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1.
Save for the media and admirers crowded up against the windows, the tofu shop is much like the rest of Inaba's shopping district: small, aging, and largely empty. Naoto cannot comprehend how this place spawned a nationally-famous starlet, or why said starlet would wish to abandon her career to return here, though she suspects the idol industry itself would provide both answers. Rise Kujikawa might, too, but her attention is largely focused on a block of tofu rather than on Naoto. This is only mildly insulting.
Kujikawa stands behind the shop counter, clad in a plain white shop apron. Her face is nearly as pale again, and she shies away every time one of the fans calls her name from outside the glass. "I'm sorry," she says, softly. "Why are you here, again?"
Her distraction is understandable. And in truth, Naoto had no reason to come here other than the knowledge that Risette presents a high-profile target and a burgeoning hunch involving television appearances. "Simply to warn you to be watchful," she explains for a second time. "The murderer has not been apprehended. Please, take advantage of the police presence."
Kujikawa lifts her head and looks straight at Naoto, eyes narrowed. "Why do you care? Are you a fan?"
Naoto shakes her head. "As I said, I work with the police – and I have no desire to see this case claim another victim."
The suspicion is gone from Kujikawa's expression, replaced by exhaustion and the ghost of a smile. "Okay, Shirogane-san." She glances over Naoto's shoulder, bites her lip, slowly shakes her head. "Those journalists outside saw you talking to me, so they're gonna ask a hundred questions. Be careful on your way."
Naoto, unhappily accustomed to her own, lesser fame, nods back. "I will. You do the same."
2.
"So, how are you finding Yasogami?"
Naoto glances up from her shoe locker. Rise is peering around the side, smiling cheerfully and clutching an eye-wateringly pink and purple lunchbag.
"It's pleasant," Naoto says, though the small pile of envelopes inside her locker makes it difficult to sound enthusiastic. Her ‘fans' are proving as persistent as they are misguided, no matter how many times she rebuffs them. Deliberately or otherwise.
Rise glances at the envelopes. "Oh. From your fan club, huh?" She shrugs, and the smile turns knowing. "Trust me, I know how it feels. Though I think you might get more than me and Yukiko-senpai."
It's difficult to reconcile this Rise – bright, bubbly, unreserved - with the white-aproned girl in the tofu shop. Naoto wonders what has changed since then; what has changed Rise, to be precise.
"Something up, Naoto-kun?" Rise asks, and Naoto realizes then she's been staring.
"Ah. No, nothing."
Rise shrugs again, then holds up the bag. "Okay. Hey, do you wanna come have lunch with me? I made it myself and there's tons left over." Her forehead creases in a small frown. "The recipe didn't say there would be, but I guess I misread it."
It's an offer Naoto has received from several of her more foolish admirers, and it would normally place Rise among the same group. But there is something different about her; something catching about her friendliness and practiced sociability. This makes sense in the abstract, given Rise was once Risette, but experiencing it in person is quite another matter. Heat rushes over the back of Naoto's neck, burning under the collar of her school jacket. "Very well," she manages, and Rise smiles the brightest smile Naoto has yet seen.
3.
The Port Island trip was a disaster and the journey back to Inaba is far too long. Naoto made certain to secure a seat among a group of boys, but that has not stopped a small gaggle of female admirers from working their way down the train, apparently solely to giggle and whisper from a few seats away. The seat beside her remains mercifully empty – or at least it does until Rise Kujikawa slips into it. Naoto didn't even see her approaching down the train aisle.
"Naoto-kun, I am so sorry!" she blurts.
"I-I don't think we need to pursue the topic." Naoto tips down the brim of her cap, cheeks already burning, and stares resolutely out of the window.
"We totally, totally do." Rise's voice drops to a whisper. "I didn't mean to – you know. Kiss you."
The burn in Naoto's cheeks escalates to a small inferno. "Y-Yes, well," she stammers, then tries to tip her cap down again and realizes how close it is to falling off. "Let's not—"
"Not that kissing you is a bad thing!" Rise continues, as if Naoto hasn't spoken. "But I didn't even ask, I was too – you know, the d-word – and I wanted to apologize sooner but the senpai were always around and I figured you wouldn't want them to know, it's probably enough that Kanji-kun saw us, though I don't think he'll tell anyone, not that I'd mind, but…" She trails off, having either finished her sentence or remembered the need to breathe. "Well, anyway, I'm sorry."
Helping Kanji take Rise back to the hotel was a horrible, horrible mistake. There wasn't even alcohol in the drinks, Naoto reminds herself miserably, so how could Rise possibly have been drunk? The atmosphere? And she tasted nothing like alcohol. Strawberry lip gloss, mostly. Which Naoto doesn't want to think about at all, so she scrubs a hand over her face, turns back to Rise, and mumbles, "Apology accepted."
