#i just meant it as in joker spent a lot of time in tokyo!! one year changes a man!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cinnbar-bun · 1 year

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Unrefined

Pairing: P5 Protag x GN!Reader (Ren Amamiya is used as his name)

Summary: Ren is happy to see you again after being separated from you for many years since you two were children. However, he knows he's not exactly the best choice for a boyfriend. In order to look cool, he tries to approach you as Joker.

Of course, reality isn't always that easy and he learns that looking cool isn't the most important thing when it comes to love and friendships.

Rating: G

A/n: Ahhhh I'm loving P5R and I'm loving Ren very much!

Ren was many things growing up. He was rather lackadaisical, unsure of himself, and oftentimes, just plain messy. He was caring and sweet, but his airheadedness had, on multiple occasions, led to some awkward encounters with other people. It was mostly through growing up together that you had understood what he really meant, but not everyone was willing to make the time.

You two had been inseparable as kids, always doing everything with one another. You had seen each other at your most awkward and weirdest- like when you got braces or when he broke his arm trying to do cool moves on the jungle gym. You dressed up in matching costumes and outfits for all sorts of events. He even took you to the middle school dance when no one else bothered with you two. You shared your dreams, worst nightmares, struggles- everything.

Yet, that connection had to be strained when your parents were relocated to Tokyo for work.

His home just wasn’t the same without you. So you two tried to keep contact with each other every day. Texting, calling, sending emails or doing video calls together was such a normal part of his routine.

He told you about how your old home was doing, anything new that was going (there was rarely anything new, though) so a majority of it was spent discussing Tokyo.

“You’d never believe all the lights! It’s crazy bright over here.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I can. Sounds like a hassle, though. Aren’t all those people and lights annoying?”

You only laughed at his response- of course shy and withdrawn Ren would never love a city like this.

Years passed and you two did your best to continue talking, but slowly every day became every other day, to maybe once a week, to sporadically whenever. There was just a lot to deal with, and life at Shujin Academy was anything but easy. He just had to settle for brief text messages and possible calls and gifts for things like birthdays and holidays.

He was stressed after his hearing, so he broke his personal rule of trying to leave you some space to send a message.

Hey it’s kinda urgent do you have time to call?

“Hey, Ren, what’s u-,” you gasped. You looked at him like he was an alien from outer space, and he figured it must be because of how awful he looked right now.

“Something wrong? You just stopped talking,” he commented.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry. What’s up? You said it was urgent. Are you doing okay?” You sent a barrage of questions his way and Ren slid a hand through his hair.

“Want the good news or bad news first?” He responded, ignoring your questions.

“Um…” you rose an eyebrow at what he could have possibly done to warrant this question. “Bad first?”

“I’m on probation.”

“WHAT?” You screamed, yet Ren didn’t flinch. “What do you mean probation? What the hell did you do?”

“Some asshole framed me for assault when I was protecting a woman,” he casually answered, as if it was just a normal occurrence for him.

“Seriously? And you still got in trouble?”

“Yeah. It sucks, honestly,” he sighed.

“Jeez I’m…” You looked crestfallen at his explanation and he felt bad he made you feel so glum. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault. Besides, there’s some good news.”

“What’s the good news? Please don’t give me another heart attack.”

“I’m moving to Tokyo. Some guy my parents are friends with is taking me in while I’m on probation. And I’m going to that Sunshine Academy you go to.”

“It’s Shujin, for one thing,” you corrected him. “But you’re really coming to Tokyo? Oh my gosh, it’s gonna be like the old times again! I have so many places to show you and take you! You’re gonna love it, I promise.”

“Eh, I dunno. I’m just gonna try and avoid those places. Sorry, I know you probably wanted it to be super fun and all, but I don’t wanna go to jail. It’s a miracle they even left me with only probation. I’m even donning a disguise.”

“A disguise? What do you mean?”

He pulled up a pair of black, thick-framed glasses.

You pinched the bridge of your nose and shook your head.

“That’s not a disguise. Come on, Ren, you can’t be serious.”

“I am. Look,” he put the glasses on and you stared at him deeply. You looked deep in thought and he wondered what was crossing your mind. “See? No one would punch a guy with glasses.”

“You’re hopeless,” you chuckled at his antics.

“But you still love me, right?” He whined, pouting like a child.

“Of course,” you said, the words slipping right out of you. A warm smile crept on your lips as you gazed at him. “So… when you come to Tokyo, I’ll make sure you have the best probation ever. You can even visit my house. It’s got a nice view of the city and we have a great diner nearby.”

He smiled for what felt like the first time in a while since this miserable incident.

“Thanks, (Y/n), I know I can always count on you.”

A few more pleasantries were exchanged and you two logged off, leaving him staring alone at his own reflection from his computer. He looked down at himself and frowned.

Great, he was going to see his best friend (and crush) for the first time in years, and it’s because he was accused of committing a crime. In some ways, though, he felt safe with you and could put his probation aside.

He hoped you would continue to be his friend in Tokyo. It was probably going to be a long year there, and he wasn’t looking forward to all the judgmental people. So much for being a guy you could depend on. Just like always, you were the one who would have to help him and accept him. He wished he was not this lame dude who couldn’t even handle a few rumors, but this isolation was killing him.

----

Ren always knew he wasn’t the most attractive guy ever. Or the smartest. Or the most courageous or confident. Barely had any talents or future aspirations beyond “just make it to the weekend”. He was pretty below-average, all things considered. And he was honest about that, like he was with pretty much everything else. He didn’t like beating around the bush or lying to others.

Sadly, his big mouth got him into this probation (he still didn’t regret it) but man, it was exhausting to try and bite his tongue back at every opportunity.

He couldn’t fight back or argue when the people made audacious claims about him. Couldn’t say a thing when people purposefully riled him up to get him to act out. Ren couldn’t even properly ask out the best friend he had loved since they were kids. Nor could he defend them whenever someone tried to spread rumors about them because of their association with him.

But, that was Ren.

Joker, however, was a completely different story. Joker was cool, suave, elegant- everything the clumsy second-year wasn’t. He could flirt with monsters and defeat evil while looking completely badass doing it.

But it’s not like he could be Joker all the time, not with the Phantom Thieves working in the shadows and him still being under the watchful eye of almost everyone in society. He had to keep it quiet.

Joker was Ren’s safe space to act out and be the man he wished to be. No one knew who he was, no one held any expectations for him- they just knew he was there to get the job done. And he did it, flawlessly, every time.

Which is why it was frustrating Ren would get so tongue-tied the minute he wished to talk to you.

The years were kind to you- very kind to you, actually- and he marveled at how you grew to be more confident and proud than when you were younger. You had a steady head on your shoulders, leading you to be the secretary of the student council and great in your club activities.

He wished he could spill everything to you, everything about the Phantom Thieves, the Metaverse, personas- it would be so much easier if you knew. But he knew that if he bothered, you would simply laugh and say he probably was pounding too many energy drinks. None of it was believable, even to his own self.

He hated lying to you, he despised it so much, but you were too understanding to call him out on his bullshit. You knew he was lying through his teeth about being ‘busy’, and he knew you were lying when you would smile and say you were ‘fine’ when he would miss out on another outing.

He didn’t know how to make it up to you or truly admit he was the Phantom Thief that had grown so popular.

He had brought this question up to his team members, and frankly, all of them were sending mixed signals.

“Do not reveal your identity to them! They could be a traitor and rat us all out! Or worse, they could try and use you!” Makoto would say.

“You should totally reveal it! And you love them a lot, right? Maybe you can make it up to them by taking them to an all-you-can-eat buffet with extra dessert!” Ann squealed.

“No, make it meat! They gotta love that, right?” Ryuji would add.

“I would say a buffet is not classy enough. You wish to showcase your heart’s true intentions to them, no? You should whisk them away to a beautiful resort and craft a gorgeous jewel that they can wear to remind them of you and-”

“Yusuke… you do recognize Ren is a poor high school kid, right?” Futaba raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think he even has a dollar to his name, right now.”

“I have twenty dollars to my name, thank you very much,” Ren corrected. “Wait- no- that’s not the point.”

And then he was back to square one. Sure, he read Reckless Casanova and The Art of Charm, and it did help as Joker, but he was helpless when it came to you.

There’s no way you’d like whimpering, pathetic Ren, especially when compared to the city boys of Tokyo, who were way flashier, energetic, and could treat you right. Unlike him, who couldn’t even say a word when people smeared your name.

That’s when a thought came to mind- he should confess to you as Joker! Joker was everything Ren was not, and you’d surely fall for him, right? All he’d have to do is play it cool as Joker, and you’d be swooning for him in no time!

He imagined the scenario in his head.

You were there, sitting in your dark room with your balcony window open. He would jump through the buildings and smoothly glide to your balcony. You would be breathless at the sight of this handsome phantom thief, who looked so similar to someone you knew, but unlike him, this man was cooler. Better. Smarter. He was the entire package.

You would be crying over that lame good-for-nothing boy who gave you nothing but trouble, and Joker would wipe your tears away.

Perhaps he’d say a really nice line in French to really hammer in the ‘phantom thief’ act. You’d embrace him and he’d confess your undying love to him, and you would accept it in a heartbeat.

Yeah, this plan had zero chance of failing.

----

Ren, donning his disguise and mask, descended upon your rooftop. He made sure to be as quiet as possible, hoping to fulfill the dream movie scenario he had planned up. It was foolproof, he’d smugly thought.

As he was preparing to jump down to your balcony, he noticed something shuffling near him.

Was it someone watching him? He turned back to see a group of rats in the darkness, watching him.

“Shoo! Go away!” He swatted at them. Some went scrambling and he thought he was in the clear. That was until he heard their chittering and squeaking. The group had ran back to him and were hissing at him, and he brought out his dagger. “Shit-!”

The rats lunged at him and he quickly jumped down on your balcony to avoid getting bitten by one of them. He crashed onto the floor and groaned in pain, cursing the rats and the concrete of the balcony.

He heard some shuffling and the balcony door swung open, revealing a very angry you with your cellphone at your side.

“Wonder what-” you screamed as you locked eyes with him, and slammed the door shut. “Who the hell are you?! Get the hell out of here or I’m calling the police!”

You typed something on your phone and Ren was panicking. Shit, he couldn’t mess up or get caught by the police. That would ruin his life and everyone else in the Phantom Thieves’s life.

“W-wait! S’il vous plait!” He screeched one of the few phrases of French he knew. He slapped himself internally at the fact he even used French when you were trying to call the cops.

Great job, brainiac.

You seemed taken aback by him until you put your phone down and raised a knowing eyebrow at him.

“Ren? What are you doing?” You asked.

Now he was in deep shit. He quickly stood up and posed by the balcony, as if he was just casually strolling by.

“I don’t know who-” Crap, I can’t use my voice. He cleared his throat and tried to make it deeper. “Uh, I mean, I don’t know who this ‘Ren’ person is.”

You looked unimpressed, and he knew his cover was blown.

“Ren, what’s with the get up and trying to break into my house?”

“I assure you, (Y/n), I was not trying to break into your house!” He answered in his fake, deep voice.

You strode over to him, and he leaned back into the balcony ledge, trying to avoid touching you.

Too close! Too fast! Shit! Abort! Abort! Abort mission! We’ll get them next time!

“So, mysterious stranger who is not Ren,” you sarcastically began, “what are you doing here?”

You stepped closer and he leaned closer against the edge. He peered down and saw how far below the sidewalk was and gulped.

“I-I am- gah!” He felt his body slip over the ledge after he tried to lean against it. He yelped and quickly brought out his grappling hook and shot it to your balcony, before slinging himself back up.

He sat on the ledge, crossing his leg over the other and running a hand through his hair as if he wasn’t about to fall to his death just seconds before.

“I couldn’t help but um, couldn’t help but be taken aback with your beauty, mon amour!” He dramatically stated, winking at you and handing you a (crumpled) rose he had picked out earlier for this very moment.

Unlike in the dream sequence he conjured up, you were not breathless or swooning- instead, you were laughing.

“Oh my gosh, Ren, what the hell is all this?” You said in between bouts of laughter.

Normally, he loved your laugh, but in this situation, he felt his pride crumble to dust.

“I… I, uh…” Not even Joker could save him. He could practically hear Arsene in the back of his head howling in laughter at the way he messed up.

Ren sighed and took off the mask.

“Yeah, okay, you figured it out, it’s me,” he said, defeated and exhausted. You wiped the tears out of your eyes and examined him.

“Wait, no way! You’re part of the Phantom Thieves-” you loudly exclaimed, and Ren shushed you quickly.

“You can’t reveal it out loud! I’m not even supposed to be here!”

“Sorry,” you complied, whispering to him. “You’re part of the Phantom Thieves?”

He nodded.

“Yes, you’re looking at the leader of them.”

“No way…” You stared, gobsmacked.

“Listen, I get it, it’s hard to believe and you may think I’m crazy but-”

“Huh? This explains everything!” You grinned. “I just… I just thought you were avoiding me and didn’t wanna see me again. You avoided me for so long and always hung out with the others, I assumed you got tired of me! But really, you were a part of the Ph-”

“Shhhh! Not so loud!” He whisper-shouted.

You fanned yourself and he noticed your eyes were becoming wet with tears. Your face was turning red and you were straining yourself to not cry.

“Crap, I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he apologized. “This wasn’t how I wanted this to go…”

“Well, you idiot, of course you make me cry. We were best friends and this whole time I thought you hated me. Why didn’t you just tell me sooner? Why didn’t you trust me? Did you think I would have told on you? And now you’re coming here randomly at night and pretending you’re not even you! Don’t you know how that looks to me?”

“I know, I know I…” he shamefully looked at the ground. “I know. I messed up. I messed up really bad but that’s why I came. I didn’t know who to trust, and I didn’t want you to get hurt because of me. And I see that I was the fool for not believing in you to begin with. You were always too good for me, (Y/n). So I wanted to be upfront with you and give you this.”

Ren extended his hand to show the broken rose again as he rubbed the back of his neck.

“I’m not perfect. I’m not as handsome, or as rich, or as cool as the other guys and I am a huge coward. I run at every opportunity. But I wanted to have you see me as… you know… someone better than me. Someone who could treat you right, defend you, and not have you always try to care for them. I know I’ve been an asshole, and I wanted to fix it. I wanted to just be someone you could rely on for a moment. Because you mean the world to me. Always have.”

You gasped and he looked at you to see your reaction. A few tears had fallen down your cheek and you covered your mouth in shock.

“Sorry, I know you’re probably upset so I’ll leave-” he began, putting a leg over the ledge to jump down when you grabbed him.

“D-don’t walk away, idiot! You didn’t even let me respond!” You shouted tearfully. He settled back onto the balcony and you threw your arms around him. “You’re really dense. You’re not a bother to me and I don’t want anyone but you. I don’t want this Joker guy, or those other people in our school. I just want you, Ren. Did you really think I would continue hoping for you to see me more if I didn’t care for you? Did you really think I would wait around for just about anybody?”

Now he felt his face heat up.

“Wait, you mean it? You like me too?” His gray eyes sparkled under the moonlight and his smile was wide. He must have looked so stupid, but he didn’t care at this moment. He was just happy you didn’t hate him and actually liked him!

“Yes, but if you wanna make it up to me, you have to promise something.” You pushed yourself off of him for a brief moment and had a serious look on your face.

“Anything.”

“No more lying to me like that. Please don’t hide things from me.”

“I promise.”

“Good. Don’t underestimate the both of us together. I rely on you just as much as you rely on me, silly. You don’t have to be anything other than you. I like how dorky and lame you are sometimes.”

Ren let out an offended gasp.

“I’m not dorky!” You smirked and pulled him down by the collar. He felt his heart race a mile a minute and he was curious what you were going to do next.

“Shut up and kiss me already, Ren,” you laughed, and he felt himself melt at the sound of your voice.

“Of course, my treasure,” he grinned as he tried to go through every tip those romantic books wrote in his head.

He pressed his lips against yours gently, almost unsure if he should even go through with it. You kissed him back and he felt himself slowly let go of his insecurities and enjoy your presence like this.

The need for air arose so he (unfortunately) separated himself from you. You laughed quietly as you stared into his eyes, and he wanted to memorize every detail about you.

“You kiss a bit too well, Ren, don’t tell me you practiced with someone else?” You teased.

“N-no I just… read a lot of books.” You snorted at his response and pressed a kiss to his nose.

“Gosh, you’re the best. Don’t tell me you also learned your terrible French from those books too?”

“Maybe…”

Sure he wasn’t perfect, but in this moment. There was nobody he’d rather be than himself in all his imperfect glory.

#persona 5 #persona 5 x reader #persona 5 protagonist #persona 5 protagonist x reader #ren amamiya x reader #ren amamiya #akira kurusu #akira kurusu x reader #my writing

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shoichee · 4 years

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Phantom Thieves of Hearts in KNB

This is part 3 for Murasakibara only! Part 2 and part 1 for other KNB characters are right here and here, respectively!

Persona 5 x Kuroko no Basket crossover

[Murasakibara x s/o reader]

Headcanons on how KNB characters find out you were a member of the Phantom Thieves + what they do afterwards

@akichan-th i remember how you wanted a murasakibara h/c and i spent a while thinking LOL

Warning: spoilers regarding the palace’s deadline after 10/11 and the subsequent events shortly after

Murasakibara Atsushi

in this headcanon, the PT is located in either Yosen high or any nearby schools in Akita, since it’s a 7 hour drive minimum from Akita to Tokyo (the main location of the PT, Shujin Academy)

you and Murasakibara have been dating for a few months

very casual, easygoing relationship between the two of you where you two give each other space if needed and cuddle (while snacking, of course) other times

so your Phantom Thief life remained secretive and very manageable to keep under wraps, especially since he just never saw the need to poke and prod through your business if you never bring it up yourself first

as long as you gave him cuddles and snacks, he didn’t have a problem; he knew you were a good person too, so he had no reason to doubt you

“(y/n)-chin,” he childishly demanded. “I wanna cuddle.”

“Ah..! I’m so sorry, Atsu!” you gave him an enveloping hug as an apology. “But not today, I have lots of work to do for school…”

you gave him a regretful look, and while he was pouting and whining for snacks, he eventually let you go out of his ginormous arms

he might be a childish person and have lots of clingy tendencies/demands, but he’s still reasonable in letting you carry out your own life

. . .

“Ready to explore the palace?” Futaba waves you over, with the other hand grasping her phone that already had the metaverse app opened and ready to be activated

“Yup,” you heaved, after jogging briskly for several minutes to the hideout

Ryuji: “Alright! All set!”

