourselves. This case… well, you just stay out of trouble. That incident with you at Junes; what were you thinking? I didn’t think the Hanamura kid was the bad sort, but if he’s the one putting you up to this—” Nanako cuts in before Dojima could finish his second lecture for the day, and Yu nods mindlessly as Dojima is forced to apologize to him for “raising his voice,” so to speak.

“I forgive you, uncle,” Yu says half amused, “and you’ll tell Adachi-san thank you for me, won’t you?”

...

April 17th – I ran into Adachi-san again, this time at the police station. He seemed to have remembered me. I saw briefly that other side of him when he had wanted to laugh at us being brought into the station.

I don’t know what he’s doing, buying a new pack of tissues for the ones I gave him the other day. Is it that he doesn’t want to owe anyone anything?

...

When Yu enters the Velvet Room, he is greeted by three stern faces. He hadn’t thought there could be such variety in the emotion that was disappointment.

Despite her own thoughts on the matter, Margaret is business as usual. Politely, she opens the Persona compendium up for him, and he sees all the Personas he had collected available for him to use. He can’t help but be a little surprised.

“So, it will be easier this time, then?”

“These are the fruits of your past labor, your past self’s labor. But, you should not forget,” Margaret warns him, “that what has been made can be unmade.”

...

It’s not that Yu doesn’t understand Margaret’s warning. She had been quite clear, after all. Yet, with the end of each tedious school day, Yu finds himself wanting only his own company or one other’s. The familiar voices of those he had once surrounded himself with feel pointed somehow, accusatory—they remind him of the year passed, the year that had been erased. He hadn’t been good enough then, and he can’t shake the feeling that what he was doing now wasn’t quite right either.

When the school day ends, he walks himself rather automatically to Junes. His sweep of the Junes lobby approaches religious, and when Adachi is not there, he writes it down in the little notebook he had taken to carrying now. If Adachi were not in Junes, then where could he be? There were not many other options: either he was at work, or he was at home.

Rather embarrassingly, Yu gets good at peering through the police station windows—he even begins to grasp a sense of where Adachi’s desk might be amongst the many lined up in several neat rows. It is unfortunate that when he and Dojima must head out to question a suspect or gather information, they hop into a police car that is impossible for Yu to chase after. He does, however, quickly discover a workaround in the shape of his surprisingly soft uncle.

I was thinking about helping Nanako-chan out with dinner tonight. Do you have a preference as to what we get, uncle? Do you know if you’ll be back tonight?

For a man generally reserved, this line of questioning gets Yu quite far. Dojima often answers him quite straight-forwardly, and sometimes he’s even able to get a hint as to where they might be, out in the field.

Thanks, Yu, I’m sure Nanako appreciates it. We’ll be at the Amagi Inn for some time, and it seems like they’re wanting to provide us with dinner. Maybe tomorrow, though.

He makes a note: so, today they were canvassing at the inn. That made sense—and, it reminded him too that the first day Adachi came home was when Yukiko had returned. He wonders if it would be the same this time, and he finds himself counting the days. If he spared only a day for her, he could learn Adachi’s movements even better, observe him even closer. Secure in his own capability to rescue Yukiko—he was an expert now, not an amateur—Yu brushes away Yosuke and Chie’s concern without so much a sense of guilt. They didn’t know; they didn’t could be blamed. He could only hope they didn’t think him too callous.

He spends the days doing his own canvassing, taking note of Adachi’s daily whereabouts. The more knowledge he had the better—that, at least, was his thinking—no matter how it was that he intended to use it. In the evenings, when Dojima is not home, he walks by the gas station to see if Adachi will appear as he did before. To his relief, he eventually does, eating convenience store food or taking an aimless break in a shadowy corner of the road. Yu discovers also that Adachi will allow him to chat briefly with him on these slow evenings as long as they’re an exchange of complaints, negative energy channeled into a show of friendship.

He leverages all that he had come to know of his friends and acquaintances—their rumors, their fears, their weaknesses—and he crafts them into little tales for him; in return, Adachi offers him sly grins and a few stories of his own, of co-workers Yu had never heard of but whom he starts to feel he does through him.

I am shameless, he thinks, but he tells Adachi anyway: Yosuke’s embarrassing crushes, Yukiko’s plans to leave town, how it was true that Mr. Morooka bought photobooks of idols even as he championed purity and celibacy. Anything, as long as it let him crack the older man’s façade, bit by bit, dirty fact by dirty fact. It was fine, he reasoned, because no one would ever know.

Yu makes a habit of this, and he makes a habit of assisting with dinner too, shaping it eventually into an expectation. It forces Dojima to let him know, as regular as a man like him can, whether to expect him for dinner—where he and Adachi were for the evening, whether Adachi would go home early or no—and Yu calls him if he forgets. Perhaps because he is older, Dojima takes him seriously enough to think it rude to keep him waiting. Yu feels this out, and he presses as hard as he can on the half-respect his uncle affords him.

...

