winds somewhere safe to sea

“We thank with brief thanksgiving
 Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
 Winds somewhere safe to sea.”

—The Garden of Proserpine by Algernon Charles Swinburne

---

The sea off of Yakushima was almost unnaturally blue, and the way it sparkled in the sunlight pulled Junpei back to the first time he came here, back in high school.

There was something about the sun on the water and the smell of this beach in particular that loosened his ties to the present. Every time he visited, he ended up seeing younger versions of his friends out of the corner of his eyes, and hearing their laughter in his ears. 

The pier looked terribly empty without a mysterious robot girl standing on it.

He’s been holding summer training camp for his team here for years now, and he still couldn’t overwrite the memories of that first summer. Not that he’d want to, really. The time he spent with SEES was precious and irreplaceable. But it would be nice to stop seeing the ghosts of his childhood every time he came to the shore.

The company wasn’t much help in that regard. Aegis was along on Shadow Operative business, and she’d brought two of the new kids with her. Junpei was passing all three off as children of friends who needed something to do over break.

Right now, Aegis, dressed in the newest iteration of the Gekkoukan High uniform, was patiently listening as Sakamoto Ryuji told a story, interrupted frequently by an annoyed Takamaki Ann. Ryuji talked loudly and with his hands; Ann’s more contained body language was no less expressive. Next to them, Aegis seemed impassive, but the small smile she wore was genuine.

It was nice to see her like that.

Watching Aegis with Sakamoto and Takamaki was a painful reminder of the differences between SEES’s robot member and the rest of the team. She still looked like a teenager, and likely always would, while the rest of them were quickly approaching an age that would allow them to pass her off as their own child instead of someone else’s.

In the short term, it was inconvenient, having to treat someone as smart and competent as Aegis as young and inexperienced. In the long term...Junpei wanted to be jealous and protective, to keep Aegis away from the teenagers that Mitsuru didn’t quite trust yet, but he also liked the idea of her having friends that were a little younger than he was. 

If Aegis liked them, they were probably okay. And besides, Junpei was at best a part-time member of the Shadow Operatives. His main job here was looking after the baseball team. He had a herd of rowdy boys to watch, most of whom had never been anywhere this fancy before in their lives. Some of them needed baseball training. Some of them needed a week away from terrible home situations that Junpei didn’t have enough evidence to act on yet. Some of them probably just needed some advice, or at least a few conversations with an adult they felt they could trust.

If Aegis needed backup, he would be there, but there were a lot of other things to keep him occupied for now.

He gave her and the other two Persona users a chance to slip off while he was dividing up the team for exercises. Ultimately, half the team ended up doing laps along the shoreline while the other half, led by the third-years, did core-strengthening exercises. 

For the first fifteen minutes or so, it was going pretty well. The third-years helped him demonstrate all the exercises so that none of the younger kids hurt themselves and the kids doing laps down by the shore stayed within eyesight and didn’t make too much noise. He’d successfully split up his current pair of problem kids—a pitcher with an anxiety disorder and an antisocial catcher, neither of whom really talked to anyone on the team but each other.

And then, he glanced down at his phone, just to check the time, and the yelling started.

The kids who were supposed to be running laps—weren’t. They were clustered around the edge of the water, shouting and waving, and a few of the kids in the group doing exercises were getting distracted by the noise or pulling out their phones to look at texts that were clearly from friends down at the shoreline. 

Junpei gave the kids a sharp look. “Finish this round of exercises, then take a break and do stretches.”

“But—” Hanai started.

Couldn’t let the first-years start getting away with things now. “I brought you guys out here because you told me you were mature enough to handle it. Are you?”

The kids muttered assent or nodded or just went back to their exercises, but no one argued again.

He remembered hating the kinds of adults who said things like that, at their age. He’d grown up into a pretty poor excuse for an adult, in the end.

But he was still the poor excuse for an adult in charge of making sure his team was safe, so he jogged down to the shoreline, noting with relief as he got closer to the group of children that they weren’t panicked so much as agitated.

“Sensei!” Tajima shouted, waving. “There’s a person here!”

“There’s a lot of people here, and none of them are running,” Junpei replied, unamused.