Rise positively beams at this. "Great!" she says. And she doesn't leave. If anything, she settles in further. Soon she's playing with her phone, legs stretched out as far as possible in the narrow gap between seats. But she is quiet, at least, and they fall into an amiable silence. Sitting next to another person is less irritating than Naoto expected, even when they might have done something possibly regrettable the previous night, something she has boxed up and tucked firmly away in the back of her mind where—
"But like I said," Rise says, suddenly, "kissing you isn't a bad thing." She glances at Naoto, cheeks just barely tinged pink, and winks. "You're cute."
Naoto snaps her head back to the window and tries not to choke.
4.
"Great shot, Naoto-kun!" Rise says, words ringing through Naoto's head. "Keep it up!"
This is only Naoto's third time inside the television. You're the newest on the team, Souji told her. You need to train.
True enough. What Naoto fails to see as necessary is the decision to return to the Secret Base – and, for another matter, Rise's incessant commentary echoing inside her head. The general purpose is clear, but Naoto suspects Rise is concentrating far too much on her. Encouraging her, which is even worse.
Naoto tries to push the thought out of her head and wills her card into her hand, squinting at the unfamiliar burst of light as Sukuna-Hikona swirls into the air.
"I said Mudoon won't work, Naoto-kun. Try something else!"
Naoto has never required cheerleading from anyone. Rise's interruptions are no doubt well-intentioned, but they leave her resentful – and, if she is honest, very distracted.
5.
Of them all, Naoto gets along best with Souji. This shouldn't be surprising – Souji attracts people like sugar attracts ants – but for Naoto, inept at making friends and ill-equipped to engage with them, feeling so comfortable with someone is a strange experience. He's kind and generous, fiercely intelligent, and friendly in his quiet, serious sort of way. He listens patiently to her theories on the case and when Yosuke inevitably teases her, he does not join in. Liking him is an obvious choice.
Yosuke himself is the most frustrating. He defuses everything with humour, but frequently at the expense of others. Souji has told Naoto that this is Yosuke's own, peculiar way of making friends, that he only teases people as a way of getting closer to them. This might be true – but when Naoto remembers her own childhood attempts to engage with other children, and their mocking laughter when she tried, being at ease with Yosuke's jokes is impossible.
"Don't let it get to you," Rise tells her at the food court, after one of Yosuke's bouts of ‘humour'. "Yosuke-senpai's a good guy, really."
"I don't enjoy being taunted," Naoto mutters, a little lamely.
A pause, before Rise speaks. "I remember how it feels. Being laughed at, having no friends. Kanji-kun does too." She looks at Naoto, expression serious yet reassuring, and taps two fingers against the brim of Naoto's cap. "Just so you know, you're not alone. I promise."
Rise is a different matter again. Naoto has no idea what to think about her. There's always the odd suspicion that she is lying, somehow, or at least obscuring the truth. Burying it under a giggle and a brilliant smile. Teasing people in her own way to deflect attention. Stealing kisses while claiming to be drunk, Naoto thinks, with a rush of heat to her face. She counts and catalogs the rare glimpses of something else - of someone close to the girl she met in the summer, or perhaps someone else again – and holds on to them. Exactly why, she isn't certain.
6.
Friendship remains a difficult concept for Naoto to grasp - particularly when it involves being groped by three over-eager girls in a hot spring.
Naoto knows she should expect such behavior, that This Is How Girls Are, but in the heat of the moment, remembering that becomes very challenging. It would be easier, she suspects, if she were comfortable in her own skin - but there are too many issues and questions surrounding that, too many reasons for her to feel vulnerable and exposed, and when Nanako needs to be put to bed, Naoto immediately volunteers.
Some time later, Rise enters the room alone, dressed in her yukata. She seems surprised to see Naoto still awake and sitting cross-legged on the floor. "Hey, Naoto-kun," she whispers. "I thought you were tired?"
"…Not as much as I thought."
"You should've come back to the springs! We had fun."
Naoto has no answer to that. She stares down at her yukata instead, studying the folds in the blue fabric. Yukiko was kind enough to find a boys' one for her to wear. Small mercies.
At the edge of her vision, Rise tips her head as if trying to see Naoto's expression. "…Though I guess you didn't enjoy it, huh."
"It's...difficult."
Silence falls: tense and heavy and awkward. After long, long moments, a hand gently squeezes Naoto's shoulder.
"Sorry," Rise says, quietly. "I mean, I honestly don't think we did anything wrong – but I didn't want to make you feel bad. I never would."
"It's fine. I – just find certain things..." The sentence is going nowhere helpful. Naoto trails off, staring at Rise and willing her to understand.
