Persona 5: Daywatch

Saturday, 9 April 2016
Afternoon
Yongen, Leblanc

In the quiet residential neighborhood of Yongen, Tokyo, a dark-haired teenager came to a stop at the door to Leblanc. The sleepy cafe lacked any lit-up advertisements, even a sticker identifying which kind of wi-fi it hosted.

Akira brushed a hand through his curly hair and straightened the thick glasses on his nose before pushing the door open. A small bell fixed to the inside of the door jingled. Worn, mostly wood interior had an old-time feel like many of the old buildings Akira lived in. It used a minimalist décor, but warmer than industrial-style buildings like the Smiling Mountain Institute. The thick scent of coffee soaked into him, reminding him of the tiramisu his mother would order. Identifying the manager by the only occupant wearing an apron, the teenager shifted the duffel bag strap on his shoulder, then straightened his gloves and strode to the register where the cafe worker lounged. "Sakura Sojiro?"

The middle-aged man looked up from The Prisoner of the Tower, a small book in his hands. What black hair hadn't already receded was slicked back, making his goatee seem larger in comparison. "Oh, right. That was today." He set the book down underneath the counter.

Laughter bubbled up from a group of three young adults as they rose from a booth further in, and the three men trotted to the exit, one of them pausing to raise a hand. "Thanks for the coffee, Boss."

Sojiro gave a show smile, something wide enough for Japan's near-obsequious service industry, but thin enough to use as little of his face as possible. "We appreciate your time." He waved back, watched them go out, then dropped slack the instant the door swung closed. Looking to their place, three coffee cups and a plate with crumbs spilling over the table waited for him. After letting out a heavy breath, he picked back up the book and opened it up with the traveling boy in his peripheral vision. "So you're Kurusu Akira?"

He twitched in distaste at the use of his family name. Not buying the feigned disinterest, Akira gave the expected bow for any new introduction. "Sorry for the trouble."

Sojiro's eyebrow rose and he looked up from the paperback, no effort to conceal either his suspicion or interest now. "I wondered what kind of unruly kid would show up." He jammed a time-yellowed receipt as a bookmark and set the book back under the counter. "You're more polite than I expected. You'll be in my custody for the next…"

"Year," Akira said, scanning the rows of coffee shelved behind the counter. "According to Officer Ichijou."

Crossing his arms, Sojiro harrumphed. "You seem pretty calm about moving and living with a stranger."

Still scanning the back wall, Akira responded, "Anything's better than back there." Finished with his visual inspection, he focused on Sojiro. "I'm just curious how you knew me. Officer Ichijou said you were a friend of the family."

"I knew Waka…" Sojiro cleared his throat. "You know what? It doesn't matter." He headed for the small hallway at the back of the cafe. "Walk this way."

Taking a loping gait after him, Akira threw back, "If I could walk that way—"

"Don't get cheeky," Sojiro snapped over his shoulder, then led him up the stairs. "I'll bring up sheets for…" He turned, eyebrows rising at the youth's pulling bags of refuse together. "What are you doing?"

"What?" Akira looked down, settled the two bags in his hands, then set his duffel bag next to the shelf crammed with coffee sacks. "Sorry, I can't stand a mess. Anything reserved?"

"I don't care about the books, bags, or boxes," Sojiro said, hands going to his hips as he watched Akira's attention leave him and return to the inanimate objects around him. "But if you throw out the ladder or any of my spare tables or chairs, I'll boot you."

Akira wiped a finger down the planks of the wood flooring and shuddered. "Do you have a clean broom for this room?"

Sojiro's left eyebrow rose. "A clean broom?" He pointed in the corner, across a dilapidated mixer to a broom that looked as old as the last World War. "Just sweep up." He drew his keys and held them up. "I'll lock up when I leave each day. Don't do anything stupid just because nobody's here to keep an eye on you."

Akira let go of the latest bag of trash and snapped straight, arm coming up at precise angles and palm out to give a picture-perfect British salute.

Sojiro's eyes narrowed. "Don't be cute. Officer Ichijou may have argued for you, but she said you're here because you butted into an adult's situation."

Akira's salute fell and his lip twitched. "He was assaulting a terrified woman. How was I supposed to know who the drunk was before I stopped him?"

A long-suffering sigh emanated from the middle-aged man, though the look in his eyes felt considerate instead of condemning. "Either way, that's what happens when you stick your nose into someone else's business. You did injure the guy," he finished, setting hands on his hips.

Clenching his teeth, Akira growled. "And Inuri High expelled me." He clamped his eyes shut, sucked in a deep breath, then blasted it out through his nose before going back to cleaning. "At least the court really did send me away from the old bastard."

