Chapter Text
Souji’s first major realization of the year is that it’s surprisingly difficult to be alone in Inaba.
You’d think that a small country town located out in the most far-flung of nowheres would be a lonely place. He knows he thought so, before being delivered here in a flurry of leaves in the wind and the steely whistle of the morning train—but ten months has been more than enough to teach him otherwise. There’s something about Inaba’s smallness that draws everyone who lives in it so close to itself, the threads of one life tangling in the ends of so many others it’s virtually impossible to glance over your shoulder without spotting a familiar face.
Take today, for example. He was ready, early this morning, to make the first shrine visit of the new year by himself, his uncle and cousin having begged off in light of their recent discharge from the hospital—never mind that he had had to cajole and reason and joke and plead for almost half an hour before Nanako would agree to stay in bed. It wouldn’t have been his first time to stand before a shrine, hands together and head bowed, placed in the smack middle of the crush of cheery groups of friends and closely knit little families and yet, somehow, still quite alone.
“Hey, partner!”
The shrines in his memories are bigger, towering and ornate homunculi of red paint and gold leaf, and the crowds milling about more boisterous. On this first day of the year, sleepy little Inaba only has its own humbler (and, to his mind, much friendlier) counterpart to offer him, residents of the town trickling quietly in and out of the unpainted wooden gates. And the surprise of not one friendly face but four, as Souji spies the distinctive shapes and colors of one familiar family on the curb—Mr. and Mrs. Hanamura smiling gently out at him, Teddie sketching huge rainbow shapes in the air with his arms as he waves, and Yosuke, half-buried in a voluminous, bright red jacket, one arm likewise lifted in salutation.
“My mom said to ask you to visit with us,” he says as he strides across the street to meet Souji halfway. There’s a slight flush, flowering across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, likely from the chilly air, and small, pale clouds of breath come out of his mouth in time to the words. “Nobody should be alone on New Year’s Day, after all. What d’you say?”
What can he possibly say to that? The sight of Yosuke’s broad grin is enough to push his own mouth up into a small answering smile and all he manages is a polite litany of “thank you’s”—for the offer, for the subsequent good wishes from Yosuke’s parents, the murmured words of praise about how tall he is, how handsome, how smart to be able to ace all his tests, how wonderful for taking such good care of Dojima-san and poor Nanako-chan. He’s never been cooed at and fussed over in this way by anyone before, or been taken by the elbow and guided forward to say his prayers, or had coins pressed into his hand for the offering—like it’s the simplest thing for the universe to pick him up and slip him ever-so carefully in with someone else’s family.
Maybe this is something other people get used to, the idea of being part of some kind of “us,” but even after ten months in Inaba the thought remains as startling to Souji as the thought of growing a second head, or of losing an arm. He feels it as a warmth, settling feathery above his heart in spite of the midwinter cold that nips at his ears and the back of his neck. Then there's the glow of Yosuke's smile again as they stand shoulder-to-shoulder before the offertory box, smaller now, a little sheepish: Sorry, Teddie and I talk about you all the time.
In perfect time with the rest of the Hanamura household, Souji claps his hands before the shrine, bows his head, and prays. He’s not sure what he should wish for, and there are too many images from the last ten months cycling behind his closed eyes—too many faces that now light up in recognition at the sight of him in shops and on street corners, too many “us”-es—that all he can think to say to whatever force might be listening is thank you.
Thank you for bringing me here.
“Hey, hey.” Yosuke again, in a whisper that pulls him right out of his prayer, a sharp elbow prodding him in the side, real and solid but nowhere near hard enough to hurt. “What’d you wish for?”
“They won’t shut up about you,” Yosuke says into his phone that night. “They just kept going on and on at dinner about how wonderful you are. I mean, get this, my mom wants to find you a girlfriend—she wouldn’t even believe me when I told her you didn’t already have one.”
“Say thank you for me.” There’s not a shred of irony in the voice on the other end of the line, in the gentle murmuring laugh, nearly soundless. “I think they’re wonderful too.”
Are they, really? Yosuke pauses. Running just underneath his conversation with Souji are all the sounds of his house, an everyday sort of commotion so familiar now it’s easy not to hear it—his parents singing along to some old record in the dining room, Teddie warbling right alongside them and substituting any forgotten lyrics with “lalala’s” and “shoobeedoobeedoo’s,” the creak of cabinets opening and closing, ceramic plates clattering against each other as they’re put away.
He can imagine it’s not so lively at the Dojimas’, for all that it’s likely just as warm (they’re a small, Teddie-free household, for one). To say nothing of—there’s a sudden, inexplicable knot in his chest as he realizes this—a house he doesn’t know, three cities away, empty and shut down behind drawn curtains and locked doors until Souji finally comes back to it. A house—or is it an apartment?—with white boxes of empty space in his imagination where the rooms are supposed to be, and a Souji he’s not quite so familiar with closing the front door behind him, bag slung over his shoulder, alone.
To be frank, Yosuke finds himself a little shocked at how little he likes this idea—how intense the bitter taste it leaves in his mouth is.
“For the record,” he says, “you can come over for dinner whenever you want. Bring Nanako when she’s better. We can make it a party.”
He can see it already, his father at the stove, his mother breaking out the good china, Teddie pulling a chair at the dining table out for Nanako with a princely flourish. And Souji framed and smiling in the doorway, stepping out of his shoes and into the Hanamura household with all the poise in the world, like he’s always belonged there, like it’s only right. Probably with a gift in hand, of course, as a courtesy; Souji’d remember something like that. Pastries, maybe, or bread. Or flowers for the house—but if so, cue another monologue from Mom about what a nice boyfriend he’d make some lucky girl, some daughter of a friend of hers, some niece. But even that wouldn’t be so bad, Yosuke thinks, for a little more light in the house.
“I’ll tell her.” There’s no background noise for Yosuke to pick up, just Souji’s voice and the rise and fall of his breath into the receiver—but maybe if his smile had a sound that would be it, that whisper of indrawn air, so soft you’d miss it if you weren’t listening close. “We’ll take you up on it soon, definitely.”
“Yeah, you’d better.” Yosuke swivels toward his desk and his eyes fall on his new calendar. It's a New Year present from Teddie, grabbed on a five-second run through the office supplies section at Junes. The paper is an embarrassing shade of pastel-yellow, decorated with smatterings of pink and blue stars, but at least the boxes that mark the days are each a few inches across—big enough to write notes in, perfect for drawing up plans, deciding what to do with time. "Just let me know when."
And because he's already started thinking about time, the questions begin to wind up in front of him one by one, little threads of smoke and uncertainty: How soon is soon? How much time do they have left? And again the image of the house-or-apartment buried somewhere in the shadowy, jagged outline of a big city, so far off it may as well be some other life, some other Souji who’ll be heading home to it on the bullet train in… how long?
“Souji?”
“What’s up, partner?”
He’s never been good at math, and the calculations come so easily and so quickly to him that he almost doesn’t want to believe how all the numbers add up. From January 1 to March 20, 79 days, 103 hours, 6,180 minutes of human time. Big numbers, but Yosuke can’t help wondering if they’ll be enough, given how quickly they burned through last year, racing through each week and each new mystery until all they had left was just that little handful of seconds counting down to midnight.
“Let’s take a trip or something soon,” he says. “With everyone. One last big hurrah before…”
Yosuke lets the sentence trail. Souji sits, steady on the other end of the phone in his hand, still so sure, still so near, and waits.