“No, like, an unconscious one,” Tajima said. “Nishihiro checked and he has a pulse, so he’s not dead, but, like, the wave came up and then he was here and we don’t know if we should move him?”

“A person?” Junpei repeated. How’d a person get here?

The beach was private. Mitsuru owned this land; that’s why Junpei was able to use it as a training camp location in the first place. No one should’ve been swimming or diving (or, please gods no, jumping) nearby.

He wondered if it was related to the Shadow anomalies Aegis and her new proteges were supposed to be looking into. He hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention to the details—it wasn’t that relevant to him, and he wasn’t smart enough for the technical details associated with all of the Shadow stuff.

“Look, even if he is alive, he might need medical attention,” Junpei said. “Unless one of you brats has a first aid certification, how about all of you back up a bit so I can take a look.”

The crowd of high school baseball players parted, revealing a tiny figure lying on the beach, coated in sand, seaweed, and bits of broken shell.

Even as dirty as he was, the blue hair, long-retired version of the Gekkoukan High boy’s uniform, and the vintage mp3 player were unmistakable.

For a second, Junpei thought he was hallucinating. But all of the kids were staring in the same direction he was.

Still, it couldn’t really be—maybe the resemblance was just—

He approached Mina—no, he couldn’t be sure, not yet—he approached the kid slowly. He knelt heavily enough to jar knee injuries that dated back to the Dark Hour and then reached two fingers under the curve of the boy’s jaw to check for his pulse. 

It was there, faint but distinct. More importantly, the boy in front of him didn’t dissolve the moment Junpei’s fingers made contact with skin.

In that moment, he was both the boy who’d made it to the roof a few seconds too late to see off his battle leader and the man who’d already processed that loss, and he wasn’t sure whose feelings were stronger.

Even after years as a teacher, he had an automatic response to this kind of emotional overwhelm.

The round of tittering and whistles that immediately followed after Junpei swore jarred him back to reality.

Feeling numb, he got out his phone and texted Aegis.

“Come to the beach. Now.”

---

When he was in high school, he’d had this fantasy, so many times, in so many ways.

Right after Mitsuru and Akihiro graduated, he’d imagined Minato reappearing on the roof, as if he was never gone.

“I fought my way back,” he’d say, sometimes.

Other times, he’d say something like, “They decided what we paid was enough.”

Most often, there was no explanation, just a tearful reunion.

It was never anything gruesome. The body that slipped into a coma never rose from the grave. He never showed any lingering weakness, or any reluctance to return to life.

Things changed, after he learned the exact nature of Minato’s sacrifice. He would daydream of other Persona users rescuing him, or of one of the others discovering some clever way to save him that none of them had thought of until now.

It was too cruel, his selfless friend turned to stone, set between Nyx and humanity, sacrificed to protect people who never gave him a second thought.

It was too cruel, but it was also the truth. Just like every other death in Junpei’s life and in Minato’s own. He had similar fantasies about Chidori for a long time. The only reason he didn’t have them about Shinjirou was that he’d watched the man bleed out. Loss was never gentle and it was never fair, and the mystical elements involved in Minato’s death didn’t change that.

So seeing Arisato Minato, tiny and pale and still 17, but somehow breathing, was far past jarring. He was smaller than a good half of Junpei’s students and the bags below his eyes were huge. He wasn’t an airbrushed-over memory, he was real and here and Junpei could not handle this.

"I'm taking him back to the house," he managed. "Finish your drills."

"C-coach?" Mihashi asked.

"Shouldn't we, like, call a hospital?" Tajima asked.

Right. Junpei was in charge of these kids and he was probably scaring them. 

"Okay, new plan," he said. "You get three questions. You have 15 minutes to figure out what to ask and to choose who's asking. If you can't agree, extra laps. Sound fair?"

Some of the kids looked ready to take him upon it, but Mihashi was shaking his head. That was unusually assertive for him; Junpei was as proud as he was frustrated.

"He n-needs to g-go to the hospital," Mihashi said.

"Mihashi's right," Abe said.

Junpei was losing control of the situation.

"Hey coach, Aegis sent me back to check—" Sakamoto called as he ran across the beach. He broke off as he got closer. "What the hell is going on?" 

