Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There was an incessant beeping from one of the nearby consoles, shrill and grating; the man ignored it as he stared at the screen, fixated on his task. Again he rewound the footage and leaned in closer as it began to play, the red light of fire reflecting in his glasses and bathing the whole room in its harsh glow.

A fine mess this was. In one fell swoop, they had lost decades of progress, and most of their equipment and test subjects to boot. If he could at least figure out what had happened to their most valued object of study, perhaps some of their work could still be salvaged, but the weapon had returned to base in a debilitated state, and its recordings of the incident at the Moonlight Bridge were faulty at best.

There was shouting in another room, and hurried footsteps as the other researchers rushed about like headless chickens. The noise was drilling into his head, further aggravating the headache that had been building over three days and nights with no time for sleep. Ikutsuki Shuji hardly considered himself a violent man, but it was a pity that Takeba had perished in the explosion he had caused; if he could get his hands on the man now, he would gladly educate him on the consequences of destroying their research when they had been so close to their goal, and afterwards, he would offer him on a silver platter to the hungry hyenas of the media circus. Tearing his name to shreds post-mortem had done so little to quell their hysteria, and keeping them away from their ongoing operations was proving to be an infuriating endeavour.

Kirijo-san might have handled it more elegantly, but of course he was dead as well, and his useless son could hardly be expected to step up to the plate. The few times he had seen the man since the incident, he had been mute and unresponsive, gawking at the ruins of their work with a dead-eyed stare. Not exactly the kind of leadership one would hope for in a situation such as this, and as such, Shuji had taken it upon himself to take control of the research team. No one had opposed his decision. Under normal circumstances, he would have quite enjoyed the promotion, especially now that some of his more troublesome colleagues were out of the picture, but cleaning up this mess was not a prospect he was particularly looking forward to.

Still, with his cards played right, this might yet be an opportunity. With all ongoing projects in shambles, at the very least he could build the research division back up from the ashes according to his own specifications. There were already so many new avenues he was considering, for when this initial hurdle was finally dealt with; there were certain areas of research that the previous management had deemed unsavoury, but given the ultimate goal of their work, Shuji hardly understood the point of some misguided sense of ethics.

The footage on the monitor glitched and froze, and with a heavy sigh, Shuji rewound it again, glancing at the dismantled android in its stasis chamber on the other side of the room. Most of their Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapons had been lost in the initial explosion; it had been sheer luck that Model-07 Aigis had been at a different location for testing, ready to be deployed to handle the immediate aftermath. And it had handled it, evidently – despite the scene it had caused at Moonlight Bridge, the weapon seemed to have apprehended the most dangerous of the Shadows successfully, if their continued existence was anything to go by.

How unfortunate then, that the exact nature of that confrontation still eluded him.

Of course, he had wasted no time in extracting the data the moment the broken robot had stumbled back into the lab. Given its state of disrepair, a simple data transfer had unfortunately been out of the question, and he’d had to pry the entire hard drive from its damaged shell to protect it from further harm; even then, a lot of the information on it was incomplete and corrupted, and piecing it back together was proving to be a hassle.

Still, it was a hassle of utmost importance. Finding out what had happened to the Death Arcana on that bridge was essential; without it, their work couldn’t continue on in any way that mattered.

The console to his left beeped again, somehow even more shrilly and gratingly than before, and his headache spiked like white-hot fire behind his eyes. With a pained sneer, he whirled to face the blasted thing, reaching out to slam his fist down on the power button with far more force than necessary—before he halted, forcing an artificial calm to smoothe his features back to their normal, pleasant state. Ah, but he shouldn’t lose his temper. They were short on equipment as it was, and it would make a poor impression on his employees in any case. He was a leader now. He could not afford to lose their loyalty.

Maybe he should look into ways to come across as more affable and gregarious. People were fond of comedy, no? Inserting small jokes into his interactions with the staff might have a chance of endearing him to them. Perhaps he should borrow a book on the subject, if time allowed. But for now, of course, there were more pressing matters to attend to.

At the very least, he should take a moment to check what that disruptive beeping was all about before he shut the damn thing down. It would be unforgivable if his own distraction made him miss something important. He rolled his chair over to the other computer and woke the monitor up with a single press of a button; proudly, it displayed the results of whatever program it had been running while on stand-by. Blessedly, the beeping finally ceased as well, and with newfound clarity, Shuji studied the pop-up on the screen.

Patch 100%, it proclaimed above its completed progress bar. Ah, but of course, the patch one of the assistants had been running on the corrupted data for the last few days! Heavens, but his thoughts were scattered lately – all the more proof that he was running on fumes and needed rest rather desperately, he supposed. Still, that was no excuse to dismiss a potentially critical piece of information so carelessly. To think that he’d nearly destroyed it in his haste – yes, he would need to do away with these reckless outbursts.

They were unbecoming of a man who would one day rule the world.

Not that he was expecting much from the patch, but perhaps now he would at least be able to watch what was left of the video recording without nearly crashing his other programs in the process.

It only took a few clicks to manoeuvre through the android’s memory storage and access the correct folder, and soon enough, the room was once again bathed in the orange glow of firelight as he hit play.

With a dispassionate frown, he settled in to watch the parts he had already seen – now significantly smoother and less grainy than they had been before – as a battle raged on the screen. Through the robot’s eyes, he witnessed it throwing itself at the cloaked form of the Shadow, grabbing its trailing chains and launching it; a garbled crash sounded from the speakers as it impacted, scattering several cars in its wake like so many toys. The android followed, dodging the flaming debris that was raining down around it, and static filled the screen as it took a glancing blow to the head.

This was the point where the previous footage had always crashed, too corrupted to continue playing, but the patch had evidently done its job; though badly mangled, the visual returned, just in time to watch Model-07 catch itself by crushing its pointed legs into the smoking ruin of a nearby car. The camera jerked sharply to the side along with its head, the vehicle shaken by some sort of explosion as the whole thing went up in flames - but just as suddenly, the footage steadied itself again. The android had locked its gaze on to a new target.

On the backseat of the ruined car, behind the flames and the gory mess in the driver’s seat, there was a boy, frozen in shock as he locked eyes with the machine. There was blood dripping from a gash on his head that was matting his dark hair, and he was staring into the camera with wide eyes, but he was certainly alive, and certainly not a coffin.

Human life sign detected, read one of the protocols popping up in the upper corner of the screen. Vital signs stable. Avoid further harm.

The moment of distraction cost the robot though, because a second later, there was the screech of metal on metal, and the footage devolved into a blur of hectic movement as its legs were torn from the car in a violent collision. It seemed suspended in the air for a moment, and then it crashed back down onto the pavement, and there was an ominous groaning noise that echoed through the speakers.

Shuji hummed in thought. Parts of the bridge had collapsed during the battle, he was aware of that much – perhaps this was the moment the cables had given out?

The camera shook as the android pushed itself to its legs, leaping clear just as the concrete crumbled underneath it. Red error messages were lining its vision now, read-outs such as critical system error and [left-hand artillery] not found; still, Model-07 seemed undeterred by its missing limb, and with a fortitude that no human could have managed in the face of such an injury, it engaged its last-resort protocol.

Orgia Mode instantly flooded the area with blue, its bright glow overpowering even the light of the growing blaze as more and more cars were catching on fire, and the android shouted for its Persona as it launched itself into the air and fired several missiles at the rapidly-approaching Shadow of Death.

Most of the resulting clash was lost to hectic smear-frames and garbled static, the footage far too corrupted to give a clear picture, but the read-outs at the edges of the screen remained telling enough; the calculations for likelihood of victory decreased with every blow, until the prognosis settled on 0.003% and remained there, while the damage reports and error messages kept piling up. The robot must have been well-aware that it stood no chance against this foe; its systems were approaching a critical temperature, and Orgia Mode would not be sustainable for much longer.

The visual grew more hectic as the android frantically scanned the area for alternate possibilities – what had it done to salvage this unwinnable battle, indeed? Shuji blinked tiredly and supressed a yawn before he turned his attention back to the carnage before him.

The visual had stabilised once more – the android’s gaze had settled on a burning car resting near the broken edge of the bridge, where shattered concrete made way for a sheer drop-off into the ocean below. With some interest, Shuji noted that one of the car’s doors was being pushed open from the inside, a small form emerging with some difficulty and falling to the ground below. It was hard to make out on the grainy and heavily-corrected footage, but it must have been the boy from earlier. Not many people were able to exist within the Shadows’ field of influence without transmogrifying unless they had undergone the special training for it, and the odds of more than one person on the scene possessing the natural talent were slim at best.

Viable vessel detected, said the read-outs on the screen as the camera zoomed in on the prone body. Commence sealing?

Shuji blinked, and then felt laughter bubbling up from within him. He stifled it with a cough as best he could, but he couldn’t help his exalted grin as he watched the robot affirm its own inquiry and take off towards the wreckage.

Yes, of course, it all made sense now – one of the earliest findings of their research into Shadows had been their odd compatibility with the human mind. While they appeared as monsters when they took physical shape, they seemed capable of manipulating a person’s thoughts, even feeding off of their desires and emotions. Further testing had revealed that the human mind itself might have evolved to adapt to the existence of Shadows, because similar entities could be manifested from within under the right circumstances; the theory was posed that perhaps they were one and the same, and while this avenue of research was still in its infancy, some experiments had followed to test the viability of inserting an outside Shadow into the mind of a person. The results had been fascinating – the procedures had always caused the Shadow to go dormant, while its vessel remained physically unharmed, though suddenly showcasing distinct behavioural quirks and traits that seemed to reflect the Shadow within.

Shuji smiled to himself, feeling almost giddy with curiosity. They had only ever used weak Shadows for these tests, and willing adults from their own team as the hosts, and even then, they had separated the two after an observation period of just a few days.

