...05/10/2009 Monday; Midday...
The break bell echoed through the hallways like a collective sigh.
Doors opened, chairs scraped, voices filled the empty spaces with the usual buzz—cafeteria menus, complaints about upcoming exams, plans for the afternoon.
The routine of Gekkoukan tried to heal the wound with the gauze of everyday life.
But certain voids couldn't be filled with normalcy.
Minato walked a few steps ahead, his lunch box tucked under his right arm. Yukari followed beside him, her hands clasped in front of her body, her eyes fixed on the floor as if each tile required concentration to be stepped on.
Junpei brought up the rear, his shoulders still rigid, his mouth sealed into a straight line. None of the three spoke during the climb. The stairs were too narrow for words.
The rooftop door creaked when Minato pushed it open.
The sky was clear—a blue so beautiful it was almost insulting. The afternoon breeze carried the distant scent of the cherry trees in the courtyard, and the metal railings gleamed under the sun as if the whole world had decided to ignore that someone had died.
Fuuka was sitting on one of the benches, her back slightly curved. On her lap, a container of onigiri—she held one between her fingers, but she wasn't really eating. Just nibbling slowly.
Beside her, Aigis maintained an upright posture—but her metallic fingers were already reaching toward the other's container. She picked up an onigiri with delicacy. Lifted it to the height of her mouth. Then she heard the movement at the rooftop entrance, and she stopped. Her head turned toward the newcomers.
"You made it." Aigis's voice sounded calm.
Minato approached. The lunch box slid from under his arm into his hands as he took a seat on the bench.
"Sorry for the delay." He opened the lid. Steam escaped, but he didn't pick up the chopsticks. "After the principal's speech... it's hard to think straight without remembering Aragaki."
Fuuka took a bite of the onigiri. The rice was cold.
She only raised her eyes when Yukari sat down beside Minato, adjusting her skirt with a quick gesture. Junpei remained standing, pacing back and forth—three steps to the railing, three steps back. The soles of his shoes scraped the floor with an irritated friction.
"Man, I wish I could smash that bastard's face in..."
Junpei rubbed his eyes with the base of his palm, as if he could erase the image of the two students. But their voices were still there. "It won't make any difference to me." Each mental repetition tightened his teeth further.
Minato spun the chopstick between his fingers. The wood slid over his skin, a distracted, almost hypnotic movement. "I know..." He didn't look at Junpei. He watched the chopstick as if it held some answer. "But it's better if we don't cause problems. Especially for Kirijo."
Yukari turned to Fuuka. Her brown eyes carried a weary curiosity—the kind of question asked out of duty, not desire. "What exactly did you want to talk about, Fuuka?"
Fuuka finished the onigiri. Her hands joined in a soft clap, her fingers intertwining as she brushed away the loose grains. Then she raised her face.
For an instant, the rooftop vanished.
She heard it again.
The raw, primal sound that had torn from Hiro's throat when Shinjiro's body lay on the ground.
The way he screamed while Minato and Aigis dragged him away—not a scream of anger, but of someone being torn by force from the only place he wanted to be. His voice breaking into something that was no longer language.
Fuuka blinked. The rooftop returned. The breeze. The sun. The four faces before her.
She scratched her head, her fingers tangling in her hair. "Kirijo-senpai said she's trying to find out who killed Aragaki-senpai..." Her voice came out weaker than she would have liked. "But besides Amada-kun not saying anything... the shots came from an unregistered gun."
Junpei stopped pacing. His face crumpled—not with anger now, but with a pain he was trying to understand and couldn't.
"It's pretty obvious Amada wouldn't talk right away... the poor kid saw everything." He shoved his hands into his pockets. His shoulders dropped. "But how did he and Aragaki end up there?"
Aigis let the untouched onigiri rest on the container.
"We don't know. But Kirijo-senpai said she'll tell us everything when we get back to the dorm." She looked at Junpei. "Hiro-san and Sanada-senpai also know why this happened."
Minato finished chewing the chicken. He swallowed and lowered his chopsticks to the lunch box, but didn't pick up anything else. "By the way... have you guys seen Hiro? I didn't see him after the auditorium."
Fuuka looked away. To the horizon. To the clouds that dragged themselves lazily over the city buildings. To anywhere that wasn't Minato's eyes.
"I asked Kirijo-senpai... she said Hiro wasn't in any condition to attend classes. So she let Hiro go back to the dorm early." Fuuka's fingers closed over the fabric of her skirt, crumpling the pleat. "I... can't stand seeing him like that."
The sentence came out almost in a whisper. Because she had seen. She had seen Hiro leaning against the auditorium wall, his face swallowed by shadow, his nails digging into his sleeve.
She had seen and hadn't been able to approach. And now, hours later, the image still squeezed her chest like an invisible hand.
Yukari ran a hand over her face.
Her fingers pressed against her eyelids, slid down her cheeks, dragging with them the last remnant of a composure she no longer bothered to maintain.
Something inside her gave way—a crack in the wall she had built since the night before.
"I thought everyone was going to be okay..." Her voice came out choked, but it didn't break. Not yet. "...no one was going to die."
The words hung over the rooftop like a naive confession. Ridiculous, perhaps, seen from the outside. But everyone there understood her.
Because everyone there had believed the same lie. They faced Shadows every night. Summoned Personas. Defied death itself with a snap of their fingers.
At some point, the exception had become routine—and routine had convinced them they were untouchable.
Minato sighed. The air escaped his lungs slowly, as if even breathing demanded conscious effort.
"There was no way we could have predicted someone would go after Aragaki..." He paused. His eyes fixed on Yukari, but his mind elsewhere. "...even if..."
His fist clenched.
His knuckles turned white. The anger rose up his arm, throbbed in his temples, burned behind his eyes. But it had nowhere to go. There was no target. Only a void with the exact shape of Shinjiro Aragaki.
Could I have done something?
The question didn't leave Minato's mouth. But he felt it. Sharp. Insistent. A shadow that fed on silence.
Would it have been in vain?
He set the lunch box on the bench beside him.
"We thought we could stop everything without losing anyone..." Minato's voice dropped. As if the words weighed more when they reached the end. "...but all we can do now is fight for Aragaki. And destroy the Dark Hour."
Junpei listened.
And for the first time since the auditorium, his shoulders stopped trembling.
He looked at his own hand—the same hand that minutes before had squeezed some idiot's neck, the same hand that hadn't been able to save anyone.
But also the same hand that had seen Shinjiro holding out a plate of food that night in the dorm. The same hand Shinjiro had squeezed once, without saying a word, because there was no need.
Shinjiro died smiling.
Junpei remembered that with cruel clarity. Even with the blood, even with the pain, there was a smile on his face. As if saying "it's okay." As if he knew something the others didn't yet understand.
Junpei's fist clenched.
"You're right..." His voice came out firmer. Not loud—just solid. "...we can't stop. We have to move forward."
Yukari kept her eyes on the floor, but she also felt there was no point in keeping her head down.
"Yes..." She nodded. The motion was short, but definite. "...it's our duty to destroy Tartarus... and stop the Dark Hour."
TO BE CONTINUED...