Junpei had no idea how to explain, and so what came out of his mouth was, "Found our Wild Card in the ocean."

Ryuji squinted at him. "Didn't you say he was—"

"Yeah," Junpei said. "He was."

"What's a Wild Card?" Tajima asked.

"Said he was what?" Abe asked sharply.

"You're explaining this to Kirijou," Sakamoto said.

"I give up," Junpei said. "Break time for everyone, and then explanations. Mitsuru really is gonna kill me." He looked at Ryuji. "Where’s Aegis, anyway?”

“She and Ann are...busy,” Ryuji said. 

“Text Ann, tell her to get Aegis down here if she has to fake being sick to do it,” he replied. “She’s gonna want to know about this.”

“Right,” Ryuji said.

“Did you just tell someone to pretend to be sick?” Tajima screeched.

“Desperate times, desperate measures,” Junpei said.

Ryuji snickered.

And then Minato made a low, sleepy noise, just like he used to when he fell asleep on the dorm's couch.

"Minato?" Junpei asked.

"Shhh, don't wanna wake up yet," Minato slurred.

Junpei took the tidal wave of emotion that hit him, wrapped it up tight, and stuffed it into the back of his mind for later. “You can sleep in this time, Arisato.”

He picked him up. Even absolutely soaked in brine, with fat cakes of sand slowly falling off of his sodden uniform, he was feather-light. Junpei didn’t exactly go around lifting kids into the air, but he’d had to carry a couple students to the bench in his time, and Minato wasn’t nearly as heavy as even the underclassmen. You’d think after swinging around a sword every night for a year, he would’ve put on some muscle, but no dice.

“We’re going back to the house,” he announced. “Anyone who wants to stay outside better be planning on doing laps and absolutely nothing else.”

Predictably, the kids trotted after him towards Mitsuru’s long-neglected summer house. Only Abe hesitated, probably because overtraining was basically his hobby.

“There anything I can do?” Ryuji asked in an undertone.

“Call Mitsuru, when you get the chance,” he said. “Let her know something happened, but don’t give details and make sure she knows we don’t need reinforcements.”

“This guy was her Wild Card too, right?” Ryuji asked. “Aren’t you gonna tell her?”

“Not until I’m sure it’s really him, and that he’s...staying,” Junpei said, brutally shoving down yet another bundle of messy emotions. 

“Okay,” Ryuji said. “I’ll let her know.”

---

In the end, Ryuji ended up leaving a message for Kirijou, and he wasn’t afraid to admit that he preferred it that way. That woman scared him.

Ann hadn’t texted back yet, so he decided to go find Coach Iori and check on...whatever was happening.

He hadn’t spent much time around the guy up until now, probably because every time he heard the word ‘coach,’ he found himself bracing for a beatdown that never came. Still, Kirijou and Aegis trusted Iori, and so did his team.

Besides, he knew a little bit of the guy’s history, from talking with Kirijou and Aegis, and from the investigations Futaba did before the Thieves joined the Shadow Operatives. He was expecting someone more bitter and jaded, and he was kinda relieved that Iori was instead a pretty normal baseball coach with a dorky sense of humor

But honestly? That made him harder to reconcile with all the stuff Ryuji’s heard so far. Two of his teammates died, three if you counted the teacher that screwed them over. Futaba said he gave a witness report for Sanada, which meant he was there. He also had some sort of relationship with one of the kids that Kirijou’s dad apparently experimented on, and she died, too. Ryuji doesn’t get how he came out of all of that in one piece.

Iori losing his shit over finding his dead team leader on the beach was strangely reassuring, because it meant that he did have genuine feelings somewhere under all those lame jokes.

(Yes, Ryuji was aware that he had trust issues. Blame Akechi.)

He searched for Iori for a bit before hearing his voice coming from inside one of the unfairly large bathrooms. 

“Hey, uh—” Nope, still can’t do Coach, “Mr. Iori?” he started.

“One second, kid!” Iori said. And then, just a few seconds later, “Okay, come in.”

He was kneeling on the tile floor next to the bathtub. The kid was slumped inside of it, still asleep and dripping wet. Iori had a hair-dryer in one hand and appeared to be considering whether to use it to dry the kid off.