To think, an unfathomably powerful Shadow such as the Thirteenth Arcana, sealed within an unfinished and malleable vessel such as a young child – however would it manifest its influence? Could it even be contained long-term? Why, there were so many variables!

He could hardly wait to study this subject more closely.

Meanwhile, Model-07 had arrived at its destination, and Shuji watched in anticipation as the sharp points of its legs touched down in front of the boy. The child had frozen again, staring up at the robot with fearful, uncomprehending eyes, before he seemed to snap out of his daze, scrambling to get away from the weapon that had destroyed his family’s car.

Shuji made sure to study his appearance more closely this time. Colours were difficult to make out in the clash of blue, red and green light, but the boy’s tangled hair must have been either black or dark blue. His wide eyes were a clear silver, and the head wound would have certainly landed him in the hospital after the incident.

Good. This should make it easy to identify him from among the recorded survivors.

From behind the monitor, Shuji watched as the android stalked forward, indifferent to the boy’s panicked attempts to escape. From somewhere behind them, there was the rattling of chains, and Model-07 Aigis reached down with its one remaining arm to lift the helpless child up into the air by the neck. He struggled against its hold, clawing at its hand with feeble fingers, utterly unable to budge its steel grip by even a millimetre despite his futile squirming. His pitiful little gasps and pleas sounded from the speakers as he cried, and fell on deaf ears all the same.

Shuji leaned forward, studying the scene intently. This was a valuable moment of scientific discovery; he couldn’t afford to miss even a single frame.

There was a noise like the rushing wind, and then the Shadow was upon them. The child barely seemed to notice it in his state of shock, but the android averted its gaze from him briefly to side-step the incoming attack. The camera shook from the quick movement, and Shuji could hear the weapon’s flat, robotic voice through the speakers.

“My apologies. This will likely be unpleasant.”

And then he watched as it tackled the Shadow and called its Palladion, channelling the Persona’s power as it shoved the struggling boy into the dark mass before them.

Shadows, while they might appear very solid to the untrained eye, were really more akin to a liquid or even a gas in most conditions. When interacting with a human mind, they tended to lose all physical substance altogether. It had, in fact, taken the research team quite the tedious amount of time to coax Death into taking a solid form at all after combining the Arcana, and then the process had been rudely interrupted before it could be fully completed – evidently, its physical shape was still easily disrupted, and upon contact with the boy, it shuddered and collapsed into the dark pool of ichor that made up most Shadows’ basic forms.

Shuji watched in fascination as Palladion’s power surged around it, the robot’s systems reaching critical temperature as it poured all its remaining energy into its task.

Prying open an unwilling human mind for Shadow insertion was certainly an unpleasant and rather ugly process, and a mere child would be powerless to withstand a Persona’s concentrated efforts. Still, did the boy have to scream so loudly? Horrific pain or no, the high-pitched shrieking was rather aggravating to his headache. Shuji hummed in annoyance and reached towards the speakers to turn the volume down a little – ahh, much better now.

He settled back in to watch as the child – piercing wails now blessedly quieted – fought against the robot’s hold with renewed vigour while the shadowy ichor swirled around him, turning into a dark mist and then disappearing altogether as it was slowly absorbed into his body.

And then, abruptly, it was over.

Quiet as the screams had been, their sudden absence felt loud as the boy went still, slackening in the robot’s grasp and staring into the middle-distance with empty, deadened eyes. He hardly seemed to react even when his captor finally burned out, dropping him and collapsing from its overheated systems.

The cameras were flickering with static, error messages filling nearly the entire screen, but Shuji could still make out the crumpled form of that boy and his flat, unblinking stare as he gazed up at the green sky above him. He could just barely see his chest moving up and down with calm, steady breaths, a far cry from the panicked hyperventilation that had wracked his body just moments before.

Eventually, Model-07 Aigis cooled down enough to stumble to its mangled legs and retreat, so he rewound the footage to pause it on that final image, studying the unresponsive form of the child with clinical interest. He seemed indifferent to the carnage around him now – for the entirety of the android’s recovery period, he had showed none of the fear he had so prominently displayed before, and had, in fact, barely acknowledged its presence at all. Not even once had he glanced back at the burning wreckage of what must have been his family’s car, seemingly unmoved by their violent demise. He had simply continued to stare up at the sky, and the enormous yellow moon suspended within it.

How truly fascinating.

Feeling energised for the first time in three sleepless days, Shuji picked up the telephone and dialled the number of one of his most trusted contacts.

“Hello? Yes – how is the set-up for Project Strix progressing? Are we about ready to start?”

After a few moments of intent listening, he nodded and smiled, idly twirling the telephone cord around his finger.

“Very good, very good! That is wonderful timing. You see, I have another subject that I would like to add to our list of acquired orphans. I suspect he won’t be missed.”

Chapter Text

Arisato Minato

Male, born on Saturday, 1992年07月17日 in Iwatodai Rosai Hospital, currently aged 6, 1^st-year student at Shinyou Elementary School.

Son of Arisato Takuma, ♂ 29, and Arisato Hotaru, ♀ 32.

Older brother of Arisato Yuuto, ♂ 3, and Arisato Wakana, ♀ 1. All perished in the crash.

Currently undergoing treatment at Tatsumi Central Hospital.

No adoption legally finalised yet.

With a pleased smile, Shuji once again read over the profile his assistant had put together for him. Frankly, all of this was turning out to be terribly convenient for them; the boy had indeed turned out to be his family’s sole survivor, and his remaining relatives were not exactly vying for custody.

The mother had been an only child, and while her parents were still alive, her father was apparently terribly sick, with her elderly mother barely managing to support them both financially while also caring for her ill husband. They were in no position to take in a child. As for Arisato Takuma’s side of the family, he had supposedly cut contact with his parents years ago, and while they had expressed shock at his sudden passing, there was legal paperwork forbidding them from any contact with the children. That only left his sister, who had stayed in touch with the family – but she was over a decade younger than her brother, and had only graduated from high school and subsequently moved into her own small apartment three months ago. She had apparently denied the custody request rather emphatically, citing her own youth and uncertain future.

With no other options available, the social workers assigned to young Arisato’s case had been desperately looking for available foster homes, and all it had taken were a few phone calls to the right people for the guardianship paperwork to appear on his desk.

It was almost like the universe was serving Death’s vessel to him on a silver platter. Destiny, perhaps.

Shuji placed the profile sheet back into the folder now labelled “P-STX#01 ARISATO MINATO”, and slid it into its designated spot on the shelf. He could appreciate a good bit of interior design, and he rather liked this shelf with its sleek metal frame and practical compartments; it was brand-new of course, an acquisition for the recently-built Project Strix facilities. It was also still mostly empty, but it wouldn’t be for much longer – the hundred-or-so folders they were planning for should fit on it quite nicely. There was plenty of room.

Currently though, the facilities were just as empty of people as the shelf was of files, and it made the white, sterile rooms with their medical equipment and expensive machinery seem somewhat haunting; be that as it may though, the place should receive its first resident soon, and the other subjects would begin trickling in shortly afterwards.

Ah, but it was always such a bracing, refreshing feeling to be on the precipice of a new project – to have completed all the necessary preparations, and to now look down into a valley of new discoveries and insights waiting just below. He squared his shoulders and breathed deeply, finding a quiet thrill in the sharp, clean scent of the disinfectant that had been used to scrub the place down in anticipation of its first arrival. Yes, he really did love his job.

Leaving his office behind, he made his way through the long, lonely hallways that would undoubtedly soon be familiar, his brisk steps sending clipped echoes down the empty corridors. No dawdling, not now – he had an appointment to get to. And oh, it was an important one.

His glasses caught the bright overhead lights, gleaming harshly as he walked, and Ikutsuki Shuji smiled as he headed out to receive the gift destiny had so generously given him.

Everything was cold.

No, that wasn’t quite right – the nurses had given him short, loose clothing to wear, saying they were having an early heatwave. Dimly, he supposed he might be aware of something like warmth – but the sensation felt distant, disconnected from his body in the way everything seemed to be now.

Maybe, then, it was that everything was empty instead. This white room with its white walls and white curtains and white bedsheets was empty of anything real, a disjointed piece of reality that felt so fragile that he thought it might pop and disappear like a soap bubble if he reached out and touched it. And yet, he was sitting on that white bed, on those white sheets, he himself just another part of this cold and empty white room that seemed to exist somewhere outside of the reality he used to know.

Maybe he, too, was just as empty, Minato thought.

He felt odd and floaty, untethered even though he was sitting down. He was aware that he was at a hospital, in the same way that he was aware that there were six neat stitches on the top of his head, and that his hair had been shorn to access the wound. He was aware that time had passed, and he was aware that Mama and Papa and Yuuto-chan and Kana-chan were dead.

He was aware, which was to say that he knew, and that he couldn’t find it in himself to feel anything about it at all.

His memories seemed just as distant and disconnected from him as the heatwave was. He could see their faces in his mind, and he could hear their voices and recall the life he’d spent with them. He knew that Yuuto-chan had liked playing with his toy dinosaurs, and that Kana-chan had always spit out the carrot mush anytime someone had tried feeding it to her. He knew that Mama had loved the colour yellow, and that Papa had been a very good cook. There had been emotions attached to this information not too long ago, he was aware of that much, but when he thought about it now, he simply felt nothing at all.

The lady in the white coat with the clipboard and the gentle eyes had frowned softly when he’d told her that, and had given him a hug. It was a common reaction to severe trauma to hide from your emotions, she’d said, and then she’d handed him some blank sheets of paper and crayons to express his feelings.

The sheets of paper had remained blank. Minato didn’t think he was hiding from anything – there was simply nothing there, and ‘nothing’ was not something he knew how to draw.