The day arrives: Yukiko’s rescue grants the police some respite, and Dojima drags Adachi home for the first time. Everything is going as he remembers, and Yu is uncertain whether he should be comforted or worried about it all. He gets up to make their guest feel welcome, and Adachi seems happy enough to hand him his coat.

“Not getting into any more trouble are you, Yu-kun?”

Yu doesn’t remember Adachi saying that to him before. He looks up a little taken aback. He wonders how Adachi means for him to take this—as concern, or the gentlest mockery?

“Oops, I didn’t say anything wrong, did I?” Dojima makes a little tsk noise before Adachi apologizes, hands clasped and head bowed, and the whole thing is over before Yu can think of anything to say in response. He wonders after the seriousness of his joke, and he supposes that the charade is rather fitting for this older man who floats about his dreams and does circles in his head, a cheeky figure as light as air.

Yu has gotten so used to thinking of him, about him, that he is not quite able to stop himself from staring at Adachi throughout dinner. He watches him fidget throughout dinner, notices the wrinkles in his dress shirt, and watches him eat: a lot, and hungrily. The conversation is largely noise, and Yu answers perfunctorily: yes, school has been a lot of fun, actually; and yes, he’s joined the soccer team; and no, his homeroom teacher likes him well enough. Every once in a while, Adachi catches his gaze and he does nothing but smile a little crooked.

Dinner is over when the TV starts to drown out the spluttering conversation—Dojima is trying his best to stay awake on the sofa, and Nanako is glued to the quiz show on TV. Quietly, Yu decides its his turn to catch Adachi by surprise.

“Thank you for the new pack of tissues, Adachi-san.” Adachi seems surprised to be addressed. Yu can see a slight flush on his cheeks, but he’s sure he’s not drunk yet. He knows he’s not as easy as he looks.

“Uh, of course. Just returning the favor.” A pause. “You know, Yu-kun… Are you usually that nice to strangers? It seems a little dangerous, if you ask me.”

“Adachi-san isn’t a stranger to me.” Yu lets his answer sink a little. He takes a sip from his water cup and watches Adachi’s mouth turn into a confused frown.

“That’s true… though I really don’t remember us being introduced. Remind me? I hope I wasn’t drunk then!” He laughs here, his usual way, fading always into a nervous chuckle.

“Oh, that first day was such a blur. I’m not sure I remember either,” Yu says nonchalantly. He turns towards the kitchen then and changes the subject abruptly: how about we do the dishes now and leave Nanako to her quiz show?

The switch is so sudden it pulls an affirmative noise from Adachi before he understands what’s happened. With a blink and the small noise of his beer can hitting the table, Adachi gets up to join Yu with a distinct sense of unease. Yu reads it in the crinkles around his eyes and the silence with which he starts handing Yu the first soaped dish.

Yu has learned that silence works wonders. He lets it simmer, one washed dish after the other, and eventually Adachi speaks up again.

“We haven’t met each other somewhere else before, have we?” No, Yu says, I don’t think so. He says also: “Don’t you think you would remember if we had?”

Adachi must be getting irritated by now, Yu thinks, and he has to suppress a laugh. As a gesture of mercy, he starts asking after Adachi’s life here in Inaba, and Adachi is happy to complain. It is his favorite thing—Yu knows this now—and it distracts him from what Yu supposes might be called suspicions.

“Did I ever tell you about my first case here, Yu-kun? I must have,” Adachi continues without waiting for his response, “because it was ridiculous, just real countryside drama, and I’ll tell it again, while I’m at it…” He drones on, and Yu finds himself oddly at peace. Adachi’s voice is a soft lull, a steady rhythm, and the mechanical movement of scrubbing plates is easy on his brain. For a few seconds, Yu lets himself think of nothing else. He could live here, in this moment, if time would let him.

“Have you rescued more cats since?”

“So many I couldn’t keep count… and it’s only been six months.” Adachi looks at him then, and Yu sees a slight change in his eyes. It is a droop, or a darkening; something that ages him. He says: “I’ll go mad at this rate, don’t you think?”

Yu returns his look with solemnity. “Do you want to return to the city, Adachi-san?”

“Who wouldn’t! But, no, that’s not in my future any time soon.” Yu finds it curious that Adachi believes this so fatalistically, but he doesn’t feel like he can push. He supposes he might even be a little worried that if he did, something more ugly would come out, something he shouldn’t know just yet… But he supposes that was the point of this, this doing over. And yet, he isn’t able to summon up enough courage before the moment passes.

“And that’s the last one! Aren’t we quite the team?” Yu hears the usual lilt in his voice, and he can’t help but smile sadly at their accomplishment. A team, indeed—and Adachi has already hidden himself somewhere he cannot reach. That was alright though, he consoled himself: he had many more days still, and much more work to do.

“Say, Yu-kun, do you have your own phone? Is that something kids are allowed to have nowadays?”

Yu knows what is to come now, and the anticipation makes his muscles tense. Easy now—no good to scare him off. Adachi’s number, that little itch…

“I have one, at any rate!” Perhaps that was too cheery, he thinks immediately after the words escape his mouth.