"It's okay. I get it." Rise's lips curl in a rueful smile. "Well, okay, I probably don't - but maybe I can try," she says - and she has such a knack with people's feelings, such an innate ability to gauge what they want to hear, Naoto actually believes she could.
(And if part of Naoto thinks that Rise actually cares, that this is more than just the professional assuming another face, she pushes it aside.)
Rise's hand is still on Naoto's shoulder, and her fingers seem to burn lines of heat in Naoto's skin. Her smile changes again, this time to something Naoto cannot immediately place: an odd, teasing shyness. "I meant what I said, back on the train," she whispers, eyes bright even in the room's dim lamplight. "You're still cute."
Naoto mumbles a stumbled, halfhearted response – Don't be ridiculous, Rise-chan – just before Chie and Yukiko creak open the door.
7.
As November rolls on, Naoto dreams every night.
The fog is thick and dirty and cold, rolling around her like a dark ocean; like she might drown in it, unable to breathe as it fills her bedroom, fills every room in her apartment and every building in Inaba. There are impossible shadows of Shadows on the ceiling, despite the lack of light, as they pour through the television screens stacked wall-to-wall in the Junes electronics department. People cower in the streets, mumbling, shaking. Waiting to die.
Naoto tells herself that the dreams make no sense – that fog is merely fog, the Shadows have no way of escaping the confines of the TV world, and Inaba's citizens are affected by simple hysteria. This would be easier to believe if not for Rise. Rise, these days, seems more at ease inside the television than out; more accustomed, Naoto suspects, to the sounds of Shadows than those of fractured human minds. She has made only vague references to now being able to ‘hear' in the real world, but the tightness of her smile whenever the team sit in the fog at the food court speaks volumes.
In truth, Rise bothers Naoto, in a way Naoto doesn't quite understand and cannot name. She shows up in the dreams, sometimes: a vague figure in the fog, crying out as the Shadows spill through the screens. Naoto tries to reach her, but the ocean is too thick to swim through and she's choking herself, panicked by the lack of air, and—
It doesn't matter. Fog is merely fog, and dreams are simply dreams.
8.
They walk out of the hospital around nine at night, into light snow falling sluggishly through a dense envelope of fog. Naoto imagines it growing dirtier and dirtier on the way down, absorbing the filth in the cotton-wool murkiness around them. It is a deeply unpleasant image.
Only she, Rise, and Chie were able to make it here tonight. Yosuke and Teddie are working a late shift at Junes, Yukiko is covering at the inn, while Kanji is helping his mother close at the textiles shop. Souji is here, as always, but he remains in Nanako's room and will do so until the nurses send him home. Chie has stayed behind too; the team have an unspoken agreement that one of them will always stay with Souji, that he should never walk back alone.
…The tofu shop is in the opposite direction to Naoto's apartment. Naoto glances at Rise all the same, and is startled to see her eyes brimming with tears. Naoto has seen her cry before, usually to get Souji's attention; a habit which leaves Naoto inexplicably frustrated. But these tears are different. They look genuine, the same as the night the team brought Nanako back.
Rise must notice the attention. "S-Sorry," she stammers. "It's just – Nanako-chan, and this stupid fog, you know? I can't—Kanzeon keeps trying to scan through it, and all I-I can hear is—" She inhales, deep and shuddering – shaking loose the snowflakes dusting her hair - and manages a tearful yet seemingly genuine smile. "But it's fine. I'll be fine. B-Be careful on your way, Naoto-kun."
Rise does not have emotions. She is emotion, rough edges smoothed out with the ease and experience of a professional. The problem, for Naoto, is that Rise knows how to be too many things at once: a dozen emotions, continually swapped out to find the one most palatable. She flirts and giggles and teases, but Naoto remembers the quiet girl from the tofu shop who was too worn down to perform, and the kind-eyed girl who tried to reassure her. Then there's the girl in front of her now, prepared to exchange one self for another to avoid making Naoto uncomfortable. Which one is real? Which one is truly Rise?
All of them, perhaps. And Naoto knows what it means to be more than one person at once, to always wear a mask.
She reaches out and takes Rise's gloved hand.
"I – will walk you home. If that is acceptable." Making the offer is oddly nerve-wracking, and despite her best efforts her voice and hand both tremble.
Rise looks at her, still sniffling, expression unreadable. "But…your apartment's the other way. It's gonna take you ages to get back."
"There's no reason for you to go alone in the fog," Naoto says, firmly as she can, and doesn't let go of Rise's hand.
She smiles again – and this one, Naoto realizes, is genuine. "Thanks, Naoto-kun," she says, quietly, as they walk off together. They do this almost every night till the fog finally clears.
