Sunday arrived without ceremony.
Ren lay on his back for a while, staring at the ceiling, doing a mental inventory of his body. Shoulders still tight. The place behind his eyes quieter than it had been. Ribs fine.
He drew the top card from the deck before he'd fully decided to.
The Chariot.
Red, like the others. The illustration was however, Ryuji in Roman centurion armor with a huge grin riding a chariot pulled by two horses facing opposite directions — one white, one black — Ryuji holding them steady through tension rather than control.
Around the edges, a faint shimmer of blue flickered once and disappeared.
Ren set it on the windowsill beside the Magician and the Tower.
Three cards now.
'But what about the bond with Takemi? The Death... Why don't I feel as though I will draw it yet?' Ren wondered internally.
Morgana opened one eye from the foot of the bed, observed the proceedings, and closed it again.
---
Downstairs, Sojiro was in a better mood than yesterday, which expressed itself as slightly less pointed silence and a fresh pot of something that smelled extraordinary.
"Sit," Sojiro said without turning around.
Ren sat.
A cup appeared in front of him. He picked it up and drank and felt the last of the morning stiffness leave his shoulders entirely.
"What is this?" he asked.
"Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. Single origin. Don't get used to it." Sojiro settled onto his stool with his own cup. "You have plans today?"
"No," Ren said.
"Good. Don't make any."
Ren looked at him.
"I mean it," Sojiro said. "You've been running since you got here. One day off won't kill you."
Ren looked back at his coffee.
"I'll try," he said.
Sojiro made a scoff that managed to convey both skepticism and approval simultaneously.
---
He spent the morning at the counter with his phone and a second cup of coffee, working through the zip file Yu had sent.
The password made him pause.
*YosukeListensToGwar.*
He typed it in and exhaled something that wasn't quite a laugh.
'Haven't heard anything about Gwar since 2011-2012.'
The archive extracted into a folder of time management documents, study schedules, reading lists, and one file labeled simply:
*Read this one first.*
He opened it.
---
*Ren.*
*I'm not going to tell you what to do. You'd ignore it anyway, which I get bro. Really. *
*But I know what it looks like when you're carrying too much alone. I've done it. It doesn't end well.*
*The documents are practical. Use what's useful. Ignore the rest.*
*The deck ended up with you for a reason. Don't overthink which reason.*
*The city is a lot. Give yourself time to learn it.*
*— Yu*
*P.S. Yosuke genuinely does listen to Gwar. I have no explanation.*
---
Ren read it twice.
'He knows something about the deck. I was right.' He narrowed his eyes.
Then he set his phone face-down on the counter and drank the rest of his coffee.
Sojiro, who had been pretending to read the newspaper, did not comment.
---
The afternoon was quiet in a way Ren didn't entirely know what to do with.
He reorganized the loft. Not because it needed it — he'd cleaned it thoroughly the first day — but because having something to do with his hands helped. He found a used bookstore two streets over and spent an hour in it, coming back with a paperback on Jungian psychology that the owner had looked at him strangely for buying.
"Research," Ren told Morgana when he returned.
"Into what?" Morgana asked.
"Us," Ren said, and opened to the first chapter.
Morgana sat beside him on the couch and read over his shoulder in silence for a while.
"This is about the Shadow," Morgana said eventually.
"And the Persona," Ren said. "Or as close as anyone in the real world has gotten to describing it."
"He says the Shadow is everything the conscious mind refuses to acknowledge."
"Yes."
Morgana was quiet.
"That's not wrong," he said finally. "But it's not complete either."
"No," Ren agreed. "It's not."
"Weird."
Ren nodded.
---
That evening, after Sojiro had locked up and gone home, Ren sat at the counter with the last of the coffee and his phone.
---
[J0ker]
Monday. Palace run after school. Bring a bag you can move with.
[Shu7thefup]
FINALLY
[Dove]
Understood. I'll text you when I'm at the station.
[SweetTreat]
Ready.
[SweetTreat]
Also what do I do with the tommy gun between now and then, it's just sitting in my room
[Shu7thefup]
Same problem with the shotgun honestly
[J0ker]
Hope your parents don't think it's real
[SweetTreat]
That is the least reassuring thing anyone has ever said to me
[J0ker]
You're welcome.
---
He set the phone down and looked at the window.
Outside, Yongen-Jaya was doing its quiet evening routine. The distant train. Someone's cooking. The alley in its ongoing negotiations.
---
Tomorrow.
He was ready.
He was also, he realized with some surprise, not dreading it.
---
Monday.
The atmosphere at Shujin had changed overnight.
Not visibly. Nothing Ren could point to and name. Just the particular quality of a hallway where people had been talking about something and had very recently stopped.
He noticed it the moment he came through the gate.
Two third-years near the shoe lockers who looked at him and then away too quickly. A cluster of girls from his class who went quiet as he passed. The specific texture of a school that had received new information and hadn't decided what to do with it yet.
Ren kept walking.
Ryuji fell into step beside him at the shoe lockers, jaw already tight.
"You feel that?" Ryuji muttered.
"Yes," Ren said.
"Kamoshida's been talking."
"Probably."
"They're saying you've been—" Ryuji stopped, visibly controlling his volume. "That you're manipulating Ann and Shiho. Like, deliberately. Like some kind of—"
Ren just sighed.
He'd expected something like this. Kamoshida wasn't going to let the confrontation in the hallway go. The assault record was already out there. Adding a narrative — the dangerous transfer student using vulnerable girls — cost him nothing and muddied the water considerably.
"It's not—" Ryuji started.
Shaking his head Ren said. "Let's try to ignore it."
They kept walking.
---
Kawakami was at her desk when Ren arrived for homeroom, reading something on her phone with an expression he hadn't seen on her before. Not her usual exhausted detachment. Something more like discomfort with nowhere to go.
She looked up when he came in.
Then looked back at her phone.
Then set the phone face-down on the desk.
Ren took his seat.
---
Ann was already there.
She looked fine. Or rather, she was doing the precise controlled version of fine that Ren had come to recognize as Ann having made a decision before she arrived and sticking to it.
She caught his eye.
He raised an eyebrow slightly.
She gave a small shrug that said: 'I know. I saw it. I'm fine. We're doing this anyway.'
He nodded once.
---
After school.
The group met in the alley by unspoken agreement — not the school gate, not the roof.
Ann arrived first, Shiho beside her. Ryuji was already there, mace-filled bag over his shoulder, trying to look casual about it.
Ren arrived last, Morgana quiet in his bag.
He looked at Ann.
"You got it?" he asked.
"Tommy gun is in here," she said, patting her bag. "I feel insane."
"Uzi accounted for," Shiho said.
"Good." Ren glanced around the group. "How is everyone?"
"Ready," Ryuji said immediately.
"Tired of today," Ann said. "Ready."
Shiho nodded.
"Right," Ren said. "Let's go."
Morgana poked his head out of the bag.
"One thing before we go in," he said — "The weapons. When we're inside, treat them like they're real. Don't hesitate. Don't second-guess. The Metaverse will do the rest."
"What does that mean exactly?" Shiho asked.
Ren relayed the question.
"It means," Morgana said smugly, "that you're all about to be very pleasantly surprised."
Ren looked at Ann.
Ann looked at the bag containing the tommy gun.
"Okay," she said. "Let's find out."
---