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Shinjirou opens his eyes and the world has stopped. A few moments ago, Iwatodai Station was loud and lively, filled with people despite the late hour. Now, it is utterly silent and still. The moon hangs in the sky, heavy and yellow, and he misses the pure, clean moonlight that until now has been all he has ever known. Everything is murky green and red, and coffins stand where people had been just a moment earlier.
His heartbeat is loud in his ears and his breath comes quick and fast. It feels like the world has died and he is the last survivor, destined to wander around alone and despairing until finally he lies down to die. Shinjirou doesn’t want to die, and drives himself to walk on shaky legs to the road that will lead him back to the dorms. He is sure, after all, that if anything happened to Aki, he would know. They’ve been through too much together for him not to know.
A ringing sound slices through the silence, metal striking metal. It’s stunningly loud in the stillness of Iwatodai. Shinjirou moves towards the sound. He doesn’t know what it could be, but anything is better than the utter emptiness of this world now. As he draws closer he can hear someone — a girl, he thinks — grunting in effort as she swings something. That doesn’t sound good. She sounds like she’s in trouble, fighting something off, and he picks up the pace. He turns the corner into an alley, fists already up in preparation to knock a creep down, and then stops in utter shock at what he sees.
A girl is wielding a naginata against something that could only be described as a monster. It looks like a gigantic bird with a human face on its chest, with large metallic wings that it uses to swipe at the girl. She avoids the blows easily before swinging her naginata to land where the wings join the monster’s body. It keens in pain before slumping to the ground. It then disappears into motes of light, and the girl turns to face him.
Shinjirou stares. He knows her, but he cannot remember how or when he had met her. There's nothing unusual about her, not like the monster, but his certainty that he knew her once disturbs him
She smiles at him, a smile as bright as her hair and eyes, and says “Oh, you’re awake! I’ve been waiting for you.”
It takes Shinjirou a moment to understand what she said. He swallows, shakes his head slightly to clear the cobwebs from it, and asks dumbly “For … me?”
Fortunately, she doesn’t laugh at his incomprehension. “Yep! I’m Arisato Minako. Welcome to the Dark Hour.”
“The what?” Shinjirou manages.
“Don’t worry,” Arisato says cheerfully. “I know it doesn’t make sense yet, but there’ll be people in your dorm who can explain it to you. We should get going.”
She shoulders her naginata and starts heading out of the alley. Shinjirou doesn’t follow her.
“How do you know what dorm I live in?”
This time the girl does laugh. It’s bright and merry, and somehow it keeps the unsettling gloominess of this frozen hour at bay. “Iwatodai isn’t that big a place, you know! Besides, I can’t leave a cute boy like you out on your own!”
Ordinarily, Shinjirou would blow her off and find his own way back. Normally when girls compliment him, it’s to get closer to Aki. On the other hand, it’s been a very strange evening, and the girl — Arisato — seems to have been waiting for him. He’s sure he knows her from somewhere, and has this vague feeling that once, she was very important to him.
Besides, she’s the only other living person he’s seen since the world turned upside down, and he loses nothing by accepting her aid. “All right, take me home.”
“Always,” Arisato says, and he wonders what she means by that.
The next time Shinjirou sees Arisato Minako, she is sitting at the desk in his room, fiddling with a pencil.
He isn’t sure what time it is, but he knows it has to be during the Dark Hour as no electronics are working. To his sleep-muddled mind, a girl he has only met once sitting in his room seems sensible and appropriate. It’s only when she looks at him and smiles that he wakes enough to realize: there’s a strange girl in his room, and he has no idea how she got there.
He sits up with a startled yelp, pulling the blankets up around him like a shield, back against the bedhead and legs drawn up to his chest.
“I never did that when Pharos visited me,” Minako muses. “I wonder what I’m doing wrong.”
“Why are you here?” Shinjirou manages. “Who’s Pharos?”
“I’m not really sure,” Minako says, and leaves it ambiguous which question she’s answering. She glances around the room, gaze alighting on the evoker and axe lying on the floor, and makes a disappointed sound in her throat. “I was going to tell you, you need to take better care of your weapons. You’ll need them, and they’re pretty expensive.”
“Don’t nag me,” Shinjirou grumbles. “I’ll get a weapon stand or something later. But what are you doing here?”
She grins mischievously. “Would you believe that I’m your guardian angel?”
Shinjirou would, a knowledge that makes absolutely no sense when he thinks about it. Instead he snorts derisively.
“Okay, that’s fair,” she concedes. “I’m not sure I’d believe it either. Anyway, what month is it?”