Haru: “I’m still a little nervous…”

Ann: “Don’t worry, Haru! We’ll make sure to change his heart!”

. . .

“Humpf,” Murasakibara huffed, blowing his hair strand off his face for the umpteenth time as his chin was propped on the table, his biscuits left mostly forgotten a few feet away

“You’ve been sighing a lot, Atsushi.” Himuro peered over from his book to see him moping. “What’s wrong?”

“(y/n)-chin isn’t here,” he grumbled

“That can’t be helped sometimes, you know.”

“I knooow,” he drawled before sighing again

“What are all these snacks lying around for? Aren’t you going to eat them?”

“They’re for (y/n)-chin, obviously.”

“Staring holes into the Hi-Chew packages isn’t going to summon them over. Come here, we can use the kitchen and maybe fix you up a quick appetizer to take your mind off of this.”

“O-kay.”

the next subsequent day, Murasakibara was clingier than normal, even went as so far as to initiate PDA by holding your hand when walking in the hallways and draping himself all over you during breaks

and yes, he fed you those snacks he saved for you from yesterday

Murasakibara honestly thought this was going to be a one time thing where you were busy, but since you were working on Okumura’s palace before the deadline, you had to always leave every day, or at least every other day, to finish the palace exploration

you initially went to the palace with the PT every day, but after seeing Murasakibara’s sour moods during school and being really grumpy over you not spending time with him, you opted to tell Joker that you would settle on coming every other day instead

Murasakibara still had some reservations about the changes in your “after school” activities that didn’t involve him by your side, but at least he knew you made the effort to try to be with him as much as you could, even though he could see how important these “activities” were to you

so for now, he was content enough with the way things are

until several days later, when he was about to approach you after school, after finding you in a secluded corner of the campus outside (it wasn’t hard to spot you with his height), he tried to approach you when he overheard your hushed conversation on the phone:

“Yeah… got it… mhm… I’ll be there at Leblanc… yeah, it wouldn’t be a problem, I hope. I should be free this evening, Akira. Wait for me, okay?”

Akira? Who was that?

Murasakibara stood there, frowning as he was processing your words and the possible implications from them, and for the first time, he felt doubt

while he was lost in his thoughts, you hung off the call, and went to look for Murasakibara, and in immediately spotting the tower of your boyfriend, you ran to him

“Atsu!” you cheerily called, and it immediately snapped Murasakibara out of his thoughts to face you (more like looking down)

“Atsu,” you said, squeezing his torso in a hug and nuzzling him. “I gotta go again… But I’ll make it up to you, I promise!”

and as you backed up from Murasakibara to start jogging to your destination, you yelled out, “I’ll bring lots of food tomorrow for lunch!”

a small hiss in the back of his mind concluded that you were possibly seeing someone else; the fact that you constantly canceled a lot of plans with him just for these “activities” already gnawed at him

in his laziness dread, he opted not to follow you at all and immediately went to look for Himuro

“Muro-chin, what does it mean when someone is always busy?”

“Is this about (y/n)-chan again?” Himuro chuckled, not missing the way how Mursakibara was even more sullen than usual

“Che.”

“Maybe you need to talk to them yourself, Atsushi,” he hummed, walking slightly ahead of the giant. “You can’t constantly rely on me for all your decisions.”

“Maybe they’re just sick of eating snacks with you 24/7,” Fukui popped up between them. “Have you ever even been on a proper date with (l/n) before??”

“(y/n)-chin isn’t like that…” he grumbled vehemently, but it was totally obvious that he was hesitant

the next day, you came to school like nothing ever happened, your face bright as you held a cloth loaded with bento boxes, and Murasakibara decided to try Himuro’s advice to “talk to you”

“(y/n)-chin, you like me, right?” he propped his chin on your head

“Huh? Of course I do, silly,” you beamed up at him, and Murasakibara, right there and then, lost the will to question you any further, and he felt the doubt washed away

he figured this whole ordeal must’ve been just his imagination and he chided himself for doubting you like that when you always gave him amazing food and told him when you were free and whatnot

scratch that, when school finished for the day, you were ready to bounce out again with another excuse

his doubt came back and just multiplied tenfold

you felt really guilty, leaving your boyfriend in the dust constantly

you hadn’t anticipate this would happen, no; Okumura’s palace unexpectedly became a lot harder to deal with in the deepest areas, especially with the constant puzzles in the maze to sort through

and you knew he wasn’t a stupid person to overlook your behavior despite his oblivious surface, but even though you knew you couldn’t tell him your secret life, you tried to make him feel better in the only way you knew how: give him food

but there’s only so much food could do to appease Murasakibara before enough was enough for him

so while you ran out from campus again for the umpteenth time, Murasakibara decided to put his laziness to the side and follow you for once

okay but to outsiders, it totally looked like this grown ass man child giant was stalking a little, unsuspecting you

you made a sharp turn before slipping into a quaint coffee shop, and Murasakibara made the connection to the phone call after seeing the shop sign “Leblanc”

he was already jittering inside from nerves, but now he’s agitated

If he walked in, was he going to see you with another person?

he gave a slow sigh before stopping before the door and opening it as he ducked in the doorway

a soft jingle from the door’s bell announced his entrance and everyone in the shop (including you) stopped their conversations midway and turned their attention to the newcomer (whose shadow from standing at the door blanketed the entire shop interior)

Ryuji: “Huh? Can’t you read? Shop’s closed.”

Makoto: “Ryuji! Can’t you just be nice?—I’m sorry, please don’t mind his manners, but he is right that we’re not open as of now…”

“(y/n)-chin came in here.”

Ann: “A-ah! Well, yes they did! But uh, they’re a sweeper and is training to be a waitress—”

you jabbed Ann’s side with your elbow with a “shhh” before you got up from your seat to walk to Murasakibara

“Atsu, what are you doing here?”

“I came here to ask you the same thing, chibi-chin.”

“(y/n) is working here as an apprentice to be a coffee barista under the owner’s tutelage along with the rest of us,” Joker said, getting up from his seat to walk towards Mura as well

“Akira…” you turned to Joker

not only was this man on a first name basis with you, but he was the Akira from the phone call

Joker could suddenly sense a huge spike in a hostile aura emitted by the purple-haired titan

Murasakibara suddenly pulled your arm into his chest and wrapped your waist from behind, all while glaring at the ravenette

“(y/n)-chin is mine.”

there was a collective silence before everyone started shouting in disbelief

“I didn’t know you dated anyone, (y/n)!!” “That’s sooo cute!!” “How long were you with him?” “What a wonderful thing to experience, (y/n)-chan!” “Mwehe, got any dirt on (y/n)?”

Joker just gives a smirk to the two of you, which you knew he meant that he was gonna make some comments and jokes on your relationship from this point on

No wonder you couldn’t come everyday to do a palace run.

“Ugh, seriously?? How the hell did (y/n) find someone before all of us? I mean, I thought being a Phantom Thief would’ve made me more noticeable to girls—”

“Ryuji!!”

“Oh… uh—”

everyone in the PT gang turned to Murasakibara to gauge his reaction:

he just had figurative question marks and clouds floating over his head as he continued to embrace you from behind

“Fan… tom… Thief?” (you inwardly sighed in relief and amusement at his reaction)

“It’s a group activity we have to do often,” you hurriedly explained. “Like… D&D role-playing gaming, and plus we all do it together after we finish doing barista work… together, but it’s kind of… embarrassing, so that’s why we’re all doing this rather secretively. So… could you keep this to yourself too?”

“O-kay.”

“Yeah, so sorry again, Atsu, but could you leave me to my own devices for the evening again?...”

“No, I don’t want to,” he replied, squeezing you even harder with his arms as if daring you to try to escape from him, and you shot glances at your team members to help you out (they looked at you as if this was all yours to deal with)

“Atsuuu,” you turned to face him while still being in his arms. “Other than this group activity, you’re still my number one priority, you know?” and you tippy-toed up to his face to give him a sweet peck on his lips

choruses of fangirling and groaning ring out again

“I guess I’ll leave you be, (y/n)-chin,” Murasakibara said indifferently, but you spied a small smile on his lips

being relieved that you weren’t going behind his back to see someone was an understatement; in fact, he was giddy that you were so forward with him in front of a large group of your friends

true to his word, Murasakibara never mentions a peep of the “Phantom Thieves” again to anyone (other than with you sometimes when you two are alone)

although he merely thought it was just a type of extracurricular/club activity of some sorts, he did ask Himuro (and a nearby nosy Fukui) if they knew what the “Phantom Thieves” were

“I’m surprised you only heard about them now,” Himuro replied. “There’s tons of popular merch of them and everyone is so hyped up that they’re pretending to be the Phantom Thieves themselves and trying to hand out ‘calling cards’ to other students.”

Fukui popped up in hearing the “Phantom Thieves” with a collection of calling cards of his own and bragging about how he had to go through extensive means to obtain the “limited edition” card

so you were just fans of these famed superheroes and role playing it with your other friends? he guess it could be embarrassing for you enough to try to hide this from him

Mura always walks you to Leblanc and then leaves home for the day, but sometimes, Sojiro invites him in (when nobody is doing PT business) for good plate of curry and soba

Murasakibara loves the old man and his cooking

he’s grown somewhat close to your PT friends, particularly Ann, Makoto, and Haru; Ann has a massive sweet tooth like Mura, so she would often give him extra sweets she bought from a dessert shop, meanwhile Makoto and Haru are like mother-figures (strict and doting, respectively) to him (sort of like Akashi and Himuro)

if you didn’t give into his whining for a particular something, he’d turn to Makoto or Haru to try to persuade you in giving in (may or may not work)

he’d probably will not think much of the “PT” business for the longest time, even when the Okumura news break out, because he doesn’t think they’re real to begin with (oh, he would believe the murder is real, but the perpetrator being the “PT” he thinks would be the media over-exagerrating and just giving any anonymous killer at large the term, “PT”)

as long as he wasn’t directly affected, he’s not someone to worry about the needless things

when things were getting dire for the PT, you actually isolated yourself from Murasakibara as well as the Yosen basketball team, not because you hate them, but because you didn’t want to drag them into legal matters with the police by association with you

you cursed yourself for being careless and letting your boyfriend hang out with the PT because someone’s bound to see a giant kid lurking in and around Leblanc at least once

Murasakibara thought he did something wrong and would tried to get your attention, but every time he did, you would expertly avoid him

he even left so many snacks at your desk hoping for you to accept them :((

one day, you finally went up to Murasakibara when you were absolutely sure you were alone with him, and before he could say your name and be elated that you were in front of him again, you coldly said:

“I want to break up.”

the usually apathetic guy would widen his eyes in complete shock and fear; the first thing you said after not talking to him in weeks were… that?

“(y/n)-chin… why? (y/n)-chin! Talk to me...”

It was for the best… you never wanted to ruin his future and his basketball career just by being near you

you feigned indifference and tried turning around to walk away from him, struggling to keep your face from being tear-stricken

“(y/n)-chin!” Murasakibara released a bellow you never heard unless he was playing aggressively on the courts, before he forcefully tug your arm to spin you around

there you were, failing to keep your true feelings hidden as you started sniffling and then full blown sobbing the longer your boyfriend stared at your face in full worry

“Here…” he pressed your face into his shirt as he hoisted you up from your knees, and he walked home with your legs around his waist, crying your eyes out from the stress and fears you’ve felt haunted by lately (“Stop crying, (y/n)-chin, it’s annoying” he would say as he rubbed your back)

as soon as he puts you down on a couch in his living room, you knew he meant business when he had a serious look on his face that meant “Talk now.”

you bit your lip in apprehension and in seeing that, Mura grabbed a few snacks from the cabinets for you before settling next to you again

and you confessed the entire truth to him, sniffling and hiccuping as you struggled to enunciate your words while stuffing your face with cream biscuits

“Is that all?...” Mura tilted his head. “You obviously didn’t kill him, so why are you worried?” he munched on his next package

“Atsu, it’s not that simple, you—”

“I know, I know.” he ruffled your hair before pulling you close

“Just stop crying,” he mumbled into your head

and you felt safe for the first time in a couple of weeks

the Phantom Thieves will overcome this, definitely.

“Don’t break up with me, (y/n)-chin,” he said out of nowhere, pouting and sulking at your figure

you busted a huge laugh, the very sound he missed hearing from you for so long

“I wouldn’t dare, Atsu.”

bonus: sometime in the future, you brought over an overly-curious Murasakibara to mementos with everyone, and there, he finally hears Morgana speaking for the first time. Afterwards, he’s best friends with the cat, taking him everywhere he went whenever he did errands or snack-shopping and ignoring the questioning gazes from strangers as he talked to the said cat like it was a normal thing. Both love to eat sashimi together.

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chrismerle · 3 years

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what’s up i spent way too long typing up a post about my thoughts on P5S, and it isn’t even all encompassing. i guess if you’re curious about anything i didn’t mention in this trainwreck just ask.

my spoiler-heavy thoughts/pseudo-review below the cut

THINGS I LIKED:

The characterization, broadly speaking. If you, like me, loved the Thieves in P5/P5R then you’ll be pretty happy with them here. There are a couple moments that made me roll my eyes (lookin’ at you, hot springs) but on the whole, the main cast are unchanged.

The new characters. Sophia and Zenkichi are great. Sophia is precious and Zenkichi straddles a very fine line of ‘realistically out of the loop, but gives as good as he gets.’ I don’t even care how silly their costumes were. Sophie looked like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man, though I did like her little emoticon visor, but also she had no pants. Wolf’s mask was badass but the fact that his stupid pointy hat was riveted to the top of his stupid disco high collar killed it and I wanted to see someone grab his hat and pull it back to see it fling back into place like a drinky-drinky bird. Even so, the characters were great, and when I noticed that all the attacks for Sophie’s initial pseudo-Persona had question marks after them (Kouga? Dia?), it made me laugh, and Wolf’s a good all-purpose party member because he hits like a fucking truck and nothing is immune to Almighty. Plus in some of his post-battle dialogue he calls them all ‘kiddos’ and they consistently call him Gramps.

The gameplay. I mean, yeah, it’s VERY different than P5, but you all know that. And hey! The game no longer immediately ends if Joker gets knocked out (unless he’s the only one left in the party, obviously). It ran pretty smoothly, there’s something weirdly charming about the other Thieves showing up perched on cover points, and the only consistent issue I ran into is that in segments where the camera gets forced into a certain angle, it can switch back so abruptly at the end that you accidentally go walking right off a ledge.

I’ve never really played a Dynasty Warriors-type game before, so it took me a Jail or so to get used to it, but then I was just cackling as I mowed down swarms of Jack Frosts like a weed-whacker in a flower field with a knife the size of Joker’s torso. Honestly, it took me the longest to get used to the fact that the circle button became the all-purpose ‘interact’ button than anything else.

Actually, that’s a lie. It took me the longest to get used to the fact that if I left a Jail, I wouldn’t be losing any time. I’m very used to Persona games having the calendar constantly counting down, which wasn’t the case here.

The story, broadly speaking. It had some hiccups and some issues, which I’ll get into, but for the most part, it was fun. I’m...not going to outline every detail of the story here, but it felt very P5-y and I enjoyed it.

THINGS I LIKED BUT THAT NEEDED WORK:

The writing. It was a little inconsistent, beyond just the usual weirdness that I have accepted comes along with Persona games. (//patiently clicks through numerous conversations of the gang going ‘did this super obvious thing that this memory threw in our faces happen? Let’s debate about whether the most likely answer by a huge margin is the answer’ and several conversations of ‘are we sure this person is bad? We saw them playing nice, like literally every other villain we’ve faced’) A lot was great! Like, the bit with the Okinawa locals breaking into the RV while the kids hide in the bushes? Genuinely unsettling! Akane’s Jail and the fake Thieves was fun, and seeing Zenkichi scuttle from hiding place to hiding place without Thief powers was funny, and his Shadow’s glowing eyes watching him before becoming his Persona was both badass and unsettling. The realization that EMMA was actively lying to Konoe was nice. Character interactions were great and I loved that Sophia went with Ichinose at the end. There was a lot that was good. But there were also a lot of missteps.

Like, it kind of felt like the direction for the writing changed partway through. It started out as if each member of the Phantom Thieves was going to get their own time to shine, identifying and empathizing with a Monarch. Ann realized she could have been Alice. Yusuke realized he could have been Ango and also saw redeeming him as sort of like redeeming Madarame by proxy. Mariko was a link to Haru’s childhood and her father. The ghost Jail on Okinawa lured Sophie in and by the end she realized how much she meant to her friends ryuji said fuck. Akane was Zenkichi’s literal daughter. And then it went to Konoe and then EMMA, so Ryuji, Futaba, Morgana, Makoto, and Joker didn’t get a chance to shine in that regard. The switch from ‘a Jail for everyone to identify with’ to ‘whelp here’s the decoy and the end boss’ felt like they came from two separate drafts of the script, and it’s not like they had to watch the time; I got through P5S in about a third the time it took me to get through P5R. It took me about 35 hours. Considering the game kind of relies on you having played P5, they already knew their target audience has a longer attention span than that.

Owada was talked up as kind of a big deal, but he had like two scenes on-screen and otherwise was an entirely off-screen character. There’s a lot of mid-combat dialogue that is very difficult to focus on, which was sort of annoying when some of it was actually relevant. Ichinose’s reveal as a villain is very info-dump-y.

Plus, Joker wasn’t utilized particularly well as a silent protagonist. He’s got more implied personality than basically any other Persona protag. Which means he’s actually pretty expressive throughout the game, but I can probably count his lines of dialogue outside of combat with fingers left over. No one expects Yu Narukami to actually react to anything, so it doesn’t feel odd when he doesn’t. But the combination of Joker being reasonably expressive and having a demonstrated personality means you’re perpetually EXPECTING and WANTING him to say something about the shit going on, and when he doesn’t it feels like mentally missing a stair.

THINGS THAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

The cut corners. Like, a lot of things just seem lazy. There were scenes that really should have been included that weren’t, like how the Thieves escaped from the hotel after the police showed up; it cut from Zenkichi warning them and getting arrested to them arriving at the temporary hideout, so we never even got to see how the Thieves reacted to realizing the cops were outside. Requests to bond with the other Thieves only got a couple of text boxes, when they could have shown a tiny scene of them hanging out like they had all over P5. Rather than having Sae actually on-screen for her brief scene, the camera instead very unnaturally switched to an angle as if it was from her point of view, which was literally the only time the camera did that in the entire game. All of the Sentries look the same from Jail to Jail, instead of being unique to each Jail. Igor is completely absent for the entire game, and other than a throwaway ‘my master can’t be here’ from Lavenza it’s just not really acknowledged.

