#junpei 01

He had this inkling in the back of his mind that he’d seen this awful fashion before. Somewhere, somehow, he had. He just couldn’t put his finger on it. But it was bad. A vest over a jacket---which was more like another hooded vest---and a flannel shirt underneath. Shit it was so bad. It was the worst fashion he’d ever laid eyes on.

And yet it felt familiar.

Staring at the other, he refused to look away until he figured it out. It was on the tip of his tongue now, only after around five minutes of staring at some dude he didn’t know. Or did he. After all, he’d seen it. Somewhere, somehow. And he doubted two different people would wear that travesty.

And then it hit him.

Slamming his hands down on the cafe table he was sitting at, he stood up, pointing at the man.

His first reaction is instinctive; he wraps his arms around the body without warning, in what he thinks is something like a hug. It isn’t right, he knows (he thinks he is not supposed to stand so still, and something about others’ bodies when they do this is easier, looser), but it is what’s needed.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and oh, his voice sounds wrong, like it’s slightly broken. “I’m sorry that all that happened to you. Over and over, deaths and pain and suffering and agony all in a loop of despair - and you heard, heard there was a happy ending but not for you, never for you. Even here you aren’t sure you can believe in it, even with them all alive and well - and then again, they took you and made you run through their maze and they took parts of you that should have been yours.”

He is probably doing this wrong. He doesn’t hold too tightly, in case Junpei wants to escape.

The amount of faces she knew within the city was starting to pile up. That didn’t mean she wanted some of them to be around like they were last time, but at the moment the ones she saw weren’t too bad. And of course, she couldn’t say that all that were here had the same memory as those in the past.

So clearly it was better to go about seeing Junpei as if they hadn’t spoken in ages--which technically was true regardless.

“Junpei!” Running over to him, she jumped up grabbing a hold of his head and smothering it in her chest, smiling and giggling.