Rei stared out the window of Yasogami High. The grounds looked the same as always, complete with the Clock Tower in the center, hands in their drawn-out march towards midnight. Once upon a time, she wouldn't have questioned this. These days...
...And we're back.
These days, just being here was something to question. "Zen... Why?" She wasn't sure what about this situation was the worst part.
"This felt better than sitting and waiting for the world to end." He had waited long enough for a girl wearing deep-blue clothes to come and go, and for him to announce that that girl's spirit would never be whole again.
What one of those had to do with the other, Rei had no idea.
Honestly, given how they'd never met the girl before, she was mostly surprised he cared. Zen's ability to socialize had improved from what it was before in the same sense that zero plus one was still a positive number.
"We may have arrived at one of the worse possible moments, however," He continued. "It seems my other self has made his move." And that meant having to go through the Labyrinths again, because then they could maybe all get out before someone had to go storm the Clock Tower. "Returning to the earliest possible point might not have been my best decision."
I'd say you were understating things, but it can't be your worst decision. We're already there.
She didn't know enough to doubt that this really was the earliest point they could have arrived in. The time before this moment- the moment that a group of Persona Users took their first steps into this fabricated world- had all sort of blended together in her mind.
A group of Persona Users who would be standing there now.
A group who wouldn't know what was going on. "Zen, what are we going to tell them?"
They'd have to tell them something. Rei couldn't pretend to be the same person she'd been without her memories, but admitting they'd all been dumped there by the fallout of a godly fuck-up felt like a bad idea. There had to be something better, right?
"...Perhaps we should figure that out when we get there." So they didn't even have a plan. He'd gone to all the effort of putting them back here, and he didn't even have a plan. "It might not be entirely up to us."
She didn't immediately realize what he meant by that. But, in hindsight, it would make perfect sense.
It hadn't been just the two of them at the end of the world, after all.
The first sign that this world was different from the last was the cat that looked a bit like Teddie, but without room to put a human form inside. It was also an obvious sign of Persona Users being present, though little Ken-chan being there would also have said that.
He was so tiny...
They could have approached then, but... it would be easier to do it with everyone at once. Less introductions, less chance of things going farther off the rails than they had already. They held back, watched as the people gathered.
Not everyone was familiar to this place. Aside from the cat, there was also the girl the last iteration of Jun-chan had spent the entirety of this mess pining for. Things last time had apparently turned out as well for them as it could, hopefully this version of things would go just as well. Jun-chan deserved it. Elizabeth was also wearing a school uniform, but Rei just filed that away in the list of strange things Elizabeth would do sometimes.
Is that the favor she asked for that one time? Zen, why did you agree to this!?
There was also her sister, the girl from the end of the world. "Nothing happens in the Velvet Room without a reason." This wasn't the first time Rei had heard those words. It hadn't felt comforting to hear them, at the time, because she hadn't understood why she'd needed to hear it. "...Even if the reasons can be remarkably petty at times." ....That, however, gave them a brand new tone.
In that moment, the mysterious girl felt more human than her siblings ever had.
In fairness, part of it was that Theo was the doormat to end all doormats.
"It'd be nice, if all we have to do is hit things until they let us leave." Akihiko was one of the people whose future Rei had known about more specifically. Enough that hearing him say that reminded her of some of his later bad decisions. "...Well, it'd be simple, at least."
"Depends what they want us to punch." And then there was the reason she'd learned so much of Akihiko's future endeavors. She'd barely registered Shin-chan's presence- it felt natural that a friend she spoke with frequently would be there. And he was supposed to be there, anyway. But this was different, because now he was looking directly at them. "...The two of you can come out, now."
...Had he known they were there the whole time?
"I'm surprised you noticed us."
...Is he really?
It was hard to tell what Zen was thinking, sometimes. But he was looking towards the ground, rather than meeting anyone's gaze. And eye contact was one of the few social skills he was good at.
"You're kind of the most noticeable students here, what with actually being real people, and all." And maybe he could have noticed it on his own. The students surrounding them were generic, based on Zen's preconceptions of a high school festival from ten years ago. "How long have you been following us, anyway?"
...He'd known they were there the whole time. Might even have been looking for them.
"I wanted to get ice cream." Ice cream actually did sound good at the moment. Maybe she'd head back there, take advantage of all the unique flavors. "And then I saw a cat going off into the crowd, so... I thought I'd follow it." Like Alice followed a rabbit into Wonderland.
...The Wonderland stall would be their next destination. There probably wouldn't be much time to talk privately for a while.
When the chance arose, Rei knew exactly what she wanted to do.
