dumpster battle stan

so to answer your question, here's how i think it would happen: shinjiro wakes up from his coma and akihiko and mitsuru essentially force him to recover, akihiko forcing him to do physical therapy to get him able to move again and mitsuru forcing him to schedule regular visits to the doctor. i think that akihiko and mitsuru would be around almost every waking moment for him (which wouldn't be many because i imagine he would have to sleep a lot to recover). the main reason they're always around is because they know shinjiro doesn't want to live. they know that if they take their eyes off of him for too long, he'll probably kill himself.

quite frankly, without kotone, shinjiro doesn't have a reason to live. he hinted multiple times in his social link that she was making him rethink his life. she was almost making him not want to die. "this isn't how it's supposed to be."

in his ng+ ending, he seems ecstatic (or as ecstatic as he can be, emotionally repressed as he is). he hugs kotone. he's open and honest with her about how he feels about her for the first time in the entire goddamn game. he tells her he was glad to meet her. he basically confesses his love.

and then she dies. and he's supposed to just... recover? get better? live? but... what he wanted was to die. he wanted his death to fix everything. his death did fix everything--it was his penance for what happened to ken's mother. it was the thing that finally made akihiko put the past behind him. it fixed everything.

but now he's back. what's the point of him being back? he wanted to die. why doesn't he get to?

and since he's too weak to really stop mitsuru and akihiko from forcing him to live, all he can do is dwell on his regrets. wish desperately that he knew, knew back then that he would be the one losing kotone, not the other way around. hate himself so much for wasting all that time pushing her away. think about how badly he wants to go back and how he would do anything to have even one more second with her. what kind of a life is this? she was the one who made him want to live. she was the one that saved him. how is he supposed to live without her? how is that fair?

metis says in the answer that the reason the abyss of time appeared underneath the dorm is because everyone missed the protagonist so much and wanted to be with them again so badly that their personas stopped time for them. shinjiro's entire character in p3 is wanting desperately to go back in time and change the past. and killing himself because he can't.

so i think that when mitsuru calls akihiko to the dorm, shinjiro comes with him. either akihiko makes shinjiro come because he shouldn't be left unsupervised or shinjiro would want to come because, well... what else is there for him to do?

in my story, i wrote my own interpretation of how i think shinjiro originally awakened to his potential. i had his door be in the same place as akihiko's, given that he only awakened because of akihiko. everyone goes through their doors and relives their pasts and reminisces together and all the while shinjiro is just fuming because they're all acting like kotone isn't dead.

in this scenario, i don't think yukari would be the one with the outburst. i think it would be shinjiro.

yukari losing the male protagonist very clearly brought up some old feelings about her dad, and i'm kind of assuming that's because they're the same gender. from what i know about kotone's vs. makoto's social links with her, kotone's is a bit deeper, in spite of the fact that makoto can romance her. yukari's character arc in the answer is essentially learning that she can lean on her friends through this loss. the last loss she suffered--the loss of her father--was something she had to suffer through alone. her mother coped with the loss by throwing herself at all these different men, essentially teaching yukari that she could only rely on herself. yukari letting herself cry and letting mitsuru comfort her was a great full circle moment, emblematic of one of the themes of the game: we get through loss by leaning on each other.

however, i think that if she lost kotone, she wouldn't need to be reminded of that. she would get through the loss with the support of mitsuru and fuuka, at the very least. i wouldn't be surprised if yukari and junpei leaned on each other too. yukari's bond with kotone was the kind of bond that only strengthened her resolve once she lost her. at least, that's how i see it.

but shinjiro? losing kotone would shatter him. more than he ever thought possible. he tried to push kotone away so many times because he didn't want her to be sad when he died. that's what he told himself, at least. but he did it for him too, because he is selfish. he didn't want to leave anything behind. he didn't want to have any regrets. but if he was just going to die anyway, and she's already in his room...

but he's not dead. he's alive. he thought he knew where his story ended, and now it's continuing and all because of kotone, but--but--she's dead. the one person, the one thing he could have seen himself living for is gone. the one thing that saved him is gone. that's not fair. how is he supposed to live in a world without her? she's the only reason he's still alive. it's her fault that he's still alive. and now he's trapped in the dorm with these people he barely recognizes anymore. people treating him like he's their friend. when he's supposed to be dead.

remember, shinjiro didn't go through any of that same character growth the rest of SEES went through. to him, five months passed in the blink of an eye. he passed out in akihiko's arms that night and woke up to find himself living (living!!) in a completely new world. in the game, he tells akihiko directly that akihiko is just as stuck in the past as he is. shinjiro's loss gave akihiko the strength to move forward.

but shinjiro isn't strong like akihiko is. losing kotone is just another festering wound of regret, of things he'll never be able to undo, time he'll never be able to get back. nothing is the same as it used to be. of everyone in SEES, he is the only one who doesn't belong. he probably never really felt like he belonged when he rejoined, but it was the farthest thing from his mind when he thought he had (at most) a month to live.

he's surrounded by people he used to know, people who claim to know him, and he's more alone than ever. because kotone is gone. and nothing matters without her. none of this matters without her.

so what would he do when presented with the opportunity to go back? to see kotone again? he would take it. why wouldn't he? he himself admits that he was stuck in the past too. he didn't fight nyx. he didn't change or grow. he's the exact same as who he was before. maybe even worse than that, because there's nothing he can do to atone for it anymore. but if he could just go back... how could he pass that up? how could anyone?

again, his whole character arc in p3 is killing himself because he can never go back and fix his mistake. it is very easy for me to draw the conclusion that he would fill in for yukari as the one who essentially is the catalyst for all of SEES fighting each other. he would be the one to call them all out and accuse them--and especially akihiko--of not caring about her if they're willing to let her die. because that's what moving forward is to him, letting her die.

akihiko has a line in the answer saying that even if he could go back and reverse miki's death, he wouldn't do it. given shinjiro's max social link event it's clear that he cared a lot about miki too. bringing miki up would just feel like a slap in the face. how dare akihiko compare the two losses? at this point, they both have been forced to acknowledge that there's nothing they can do to save miki. there was nothing they could've done then and there's certainly nothing they can do now. but kotone? there is something they can do, there is, and if aki can't see that then he never really cared about her. none of them did.

how could they just move forward? how could they just let her die? shinjiro wasn't there for the nyx fight. as far as he's concerned, they did let her die. and now they're letting her die again.

they all talk a big game about how important it is to move forward for kotone, but all of them are stuck in here together. all of their personas caused this. all of them are hypocrites. shinjiro is just the only one brave enough to admit it.

i'm not going to say any more as i'd like to not spoil my fanfic completely, but those are the kinds of things i was thinking about when i wrote it. i wrote the first half of it four years ago and the second half two years later so there are some noticeable differences in writing quality, but i've tried my hardest to make it as consistent as i could! (though my favorite parts of the story are pretty much everything that happens after they go through ken's door).