Sojiro's arms crossed. "That's no way to talk about your fath—"

The garbage bag hit the ground and Akira took one stomping step at Sojiro, finger pointed like a weapon. "That bastard is not my father."

Sojiro's eyes narrowed. "You should be a little more considerate of the only link between you and Wakaba." Uncrossing his arms, he took a quarter turn to the stairs. "Just don't cause any trouble and don't say anything. A restaurant lives and dies on its reputation. As long as you behave yourself, you'll only have to put up with this for a year. After that, your probation is lifted and you can file whatever motions you want with the court."

Akira set the bag down in a neat grid with the others by the table next to the stairs, and swept the open swath of floor.

Waiting a moment for eye contact, Sojiro gave up with a quiet sigh. "Make sure you're ready to go to Shujin Academy tomorrow morning. They never mailed your ID and said they want to be sure your paperwork is finalized."

Akira spared him a confused glance. "I already got the uniforms. What else do they want?"

"You're on thin ice already. I don't think it's unreasonable that they want a proper introduction before you start class." Sojiro put his hands on his hips, fingers tapping for a moment. "It'll be… First thing Sunday. Are you going to need to do anything?"

Akira paused, a garbage bag in each hand. "I would be going to Mass since it's Easter season, but they hold it in the morning." Setting them down against the tidy arrangement of trash bags against the stairs, Akira dusted off his gloves before reaching into his time-worn jacket and drew a fat envelope. "Father Motoori gave me this for Father Sugiyama."

"Sugiyama?" Sojiro's eyes widened.

Akira looked the middle-aged man in the eyes. "Why do you sound so surprised?"

"He…" Sojiro's eyes drifted to the bottom of the stairs, "buried Wakaba."

Akira's shoulders slumped. "I… sorry. I didn't—"

"Don't get any wrong ideas," Sojiro said, turning to the stairs. "Just be sure you're ready to make the trip up to school tomorrow. Once you get your transit pass from them, you can handle your own travel."

Saturday, 9 April 2016
Evening
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Akira grunted, standing the ladder against the corner near the stairs. With several more square meters of floor open and swept, he sloshed the mop in the bucket and attacked the dusty floor.

The stairs creaked as somebody paced up, a purposeful but measured gait. Sojiro watched for a moment, his eyebrows raised. "You were serious about cleaning." He looked to the corner. "Looks like you prefer your bed against the wall."

Keeping his focus on the floor even as his back complained, Akira threw back, "I can't stand a mess." Reaching the end of one stretch, he kept his feet on the dry floor and returned to the mop bucket. "I'm assuming by the flat tires the bike is an abandoned throwaway?"

For some reason, Sojiro smiled. "It is, but for Shujin you'd be just as well walking to and from the train station." He folded his arms over his chest, sweeping his gaze over the room and the stack of unsorted books on the table by the stairs. "Hm. This place doesn't look so bad."

"A professional is neat and tidy," Akira said, attacking another lane on the floor.

"If you're trying to make a good impression, I think you already have your start." Sojiro watched the boy clean in determined silence for several long seconds. "Don't forget to get some rest so we can get to your school on time tomorrow."

Akira stopped to jab at a dark spot multiple times.

Sojiro's brow furrowed. "Fine, if you get sick, I'm not going to look after you. You'll be—"

"I've been on my own my whole life," Akira snapped, returning to longer sweeps with the mop. "This is just a bigger flat to do it in."

"Oh!" Sojiro snapped his fingers and trotted downstairs with a little more energy than his entry, coming back up a few moments later. He set something leather-bound on top of the nearest stack of books on the table. "Here's a journal. You'll make a complete record of your daily activities. You'll turn it over to me whenever I need to make a report to social services." He folded his arms over his chest again. "Don't trust that your social worker will skim over, actually fill it in so I have something to report."

Akira continued mashing the mop over the floor. "Just as long as Father Sugiyama doesn't have to read it. I'll already be doing Hail Marys for skipping Mass tomorrow." He stopped and lifted the mop, making a face at the dark water dripping from it. When he noticed Sojiro still standing there at the top of the stairs, he asked, "Something else?"

The middle-aged man adjusted his glasses, then relaxed. "You may be on probation, but since you don't have a special conviction like computer crime there's no special limitations on anything in particular. As long as you follow the law." With that, he turned and went downstairs.

Akira swirled the mop in the dust-muddied brackish water in an effort to rinse it off. Letting out a deep breath, he pulled his phone out to step back his alarm in the morning. A bleeding eye icon sat on his grid of apps and Akira tilted his head. "I wonder what update that came with?" Sniffing at the scent of dust and old books, he put the phone away, picked up the mop, and trotted downstairs to change the water.