Things were different in the Labyrinths, too. Not the maps- those were burned into Rei's memory, the number of times she'd looked them over- but the people in them were fighting differently. Some of them had Personas they shouldn't have had yet. Another used an element that, in another life, her creators would ripped away from her.
Shin-chan could summon his Persona without an Evoker. That... felt like something where she should have been happy for him?
She wasn't sure. His feelings about his Persona had always been a bit of a minefield topic.
I can't imagine it'd be any better at the moment. Given the circumstances.
So she wasn't going to mention it until he brought it up himself. And, when the three of them had a moment to themselves after the Queen of Hearts' defeat, he didn't bring it up.
He said something else entirely. "Hey, Zen, what the fuck?"
...To be fair, if Rei was the kind of person who swore out loud, she probably would have said the same thing. It summed up her feelings on the situation perfectly.
"The world was ending," Zen said, as if that wasn't also the case for a large number of other beings who had been unable or unwilling to abandon timeline. That poor Lavenza...
"Yeah. I noticed." Shin-chan was a person who, like Rei, had plenty of things to be bitter about regarding his life. But he'd never acted that way in her presence before. They'd just accepted that they both had issues and talked about literally anything else. "Please tell me I get to forget by the end of this."
She blinked. She hadn't considered that yet. "Like, these Labyrinths, or...?"
What about me?
"All of it. The guy who walked into Tartarus this evening was actually a well-adjusted person. Do you have any idea how great it would be to keep being that?"
"Why would your memories change-?"
"Dying hurts, Zen." Why did she have to remind him of this? It was the whole reason they were here.
He's our idiot, but that doesn't mean he's not an idiot.
Zen looked between the two of them. "...Given the nature of this world, it's very unlikely you'll remember anything if you don't want to."
Rei supposed that was fair. Shin-chan was her friend, and she should have been happy that he'd get to be the version of himself he wanted to be.
But he won't be our friend anymore. Not for at least the rest of his life.
"You... really want to forget us?"
"Look, it's not about you, you're fine, it's about the other guy actually having his shit together. I'm not going to be the one who ruins that. Besides, what would I tell Ken?"
She nodded, because it kind of made sense, if she looked at it from a certain angle. And, in the end, it would be basically the same as if it were just her and Zen that woke up here.
But we'll always know it wasn't.
She didn't talk much to Shin-chan after that.
It was just too painful.
She didn't talk about the situation with Zen, either. There were plenty of other things to talk about that didn't make her feel terrible.
Not talking about painful things worked, sometimes. But the last Labyrinth before the Clock Tower was somewhere that would never work, at least not for Rei.
If she had talked about it, maybe there wouldn't have been a guardian for the Labyrinth. "This is faster than I expected." Her Shadow looked the same as she always had, sounded the same as she always had. People were saying things around them, but Rei wasn't paying them much attention.
She hadn't been sure if her other self would manifest here. She couldn't decide if it was better or worse than if she hadn't.
"We're ready to leave, now." Zen approached her Shadow carefully, his hand never far from his crossbow. "If you could just-"
Her fingers dug into her rabbit. "You know it doesn't work that way. Besides. I have a few bones to pick with you, Chronos."
"I thought we had already discussed-"
"This isn't about the festival. We liked the festival, didn't we?" Oh. So maybe it'd be about something else, this time. And she wasn't wrong- even when things were bad, the food stalls were always there for her. "Even if it didn't start out great. But he did learn something from that. One thing. Don't you wish he could have learned a bit more?"
"I-I don't know what you mean." Sure, his social skills would never be great, but... "Zen- Zen's..." Her partner, who meant more to her than anything. Someone who went to the effort of protecting her from his own mistakes.
...Someone whose mistakes kept leading back here.
"...We're really going to do this again, aren't we?" Had the bunny always been animated? She didn't think it had. This felt like something she should have remembered. "Just a little consideration, that's all we really want, and you won't even ask him for it! Like, I get that he doesn't always consult us before making big decisions, that's how we got here, but do you really want to sink to the social skill level of someone who only talks to dead people?"
She pointed at Shin-chan, then, who was doing his best to look like he didn't know what was going on. "People are talking to each other in Shin-chan's world, and look how happy he is now!" She'd been trying not to. "But... that only matters if you want to get better at it, doesn't it?"
"Wh-what do you-?"
"Talking's a life skill." Even discounting the color, her eyes didn't look quite human anymore. To be fair, though, 'Philei' and 'eyes' hadn't always been on speaking terms. Maybe she was just reflecting that. "And what's the point of life skills, if you've only ever been happy when you were dead?"
That was... a strong accusation. "Th-that's not why... I- I was happy when I was alive!" She'd had books and stuff. Yuki-chan even taught her to cheat at cards! It hadn't been great, but... there'd been things worth having, hadn't there?