The lady with the gentle eyes had smiled at him sadly and written a lot of things down on her clipboard, and she had visited him every day since then. She was trying to help him, he thought, but he wasn’t sure how to get better. The Arisato Minato in his memories seemed like just as much of a stranger as the people he had lived with – he didn’t think he really was that person now.

Still, he had done his best to do all the things she’d told him to do, and he’d dutifully answered all of the questions she’d asked him. He had told her about his family-that-were-strangers-now, and his first two months at school, and the friends-that-were-strangers he’d made there, and then the crash.
He’d told her about the way Mama had disappeared through the windshield the first time the car had flipped, and how Kana-chan had smacked her little head against the side of her carrier and gone all still and quiet; he’d told her how Yuuto-chan had cried and cried and hidden in the footwell behind Papa’s seat, and how Papa had been shouting for Mama. And he’d told her how the robot had landed on the car then, and how that had scrunched up the whole right side, making both Papa and Yuuto-chan suddenly go very very quiet.

He thought that was the moment he’d bumped and cut his head, so he’d told her about that, and about the fire too. The fire had made it very hard to breathe.

She’d made a compassionate little sound and asked him to tell her more about the robot, and he had described its white body and gleaming joints and yellow hair, and the way the monster with the chains had thrown it from the car and ripped out one of its arms, and how the robot had responded by glowing blue and shooting rockets at it—he hadn’t been able to hear anything for the next bit, he’d told the lady, because the explosions had been so loud and so close.

And then he’d told her how he’d tried to run away, and how the robot had caught him, and how it had pressed him into the monster – and how the only thing he remembered after that was pain, just pain, like someone had tried to crack his head open and tear his brain into pieces.

They couldn’t have succeeded, he’d told her, because he was still alive, but maybe they had instead broken something inside of him. He could actually picture that, strangely vividly compared to the dullness of everything else; his own mind, splintering and then shattering into a million little pieces, like the glass cup he’d accidentally dropped a few weeks ago. Papa had been very mad at him then, and he remembered feeling so ashamed – but maybe that feeling had shattered into tiny little pieces too, because it was gone now, and he couldn’t quite grasp the memory of it anymore.

The lady had written things down on her clipboard for a long time after that, but Minato didn’t know enough kanji to read any of it. She had been frowning though, and she’d looked concerned.

He probably wasn’t being a very good patient, Minato thought.

That had been a few hours ago, as far as he could tell – time passed in stops and bursts here, without anything to do. Not that he particularly cared; there was nothing he wanted to do, and nothing that caught his attention, so he simply sat on this bed, hands folded on the white sheets, and watched those white curtains blowing in the breeze from the open window as the light from outside changed from bright to golden to dim, and the shadows grew longer. An empty day for an empty boy.

Minato slept a lot. Not because he was tired, per se – exhaustion had gotten just as dim and distant as all the other things he should have felt, though his limbs were heavy all the same. It was simply an easy way to pass the time, and he had no reason not to. It was less dull than being awake, now that there was so little point to it.

The lady with the clipboard had looked worried when he’d told her that, too.

For now though, the light from outside was still bright, and the shadows were short. The lady had only been gone for a little while, and Minato was awake. They’d told him that he’d have a visitor today.

There was a knock on the door, after some indeterminate amount of time during which the shadows had continued their slow and deliberate advance across the floor; the old woman who entered was the one who had told Minato that she would find him a place to stay, and who hadn’t come back since. She was here now though, and with her was a man in a brown suit and glasses, who looked at Minato with a pleased expression.

“You must be Arisato-kun,” he said, without waiting for the woman to speak. “It’s very nice to meet you. My name is Ikutsuki Shuji. Difficult to say, isn’t it? Even I get tongue-tied sometimes!” He laughed, his tone just as pleasant as his smile, and Minato blinked at him.

“Hello,” he said, his own voice flat and quiet. He didn’t think the name sounded very hard to say, but maybe the man was just clumsy. He shouldn’t judge.

With a cheerful nod, his visitor stepped forward. The woman cleared her throat, and moved to stand at his side. “This is Ikutsuki-san, as he just said. Arisato-kun, he has offered to take you in as his ward! His background is very impressive, and this is by far the best foster home we’ve managed to find for you. You’ll have a very good life with him.”

Ikutsuki-san chuckled, but waved away the praise. “When I heard about the horrible tragedy that happened on that bridge, I simply had to do something to help. What you’ve been through is terrible, young man. The least I can do is make sure you have a place to stay.”

He seemed to square his shoulders and his smile grew wider, like he was preparing to say something important. “I suppose you could say that I am trying to bridge the gap between us!”

There was a moment of silence, and he let out a few awkward chuckles as the woman stared at him in horror, her face draining of its colour. “Ikutsuki-san!” she hissed, casting a mortified glance at Minato. He returned her gaze with mild puzzlement, and she turned her attention back to the man. “That was incredibly inappropriate! How could you joke about something like that? Perhaps I should reconsider your application—”

That seemed to get a reaction, because he threw his hands up defensively and shook his head, suddenly looking contrite and smiling apologetically. “Of course, of course, I am so sorry! It’s just that I was nervous about meeting Arisato-kun, and I really wanted to make a good first impression, so I thought I would lighten the mood a bit with a joke – but of course, there I go again, putting my foot in my mouth in the worst way possible…”

The woman sighed. “Look, Arisato-kun. I am so sorry about this. If you want him to leave, just say the word.”

Minato blinked at her, not quite following the bizarre exchange. “It’s fine.”

She seemed to do a double-take at that, giving him a look. “I know that you are a polite young man, Arisato-kun, but this is a very important decision. If you don’t want to live with someone who would make such insensitive jokes about your situation, you don’t have to hide it.”

He shrugged, unsure what she wanted him to say. “I don’t care.”

She stared at him for a few seconds longer, and then seemed to deflate as she glanced back over at Ikutsuki-san, whose pleasant smile was starting to look a little strained around the edges. “Well, if you’re sure… We did get rather extensive recommendations for him, I suppose.” She paused for a moment. “Still, this better not happen again, Ikutsuki-san. You know what I told you about Arisato-kun’s fragile mental state – he’s been through an incredibly traumatic event, and according to the therapist he’s been seeing, he exhibits strong symptoms of post-traumatic stress. It’s a difficult condition for someone so young, and he will need a delicate hand to guide and nurture him.” She fixed the man with a hard glare, seemingly very tense and worked up for reasons Minato couldn’t fully understand. He was pretty sure that wasn’t stressed, actually – he probably couldn’t even feel stress right now.

“Are we clear?”

Ikutsuki-san seemed to sober at that, bending forward in a perfect bow. “Of course. And again, my apologies. I never wanted to make Arisato-kun uncomfortable – though my attempts at humour could clearly use some work.”

Mystified, Minato kept watching the two adults talk over his head. Hadn’t he said it was fine? They kept expecting him to be upset, and it didn’t seem like they were going to believe him that he wasn’t, no matter how many times he said it. It would be frustrating, he thought, if he could still feel frustration – but there was only an aching emptiness inside, and he couldn’t find the emotions that had once come so naturally to him. So he simply remained quiet and unmoved, and watched as the discussion went on.

It took a while, but they eventually seemed to reach an agreement; Ikutsuki-san bowed again and handed over some official-looking paperwork, and then he shook hands with the woman, who smiled politely, only to immediately cast another worried glance at Minato the moment Ikutsuki-san looked elsewhere.

“The doctor says that you are free to be discharged, as long as you come back to get the sutures removed in about a week – though I suppose you can also make an appointment somewhere else, if that’s easier for you to reach. If you want, you can go with Ikutsuki-san right now. He says everything is ready for you in your new home, and we will be sending your belongings to the address he gave us. Aren’t you glad? You’ll get to leave the hospital today!”

Leave the hospital. Leave this empty white room. It would probably be nice to escape this isolated bubble of reality, Minato thought. Maybe he would finally feel something again, once he was gone from this place.

“Sure,” he said, and got up off the bed.

When he looked at Ikutsuki-san, there was a strange gleam in the man’s eyes – but then he seemed to catch himself, and his friendly smile slipped back into place. Minato wasn’t sure why he was trying so hard to put on such an act, but he didn’t care to find out. It was all the same to him.

Expression impassive, he followed his new guardian out of the hospital room. It wasn’t like he had anything to pack.

The soap bubble-reality wasn’t popping. The drive had been pretty long – they had spent a whole hour turning corners and going down unfamiliar streets, until Minato had lost all sense of direction. And yet, the weird disconnect between himself and the real world had remained; even with that room far behind him, his head felt empty, and the spring heat was a distant sensation. He had stared out of the car window, and had thought that the pane of glass wasn’t the only thing separating him from the world beyond.

Then, they had arrived at a large, modern building, somewhere outside of the normal city limits. It hadn’t looked like any home Minato had ever seen, but he had followed Ikutsuki-san through the fancy glass doors and into the even fancier lobby inside all the same, and then through a set of reinforced steel doors that had required several different access codes and keys to open. At this point, he had no longer been expecting the cosy sort of living space he was used to from home, but neither had he been expecting more white walls and empty hallways.

There were no windows or curtains in this place.

“Are we at another hospital?” His voice sounded small, he thought. This place dwarfed him in a way even the other room hadn’t – it felt a lot less kindly, too.

“In a manner of speaking, yes!” Ikutsuki-san’s hand felt heavy where it rested on his shoulder, his grip just a little bit too tight to be friendly. “Welcome to your new home, Arisato-kun! You are the only one here right now, but you will have a lot of friends to talk to soon. You’ll all live here together. Exciting, isn’t it?”

