* all that’s left are echoes，

before: it must have started, he thinks, the first time he saw sheng yuan on that parapet. he was giving a speech to the crowd about unity and cooperation and hard work, and then matching action to words in a way zhanying had never fathomed a member of the imperial family would lower themselves to do.

even covered in dirt and drenched in rainwater, sheng yuan’s brilliance, like a lotus blooming in muddy water, could not be dimmed. he stood out like a beacon of light in the midst of a dull crowd, breathing excitement into anyone he so much as greeted and lighting a flame in all those who worked in any proximity to him by his presence alone.

having lived his entire life so far in this village, zhanying almost couldn’t recognize his neighbors, so abrupt and momentous was the change that had come upon them— gone were those eyes devoid of hope and bodies beset by torpor, those broken spirits that worked only to get through the day and minds that thought no further past their next meal, inasmuch as there was any meal to be had. and sheng yuan had changed that, too. with fair compensation for their labor, those who worked no longer needed to worry about providing for their family, and in times when resources were low, sheng yuan always made sure to prioritize those who were the most in need over those who had the most to give.

in all his years, zhanying had never seen a revival sparked so… intimately— by anyone, let alone one who should already hold the world in his hands. zhanying had never met anyone like sheng yuan, had never known someone with such bone-deep goodness could exist, and that was enough for him to decide, then and there, to devote his life to this emperor.

he should have chalked himself down as a lost cause that very moment. like the sun, sheng yuan was the emperor around which everything orbited, and zhanying was nothing so special that he could resist that pull.

(it wouldn’t have saved him the yearning, of course, or even lessened the eventual grief, but at least he would’ve tried to hold on tighter to every moment they spent together, not knowing how little time was left to them in actuality.)

in time, the coughing became commonplace. like always, sheng yuan reassured them that it would pass, that it was simply a minor recurring cold, and like always, zhanying tried his best to believe him.

so when it happens, he witnesses these events as if in slow motion: sheng yuan coughs and doubles over with the intensity of it. his handkerchief slips from his grip and falls to the ground, sliding almost dramatically to reveal the blood staining it. before zhanying can even begin to rush to sheng yuan’s side, xi jiu'an’s raised voice is sharp with a command.

in zhanying’s years of being in the palace, he’d never seen the grand imperial preceptor display such deep fear before. zhanying dispenses with the formalities and runs straight for the doctor.

it’s not enough, of course. people like him, the ordinary ones, deserve ordinary things. he should have resigned himself then to losing sheng yuan. something so extraordinary was not meant for zhanying’s hands to hold, let alone to keep.

but sheng yuan forges on despite the physician’s pronouncement, brimming with so much hope that zhanying could only pretend with him that nothing was wrong. in a world they imagined, maybe a miracle cure would come about at the last moment. if not for zhanying’s sake, then at least because sheng yuan, in all his fairness and kindness, should have deserved at least that much.

but the world was neither fair, nor kind.

the moment zhanying realized that sheng yuan was going to die rendered the weight on his heart feather-light in comparison.

if he hadn’t spent years in sheng yuan’s company, he might not have recognized the signs: sheng yuan tired more easily as the end drew near; his smiles became strained at times, though zhanying could see that he was trying not to let the effort show; there was a look in his eyes, sometimes, something dark and faraway, and it reminded zhanying of the people from his village before sheng yuan had come along.

when sheng yuan stopped putting up a brave face and simply collapsed onto zhanying for the first time, he knew they could not pretend it away anymore.

but no matter how tightly zhanying tried to hold on to sheng yuan, it didn’t stop the inexorable pull of fate.

sheng yuan leaves, like zhanying had always known he would.

after: they say sorrow shared is halved, but the weight of grief pressed down on zhanying and xi jiu'an in compounding measures, getting only heavier as the days passed. each in their own way, they felt the loss keenly: it caved xi jiu'an in with rage, his focus narrowing solely to the pursuit of vengeance; whereas it drew zhanying into a downward spiral of guilt, like his love was a star that had collapsed into a black hole of grief that ate away at everything else and left a gaping emptiness inside him.

he drifted through his duties by sheer force of habit, only occasionally halted by the sharp sting of loss whenever he turns to remark on something and finds an empty space where sheng yuan used to be, and then reality would set in with heartrending clarity, echoing sheng yuan is dead in the wake of his footfalls throughout the rest of the day.

if there was ever a flaw to be attributed to sheng yuan, it was this: that he left things, and people, and zhanying— better than he found them, but greater heights only led to more catastrophic falls.

it’s an unremarkable moment when something in zhanying breaks. he’s drifting through the day again, one week blending into the next in an indecipherable sequence of time, and suddenly a piece of him that was still holding on to hope against all odds starts to crack, shatters into unrecoverable shards. sheng yuan is gone.

he packs his bags that night with the intention of leaving the capital by dawn.