“You’ll wake him up,” Ryuji said.

“Nah, he could sleep through a thunderstorm,” Iori said. “Then again, that was probably...well, anyhow, I don’t like leaving him in cold, wet clothes but I ain’t changing them for him.”

Unable to stop himself, Ryuji asked, “Is this really him?” 

“Sure looks like him,” Iori said. “If this isn’t really Minato, then someone put a lot of effort into making him look like Minato. And that would probably end up being Shadow Operative business too. So it’s good that we found him, either way.”

“And are you really going to tell your team everything?” Ryuji asked.

“Well, maybe not everything, but some of it,” Iori said. “They’re smart kids, and some of them have had some really bad coaches. If I lie to them, they’re gonna jump to all kinds of conclusions.”

Something inside Ryuji snapped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Uh, that I don’t want to freak them out?” Iori said, looking honestly baffled. 

“Sure, them,” Ryuji said. “I know Kirijou probably told you all about me. You can just ask me if you think I’m too fragile to handle this, or whatever.”

“I think you’re trying to get at something but I don’t know what,” Iori said. “Whatever you think Mitsuru told me, I’m pretty sure she actually didn’t.”

“So this wasn’t about Kamoshida?” Ryuji asked.

“I really have no idea who that is,” Iori said. He squinted at Ryuji for a second. “Are they still a problem? Mitsuru will destroy their life for you, if you ask.”

“Already managed that myself, thanks,” Ryuji said tightly. He could feel his cheeks turning red. He hated talking about this crap with adults; they always got weird about it.

“Good for you,” Iori said. 

“Whassat about Mitsuru?” a new voice slurred.

Iori turned so fast he nearly keeled over as the kid—Minato?—slowly sat up.

“Wait,” Minato said. “Why...am I in a tub?” He stared at Iori. “This is...Mitsuru’s mansion, right? But…”

“You’re in the tub because a couple of kids found you washed up on the beach,” Iori said. He put the hairdryer down and stood up, heading for the towel rack.

“I don’t remember going swimming,” Minato said. 

“You don’t?” Iori asked. He knelt back down beside the tub, towel in hand. “Then what do you remember?”

“I was on the roof, and I was really tired,” Minato said. “I think Aegis let me fall asleep on her?”

Iori made a choking sound and dropped the towel. His face was chalk-white.

Minato blinked a few times. “Wait...that was...oh no. Junpei, Nyx is—”

“I know,,” Iori said, in a voice that sounded like it had been dragged across sandpaper. “We saw the Seal you made.”

“But if I’m here—”

“We’ll figure out what happened, okay?” Junpei said. “But I kinda like having you here better than you guarding a door in Hell or whatever. Now, here, dry yourself off.” He handed Minato the towel.

“You’re...older,” Minato said, taking the towel and looking Junpei over carefully.

“It’s 2017,” Junpei said. “You’ve been gone awhile.”

Ryuji was feeling more and more like he was intruding on something extremely private, but he didn’t know how to leave without making enough noise to disrupt the conversation.

“You’re kidding,” Minato said. 

“I’m not,” Junpei answered. “It’s 2017, and I’m an actual adult with a job. Somebody trusts me enough with kids to let me coach an entire team of them, can you believe it?”

“Yes,” Minato said. “That sounds like something you’d be good at.”

For some reason, that was Iori’s breaking point. He leaned over the edge of the tub to wrap Minato in a hug. Minato froze in his arms for a few seconds, looking almost spooked, before carefully patting Junpei on the back.

“You’re getting wet,” he said.

“Don’t care,” Iori responded.

There was a soft knock at the door. 

Ann’s voice drifted through, high and annoyed. “Ryuji, this better be important!”

“It was, promise,” Ryuji said, opening the door. “Did Aegis come?”

“I am here,” Aegis said, adjusting her uniform a bit as Ryuji opened the door. “What is going on?”

Ryuji knew the second that she saw Minato. She usually moved a little less than an actual human, but he’d never seen her so still. 

It hadn’t really hit for him, until now, that Aegis was part of the same team as Iori. She looked and acted like she was his age, most of the time. But she wasn’t. She was older than everyone in the room, and she had more history with Iori and Minato than with anyone in the PT.