“Well, I imagine your parents think you can be trusted. Dojima-san has been a little worried about you, you know, after that Junes incident?” Yu nods, says, he understand where his uncle is coming from. Adachi scratches the back of his head in that affected, sheepish way of his, and Yu smiles at him encouragingly.

“Think of it as a favor to him, then. It’d reassure him if I had your number on hand, keep an eye on you. Oh, I know, I know, adults and their fussing… At any rate, it’d make my job easier, so don’t be too upset with me, alright?”

So that was how he was going to frame it this time. Yu makes a mental note to remember it all—the slight differences in the words he chose… would it be possible to detect a shift also in his real intentions?

“Not a problem at all, Adachi-san. Being an adult’s tough, isn’t it? Especially working under Uncle… Anyway, send me a message, and I’ll put you in my Contacts.”

Adachi seems a tad surprised by how easily he rolled over, but Yu can see a little relief too. He wonders if it was true that Dojima had asked him to keep an eye on him. If it weren’t true, wouldn’t he be worried that Yu would figure it out eventually? He keeps his questions to himself as their phones beep in the domestic hum of the Dojima household. Yu watches his first message from Adachi—this time, anyway—flash on his screen.

It's Adachi. Thanks for being a good sport, Yu-kun.
I promise I won’t bother you too much!

It’s strange, seeing him message so formally. Yu wonders how long it’d take before they settled into the same rhythm as before, or perhaps they wouldn’t at all?

I’m in your care, Adachi-san.
I don’t mind at all, so message me whenever.

...

It is perhaps worse, in truth, to have Adachi’s number in his phone and know it would be better if he didn’t text him whenever he felt a little restless, a little bored perhaps. He doesn’t understand the urge still, but at least he can control it a little better now. It also helps that the days that follow Yukiko’s rescue are rainy; he finds Adachi sheltering more consistently in the Junes lobby, staring out the windows.

“Adachi-san. Bad weather, isn’t it?” Adachi seems unsurprised by him now, ever present and always running into him conspicuously. His measured, blank face is perhaps more discomfiting. The first time around, his uncle had suggested he tell Adachi off if he ever found him slacking off in Junes, but Adachi doesn’t ask whether Dojima’s sent him this time. Something seems to have told him, instinctively, that this wasn’t the case.

“It really is, isn’t it! And several days in a row… talk about bad luck. Anyway, what are you doing here, Yu-kun? Hanging out with your friends again?”

Yu can almost hear the mockery slip in near the tail end of Adachi’s question. It’s rather careless of him, in a way.

“No, it’s just me today.” Yu shifts his feet then, as if to appear more casual: “Actually, I was on my way to pick up some things for Nanako-chan. Do you have dinner plans?”

In a way, Adachi is almost an easy catch. Free food always gets his attention, even more when Yu slyly suggests that he’s considering picking up some sushi—sea urchin, you know, and maybe some fatty tuna?

“Oh, well, I don’t know… won’t Dojima-san think I’m intruding?”

He’s playing hard to get, Yu finds himself thinking. But, he can see he’s got his hook in…

“Of course not! We’ll say I’m the one who invited you. You can help out with the groceries.” Yu beams at him, and Adachi relents, with a dramatic shrug of his shoulders and a drag in his step.

...

One thing Yu has gotten better at, he realizes, is this setting of expectations. He does it first with Dojima, and he does it again now with Adachi. When he helps Nanako set the table, he’s sure to leave a plate extra—for Adachi-san, he tells his uncle, if he comes. Slowly, it becomes more likely to expect him than not. It helps too that Nanako has taken a shine to him—his inadvertent accomplice.

“Adachi-san has been trying to teach me how to do my hair in buns,” she tells her father over dinner once, and for once Adachi takes a compliment when he’s given one.

“Is that true? Didn’t think you’d be good at that,” Dojima says a touch surprised, and Adachi chuckles nervously, as usual. “I’ve good hand-eye coordination, or so I’ve been told.”

Yu looks up at him. “Does that mean you’re a good shot?” He sees Adachi’s smile drop instantly and his guard go up.

“Hm… I’ve never had the chance, so who knows?” He seems to catch himself mid-way, realizing this was a rather odd response. “What a scary thing to ask, Yu-kun!”

Dojima nods sagely at Adachi’s adjusted answer. That’s right, he echoes, it’s no good thinking about such things, and Yu concedes, apologizes. He brings up, to cover his tracks, the hand trick Adachi did for Nanako the other day, and his sweet younger cousin swoops in. Show us again, she cheers him on, and all that talk about guns and shooting is pushed to the wayside.

Before he leaves that night, Adachi catches him returning from the bathroom and guides him away from the living room gently by the elbow.

“I didn’t know your high school had a riflery club. How very rural of them!” We don’t have one at all, Yu responds, matter-of-factly, and he watches Adachi scrutinize him.

“Then why the interest in shooting all of the sudden?”