Minato glanced up. Ikutsuki-san was still using the same cheerful voice from before, but his face no longer matched his tone. The pleasant smile was gone, and in its place was a strange expression; he was grinning with excitement, but his eyes were harsh and cold, filled with a hungry curiosity. It reminded Minato of a boy he had seen on the playground a few months ago – the boy had caught a little spider between his fingers, and had torn off its legs one by one to watch it wobble around increasingly helplessly as he laughed at its struggles, until the little thing had had no legs left at all. The boy had run off and left it to die then, his curiosity satisfied and his casual cruelty already forgotten.

Minato had put the pitiful creature out of its misery after the other boy had left, unease churning in his stomach, and the memory had stayed with him.

The anger and disgust he had felt towards that boy escaped him now, but something about Ikutsuki-san’s expression made a slow sense of dread coil within him all the same. There was no fear accompanying it, however – it was simply a certainty that nothing good could possibly come of this. But there was acceptance, as well. Regardless of what would happen to him here, he had already seen the spider’s end, and that of his own family, too. Beyond any kind of cruelty, there was only ever one possible outcome, and somehow, that knowledge brought with it an odd sense of peace.

All living things would eventually reach the same destination, one way or another.

“Ah, right! I’m sure you’re hungry!” The grip on his shoulder tightened, and Minato didn’t resist as the hand pushed him along and guided him down one of the long, empty corridors. “I don’t have much more time to spare today, since I’ve been terribly busy lately, but I should at least show you where you’ll be eating your meals. Regular meals are important, you know – we’ll need you to be in the best possible condition, after all!”

Food sounded like a good idea. Not that Minato felt even remotely hungry, but maybe a meal would fill some of that endless emptiness inside; either way, he had no reason to refuse. Papa would have wanted him to eat, too.

But Papa would have probably been disappointed by this meal, he thought, sitting in the cold cafeteria and staring at his plate. There was only bland rice with a simple, flavourless curry, and some unseasoned fish as a side dish. Ikutsuki-san nodded smartly and said something about omega-threes and keeping the subjects’ minds in good condition, but Minato wasn’t really listening as he chewed methodically, hardly tasting the food at all.

After the meal, he followed the man through more endless hallways towards the bathrooms, uncomplaining. He changed into the plain pyjamas he was given, and brushed his teeth with the bitter, herbal toothpaste he was handed, and he stared at the boy in the mirror, not recognising his own reflection whatsoever. Short hair, dull eyes and unfamiliar clothing; perhaps it was fitting, he thought. He didn’t feel like the same Arisato Minato that had existed just a few days ago anymore, so maybe it was only right that he didn’t look like him either.

The final room Ikutsuki-san lead him to seemed to be a communal bedroom. It was huge, filled with rows upon rows of simple, cheap-looking bunk beds, and the heavy silence was only broken by the ringing echoes of the man’s footsteps on the concrete floor. They seemed too loud in this cold, lonely place. Minato, lagging a few steps behind, looked down at his own bare feet. He was hardly making any sound at all as he moved, like he was nothing but a ghost. Maybe everything was so different and empty now because he had died in the crash after all, he thought – but he was pretty sure that couldn’t be the case.

Some part of him really did feel dead though.

“That’s all for now, I think!” Ikutsuki-san clapped his hands cheerfully, practically beaming. “I will be back early tomorrow morning, because we have a lot of initial tests to run before we can really get started on the exciting stuff. So make sure you don’t stay up too late!”

He turned to leave, but then he paused, glancing back at Minato with an evaluating look in his eyes. “You’re a very quiet boy, aren’t you?”

Minato didn’t respond, only meeting Ikutsuki-san’s probing stare with a flat frown.

“It’s just very interesting how strongly the Shadow seems to have affected you, I mean. According to my sources, you were a rather expressive and empathetic child before, gifted in music and human connection. It’s like your personality was completely overwritten. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” He seemed to be studying Minato’s face for any reaction, and the longer he remained impassive, the more delighted he seemed to get.

“Yes. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow. Good night for now, Arisato-kun! Get some good rest!”

And with that, he withdrew, the heavy metal doors closing behind him. Minato could hear the sharp click of a lock falling into place.

And then, all at once, the deafening silence was all around him, with nothing to disrupt it.

This room was designed to make him feel exposed, he thought. It was too large, and too empty, aside from the wiry metal frames of the countless bunk beds. Maybe they wanted him to feel watched, to make sure he would behave. It was a little ironic then, that he didn’t feel intimidated at all. There was a dim sense of loneliness to this vast, unused space, but Minato felt indifferent to that, too. This really was no different than the previous room he’d been staying in. Just another empty, white place.

He picked a bed at random, and turned off the harsh overhead lights. Now there was only the soft glow of a few strategically-placed nightlights left, dispelling just enough of the darkness for him to find his way to his bunk without getting lost. With their dim, warm light, the room almost seemed cosy now.

The blanket of his bed was thin and scratchy. Minato wrapped it around himself all the same, banishing the artificial chill that seemed to permeate this whole place. There was something grounding about the sensation, and he slowed his breathing as he closed his eyes. Despite the uncomfortable mattress, sleep came easily.

“Hello.”

When Minato was awoken some indeterminate amount of time later, groggy and disorientated, the warm glow of the lights was gone. The room wasn’t dark though; a strange green hue seemed to illuminate every nook and cranny of the night. Minato acknowledged it with only mild bemusement; this wasn’t the first time he had woken up to it in recent days, and he had decided to simply accept this odd new phenomenon. However, there was something else that had caught his attention this time.

At the foot of his bed, there was a boy.

At the foot of his bed, there was the boy from the mirror.

Short hair, strange eyes and unfamiliar clothing. His reflection stared at him with an odd expression that looked alien on his own face, idly kicking his legs where he was sitting at the edge of the bed.

“Hello,” he said again, the vowels long and strange, like he wasn’t quite sure how to properly form the sounds. Minato sat up, blinking the sleep from his eyes. His reflection only tilted his head curiously, likely waiting for a response.

“Hello?” Minato tried, and got a weird little smile in return. He was pretty sure that he had never smiled like that before – it just didn’t look right on that familiar face.

Actually, now that he was getting a better look, the boy wasn’t quite a perfect reflection of himself. There was a small mole underneath his left eye, like the one Yuuto-chan had had, and his hair seemed slightly curly in a way that reminded him of Mama. It was hard to tell from the way he was sitting, but he was pretty sure the strange boy was a little taller than him, too. It was almost like someone had stolen various bits and pieces from Minato’s memories and pasted them onto his face and body at random, like they had been trying to recreate his shape and gotten confused along the way. It was a little uncanny.

Those eyes, though… Minato was very certain that he didn’t know anyone with eyes like that. In fact, he was pretty sure that a blue like that couldn’t possibly be natural – they seemed to almost glow with their own inner light.

Come to think of, he hadn’t seen the boy blink yet, either. Weird.

“Are you a spirit?” he asked hesitantly, suddenly reminded of all kinds of legends about ghosts and yōkai.

The boy seemed to give it some thought, then shook his head uncertainly. “I don’t – think so,” he said, slowly and carefully enunciating each word like he was sounding them out for the very first time.

Minato blinked. Oh, of course. “Are you a foreigner, then?” That might explain the blue eyes and the language barrier, he thought. He hadn’t met a Westerner before, but he was pretty sure they could have blue eyes. He’d seen it in an anime. Maybe the colour was normal after all?

The boy just kicked his legs again, a distant look on his face. “I don’t – know,” he said, taking a moment to string the words together. “I just knew – that I needed to”—despite his evident struggles to form the sentence, he seemed unbothered, suddenly aiming that same tiny smile from before at him again—“talk to you, I think.”

Minato blinked at him, not quite sure how to respond. This was a very strange situation. He decided that common courtesy was probably a good start, though. “I am Arisato Minato,” he said, and dipped his head forward in a sleepy approximation of a bow. “It’s nice to meet you.”

His not-quite-reflection smiled a little more widely, and clumsily mimicked the gesture. He looked a bit silly, like he had never tried to bow before. Maybe he really was a Westerner – didn’t they do handshakes instead? But then again, he had Minato’s face, and Minato was pretty sure that he was fully Japanese. A Westerner wouldn’t look like him, right?

In any case, the silence had gone on for a little too long to be comfortable. “What’s your name?” he prompted, though he didn’t actually care about the answer. He just wanted to move this odd conversation along so that he could go back to sleep.

The boy frowned softly though, looking puzzled. “A name?” The words still didn’t sound quite right, like he was pronouncing each phoneme individually instead of fluidly saying the whole thing. “I don’t know.”

Minato yawned, and then tiredly rubbed his eyes, sitting up a little straighter. “Do you know why you are here?”

His reflection seemed to perk up at that, and as Minato blinked, he was suddenly sitting right next to him, like he had been there the entire time. In his hands, he held a fancy-looking folder and a pen. That small smile was back, too.

“Right! I was – supposed to give this to you.”

Bemusedly, Minato took the pen and sat the folder down on his lap. Strangely enough, it swung open on its own, revealing a neat document inside. There were only a few lines of text on it, and thankfully, their spelling was easy enough to read. Not that the text made a lot of sense to him anyway – it seemed more like a vague poem than a formal document.

“It’s a contract,” the other boy said, sounding very sure of himself despite his struggles to pronounce the words. “There’s – no need to be scared.”

Was this a situation to be scared of? Minato wasn’t sure, but he was pretty certain that at the very least this wasn’t actually the scariest thing that had happened to him today, despite no longer having the capacity to appreciate the emotion. As it was, he just stared at the boy blandly as he uncapped the pen.

Undaunted, his reflection nodded and smiled. “Just – sign your name there.”

This, Minato knew how to do. He had practiced the kanji for his own name many times, and painstakingly, be began to draw them onto the designated line.

有 Ari. To have, to exist.

里 Sato. Village, hometown.

湊 Minato. Harbour, port.