“Minato?” she asked.

Iori pulled back and stood, presumably to give them a better view of each other.

“Aegis?” Minato said. “What are you wearing? That’s not the right uniform.”

“They changed it,” she said. “After you were already gone.”

“I had to,” Minato said. “There wasn’t another way; I didn’t want to but I had to do something—”

“I know,” Aegis said. “I hated it, but I know.”

“Help me figure out why I’m here,” he said. “And what’s happening with Erebus and Nyx now that I'm not in between them.”

“I won’t let you go back,” she said. “I’m not going to let you sacrifice yourself again.”

“But—”

“We’ll find another way,” Aegis said, so firmly that Ryuji couldn’t imagine anyone arguing.

Minato apparently felt the same way, because he responded by sputtering a bit and then going quiet.

“What is happening?” Ann hissed, walking up beside Ryuji.

“That’s their Wild Card,” Ryuji whispered back. “Y’know, the one Oracle told us was dead.”

“Oh,” Ann said. “Should we even be here?”

Ryuji shrugged.

“You’re wet,” Aegis said.

“Apparently I was in the ocean,” Minato said.

“He washed up on the beach,” Iori said. “Actually, now that you’re up, you should get changed into something dry. I’ll grab some clothes.”

“Okay,” Minato said.

“Can you stand?” Aegis asked. 

“I think so?” Minato said.

Aegis walked over to the tub and extended a hand. Minato grabbed it to pull himself up, but he looked shaky.

“We should go,” Ann said quietly.

Ryuji followed her out.

---

Minato’s fingers were stiff as he fumbled with the buttons of the shirt Junpei had lent him. His body felt strange and inflexible, and he was too tired—not as tired as, well, what felt like a day ago, but much more tired than he had ever been before the fight with Nyx.

It added to the general sense of unreality.

Aegis was unchanged, but Junpei was an adult. An actual one, not nearly as old as Tanaka but far older than Akinari. He still looked like himself, but it was jarring to see subtle creases forming around his eyes.

Minato wondered what the other members of SEES looked like now. He couldn’t quite get his brain around the math, but he was pretty sure even Ken would be nearing the end of high school. He couldn’t picture Ken as anything but a kid; it was beyond him.

When he’d realized that he needed to die to seal Nyx, he hadn’t thought about what would happen afterward. He knew his friends would grieve, and he was upset about that, but other than that—he hadn’t really thought much about the kinds of lives they might have when he was gone. 

Now, he was thinking about it. He was wondering if the others still kept in touch with one another, what their jobs were like, and whether any of them were dating now. He briefly wondered if any of them had kids, then gave that line of thought up as too disturbing.

None of this felt real, actually. If his sacrifice worked, he shouldn’t exist at all anymore. If it didn’t, he should have stayed alive through the rest of 2010. The idea of being thrown back into the world at the same age while his friends had all kept living and growing older...he couldn’t wrap his mind around it.

At least Aegis hadn’t changed. It wasn’t as if she could, physically, but it was still reassuring to see that at least one thing was still the same.

He toweled off his hair one more time, and then tried in vain to adjust the shirt. It was ridiculously big on him. He remembered borrowing Junpei’s shirts on the regular, what felt like only months ago—they frequently traded around uniform parts as needed if one of them got their clothes dirty during the Dark Hour.

But the Dark Hour was gone. Even if him being here had unsealed Nyx, the Dark Hour as it was wouldn’t start up again. Erebus and Nyx would try something else, maybe, but it would be new.

Sort of like everything else at the moment.

He pushed open the bathroom door and walked out into the familiar hallway. It looked just like it had back during SEES’s summer trip. He half-expected Yukari to show up and yell at him for hogging the bathroom again.

Instead, some short-haired kid in a baseball uniform skidded around the corner, looking a little frantic.

“Hey, you seen Coach?” he asked.

It took Minato a moment to realize that the kid probably meant Junpei.

“He was here a few minutes ago, but I don’t know where he went,” Minato said.

“Dangit, where is he?” the kid muttered. “Oh, wait, you’re the weird kid from the beach. What’s his deal, anyhow?”

“What?”

“He’s been acting weird since we found you,” the kid said. “Do you guys know each other or something?”

