Author's Note: This is something a little more experimental - more Kanji, with the added twist of Naoto. Help. I love this pairing _ Atlus owns, like, everything.

Ensemble

In their second year of high school, she shows up one morning acting all tense. Paranoid, even. Kanji's not really sure what gives, but he makes the usual small talk as they head upstairs anyway. Her eyes are everywhere, but she doesn't meet anyone else's (and definitely not his). Through it all she's holding her head up defiantly, looking determined in a red-faced, mortified kind of way.

People stare. He doesn't get what they're looking at. Him and Naoto are just walking up the goddamn stairs like every other goddamn morning. With some effort, he invokes his new-found Powers of Not Flipping Out and ignores them. Whatever.

He doesn't realize what's changed until after he's given her a lazy wave and entered his classroom, leaving her to walk down the hall to her own. He sits and lets it gestate for a while (and he is not brooding, Rise-chan) until suddenly his face pales, then flushes, as he realizes what all the goddamn weirdness is about.

She hasn't bound her chest this morning.

It takes him all of three minutes to get used to the idea. He decides it was pretty ballsy of her, and if there's one thing he appreciates it's someone with guts. He reminds himself to keep Yosuke-sempai's alter ego (Le Perverted Asshole) in check, for her sake, and gets back to the important business of doodling kittens in his notebook.

The second year after they've started living together, Kanji is once again sketching out the tentative beginnings of a new wardrobe. He insists on making her new clothes every year, and that's all there is to it. She never bothers protesting. Once he gets on a creative spree there's no stopping it until it's done, and there's a gleam in his eye that's a little frightening, but maybe that's just another reason why she's so in love with him.

He's on the couch with his sketchbook propped on his knee, drawing furiously (it seems he does everything furiously) and she approaches him almost warily. The page is littered with designs – it's all sharp-cut shirts and ties and waistcoats, and she blushes to see that he represents her figure perfectly on paper. Like he's spent the last few years memorizing every line, every curve, every dip and hollow –

She shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath.

And quietly, respectfully asks him if he might be able to add a simple, elegant black dress to this year's collection.

For formal occasions.

You know.

If it's not too much of an inconvenience.

In the two years since Naoto first asked Kanji for a dress, she'd actually gotten three. One was the requested black dress, which was as specified very simple and timelessly elegant.

The other two were bridesmaid gowns.

Rise dressed them in romantic, violet confections that had Kanji slaving over his sewing machine for months, and at one point he'd said some very unkind things to Chie-sempai about watching the croquettes, because he was "tired of makin' motherfuckin' adjustments on this motherfuckin' dress!"

It was the stress talking, naturally. Chie-sempai hadn't been getting wider so much as she'd been getting taller, and in the end he put her in ballet flats courtesy of Junes instead of the expensive kitten heels he and Rise had originally picked out (and which, at the time, were the bane of Naoto's existence) and Rise's marriage to Souji went off without a single hitch. Not even with the "motherfuckin' dresses".

Chie-sempai had gone for shorter dresses; cute, stylish, and a little daring – just like her. Kanji had manged to tactfully steer her away from the territory of "really vivid lime green, y'know? Like BAM! I'm talking practically fluorescent. Got anything like that?" into the safer lands of sage, may, and emerald. Like Chie- and Yosuke-sempai's relationship, that wedding had a few more complications and a little more chaos. And that, everyone agreed, was what made the day so much fun in the end.

Two years since Chie- and Yosuke-sempai had tied the knot, Naoto is wearing yet another new dress. Kanji had been rather adamant about this one. He would not be the one to make it.

It's white.

And, after all, he's a traditionalist.