i've tried to be sweet, i've tried to be kind

Alone in his attic once more, Akechi stumbles out of bed long enough to light the candle, then huddles back under his quilt; the attic’s chilly even on summer nights, and arctic in winter. With a pang of regret for his future smartphone with its secure notetaking capabilities, and for his journal with its lock and all the cool stationery Amamiya-kun had given him—he checks hopefully for a reply to his text, but maybe it’s still too early—he pulls his own old notebook from his school backpack and, thinking of Raven-kun, gets to work.

What Happened (and what will happen)


• Another dimension, made of cognition. The Velvet Room. “between dream and reality, mind and matter.” It’s real here because Ren-san knew about it, and because Igor-san told me to find it.
  
  
• It brought in lots of the same people from different worlds. Mostly me. Also Amamiya-kun (who sometimes was Kurusu-kun), and Haru-san, and Sakura-san, and some others.
  
  
• I didn’t always exist (??). I was 18, but I drank something that made me younger. Raven-kun says older-me is back there now, and I came back here just like Igor-san said I would. So there are two of me now, but really me, not another universe’s me. Trust Igor-san??

He underlines that last bit, and draws a heavy box around it, thinking hard.

• In the future, I worked for him, hurting people and killing them with my Persona in the Metaverse. (Persona: part of you that’s magic and can fight and used to be your Shadow. Metaverse: a cognitive place like the Velvet Room, except you get into it with an app on your smartphone (???). It’s like Raven-kun’s TV world, except not.
  
  
• (I don’t have a smartphone. Do I need one?)
  
  
• (get enough money for a smartphone)

Reliable income is still something of a problem for him; he chews his pencil.

• Ren-san was on the other side, with the Phantom Thieves. They used the Metaverse to fix bad people by stealing their hearts. But we were friends too, sort of, and in the future I died and he wanted me to undo it.
  
  
• I don’t want to die and I don’t want to kill anybody.

He slowly underscores that three times, screwing up his face tight until he stops thinking things like even if they really, really, really fucking deserve it. He pictures Haru-san telling him she wasn’t kind, telling him it was okay to think the bad things in his heart. It’s easier to agree with that, now he’s had his moment in the sun.

People to find, he adds next, in the candle’s barely-there light.

• Igor-san. He said an evil god will take over the Velvet Room in my future. I guess this is what he wanted from me, to undo that. The evil god is meant to give me my Persona. But Igor-san said if I can find him first, then I can maybe change that.
  
  
• (Do I really want to change that in particular? Is the evil god evil, or just different? I don’t want to do what Igor-san tells me just because he tells me to do it.)
  
  
• All he would say about how I find him is that I need to make “bonds” (friends). And the reason I was bad in the future is because I didn’t have any. But I have some now. Raven-kun and Amamiya-kun and Crow-san and Haru-san. And even if they’re gone, they’re not gone if I can still text them. And maybe they won’t even forget about me after all, because I’m an Akechi and I’m specia

The words blur with tears and he stops writing, amazed at his own boldness, at the string of names that spilled out of him like a charm. Special? Him? Nobody thinks he’s special, not here in the real world. And he knows so well that, as soon as you’re out of sight, people just forget you.

In the end, he picks up his eraser and removes that whole last line, blinking hard before he goes on.

• I have to make new bonds in the real world, with people who don’t know me. People who can see me and so they won’t forget me. I have to be honest with them so they can really see me and really be a bond. But what I know will be useful to them if I’m careful, so maybe it will be okay?

Yeah, this is what Crow-san would have labelled “transactional thinking”, for sure. Crow-san would be giving him that really annoying look, right now, pretending like he wasn't projecting and like he could read all Magpie's secrets on his face.

• And then maybe I can really find Igor-san and change my future. Maybe I can be a good guy after all.
  
  
• I need to think about him. But what I did didn’t work. And if I do everything right from now on, then future-me will have better resources. I will definitely do something about him, though. For her. And for future-me. And because it’s the right thing to do. But it can wait for now.

Again, he stares at that one hard. It had been the most important thing in the world, when he left. More important than anything else; more important than school. More important than his own life, for sure. But now it seems distant; hollow and ugly. A false promise, a pretence of purpose that rings like a cracked bell.

He adds one more line.

• or maybe I won’t even ever look for him at all