#ryujiann

Ryuji wants to talk about how great it feels to be able to run again, but how lonely he is all by himself. How he has only a few friends, but no one he can really trust. Not like the Phantom Thieves. He doesn’t think he’ll ever find friends like the ones he left behind here in Tokyo. The friends that are leaving him behind as they go on to actually do things with their lives. 

And Ryuji’s stuck. He’s afraid that if he doesn’t do something about it he’s going to get permanently glued down. 

Or. 

Ryuji goes back to Tokyo and gets kisses from the girls. 

Ann’s not surprised when Ryuji tells her that he knows how to braid. Honestly, if it was anyone else but Ann, he’d be surprised that they were not surprised. But it’s Ann, one of the few people in the world who know him almost as well as his own mother. For better or for worse, they’re each other’s best friends. 

“Where did you learn?” Ann asks, taking her hair out of her signature pigtails and shaking the curls out. Ann’s hair is controlled chaos. It puffs out in every direction, her anti humidity hair products badly losing the war against Tokyo’s summer wetness. But there are indents where the ponytails were, Ann’s hair stubborn to lose their iconic shape. 

Ryuji is sitting down on the edge of her bed. Ann sits in between his legs. She hands Ryuji her hairbrush and he gets to work. 

He sections off her hair first, right down the middle. He’s found it easier this way. It would be easier with wet hair, but even though Ann had showered she had refused to get her hair wet. The reason for it goes way above Ryuji’s head.  “When my mom isn’t working the night shifts, she has me braid her hair after she showers. I used to hate it at first. But now I just find it calming. I sometimes braid Akira’s hair, but it’s too short to really do anything.” 

Ann snickers. “You’re such a momma’s boy.” 

Ann started going to the gym with Ryuji after they went steady.

Preview:

At first glance, the plan seemed as sound as it could get. It even had Sojiro Sakura and Sae Niijima’s approval – despite their unavoidable misgivings. Looks of quiet enthusiasm lit their faces with each time they went over the procedure. There were two dynamics at play: infiltrating back into Nyarlathotep’s domain to obtain information on his long-term intent, and returning to the world and their public personas as students and employees. But there was a set of problems to each undertaking.

For one, they could not go blindly into that dark, mutable world and simply hope to hold a civil audience with its Master. And they also could not merely show up out of the blue, back at their respective places in university and the workforce. There was also the glaring hazard of possibly encountering the other Joker. The latter threat came down to a matter of fight-or-flight, of which retreat was preferable, and highly perilous all the same. However, Akira and his friends now had a way to handle the first two problems.

Strictly speaking, the five-part plan’s layout was nothing new to them. In fact, it was well within their M.O. as Phantom Thieves. But nuance made it a shinier prospect.

Phase One - Preparation. They would go into the Velvet Room and have their Personas strengthened by Lavenza’s siblings and the Artists.  The objective was not to hone them for battle, but to facilitate the swiftness of their movement. If they were to face Shadows, they would cut them down with ease and speed. And if they were to find ‘Joker’, retreat would be more effective than the last time. Considering that the Failures were eliminated by Akira’s vile doppelgänger, the higher danger was decreased to only one party.  

Phase Two - Reconnaissance. The success of this part ran on the validity of one theory borne from a wildly made assumption. Despite the chaotic geography of Nyarlathotep’s world, there were two fixed locations: the centre, where his fortress was erected, which remained despite the violent shifting of the landscape. And a rock formation shaped like a gate; the place from which ‘Joker’ had sprung. This place too seemed to hold during their hasty evacuation with Lavenza. Proper reconnaissance of their surroundings was likely impossible, if the place continued to morph after they left. But these two sites may serve as landmarks to plan their way ahead.

Preview:

Makoto woke up from dreamless sleep at 3 in the morning. The subdued, droning light of the cityscape seeped into her room like a cold, furtive presence. The young woman greeted the faceless amalgam of wayward occupation with heavy eyelids and tired indifference. Her arms and legs, spread out on the mattress, felt numb and stiff. She thought it strange, as she usually associated the feeling with the aftermath of a hasty but strenuous workout. But it had been a rather long time since she last got some proper exercise.

On the other hand, it was not as if she had been idle since.

The darkness was not her friend. It never has been. The source of her fear reached far back into her past, long before her father’s untimely death. Yet the courage that compelled her to push past, plunge in, survive in the dark had an even longer reach – it spanned her present, her past, and her future. That was something her boyfriend said once during a pleasant, lazy afternoon spent just lying together on his mattress. Hearing others say it often helped her assert the belief. But whenever she heard it from her sister or Akira, something felt warm and gently swelling in her chest.

As if the memory itself could shape reality, a shadow on her right gave the peculiar impression of being something else: a head of thick, black hair, wildly tousled. She could count the times he spent time like this in her room on one hand. But each of those times had a special, unique charm to it – something about him huddled next to her in her single bed. Close, intimate in a kind of way that needed little more than each other’s company. For most other things, his room offered ample space - his bed and couch for their indulging; the floorboards for the one kind of mess she loved.