The missed opportunities. Like, there is no way to look at this except to assume that Joker was a horrible friend to literally everyone in this world state. Like, I can pass off the fact that everyone has their baseline Personae as being because they haven’t had access to their powers for a while, but when you combine it with the fact that NONE of Joker’s other confidants show up or even know he’s back in Tokyo, it leaves little to assume except that in this world, no confidants got maxed out. On top of that, the Personae are all basically pointless. They could be Pokemon or Stands or Digimon or fucking YuGiOh cards, and it wouldn’t make a difference; NOTHING about the game says ‘these entities are integral to this world and important to these characters.’ Also they could have had Akane actually realize who the Thieves were and it would have been hysterical, but that’s just my personal sulk.

The Requests. I liked the Mementos missions in P5/P5R. They felt like they had a point. Requests in P5S are all basically just fetch quests. ‘Go to Location A, fight so many of Enemy B to get so many of Item C. Turn in Request.’ Hell, one of them bugged out on me, I swear. There’s a Request to teach Zenkichi how to cook a simple meal, and Haru gives you a recipe including beef. I had no beef on me at the time, because if you want SP restoratives you gotta cook a fair amount and I used it, and I could find literally no beef in the city I was in at the time so I had to abandon the Request. On top of that, outside of getting food or a few moments where another character specifically asks for Joker’s attention, character-specific Requests mostly replace the ability to bond with the other characters individually.

The restoratives. Or, more specifically, the disparity between HP restoratives and SP restoratives. There’s essentially one cookable recipe to restore SP for every four recipes to restore HP. Even if I stopped at every store and vending machine, I’m pretty sure there were a couple cities where I could find NO SP restoratives for sale, while most stores and vending machines had at least two or three HP restoratives. And while it is true that you can go in and out of a Jail whenever you please to restore SP, that doesn’t help you if you run out during a boss fight you weren’t expecting (mini-boss encounters are virtually identical to regular monster encounters) or during one of the times where you CAN’T leave the Jail for reasons XYZ.

The final boss, and not just because I died and had to start over a few times. As a concept, EMMA could be cool, but in reality she just seemed like the writers threw Yaldabaoth and Maruki in a blender and poured the results into the game. Like Yaldabaoth, she is a false god who seeks to control humanity, claiming it’s what they want. Like Maruki, she seems genuinely deluded into thinking it’s for the best and that she’s not doing anything wrong. Her Jail looked like a slightly sci-fi reskin of the Depths of Mementos. The shtick with the multiple platforms and getting to actually SEE an all-out attack at the end were nice, but for the most part the fight itself was nothing special. Ultimately, EMMA had nothing unique going for her except her name.

Plus, EMMA’s entire rationale was that the majority of humans want someone else to control their lives for them, essentially out of convenience. And she’s presented as being more or less right, but that just being one of the hurdles of being human. It seemed a little dour and far-fetched. Like, the Thieves repeatedly point out that struggling allows people to grow, and they’re right, but in my experience, I’ve never actually met anyone who, upon hitting a roadblock, decided ‘Jesus take the wheel.’ Considering the greed with which her weird tentacle arms snatched up the solidified Desires, the pettiness of the complaints she used as a “gotcha,” and the fact that she just kind of reiterates her ‘people want to be controlled’ point over and over, I think it would have felt a bit more true to life and given her more agency if, instead of presenting her as largely correct, it instead acknowledged that everyone at some time or another hits a wall and wants someone to tell them what to do and had her capitalizing on those individual brief moments to hook people in, despite her having reams of data that for most people, those moments are temporary.

#persona 5 strikers #persona 5 strikers spoilers

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wallstoothin · 3 years

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Big Brother pt 0.5

Move over Sis-Con Banco, Joker is in town. Based on @soaptaculart child Mona art. What started as a 500 words stress reliver is gonna turn into a multi part writing-maybe. I hope you all like it, I would like to eventually post it on A03 maybe, still thinking it over. This is part 0.5 as a test post.

>I found him

>He has no home

>I’m a dad

No matter what he utters out of his mouth, Akira has a feeling that Sojiro won’t accept the fact that he brought a kid home after skipping class the day before. But what can he do about it. Ryuji can’t take him in, his mother is working double shifts at the hospital and he doesn’t want to burden her. Ann with her work and her empty home can’t watch over a child all the time. Akira was the only one left, beside out of the three of them Morgana seems to like Akira the most.

There’s no way Akira can say no to that face, his bright blue eyes shining in the light, his face into one big pout. Akira as a former member of a babysitting club thought he had seen it all. The ‘pretty-please’ and the ‘puppy dog eyes’ of the kids he took care of weaponized. He should be immune by now. But it was something about Morgana. Watching him stamp his feet as he curses out Kamoshida with G-rated “curses”, his little cat burglar outfit in the other world and with his weapon of choice. He called himself a thief in training and declared Akira his student.

How could he say no to that.

So here is here, sitting on the train on his way back to Yogen-jaya with Morgana sitting on his lap kicking his foot and hitting Akira’s shin with each kick, happily playing a game on Akira’s phone.

“What a cute brother you have there.” A nice old lady told him on his way out. He croaked out a thank you as held Morgana’s hand and step out of the train.

Morgana was very curious about Le blanc and questioned Akira about it while hoping from one foot to another.

“Hey Joker, what kind of place is Le Blanc.”

“It’s a cafe that sell coffee and curry.”

“Does curry taste good?”

“I think it would be a bit bitter for you.”

“No it’s not. Bitter is an adult taste right? I'm smart as any adult so I can eat bitter just fine!”

“If you say so,”

“Yeah I say so!”

Akira...did not give the best first impression to Boss. But it was not like he can say he was magically whisked away into another world and adopted a random cat boy. Boss already told him during the car ride that he took Akira in for the sake of money, there’s no way that Boss would let Morgana in without any monetary compensation right? At least, the adult he knew were somewhere along that mentality and from what he sees, Sakura-san is somewhere along that line. Akira winced at the thought of taking more money out of his savings. He’s already used a lot due to overpriced food and necessity, he’ll have to ration his own portion and find a part time job to make up for it.

He took several deep breaths in and out to calm himself down.What ever happens, happens. He’ll deal with the consequences later. He pushed open the door, the small bell overhead chiming with a happy ‘ding.’ Boss who looked like he was just about to wash the dishes. Sakura-san's attention went immediately from Akira to Morgana.

“Who’s that?” Oh boy, he sound mad.

“Hi! I’m Morgana.”

“He’s Morgana.” Akira unhelpfully added.

From the raised eyebrow Akira can tell just that is not cutting it. The options from earlier came back to his mind.

>I found him

>He has no home

>I’m a dad

Hopefully, Morgana won’t ruin it.

“I found him hiding in the school the other day.” He admits. “He told me he can’t remember anything from his past. I checked online for any missing children reports and he wasn’t there, I thought…”

I thought he was abandoned.

Metaverse magic and what not. The fact that Morgana was a child and left to fend for himself had Akira thinking of the worst case scenario of how he came to be. He heard, at least in rumors that Tokyo is filled with undocumented children. Children who don’t have insurance, who can’t go to school or even have a birth certificate, because of that it was easy for those children to fall through the cracks of society and end up getting picked up by the worst kind of people.

Even if Morgana can’t read between the lines, from the expression that Sakura-san is making he was sure that the older man can.

“I can provide him with things he needs.” He added. “I-I’ll get a part time job, I just need to know if he can stay here for a while.”

Sakura-san stared at him long and hard as if he could see Akira’s soul. Morgana took this time to tug on his uniform shirt. “Akira, I’m hungry.” He ruffled Morgana’s hair, the same way he would have wanted when he was six.

“Alright, He can stay. We’ll take him to the doctor tomorrow.”

“Thank you very much Sakura-san!”

“Yeah! Thank you boss.”

Sakura-san then gave them both curry for dinner and told them to go to bed. That was fine with Akira. Morgana sneezing non stop because of the dust in the attic. That was not fine. He’s going to have to do something about that.

Bedtime was another issue. He spent a few minutes fighting with Morgana. As the oldest he should take the couch and let Morgana sleep on the futon. But Morgana told him that the couch was lumpy and ugly and Akira won’t get enough sleep from it. In the end they both compromise and decided it was best if both boys slept together on the futon. It was nice, although it was spring, the night was still cold and the thin blanket he received probably would have contributed to an upcoming cold or something. The warmth that was radiating from Morgana felt nice. He wondered if this was what his classmates meant when they talked about living with their younger siblings.

Akira then spent the next few evenings without rest. Redecorating, clothes shopping, miniature wrestling trying to get Morgana to get his shots, paperwork, actual work, confidants and of course Kamoshida.

Morgana has been asking questions about Kamoshida. If it was up to Joker he would have never let the younger boy go anywhere near the castle. That’s why he leaves Morgana home whenever he goes to school. He doesn’t want to let the boy anywhere near real life Kamoshida. But there was no choice in the metaverse. Morgana was the one who tells the weakness of all the shadows, who tells him who’s low on health or if they are under some kind of a status effect. He’s one of a kind, which is why Akira wants everything to be done and over with as quickly as possible.

#persona 5 #P5 #kurusu akira #Morgana #bigbrotherau

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spyder-m · 4 years

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Shumako Week 2020, Day One: The Set-Up

@shumakoweek Day One: Study Partners / Confessions

AO3 / FF.net

Summary: The Phantom Thieves face one of their most challenging operations to date, getting a confession out of their leader and advisor.

It was no secret that the Charge Commander of the Phantom Thieves, Sakamoto Ryuji, was not one for subtlety. Despite his best efforts, there were times where he became overzealous, words slipping out without a thought.

Their latest operation was one of he was having trouble keeping under wraps.

With a near-impossible task and seemingly insurmountable odds stacked against them, the pressure was becoming too much to contain. The urge to speak out, to try and find advice was tearing away at him.

The Phantom Thieves had managed fine without Joker's guidance before; pulling off operations during his interrogation and time in prison. But a mission without both their leader and advisor, in many ways, his second-in-command, wouldn't be easy.

Yet, Ryuji knew they couldn't let themselves become distracted by what they were missing. They needed to stay positive.

They still had Futaba's hacking skills, and that furball, as much as he hated to admit, was their most experienced member. Most of what they knew had been because of his teachings.

And while he, Ann and Morgana could get on each other's nerves at times; when united by a common goal, they were a powerful force as original members. They would need to harness that force as much as possible, considering this could be their hardest mission yet.

Not only were they short team members, but they had two targets they needed to get a confession out of this time.

Ryuji leant back with an exhale, warm water lapping at the knots in his shoulder; allowing him a momentary respite from the concern clouding his mind.

He and Ren were visiting the baths across from Leblanc again; a momentary respite Ryuji was thankful for; particularly now that there weren't any old dudes constantly cranking up the heat.

Though, the trip couldn't alleviate his worries entirely. Even it was part of their plan. He needed to stay focused.

The setting was perfect, an excuse for him to bring up the conversation they'd had last time without raising suspicion.

Back then, Ryuji hadn't expected Yusuke to show much interest in girls, beyond aesthetics. Though, he had been surprised that Ren played coy when asked about Ann; talking up her strengths as a teammate and a friend.

Tsk, what a cop-out.

Ryuji had the feeling Ren was well-versed with women. At least, based on how well he'd handled the maid incident compared to Mishima. Not to mention, for the short time he'd lived in Tokyo, he'd certainly made connections with a lot of them.

Ryuji found it hard to believe he didn't have a preference.

Still, thinking on it, his words rung true.

Over the past few years, many things had changed. Their team had grown, and there were more female members. There was someone Ren carried herself around quite differently from anyone else on their team.

It had to mean something.

Though he was quiet, at times hard to read, Ryuji suspected the response to his question would be a bit different this time around and decided now was as good a time as any to probe.

"So, Renren. When are you gonna like... ask Makoto out?"

Though, as established, Ryuji was never one for subtlety.

It was fortunate that Ren had the foresight to remove his glasses before they entered the bathhouse. For; despite priding herself on keeping calm and level-headed throughout even their most dire Metaverse battles; he was completely rocked by Ryuji's question, his body slipping beneath the surface of the water with a shocked cry.

Ryuji chuckled, pleased to have caught his usually cool, stoic friend off guard. The reaction was telling, there was definitely something to his suspicion.

Ren emerged, moments later, a maelstrom of coughs and damp, shaggy hair. Though the springs were warm, Ryuji wasn't sure they were the reason for the flush building across his face.

His laughter died, though, under the glare Ren leveled in his direction.

"W- what? Where did you get that idea?"

"Come on, man. I'm not that stupid. You’d have to have been hit by Marin Karin to not see that you two are totally into each other."

"Oh, really?" Ren challenged.

"Uh, yeah. Remember back when we broke into Boss' house in the middle of a storm and the lights went out? Makoto was practically hanging off of you."

"S- she was just scared. Futaba does the same thing whenever we're somewhere crowded."

Ryuji took satisfaction in the flinch that crossed Ren’s face. He had a weak point and capitalise on the advantage.

"Well, speaking of Futaba. When we were fighting that cognition of her mom, you knocked Makoto out of the way when that pillar was going to hit her."

"I didn't want her to get hurt! I would've done that for any of you guys."

"Really?” Ryuji grinned, smugly, his arms folding. “Cause you sure held onto her for longer than necessary though. I'm pretty sure she was fine."

"That's-"

"Not to mention, I heard from Ann that you've been going on double-dates with Makoto and her friend."

"That's just a cover. I'm helping her lookout for Eiko."

Ren’s protest trailed off, perhaps the most half-hearted of them all. Ryuji’s expression softened, his words carrying a more sincere lilt.

"But you wouldn't mind if you were actually dating?"

Ren sighed, his eye’s carrying to the ceiling as he leant back.

"All I'm saying is, I've only ever seen her act like that around you. A lot of other guys seem kind of scared by her."

"She's our teammate, Ryuji.” Ren insisted. “A great strategist and friend. There's nothing more to it than that."

Ryuji shrugged.

"If you say so, man."

The apparent doubt in Ryuji's voice was not missed by Ren, as if noticing his lack of conviction. The words troubled him, picking at an uncertainty inside of him.

Ann's eyes lifted over the cup of coffee she held to her lips, carefully watching Makoto through the wisps of steam rising from the liquid.

She had asked her older friends to come out with her to the shopping district, part of the plan she had formed with Ryuji and the rest of the Thieves: to get Ren and Makoto alone and ask them about their feelings for one another.

With everything in its right place, the boys should have been at the bathhouse just across the alleyway right now. Futaba would be monitoring the situation from her room, convenient, as it meant she wouldn't have to also face the crowds of ().

This was an operation Ann had to approach this like any other battle; consider the enemy's strengths and weaknesses and exploit them to her advantage.

She knew she wouldn't be able to beat Makoto when it came to strategy and wasn't dumb enough to even try and overpower her physically - although, having Haru with her may have helped.

If she probed, Makoto might feel like she was being interrogated and get suspicious. Asking directly, flustering her and catching her off guard when she was relaxed, would work best in Ann's favour. It would be the fastest way to expose her true feelings.

They were on familiar turf, enjoying coffee in the booths of Leblanc. A place Makoto had grown more than comfortable. It would be the last place she would expect an ambush.

Much like in Hawaii with the guys, she would ask, point black, framing the question as casual conversation.

As Makoto didn't chat with her peers often, it's possible she wouldn't pick up on the obvious motive behind her question.

Though, normally, it would be either Makoto or Futaba who would remind her of enemy strengths and weaknesses, which posed an issue. Futaba wasn't with them and she couldn't clue Makoto in on what they had planned.

"So, Makoto. What kind of guy do you like?"

Makoto's voice squeaked, her own cup almost slipping from her grip.

"W- where is this coming from, all of a sudden?"

"Relax Makoto, it's just girl talk." Ann reassured warmly. "I didn't get to ask you on the school trip like I did with Ren and Ryuji, and what can I say? I'm curious."

"W- what do you expect? You should know I'm not familiar with such things."

"Maybe so, but a lots changed in the past year. You've done things you now that I bet you never would have dreamed of before."

Makoto caught her bottom lip between her. She certainly couldn't argue that point.

"Maybe you just haven't figured out what your type is yet? That's okay! We can help you out!"

With a smirk, Ann's finger stroked her chin; a gesture usually akin to Makoto; scrutinising her friend closely. Makoto's eyes lowered, suddenly unnerved by her friend's proximity, her fingers tracing the pattern of her skirt. She decided not to acknowledge her, not wanting to risk incriminating herself. Instead, she left Ann to speculate out loud.

"What about the guys in our group, huh?" Ann began. "You and Ryuji might be at odds, but he seems into you. He's always talking about how awesome your Persona is."

Despite her best efforts to ignore Ann, Makoto coughed, a mouthful of coffee catching in her windpipe. Haru shuffled beside her, patting her on the back and sliding over a glass of water.

Of all the names Ann could have come out with, Makoto had definitely not expected Ryuji to rank highly.

Certainly, Makoto had grown of Ryuji. The perception she once held of him as a problem delinquent had been quickly shattered in the time they’d spent together. Though at times, he still behaved in a frustrating fashion, she had come to find that he was passionate, well-meaning and incredibly loyal.

Still, she wasn’t sure where Ann had gotten that idea at all. If anything, Ryuji seemed much closer to her.

"Hmm.” Ann continued, her tangent seemingly uninterrupted by Makoto’s coughs. “Well, I suppose I could also see it being someone like Akechi. He's popular, but smart like you, and a detective."

Makoto shuddered, finding the notion of Akechi viewing her in a romantic light unsettling.

If anything, she saw him as a rival. His presence waking pangs of jealously, for all the time he spent with sis and the respect she appeared to hold for him. Still, she didn’t answer, opting instead to savour her coffee; careful to take smaller sips.

"Not interested, huh? Well, I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that your tastes wouldn't match most girls our age..."

As Ann broke off, seemingly lost in thought once again, Makoto hoped for this conversation to not continue.

"Though, I have to say, Ren gave quite an interesting answer when I asked him about this."

"I- is that so?" Makoto answered, reflexively; realisation seeping through her with a grimace.

That this was the first time Makoto actually spoke up wasn't missed by Ann. Though, she couldn’t afford to let it show.

She would have to revel silently in that small victory.

"Mm." Ann said, feigning nonchalance. Though inside, she was growing giddy with excitement. "He said he valued intelligence most in a girl. Now, I wonder who that could be referring to?"

"We hadn't met you yet, Haru, so he couldn't have been talking about you, and... Well, Ren's seen my test results, so I doubt he meant me. That would leave either Futaba, or..."