“What month?” Shinjirou echoes skeptically. “Surely you know what month it is. It’s July.”
Minako sighs in relief and Shinjirou suspects that she genuinely didn’t know. “Good!” she says brightly. “We have time still.”
“Time for what?” Shinjirou says. She’s obviously not a threat, and he’s intrigued as to what is motivating her to do what she’s doing. Besides, there’s that nagging feeling that he knows her from somewhere, and that he trusted her with his life. He gets out of bed, painfully aware that he is very underdressed to have a girl in his room, and puts his Evoker on his bookcase. “There, happy now?”
“Yup!” Minako chirps. “And time to talk about Personas. Personae?”
“Persona,” Shinjirou says, if only because Mitsuru is very insistent on what the plural is for Persona.
“You know, I’ve always wondered if that’s correct…” Minako says, and Shinjirou shrugs. He doesn’t really care either way. It’s always been Mitsuru’s bugbear, not his.
“Do you have a Persona?” he wonders aloud. It would make sense. Only people with the potential to summon a Persona are awake during the Dark Hour.
Minako nods emphatically. “Sure do! Want me to summon it?” She sounds far too enthusiastic to summon a fragment of her subconscious, but Shinjirou doesn’t mind. After all, he’s curious to see what her power looks like.
“Depends,” he says, trying to sound nonchalant and failing dismally.
“I promise you, you won’t be disappointed.”
Minako pulls an Evoker from her pocket. It’s battered and scratched, and clearly been well used, but Shinjirou is struck by the fact that in form it looks just like the Evoker that Mitsuru gave him. Apparently only the Kirijo Group make Evokers. He’s not sure what to make of the fact that Minako has one.
She raises her Evoker to her head and, with a casualness that is downright disturbing, fires the trigger. A shadowy figure begins to appear and Shinjirou leans closer, eager to see her Persona.
It … is a green phallus on a chariot.
Minako laughs at his reaction.
“That’s not my only Persona,” Minako says, as she dismisses her Persona. “I just wanted to summon that one to see your face.”
“You have multiple Persona?” Shinjirou asks, folding his arms and pretending he doesn’t know that he is blushing furiously. After all, a pretty girl did just summon a giant penis in his bedroom in the middle of the night, while Shinjirou is only wearing a pair of shorts. He consoles himself that at least, thanks to operational requirements, he no longer sleeps naked. That would have been one embarrassment too much to bear.
“Yeah. Apparently that’s special.”
“It’s damned impossible,” Shinjirou mutters, because if Mitsuru has made something abundantly clear, it is that one person can have only one single Persona at any time.
“I think I’m an exception to the rule,” Minako says. “I can prove it! Want me to summon another Persona?”
He does. He wants her to be telling the truth. He already half believes her, despite her saying things that make no sense, and he wants something tangible to base his belief on. She smiles, and fires her Evoker again.
This time, a woman appears. She looks like a doll, with visible hinges for joints and long metal limbs. Her orange hair is long and wild, contained with a red hairband, and her eyes are the same color as Minako’s. Slung to her back is a heart-shaped lyre.
She is also proof that Minako is telling the truth. Minako has at least two Persona.
“This is Orpheus,” Minako says fondly, resting her hand on her Persona. “The first Persona I ever summoned.”
“That’s more like you,” Shinjirou says. “Not … that other one. Why did you summon it anyway?”
“Honestly?” She giggles. “I just wanted to summon Mara. Wouldn’t you, if you could?”
“No,” Shinjirou said stonily. “Definitely not.”
“And that’s why Mara isn’t your Persona! They’re representations of ourselves, you know.”
Shinjirou tries not to think about the implications of a pretty girl having a gigantic green penis as a reflection of herself. He’s not successful, and clears his throat awkwardly.
“Yeah,” he says, and clears his throat again. “That’s what Mitsuru says.”
“She’s right. You’ve noticed, haven’t you, how perfect Polydeuces and Penthesilea are for Akihiko and Mitsuru?”
He had. Mitsuru is graceful and elegant, coolly in control even in battle. Aki hits hard and fast, always has, and his Persona just allows him to hit harder and faster than he could before. They can summon their Persona readily, without hesitation, leaving Shinjirou behind to grapple with his own mortality. Remember that you will die, Mitsuru had told him, hold that in your heart, and fire. It’s easier said than done.
Still, that raises the question of how Minako knows about Mitsuru and Aki’s Persona. He opens his mouth to ask, and Minako puts up her hand to forestall any further questions.