That...actually hurt. Junpei probably hadn’t realized, but the last that Minato remembered, all of his friends had forgotten the Dark Hour and each other. He still wasn’t entirely sure what had given them those memories back, but he knew it had happened right around when he...fell asleep. So, yeah, he knew Junpei, but it was still a constant surprise that Junpei remembered him.

“Yeah,” he managed.

“What were you doing in the ocean?” the kid asked.

“Being unconscious,” Minato said flatly.

The kid pouted at him a little. “I mean before that,” he said.

“Before that, I wasn’t in the ocean.”

It was starting to come back, a little, in bits and pieces. A long, meandering dream, featuring every person he’d gotten to know over his year at Gekkoukan, punctuated by bursts of pain that must have been Erebus trying to get through. He still couldn’t remember everything. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to.

Aegis appeared out of nowhere. “Minato, we made food. Come to the kitchen.”

Minato hoped Aegis had been the one cooking. She mixed up ingredients occasionally, but on the whole she was better than Junpei, whose idea of cuisine was instant ramen and convenience-store sushi. At least both of them were better than Yukari.

“Aegis!” the kid exclaimed. “Someone’s knocking on the door. Can you get Coach?”

“Yes,” she said.

Minato found himself being more-or-less dragged to the kitchen, where Junpei was...making sandwiches?

He was an adult now, Minato supposed. He had to eat something other than ramen sometimes.

“There is someone at the door,” Aegis reported. “I will stay with Minato.”

“Why can’t you get the door?” Junpei asked.

“I am just a highschool student, Coach Iori,” Aegis replied.

Minato blinked, as he realized Aegis was teasing Junpei. She’d developed more of a sense of humor over time, but her jokes were still rare and a little stilted. Or, they had been.

Junpei reached over and deliberately messed up her hair. Aegis batted at his hands, not using even a fraction of her actual strength. It looked like some sort of well-worn routine, a shared joke that they’d traded back and forth dozens of times.

Minato felt odd, watching it. These two had years of knowing each other that Minato didn’t share. He’d only been in SEES with them for a year, after all. It felt a little like being left behind.

Something must’ve shown on his face as he watched Junpei leave the room, because Aegis immediately asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said, more out of habit than anything.

Aegis’s hands gripped his shoulders, smooth and cool even through the fabric of Junpei’s borrowed shirt.

“No,” she said. “Don’t hide your problems. You were alone for those last few months; we won’t let you be alone again.”

“You two changed,” Minato admitted. “That’s good. But it also makes me feel lonely.”

Aegis cocked her head to one side.

“You’ve known each other for longer than I’ve known either of you,” he said. “I’m the odd one out.”

“No, you’re our precious leader,” Aegis said. “You’re not allowed to feel lonely anymore. We won’t let you.”

“Is that an order?” he asked, amused. Aegis had to know she couldn’t just tell him to feel a certain way.

“No, it’s a promise,” she said. 

Minato opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by a shout from Junpei, followed by the sound of someone running. There was something familiar about the footsteps, but Minato couldn’t quite place them—

Until someone quite literally crashed into him, wearing the deep blue of a Velvet Room attendant. Short strands of platinum-blond hair drifted in front of his eyes, and thin yet muscular arms wrapped around his waist.

“I did it!” Elizabeth whispered into his shirt.

“Elizabeth?” Aegis asked.

“I finally freed him,” Elizabeth said, pulling away from Minato. “I can’t really explain it to humans, or even human-made robots, but...those last Persona users changed the collective unconscious, just a little, and I was able to do some things I couldn’t do before.”

“So...the Seal, it’s still there?” Minato asked.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “It just doesn’t need you to power it for the rest of eternity.”

“Are you sure?” he pressed.

“Positive,” she said. “You’re still...connected to it, just a little. You’re probably going to be a little tired most of the time, from now on. But you’ll have a normal human lifespan, and when you die, you’ll join the Sea of Souls like everyone else.”

“Elizabeth,” Aegis said. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t just do it for you!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Minato is precious to me, too!” She glanced over at Minato, and—was that a blush?

“Still, thank you,” Aegis said.

“Yes,” Minato said. It sounded like it was coming from far away.