"Why are you restricting this to our group?" Makoto protested, perhaps too fiercely. "Ren knows plenty of intelligent women. There's that Doctor who supplies us with medicine, or the Shogi player, Hifumi-san."

"Yeah, you're right, Makoto. What about Sae-san? She fits that description perfectly."

Ann could sense the urge to grin pulling at her lips; proud of how she'd managed to turn the conversation back against Makoto.

Bringing up her older sister; who she often compared herself to; was perhaps an under-handed move. But they were thieves after all, and Ann was determined to uncover the truth.

If Makoto felt anything for Ren, the idea of him liking Sae-san would certainly spark a response from Makoto.

Makoto swallowed. She was glad the conversation was no longer centered around her, but... The idea of Ren being attracted to sis, didn't sit well with her, those feelings of inadequacy churning inside her chest.

Perhaps, worse still, was that the scenario didn't seem that farfetched to Makoto. She could actually imagine Ren being able to live up to her sister's lofty expectations.

While sis was meticulous, there was an inexplicable charm to Ren, one that many; herself included; were drawn to. Being related to Sae, Makoto suspected it would work similarly on her. After all, he had managed to break through her cold exterior before.

There shouldn't have been any reason for it bother her. They had no business speculating about their private lives.

"If you don't mind, could we perhaps change the subject? I- I'm not sure Ren would appreciate us having this discussion."

Ann relented, already having got what she needed from their conversation.

A tactical retreat, for the time being.

After assessing the targets, the Thieves reported their findings back to one another at the Accessway in Shibuya.

Of all their hideouts, it seemed the safest place.

Had they met up at Leblanc, or the Shujin rooftop, there was always the chance that Ren or Makoto would stumble upon them.

Instead, they kept their plans for the weekend open, knowing that Ren would be busy working at Leblanc and Makoto, as always, would be preparing for University entrance exams.

Their normal hangouts were nearby anyway. Ann usually spending time in the Underground Mall, Ryuji the Arcade on Central Street, Haru tending to her crops at Shujin, and Yusuke people-watching in the middle of the station.

It would be easy for them to meet up at a moment's notice.

Morgana would have the hardest time sneaking off, as he usually stuck with Ren. The Thieves agreed it would be best for him to leave with Futaba, the two claiming they were going to Akihabara, so has as not to raise any suspicion.

After a few rounds of Gun About, Ryuji shuffled over, his hands buried in his pockets. He greeted Ann with a lazy dip of his head.

"Any luck?"

Ann shook her head with a sigh.

"Makoto tried her best to deny it, but it was pretty much written on her face. "

"Yeah, same with Ren."

"Hm. It would seem it won’t be easy to get a confession out of either of them."

"That sure suits them both. Stubborn 'til the end."

"Urgh. Why is this so hard? We’ve made criminals confess; it shouldn’t be so difficult to get our own friends to admit their feelings."

"Yeah. Kinda sucks all that stuff with Eiko blew over. All that fake dating shit really seemed it was getting them somewhere."

"Wait, that's it!"

"Wha-"

"Why don't we convince them to go on another pretend date? We could get Eiko to go along with it. We send those two somewhere romantic together, have Eiko split at the last minute and things are sure to play out between them!”

"I guess? But like, how are we gonna ask? Do you even know her?"

"I don't. But she's a third-year like you, right Haru?"

"That's right. I've seen Eiko-san around before, but we've never really spoken before."

"You're both friends with Makoto, though. That's a start! If you let Eiko know we need her to help out Makoto, I'm sure she'll be willing to listen."

"Well, I suppose. How do we approach her about it, though? I don't have her number."

"Leave that to me! Just gotta crack in Makoto's cloud and we should have no problem finding the right number."

"Please don't tell me you've done that to any of us before."

"Aw, come on, guys. You can trust me. This is just a one-time thing, I promise! For the mission, and their own good. The ends will justify the means."

"Well, if you say so."

Ren's fingers rapped against Leblanc's counter-top, his long, drawn-out sigh accompanying the sporadic beat.

The shop was unusually quiet.

Sundays had always been slow for business, Sojiro had told him so. People wanted to make the most out of their day off and tended to rely more on caffeine to fuel them during busy work weeks.

Still, that trend had seemingly shifted ever since Ren had moved upstairs, making friends of his own in Tokyo. They would hang around, keeping him company during long, uneventful shifts; often without need for invitation.

It was a shame they had all had other plans today and left him feeling a little sad.

For as much time they had spent and grown together, Ren almost couldn't remember what it was like; or how he had managed to get by; without them. It felt empty, alien.

Perhaps it was born of a connection between their Persona; the other self that had laid dormant inside them all.

At the lively sounds stirring through Yongen-jaya, Ren was overcome by envy.

Children laughing, dogs barking, patrons chattering with enthusiasm as they stepped out of the recently reopened movie theatre.

He wished he could be outside with them.

With no customers around, and all the dishes cleaned and stacked beside the sink, there weren't even any of the store's usual, mundane tasks that Ren could focus on to past the time.

Ren's hand lowered, digging through his pocket for his phone. Craving the distraction and hoping maybe, someone, might be finished with their commitments for the day. Willing to see him.

Before he could punch in his passcode, the bell above the door chimed.

Not wanting to incur another lecture from Sojiro about slacking off while on the clock; this from the guy who was usually reading the paper behind the counter; Ren's phone found a makeshift hiding place under the sleeve of his shirt.

However, a swell of happiness flooded through Ren, as he instead saw Makoto stepping through the door, her lips pulling into a smile.

His initial surprise dissipating, Ren exhaled, the familiar face flashing before him a beacon of relief.

He hadn't bothered messaging Makoto earlier, knowing that she was busy studying and not wanting to interrupt here. Her presence was unexpected.

Still, he wasn't complaining. Her company could keep him from going insane until Boss got back.

"Hey Makoto. How's studying going? Here for the usual?" Ren asked, hoping she would take the invitation.

"Please." She answered, setting down in the stool nearest him. "Although, I'm afraid I didn't come here just for coffee."

"Is that so?" Ren asked, sifting through the large display of beans behind him. "Well, what's up?"

"I need to ask a favour of you. One big enough to bring me here in person."

"Fire away."

"Eiko's asked us on a double date again."

Ren froze in the middle of adjusting the siphon, wondering for a moment if he had heard correctly.

"Oh." The word slipped out reflexively. "I thought she ended things with Tsukasa?"

"She did." Makoto nodded. "She has a new boyfriend now, apparently."

Ren hummed in reply, as he worked on her coffee, expecting her to continue. Though, from the way Makoto's hands kneaded together and her gaze zeroed in on the countertop; it mustn't have been easy to piece together whatever was on her mind.

Ren glanced up, taken by a momentary flash of concern. Such apprehension was unlike her; it had been for months.

"The problem is... Well- You see, after everything. I never told her that you and I dating was... just an act. It never occurred to me that this would come up again."

"So, she still thinks that we're...?"

"Exactly."

The sound of water churning at least distracted from the palpable silence that rung out between them.

As if not wanting to be swallowed up, by the heavy, oppressive atmosphere, Makoto urged herself to carry on, words now trailing from her lips in a flurry.

"While I could just turn her down, I am worried." She admitted. "I hope this won't be a repeat of what happened with Tsukasa. While I'm sure that the whole experience helped her become a better judge of character, I want to make sure her new boyfriend doesn't have any ulterior motives.

“I'm sure that we'll only need this one date to find out. After that, I can explain everything to her and clear up any confusion about us... Or lie and say that we've broken up, whichever comes easier."

"You've really thought this through." Ren laughed as he added the finishing touches to Makoto’s coffee and set it down. She accepted the cup, smiling.

“She asked me earlier today. It was bothering me so much that I couldn’t focus on studying anymore. I had to come and ask you."

“Alright. Well, let me know the time and place, and I’ll be here.”

“You’re a lifesaver, Ren. I promise this will be the last time.”

It was strange, becoming abruptly conscious of something that had long been missing.

It had never really struck Ren until now, that he and Makoto had stopped 'dating' weeks ago.

Now, starting again seemed... bittersweet, as he knew, going in, that it wouldn't last. That he would, in a way, be saying goodbye to times he had fond memories. Times that had brought he and Makoto closer.

Though, it was foolish, pointless, to despair. This being their last 'date' didn't mean that wouldn't spend time together anymore, Ren knew this.

Yet, somehow, the prospect of it ending left him feeling hollow, sad.

When the two arrived at Odaiba Seaside Park in their agreed meeting place, Makoto couldn’t find Eiko anywhere.

She wondered initially, if in her nervous haste, she had had them leave too early, arriving well before the other couple.

That must be it, she reassured herself. There was no need to worry. Dates and hangouts between friends were casual affairs, with schedules that weren't enforced that strictly. They would show up at any moment.

Though, as the minutes melted away, and the sun began fading into dusk, she grew anxious. Why hadn't Eiko turned up yet? Had something happened?

Unsurprisingly, Makoto wasn't alone in sensing something was off.

"We didn’t mix up any of the details, did we?" Ren asked, glancing over Makoto's shoulder as she double-checked the message on her phone.

"No." Makoto frowned. "Eiko said to meet right here at around 6 o’clock. Surely, they couldn't have forgotten?"

Makoto sighed. Despite how carefully she had planned, the evening was already falling apart. All because of circumstances beyond her control.

Not to mention, Ren was doing her a favour. She would feel like she was exploiting his good-will if she dragged him out for a date that didn't even end up happening.

Makoto's concern was alleviated momentarily by the chime of her phone.

"Oh, Eiko just messaged me. Perhaps they’re running late?"

Her fingers tapped against the screen, nose wrinkling at the string of words that flashed before her eyes.

Good luck! You can thank me l8r! Ｏ(≧∇≦)Ｏ

"That's strange." She said, turning the screen towards Ren. "Perhaps she meant to send this to someone else?"

Ren's eyes narrowed as they glossed over the cryptic text before looking to her with a shrug.

Hoping for a more concise answer, Makoto frantically strung together a reply.

Eiko? What are you talking about? Where are you?

Though, as she pressed send, clutching her phone in eager anticipation, her patience and optimism began to wear thin.

Makoto doubted the message had not been seen. Eiko was rarely without her phone and normally quite punctual when responding. If anything, her concern had shifted into suspicion.

Eiko laid out an incredibly vague hint, before lapsing into apparent radio silence.

Good luck? What could that possibly mean? What is she up to?

“Should we head back?” Ren asked, his voice pulling Makoto from her reverie.

Her lips pursed.

The offer was tempting. Though, after coming all the way; even having paid the train fare; it would seem like a waste to leave.

They didn't get out of the city often. They could at least enjoy themselves for tonight.

Tourists and other couples wandered by, basking in the picturesque view of the setting sun as it draped over the water.

For every glance she exchanged with passing strangers, Makoto grew more self-conscious, wondering if perhaps they thought she and Ren were together.

If Ren noticed, he didn’t say. Instead, seeming similarly taken by the scenery as she caught him from the corner of her eye. Though it couldn’t stop the pang guilt building her chest. Being alone with him, in a clearly romantic setting, and the longing it stirred inside of her.

"I'm sorry, Ren.” Her apology broke abruptly. “I can tell Eiko. That way, we can be done with... With all of this."

"Hey, if I didn’t know any better Makoto, I’d think you didn’t enjoy my company." Ren smirked, sensing the shift in her mood.

"T-that’s not the case! I just didn’t want to trouble you anymore."

"Makoto, come on. It’s no trouble. I was happy to help you look out for Eiko, getting to spend time with you is a bonus."

"You’re a great friend, Makoto." He tacked on, lamely.

Ren panicked, internally, as the words brought a flicker of disappointment across her face.

"A friend to Eiko, I mean." He reiterated, stumbling over his words. "That’s not to say we aren’t friends. It’s just you mean, so much to me- All of you guys do. ‘Friend’ doesn’t really describe it, you’re like… confidants."

Makoto couldn’t contain the peal of laughter that broke from her lips.

"It’s alright Ren, I understand."

Ren was quiet, at times, but concise and deliberate when he did speak. For him to stammer was unusual.

For everything he had endured and accomplished as their leader, it was a reminder that he wasn’t infallible. Even though Ren seemed more socially attuned than her, he was still an ordinary teenager who could become awkward and flustered. It was something Makoto found reassuring.

Her eyes fell on Rainbow Bridge, stretching back into Tokyo. Reminded of longing daydreams that plagued her, of having someone to walk across it with. She exhaled, wistfully, knowing her luck in that department.

"I guess Eiko was right when she said I would flunk a test on love.” Makoto said. “The only way I could make her think otherwise was by lying. I can’t learn about romance by myself."

"What about me?"

"I appreciate the offer, Ren,” Makoto sighed, “but I think we should stop pretend dating-"

No sooner had she formed the words than they were stifled by the pressure of Ren’s own lips gently capturing hers. Makoto’s eyes widened, the space dissipating between them, as she was pulled into his arms.

Only when the kiss had lingered long enough for her to find her own rhythm, to confirm that it was real, did he pull away, the sincerity and intenseness of his gaze pinning her down.

"You’re right. We should.”

#shumako #shumakoweek #shumako week day 1 #fanfiction #persona 5 #p5

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taizi · 5 years

Text

past the places where we might have turned

persona 5 pairing: pegoryu word count: 6876 title borrowed from everything you want by vertical horizon summary: Ryuji bumps shoulders with him and says, “Their loss, man. You just keep doing you, and screw ‘em if they don’t like it.” It doesn’t feel like enough. “You deserve to be happy,” he adds, and that feels a little better. Akira’s smile stretches into a shit-eating grin. “Is that a confession?” “I take it back. You’re the worst person I know.” So they end up trying to push each other into traffic, but it still feels good. read on ao3

They tear through the peaceful countryside like it’s their mission to make a mark, gunning the engine and kicking up gravel with every hard turn. They lean out the windows so Akira can hear them coming from whole blocks away, shouting and waving, because it’s the kind of hello he deserves.

His neighbors stare, his parents don’t look pleased, but Akira’s on the sidewalk in front of his house with a bag at his feet and his cat in his arms and a grin on his face about three miles wide.

It’s a grin he used to only wear behind Joker’s mask, one that does something kind of wonky to Ryuji’s heart.

“You’re late,” Akira calls out. His voice is so fond. The phone calls didn’t do it justice. Ryuji missed him so goddamn much. “You didn’t forget about me, did you?”

“As fuckin’ if, ” Ryuji manages in the second before they crash into each other, bodies colliding in an embrace whole months in the making.

Morgana yowls in protest, Ann and Futaba complain about Ryuji getting there first, Akira’s parents watch with cold eyes from the front door--

But Akira is laughing. His hair is soft against Ryuji’s cheek, and his hands are hot against his back, and it feels like they haven’t missed a single minute. It feels like a homecoming, even though it’s literally the opposite of that.

Some jangling, dislocated thing inside Ryuji settles, and he holds on to his best friend as though the world would end around them for a second time if he ever let go.

The last time Akira visited, he stayed at Ryuji’s little apartment for a snatched weekend between school days. There wasn’t enough time in that limited window for him to visit the staggering number of friends he’d made in the city, but obviously he’d make time to see the coffee shop he called home for a year.

Sojiro was surprised that day, when Akira pushed open the door with Ryuji, Ann and Morgana. Ryuji remembers him saying something like, “I thought I’d take you brats out to lunch somewhere,” and Akira quipping back, “In that case, we’re in the mood for coffee and curry. Know a place?”

Sojiro blustered and postured a lot, but it was obvious that he was touched. And it would take armies considerably bigger than the ones they were used to dealing with to strong-arm the former Thief out of his favorite place in the world.

This time, Sojiro knows what to expect. In the middle of a sunny Thursday afternoon, they push past the closed sign on Leblanc’s front door, and Sojiro’s waiting with a full spread of food. Akira breathes in the rich smell of ground coffee beans, the hot cinnamon-ginger of curry on the stove, and lets it all go with a sigh so content it makes Ryuji’s heart hurt.

“You’re sure you don’t mind keeping me for spring break?” Akira asks, setting his cat bag down. Morgana leaps up from it to sit on a stool instead. “I could find somewhere else to stay.”

He could, too. He’s got a lot of crazy adult friends who would happily house him for the next three months without batting an eye. Ryuji thinks of Akira living with that terrifying gun dealer or the flirtatious reporter or the medical practitioner who conducted experiments on him and blurts, “Don’t be stupid, Akira. You stay with Boss or you stay with me.”

“Stupid’s right,” Sojiro snaps, “I said you’re welcome and I meant it. And you’re not staying in the damn attic this time, either, Futaba would have my head. We’ve got a guest futon and a living room with your name on it.”

Futaba cheers “Damn right!” from somewhere in the room, and Makoto scolds him, “You were probably thinking of going to that arms dealer, weren’t you? Honestly, Akira, my sister is a lawyer and we have a guest bedroom and the first person you thought of was the arms dealer.”

“You don’t know that’s what I was thinking,” Akira says with a charming smile that doesn’t fool a single person in the room. Obviously that’s what he was thinking.

“You should come home more often,” Yusuke tells him firmly. “You always get these strange ideas in your head about not being welcome when you stay away for too long.”

And their leader’s face goes soft. “I’d visit every day if I could,” he says, and just like before, they all know what he’s thinking; if he had a choice, he’d never leave.

The first month is a bit hectic, because Akira really does have like a thousand friends to see. His time is always spoken for, though he’s happy to have some of his former Thieves along no matter where he’s going. Ryuji tags along every chance he gets, because it’s a little bit amazing.

Somehow, between being the top student in his class and working a handful of part-time jobs and training to exhaustion in Mementos, Akira had time to make all these connections with people. And he says things like “Hifumi taught me how to play shogi,” or “Shinya’s amazing at first-person shooters,” and it’s enough for someone who knows him well. Ryuji looks at Ann or Yusuke or Haru or whoever he’s with and sees them thinking the same thing.

Everything he ever did was for the Phantom Thieves. He poured his free time and all his energy into learning whatever he needed to be a better leader, earning money to keep their armor up to date, letting an intimidating back-alley doctor drug him just so they’d always have access to curatives.

When he made new friends, he learned things from them, too. Not a single meeting was meaningless. Not a single day was wasted. He seized every opportunity he could in both hands and dragged his team up with him every hard-earned step.

God, Ryuji thinks. He’s so amazing.

“God,” Ryuji says, “you’re such a loser.”

Akira moans at him, burying his face in a pillow to shield his eyes from the mid-morning sun. Ryuji beat him awake by like two hours. That has to be a world record or something. He already texted Ann about it, because it’s kind of a momentous occasion and all that.