His first name was particularly difficult; he took his time to make sure he didn’t forget even a single stroke as he wrote the kanji from memory. His name meant ‘the harbour of our hometown’, Mama had told him once. She’d said that she and Papa had always hoped that he would grow up to be a safe harbour for the people in his life.

There had been a bully at school though, and she had scoffed and told him that a harbour was just a place of transience, from which many people came and went, never to stay for very long. It simply wasn’t a place meant for permanence, she’d said. And he wondered if she’d been right all along – his family had already sailed from his harbour, after all. It hadn’t turned out to be a very safe place for them.

He drew the last stroke of his name, and just like that, the elegant pen disappeared from his hand. The contract fell closed with a flourish too, and was suddenly back in the boy’s hands. He studied it with an unreadable expression, and then he smiled and ever-so-gently hugged it to his chest.

His strange, unnatural eyes met Minato’s own.

“And so – it begins,” he murmured, still stumbling over his words a little. He seemed to hesitate for a second, watching Minato closely. “Can I – come back later?” he asked, sounding a little lost. “I don’t know where else – I should be.”

There was no reason to refuse, Minato thought. The boy was strange, and didn’t even know his own name, but he didn’t seem entirely unpleasant to be around.

“Sure,” he said, and covered his mouth with a hand as he yawned, still feeling very sleepy. He thought he heard a quiet, delighted laugh, but when he opened his eyes again, the boy was gone, and the room was once again dim, just barely illuminated by the soft orange glow of the nightlights, the green hue gone as if it had never been there in the first place.

Minato stared into the darkness for a few moments more, vaguely bewildered by the surreal sequence of events, before he shrugged in acceptance and laid back down. At least he would finally be able to go back to sleep.

But as he closed his eyes and sunk into slumber, he felt himself drift in the embrace of a distant, mournful song, and all around him shimmered gentle shades of blue, like the deepest, darkest of velvets.

Chapter Text

„Oh my! I must say, this is rather unexpected!”

There was a bright, chipper voice, and a lilting, sorrowful soprano echoing in the distance, and Minato opened his eyes to darkness. He blinked up at the vast expanse of nothingness above him for a few moments as he lied on his back, contemplating this second interruption of the night; he was pretty sure that he was no longer in that large, unwelcoming room. For one, there had been no singing when he’d fallen asleep – and there was also the fact that, the last time he’d checked, his bed hadn’t been swaying.

Bemusedly, Minato sat up. His movement made the rocking worse, and he stilled; then he took in his surroundings, and stared in bafflement.

Having spent all the years of his young life in a coastal city, boats were not difficult for him to recognise. And he was unmistakably sitting on the plush, cushioned floor of a particularly long, slender one now, the low walls of its hull rising up around him. Beyond that was only the deep and unfathomable blackness of a sea at night, the dark waters lapping against the polished wood with liquid, babbling murmurs that almost sounded like words.

A single lantern hung from the stern of the boat, softly illuminating its entirety with its golden light. It looked elegant and refined, Minato thought – like one of those gondolas from that foreign city with the many canals. He had seen them in a movie a while back, and had thought that they looked like something out of a fairy tale. This one had a smooth black hull, aged but well-maintained, and an interior coating of fancy blue velvet. The material was silky and cool to the touch when he slowly ran his fingers over it, and he got lost in the sensation as he continued to look around the vessel.

His view ahead was blocked by the backrest of a curious bench; it was fashioned to look like some sort of stringed instrument. Kind of like a harp, he mused as he carefully stood up to move around it, except that the shape wasn’t quite right.

It was only when he stepped out from behind the artistic backrest that he realised he wasn’t alone on this strange, otherworldly boat.

In front of the seat was a low, fancy table, and behind that table was a luxurious settee; and on that settee, there was a man.

Calling him a man might have been a bit too generous though. For a second time that night, as he hesitantly dipped his head in a polite bow, Minato wondered if he was in the presence of a yōkai. The entity was hunched over, with spindly limbs and a toothy grin that stretched from pointy ear to pointy ear; his lidless eyes stared wide and unblinking like those of a fish, accentuated by dark, bushy eyebrows that made for a striking contrast to his balding head and white hair.

There was, of course, also his incredibly long nose, more of a beak than a facial feature. Overall, these elements should have combined into a decidedly sinister appearance. And yet, as the strange man leaned forward and raised one elegantly-gloved hand in greeting, he felt anything but threatening. There was only kindness and curiosity in his words when he spoke, his shrill voice just as inhuman as his body, yet amiable all the same.

“Welcome to the Velvet Room, young man. My name is Igor. I am delighted to make your acquaintance.”

With a tilt of his head, he acknowledged a second stranger; she was standing behind his seat, in the spot that would normally be taken up by the gondolier.

“This is Elizabeth. She’s a resident here, like myself.”

The woman dipped into an elaborate curtsy, twirling the skirts of her peculiar blue dress. Her short hair, just as white as Igor’s own, bopped along to the movement, and her golden eyes gleamed like two miniature moons as she smiled at Minato, sharp and delighted.

“Pleased to meet you!”

He recognised the cheerful voice, he realised; she was the one who had spoken when he’d first woken up here.

“What is unexpected?” he asked quietly, hesitating only briefly before sitting down on the bench with the instrument-shaped backrest. It was the perfect height for him, and he sunk into the cosy padding with some relief. “You said this was unexpected. Why?”

Of course, he certainly hadn’t been expecting to wake up on a mysterious gondola on a dark ocean with two maybe-yōkai after going to sleep on a bunk bed in a locked room, but these two surely knew more about this place than he did; if even they didn’t know why he was here, that was a little troublesome.

Elizabeth seemed surprised by his question for just a moment, before she opened her mouth to reply – only to promptly close it again when Igor spoke up instead.

“This is the Velvet Room, a place between dream and reality, mind and matter.” He gestured at the vast expanse around them, which decidedly did not look like a room at all. “Only those who have signed the contract can enter this place.”

On the table before him, a familiar document shimmered into existence, and Minato nodded slowly. That made sense, he supposed.

“However,” Igor paused, grinning an unreadable grin, “you seem to have signed it a lot sooner than we anticipated, and under very different circumstances at that.” Again he gestured, and this time he seemed to be indicating the black ocean beyond their little vessel. The boat rocked gently on invisible waves, and sent a faint ripple out into the gloom. “My dear guest, your future is uncertain. This place takes on the shape of your heart, and you are drifting on dark, murky waters indeed. Where they will take you is unknown.”

He leaned forward, his smile growing impossibly wider. “But you are now a guest of this room, and I can sense great potential within you. We will help you in any way we can.”

He snapped his fingers, and out of thin air, a slim, elegant key appeared in front of Minato. He stared at it where it hung before his eyes, suspended on nothing and seemingly glowing with its own inner light, then carefully reached out to grasp it. It was warm to the touch.

“With this key, you will always be able to find your way here,” Igor said, his oddly high-pitched voice taking on a strangely gentle tone. “Do not worry about losing it. It will appear to you whenever you have need of it.”

Minato nodded again, unsure what else to do.

“The circumstances of our meeting are certainly unexpected,” Igor continued, seemingly unbothered by his silence. “However, in this Velvet Room, nothing happens without a reason. I believe that we will be able to aid you, on whatever new path destiny has chosen for you. And as long as you accept full responsibility for your choices, I am certain that you will reach a satisfying destination.”

Minato pondered that for a while, staring at his bare feet where they rested on soft velvet. “What if I can’t choose, though?” he finally asked, his voice flat. “Ikutsuki-san has made plans for me already, I think. They probably aren’t very good.”

“My dear guest,” Igor said with that knowing grin, his spindly fingers steepled beneath his chin as the mournful song faded into a ringing echo and the darkness grew fuzzy and indistinct, “there is always a choice.”

Monday, 1999年05月31日

File no.: P-STX#01 ARISATO MINATO

Report no.: 02

Dr. Ikutsuki Shuji

[An excerpt]

[…] and as such, I was intrigued by the prospect of such a powerful Shadow possessing such a young and malleable host, but it would appear to have had rather vexing consequences for our project. In previous trials, where weak Shadows had been inserted into fully-formed adult minds, the two subjects would influence one another, but always remain as two individual entities, easily separated once the observation period was over. However, this does not appear to be the case here – perhaps due to the Shadow’s unprecedented power, or perhaps due to Arisato’s undeveloped state, the two minds seem to have merged to an unfavourable degree.

The Death Arcana, though currently dormant, seems to have obliterated most of Arisato’s prior personality and nature, and thus fully dominated his mind; at this rate, I doubt that we can successfully extract the Shadow without killing the host in the process. And while sacrificing the lesser specimen would be a more than acceptable cost, there is unfortunately no way to predict how the demise of the vessel would affect the Shadow within, not while they are this thoroughly fused. The Thirteenth Arcana is too valuable of a subject to risk in such a manner. Our best course of action seems to be to leave the seal intact for now, and to merge the missing Arcana into it as soon as they are collected. Once Death is once again completed, it should be stable enough that killing the host to break the seal should no longer be of any consequence to it, allowing us to free it in order to finally initiate the Fall.

Luckily, with his human mind and instincts dismantled, Arisato remains far more docile and cooperative than a regular person would, and has willingly gone along with all tests and treatments administered to him thus far. As such, conditioning him to receive the additional Arcana to stabilise the Shadow he holds within should be no difficult task, even with his own eventual demise as the end goal. In fact, […]

Minato’s head hurt.

True to his word, Ikutsuki-san had woken him early, and after changing into the clothes provided to him, brushing his teeth and eating a sparse breakfast, Minato had been herded into yet another white room filled with strange equipment, and a sharp smell in the air that reminded him of the hospital.