Saturday, 9 April 2016
Night
Location: Unknown

Akira opened his eyes to blue crushed velvet. Confused, he reached out to brush a finger against it and check whether it felt like what he saw. Before his arm got halfway, he noticed the salvaged large shirt he wore to bed replaced by a black and white striped shirt. At least it wasn't hot. Sitting up, he realized all his clothes were replaced by the silly striped uniform. Glancing to his side, he spotted bars. "Oh, this is just ridiculous."

Chuckling echoed from beyond the bars and Akira turned his focus from the prison cell to its source. A bald man with wild tufts of pale grey hair sat behind a fine wood table. The stranger wore a crisp tuxedo that only served to enhance the eeriness of his wide, bloodshot eyes and the longest nose he ever saw. "Welcome to my Velvet Room. I am delighted to make your acquaintance. This place exists between dream and reality, mind and matter." The well-dressed stranger folded his hands. "I am Igor, master of this place."

Akira stood up, trying to ignore the chains linking his wrists or ankles. "Nobody who's truly a master of something needs to stop and say it. Now why do you fear me so much you need me behind bars?"

A blond child in a corny blue warden's uniform stepped out from his right and whacked her baton on the bars, sparks zipping between the contact. "Know your place, Inmate!"

Akira shot her a dirty look.

Igor's smile thinned. "This place is a reflection of your heart. Are you a prisoner of society? Fate itself?" He took his hands apart, resting his chin on one. "You stand on the cusp, but will you have the strength to stop the impending ruin?"

Akira approached the bars, noticing a similar kid-wannabe-warden on the other side. Keeping his focus on the man behind the desk, he gripped the bars and pushed out to test their strength. "If you're trying to make a veiled threat, you're going about it the wrong way. The only way something in the future is assured is if you do something."

Igor chuckled, unperturbed. "Do not be afraid. It may be possible to oppose fate, perhaps even rehabilitate your way—"

Akira snarled. "Yeah, I've already seen what 'rehabilitation' does to prisoners and psych ward patients. You might as well be honest and call it a lobotomy. 'Mental reprogramming' is just a set of words to make yourselves feel better about it."

Igor chuckled, something incongruous about the well-dressed man finding something amusing about the phrase 'mental reprogramming'. He straightened just a little from his drastic hunch. "Such spirit! Perhaps you may yet find the resolve to challenge the world's distortion."

Rankled, Akira tightened his grip on the iron bars. "I have the resolve to take on anything, old man." He glanced down to one child, then the other. "So, who's Oxymoron?"

A soft but pleased chuckle floated out of the tuxedoed man. He held a hand to the costumed kid on Akira's right, "Caroline, and Justine," he finished gesturing at Akira's left. "They shall be your wardens."

Akira pulled at the bars. "Nobody keeps me prisoner, so nobody is my warden!"

"Struggle all you like, Inmate," the eerie girl with a blindfold over one eye said.

"If you insist," Akira snapped. He yanked at the bars, but they held fast.

Igor's grin only widened. "This shall be a most interesting 'rehabilitation'. I shall look forward to seeing what power you choose to awaken. Shall you seek your own world, or will you seek other thieves to use?" The long-nosed man let out a laugh with all the depth of his voice. "In time, young one."

Sunday, 10 April 2016
Early Morning
Yongen, Leblanc Loft

Grinding his teeth at the irritating buzzing, he fumbled for his smart phone and shut off its alarm, then put on his glasses to check and see if it decided to go off an hour early like his body claimed it did. No such luck. "Damn, didn't I get any sleep?"

A clatter sounded downstairs and the 'first thing in the morning' business at Shujin leaped to his mind. Akira scrambled to get into his Shujin uniform, getting his long-sleeved shirt on and trousers up before Sojiro strode up the steps. Hopping on one foot to try to keep his balance, he hit the bookshelf crammed with thick books and binders, knocking over the broom.

The middle-aged man looked over the polished floor of cleared space. "I'm surprised you're up…" His gaze paused at the broom. "You did sleep, didn't you?"

Akira zipped up his school uniform and picked up the black jacket. "That's what I'm trying to tell myself." Heart still beating fast and hands aching to land fists on someone, he shook his head to push away the strange dream. "I thought I'd be able to get a peaceful night's sleep now that I'm outside."

Sojiro crossed his arms, an eyebrow rising as he looked over the transfer student. "Outside?"