“I’m not interested in shooting anything. I was just curious about your abilities.” He smiles after saying this and watches Adachi frown in opposite response.

“Eh?” For a moment, he doesn’t say any more than that. “You know, you’re a strange kid, Yu-kun.” The echo of those words remind Yu of all he’s done, of what he intends to do now. He steadies himself, reminds himself to watch closely the face of the other man, whom he thought of so often.

“That’s not very nice,” Yu says in joking response, “especially as I think very much of Adachi-san.” Because he seems quite taken aback, Yu continues: “You should show me how to do that hand-trick. Besides, I think it’s almost time for dessert.”

...

Yu likes this, this tentative crossing of lines and the grazing over of Adachi’s buttons. It feels the safest way to him, the most comfortable way, to be certain that he was doing something different in this second run. It is with this reasoning that he texts Adachi for the first time about something entirely irrelevant to their new schedule of dinners at Dojima’s.

I tried the non-alcoholic version of the beer you were having with Uncle the other day.
Is it meant to taste so bitter?

He imagines Adachi laughed at him when he received this, but it gets him a response regardless.

and now you’re drinking, yu-kun?
seriously, cut me some slack, dojima-san’s going to kill me at this rate

Yu smiles. This was closer to the Adachi he remembered.

It was non-alcoholic, so it’s fine.
Plus, Uncle hardly has the right to scold me for drinking when he drinks so much.

Yu wonders if his little dig at his uncle’s habits will work to convince Adachi to let his guard a little more down. He wonders and thinks, and it does circles in his head as he blows mechanically through Kanji’s dungeon.

He allots only one day for Kanji’s rescue too, and it continues to prove fairly easy when he allows himself to rely on the Personas he’s fused before. Past luck and past labor, put to good use. His party members look exhausted by the time they’re done, their legs sore from running up floor after floor, but they’re altogether unable to convince him to take it slower, one day at a time.

At one point, Yosuke turns to him and says, with perhaps some insecurity: “You’re really good at this, like, seriously good. It’s almost like you’ve done it before.”

Yu thanks him as casually as he can, and he doesn’t offer to say anymore.

...

A few days after Kanji’s rescue, Adachi texts him when he’s slacking off in Junes. As far as Yu can recall, he’s never done that before, and he finds himself rather excited.

hey i’m at junes
don’t you think there should be more beer snacks in the house?
you should come get some before dinner

Yu sees the message when the school day’s over, and he almost trips over himself dashing off, dodging as many handwaves and greetings as he can. He forgets to say goodbye to his friends before he runs off, and the oddity of it all seems to finally prompt Yosuke to say something to the others.

“Isn’t this all really strange?” Yosuke starts, ineloquently. He’s not quite sure he has the words for it, even if he were to think on it a bit longer.

Chie looks at him funny. “What do you mean? What’s ‘this’?”

“I mean him, I mean Yu. Didn’t it seem like he knew his way around Kanji’s dungeon like… really well?”

Chie rolls her eyes at him. “This isn’t you being jealous of how good he is in a fight, is it?”

“No, you’ve got it completely wrong! It’s just…” Yosuke sighs. He doesn’t quite know how to put it in a way that didn’t make him sound paranoid. In the end, he decides it doesn’t matter if they think him of that way.

“It’s just that he came to Inaba right around the time the murders started happening, right? And then he was the only one who could go into the TV at first, before we all got our powers…” Yukiko looks at him then with her brows furrowed in a way that makes him want to shrink into a ball.

“Are you suggesting that Narukami-kun might have something to do with the culprit?” Yosuke winces. He hems, haws, says, well, no, it doesn’t have to be that way…

“But then why would he rescue us? Why didn’t he just let you die in the TV when you forced him to take you back?” Chie has her hands on her hips now, and her voice is a tad louder than Yosuke would like.

“Sh! Not too loud!” He realized belatedly that he was getting quite loud himself. “Look, let’s talk about this someplace else. We’re already getting weird stares…”

...

Yu finds Adachi waiting for him in the usual spot, hands in his pockets.

“I came as soon as I could. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.” I didn’t really mean it all that seriously, Adachi says shrugging, but he gestures for them to go up anyways. It was like him to set expectations low.

Adachi tells him in the elevator: “Like I said, I was thinking we were a bit low on beer snacks, you know? And then I heard a brand I rather like was on sale today…” Yu smiles and gets the hint. The man ten years older than him was hoping to use his allowance to buy snacks for drinking at their house. Somehow, this pleased him.

“I didn’t know there was a brand you liked. You should show me, and I’ll make sure to get some whenever I go to Junes with Nanako.”

“Aah, that’d be such a help, Yu-kun! Here…” Adachi pats him on the back and hands the shopping trolley over to him as the elevator door slides open. “Let’s see now, what aisle would this be?”

...

The Investigation Team find themselves at the Junes food court. Everything is per usual, except that a chair is conspicuously empty. Kanji shows up looking a few shades uncomfortable with their leader’s clear absence, but he sits down nonetheless.