There, Ikutsuki-san had made him answer all kinds of odd questions and drawn his blood, and then he’d stuck these little things he’d called electrodes onto Minato’s head, which were all connected to some big machine. He’d stared at its screen for a while, asking even more questions as he was typing, occasionally frowning severely at whatever read-outs he was getting.

Minato had watched in silence, feeling a bit light-headed from the blood he’d lost. He’d given short responses whenever prompted, but had otherwise sat quietly on the gurney, letting the procedure pass him by, motionless and uncomplaining.

Eventually, Ikutsuki-san had turned off the monitor, and he’d had a pinched look on his face as he removed the electrodes from Minato’s head. He’d been a bit rough about it, and Minato had wondered if that meant he was bad at whatever he was needed for here, too. Being a good patient was turning out to be unexpectedly difficult.

Some other people in white lab coats had come into the room then, and even though they had all stared at him with a weird intensity, none of them had bothered with introductions. At their prompting, he had followed them into yet another wing of the facility, where he was guided towards a large, circular machine. They’d given him several strange-tasting liquids to drink, and he couldn’t remember much after that, aside from a few random flashes of warped awareness and muted pain; they clearly hadn’t needed him to be awake for whatever they’d done with him there.

He wasn’t sure when or how they’d moved him back into the large bedroom, but he eventually came to in his bunk, lying on top of the scratchy blanket. If it weren’t for the fact that he was still dressed in the clothes he’d put on that morning, he might have assumed that all of that had been nothing but a dream.

It wouldn’t have been the only strange dream he would’ve had that night, after all.

But he knew that it had been real – the plain, loose-fitting grey shirt and trousers Ikutsuki-san had given him confirmed as much, and whenever he reached up to run a hand through his hair, he found more dried remnants of that cold jelly substance the man had used to make the electrodes stick.

Also, his head hurt, and he was dizzy.

There was a clock on the far wall that he’d seen earlier, but he wasn’t feeling well enough to sit up and check the time; for a while, he simply lied on his back and stared up at the bunk above his own, seeing but not processing the metal grid propping up the thin mattress that his gaze had come to rest on. He allowed time to pass him by, feeling even less in tune with reality than he had before, until the sudden click of the lock startled him back to awareness.

Ikutsuki-san stepped into the room, that polite expression once again fixed on his face, and he wasn’t alone this time. Minato could hear them before they even came into view; the voices of children chattering among themselves, talking and whispering excitedly.

“Here we are, everyone! I know it probably isn’t what you were expecting, but this is where you will be sleeping from now on. For now, you can all choose whatever beds you want and get settled in – someone else will come by to pick you up and show you around in a bit.”

A group of around fifteen children cautiously entered the room. Some of them seemed a few years younger than Minato, others a bit older. He doubted that any of them were above the age of ten, though. There was a certain hushed anxiety to them as they took in the sparse, unfriendly furnishings, and they suddenly seemed a lot less excited than they’d been just a moment ago.

“Excuse me, Ikutsuki-san,” one of the older-looking boys spoke up, his voice quiet and a bit trembly as he nervously clasped his hands behind his back. “Is this another orphanage? I was told that I was going to be adopted.”

His gaze lingered on the other children standing beside him, and he seemed to find his resolve, his voice growing a bit steadier and louder. “We were all told that they’d found proper homes for us. What is this place?”

Ikutsuki-san smiled thinly. “This is your home now, yes. We have simply taken in an unusual amount of children, and more will be joining you soon. Feel free to think of everyone here as your siblings, if you will. All of you are under my guardianship now, after all.”

He glanced over, and his eyes met Minato’s hazy stare.

“Ah, I see Arisato-kun is awake as well. He is another one of the children we took in – don’t mind him, he simply isn’t feeling very well today. I would appreciate it if you could try not to disturb him too much while he’s resting.”

The older boy stuttered wordlessly for a moment and ran an anxious hand through his wavy black hair. “Is that– Is that even legal?” It was probably supposed to come across as a challenge, but instead, he just sounded scared. The other children were exchanging uneasy glances, huddling closer together.

“This isn’t what you told our caretakers, is it? I want to go back!” His lower lip was quivering. “Let us go back!”

There was a beat of silence, and then one of the younger kids in the back of the group started crying, their sobs quickly escalating into loud, hiccupping wails as they clung to the sleeve of a girl standing next to them. Minato winced silently. The noise was making his headache worse.

Ikutsuki-san was no longer smiling, either. With cold eyes, he stared down at the children in front of him. “I believe I asked you to be quiet, no?” He clapped his hands sharply, the resounding echo cutting through the clamour. “This is your home now, whether you like it or not. As I said, someone will fetch you in a little while to show you around and prepare you for what’s ahead. That will be all for now.”

And without another word, he turned to leave, the heavy doors falling shut behind him.

The other children seemed too stunned to even try to follow him, glaring after him aghast.

Their shock only lasted for a few more seconds though, because soon enough, the crying and screaming started in earnest; the younger kids were sobbing loudly or staring in blank confusion, while some of the older ones were banging on the door, throwing themselves against it in an attempt to open it.

Minato grimaced mildly, and rolled over to face the wall instead. Not that it was doing anything to help with the noise though; his head was pounding in time with every rattle of the door, and every echoing wail. He couldn’t blame them, he supposed – he was the abnormal one for not feeling anything about their shared predicament. Their reactions were probably a lot more reasonable than his own.

For lack of any better options, he closed his eyes and did his best to simply endure the commotion. A deep sense of vertigo clawed at him with every piercing spike of his headache, and even with his eyes shut tight, the room seemed to be swaying around him. It wasn’t like the comforting rocking of the boat from his dreams, though – this was disorientating and dizzying, and it was slowly dragging him under.

He didn’t try to fight it. He’d rather not be awake right now, anyway.

The noise seemed to grow distant and fuzzy as he sank into unconsciousness, and for a while, he drifted in deep, blissful unawareness.

The darkness was absolute, heavy in a gentle way; there were no fancy contracts or murky seas this time. That had been the exception, in any case – his usual dreams since the night of the crash had been just as hollow as he was now, a simple absence of sensation and awareness. There was a comfort in dreaming without truly dreaming at all; removed from all physicality, the pain and vertigo from earlier were distant memories.

Here, like this, simply existing was enough.

“Is that so?”

The curious voice would have startled someone with the ability to startle, but Minato, suddenly feeling physical again, simply turned his head towards its source, staring bemusedly.

Floating next to him in the dark void of this not-dream, there was a woman with white hair and wide, golden eyes, wearing an odd blue dress.

“…Elizabeth-san?” he asked, unsure if he remembered the foreign-sounding name correctly. “How are you here?”

“Well!” she said, her voice just as bright as her expression. “As a resident of the Velvet Room, the world of the collective subconscious is where I exist! And it is deeply connected to the minds and dreams of humans – our esteemed guests first and foremost, of course!”

She drifted closer, her eyes wide with curiosity.

“My master asked me to take a less forward approach, but to be frank, the circumstances of our meeting worry me. I am to be your guide and attendant, but the expected course of your life seems to have changed rather drastically, and your fate is unknown.” She frowned, her cheer quieting somewhat. “If I truly am to help you on your path, I feel like I cannot do so only from the safety of my master’s domain.”

In her hands, she held a thick, old-looking tome, and she absent-mindedly traced the edges of its heavy binding as she spoke. There was a dreamy quality to her voice. “Would you perhaps allow me to visit you in the human world? It is a strange and marvellous place to me, and I have always wished to see it with my own eyes – but now, my desire to do so goes beyond mere curiosity!”

She leaned in, not bothering to hide her excitement.

“To my knowledge, humans need close bonds to survive and thrive. In fact, it is the Velvet Room’s cherished duty to help them along. But you are not in an environment where you will be able to freely forge such social links.” She nodded determinedly. “Those are simply unacceptable conditions for a dear guest of mine – so I have decided to offer my own companionship to you instead!”

She raised both arms above her head to strike some sort of bizarre pose, clearly unperturbed by the fact that it made her look rather silly, hanging suspended in a weightless void as she presently was.

“I, Elizabeth, shall be your first friend on this journey!”

Her declaration was loud and boisterous, and her golden eyes were shining with both mirth and sincerity. Her sunny expression made an odd tightness bloom within Minato’s chest, and he stared at her wordlessly for several moments, unsure what to say. He couldn’t think of an adequate response.

Still, he had to say something. This moment felt significant in a way he couldn’t quite name.

“Okay,” he finally breathed, the simple word all he could offer.

And yet, Elizabeth smiled at him like he had given her the world; she laughed brightly and clasped his hands. “Marvellous!”

Her dizzying enthusiasm made the heavy tightness in his chest expand, but it wasn’t painful. How strange. Even through her gloves, her hands felt warm.

He was drawn out of his thoughts when she gasped, and then fell silent; when he looked at her, she was staring at something above them with wide, astonished eyes.

There, floating down between them and glowing faintly, was a playing card.

“Oh, my…” Elizabeth’s voice trembled with some unknown emotion as she let go of Minato’s hands to gently catch it, holding it close and cradling it against her chest. In its light, her eyes seemed softer somehow, shining with a tender kind of disbelief.

“I am aware that I offered you my companionship, but I never imagined that I would be allowed to play a role such as this in your story,” she said quietly, seemingly more to herself than to him. She was still staring down at the mysterious card and the jovially prancing figure depicted on it, a small, awed smile on her face.

“I am thou, thou art I,” she whispered, and though her voice hadn’t increased in volume at all, the words seemed to be ringing all around them, infused with an otherworldly certainty and power. Her eyes met his, and her smile once again grew radiant as the card vanished in a shower of sparks, her hands reaching out to grasp his once more.

“Thou shalt have our blessing when thou choosest to create a Persona of the Fool Arcana!”