“Sorry, I have to go. Next time we meet, I want to see Castor!” She disappears in the brief time his eyelids are closed to blink, leaving Shinjirou with far too many questions. She seems human — after all, she can summon a Persona — but no human can teleport like that. Maybe it’s part of her Persona’s abilities, like how Mitsuru can analyze enemies. He knows far too little about her to speculate.
It’s as he gets back into bed that he realizes: he never told her his Persona’s name. How did she know that? It’s a question with no answers.
Shinjirou finds himself counting down the days to the next full moon, hoping that there will be no Shadows that escape from Tartarus that will pull him away from his room. There aren’t, fortunately, and he sets his alarm to go off one minute before midnight. It’s hard to wake up at that time, and every fibre of his body yearns for sleep as he sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed, but his reward is Minako’s startled delight when she appears in his room right at the commencement of the Dark Hour to find him already awake.
“I’m glad you waited for me!” she says as a greeting. “Remember, you promised you’d show me Castor.”
“I don’t remember promising that,” Shinjirou retorts, but his Evoker is already in his hand. He knows that the Evoker is a symbol. The weight and heft of it, the gleaming metallic barrel, are all designed to make him think it’s a gun. It’s designed to make him think he is on the verge of death, so that his Persona will come out to help him. It still is very difficult to raise it to his head and fire. His hand shakes, and he tells himself it’s because the Evoker is heavy.
He closes his eyes and pulls the trigger. His brain aches from a psychic shock, and he opens his eyes to see Castor appear in his bedroom. Shinjirou is not sure if there is anything inside the dark armor Castor wears, and he is afraid to find out. He’s afraid to know whether the representation of his true self is a hollow shell, and what that means for him. Perhaps that for all he tries to act tough, Shinjirou cannot protect anyone.
Minako reaches out a hand to brush Castor’s mount’s nose. Castor, to Shinjirou’s utter astonishment, lets her. It feels strange to have someone else touch his Persona, like someone is touching a place inside his mind. It’s not an unpleasant feeling, but it is certainly an unusual one.
“He’s a real knight in shining armor, isn’t he?” Minako observes.
That, he didn’t expect. “What?”
“Look at him,” Minako says insistently, hand still on the nose of the horse. “He’s so proud on his horse, but his sword is sheathed close to his heart. He’s not ready to fight, he’s ready to defend.”
“You think so?” It’s a take that Shinjirou hadn’t considered. He’d noticed the similarities between Castor and Polydeuces, even before looking them up and learning that they were twin brothers, but that was about it. It seemed appropriate that he and Aki have complementary Persona, but he’d been too anxious to look at Castor to try and understand what it meant about him. Now, he can see what Minako meant. The black menacing armor is a distraction. If he looks at Castor properly, he can see that Castor resembles nothing more than a knight in a storybook.
He dismisses Castor, because that’s a deeply embarrassing epiphany.
“He’s a perfect Persona for you,” Minako says, her hand falling to her side. “You both want to protect people.”
“Yeah right,” Shinjirou mutters, because if realizing that Castor looks like a fairytale knight is embarrassing, Minako talking about his desire to protect people is horrifyingly so and he desperately wants her to stop.
Minako gives no suggestion that she is about to stop, much to his dismay. “Remember how we first met? You’d just woken up in a strange place where everyone looked dead and your first reaction was to run to help me.”
“Anyone’d do that,” Shinjirou protests weakly.
Minako smiles at him. “You think that. That’s why Castor is your Persona.”
“Anyway,” Shinjirou says, desperately trying to change the topic from him to literally anything else. “Why did you want to see Castor?”
“I wanted you to see him,” Minako says.
“Why?”
“He’s pretty,” Minako says blithely, and Shinjirou remembers that this is the girl who last month summoned a giant penis into his room for a laugh. “Also because he’s you.”
“You wanted me to see my Persona because he’s pretty,” Shinjirou says dryly. “I stayed up for this.”
“I know, and I appreciate it,” Minako says. “But really, I wanted you to see how amazing Castor is. He’s pretty great, and I know you don’t see that.”
Shinjirou has never claimed to be clever, but even he can work out what Minako is alluding to. He blushes, hunching his shoulders, and smiles because even if she is being very cheesy about it, it’s nice to hear her say that he’s amazing.
“There’s the smile I was looking for!” Minako says brightly. “I’ll be back next month. Same time, same place!”
“I’ll be here,” Shinjirou promises.
Shinjirou keeps his promise, but only barely.