“So? What’s it that you’re wanting to talk about?”

Yukiko taps Chie gently on the shoulder. “Chie, let’s catch Kanji-kun up on what’s happened so far.”

“You know what, why should we? Hanamura, you do it. This was your idea anyway.”

Yosuke sighs for what felt like the hundredth time, but he supposes he was the one who brought it up.

“Look, again, I don’t mean to say I’m convinced or anything. I just mean that the whole thing feels kind of odd.”

“Don’t beat around the bush now! Just tell him what you said to us!” Patience, patience, Yosuke responds, but he concedes anyway.

“It’s just a feeling, but I can’t help but think our Leader knows something we don’t. And, like I was saying, he came to Inaba around the time the murders started, right? He was the first one to gain the power to enter the TV, and he just seems really comfortable with all this Persona and shadow business…”

Chie and Yukiko look at him still with faces of displeasure, but Kanji seems to grunt at least in acknowledgement.

“Well, if he was hiding something, wouldn’t you guys have already seen it when he faced his Shadow, or whatever? I mean, I wasn’t the only one who had to deal with that, right?”

This seems to sway Yukiko a bit; the memory of her own Shadow sours her mood and her generosity. He never did have one, did he, she suggest gently, pushing Chie to repeat her own words: “Wasn’t that what you said, Chie?”

A bit uncomfortably, Chie suggests, “Couldn’t that just mean he’s not hiding anything?” Yosuke frowns at that.

“How’s that possible?”

“Maybe there’s just nothing he’s insecure about. Maybe he faced it back when he was in the city, I don’t know!” Her raised voice has Yosuke wincing again and he hushes her again.

Chie rolls her eyes at that. “What’s the point of coming here if we can’t talk a little more loudly about it?”

Without meaning at all to be solemn, Kanji chimes in, “A man that’s afraid of nothing is the most dangerous of them all.”

“Thanks for that,” Yosuke says frowning still, “really comforting.”

Suddenly, a laugh a few shades too familiar drifts in from somewhere near; they’re not sure where their backs should turn—towards or away from the food court entrance?—and then it comes again, a little softer now.

“Really? I had heard some stories about students from that school, but I didn’t know they got that rowdy…”

It’s most definitely their leader, they think in silent unison—it’s certainly him, and it would be incredibly awkward if he saw them meeting without him.

“Not that you don’t get into some trouble yourself, Yu-kun, isn’t that right? You do know getting arrested can go on your record?

The other voice is a strange mix of known and unknown. Yu-kun, he had said… someone older or someone familiar, perhaps, but none of them are willing to wait long enough to find out. Yosuke looks over at Chie, then Yukiko—Kanji, he figures, will act perfectly fine on his own—and he gestures wildly at a few potted plants some feet away. They make a break for it, and hide themselves behind a pot each. Kanji, Yosuke notices, has settled for just looking very seriously out and over the patio. Good for him, Yosuke thinks; we can only hope that works out.

It’s much harder to make out what they’re saying now that they’re further away, but they get snippets still and, moreover, a look at the man their leader was talking to. It takes a few seconds, but the suit clues them in fairly quickly.

Chie leans in to whisper to Yukiko: “Yukiko, that’s the detective, right? The one Narukami-kun went up to help that day we were released early from school?”

“I think you’re right. I guess they must be close…” To Chie’s ears, Yukiko doesn’t seem too confident in that assumption, but it seemed a natural one given that they were, apparently, going shopping together.

Yosuke, having made his own breakthrough, taps Chie on the shoulder. “That’s the detective! I remember Yu said hello to him when they took us into the station. He was the one who was convinced Amagi might have been involved with Yamano’s death!” This time, it was Chie who shushed him. We’ve already figured that out, idiot, she mutters quickly to him, but paused at the new information.

“That’s still a really strange thing to say, isn’t it? Especially to students from the same school…”

Abruptly, Kanji’s voice takes them out of their heads. There’s a light panic to it, as he exclaims as casually as he could: “Oh! Senpai! What a, um, coincidence seeing you here!”

All three of them turn their heads quickly to see what trouble Kanji got himself into. “That idiot!” Yosuke hisses as quietly as he could. Yu and Adachi were closer to them now, but they could see a carefree smile on Yu’s face. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed anything, perhaps they could just continue eavesdropping from here…

“Are you going shopping? My ma wanted me to get something too, er, some cooking oil or other that she likes.”

Adachi chimes in with his usual cheer: “You’re a good kid after all, aren’t you! Dojima-san was telling me about your gang-crushing exploits the other day, but anything at all when it comes to your ‘Ma’!” Kanji thanks him with some awkward sincerity, and Yu has to suppress a wry smile at Adachi’s thinly-veined jab at Kanji’s reputation.

“We’re going shopping too, Kanji. Adachi-san’s coming over for dinner today so we’re helping Nanako-chan pick some things up.”

Yosuke blinks a little and looks at Chie and Yukiko next to him. It sounded… pretty normal, all things considered.