"No, we weren't." Her Shadow began counting, on her hands, the crimes committed against them in and by life. "Mom blamed Dad for us being sick, and took us away from him and Big Sis. Then she abandoned us in the hospital. We made friends, but they all got to go home at the end of the day." Thankfully, the conversation remained on when they were abandoned during their life.
As sad as she was about what was happening with Shin-chan, she didn't want to make things harder for him in the short time they were still here. She owed him that much, at least.
It was just that the subject of being alive wasn't much better. "Even if we did miraculously get better, where would we go? I know you thought about it. And the answer is nowhere. Because there was no place for us in that world. And there was never going to be." It was something Rei hadn't thought of an argument about, because the whole thing had been so long ago she had no idea what happened to anyone from that time.
...She'd never even known what her father's name was.
Her Shadow had not calmed down in the slightest, possibly because of her own line of thought. "So what if we couldn't live in that world? That just means... we can let people decide where we do fit!? With no consequences!? I'll show them consequences, if you won't." This was... probably a thing she was meant to do something about.
"N-No, you can't!" She had no idea what consequences meant, but it felt like something she'd regret later, if she allowed it to happen. "You can't decide to do that for me!"
"And why is that?" ...This was bait. This was absolutely bait. "Why can't I be the one to decide how to handle what you're feeling? We're the same, after all. Unless... you had a few words to say about that? About what you're-"
There was, unfortunately, only one way Rei could see to make her shut up. Running right into the trap. "You're not me!"
She was so bad at this... Thankfully, in the chaos of a Shadow transformation, no one would notice a touch of instant regret.
"...I was going to ask if you were about to own up to your feelings for once in our existence, but this works, too." ...Yeah, in hindsight, that would have been a better idea. But this had already started, so there was no point in trying to stop it.
At least, that was what she told herself.
Ken-chan was someone Rei was never quite sure what to think about. She'd met him when he was young and tiny, and this him was still young and tiny, and his life was a mess for reasons that were mostly beyond his control.
But they'd never felt the same age, and he didn't approach her much, so she couldn't say she'd really gotten to know him.
...Actually, she thought she might have spent more time with the cat. "Mona-chan had a Shadow?" It was sort of surprising, but then, why wouldn't he have a Shadow? Teddie had a Shadow, apparently, and he was a Shadow. "It's... what was that about?" Maybe she could talk about that, while waiting for everyone to finish dealing with her own. Maybe it'd help her figure out what to do about her own Shadow.
"Well, his Shadow had a few... trust issues."
Why did he pause? "Trust issues?"
"It's... a lot of bad things happened." That bit wasn't a surprise. From what she could tell, being a member of SEES required having a tragic backstory. If she'd been alive at the time, she would've fit right in. ...And she never would have said that to Makoto. "It made him doubt that any of us were really his friends, but he also never explained what he had a problem with. So I'm not really sure what was going on. I think his Shadow might have wanted him to stop trusting people, a little, except that's kinda dumb."
"...It could have." The point of a Shadow was to make people deal with their issues. No one said the ensuing coping mechanisms had to be healthy. "I don't think they care how you do things. As long as you're doing something about it."
She... hadn't been doing much about the whole situation. Because so much of it- this whole world- was temporary, it was easy to try and push things off until later.
But stalling for seven years wasn't a realistic notion at all, was it?
"So, your Shadow wants something to be done about whatever has her mad at Zen-san?" Ken-chan had a good point. But what was there to do? They were here, and there was no going back.
"Zen's great. He's just... not good at people. At all." So when he tried helping them, it ended up being something like this. A mistake that would cost people things they'd never know they had.
"Do you... want him to get better at people?"
A Zen who was good with people... Someone who would think to ask people before taking major actions that would impact them. Yes. That was what she needed him to be. "I... don't think he'll have a lot of chance to, though. He doesn't get out much. So, I..." There was only so much one person could do.
"Rei-san, your Shadow... It sounds like... this is a new problem, isn't it?"
It was. Newer than this timeline, if only by however long it had been running before she was pulled into it.
"It's... not like last time." He didn't know what last time was, and she wasn't telling him. She'd dealt with that set of issues. "I... I know what I would have said. If it was about the same thing as last time." It would have been so much easier, if it was just the stuff from last time. She could have just pointed out the future that was, and how it hadn't been anywhere near as bad as expected.
Ken-chan leaned back. "I guess that means you're doing better about what it was last time."