The three SEES members had gone out the night before to explore the first two levels of Tartarus. Ikutsuki had recommended it to them, saying that he thought they were strong enough to handle the Shadows in that area. They were doing well, until they weren’t. It turns out that the Shadows can create illusions that seem real. Shinjirou’s face still smarts from the flames of the orphanage fire.
Aki had been the worst affected, and couldn’t summon his Persona despite using his Evoker. The idea that a Persona has a will of its own is disturbing, and even unflappable Mitsuru looked disturbed as she directed them to return to the entrance and go home. They were too injured to continue on, having won the battle through sheer gritty determination, and Shinjirou had nursed his bruised ribs in the dorm the following day.
He leans against the wall, grunting with pain, as he prepares for Minako’s arrival. She comes right on the stroke of midnight, when time stops and the world freezes for one hour. She looks startled at how drawn he looks --more so than is really warranted in Shinjirou’s opinion-- and sits down gingerly next to him.
“Did something happen?” she asks carefully.
“It’s nothing,” Shinjirou demurs. “We just had a bad run at Tartarus. It’ll be fine in a few days.”
She turns to look at his face, frowning slightly. She seems satisfied by what she sees, as she relaxes with a sigh. “Good,” she says. “You really had me worried! What happened?”
“Some Shadows can mess with your mind or shit like that,” Shinjirou says. “We ran into one and it messed with us. Showed us stuff from the past. Aki couldn’t summon his Persona afterward.”
“Was it the fire?”
Shinjirou starts, and then winces at how the movement pulls at his ribs. “How do you know about the orphanage fire?” The only people who know about it are Aki and Mitsuru, and Mitsuru only knows because the Kirijo Group ran background checks on him and Aki before allowing them to stay at the dorm.
“I can’t tell you,” Minako says.
“Why not?”
“I can’t,” Minako says helplessly. “I can at the next full moon but … I can’t right now. I promise, next full moon I will tell you everything.”
“Everything?”
“Yeah. Everything I know, anyway.” She manages a smile. Shinjirou looks at her properly, now that she’s sitting next to him, and is stunned at how drawn and exhausted she looks. Her head keeps ducking forward as if she is falling asleep before catching herself, and her shoulders are slumped. Now that he thinks about it, she’s always looked tired, always looked like she’s pushing herself on out of sheer determination. He just hadn’t noticed it, or the ragged desperate edge that she uses to pull herself forward until now.
“Never mind that,” he protests. “If you’re tired, you should stay in bed. Don’t come visiting me and making yourself sick.”
She stares at him, and now that she’s not trying to look positive and happy Shinjirou can see how terribly sad she is. He’s such an idiot for not noticing, for not telling her to put herself first rather than pushing herself to come and see him.
He knows that she will wear herself out to protect others. He knows that she will always lead them on with a smile and a positive word, and no matter how tired she is she will spend time with her friends and lend them a comforting ear.
Except that he doesn’t know this at all.
He shakes his head to clear it. Whatever’s going on with him, it’s not important right now. He pushes himself to his feet, feeling like an old man as he does so, and staggers to the desk chair. Minako moves to get up and he gestures for her to stay where she is. She shakes her head fractionally in bewilderment.
“Look, you can have the bed. I’ll stay here for the next hour.”
“But —”
“But nothing. Stay there and get some rest, you got it? It’ll be fine.”
Minako looks at him gravely. “There’s something I have to tell you first.”
“It can wait,” Shinjirou says firmly. “Whatever it is, it’s not worth making yourself sick over.”
Minako looks like she’s about to protest, but her eyes are already fluttering closed. She lies on top of the blanket and mumbles something. It sounds like his name and something else. It might be asking him to wake her up before the Dark Hour is over. It might be the thing she wants to tell him.
She sleeps through the Dark Hour, disappearing as the electronics in his room whir to life once again. Whatever it is that she wants to tell him, it can wait until the October full moon.
The Shadow looms overhead, terrifyingly powerful, suitably terrifying given that it had escaped from Tartarus under its own power. Under the light of the moon, it looks a hundred feet tall, even if Shinjirou knows that objectively a being that tall would not have fit into the back alleys of Iwatodai. The battle is being waged in the back alley to Port Island Station, and Shinjirou is telling himself that the odds are in their favor. The Shadow may be wearing dark spiky armor, wielding a sword that is devastatingly heavy, but there are three SEES members fighting the Shadow. Three against one are good odds.