“Oh, that’s nice! Really nice… Well, I’ve gotta get going, can’t keep my Ma waiting for too long. She probably needs that oil for dinner too, after all. See ya at school, senpai!”

Kanji dashed off as quick as he could, aimlessly, as far as his legs could take him. Adachi couldn’t help but laugh once he was certain Kanji was out of earshot.

“I think he’s scared of you, ‘senpai,’” Adachi jokes, and Yu frowns. It was true that Kanji had behaved oddly there, but it wasn’t entirely out of character for him either, was it?

“Isn’t it just because you’re a cop and Uncle’s partner? You brought that up on purpose…”

“Maybe,” Adachi says shrugging, before slapping his hand on Yu’s shoulder. “Well! Since it seems you’ve roped me into dinner now, we best start shopping too. Here I was thinking you were just so nice you came running to help me pick up some drinking snacks without any ulterior motive at all…”

Yu turns to him, deadly serious: “I would though.”

Adachi blinks at him. Here he goes again, this odd kid. He’s not sure what to make of him, earnest and bewildering, like a pretty stray that rubs against you before biting, saying such stupid things—are you a good shot, Adachi-san, he had said, because I think very much of you, and then he brushed past to make dessert.

Yu is staring at him now, and so he moves to leave without looking back. He says, thoughtlessly, I’m sure you would, and he decides he’d rather think instead about the free dinner he’s got lined up, courtesy of the Dojima family once again.

...

“The last bit was a little strange,” Chie starts when the both of them have left the food court entirely, “but otherwise, it makes sense that Narukami-kun would help with dinner, right?”

Yosuke appears to be chewing his thumb nail in thought. That’s what he had felt initially, but their last exchange seemed a little more than just strange to him, if he were being honest with himself.

“You saw the way Yu ran off after school… all that just because he had to go pick up a few things at Junes? Seems like a big deal for very little.”

Chie could tell just from Yukiko’s face that she didn’t feel particularly good about the whole thing either, but she’s not quite sure what they’re meant to do about it all. After a few moments of silence, she pipes up: “Let’s call it a day for now, shall we? We’ll reconvene with Kanji-kun and see what he thinks.”

Neither of them put up much of a fight, and Yosuke calls Chie at night for once without an awful joke to inflict on her. All he has instead are a jumble of worries and, half an hour in, she exclaims in exasperation, I wish you’d just tell me a dirty joke instead! That shuts him up, and he bids her good night a little more deflated than usual.

...

The beer snacks Adachi picked out are both the more expensive sort and a hit with Dojima, who crunches happily on them before they even finish the main meal. Over dinner, he sees Adachi grin at him and Yu decides: drinking with Adachi, that should be his next goal, no? He makes a note of the beer he likes, and he wracks his head trying to remember what it was that Adachi said he liked to eat that wasn’t just a whole platter of indulgent sushi. Beef, wasn’t it? Maybe a beef stew?

The next day, Yu runs off again to Junes after the school day’s over to pick the right ingredients. As for the beer: it was easy enough getting the non-alcoholic stuff, but Dojima would certainly notice if he took more than a few from the fridge. No—perhaps it was time he called in a favor.

“Yosuke!” The voice of Yu behind him makes Yosuke jump. He would be lying if he said he had slept well, and the mechanical movements of his shift at Junes wasn’t helping him keep awake at all.

“Oh, hey, Yu… what a coincidence, huh?” Briefly, Yu feels as if he’s just gone through this recently. Was that supposed to be odd?

“Perfect timing, actually. I know it’s a huge favor to ask, but I was wondering if you’d check me out at the cashier?” Yosuke looked at him confused.

“Um, sure? Why’d it have to me in particular? The Junes staff haven’t been rude to you or anything, have they?”

No, of course not, Yu reassures him before continuing: “The truth is I was hoping to get some beer while I was here, but you know, I’m not technically supposed to be doing that even if it weren’t for me… But you wouldn’t mind though, would you, Yosuke? I’ll be real quick about it.”

There’s a great sense of unease in Yosuke’s stomach, but what was a favor among friends? He agrees, trying to suppress his hesitation as much as possible. Eventually, he even works up the courage to ask: “So, who are these for?”

Yu figures it better he tell a half-truth than to lie; it would be more believable that way, more natural. “Oh, it’s just for Adachi-san. It’s probably something my uncle asked him to do, so I figured I’d help out, with the police being so busy and all.”

Hum, Yosuke says, and a rather awkward silence fills the air.

“Kanji mentioned that he saw the two of you at Junes yesterday, actually.”

“Ah yes! We did run into him. Buying cooking oil for his mother, he said. Well, he’s a softie, isn’t he?”

It’s good Yosuke’s a softie too, Yu thinks to himself as Yosuke wraps up the check-out process. He can tell Yosuke has something on his mind, and he imagines it has to do with his relative absence recently. Well, there was nothing much to be done about that. It’ll be fine, he tells himself, it’ll all be fine, and he waves goodbye to Yosuke with the biggest smile he can manage.