This was real. The time as the Seal had been real too. And now he was here, alive, and years younger than everyone he knew.

He sat down in one of the kitchen chairs, because standing sounded like too much work, just now.

The next thing he really registered was Junpei asking, “Hey, Minato, you with us?”

“Uh,” Minato said.

“So, you don’t have to spend the rest of eternity as a statue,” Junpei said. “Big news.”

“Yeah.”

“Having trouble getting your brain around it?” he asked.

He must really be a good coach, Minato found himself thinking. Junpei had never been this perceptive before.

“Little bit,” he said aloud.

“It’s been a lot longer for me, but I remember how weird it was to wake up and know that the world wasn’t one day closer to ending,” Junpei said. “Kept throwing me off. Spent a few weeks being kinda reckless because I really couldn’t believe that deadline was just….gone.”

Minato just nodded.

“Probably worse for you, though,” Junpei said. “I didn’t spend a month knowing I was gonna die and not telling anyone about it.”

Minato blinked at him.

“Yeah, we found out about that,” Junpei said. “We’re having a talk about it, too, but later. You deserve a break, and I don’t think I can even pretend that I’m mad at you right now.”

“Speaking of talks,” Aegis said.

“Yeah, uh, any chance you’d hold off on telling Mitsuru?” Junpei asked. “Just long enough for me to get a head start on leaving the country?”

Aegis giggled—giggled, at one of Junpei’s lame jokes, no less!—and shook her head.

“Why are you planning to leave the country?” Elizabeth asked. “Minato is in Japan.”

“Yeah, but so’s Mitsuru, and she’s gonna kill me,” he said.

“Why?” Minato ventured.

“I sorta told my baseball team I’d explain why I freaked out and refused to call an ambulance after we found you,” he said.

“...like, actually explain?” Minato asked.

“Yeah,” Junpei said. “They heard me call you a Wild Card. It’s gonna be a mess.”

“Leaving the country sounds smart,” Minato said.

“You could lie,” Elizabeth suggested.

“No he can’t,” both Minato and Aegis said, their voices overlapping each other.

“That hasn’t changed,” Junpei said. “I’m a little less of a loudmouth, but still a bad liar.”

Minato knew Junpei was trying to cheer him up. Despite himself, it was working.

Junpei was older, and changed, but he wasn’t a stranger, not really. Minato just had to get to know the new version of his friend a little better. 

He smiled. 

“I could make Minato do it,” Junpei mused aloud. “There’s no way Mitsuru will get mad at him.”

“I’ve only been back for a few hours, and you’re already passing work off to me?” Minato asked.

Junpei actually winced.

“Hey, no, that was just a joke,” Minato said quickly.

“Yeah, but—we did ask you to do way too much, back then,” Junpei said. “And I kept blaming you for things that weren’t your fault.”

“We were all pretty stressed,” Minato deflected.

“Stressed, yeah, that’s a word for it,” Junpei muttered.

The blond teenagers who’d been standing awkwardly to the side when Minato first woke up walked into the kitchen. They were wearing matching school uniforms that Minato didn’t recognize, but there was something about them that reminded him of SEES.

It’s how they stand, he decided after a few seconds. They’ve been in fights before. Real ones.

“The team’s starting to get antsy,” the boy said.

“More importantly, they figured out that Ryuji was the weak link,” the girl said. “If you leave us alone with them for any longer, he’ll end up telling them everything.”

“I was trying!” Ryuji protested.

The girl snorted, then turned to Minato. “Takamaki Ann,” she said, sticking out a hand for him to shake.

“I’m Arisato Minato,” Minato said. “I’m in your care.”

“I’m Sakamoto Ryuji,” Ryuji added. 

“So, you know about the Dark Hour?” Minato asked, trying to be polite.

“What’s a dark hour?” Ryuji asked.

“I think that was their version of the Metaverse,” Ann said. “We’re Persona-users too,” she added.

“Oh,” Minato said. More Persona-users?  “I thought, with the Dark Hour over and the Seal—”

“Turns out there are a lot of nasty things running around the collective unconscious besides Nyx and Erebus,” Junpei said. “These two and their friends handled one of them last year.”