His axe skids across the surface of the armor, weapon twisting strangely in his hands as the head catches on a spike, and then he jumps out of the way as Aki flings a Zio spell at the Shadow. It’s a pattern Mitsuru identified early on in the fight. She’s standing near Aki now, flinging a Bufu spell at the Shadow while Shinjirou drives his axe into the Shadow’s armor to try and prise it off.
There is no space for them to catch their breath or bolster their defense. The three of them must remain on the offensive at all times, because the Shadow’s attention is easily lost. There are two people transmogrified into coffins nearby, and the Shadow has tried several times already to prise open one coffin with its sword. Shinjirou doesn’t know what would happen if the coffins were opened by a Shadow — in fact, until now he didn’t think it was possible for a coffin to be opened at all — but he is sure that it would not be good for its occupant.
He’s tired though. Mitsuru and Aki are quick with Dia spells but Shinjirou still aches from when the Shadow struck him. At this point the only thing keeping him on his feet is the thought that if he falls, then the Shadow will do something to the people inside those coffins. That is something he cannot abide.
He wavers, exhausted, and the Shadow reaches towards the nearest coffin once again. He feels sick as he lifts his axe once again, a dizziness that transforms into horror as his Persona seems to shift inside him. He grabs at it desperately, trying to bring it back under control by force and throttle it into submission, but of course his Persona is more powerful than that.
Then he stops trying to fight his Persona. He remembers what Minako told him. His Persona is his true self, unfettered by misconceptions, and empowered by everything that makes him Aragaki Shinjirou. Castor is a representation of the Aragaki Shinjirou who protects his loved ones. That’s not something to be afraid of. Protect us, he thinks. His Evoker is slippery in his sweaty hands. He raises it to his head, fires. Castor appears, a gleaming knight on a metallic horse. A shining knight, who let Minako touch his steed. A part of himself that he can accept. I trust you.
Castor strikes the Shadow down before fading back into Shinjirou’s subconscious, and Shinjirou falls to his hands and knees. He struggles to catch his breath, before Aki helps him up.
“Way to go, Shinji!” Aki is loud in his exuberance and Shinji can’t help but crack a smile at it. If only the boxing club could see their quiet leader now.
“I’ll go on ahead,” Mitsuru says as she straddles her motorbike. “Ikutsuki might know something about opening coffins.” She looks as exhausted as Shinjirou feels but she manages a smile from somewhere. “You did well, Shinjirou.” She takes off, the roar of the engine comfortingly loud in the eerie stillness of the Dark Hour.
“You ready to go?” Aki asks. Shinjirou nods. He looks back as the Dark Hour fades to see who had brushed so close to death but for SEES. It is a woman and a boy wearing the uniform for Gekkoukan Elementary School, and Shinjirou sucks in a breath as he recognizes the boy as well. The boy's name is on the tip of his tongue, and Shinjirou wants to run out and apologize to him, though for what he doesn't know.
Then the moment goes, the boy is just a boy again talking with his mother, and Aki is cajoling Shinjirou home.
Walking becomes easier once he gets moving, though he is sure he will feel every scrape and bruise tomorrow. As they walk, Shinjirou turns over the battle in his mind. Minako knew what would happen, he is sure, and had been guiding him towards a certain outcome. What he does not know is why she would do that. She’s clever and bright and funny, but sometimes she looks so sad when she looks at him. How did she know? Why would she spend so much time with him, of all people?
He thinks now he is entitled to answers.
Minako, as it turns out, is surprisingly free with answers now. Too free, and it makes his head hurt to think about it. If not for the months he has spent fighting Shadows in the Dark Hour, he is sure that he would laugh in incredulous disbelief at her
“So you’re telling me that you are from the future, that you are dead, and that in my future I have to let you die?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.” She sighs, looking down at her hands. “I wish we had more time, but I have to die on January 31. It’s the fate I chose for myself. Either I died or everyone would die.”
“Can someone else do it for you?” Like me, he thinks but doesn’t say. The way she smiles at him suggests she knows what he is thinking and appreciates the sentiment.
“No, it can only be me.”
"How do you know that?"
Minako looks tired as she says, "This is not my first time around."
"What?"
"Because …" she gestures helplessly. "The first time around, I didn't do everything right and you died because of it. The second time, you live longer, but not long enough. I tried so many different ways to save you: warning you, making sure you weren't there, hiding and tackling Takaya … none of it worked. You still die too young. So … I decided that this time around, you were going to have a future."
"Why do I die?" Shinjirou doesn't want to die, but the idea that someone has focused so much time on saving him makes him wonder what happens to him. Why is everything so determined to kill him?