Akira's face heated up and his stomach twisted at the humiliating days past. "Never mind. If we've got to go, let's go. Shujin's in Aoyama, right? Yongen-Jaya to Shibuya, then transfer Ginza to Aoyama-Itchome?"

"Something like that, but I'm driving." He held up a finger as if making a stern point was necessary. "Just for today. I don't want to take the chance we have a problem with the subway." Sojiro headed back to the stairs, muttering before descending, "Sheesh. Men usually aren't allowed in my passenger seat."

Akira buttoned his jacket. "Wonderful. I finally get out of the asylum and my caretaker is a nut."

Given the standoffish, naked hostility from Sakura Sojiro, Akira turned and stared out at a city looking more like a rat maze with thick crowds of people rushing about anywhere cars didn't choke the streets. Either he picked up on Akira's overwhelmed state, or Sojiro didn't feel like talking past one quip, so the trip passed in as much silence as one of the world's busiest cities would afford.

Pausing just before the front gates of some school with "Shujin" on the sign out front, Sojiro turned on Akira and set his hands on his hips. "Do me a favor and behave yourself, all right?"

Akira played up the offended innocence. "Just because I usually don't behave doesn't mean I don't know how to." At the restauranteur's flat stare, he straightened. "Right. No stand up in the halls. I understand." He snapped one foot against the other, standing at attention and gave a British salute.

"Just… don't be yourself," Sojiro said, sounding weary. "I don't care what happens to you, but I don't want to have to clean up anybody else's mess again."

"Again?" Akira's mocking salute fell.

Sojiro whipped around and marched Akira up to the school principal's office.

The obese man in a Dijon-yellow suit leaped straight to the expected rhetoric. "You'll be expelled if you cause any problems."

Staring straight ahead, Akira drew his heels together with a click and stood at attention. "Sir!"

Kobayakawa looked down at a manila-sheathed dossier, his frown deepening the folds on his face. "I understand you have a history of fighting and infractions that never led to charges pressed in your hometown, but you will behave yourself here."

Akira stared straight ahead, letting out nothing but a curt and clear, "Sir!"

Kobayakawa paused, his feigned officious anger losing the battle to bewilderment before he looked away from Akira. "Well…" He swiveled his seat to a woman in a yellow shirt. "This is Kawakami. She will be your homeroom teacher."

She gave a brief incline of her head. "Kawakami Sadayo."

Akira turned to her with a click of his heels and snapped a thirty-degree bow. "Kawakami-sensei!" He rose with the same swiftness.

She took a set of paper envelopes from the stained-wood desk and handed them out. "Here's your student ID and your authenticated transit pass. Make sure you read the instructions, it might be different from the buses and trains where you came from." After Akira took both, she shifted back just a little. "Violations will result in a trip to the guidance office, so read the school rules and don't repeat your behavior from the last schools. We call this Shujin Academy for a reason. If you have any problems, I won't be able to protect you," she said in a manner that sounded very much like 'I wouldn't even bother trying.'

Akira clenched his jaw for a moment to hold up his façade-for-the-moment. In the same snappy, professional tone he stated, "You will find that a new environment has an enormous effect on performance and behavior, Kawakami-sensei." He snapped his right hand up at a sharp angle, palm flat and out against his eyebrow, then dropped it.

"W-well," Kawakami said before retreating a step toward the principal, then leaning closer to whisper not quite low enough, "I thought he was a regular student, not a transfer from a military school."

"He is supposed to be a regular student," the pudgy oaf complained. He swiveled back to Akira. "Oh, relax, boy. You're making me feel tired."

Akira snapped his hands behind his back, feet spread to shoulder width and back still straight as a meterstick.

Granting Akira no shred of attention, Sojiro gave a tired, "If that's all? I have a business to run."

Kobayakawa cleared his throat and feigned the least believable smile the transfer student ever saw. "Thank you for keeping a close eye on him."

Sensing the end of the demeaning meeting, Akira snapped back to attention with a click of his heels, bowed, then came back up and returned to rest.

Kawakami rubbed at one eye for a moment before saying, "Come to the faculty office tomorrow and I'll show you your classroom."

Sojiro led the way out of the office, but failed to conceal a sense of tension which burst at the entry hall when he towered over Akira and snapped, "What was all that in the office about?"

Akira slid a foot back and bit his tongue to try to keep a grip on his temper. "At least I held back the urge to snap up an arm and shout 'Heil Kobayakawa'," he said along with a click of his heels and right arm held out. The transfer student fell back into a relaxed pose. "Besides, the best thing to do when you're in an unusual situation is to smile. It confuses people."

Sojiro rolled his eyes. "Ugh. Let's just get going."