“So this is what happens when there’s no Morgana around to make sure you go to bed on time,” he goes on, crouching by the bed. “I can’t believe that cat is the only reason you’re a functioning member of society.”

“Ichiko kept me out late,” comes the pitiful mumble. “I thought I’d swing by to see her for a couple minutes after dinner with Iwai and Kaoru but she was so drunk. She kept telling people I was her ex-boyfriend.”

All Ryuji can think to say to that is, “What the fuck?”

“It’s, er, an excuse we used once to get her out of trouble with her boss,” Akira explains, pushing himself upright as though it's a Herculean effort. Propped up on his elbows, the tips of his dark curls burning red in the sunlight, borrowed T-shirt too big and crooked on his shoulders, he looks both unreal and stupidly human. “I used to work at that bar, and all the familiars are used to her, so no one thought she was serious.”

“You used to work at a bar? And you didn’t sneak us in for free drinks? Fake friend.”

“You can get beer out of a vending machine three blocks from your apartment for six hundred yen,” Akira replies dryly. Then he smirks. “But good boys don’t drink, do they?”

Ryuji sputters, feeling his cheeks burn, and yanks the blanket over Akira’s head so he won’t have to look at his stupid face when his best friend starts laughing at him.

“See if I ever make you breakfast again, you asshole.”

“Wait, wait, you made me breakfast?”

Akira is struggling clumsily out of the blanket, and his voice sounds rusty and a little tired but he’s still laughing. Ryuji can’t think of a single person he loves more in that second.

Because mom had to work late, their breakfast is little more than the most appetizing prepackaged food the 7-Eleven around the corner had to offer, but it’s still Ryuji’s favorite kind of morning. Akira finally manages to peel himself out of bed and sits close enough to Ryuji that their knees bump and fights him for the best melon bread.

It’s so easy, with him.

Haru takes Akira’s hand in both of hers, so soft and sweet that Ryuji thinks the whole world slows down to hear whatever she's about to say.

“How have you been?” she asks kindly. “You haven’t said a word about it.”

Makoto pauses in the act of turning a page for a split-second, enough of a tell that Ryuji knows she’s listening closely. On her other side, Goro's writing slows down. Morgana’s tail is swishing, jewel eyes bright. Their sudden focus makes Ryuji think he should pay attention to whatever’s coming, too.

He supposes it is kind of odd that Akira hasn’t had anything to say about his parents, or his classmates, or his baseball team-- all those things he lost when that dirtbag Shido ruined his life-- but maybe he was just happy to be back. He's been busy, and he's had a lot to catch up on.

But Akira’s gray eyes are unguarded here, among his friends, and so Ryuji sees it. That split-second sadness before it’s wrapped up and hidden away again. He says, “There’s not much to talk about,” but just that says enough.

Because Makoto and Goro dart a glance at each other that speaks volumes, and Haru’s expression crumbles a bit. Behind the counter, Sojiro sighs like he’s just aged ten years.

Ryuji looks at Akira, the most magnetic guy he knows, the guy who made about nine thousand friends in Tokyo within a calendar year, and wonders how on earth he could have spent the last five months in his hometown and come back without anything to talk about.

He thinks of Akira’s parents watching their son’s reunion with his friends from the front door. He thinks of the weird looks from his neighbors. He thinks, for the first time, how weird it was that Akira was leaving for the whole spring holiday and there was no one there to tell him goodbye.

“Hey,” Ryuji says, when they’re walking back to the train station. “Was it okay?”

Because he’s worried and he doesn’t know if he should be or not. He hates the possibility that he should be.

“It was okay,” Akira replies. Morgana’s in his arms, rather than on his shoulder or in his bag, and maybe that’s clue enough as to how he’s feeling. “It just wasn’t home anymore. I was gone for a year, and there were a lot of rumors. I wasn’t the person my parents thought I would be. I didn’t-- keep my head down. I don’t know. I just don’t belong there like I did.”

Morgana says, “You know where you belong, Joker.” It sounds like an old conversation repeating itself, but it makes Akira smile.

Ryuji bumps shoulders with him and says, “Their loss, man. You just keep doing you, and screw ‘em if they don’t like it.” It doesn’t feel like enough. “You deserve to be happy,” he adds, and that feels a little better.

Akira’s smile stretches into a shit-eating grin. “Is that a confession?”

“I take it back. You’re the worst person I know.”

So they end up trying to push each other into traffic, but it still feels good.

Time crawls until suddenly it starts to sprint, and before Ryuji knows it Akira is standing by the cafe door with a couple bags at his feet.

“I have three times as much stuff as I came here with,” he complains, but Ryuji stayed over at Sojiro’s place last night and watched Akira pack every memento with care and affection. He’s not fooled by this act for a second.

“Shut up and give me another hug,” Ann orders. Akira shuts up and gives her another hug. It breaks whatever fragile barrier was keeping the rest of them back, and they converge upon him in a loving horde.

“You're sure we can’t drive you?” Goro asks quietly.

“I stayed like three days longer than I was supposed to,” Akira replies, somewhat muffled against Yusuke’s shoulder. “If you try to drive me, you’ll all either be late for your first day of school or exhausted. I’ll be okay on the bus.”

Futaba’s eyes have been red all morning and she’s starting to cry again, clutching at Akira’s jacket when he wraps his arms around her for the fourth time.

“Come visit on the weekends,” she insists. “I’ll pay for your tickets.”

“We’ll all chip in,” Makoto replies, and it says a lot that she doesn't tell him to worry about his homework instead.

“Iwai said he’d drive Kaoru out to see me,” Akira says carefully. He sounds hopeful. “I know you all think he’s scary, but he’d probably be happy to take a couple of you, too.”

“None of us think he’s scary,” Ann lies. “Where do you get these dumb ideas?”

“Futaba and I will stop by,” Sojiro promises gruffly. “And I’ll bring along whichever hooligan asks first.”

It’s a goodbye that extends almost to the point of Akira missing his bus. Ryuji offers to walk him to the station, and Akira smiles at him and tells him it’s okay. Morgana is wrapped around his neck when he shoulders his bags, purring loud enough to be heard above the ring of the bell at the front door.

Ryuji wonders if Akira needs the solitude now to get used to the idea of being alone again for the rest of the year. His fists clench and he has to steel himself not to reach out and grab him and somehow make him stay. There's a moment that passes between them-- a long look, one that's just for the two of them in this crowded cafe, one that feels stolen in front of the rest of their friends-- and then it's gone.

Akira says, “See you,” like it doesn’t cost him anything to say it, and then he’s gone, too.

"Akira went home?" Mishima says by way of greeting, their first day back in school. Ryuji, slumped bonelessly over his desk, doesn't bother lifting his head and mumbles something affirmative. Mishima leans against his neighbor's desk with a sigh. "It's not the same without him around here. I miss that stupid thing he does with his pencil."

Ryuji smiles against his sleeve. "The spinny thing? He does it with his phone, too. He's such a nerd."

"If he's a nerd, I don't even want to think about what that makes me," Mishima says cheerfully. He's mostly outgrown the self-deprecation that used to follow him around like a gloomy cloud, and it makes him a much more likable guy. "It's hard to believe a person like that spent a whole year single."

"It ain't that hard to believe," Ryuji says defensively. "We were busy as hell last year, case you forgot."

"Oh, for sure," their self-proclaimed publicist is quick to concede. "But I mean-- Ann told me she and Shiho are finally dating. So they must have found time."

The annoying detective tendencies are back in force, Ryuji thinks but manages not to say. Something about this conversation is making his prickly temper sit up and take notice. He props himself up an elbow and mutters, "Where you goin' with this?"

"Nowhere, I guess?" Mishima scratches the back of his head. "Just-- you guys were all really close, y'know? I think if Akira was going to have feelings for anyone, it'd be one of you."

"He'd have told me," Ryuji dismisses it easily. "He tells me everything."

Mishima excepts this with a nod, and heads back to his own class when the lunch break ends. Halfway through English, Ryuji props up his workbook and pulls out his phone.

His chat with Akira is still open from earlier that morning, and the last text Akira sent was an extreme close-up of Morgana mid-yowl, captioned "alarm clock." It made Ryuji smile when he woke up to it, and it makes him smile now. He taps out a reply, keeping one eye on his teacher.

skull 💀 at 1:42pm You know you can tell me anything right?

Almost immediately, a little bubble pops up that indicates Akira is typing, even though he's in the middle of class, too.

✨JOKER✨ at 1:42pm I tell you everything

Ryuji grins. He thought so. If Akira had a crush or a secret girlfriend, Ryuji would know. He'd be the first to know.

He says as much to Ann when they're walking to the hangout spot after school, and she rolls her eyes so hard he's distantly surprised she doesn't sprain something.

"You are so dumb," she says, but she throws an arm around him as she says it. "I'm praying for you."

Nearly a month goes by, and late on a Tuesday night Ryuji is startled awake by the raucous ring of his phone. He rolls over and gropes for it, nearly falling out of bed in the process, and swipes to answer as quick as he can so it doesn't wake up his mom in the next room.

"Whazzit," he mumbles, rubbing his eyes.

"You talk to this idiot!" Morgana's voice yowls at him from the receiver. It's enough of a shock to wake Ryuji straight the hell up.

"Mona? Did you call me? How did-- you don't have hands."

There's a scuffle and a distant, hushed disagreement, and then Akira is there. "Sorry, Ryuji. Go back to sleep."

"Hey, no." Ryuji sits up, forcing his mind to focus. "How many times did I call you in the middle of the night last year? It's cool, man, what's up?"

There's a pause long enough that he starts to think he won't get an answer, and then Akira mutters, "Had a fight with my parents."

Something in the pit of Ryuji's chest goes painfully tight. He violently dashes thoughts of his own father away. "Wanna talk about it?"

Morgana insists yes you do! from somewhere on the other end of the phone call, which means Akira is definitely thinking about deflecting. Considering the entire phone call was coerced, Ryuji shouldn't be surprised. But it does kind of make him feel sad.

"It's stupid," Akira finally says. There's wind on his side of the call, creating a soft crackle of white noise against the speaker. He must be outside somewhere. "They don't think I should move back to Tokyo when I graduate. They're trying to get me into the university dad went to. It's-- if I went there I'd never see you. I'd have to fly out, or spend two days on a train, and I can't-- I don't want-- "

His words are beginning to run together, the way Futaba's does when she's panicking. Ryuji's heart is beating a frantic tattoo against his chest, because it's close to three AM and he's not equipped to deal with this, he never knows what to say.

The last time Akira sounded this bad was the night they brought down Shido's palace. The girls were getting in Ryuji's face, terrified at how close they thought they'd come to losing him, and Akira snapped at them to stand down. His voice was almost unfamiliar and his gray eyes were so big and hurt and scared, and he didn't say anything else, as though for all his charm and wit he couldn't say anything else. Ryuji had simply leaned in the rest of the way and hugged him, and Akira hugged him back just as hard, and they never really brought it up again.

Ryuji isn't there to pull him into an embrace this time, and he can't bear the thought of leaving Akira alone even for as long as it would take to call Haru or Goro, so he reaches for the right words.

"You don't have to do anything you don't wanna do," he says slowly. "I know they're your parents, but they're not your only family. Frankly, you got a scary number of people in your corner. They started a riot for you last year, dude. You're not-- you're never in this alone. Not ever. Even if it was just you and me, we'd make it. It's okay to freak out and be scared, but I swear to god, you're gonna be fine."

Akira's breath is shaky, and he doesn't answer for a long moment. Somewhere behind him is the muted ambiance of night-time traffic, and his footsteps crunching through gravel. Ryuji sits in his warm bedroom and wishes he could pull Akira through the phone and wrap him up in the blanket he always steals when he sleeps over and make him watch stupid videos on Ryuji's phone until the last sharp edge of this bad night is smoothed away into peaceful sleep.

But he can't do that. They don't have magic anymore. All he can do is sit here on the phone like an idiot while his best friend is hurting miles and miles away.

"You and me," Akira says suddenly, like he's found a way out of the pit and he's grasping at the first rung of the ladder.

"You and me," Ryuji reaffirms without a second of doubt. "Hell, Akira. Look at it this way. Even if you move to the other side of the world, you're just gonna have to find an apartment big enough to fit everybody who's gonna move with you."

That draws out a muffled laugh, and it sounds a little watery, but his voice is so much warmer than it was. "I'll keep that in mind."

"You better." Ryuji can feel his heart start to settle, can hear Morgana purring from Akira's end of the call, and thinks, somehow, he didn't fuck this up. "Go home, you loser. You're not a Phantom Thief anymore and you have class in the morning."

"Ouch," Akira says, but he's smiling as he says it. "I'm going. Goodnight, Ryu."

Ryuji says goodbye and hangs up the phone, and gets a text before he has a chance to minimize the call log.

✨JOKER✨ at 3:13am thank you

He scoffs, mostly to ignore how damn pleased he feels, and starts looking up train schedules. There's a two-day weekend coming up, and he's got a great idea. Yusuke would call it inspired.

The noise Akira makes when he sees Ryuji in front of his school is worth changing lines twice and standing for the first half of the entire trip. He runs down the rest of the steps, nimbly weaving through the crowd of his fellow students, and slams into Ryuji at a hundred miles an hour. Ryuji laughs and catches him in both arms, squeezing hard enough to bruise and using the momentum to swing around in a few giddy circles.

"What are you doing here?" Akira demands. He looks so ruffled, his glasses slipping down his nose and his curls all tossed around, that Ryuji can't bring himself to let go right away.

"Well, gee, I dunno." Ryuji rolls his eyes. "It's not like I have any best friends in the area I wanted to visit or anything."

They're attracting a lot of attention, Ryuji realizes. He looks around and meets a few stares dead-on, daring them to say a word. Whether it's his bleached hair or the piercings in his ear or the rumors that supposedly followed Akira around since he came home, no one steps up to Ryuji's silent challenge. Everyone just averts their eyes and moves on, talking in whispers.

"Jesus, do they think you're in the mob or something?" Ryuji mutters as they turn to leave. "A guy like you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Akira's voice is mock-indignant, Joker's cultured leer. "I'll have you know I used to run a very successful organized crime ring."

They get a few more wide-eyed looks at that, three schoolgirls who look alarmed to have overheard them, and Ryuji's mouth is working as he desperately tries not to give in to a grin. "Keep your voice down, man. One of these punks is gonna rat you out, and I'll have to bring the whole gang out here to rough 'em up."

That clears the sidewalk fast. Akira's shoulders are shaking, a hand shoved against his mouth to keep the laughter in. Morgana says, "You guys are the worst. This isn't gonna help Akira's reputation at all."

"Who cares?" Ryuji says, draping a shameless arm around Akira's shoulders, just so everyone who sees them gets the right idea. "He's not gonna be here much longer. Once he graduates he's comin' back home, and everyone there already knows he's a danger to society. He won't have a reputation to worry about."

Akira grins, sideways and silly in a way that digs right through Ryuji's heart like it's got an express pass. He's warm against Ryuji's side, lined up against him like they're two pieces of a matching set, and it's just like every single summer day they had to leave behind.

"Snacks," Akira says, pointing out the conbini on the street corner.

"Lemme check into my room at the inn first," Ryuji says, waving the bag at his side for emphasis. "Then you can show me all your favorite places to sneak off to at three AM."

Something sort of strange happens to Akira's expression. Ryuji would almost call it disappointment. "You're staying at an inn?"

"It's a surprise visit, dude. That means you didn't have time to convince your parents to let one of your hooligan friends stay over." He rolls his eyes and gives Akira a nudge that almost trips him off the curb. "I'm not going to tell all our friends you're a bad host because I didn't get to sleep at your house."

Akira sulks for a moment, because he's a big baby, and then says, "Is the inn cat-friendly?"

"You think Haru's gonna book me a room my best friend can't bring his cat chaperone into? Please. Obviously you're staying there with me, idiot, she reserved it for two."

"Like a staycation!" says Morgana, who picks up the strangest things from all the conversations he listens in on. In a rare show of affection, he jumps from Akira's shoulder to Ryuji's, tail swishing in anticipation. "This'll be fun!"

It is fun, but it has nothing to do with the town.

Akira's hangout spots are quiet little nooks and forgotten rooftop corners, places where he obviously goes to be alone. There's a batting cage that's a lot bigger than the one in Yongenjaya, but Akira walks right by it, waving his hands as he tells a story about a grizzled old shopkeeper he made friends with recently.

"Her name's Miss Ito. She made a grown man cry yesterday because she didn't like how he was talking to his kids," Akira says gleefully. "She's kind of my hero."

"Let me guess, you're gonna convince her to give you a job," Ryuji says dryly. His friend shoots him a flashbang smile that's answer enough.

Akira is balancing on the hand rail as they walk, lining up each neat step without wobbling. Morgana is threading through his feet to try to trip him up, and Akira seems to enjoy the additional challenge.

"If you fall on your ass, I'm taking a picture and sending it to the group chat," Ryuji tells him firmly. "I won't try to catch you at all."

"You'll catch me," Akira says with total confidence, pretending to list giddily to one side. "You're a gentleman."

Ryuji kind of wants to push him off now, actually. He does reach up to take one of Akira's hands, giving him a tug back down to earth. Akira doesn't jump down, but he also doesn't let go, and Ryuji maybe doesn't try his absolute hardest to yank his hand away. There's a group of kids their age at the end of the street, casually leaned against a low wall. They don't make a move or say anything smart, they just stop talking to watch Akira and Ryuji go by.

A small, cowardly part of Ryuji wants to drop Akira's hand and go pick a fight like he's got something to prove. The bigger part of him really ismore concerned with Akira slipping and busting a tooth out on the rail, and so he holds on and keeps pace with Akira's steady progress.

"You're gonna get a ticket or something," Ryuji tries next. "Small town cops are the worst."

"I find it hard to believe you know anything about small town cops," comes the cheerful rejoinder. "City boy."

"Definitely not catching you," Ryuji grumbles, but they both know it for a lie.

That night, the rest of their friends realize where Ryuji is, and there's a storm of messages in the group chat that mostly boil down to "how DARE you leave us out, we're gonna kick your ass Skull." Somehow Haru, co-conspirator, is left blameless. Akira, the traitor, giggles and screenshots his favorite texts to save in the photo album on his phone labeled "RECEIPTS." Because he's actually literally the worst person in the world.

Morgana is out exploring the rest of the inn, and probably begging scraps off other patrons with his big blue eyes, so Ryuji and Akira have the room to themselves. They have a mountain of junk food between them, and a pile of DVDs from the rental store, but two movies in and they're both starting to flag. Ryuji can blame his long commute; Akira's just lazy. How people like Mishima think he has his act together is a mystery.