...

A few days later, Yu shows up at Adachi’s door with a pack of beer and two plastic containers of beef stew. Adachi’s face peeks out at the sound of the doorbell, and he unlocks the chain with a sigh. Yu sees his suit jacket tossed haphazardly over a low sofa further inside the apartment, leaving the older man in an embarrassingly rumpled dress shirt. Somehow, he had a feeling Adachi didn’t have an iron in his house and wouldn’t bother even if he did.

“Again, I didn’t think you were being serious… it’s late! How’d you sneak past Dojima-san anyway?”

“I told him I had a part-time job to go to.” Adachi raises his eyebrow at that.

“Is that true?”

“Only occasionally. Anyway, look at what I’ve brought, Adachi-san!” Yu shakes a big bag of the beer snacks they had bought the other day from Junes with enthusiasm. It’s the last one, he confides, and Adachi makes a dramatic sigh—oh, bummer! It’s all theatrics, but Yu finds a little fun in playing along.

With unwarranted familiarity, Yu moves to reheat the beef stew in the microwave—in the same place as it had been before—and he can feel Adachi hovering behind him.

“I thought you said you were just bringing beer over.” He sounds suspicious, but Yu can also hear his nose sniffing at the smell of the stew.

“I had some spare time this evening. You’re a fan of beef, right? I made some beef stew to go with.” Adachi looks at him a little displeased—never a fan of surprises, Yu supposes—but he shuffles lazily back to sit at the table anyway. Wordlessly, he cracks open a can of beer and starts rifling through the snack bag without asking.

“Yu-kun, say, did you steal this beer?” No, Yu says simply, and he feels Adachi stare at the small of his back. He continues: “And what, are you drinking it too? I don’t see any of the non-alcoholic stuff in here…”

Yu turns around them, smiling. “Adachi-san, can you keep a secret?”

...

Without so much a compliment, Adachi goes through his portion of the beef stew quickly and hungrily—clearly, he likes it more than he lets on. That was one victory, then, Yu thinks. He cracks open a beer himself, as confidently as he could, and takes a sip. It’s bitter and stringent, like the non-alcoholic type he had. He supposes it makes him feel a tad warm, but otherwise it settles rather calmly in his stomach for now. Adachi looks away uncomfortably for his first few sips, but several beers later, he seems to have forgotten that it was a big deal at all. Several beers in and he’s much meaner too, Yu realizes.

“What’re you doing wasting this kind of cooking on me, anyway? You using me for practice? For some girl you like at school?”

Yu laughs. “No,” he says without further explanation, and Adachi sneers at him in irritation. “Well, I’m sure you have your pick. What with drama club this, part-time job that…”

“I haven’t been going to any of that stuff, really,” Yu says, half to himself, and he wonders if he can feel that shift within himself or in his Personas. At the moment, he feels he can’t quite tell. Adachi looks a tad surprised, and perhaps even… pleased? It manifests itself in a rather self-satisfied grin.

“What are you doing instead, then?” Yu keeps quiet at that and looks a little longer at Adachi than he thinks the older man would find comfortable.

“Knock it off. That’s creepy. You’re creepy.”

“Adachi-san said I was a strange kid the other day.”

“And? You’re offended?”

“I’m just curious why you find me so strange.” He wonders if Adachi could put his finger on it—the déjà vu, the once over. Briefly, he wonders if Adachi would try to push him into the TV too, in the panic of realization.

“Don’t ask me to think when I’m drunk, idiot. Why can’t you answer normally for once, like kids should?”

Yu is tempted to answer him honestly—he’s tired too, not of clubs or of school or even of the TV, but of pretending as if he hadn’t already seen all of it, hadn’t already failed to live up to someone’s expectations. He wonders if Adachi is drunk enough. Would he remember, if he let him soak in a few more cans?

“Maybe you just need to drink a little more with me, Adachi-san, before I answer you honestly.”

Adachi glares at him with genuine irritation in his eyes. “Are you trying to get me drunk?” I thought you already were, Yu says jokingly, but the humor falls flat on him this time.

“You want to know why I think you’re odd? It’s because you’re clingy. Adachi-san this, Adachi-san that… you’re just my boss’ nephew, why the hell do you keep hanging around me?”

Yu watches him rant in silence. His lack of response doesn’t seem to deter Adachi, who continues on: “It must be your stupid group of friends… sticking your nose into police business—I heard from Dojima-san, you know, about you hanging around the textile shop when Tatsumi Kanji went missing. Now, why on Earth would you be doing that?”

Adachi pauses. “And we ran into him the other day, didn’t we… ‘Senpai,’ was it? When did you get so cozy with a delinquent?”

“So Adachi-san doesn’t think I’m a delinquent?” That seems to get Adachi thinking for a bit.

“Dojima-san hasn’t complained about your grades,” he starts, and Yu nods. Well, Adachi had seen them after all.