“If you want, we can introduce you to the others,” Ryuji offered. “It’s probably weird that your friends are all adults now.”

“It also might be nice to meet other Persona-users,” Ann said. “Speaking of that,” she squinted at Elizabeth, “are you...Lavenza?”

“No, she’s my sister,” Elizabeth said. “She was your Wild Card’s attendant, yes?”

“Kind of?” Ryuji said. “It’s complicated.”

“Ohhhhhh, the twins,” Elizabeth said. “Do apologize to him for me, Lavenza’s even nastier when she’s split in half.”

“Twins?” Junpei asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Elizabeth said, waving a hand.

“I’m very confused right now,” Minato said.

“Don’t worry, so am I,” Junpei said.

“But yeah, you should figure out what you’re gonna tell the team before they come ambush you,” Ryuji said. “Arisato, I don’t know what you told Hanai, but he got really worked up over it.”

Hanai must be the kid I was talking to, Minato thought. Aloud, he said, “He asked me what I was doing in the ocean. I said I was being unconscious.”

Junpei snorted. “I think I kind of forgot how much of a smartass you could be.”

“He was only being honest,” Aegis said, but she was grinning.

“Welp, time to explain things, I guess,” Junpei said, stretching a bit. “Minato, do you want to come?” 

“Why not,” Minato said. He was kind of curious to see what an entire baseball team coached by Junpei was like, anyhow.

Junpei led them to the living room, the same one Minato remembered sharing with SEES during their vacation here. He could remember sitting with Yukari on that couch, listening to Akihiko and Shinjirou’s bickering in the kitchen. Now, the room was stuffed to the brim with unfamiliar teens in baseball uniforms. Some were huddled together and whispering, others were making a clear effort to stand as far from their teammates as possible. It felt nostalgic. It also hurt a little.

He’d never make it back to that summer. The friends he’d had back then were either adults or dead. The Dark Hour wasn’t binding them together anymore.

But...Junpei and Aegis still missed him, still wanted him. The new Persona-users were willing to introduce him to their friends.

He’d never get what he had back, but it felt like he could build something new. He hadn’t felt that way in a while, and it was...nice. A little overwhelming, but also exciting.

“Sorry for freaking everyone out,” Minato said. The student’s eyes all shot straight to him. “I’m a former classmate of your coach’s.”

“Minato—” Junpei started.

Minato gave him the look that had meant “let me handle this one,” back in the Dark Hour. Surprisingly, it still worked.

“A...former classmate?” one of the kids asked.

“Yeah, we were in the same afterschool club,” Minato said.

“You don’t look like you graduated with him,” another kid said slowly. 

Minato appreciated that no one had jumped straight to calling him a liar.

He let himself grin. Might as well have some fun with this, right? “I didn’t graduate. I died during second-year commencement.”

The kids exploded. They were all talking over one another; Minato couldn’t even make out the individual questions.

Ryoji would’ve loved this, or at least the boy Ryoji thought he was would have. Even Shinjirou would’ve probably laughed. It didn’t seem fair that he was here, and they weren’t, but Minato couldn’t let himself dwell on that, not without despairing again.

“Do you guys want an explanation, or not?” Junpei barked. “Settle down before I give you all laps.”

The team quieted down, though several of them looked distinctly unhappy about it.

“Okay, so, a lot of weird stuff happened when I went to Gekkoukan,” Junpei said. “Like, a lot of it. So, before we get back to what happened to Minato, we should probably tell you about some of that.”

The team perked up, several of them leaning forward. Junpei straightened a little, the way he used to right before he started bragging. 

“Back when I was in high school, days used to be longer,” he said. 

One of the baseball players snorted, and a few seemed to be muffling laughter.

“No, really, there was an extra hour, between midnight and 12:01,” Junpei said. “We used to call it the Dark Hour.”

Minato settled in to listen to the familiar pattern of Junpei’s storytelling and did his best to ignore the way the team members were staring at him. It wasn’t his first time being the new kid. But this time, he wasn’t alone. 

Later on, he’d think about the future. About the fact that the government definitely considered him dead, and the fact that he still needed to attend school if he wanted a diploma. But for now, listening to Junpei talk, with Aegis and Elizabeth by his side, felt like enough.