But what mattered was what was happening this time. "Zen... She's really mad at him." Because he'd taken her back to the place where she'd had her lowest points. Because he hadn't even asked first. Because he put one of the people he'd dragged along in a position where he'd chosen to disappear. "She wasn't happy with him, last time, but..." But it hadn't mattered, compared to how much she was unhappy with herself.
It was just that, with that dealt with, a new issue had room to take priority.
"What did Zen-san do? To make her so mad at him?"
How could she explain this in a way that didn't make things weird? "He... did something big without talking to anyone about it. Even... the people who ended up part of it." If he'd asked her about this, would she have agreed to it? She didn't know the answer, and never would. "But that's not really a new thing, just...." Just how did he keep doing this in ways that had massive consequences?
Most people's mistakes were, like... breaking a dish, or saying something tactless at a casual event.
Zen's mistakes were the sort that would impact multiple timelines at once.
"...He does that a lot?"
"He... talks to me, sometimes, when he's thinking about something." Smaller things, things where he could see the value of a human perspective. "But with big things. Like this. He just doesn't."
"He doesn't ask you, or he doesn't think about it?"
"I... It could be both." It was like he'd said. The world was ending. "...Last time something this big happened. It's 'cause he panicked. He's calm a lot. But when he isn't..." It led them right back here. To Yasogami High.
"Maybe you should talk to him," Ken-chan said, in a much less confrontational tone than her Shadow. "He'd listen to you, wouldn't he?"
"...He'd try. He's not good at it." But... maybe it'd be better than just sitting here.
"Yeah, that makes sense." She hadn't expected him to agree with her. "I've noticed that a lot of our problems were because no one on our team knew how to talk."
Rei wanted to claim that was an exaggeration, but... she knew what had happened to SEES. "Like..." Like Shin-chan, and how his greatest regret had been not having an emotionally honest conversation with Akihiko that both of them could remember. Like that time they'd had the option of time travel, and couldn't decide what to do about it without first fighting to the death.
Like how Makoto had never left anyone a note, or anything, about why he was dying. That might have eliminated the need for the time travel thing.
But she wasn't expecting what Ken-chan said next. "Even my future self wasn't that good at it, before Lavenza sent him back in time and he ended up in my Persona."
She knew someone had gone before them, in order to create this timeline.
She hadn't known who it was. "So you're..." No wonder Shin-chan had decided to just not deal with any of this. That would be the world's most awkward conversation.
...Well. If Shin-chan could make that kind of important decision, so could she. In a less avoidant direction. She stood up, and marched in the direction of the battle.
She took a deep breath. "Hey, if I wanted to actually talk now, could we, uh-?" About four people were bowled over in front of her. "...not do that? Please?"
"You couldn't have decided that fifteen minutes ago!?" But Zen was dropped down near her, so she'd take that as her Shadow's unwavering support.
"Zen, we need to talk." She paused, and looked at all the people around them, most of them doing battle with her Shadow. "Maybe not here, somewhere more private, but... Coming here was a bad idea." Her other iteration, if she would have existed, would have turned out fine eventually. "And just... deciding on it, and not telling anyone... that hurt. A lot." If she'd agreed, and Shin-chan had simply backed out ahead of time... that would have worked for her.
"I've... begun to realize that." She relinquished his power back to him. At the moment, he needed it more. And she needed the space to do something else.
She turned to her Shadow, who had stopped fighting back. "We'll talk about things," she declared, because she wasn't sure where else to start. She'd never gotten this far before. "...You're right. I need to say when I'm not okay with stuff. Even- even if it doesn't change anything." She was here, and had to start over from the beginning with everyone but Zen. If she didn't speak up, this might not be the only time. "I can at least stop this from happening again." No, that wasn't the right word for what she wanted. "...We can stop it."
And in the place of her Shadow stood Inaba-no-Shirousagi.
Rei never expected that someone else would need to be rescued from the Clock Tower. She hadn't dared go near the final battle, too worried about what the Clockwork God would do if she wandered too deep into his domain, so she just sat in the nurse's office until Ken-chan showed up and told her it was over.
Everyone would be leaving soon.
There was something she still needed to do. "Shin-chan, I..." She knew she couldn't change his mind. It had been made up from before they even found each other. Maybe if Ken-chan had known the truth, but... what could possibly have brought that out? Nothing that had actually happened, that was for sure. "...I have a Persona now."
She couldn't do much with it- it was a physical-based Persona and she was a dead cancer patient- but it was there. That was the important part.
"I saw. Congratulations." He sounded like he meant it.
He probably did. He was a good person like that.
And that made it easier for her to ask for what she wanted. "...I don't know how to use it yet. But it- it does the same things as yours. So, before we go... could you...?"
"...I've probably got time to show you a few things. We don't need Wonderland anymore, right?"