But what kind of mess did she leave him in when they parted earlier in the evening?

He looked calm enough – that was as best as it got during more recent days. His ‘intervention’ in Arancia shed new light on one of his worst habits: secrecy towards his friends whenever something was wrong about him. By now, they knew his increasingly severe dissociation was caused by Nyarlathotep’s hand. But all the same, the way he handled it was cause for concern. Makoto knew he would have kept it from their eyes forever if he could help it.

Preview:

  A few hours prior…

Everything had happened so quickly, from the moment she got the call from Boss to her uneasy walk to LeBlanc. The café was usually a sight for sore eyes, but the tone of recent days made a horrorshow of it. The people gathered in the ground floor made it look no different to the waiting room in a hospital, where a patient’s loved ones were kept in suspenseful tension for news to come. Tae Takemi prayed silently as climbed the stairs.

Many eyes laid their weight on Tae’s shoulders. Their silence lingered, waiting for any utterance on her part. Any groan or sigh, or even the slightest variation in her breath could break the levee, and give way to panic. She was aware of this, so she kept quiet like a grave while she worked. The lighting in Akira’s room was too dim for her liking; it did not make her work easier, and she hoped her expression would not be misinterpreted by his friends, and Sojiro.

“Hmm… He doesn’t appear to be unconscious, so there’s that. He’s responding to stimuli. It’s more like deep sleep.” Doctor Takemi spoke. Her voice in Akira’s room was quieter than she may have intended. “Not the first time I’ve seen something like this.” She turned to Futaba with a discreet smile. “I’d really like if this was the last time, but there’s just not knowing with you guys.”

Preview:

Joker could not presume to speak for his friends, but their silence itself spoke volumes. He himself found no words to rationalise what unfolded before his eyes. After the harrowing experiences in Nyarlathotep’s dominions, Akira felt well equipped to handle whatever problem was occurring in the Velvet Room. Now, he found how woefully wrong he was. He mentally scolded himself about not being able to heed Lavenza’s call sooner.

Maybe no more than ten seconds ago, they were all still in LeBlanc. There was some banter in the air about Lavenza having conjured the door to the Velvet Room in the café’s restroom. Ryuji and Futaba were each proportionally amused in relation to Boss’ bemusement. Makoto was not very keen on the embarrassing implications, but she seemed at least somewhat pleased that the spirits were high. It felt like a distant echo of days past; the mood that preceded every venture into Mementos.

Lavenza ushered them in, one by one, through the blue door. A moment later, they were on the other side, wearing their Phantom Thieves’ attire. And the spirits they carried all plummeted in an instant.

In a way, this visage was not any more disturbing or foreboding than many of the perils they encountered before. But the way this place had changed was no easy thing to process. With the exception of Joker and Morgana, they set foot in this place only once before. This is where they regained the strength to carry on after absolute defeat. In the briefest while, they partook of the Velvet Room’s grace, and they knew in their hearts that this was a sanctuary for everybody’s souls. This was a sacred place, one which not even Yaldabaoth could truly corrupt.

But the Velvet Room had been something more for Akira. This was the cradle of his rehabilitation. He could not attempt to count the times he visited this place. Despite Caroline and Justine tormenting him, and the false Igor’s ominous presence, Akira grew to think of this place as a peculiar kind of home, safe and inviolable.

Preview:

Chapter Thirty Two: Lost Epitaph

Akira and his friends stood utterly dumbfounded in the room’s threshold. Even after traversing countless iterations of the Velvet Room, and the Shadow-riddled no-place which they had just overcome, the final destination was still the thing most uncanny - despite the relative normalcy of its design. It was merely a wide lounge with a bar, a stage at the centre, and several tables spread about. This was virtually an amalgamation of places like LeBlanc, Arancia, and several others he had seen in pictures or films – dyed blue. He got to see other similar shapes of the Velvet Room in the past hour, but none quite like this one. It stood out by its occupants and the purpose it represented for them.

The young man guessed they were intrinsically connected. Yet there may be something else to it, something he could not put a finger on, but certainly felt inside of him.

Far back at a table on the left from where they stood, Lavenza was being comforted by three people dressed in blue. All yellow-eyed and pale skinned like her; each bearing a distinctive kind of otherworldly beauty. They seemed to be the siblings she talked about. But the fourth, the elder one with the cane and the dark circles around his eyes held his gaze firmly on the Phantom Thieves. And he was not the only one. On the right, three other figures regarded Akira and his friends with slight detachment, never once removing themselves from their activities. It felt like a disinterested answer waiting for the question that hung on everyone’s tongue.

Ryuji usually was the first to break the silence. But even he would not say a thing now. The rest shared in his silence.

The blindfolded pianist continued to play. The soprano continued to sing. The song went on - that which yielded soulful vitality to the Velvet Room, even as a prison. Akira remembered how it looped in on itself ad infinitum, but he never once got tired of it. This composition was not merely a thing one could perceive through the senses. One experienced it no different than the tempo of the heart: generally taken for granted, captivating when truly listened to, terribly alarming when missing.