Chapter Text

Silence greeted him the next time he awoke.

With tired eyes, Minato stared at the wall for some time before he finally sat up, carefully stretching his limbs and noting with muted relief that both the headache and the dizziness seemed to be gone. The shakiness still remained though, and his throat was parched; the last time he’d had anything to drink, he recalled, had been early that morning, when the doctors had made him swallow those strange-tasting liquids.

He wasn’t sure what time it was now.

On weak legs, he stood up, holding on to the bed’s metal frame for balance. Even that was enough to make his limbs tremble with exertion; he frowned, puzzled at the effort it took to simply remain upright. All the more reason he should drink something, he supposed. There was a small bathroom at the far end of the chamber, which Ikutsuki-san had pointed out to him yesterday; it contained only a few sinks and stalls, but that was fine. Right now, he only needed water.

He took a few steps and swayed, letting go of the frame to stumble over to the next bed he could hold on to. The other side of the room seemed far away right now. Hazily, he glanced over at the clock mounted on the wall, needing a few seconds to make sense of the thin hands steadily ticking around the numbered circle – they’d still been learning how to read clocks when he’d last been to school. It said 7:48, he thought. But was it morning or evening? Minato turned his gaze back towards the unassuming white door that marked the bathroom, blinking drowsily as he kept inching towards it. The time of day was impossible to tell in this windowless place, and he didn’t know how long he’d been asleep for.

Wouldn’t Ikutsuki-san have woken him up if it was morning, though? Or had he decided to let him rest, and only taken the other children along? But he’d also said that someone would come and collect the new arrivals for a tour of this place later that day – maybe that’s why they were gone now?

Oh well. It didn’t really make a difference, he decided. They’d come and get him if they needed him for anything.

By the time he made it to the door, he was sweating, and his vision was growing a little fuzzy around the edges. He leaned against the doorframe, breathing shallowly. How strange – had he caught a cold? Maybe that was why they’d given him medicine to drink. He hadn’t felt weak this morning though, had he? None of this was making any sense, so he frowned softly and let the thought go. He didn’t care enough to bother with it.

It took a while for his breathing to finally even out, and it was only then that he opened the door and shuffled into the small bathroom. The fluorescent lighting stung his eyes – it was too bright, aggressively filling the cramped space and casting a harsh glare across the polished interior. It was obsessively clean in here, and that same sharp hospital smell he’d noticed in the rest of the facility seemed to linger in the air.

The water that came out of the faucet was icy as it hit Minato’s trembling fingers, and there didn’t seem to be any way to raise its temperature at all. No matter, then. He cupped his hands and caught the water as it fell, then brought it to his mouth to drink; it was cold enough to make him feel light-headed again, but his body’s reaction was instant. As if the first sip had only intensified his thirst, it was suddenly all he could think about, and he drank more greedily, catching handful after handful until his fingers were pale and stiff with cold.

In the absolute silence of the room, the rushing water echoed strangely off the walls. Gurgling whispers and babbling murmurs seemed to fill his ears as he washed his face with numb hands, and for one dizzying moment, a fresh, briny breeze cut through the sterile air, and he could feel his bare feet sinking into plush velvet as the ground beneath him rocked and swayed with the steady rhythm of ocean waves.

Disorientated, he raised his head and blinked droplet-heavy lashes to clear his sight – but it was only the same bathroom tiles that greeted him, looking just as white and unassuming as they had before. The salty scent he thought he’d smelled was gone, and the air was still once again. For a few seconds, he simply stared at the floor as he pondered this most recent odd occurrence, idly studying the stray drops of water he had accidentally splashed onto the immaculate surface. How strange. They were reflecting not just the bright overhead lights, but also a gentle blue glow.

Vaguely puzzled, Minato looked up and into the mirror above the sink. His own reflection stared back at him, notably paler than yesterday, with dark circles underneath his eyes. His hair had gotten wet from the water, and was curling slightly at the ends – he looked even more like the boy he had met during that green time of night now. Maybe it was because the mysterious blue light was coming from behind him, and was reflected in his own eyes too, tinting their grey shade in a way that felt somewhat reminiscent of that unnatural hue.

Pensively, he shifted to scrutinise the source of the new lighting that had so suddenly flooded the entire space, rising beyond his mirror image at the opposite end of the room.

He was fairly certain that there hadn’t been a door there when he had first entered the bathroom, and he was pretty sure that it was also fairly unusual for doors to stand freely in front of walls while glowing with bright blue light. But then again, things he had assumed to be unusual kept happening to him lately, so perhaps they were actually more common than he realised. He wouldn’t know.

There was a slight, sudden weight in his pocket, and when he reached inside, he found a small object there. It was just like in his dream – the small key even still warmed his frozen hands, as if it had been left out in direct sunlight for some time.

Maybe this was what Igor-san had meant when he’d said that he would be able to find his way back to that otherworldly boat? Minato turned around to face the door properly, and as he stared at it, he thought he could once again make out the faint whisper of waves, and the soft creaking of old wood on water.

He took an unsteady step towards it, wondering if the door would feel solid underneath his hands, and if it would be just as warm as the key – or if he would simply phase right through it, as if it were some ghostly illusion. But before he could find out, he was interrupted by the sharp noise of a heavy lock clicking open, followed by the sound he now recognised as the main gate leading to the rest of the facility sliding open.

Reluctantly, he cast one last glance at the gentle blue light before he turned his back to it and left the washroom. The key vanished from his hand as he closed the bathroom door behind himself, but its warmth lingered for a few moments longer – Igor-san had told him that it would always come to him when he needed it, and he had no reason to doubt the man’s words.

And he hoped they would ring true, because it didn’t seem like he would have time to investigate the strange blue door at the moment. At the far end of the main chamber, several people in white lab coats were herding the group of children through the heavy gates back into the bedroom. At least Minato assumed that this was the same group of children from before – frankly, it was difficult to tell.

Their colourful dresses and shirts were gone, instead replaced by the same plain, grey attire he himself was clothed in. Their hair had been shorn, boys and girls alike, now matching the short length of his own.

They all looked like they were getting ready to spend the summer at a Buddhist temple, Minato thought – except nothing about this group was serene and composed like those monks would be. Though the children were quiet now, walking meekly with downcast faces, he could tell even at this distance that most of their eyes were red and puffy from crying. The occasional muted sniffle reached his ears as they shuffled into the room, and the doctors only glared at them in silent annoyance before they stalked out of the chamber and slammed the heavy doors shut behind them without another word.

Minato awkwardly averted his gaze as some of the children hiccupped quietly and then began to sob in earnest now that they were alone. The group didn’t seem to be paying him much attention as he slowly stumbled back towards his bed, and that suited him just fine. He wasn’t sure what he’d even say to them – it wasn’t like there was anything he could do to help. Talking to them wouldn’t make any difference whatsoever.

Still, his weakness was catching up to him. Getting to the bathroom had been hard, and getting back to his bed was proving to be even harder – his legs were trembling, and even as he clutched onto the bunks he was passing by for balance, his vision was swimming. Rapid, shallow gasps rattled in his chest with every step as he tried to breathe, and he couldn’t seem to get enough air into his lungs anymore. How odd. There were curious black spots dancing before his eyes, and the whole room was getting weirdly grainy and warped. Even the crying from the other kids was sort of muffled and quiet all of a sudden.

Not that it mattered. Minato tried to ignore the rising dizziness and kept resolutely placing one foot in front of the other, the knuckles of his hands going white from how hard he was gripping the metal frames that were supporting his weight. His own bed was only a few more steps away now, but he felt like it might as well be at the other end of the city; the small gap between its frame and the one he was currently leaning against seemed to taunt him. His hazy vision had narrowed down to only his goal right ahead of him, and it was making distances difficult to gauge, but he was pretty sure that we wouldn’t be able to cross that gap without immediately losing his balance.

It was fine though, he supposed, dimly aware of the thin rivulets of warm sweat that were running down the sides of his face. He would simply crawl the rest of the way if he fell. It wouldn’t make much of a difference in the end.

He took a step, and then another, and let go of the bed post while his other arm reached out for the frame right in front of him. It barely felt like a part of his own body, weirdly disconnected and numb, and for a moment, he stared at it in bleary confusion, as if it were the limb of a stranger; and then the vertigo hit him all at once, and the world seemed to tilt sideways as all sound cut out and his vision went dark.

He fell, and fell, and then he stopped; there was a soft, disorientating impact, and it took his befuddled brain several seconds to recognise the fact that he hadn’t actually hit the floor. Instead, he seemed to be leaning against something warm and upright, and whatever it was seemed to be trembling slightly. His head lolled forwards, and it took his dizzy mind several moments more to clear enough for the arm around his shoulders to register, and then he realised that his cheek was smushed into someone else’s chest, and that they were probably trembling because they were straining to hold his weight.

They were still a little muffled, but sounds seemed to be coming back to him; he could sort of make out someone speaking in a loud voice right into his ear. He made a vague humming noise to show that he was paying attention, and tried to focus on the words. Through the static filling his ears, they were slowly starting to make some sense.

“-you alright? Hey, can you hear me?”

It was a boy’s voice, he thought. Weakly, Minato managed a small nod, moving his heavy head up and down against the other person’s chest.

There was a sigh of relief that Minato felt more than heard as his support slightly sagged beneath his cheek, and the arm around his shoulders tightened.

“That’s your bed over there, right? I saw you sleeping in it earlier. Just lean on me, I’m going to help you get there.”

Minato managed another quiet hum of acknowledgement, and the taller boy started to gently push him forwards. Focusing on simply putting one foot in front of the other was easier when someone else was holding him up, and before he knew it, he was being lowered down onto his mattress, and felt it shift as a second person sat down next to him, one hand still on his arm to keep him upright.