"That doesn't matter anymore," Minako says. "It won't happen now. You made it through October 4 without losing control of Castor." She laughs. "It's funny; I came back to help you, but you did it all by yourself!"
"Is that what happened? I killed that kid?" The thought is terrifying.
"That -- oh, you saw Ken-kun?" Minako shook her head. "No. His mother."
That's no better, and Shinjirou says so.
She takes his hand in hers. “It’s okay, you know. This time around, I think I’ve done everything right. But … can I ask a favor?”
“What is it?”
“A kiss for good luck?”
He snorts. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. But don’t feel obligated to! I know it’s a selfish request.”
Given what Minako has told him about her future, her request is anything but selfish. He leans in, laughs sheepishly, and then closes his eyes. It’s easier if he can’t see what he’s doing. He’s never kissed anyone before, and he’s sure that he is clumsy and awkward, but this he can do.
She kisses him back. That seems familiar. The scent of her hair and the way her ponytail tangles in his fingers, the softness of her lips, the sweet pressure that builds between them, he knows this.
He knows this.
He knows this.
He remembers another timeline, of a bright-eyed girl who broke through his shell and won him over. Their leader, who brought them through hardship with a smile and positive attitude, who for some reason was determined to win over a more wary and surly Shinjirou. The SEES’ rising star, their guiding light, who helped to light the way. The girl who loved him.
He remembers now loving her as much as he dared, while febrile heat made him weak and dizzy and congested his lungs. He remembers asking her to look after Aki after he died. He remembers her promising they would do it together, and it’s the memory of that promise that draws him up short.
“We had a promise, didn’t we?” Minako says. Now that he’s this close to her, he can tell she doesn’t have a pulse. Of course not. She’s not physically here. “I’ll be transferring here in 2009. We can continue the promise then.”
“But … you’re going to die.” He knows this too. He remembers the grief he felt as she died on the school roof, the terrible knowledge that despite everything there was never enough time. There would never be enough time.
“Yes,” she says. “But we only had a month last time. Imagine what we could do with a full school year.”
She’s glowing, a spiritual luminescence that is painfully fitting given that he’s been interacting with a disembodied soul these last few months. A surprisingly corporeal soul, but a soul nonetheless. He doesn’t understand how she can be here while also being a middle schooler somewhere else, but he does understand that he doesn’t want her to go.
“Don’t cry,” she says as she disappears. “You’ll see me soon.”
He hadn’t realized he was crying. He doesn’t stop for a while.
Two years pass. SEES grow larger with the discovery of Takeba Yukari, a junior classmate a year younger than the rest. Shinjirou quite likes Takeba and thinks she’ll be a good asset once she overcomes her fear of summoning her Persona, but he has to admit to some disappointment when Ikutsuki says that Takeba is their newest recruit. He's been waiting for Minako for two years, and the school year has already started. Why is she taking so long to arrive?
He has a new appreciation for how hard it must be for Minako to loop time and again without letting on to others what she knew. Shinjirou remembers everything that his previous selves did, and tries to use that information to steer SEES towards a better course. Sometimes he slips up. Mitsuru has started to wonder if his Persona has a precognitive talent. Ikutsuki sometimes looks at him, and Shinjirou shivers at the cold calculation that’s barely in view there. He doesn’t understand what is going on, as Ikutsuki had been nothing but helpful in all of his memories, but hopes that when Minako transfers in she can explain.
Finally, Minako arrives. Fittingly, it’s during the Dark Hour. She looks just like how Shinjirou remembers, vivacious and charismatic, drawing the eyes of everyone around her. She also looks a lot less exhausted, to Shinjirou’s relief. She smiles at him as they meet in the second level lounge.
“Hello! I’m Arisato Minako!”
“I — uh — Aragaki Shinjirou,” he mutters, ducking his head. “I’m a third year, like the others.”
Minako looks at him carefully, frowning slightly, before coming to some kind of realization.
“You remembered me,” she says. “I didn’t expect that! It was two years ago!”
Shinjirou suspects that it is more that she didn’t dare to hope. After all, she has travelled back in time multiple times, and on each occasion the version of him she had met didn't know her. He blew her off, dismissed her, and yet she kept trying to save him with a smile and a positive attitude. It’s a humbling thought. Time is precious, and she has accepted that she will die on January 31. He can’t change her mind, but he can spend her remaining time with her.
“So we have a year?” Shinjiro says. “That’s not too bad. Let’s make the most of it.”
Minako’s smile proves he made the right call.