9.
"Time to walk me home, Naoto-kun," Rise tells her, grabbing Naoto's hand outside Junes. Adachi is already en route to the hospital and, accounting for his confession, the other detectives are finally satisfied with whatever lies Naoto was able to spin on the team's behalf. All of this could come crashing down the moment Adachi decides to change his mind. Because why wouldn't he?
Anxious and exhausted, Naoto doesn't remember what story she concocted – but she remembers enough to know that she should accompany Rise home, that this is what they do. It isn't until they reach the edge of the shopping district in a town free of fog, and Rise suggests that she stay the night, that Naoto realizes just who was accompanying whom.
10.
Midnight rolls around, and Rise's room is dark and unfamiliar. She lies flat on her back on the left of the futon, long hair spilling over the pillow, while Naoto is curled up on her side on the right - lightheaded, nerve-wracked, discomfited, and confused as to why she feels any of it.
She sits up, careful not to disturb the futon's surface, and untangles herself from the thick, warm blankets. The blinds above the back of the sofa are closed, but she is able to lift a corner without too much of a rattle and peer outside into the silent shopping district, where snow is tumbling in fat flakes into the pools of lamplight. Naoto stays kneeling on the sofa cushion, head tilted so she can watch them fall through the narrow visible portion of the window.
There's no fog now. No more battles to fight inside the television, only outside it – and the tired, ragged part of her wants to crawl back into the futon, pretend Adachi will play along, and forget about everything.
A hand glides across her back, and the cushion sinks beside her a moment later. "Can't sleep?" Rise asks.
Naoto shakes her head. Rise gives a slow nod in return and pulls the string on the blinds, raising them high enough to give a clear view of the street. The blanket is draped over her shoulders and she pulls it tightly around herself, as if merely seeing the snow outside is enough to make her colder. "Me neither. Not after what happened today. I'm so, so glad we caught him, but it feels like an ending."
"Or maybe a beginning," Naoto hears herself say. She meant it in a bad way, really – the beginning of a long saga simply to get Adachi to court – so Rise's slight, uncharacteristically shy smile comes as a surprise.
"New beginnings, huh? Isn't that kind of a cliché?" she says, half-giggling, and there's a warmth in her eyes that spreads through Naoto's entire body.
Naoto has always gotten along with Kanji, too, but in a strange, tentative sort of way. As if there is some secret Kanji is carrying, one he refuses to tell her. Right now, staring at Rise with butterflies fluttering in her stomach, Naoto is beginning to understand what that secret might be. She opens her mouth, planning to respond, but the lightheadedness increases and the way she trembles has nothing to do with the cold. Am I right, she wants to ask, am I right in thinking we both could be—
But instead, she leans in - or maybe they both do, or maybe Naoto just likes to think so – and grips Rise's shoulder with one hand, just loosely enough to let her move away, and kisses her.
It's unplanned and clumsy and Naoto expects it to end badly from the moment their lips meet – so it's a surprise when, after only a split-second's hesitation, Rise kisses her back.
11.
Adachi has been defeated, the fog has receded, but the snow still falls. Such weather is quite unusual for Inaba - or so Rise has told Naoto twice this morning, while wearing four layers of clothing and pink cat-eared earmuffs.
"I'm so glad we're all meeting at Senpai's," she says as they walk through the shopping district to the bus stop. "No way am I sitting at the food court in this weather!"
Naoto nods and stares down at her snow-dusted boots.
It wasn't just a one-off. They kissed two more times last night: the first sitting side by side on the sofa, Rise having wrapped the blanket around Naoto's shoulders too, and the second as they lay on the futon. Rise was lying on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, and she dipped down to meet Naoto's lips, nervous and shy but no less keen. Then they fell asleep, curled around each other – and since then, Rise has said nothing about what happened.
Naoto has other questions she wants to ask, now. She has too many, most revolving around where do we stand what does this mean what do we do now should we just forget the whole thing. The last idea must be considered a possibility, no matter how much it makes her stomach twist into cold, leaden coils. And perhaps it would be for the best, when any emotional entanglement - if that's possibly what this is, if Rise even feels that - would only turn out to be a distraction at best, a disaster at worst, and—
She swallows, hard, and takes a deep breath. "I – last night," she starts, then stops. Rise is staring at her, smiling gently, cheeks too flushed for the chilled air to be the cause.
"Yeah. I know. Me too." She leans in, quickly pecks Naoto on the cheek – then she takes Naoto's hand, and they continue walking.
12.
And admittedly, that doesn't cover all of Naoto's questions.
But in another way, maybe it comes close – and perhaps, she thinks, with Rise's hand warm in her own, not all of them need an answer.