Breathing was getting a little easier now that he was no longer standing, and his vision was beginning to clear. With it, his manners also seemed to be returning to him, and he straightened dizzily, suddenly feeling rude for relying on a stranger’s kindness to such an extent. In a clumsy move that felt reminiscent of last night’s visitor, he managed a shallow bow in the direction of the other person.

“Thank you for your help,” he rasped, his voice still weak and quiet.

The hand on his shoulder briefly tightened in a friendly squeeze, and the other boy graciously returned the bow.

“You are welcome,” he said, and now that Minato was getting a better look at him, he thought he could place the voice. His wavy black hair had been cut down to a buzz, which made him more difficult to recognise, but he was pretty sure that this was the same boy who had spoken up against Ikutsuki-san earlier.

His dark eyes were just as red-rimmed as those of the other children, and now that the world was no longer swaying quite as badly, Minato realised that the hand resting on his arm was still trembling; maybe it hadn’t been just from the strain of supporting his weight after all, then. Still, the boy seemed to be doing his best to appear calm and unruffled in spite of it, and once again Minato wondered why everyone here seemed so determined to hide their actual feelings.

“Are you okay?” he asked, because it felt like the polite thing to say, even if the answer was a fairly obvious ‘no’. The other boy only stared at him though, and then began to laugh awkwardly.

“Should you be asking me that? You are the one who nearly collapsed just now.” He paused. “Oh, wait.” With the air of someone who had just remembered something important, he raised his free hand and placed it on Minato’s forehead. He kept it there for several seconds, as if he was waiting for something to happen, his brow gradually knitting in confusion.

“Well, you feel… somewhat warm? And sweaty. But also sort of normal, so I am not sure if—”

“I don’t think I have a fever,” Minato said, deciding to help him out. “I just feel really weak right now.”

The taller boy blinked, and slowly dropped his hand.

“I see.” He seemed to deliberate for a few moments, and then leaned in conspiratorially. “You’re Arisato, right? That Ikutsuki guy said earlier that you were feeling ill. But are you actually sick, if you don’t even have a fever? Do you think the people here could maybe have”—he dropped his voice even lower, and Minato strained to make out his whisper—“done that to you? This place is so suspicious, and they were herding us around all day and shearing our hair like we were nothing but animals to them. They were the ones who hurt you, weren’t they?”

Minato pondered this. Were they the cause of his sudden weakness? He supposed it had only started after the people in the white coats had made him drink those odd liquids. Maybe it hadn’t been medicine after all.

He hummed thoughtfully. “Maybe they made me drink poison?” he suggested, idly contemplating the idea. It seemed like a pointless thing to do though. And they hadn’t seemed surprised that he was still alive – so killing him had probably not been the goal.

The other boy was staring at him with wide eyes though. “They made you drink poison?”

“I don’t know. Whatever it was, it didn’t taste good, and I fell asleep right after, so I don’t remember much of it. I think they were testing me for something though. They had me hooked up to all those machines.” Minato looked down at his folded hands pensively, studying the pale, unhealthy tint of his skin. “I don’t think they were happy with the results they were getting.”

The other boy seemed taken aback, and he nervously carded a hand through his hair, briefly jolting when he touched it, as if he had forgotten how much shorter it was now. “They were testing you for something? You mean, like a human experiment? I can’t believe it…” He glanced towards the locked gate anxiously. “Do you think they’re going to do that to all of us, then?”

Minato followed his gaze, and nodded uncertainly. “I think so. Ikutsuki-san said something about ‘subjects’. I think he probably meant us. And more children are going to come soon, right?” He weakly gestured towards the large, empty room. “There are still a lot of beds to fill.”

The older boy finally removed his hand from Minato’s shoulder, tensely clenching and unclenching his fists. He seemed to have a lot of nervous habits, Minato thought as he watched him with mild curiosity.

“How can you be so calm about this? You’re younger than me and they’ve already hurt you, and yet you’re acting like it doesn’t even matter. Aren’t you scared?”

Minato shrugged, awkwardly averting his gaze once again.

“I don’t really care,” he said, pulling his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them for additional warmth. It was cold in here without a blanket. “If I die, I die. If I don’t, I don’t. What’s the point of worrying about it when it won’t make a difference either way?”

There was a long beat of silence, and when he looked over at the other boy, he found him staring back at him in horrified astonishment. “That’s—” He opened and closed his mouth a few times, seemingly struggling to find the right words. “That’s an insane thing to say. You know that, right? You should be worried. You should care more about your life than that. You’re still just a kid, right?”

Minato nodded. “I’m a first-year student at Shinyou Elementary School. I’ll turn seven in July.”

The other boy huffed. “See? You’re way too young to be talking like that. I’m ten, so I’ve already started my fifth year at elementary school. Children like you shouldn’t be saying dark things like that.”

That didn’t make much sense, Minato decided. It was the simple truth, after all. Still, he was the younger one here, and it was only proper to show respect to an older student. “You’re my senpai, then,” he said, quietly wondering how he should politely address someone whose name he didn’t even know.

The other boy shook his head though. “That’s alright, you don’t have to call me that. I don’t think we need to worry about formalities here. It’s not like we even go to the same school anyway, and we have more important things to worry about right now.”

He leaned forward, a fierce expression on his face that felt at odds with the half-dried tear tracks running down his cheeks. His eyes had seemed just as black as his hair from further away, but now that he was this close, Minato could tell that they were actually a warm, deep shade of dark brown. Right now, they seemed almost bottomless in their intensity despite the red, puffy skin surrounding them, burning with a fiery conviction he couldn’t understand.

“You know what? I don’t care whether you’re worried or not. I’m one of the oldest ones here, so it’s my job to look out for all of you – and I’m going to get us out of this place, and make sure that no one gets hurt. I’m not like you. If you don’t care about any of this, then I’m going to care for you, and for everyone else too.”

His eyes bored into Minato’s own, and he couldn’t avert his gaze this time, feeling caught.

“Watch me. I’m going to save us all, whether you’re on board or not.”

Pinned beneath that intense gaze like a butterfly under a needle, Minato could only stare into those bottomless eyes, and for a second, the maelstrom of conflicting emotions that was roiling within them seemed to catch him too, threatening to drag him under and drown him; these feelings whose sting he had forgotten were so endlessly loud compared to his own emptiness, a clash of fear, anger, hope and protectiveness overwhelming the quiet void within him as they crashed into him, and he felt like the air had once again been knocked out of his lungs.

He didn’t know how it was possible to feel someone else’s emotions, but they seemed to flood his empty mind in a singular moment, and reality froze around him in crystal fractals as the connection grew tangible, shimmering into existence like a finely-spun thread, as ephemeral as sunlight, and yet strong and solid underneath his curious fingers when he traced its length in quiet, confused wonder.

Above his reaching hands, the shining outline of a card rippled into existence, and on it, he could just barely make out the silhouette of a person trapped within a diamond of their own scales and sword, maintaining a meticulous balance. Then, the light grew too bright to look at, and his eyes instinctively flinched shut. As if from a great distance, he thought he could hear Elizabeth’s voice, though it also seemed to be echoing all around him, a quiet whisper and yet a deafening roar at the same time.

“I am thou, thou art I,” she murmured into his ear, and chanted towards the heavens. “Thou shalt have our blessing when thou choosest to create a Persona of the Adjustment Arcana!”

And then all at once, the crystal fractals shattered around him, the foreign emotions scattered and vanished from his mind, and reality stuttered jerkily back into motion, like a poorly-maintained video tape that was skipping frames.

Minato blinked, and from one moment to the next, everything was back to normal. The black-haired boy was still staring at him with that overpowering turmoil in his eyes, and this time, he did manage to tear his gaze away, choosing to once again peer down at his own pale hands instead.

“That’s fine,” he managed, not sure what else to say. There was another long moment of silence, and he felt the bed shift as the other boy leaned away from him, awkwardly clearing his throat.

“I am… sorry about that, Arisato. I can get kind of carried away sometimes.” He shuffled uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just get very passionate about things. That’s what the social workers always say, anyway.”

Minato shook his head. “You don’t scare me,” he replied honestly. “But you care so much. I don’t get it.”

The other boy made a pensive sound. “Is that so? Well, I suppose it’s fine if you don’t understand. I meant it when I said that I’d care enough for the both of us if you won’t care about yourself. I will care enough for everyone here, even!”

Minato glanced over at him, genuinely puzzled. “How would that even work? How would you feel someone else’s feelings for them?”

The older boy’s brow furrowed, and he waved his hands defensively. “Do you always take things so literally? I was trying to be poetic, you know. It just felt like something a hero would say in a situation like this.”

What an odd thing to think. “Are you a hero, then?”

“I- I could be! I caught you before you fell, right? This whole situation already feels like something out of a crazy manga. We might as well play along, then!”

Minato wondered about that. This wasn’t some storybook adventure. A happy ending was not guaranteed, and heroics seemed unlikely based on the things he’d seen here so far. There would be no Feathermen coming to rescue them, and they certainly wouldn’t be able to escape on their own. And even if they somehow managed to, there was nowhere else for them to go. Reality wasn’t like those stories. Did the other boy not realise that?

Still, the fiery determination in the other’s eyes had been real. Minato had felt the heat of its erratic flames tear through his mind and singe the cold emptiness within him, and that silken thread of a connection was still there when he reached out to it with his mind. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but he knew that it meant something.

Elizabeth had said that bonds were important. He might as well give them a try, he supposed.

He shifted to finally face the other boy properly. “I’m Arisato Minato. You don’t have to keep using my surname if you don’t want to.”

He got a warm smile in return, dark eyes crinkling cheerfully. “Minato it is, then. My name is Sakaki Takaya. It’s nice to meet you. And I swear – I’m going to get us all out of here safe and sound. I won’t accept any other outcome.”