“No, I haven’t. What do you mean I’ve seen them?” Oops, Yu thinks, he supposes he had let that thought slip out. That was last year, he reminds himself, not this one…

“You know, I think that’s it. You’re strange because you act like you know everything. You’re a know-it-all who doesn’t know anything at all. You think just because I come round for dinner a few times a week that we’re friends or something?” Adachi laughs at that, pointing at Yu’s face with a can of beer in his hand.

Yu stays silent at that. He wonders vaguely instead if the gas attendant thinks them a couple of fools for making so little use of their second opportunity. Then again, Yu hadn’t asked for this, hadn’t asked for this repeated nightmare, and he had not even a guide to help him newly along…

“What do you think we are, Adachi-san?” Yu’s question lingers in the air unanswered as Adachi refuses to look at him. It’s pitch black outside, and Yu can’t see anything outside the window except for a few flickering lights.

Eventually, Yu relents to that urge inside him to give up, to answer honestly: “I’m not sure we’re friends, but I can’t seem to stop thinking about you.”

Sure enough, Adachi turns to look at him then, a mixture of disgust and disbelief on his face. He asks, are you joking, and Yu tells him no quite plainly. When Yu doesn’t offer to say anymore, Adachi grabs him by the collar of his shirt and shakes him, as if he’d get a different response. Yu feels, briefly, like a capsule machine, and the thought amuses him.

“Stop fooling around! You piss me off!”

“I’m not fooling around. I was telling the truth.” Yu thinks it unfortunate that he hadn’t got much out of telling it. Adachi stops, having tired himself out, and sits down in resignation.

For once, Yu is unnerved by the silence, the stagnant, stale air.

“Do you think,” Yu starts up again with a renewed sense of recklessness, “do you think you’ll remember this in the morning?” Adachi glares at him again, seemingly balancing his options in terms of a response. He gives a noncommittal shrug before shaking the beer can in his hand—empty, it seems.

Before he can say anything more, Yu covers Adachi’s mouth with his. He tastes the stew he made himself—his little trap, maybe—and he feels Adachi’s tongue, clammy from several cans of cheap beer. Adachi breathes out shakily and can’t seem to decide whether he should keep his mouth shut or open. All in all, it’s nothing he’s ever imagined. Stunned into silence, Adachi lets him do as he pleases for a few precious moments—Yu sneaks his hands under the detective’s shabby dress shirt and feels the shape of his torso, his bony back, his spine running up, up, to his neck—until reality hits him with full clarity and Adachi kicks his legs out, feet hitting the side of Yu’s torso.

“What do you think you’re doing…!?” Breathless, Adachi wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “Assaulting a police officer’s a crime, you know!”

Yu supposes he should find that threatening, but he’s convinced Adachi wouldn’t so much as mention this to Dojima, never mind the other officers at the station. For one, it’d be too hard to explain—what was he doing drinking with a minor? His partner’s nephew, no less?

“I’m sorry,” Yu says without any feeling behind it. Would you let me kiss you again, he asks, and Adachi blinks at him, wide-eyed.

“No,” he says, still not quite sure what to make of the question being asked, “definitely not tonight.” Yu accepts that—I understand, he says softly, and he smiles a little resigned. Perhaps this was the wrong way about things, this chasing after a man who spooked so easily. A killer too, he has to remind himself, though he finds it hard to comprehend it in this new world, where what has past waits instead in his future.

Adachi gets up after a few moments of silence and adjusts his shirt, tucks it back into his trousers haphazardly with the palms of his hands. He doesn’t seem to know where to look—his hands are on his hips and his eyes are aimed at the floor.

“Let’s call it a night, Yu-kun. It’s late. Dojima-san will be worried, don’t you think?” Yu sees him slipping back into his usual tenor, half responsible adult and half oaf, his gaze always unsettled, looking at everywhere but him. Yu doesn’t let it hurt him—it can’t, because it is still true that he has more days, more work to do. The summer’s not even here yet, he reminds himself. The sheen of sweat on Adachi’s forehead, wisps of his black hair plastered against his face, and the slight transparency of his white shirt; images from the past year flash in his head, different than those that had driven him before. He had never known Adachi in this way before—his very physicality, the smell and feel of him, makes Yu’s belly curl in a sour, hesitant anticipation. Was this alright? Even if it wasn’t, could he allow himself this anyway?

Adachi helps him clean up the place before he leaves—he is being unusually helpful. Most times, he’d be sleeping restlessly on the floor of the Dojimas’ living room by the time Yu started cleaning up after dinner. He is a strange kind of sober now, quiet and focused. When everything is put away, he speaks up. Perhaps it was something in the way Yu looked at him every once in a while, funerary almost, pinched in a way that looked too old on him.

“Next time, maybe you should stay away from what the adults drink, hm?”

Next time, he says, as if extending a peace offering, and Yu says, a little too shamelessly, yes please. One more time—his motto now—one more time and maybe he’d do it a little better, start a little less sudden, kiss a little sweeter.

Adachi opens the door for him when he leaves, and Yu drags his feet through it.