despite the fact that the management of imperial affairs had fallen upon (or, depending on how you viewed it, taken up by) the imperial grand preceptor after he had… put affairs to rights, (again, depending on how you viewed it—) it was still more an act of courtesy than formality that zhanying writes xi jiu'an a letter of resignation and leaves it on the table where he takes court now — having been the same table sheng yuan held court at before his passing, it was unavoidable that zhanying felt the stab of pain through his chest where it had never healed.

there’s nothing left for him here anymore. still, he stumbles in a moment of hesitation as he retreats. when the light hits the throne just right, zhanying could still picture the halo that seemed to always follow sheng yuan sitting pretty on his head; could picture sheng yuan, animated and joyful and making a joke at his own expense. sheng yuan, alive.

he thinks sheng yuan would have appreciated the notion that as long as someone remembers him, he’ll live on in their hearts. zhanying has no intention of forgetting, in his entire lifetime, someone so remarkable as sheng yuan.

lie zhanying fixes his gaze upon the throne and bows deeply to it for the last time. then, for the first time in years, he leaves the capital city behind.

the warning bells ring in her head, sounding like wind chimes, tinkling a faint ‘welcome home’ in her voice.

she so rarely dreams of her sister anymore.

the voice that speaks is kind, and gentle, and beguiling. the voice is hers. the voice is not her.

yixuan reaches out anyway.

the image distorts when the fog holding it together parts around her hand where she makes contact, swirling the body of yijiang into something nebulous and tinged an ominous purple-red that feels like a black hole drawing her in.

she pulls back and the shape reforms.

“i should.” yixuan huffs out a small laugh, self-deprecating, as her head falls and tilts closer to touch her forehead to the shadow of her sister’s. her eyes are closed; she doesn’t dare look at what yijiang has become this time— doesn’t want to know if she’s lost the ability to even hallucinate touching her anymore. “but it’s so hard to let go. you never taught me how…”

the vision is not her sister, but yixuan imagines that her kindness and care lives on in the world and watches over her where yijiang herself cannot, and the thought clears her head for long enough to register the distress signals her body is sending out. as her vision begins to double and her limbs grow heavy, yixuan knows this is as far as she can push it.

with a practiced hand, yixuan draws a sigil in the air that explodes in a blast of auric ink and the miasmic energy consuming her is destroyed in a flash.

it’s a one-sided goodbye. her heart lingers.

“i miss you already,” yixuan hears herself say. it sounds like until next time.

ryuji likes to imagine they’re on a road trip sometimes to make it more palatable. mementos feels less like a horror funhouse when you blast music loud enough to drown out the creepy tunnel-amplified bgm and the weird slithery sounds coming from the vines crawling all over the walls. not to mention the shadows, with their stalking forms and that hovering thing most of them defaulted to as an idle animation.

oh, the point got away from him. the point: a lot of what constitutes phantom thief activity is, to put it simply, just some teenagers hanging out in a bus.

the amount of sitting still is one of ryuji’s least favourite parts of each mementos run, tucked somewhere between one, the lack of distinction between its real and fake walls — because as much of a fan of brute force he was, crashing into walls just because you might break through them didn’t lend itself to a great experience of being in the vehicle doing the crashing — and two, having to talk sense into shadows, but he suspected the first was universal distaste and the second was more of a personal flaw.

he respects joker for having the patience of a saint, but ryuji’s own patience thins with every new shadow trying to justify the actions of its owner. each argument they make really doesn’t help curb ryuji’s urge to say, let’s just beat ‘em up and move on.

all that to say, they’ve reached a point where ryuji’s tired. he’s sick of it, the way the shadows twist themselves into shapes approximating humanity to pretend they’re not monsters. he’s sick of the fact that he’s stuck in a moving vehicle that talks too much for a cat pretending to be a bus, neither of which are meant to have the ability to speak, and there’s nothing in here for him to direct all that nervous energy at, so somewhere between shadow thirteen or three thousand, ryuji closes his eyes and, rather aggressively, despite it only being in his head just like everything in here is in the heads of everyone out there, begins to count sheep.

surprisingly, it’s the buzz of his phone that startles him to wakefulness. there’s less chaos than he had expected — the dungeon bgm was reduced to a hum in the background, and the sound of monabus’ engine had stopped. they must be at a rest stop. he’s not sure when, or why, really, they stopped.

then he stretches and the movement dislodges something from his side that makes a noise approximating a groan as it shifts and straightens up and a bit of akira’s hair is pulling free from where it had caught on the zipper of ryuji’s jumpsuit and ryuji freezes in place as his mind pieces the logical series of events together.

there’s a moment of silence.

it sits long and heavy until ryuji, face flushed and unable to stand it any longer, raises a hand and speaks: “uhh, hey, so… maybe we should get home and get some proper rest, huh?”

new message: phantom thieves of hearts !

takamaki ann: [photo attachment: an image of ryuji, skull mask and all, asleep in the back of the monabus, his mouth half open with a line of drool trailing down the corner. next to him is akira, his head resting on ryuji’s shoulder, tilted at a degree that most likely was going to result in a crick in his neck when he woke, but overall looking far more dignified than ryuji did in his sleep.]