"Which closet are the futons in?" he yawns, wandering along behind Ryuji as they search for bedding. "Oh, here they-- are."

There it is, anyway. Ryuji pulls out the single futon and they both stand there and look at it for a moment. Haru did this, Ryuji thinks at once. Then guilt creeps along. No, she wouldn't. Not Haru.

"Let's just go down to the front and ask for another bed," Ryuji says, rubbing the back of his head.

Akira glances at the clock, and Ryuji reluctantly follows suit. It's late, and the inn is a privately-owned place, run by a mom and her daughter. Ryuji doesn't want to wake them up over a few blankets any more than Akira does.

"It's okay," Akira says, "I'll just come back in the morning."

"What? No." Ryuji spreads out his arms, as though to block Akira's exit. "That's stupid. We share a bed every time you sleep over at my apartment. We can share one here."

For a brief, fleeting moment, something very fragile darts across Akira's expression. He hesitates, his fingers curled into loose fists, uncharacteristically vulnerable for the space of about two seconds.

And then he relaxes with a smile that's as familiar to Ryuji as his own name, and everything goes right back to normal.

"Just don't hog all the blankets."

"Oh, that's rich, coming from you."

They leave the window open for Morgana, and turn out the overhead light, and leave the TV on with the volume turned down low as they crawl under the duvet. The screen throws flickering shadows across the room, the darkness in the corners stretching and shrinking with every new scene, and somehow it makes the room feel smaller, makes everything feel closer and more intimate and oddly comfortable.

Ryuji finds himself watching the colors as they wash over Akira's face. His glasses are folded by the pillow, and his eyes are impossibly dark. There's a curl of hair hanging over one of his eyes, and Ryuji moves before he realizes he's doing it, brushing careful fingers across Akira's forehead to tuck the stray curl out of the way.

Akira shivers beneath the touch, but he doesn't pull his eyes away from the movie.

"'Night," Ryuji murmurs, halfway asleep already.

"Yeah," Akira whispers. His voice is strangely thick. "’Night."

The rest of the weekend vanishes in what feels like the blink of an eye. The innkeeper was so embarrassed about forgetting the second futon that first night that she tries to give them a discount for their whole stay, but Akira talks her out of it.

"No harm done," he said with that winning smile. "It was just one night."

Ryuji groans as he hauls his bag down onto a bench at the station. "I can't believe you're sending me home with all the extra food."

"You're actually complaining about that?" Akira says incredulously. "You won't be when you actually have snacks in your house for the next two days."

"Shut up," Ryuji says intelligently, and then opens his arms for a hug. "Your turn to visit next."

Akira smiles and slips into his arms like he belongs there. They linger together for a long minute, until the platform starts getting a little too crowded, and then Akira reluctantly pulls away.

"Thanks for coming," he says softly. "I know you only did it because I worried you. It means a lot."

Ryuji is not going to let Akira make him cry after the awesome weekend they just had. He shoves his hands in his pockets and says, "You keep saying thanks, but you got nothin' to thank me for. I'd do more than this for you, easy. A thousand times more. And I want to. You don't have to say thanks, not when I want to."

Akira hitches Morgana's bag up a little higher on his shoulder, and hitches up a lopsided smile sort of unlike the one he was wearing a few seconds ago. "Text me," he says, drawing away. "See you."

Morgana mutters something that sounds like "You're both idiots," and Akira doesn't answer him. Ryuji watches him go until he can't see them anymore, and then he sits down by his bag to wait for the train. His heart feels like it's somewhere near his feet, as heavy as concrete.

His phone chimes, and he pulls it out, happy for the distraction.

👽 at 5:46pm soooo how'd it go???

skull 💀 at 5:47pm anytime you show interest in what i'm doing i feel real fear

👽 at 5:47pm that's very wise.

👽 at 5:47pm but seriously, how'd it go

skull 💀 at 5:48pm it was cool. he showed me around town and stuff. and the inn was great, i gotta thank haru again

👽 at 5:48pm the inn was great?? how great??? DETAILS

But Ryuji's not paying much attention to his phone anymore. He's thinking of the inn, now that Futaba brought it up in her roundabout way, and their first night there. It was easy to dismiss at the time, but he's thinking about it, now-- the way Akira looked at him, and the unguarded gray of his eyes, and the two seconds they stood there with a distance between them that Ryuji had never noticed before.

The way he looked in the half-light, his face inches away from Ryuji's, soft lips pressed together, eyes trained safely on the television screen. The way he trembled under Ryuji's hand, and how close he was, close enough to--

Oh.

Abruptly, Ryuji's on his feet. His phone is chiming again but he ignores it, cramming it into his pocket and snatching his bag off the bench. He makes tracks through the station, up the street, and stops dead at the second crossroad, not sure which direction to run in.

"Fuck," Ryuji mutters. His heart is racing, and he's afraid to stop moving, because reason might catch up to him and make him turn around. There's-- something just ahead of him. Something important. He just has to reach out and grab it, but he's two seconds from understanding, two seconds too slow.

"S'cuse me," a soft voice says behind him. He turns to find a girl about his age, with short dark hair and a baseball jacket. She's got a catcher's mitt in her hand and a pleasant smile on her face. "You're Sakamoto, aren't you?"

He blinks, taken aback. "Uh, yeah. How'd you-- "

"Kurusu talks about you all the time," she says. Her voice is a little brighter. "I'm glad I finally got to meet you. I knew I’d see you around eventually.”

Somehow, it's like the final piece he's been missing. Somehow, it explains all the curious looks they've been getting, walking through town hand-in-hand. Somehow, he's missed it every single goddamn step of the way here.

"I think I've been an idiot," he confesses to this person he doesn't know. She laughs. She's got the wrong idea, but also kind of the right one.

"Luckily, I think you'd have to do a whole lot worse than that for him to wanna break up. He's kind of stupidly in love with you, y'know."

She's happy to give him directions. Akira's house isn't far, and the black and white cat sitting on the low wall just ahead is a dead giveaway.

"Mona!" Ryuji shouts, causing a few neighbors to look over and the cat to give a wild start. "Tell Akira to get his ass out here!"

Morgana disappears up to the front of the house immediately, and a second later the door swings open and Akira tumbles out. His eyes are lined with red, and Ryuji is not going to think about that, because it's his own stupid fault why.

He throws his bag down at the gate and stomps the last few feet between them.

"You tell me everything?" he says scathingly.

"Mostly everything," Akira replies. He looks stunned, like he can't believe this conversation is happening. Like he's daring to hope it means what he wants it to mean, but there's no way. Because Ryuji has been so clueless for so long it's a miracle Akira still has any hope left. "Almost everything."

"How long were you gonna let me hurt you?" Ryuji demands. There's something white-hot in his throat, in his heart, in the spaces behind his eyes. He can't stand that he hurt Akira, that he was hurting him without even knowing that's what he was doing.

He thinks of all those afternoons lamenting about a girlfriend, dragging Akira along when he and Mishima tried to score dates, giving him a Valentine's Day chocolate he didn't even mean. Akira, quiet and commiserating and supportive, while his crush complained about being unlucky in love from the seat right next to his.

"You never hurt me," Akira says firmly. "Don't be stupid. You can't change how you feel."

Ryuji grabs him by the shoulders and gives him one solid shake. He's stupid, but Akira's stupid, too, because it's obvious. "You're my best friend, Akira. I've loved you this whole goddamn time. I dunno if it's love like yours, but it's fucking there. You don't see me crawling into bed with Yusuke, do you?"

Akira laughs, but it's a choked little gasp of a noise. His hands come up to Ryuji's wrists, holding him where he's holding Akira. He says, "Well, there was that one time right after Yusuke's birthday-- "

"Oh my god, shut up," Ryuji blusters, and drags him in for a kiss. It's the most effective way anyone has ever made Akira stop talking. He's still and shocked for a moment, and then he melts right there under Ryuji's hands, and then he tilts his head and kisses back, and oh.

This is why people get all stupid over this stuff.

This is why they make movies about it.

This is what they could have been doing for months.

Akira makes an appreciative noise when Ryuji's grip tightens around his waist. His hands are curled in the front of Ryuji's shirt, and he's shivering again, like he just can't get warm. So Ryuji pulls him a little closer, holds him a little tighter, and thinks he'll have to thank Futaba for that brief conversation on that platform--

And then a sudden realization slams him out of his honeyed thoughts: "I missed my train."

Akira leans against him and laughs like it's going out of style.

"Joker, this is serious!"

"Miss Ito will give you a ride," his best friend says, eyes shining. "I may have, uh, mentioned you to her. She's gonna give you the best shovel talk you've ever heard. You'll probably cry."

"Well, I'm glad I have that to look forward to."

Akira's mother is glaring from the doorway, and a few passing teens are hooting good-naturedly at their display, and apparently a terrifying old woman is going to threaten Ryuji with bodily harm if he even looks at Akira wrong for the entirety of the very long ride back home....

But Akira's gray eyes are dancing and his smile is brilliant and he's altogether the most beautiful thing Ryuji's ever been able to call his, so it's a pretty fair trade.

Ryuji kind of hates that it took him this long to catch up, but he's here now. And they've got the rest of their lives together to figure it out.

#persona 5 #p5 #pegoryu #akiryu #kurusu akira #sakamoto ryuji #takamaki ann #sakura futaba #kitagawa yusuke #niijima makoto #akechi goro #morgana #okumura haru #sakura sojiro #my writing #p5 fic

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icecreambat · 7 years

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Story time: Dating everyone in P5 turned Joker into a sociopath

The first time I ended up dating more than one girl in a Persona game, it was an honest accident. I’d already imprinted on Chie in Persona 4, and had no idea comforting Yukiko during her social link would turn me into a two-timing douche. A quick save-state reload rectified this mistake, but it taught me an important lesson: in Persona games, monogamy is not the limit of your teenage life.

As Persona 5 rolled around, I grew fond of Makoto on my first playthrough. With her on my side I experienced the Phantom Thief thrill ride, maxing my social links while gently turning other girls down. It wasn’t until the NewGame+ that I wondered: wouldn’t it be interesting to try the multi-dating thing? That way I could fast-forward all romance scenarios and not watch them on Youtube later like a loser, duh. If this game was intentionally giving me the opportunity to be Tokyo’s biggest Don Juan, then by Mona, I’d do it!

Little did I know, though, that as I embarked on a quest to bag all the single ladies* the whole atmosphere of the game changed. What had been a more or less generic adventure about truth and justice took on some… rather disturbing undertones, ones that went beyond the actual dating scenarios. In fact, the game turned out to be such an interesting social experiment that I wanted to write about it, so here I am. So, this is a recap of how dating multiple people in Persona 5 turned my Joker into a sociopath.

* except for Makoto, because a) I already romanced her before and b)…. it didn’t feel right, her being my first and all. SO SUE ME I’M A LOSER AFTER ALL

So. Here we are again, moving to Tokyo, whoop de doo. NewGame+ means not having to waste days on working out the ropes, so you can focus on the stuff that matters: getting as overpowered as you can in the least amount of time possible. For me, this meant maxing out Kawakami’s social link as fast as I could, because her bonuses are pretty swank – I really could have used the post-Mementos or post-palace massages during my first playthrough too, but kinda forgot about her right after Operation Maidwatch. Well, no more! I was bringing that teacher home left and right at every possible instance, so obviously I ended up maxing her link first. Ergo, we entered a relationship.

I’m not gonna lie: the Kawakami romance is some weird (and arguably illegal) shit. Maybe that kinda set the tone of this adventure from the start, giving me an mc who was 100% ok with romancing his homeroom teacher slash part time maid. Uh… huh. Given that my suspension of disbelief went out of the window right about there, it was easy to pick the “omg i totally like, care about you and stuff” dialogue options that went with it; I mean, I was doing this for science and stuff, no big deal.

That’s why it surprised me that when it was time to romance the next (un)lucky girl, I felt like shit about it. Not because of Kawakami, but because Ann wasn’t some ludicrous dating option pulled out of the “lol what if we let the players date everyone!!” shitpost book. Instead, Ann and the mc had already been through Some Shit together, best friend suicide attempts and sexually abusive PE teachers included, and she was a teenage girl looking for her place in the world. So when Ann confided in me about her feelings and told the mc she loved him, “returning” her feelings –while knowing I was already dating my…. uhh, homeroom teacher slash part time maid– genuinely made me feel like the absolute scum of the earth.

“I can’t do this,” I thought at this point, “Even if these are fictional characters in a fictional game, I feel like shit lying to these girls that I care about them, because obviously that’s not true if I’m so callously dating someone else behind their back. How can people do that in real life if I can’t even do it in a video game? Oh, naïve me! Because my lesson in the callousness of man had only just begun.

Anyway, so. Here I am, dating Kawakami and Ann. I think I figured that lying to my teammates didn’t Feel Very Good so headlining for randos seemed like the better choice to make next: Ohya the reporter ended up being the third girl I romanced, and it was relieving she seemed to understand the unlikely nature of our relationship. “I get that we probably won’t stay together forever,” she was telling me, almost like she knew she was only the third wheel in my extended trailer truck, headed to nowhere fast; the same kinda goes for Tae, the punk rock doctor, whose reservedness somehow made it easier to ignore the serial cheater vibes in the dynamic.

Chihaya, on the other hand, was different. Seemingly a little younger than the other grown-ups, she was already a lot more straightforward about her interest in the mc, and harbored all sorts of weird fantasies about them staying together forever. Which is exactly what I told her would happen. Not! Funny that for a fortune teller she couldn’t see I was also spouting this same shit to four other girls, huh? Chihaya reminded me of Ann, in a way, which is why the Bad Feels actually started to resurface here – it’s one thing to lie boldly in the face of girls (women) who aren’t really that invested in you to begin with, but when it’s people who actually believe said lies… well.

Now, I know, I know. There’s no actual reason to feel guilty, because these choices don’t affect the gameplay in any way. Whether or not the mc is an asshole in some ways will still result in everyone loving the shit out of him, and being sad when he leaves. Sure, there’s the scene after Valentine’s Day where you get beat up for being a cheater and the girls kind of call him out on it, but that’s about it; this isn’t Mass Effect, you can’t go full renegade, etc. etc. But even if the game barely acknowledges the clear disparity in the mc’s words and actions, it’s really hard to overlook as the player, and as I said, it kinda changes the tone of the whole game.

You see, during the course of the story the mc ends up establishing a whole bunch of social links: Ryuji, Yusuke, Mishima and even Sojiro are but few of the guys you end up making heartfelt bonds with too. Only problem is, once you go the Lie Route with the girls, the mc hardly comes across as any more honest with the guys – and this is what really puts a spin on his reliability. Everyone’s always going on about what a great guy he is, but none of them know what a quadruple-timing, lying asshole he is at the same time. And why would they? All he does is tell people what they want to hear!

Apparently the devs of Dream Daddy wanted to challenge the notion that this kind of behaviour automatically leads to “good endings” in visual novels, because it only makes the mc seem a little sociopathic. Sure enough, that’s exactly the word I would use to describe how my mc started to come across in all his social interactions in P5. Well, not all, actually; there was one character whose exchanges with the mc came across as genuine even when virtually nothing else did. Yeah, you guessed it: Akechi.

I’m taking a brief interlude here to talk about Akechi, because my social experiment with the mc’s romances actually ended up underlining how similar he and Akechi are as people. It’s what the game hints at continuously with the whole ~two sides of the same coin stuff anyway, but the point really gets hammered home when you repeatedly watch the mc fake his way through life just like Akechi puts on his own double persona (pun not intended). In that sense, it’s only natural that the two would recognize each other as equals, and that their interactions ring more sincere than any other discussion they have in the game.

But back to serial dating, if you will. After Chihaya, I started dating Hifumi the shogi girl, but to be completely honest I sort of mentally fazed her out; with every new girl I tricked into dating me, the initial unease seemed to diminish until I couldn’t remember what had made me feel so disgusted in the first place. I mean, I was already lying to so many people, what did it matter if I lied to one more, right? It’s not like I actually hung out with anyone ever again after I “entered a relationship” with them, and it’s not like my actions carried over to pre-scripted cutscenes, so who cares, right? Nobody (well, apart from a physical game engine) was forcing these girls to believe my bullshit, so really, the fault was theirs for being so gullible, right!!11

…Well, I might have been able to go along with that type of douchebag logic if I’d only kept dating randos. Since I skipped Makoto, the next girl I got cozy with was Futaba… and this is where the skeezy-ville started to nag on my consciousness again, because like with Ann, you know that Futaba’s been through A Lot: she basically spent the past couple of years as a hikikomori, convinced that her mother committed suicide because of her. Trust is a really big thing for her, so throwing a cheating mc into that equation gets really ugly when you think about how he gains that trust just to betray it. When you add in Sojiro, you’re essentially screwing both of them over while pretending to be a happy little family. If you take these events at face value, it kinda makes you wonder: seriously dude, what on earth is your damage?!

If that wasn’t disturbing enough, we finish with Haru. She is also running from one abuser but, if dating a cheating mc, kind of ends up in the arms of another. Although she enters the story fairly late in the game, it’s no less shitty to listen to her be so grateful for your “support”, knowing you’ve sat through variations of this scene with half a dozen other girls already. I just kind of kept staring at the mc’s poker face (pun not intended, again) while wondering how much worse it seems that none of these choices affect anything tangible in the game, even when the whole theme is helping other people (and shitty authority figures, sure, but mainly helping people).

And you know, it’s really that endless poker face that gives the whole thing such a weird ass vibe: this is a 17-year-old kid who’s moved to Tokyo for a year, and ends up constructing a meticulously crafted fake personality that has everyone treating him like the greatest guy on earth. If you perceive this as the intended story (as opposed to the mismatch of a fixed script and optional gameplay choices that it actually is), Persona 5 suddenly becomes a story much darker than its original premise. Who is the real mc, and why is he doing any of this? What is his actual sense of truth and justice, if he spins it so grotesquely to suit his given situation? How troubled does he have to be for this kind of behaviour to emerge, and what caused it?

I know getting busted on Valentine’s Day is played mainly for laughs, but when you put all this together it’s obvious just getting dumped doesn’t even begin to cover the actual consequences of the mc’s actions should have. For the 100% fake personality he’s clearly constructed up until this point, how anyone can still follow him into the depths of Mementos is beyond me. But hey, I know we’re not operating on earth logic here.

Still, as I mentioned, this levels the mc with Akechi a lot – suddenly it’s very hard to condemn Akechi, even in theory, for the route he ended up taking in life, because isn’t the mc basically doing the same thing? Taking advantage of as many people he can to advance his own ends, with the only difference that he ended up on the winning side? Not only that, but it makes it harder to root for the “good guys”, knowing that you’re not a good guy – you’re just some guy with a big enough charm stat to make people follow your fake ideals, whatever those might in reality be.

Personally, I was also surprised at how easy it was to go from “this is horrible I hate this I can’t lie to these girls” to the “eh whatever, I’ve done this long enough that I’ve distanced myself from giving a shit”, then back to “oh shit oh shit this is so wrong” over the course of a single game. I know this sounds like a hyperbole, but in that sense I’m… actually not that surprised at how people find themselves ignoring those same patterns in real life. Which is why it’s so disheartening there’s only one scene dedicated to the consequences; it would be so interesting if there was something more tangible to remind the player that yeah, you’re entitled to picking these options, but it does turn the mc into someone pretty damn messed up.

I mean, damn – by December I’d maxed out all my social links, and suddenly had shit all to do, and because I couldn’t sit through a single fake date with one of my fake ass girlfriends again, I ended up making my mc train every day and night just so I had something to occupy my time between going out and murdering things in Mementos and/or a palace. Watching him do shirtless pull-ups in his room I sorta realized: Oh my god, I turned my mc into a high school version of Patrick Bateman. This game sure took a turn.

So I suppose the point of this story time is that while dating anyone in P5 (and most Persona games, I’d assume) is ultimately only a gameplay element meant for the player’s extra entertainment, sometimes those seemingly superfluous gameplay elements can turn into unintentional story elements – in this case, an experiment of how easily lying to one person turns into lying to everyone, and how sometimes it’s not that easy to tell at what point you stop being genuine at all. Wow, them video games, huh? Always a source of profound inspiration.... or something.

#persona 5 #idk what to tag this #maybe i'll add a new category for my rantings #and call it #story time #ok for the sake of archiving i'll also add #meta

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c-is-for-circinate · 7 years

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Some thoughts on the very final boss battle of Persona 5

It’s in those very last moments--that final instant, that flash that is as still and infinite as eternity, when all the voices of every soul below reach up to them and their final battle against the God--that Akira knows himself to be a slave.

He’s a rebel. He’s fighting god himself, has struggled his way through hell and up to heaven for it. He is here to champion the cause of free will for every single soul on Earth, and he has no choice in the matter. He never did.

This is what he’s good at, where he excels: fitting perfectly into whatever situation comes upon him. He’s the Trickster, the man of a thousand masks. He can wear any face he likes, and in return, he always wears the face he needs. It’s a bargain of sorts. Akira knows a lot about bargains by now. He has known a lot about rules for his entire life.

Once upon a time, that was a quiet life in a small town where he kept to the middle of his class and hid his face behind glasses and obeyed every rule. Nobody up here with him would believe it, but he was just like everybody else. He would have willingly given over rule of his life to somebody else. He did, every single day--his parents, his teachers, the will of society as a whole. He would have let Yaldabaoth rule over him without hesitation.

He did. That’s the secret that isn’t a secret at all, only he doesn’t think any one of his friends have realized it. They all stepped into the life of a Phantom Thief, one by one, to rebel against whatever force was holding them back. Akira stepped into it because that was the door open in front of him. Because he was chosen. Because it was fate.

He spent a long time in that cell in Yaldabaoth’s Velvet Room. He’s been playing his role for a very long time.

It was a rigged game, Lavenza said. So why play a game at all?

There are rules. Yaldabaoth always meant to take the world, but he’s bound by rules. He’s created by the collective will of the entire world, to be the incarnation of rules, and that means he has to follow them, too. That’s how the story goes: two opposing sides. Order and chaos. Bless and Curse. The God, and the Trickster.

That’s what it means, to be the Trickster. It’s a role. The story requires it. Every story needs an antagonist. Every fate demands an opponent.

It’s been a long, slow, arduous path up to the top of this summit right now, but there is no other path he could have walked. None. He chose the ‘how’, sometimes--picked their days to storm into palaces, certainly, but whether or not they stormed in at all? No. It was never a choice. The door was open in front of him, and he walked through. From the very first moment--he could have stumbled along the way, but there was never any other place he could have ended up besides right here.

He could have turned right instead of left and fallen off a cliff at Akechi’s hands. He could have taken the false Igor’s deal, maybe, and left the world enslaved. Supposedly. He could have left the woman to Shido’s attentions and turned the other way all the way back at the beginning, a year ago almost to the day. That might have been the only real choice in all of this, the step that started him down this path, except there was no choice at all. It was a foregone conclusion as soon as he set foot on the street that night.

He knows about bonds, now. He can feel every single unbreakable chain that he’s forged this year, tying him to his fate. He’d never understood, back at the beginning, the chains tying Arsene’s arms to his--which of them was the puppet, the prisoner, and which of them was supposed to be the will? Even back then, all the way back at the beginning, he was bound--to himself, if nothing else. To his own code. To his own justice. He could not have turned the other way on that first night any more than he can turn around and leave the battle in front of him right now.

He’s the Trickster, after all. Yaldabaoth created him as such, and gave him to the world, because the collective will of humanity demanded a rebel. The collective will of humanity demands freedom and hope and revolution every bit as much as it demands order. He can feel it this very instant. He can feel it right now, the light and the power from every person in Tokyo, in Japan, on Earth who believes in this moment in the Phantom Thieves.

The Trickster is every bit as much a creation and a slave to the will and desires of humankind as Yaldabaoth is himself. He thinks, fleetingly, of online polls and Kunikazu Okumura. He thinks about choices.

He could surrender right now and let Yaldabaoth kill him, destroy his friends, enslave the world. Akira Kurusu is a human being with a human’s free will. He can choose. He can give in--

He told me to go to his place. You know what that means.

Whenever I acted out of line, I was made to sit calmly in that corner.

I’m just a burden to her.

This place is my tomb.

I think it’d be useless.

He can give in to Yaldabaoth. Or he can give in to the rising, rushing tide of hope and determination that demands he win here. Surrender or surrender. Submit to a god, or submit himself to the rules of becoming one.

Shall we make a deal? The ring of his own thoughts echo in his own head, through all the bits of him that Yaldabaoth never quite managed to execute. He’s been killing bits of himself since the very first week he stepped into the Velvet Room, murdering himself by inches in exchange for power, a few more steps down this path that chose him. But some bonds can’t be broken. Arsene hasn’t quite left him yet.

A deal. One last deal, with his own self. One more vow.

Maybe it’s possible for humans to go through life unbound by rules and bonds and the will of society. He’s here to defend that possibility. It doesn’t exist for him, but.

He can choose which bonds to forge into unbreakable steel. He can pick which side he surrenders to.

It’s not in him to break a promise. One last promise, then. Arsene flares up inside him for the first time in almost a year, behind his mask.

He’ll take the power. He’ll be the Trickster, the Joker. He will be Satanael, the Rebel, the Devil Himself. He won’t falter. He won’t fall.

And when this is all done, he’ll just be human, that’s all. This will be done. No path, no story, no more fate, just the wide World spread out full in front of him. He’ll have his own freedom, then.

He raises his gun and gives in to fate just one more time.

#C plays persona 5 #I thiiiiink this technically qualifies as fic?#it's headcanon-y #but I think it's correct #more or less

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coin-news-blog · 5 years

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3-Day Japan Bitcoin Cash Survival Challenge

New Post has been published on https://coinmakers.tech/news/3-day-japan-bitcoin-cash-survival-challenge

3-Day Japan Bitcoin Cash Survival Challenge

Among cryptocurrency enthusiasts, Tokyo is often mentioned as one of the most crypto-friendly cities in the world. Recently, it has especially become known for Bitcoin Cash (BCH) adoption, which is a cryptocurrency that has the characteristics of the original Bitcoin (BTC), as intended by the mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin Cash is meant to be used as cash for daily transactions, while Bitcoin (BTC) is not as useful as before with its high transaction fees, etc.

Three Days Subsisting on BCH

The Bitcoin Cash community in Tokyo is growing. I am an organizer of the Bitcoin Cash Meetup which currently has 1,500+ members. We meet up every Wednesday in Tokyo. I am also a Community Manager at Bitcoin.com and Satoshi’s Angels helping with the community’s growth and adoption of Bitcoin Cash.

Tokyo Survival Channel challenged me to survive 24 hours in Tokyo with only Bitcoin Cash (BCH) — no fiat currency. This was their rule:

All of the things you buy must be paid with BCH, or BCH converted into some kind of e-money. No “fiat” (=Japanese yen) can be used during the challenge. Have a normal city life in Tokyo.

I told them that it would probably be easy to do this, so they upped the challenge to 3 days/72 hours instead. I wasn’t sure if I could really get through 3 whole days without using any fiat currency, but I decided to take the challenge anyway.

Summary of my challenge

Crypto Survival Challenge: Day 1

Crypto Survival Challenge: Day 2

Crypto Survival Challenge: Day 3

Can you Enjoy Tokyo with Only Bitcoin Cash?

Crypto Survival Challenge: Day 1

Monday, August 26th

I didn’t want to mistakenly use fiat (Japanese yen), because it’s easy to do, so I decided to hide my fiat and credit cards in the closet, so I couldn’t touch them. I loaded my Bitcoin.com mobile wallet with 1 BCH (about 32,000 yen worth). My wallet was very lean (in a good way)! I started to feel a bit nervous unexpectedly thinking to myself “Can I really survive without fiat for 3 whole days?”

Lunch at Dot RAW

I started with lunch. I was in the mood for something healthy, so I went to Dot RAW to have their all-you-can-eat salad, soup and deli (3 kinds of dishes) for 1,100 yen. They also have smoothies so I ordered a tropical green smoothie for 800 yen, too. Maybe that was too many vegetables. I paid with BCH from my mobile BCH wallet directly.

Cost: 1,900 yen

Coffee at Gluten-Free T’s Kitchen

Gluten-Free T’s Kitchen across from Tokyo Midtown is popular for visitors who are looking for gluten-free food in Japan. I feel vegetarian/vegan or gluten-free restaurants are still hard to find in Japan. This cafe also makes desserts that taste so good you can’t tell that they’re gluten-free.

Cost: 500 yen

Chocolate snack at Family Mart

You’re probably thinking, “Wait, I can use cryptocurrency at a convenience store?”

The answer is, yes you can! But indirectly. This is how I did it:

A Japanese exchange Decurret has just released a cool service that lets users charge some of the most popular e-money cards/wallets such as Rakuten Edy, Nanaco, and Au wallet with certain cryptocurrencies (BCH, BTC, LTC, and XRP). Here is their press release for the service.

Being able to top-up these popular e-money cards means you can shop at 400,000+ shops for Edy, 490,000 + shops for Nanaco, and Au wallet can be used for places that accept Visa or Mastercard, so that’s a lot of shops. Opening an account with an exchange takes some time, so asking a friend to buy you “gift points” might be another easy option. Edy and Nanaco are charged with gift points.

Cost: 108 yen

Printing at 7 Eleven

I had to print something, so I went to 7-Eleven and used the printer with a Nanaco card which was topped-up using BCH through Decurret. Being able to use a printer with cryptocurrency even indirectly was a very cool experience for me.

Cost: 660 yen

A Quick Drink at MEZZO

You think night clubbing or going to a bar in Tokyo is too expensive? Mezzo is located right by Roppongi Crossing, with a great atmosphere and professional, friendly staff. Their drinks and most of the food are 500 yen (less than 5 U.S. dollars). They accept BCH directly from your BCH wallets.

Cost: 500 yen

Bitcoin Cash IPA and Pizza for Dinner at Two Dogs Taproom

Two Dogs Taproom has been a long-time Bitcoin supporter going back to 2013. They accept BCH and BTC now, directly from your Bitcoin wallets.

They also make Bitcoin Cash branded IPA, which is their best seller. Don’t forget to try Coinspice pizza, which is sponsored by crypto news outlet. If you pay with BCH, you get Bitcoin Cash IPA for a happy-hour price. Even though they accept Bitcoin (BTC) as well, I chose to use BCH because it’s much cheaper to use. When I paid the bill with BCH, I spent 0.08 yen which is less than one-tenth of a penny, but if I used BTC, I would have paid 100–200 yen on top of my bill. Two Dogs’ owner told me that nobody really pays with BTC anymore because of its high fees.

Tipping in Japan isn’t common, but it’s fun to tip staff in BCH, so I added another 300 yen on top of my bill.

Cost with tip: 3,350 yen

A Drink at Jokers

The night club Jokers is about 20 steps away from Two Dogs Taproom. They accept BCH directly from your BCH wallets.

Cost: 1,000 yen

Late Night Curry at CoCo ICHIBANYA (Spicy level 4 🔥🔥🔥🔥)

It was almost 1:30 a.m. and I was getting hungry again… In the late hours of the night, the choices are more limited for a good meal if you want to buy with bitcoin cash (BCH) directly, so I decided to use one of those cards that I topped up with BCH using Decurrent. I ordered a takeout “Summer Chicken Curry” from CoCo Ichibanya with Edy.

Cost: 985 yen

Day 1 Recap

In the morning I was a bit worried if I would be able to survive with no fiat for 72 hours, but by the end of the day, I realized there are so many places that I can spend cryptocurrency directly and indirectly.

No Fiat 72 Hrs Challenge in Tokyo Day 1 Results🗼 1. Healthy lunch & smoothie at Dot RAW 2. Coffee at Gluten Free T’s Cafe 3. Quick drink at MEZZO 4. BCH IPA & pizza for dinner at Two Dogs 5. Drink at a night club “Jokers” …and more! All paid in #BCH😎@_tokyochallenge https://t.co/MbJEo6M3Oq pic.twitter.com/8I03jbp4he

— Akane Yokoo (@YokooAkane) August 26, 2019

Crypto Survival Challenge: Day 2

Tuesday, August 27

I was still full from the late night curry from yesterday, so I skipped breakfast.

Iced Coffee from Family Mart

I need some coffee in the morning, so I went to Family Mart and paid for an iced coffee with Edy. Nice and easy!

Cost: 100 yen

Lunch at Gusto

I had lunch with my non-crypto job colleagues.

I told them that I couldn’t use fiat, so we decided to go somewhere that accepts Edy or Nanaco. They think I’m a weird Bitcoin nerd who can’t stop talking about Bitcoin all the time, but they’re nice enough to bear with me. We decided to go to Gusto, which is a family restaurant chain in Japan that accepts Edy.

When we were about to order food, however, the waiter told me they only accepted Edy through a QR code. Since I have an iPhone I couldn’t install the Edy app, and Gusto didn’t accept the Edy card. I challenged this situation by convincing one of my colleagues to accept BCH for me so she could pay on my behalf with JPY. The peer-to-peer exchange of Bitcoin was made in a few seconds. I had a hamburger and salad.

Cost: 1,023 yen

Hot Coffee from Natural Lawson

Lawson accepts Edy.

I love Natural Lawson because they have so many kinds of high-quality products including organic wine, coffee, snacks, vegetables, etc., in addition to daily essentials all convenience stores have. They even sell organic natto.

Cost: 100 yen

Cake at Dean & Deluca – 583 yen

After work, I was craving something sweet. I stopped by Dean & Deluca at Tokyo Midtown for a delicious looking piece of cake. They accepted Edy.

Note: If you want to exclusively spend BCH for desserts, places I mentioned before like Gluten Free T’s Kitchen and Dot RAW serve desserts as well.

Dean & Deluca

Cake at Dean & Deluca

They accept Eddy payment.

Paid with Eddy!

Cost: 583 yen

3 pairs of socks at UNIQLO

Time for a little shopping.

I went to UNIQLO and purchased 3 pairs of socks. They accept Edy!

Cost: 1,069 yen

Passed by Matsuya

Hmm, I guess they don’t accept Edy or Nanaco…

Bottled Water from Mini Stop

I was thirsty, so bought a bottle of water from Mini Stop, which is another chain of convenience stores, with Edy.

Cost: 91 yen

Eye Drops from Drug Store Matsumoto Kiyoshi

I remembered that I needed to buy eye drops, so I bought a bottle at Matsumoto Kiyoshi, which is probably the largest drug store chain in Japan. They accept Edy.

Side Note: I heard Japanese eye-drops are popular souvenirs among some people.

Cost: 198 yen

Train Fare – 195 yen x 2 = 390 yen

So here came the big challenge — how could I pay for transportation with cryptocurrency?

Decurret’s president hinted this year that they’re thinking about adding crypto for charging Suica, which is one of the two major digital money cards used for transportation issued by JR East. Unfortunately, it hasn’t happened yet, so what to do? I couldn’t think of an easy way to get around this challenge. Asking a random stranger to purchase a ticket and I will pay them BCH did not sound like an easy or fun thing to do. I asked a friend to buy and charge PASMO for me after sending him 4,000 yen worth BCH. I have not touched fiat so far.

Spanish Dinner at La Cocina De Gaston in Nihonbashi – 3,000 yen

Had a nice red wine, delicious tapas plate, and peppermint tea and paella for dinner. They accept BCH directly from your BCH wallet.

Book at Book 1st

I bought a Japanese book about blockchain technology at Book 1st using a Nanaco card!

Side note: “Digital Gold” by Nathaniel Popper is a recommended book if you want to hear an interesting history of Bitcoin.

Cost: 1,998 yen

Don Quijote

Don Quijote is like Walmart. They have all kinds of things from daily consumables to party items, electronics, etc. I often recommend this place for souvenir shopping for my foreign friends who are visiting Japan. I bought a green tea flavored chocolate snack.

They accept Rakuten Edy.

Cost: 149 yen

Frozen Strawberry Margarita at Wall Street House

Wall Street House is located next to Two Dogs Taproom and Jokers in Roppongi’s “BCH District,” where there are about 6 BCH-friendly shops on one block.

The bar is great for a quick drink after dinner. From the counter table, you can enjoy the busy streets of Roppongi while you enjoy your cocktail.

They also offer 200-yen discount if you pay for a drink with BCH.

Cost with discount: 1,000 yen

Window Shopping at Luxury Watch and Jewelry YUKIZAKI – 0 yen

Yukizaki, a luxury watch and jewelry company that has more than 15 shops in Japan, accepts BCH as payment. While it’s too much money for this challenge, it would be hard to pass up if I needed a new watch.

Some of the photos for #TokyoChallenge No Fiat 72 Hours Survival Day 2😋 https://t.co/e3aCcsREr2 pic.twitter.com/TtTmHPsiPn

— Akane Yokoo (@YokooAkane) August 27, 2019

Crypto Survival Challenge: Day 3

Wednesday, August 28th

I worked from home in the morning, and I didn’t want to leave the house but I was hungry. It would have been nice if I could use crypto to get food delivered with services like Uber Eats. This is something that is definitely missing.

Lunch at Downtown B’s Indian Kitchen – 1,000 yen

This pop looking place is actually an authentic Indian curry restaurant. Downtown B’s uses good ingredients to make delicate-tasting curry, which is not spicy.

I ordered a “Grill Lunch Set” that comes with tandoori chicken and a drink.

Exterior

The Menu

Grill Lunch Set – 1,000 yen

BCH accepted!

Cost: 1,000 yen

Taxi from Roppongi to Ebisu

I was running late for my hair cut appointment, so I decided to take a taxi. They accepted Edy.

Note: Some taxis only take cash (fiat) so when you get in be sure to ask them what they accept.

Cost: 1,850 yen

Haircut and Treatment at Hair Salon Mint

I was running late for my appointment at the hair salon Mint, which is one of the few salons that accept BCH directly.

The friendly owner and staff gave me a very warm welcome. Their salon has a spa-style room where they give a variety of hair treatment services. Just hearing about the spa menu made me feel relaxed.

Getting new hair cut

Paid with BCH

After a haircut, they gave me an herbal scalp cleansing and moisturizing hair treatment followed by a neck and shoulder massage — I was completely relaxed. I’d like to come back here for more spa treatments soon. The total bill was 10,220 yen but I got 20% referral discount.

Cost with referral discount: 8,170 yen

Drinks at Bar BASHI in Ebisu

BASHI is a nice cozy bar that started accepting BCH in August 2019. The Bitcoin Cash Meetup that I help coordinate met on day three of my challenge. We welcomed 20 people and discussed topics ranging from basic information on Bitcoin Cash to recent progress on BCH development, etc. It’s a very friendly community in Tokyo, so please join us if you love Bitcoin!

A quick view of tonight’s Tokyo #BitcoinCash (#BCH) meetup at the new venue BASHI in Ebisu! https://t.co/ZkG5E4Fl6e pic.twitter.com/HAdzVBhIIr

— Akane Yokoo (@YokooAkane) August 28, 2019

Cost: 2,900 yen

Drinks at Sheesha Bar No.5

After lots of talking and laughing, I headed to Sheesha bar No.5 with a friend.

We ordered 2 drinks and one sheesha (guava and strawberry flavor). This place accepts BCH directly.

Karaoke is included. They have a great view from the windows. Very Tokyo-ish. There’s also 500 yen per person table charge.

Cost (for 2): 5,500 yen

Cookies from Daily Yamazaki (Convenience Store)

The 72-hour challenge was almost over… I celebrated it with a small bag of chocolate-covered cookies (Takenoko no sato) from the convenience store Daily Yamazaki.

Cost: 140 yen

Daily Yamazaki, one of the famous Japanese Convenience store

Takenoko no Yama! Popular snack.

Can you Enjoy Tokyo with Only Bitcoin Cash?

I’d say living on bitcoin cash for three days is doable, and there are a lot of ways you can use bitcoin cash in Tokyo directly and indirectly. You can easily find restaurants, nightclubs, and bars (some have karaoke inside) that accept BCH directly, but you will have a hard time using transportation, postal and delivery services, etc. with cryptocurrency.

Also, I’d like to talk about the “hidden costs”. As much as these e-money cards are useful, paying with cryptocurrencies directly instead of going through these services is much better in the bigger picture. If you send BCH directly to a shop, for example, there is almost no fee for you or the shop, while if you pay with a credit card or e-money card, shops are charged 3–5% for the payment service even if it’s free for you to use those services. And the irony is that most shops reflect this fee in the product prices so that they don’t loose money, which means us consumers are indirectly “paying the price” for these expensive payment service fees. There is a reason why cost-efficient businesses like Saizeria (family restaurant) don’t accept e-money card payments.

Credit card services, e-money cards, or fiat are probably here to stay for longer than we think, and there are benefits from using those forms of money, too during the transition. There are many other merchants I wanted to introduce but three days was too short for that. You can find recommended shops that accept BCH directly here at Bitcoin.jp.

Enjoy Tokyo with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and let us know your fun experience!

More Tips for Travelers

Opening an account with a Japanese crypto exchange locally is probably unrealistic. So if you need to change your BCH to cash (fiat/Japanese Yen), using services like Local Bitcoin as it does not require registration or ID may be helpful.

If you need more info about spending BCH in Japan, feel free to visit the local Tokyo meetup that’s held every Wednesday night. We’re sure you’ll find lots of useful information and make good connections about cryptocurrencies or Japanese culture from the participants.

If you are a foreigner visiting Japan and you’d like to use an e-money card with BCH, nanaco might be the easiest of all three. I recommend asking a friend to top it up for you beforehand if you live abroad. It takes a few days until you can receive Nanaco points.

If you are a ramen fan, there are two ramen shops (named Ramen Jinanbou) that are very good in Nogata that accept BCH directly. I highly recommend it. Don’t forget to check out Hatano Chiropractic, which is only 1–2 minutes away from Ramen Jinanbou.

I definitely recommend bringing fiat if you want to travel in the countryside. You will be shocked to find that some of the old shops and hotels do not even accept credit cards yet.

How to find stores and restaurants that accept Cryptocurrency: Go to Marco Coino. They keep the most updated info about shops that accept Crypto payment.

Source: news.bitcoin

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rexiortem · 7 years

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Persona 5 Thoughts (spoilers for everything)

I didn't have high expectations when buying Persona 5 several months after its release. Many of the Twitter games people I follow had already expressed mixed opinions, the common thread being a strong opening that doesn't last after the first dungeon. For me, it is a JRPG with enjoyable mechanics that is bogged down by a disappointing story.

I never played a Persona game before, but I have a fair amount of Shin Megami Tensei experience under my belt. When other reviewers complained about the game's difficulty, I came in with a good idea of what was to come. Insta-kill attacks, paralyzing status effects, and random encounters that went poorly due to bad luck were all commonplace in old SMT games, and Persona 5 never turned out as difficult as those. Building a team of personas mixed with the Phantom Thieves party members was a fun puzzle for each new dungeon; every time I made it through a difficult boss it was with a sense of accomplishment rather than relief that I could move on.

Persona 5's UI needs no introduction, it may be one of its most popular features. While it looks cool, I hope that isn't the only takeaway other JRPG developers get from its praise. Persona 5, like many SMT games, has a very snappy menu. The simple act of pressing X to attack an enemy or use an item has a tactile feel that many other JRPGs lack. Its largest accomplishment is that you don't feel like you are just using a menu. You never have to wait too long, and rarely any attack animation lasts too long. The only exception I can think of is when one particular enemy was only weak to physical attacks, which meant that every normal attack led to the several-seconds-longer critical hit animation. Many JRPGs that I enjoy significantly more than Persona 5 - such as those in the Kiseki series - could benefit from faster fights.

Beyond the fighting mechanics, running through the dungeons and fast traveling between maps kept the game moving at a brisk pace. The detective vision that Joker gets early on in the game is a welcome addition - highlighting items and environments you can interact with - although it also felt like a band-aid over a larger design problem that plagues most RPGs. I still haven't decided whether I like the safe room system. On one hand, having limited windows to save your game is a classic method of retaining tension when playing through a dungeon - if you could save at any time this game would be too easy. On the other hand, like most people who have graduated from college, I don't have much time to play video games, and losing 30 minutes of progress can ruin a night. While it never turned me away, I can see why other people would get frustrated by Persona 5's harsh battle penalties combined with a limited save system.

Persona 5's story and characters, unfortunately, fizzled out quickly for me. Kamoshida was a highlight villain in terms of personal involvement, and is a great choice as the first big bad to fight. Part of this is how believable he was - this was someone that could be in your neighborhood, that could be in charge of your kids. He carried himself well around the adults, and often manipulated the kids enough that they would feel like the bad guys, and he the victim. Making him confess to all his crimes was rewarding to me personally, not just because it was a goal that the game laid out for me. After Kamoshida, the villains quickly devolve into cartoon territory. Not every bad guy needs to have ten layers of depth, but the lack of any made going after them feel much more hollow than Kamoshida.

What I found especially disappointing was how Persona 5 handled the concept of Palaces. Early on, Morgana explained that palaces are a result of a person's distorted desires. This explanation was vague enough that the writers could have dived into what exactly a distorted desire entailed. Desires are not inherently bad things. While this concept is somewhat explored in Futaba's and Sae's palaces, it never goes far enough to ask how a desire that could have been born with good intentions could hurt the person and others around them. Instead, we get cookie cutter bad guys that want money and power because... they are bad guys.

I also didn't find myself caring much for Persona 5's cast of social links and party members. I definitely have favorites, with Yusuke, Sojiro, and Hifumi being my top 3, but the story rarely takes a dive into any character's motivations or goals. I'm not the first to write this criticism, but it feels as if once each new character's introductory segment is done, they are reduced to flat character tropes. I liked everyone well enough, but I also don't see myself missing anyone from that universe. I longed for the world building that I've come to expect from other series like the Kiseki games. Talking to NPCs in Persona 5 is a chore, no one says anything interesting nor does it go anywhere. Again, not every RPG needs 50,000 lines of dialogue to achieve a meaningful plot or world, but Persona's Tokyo feels routine and lifeless compared to other, quieter settings.

For all the relevant commentary Persona 5 has - public apathy, a predatory older generation, the effects of corporate greed - it has a distressing lack of self-awareness. Any time I turned on the game, my Playstation 4 eagerly reminded me that I couldn't record footage for most of the game. While I didn't care to record myself blankly staring at fusion screens for an hour, the simple fact that I couldn't decide for myself thanks to a corporate decision made me feel like a lot of the commentary fell flat on its face. Criticisms of Persona 5's social commentary go much deeper, but I don't have the vocabulary to voice them. Other writers much more learned than me have done a better job already.

My time with Persona 5 clocked a little under 100 hours, and I don't regret the time I spent. The dungeons were fun, the music is amazing, and while the characters were nothing spectacular I did enjoy their company. It's not a game that I see myself replaying anytime soon, but if I did, I would be interested in trying with a harder difficulty while skipping over most of the story.

Some random points:

- I love most of the soundtrack, but if I had to pick a favorite, it would be Madarame's palace. I can put that music on loop for a whole day and not get sick of it.

- While I liked (and relate to) Kawakami the most out of the romance options, the circumstances around her social link were so off putting that I couldn't stand it. I ended up going with Hifumi.

- I was aware of Shido's palace being the infamously bad one, but I didn't feel like it was as long as other people said. Then again, I've already been badly burned once by Trails of Cold Steel 2, where finishing the "Final Dungeon" meant you had 15 more hours of game left.

- Gating social links behind Guts/Kindness/etc is lame.

- Mementos sucks

- what if it wasnt akechi who betrayed you but like if mishima was getting freaked out b ythe cops and so he ratted you out and its like a whole thing. just asking questions

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coin-news-blog · 5 years

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3-Day Japan Bitcoin Cash Survival Challenge

New Post has been published on https://coinmakers.tech/news/3-day-japan-bitcoin-cash-survival-challenge

3-Day Japan Bitcoin Cash Survival Challenge

Three Days Subsisting on BCH

Tokyo Survival Channel challenged me to survive 24 hours in Tokyo with only Bitcoin Cash (BCH) — no fiat currency. This was their rule:

All of the things you buy must be paid with BCH, or BCH converted into some kind of e-money. No “fiat” (=Japanese yen) can be used during the challenge. Have a normal city life in Tokyo.

Summary of my challenge

Crypto Survival Challenge: Day 1

Crypto Survival Challenge: Day 2

Crypto Survival Challenge: Day 3

Can you Enjoy Tokyo with Only Bitcoin Cash?

Crypto Survival Challenge: Day 1

Monday, August 26th

Lunch at Dot RAW

Cost: 1,900 yen

Coffee at Gluten-Free T’s Kitchen

Cost: 500 yen

Chocolate snack at Family Mart

You’re probably thinking, “Wait, I can use cryptocurrency at a convenience store?”

The answer is, yes you can! But indirectly. This is how I did it:

Cost: 108 yen

Printing at 7 Eleven

Cost: 660 yen

A Quick Drink at MEZZO

Cost: 500 yen

Bitcoin Cash IPA and Pizza for Dinner at Two Dogs Taproom

Two Dogs Taproom has been a long-time Bitcoin supporter going back to 2013. They accept BCH and BTC now, directly from your Bitcoin wallets.

Tipping in Japan isn’t common, but it’s fun to tip staff in BCH, so I added another 300 yen on top of my bill.

Cost with tip: 3,350 yen

A Drink at Jokers

The night club Jokers is about 20 steps away from Two Dogs Taproom. They accept BCH directly from your BCH wallets.

Cost: 1,000 yen

Late Night Curry at CoCo ICHIBANYA (Spicy level 4 🔥🔥🔥🔥)

Cost: 985 yen

Day 1 Recap

— Akane Yokoo (@YokooAkane) August 26, 2019

Crypto Survival Challenge: Day 2

Tuesday, August 27

I was still full from the late night curry from yesterday, so I skipped breakfast.

Iced Coffee from Family Mart

I need some coffee in the morning, so I went to Family Mart and paid for an iced coffee with Edy. Nice and easy!

Cost: 100 yen

Lunch at Gusto

I had lunch with my non-crypto job colleagues.

Cost: 1,023 yen

Hot Coffee from Natural Lawson

Lawson accepts Edy.

Cost: 100 yen

Cake at Dean & Deluca – 583 yen

After work, I was craving something sweet. I stopped by Dean & Deluca at Tokyo Midtown for a delicious looking piece of cake. They accepted Edy.

Note: If you want to exclusively spend BCH for desserts, places I mentioned before like Gluten Free T’s Kitchen and Dot RAW serve desserts as well.

Dean & Deluca

Cake at Dean & Deluca

They accept Eddy payment.

Paid with Eddy!

Cost: 583 yen

3 pairs of socks at UNIQLO

Time for a little shopping.

I went to UNIQLO and purchased 3 pairs of socks. They accept Edy!

Cost: 1,069 yen

Passed by Matsuya

Hmm, I guess they don’t accept Edy or Nanaco…

Bottled Water from Mini Stop

I was thirsty, so bought a bottle of water from Mini Stop, which is another chain of convenience stores, with Edy.

Cost: 91 yen

Eye Drops from Drug Store Matsumoto Kiyoshi

I remembered that I needed to buy eye drops, so I bought a bottle at Matsumoto Kiyoshi, which is probably the largest drug store chain in Japan. They accept Edy.

Side Note: I heard Japanese eye-drops are popular souvenirs among some people.

Cost: 198 yen

Train Fare – 195 yen x 2 = 390 yen

So here came the big challenge — how could I pay for transportation with cryptocurrency?

Spanish Dinner at La Cocina De Gaston in Nihonbashi – 3,000 yen

Had a nice red wine, delicious tapas plate, and peppermint tea and paella for dinner. They accept BCH directly from your BCH wallet.

Book at Book 1st

I bought a Japanese book about blockchain technology at Book 1st using a Nanaco card!

Side note: “Digital Gold” by Nathaniel Popper is a recommended book if you want to hear an interesting history of Bitcoin.

Cost: 1,998 yen

Don Quijote

They accept Rakuten Edy.

Cost: 149 yen

Frozen Strawberry Margarita at Wall Street House

Wall Street House is located next to Two Dogs Taproom and Jokers in Roppongi’s “BCH District,” where there are about 6 BCH-friendly shops on one block.

The bar is great for a quick drink after dinner. From the counter table, you can enjoy the busy streets of Roppongi while you enjoy your cocktail.

They also offer 200-yen discount if you pay for a drink with BCH.

Cost with discount: 1,000 yen

Window Shopping at Luxury Watch and Jewelry YUKIZAKI – 0 yen

Some of the photos for #TokyoChallenge No Fiat 72 Hours Survival Day 2😋 https://t.co/e3aCcsREr2 pic.twitter.com/TtTmHPsiPn

— Akane Yokoo (@YokooAkane) August 27, 2019

Crypto Survival Challenge: Day 3

Wednesday, August 28th

Lunch at Downtown B’s Indian Kitchen – 1,000 yen

This pop looking place is actually an authentic Indian curry restaurant. Downtown B’s uses good ingredients to make delicate-tasting curry, which is not spicy.

I ordered a “Grill Lunch Set” that comes with tandoori chicken and a drink.

Exterior

The Menu

Grill Lunch Set – 1,000 yen

BCH accepted!

Cost: 1,000 yen

Taxi from Roppongi to Ebisu

I was running late for my hair cut appointment, so I decided to take a taxi. They accepted Edy.

Note: Some taxis only take cash (fiat) so when you get in be sure to ask them what they accept.

Cost: 1,850 yen

Haircut and Treatment at Hair Salon Mint

I was running late for my appointment at the hair salon Mint, which is one of the few salons that accept BCH directly.

The friendly owner and staff gave me a very warm welcome. Their salon has a spa-style room where they give a variety of hair treatment services. Just hearing about the spa menu made me feel relaxed.

Getting new hair cut

Paid with BCH

Cost with referral discount: 8,170 yen

Drinks at Bar BASHI in Ebisu

A quick view of tonight’s Tokyo #BitcoinCash (#BCH) meetup at the new venue BASHI in Ebisu! https://t.co/ZkG5E4Fl6e pic.twitter.com/HAdzVBhIIr

— Akane Yokoo (@YokooAkane) August 28, 2019

Cost: 2,900 yen

Drinks at Sheesha Bar No.5

After lots of talking and laughing, I headed to Sheesha bar No.5 with a friend.

We ordered 2 drinks and one sheesha (guava and strawberry flavor). This place accepts BCH directly.

Karaoke is included. They have a great view from the windows. Very Tokyo-ish. There’s also 500 yen per person table charge.

Cost (for 2): 5,500 yen

Cookies from Daily Yamazaki (Convenience Store)

The 72-hour challenge was almost over… I celebrated it with a small bag of chocolate-covered cookies (Takenoko no sato) from the convenience store Daily Yamazaki.

Cost: 140 yen

Daily Yamazaki, one of the famous Japanese Convenience store

Takenoko no Yama! Popular snack.

Can you Enjoy Tokyo with Only Bitcoin Cash?

Enjoy Tokyo with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and let us know your fun experience!

More Tips for Travelers

I definitely recommend bringing fiat if you want to travel in the countryside. You will be shocked to find that some of the old shops and hotels do not even accept credit cards yet.

How to find stores and restaurants that accept Cryptocurrency: Go to Marco Coino. They keep the most updated info about shops that accept Crypto payment.

Source: news.bitcoin

0 notes