[Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne] "Pure and Cruel"
I wrote a "five things that never happened to [character]" story and it's not even pornographic. I feel ashamed. (It was, originally! But that part's going to be its own fic because it was getting long.) Some very strong hints of demi-fiend/Isamu (hence the tag), especially in #4. Spoilers all over the place-- the big ones are at the Amala Temple, everything about Yuko and Aradia, and the neutral ending of the game. I'd peg it somewhere around a PG-ish rating, because there are mentions of unpleasant things but nothing overtly stated. Counting the notes at the end, it's around 3500 words.
Shin (full name Shinya Hirai, which is referenced once or twice) is my demi-fiend's name. I've chosen to use it over "Naoki," because my characterization of the demi-fiend is not the drama CD's characterization of the demi-fiend.
Pure and Cruel
or, five things that never happened to Isamu Nitta.
title courtesy of this song, which is a song I always associate with Isamu.
I.
Isamu is the only one who goes to the medical center to visit their teacher, because Shin has to help his mother with something and Chiaki has cram school to attend (because even with all of the money her parents have, she'll have to pass the exam to get into the fancy university she'll undoubtedly attend). Ms. Takao doesn't seem very ill to him, but who is he to judge? He's too busy trying to telepathically convince her to start acting out his worst pornographic teacher fantasies (which she doesn't) to worry about things like that, anyway. All in all, it's a very unsatisfying visit in more ways than one, even for someone as deluded in regards to his teacher's affections as Isamu is.
Isamu is the only one who goes to the medical center and thus the only one to come out again after the Conception. At first he thinks he's going to die in the middle of the broken concrete, until he manages to duck inside a building and finds a man standing inside.
"I remember you," Jyoji Hijiri says, hands running up and down a stone cylinder. "Now get out of here. You won't do anything but get in my way."
"Like hell I'm leaving," Isamu says, and if it was a little bit rude, well... a guy who told someone to go back outside in the middle of whatever it was going on outside really deserved it. "I'm not going to bother you, whatever it is you're doing. I don't care about it."
And he really doesn't, not at first. But as time goes on he gets interested in this thing that Jyoji Hijiri the reporter is studying so obsessively, and he starts paying attention. As he does, Isamu slowly comes to realize that he understands much more about it than Hijiri seems to-- he can almost read what's carved into the sides, and Hijiri's muttered questions about the mysteries of it sound stupid to his ears in a way that he can't really articulate or explain.
"Let me," Isamu finally says in frustration, pushing past Hijiri and putting his hands on the terminal (because that's what it is, one of the words Hijiri was grasping for but couldn't quite come up with). Whatever's inside the Amala Network, it has to be better than sitting in an old building with insane Jyoji Hijiri and waiting for something to come along and kill them.
II.
It's not hard for Isamu to slip past the big, ugly... well, whatever it is that's lazing in the way of him leaving the medical center. It doesn't even seem to notice him, and he counts that as a very good thing until he gets outside and sees that maybe, just maybe, he should have stayed in the medical center.
"Isamu, wait!"
Isamu's relieved beyond belief to hear his friend until he turns around and sees that Shinya Hirai's voice is coming out of something that looks like it came from the same bad movie set they're standing on.
"You-- what--" Isamu manages before the distance between them has been bridged and Shin (that is totally not Shin) is standing right in front of him. Close up, he can see that the guy's skin is glowing and that just makes things even stranger. People don't glow, especially not people who talk in his friends' voices and know his name already. "Shin?"
"It's me." Shin sounds so relieved to have found one of his friends that Isamu can't help but think maybe it is him under that alien skin. "Someone said they saw you get out of the building, and I was afraid I wouldn't find you or Chiaki again. Have you seen her?"
"She wasn't with me when I left." Isamu shakes his head. You never tell the monsters details like that in movies unless you want to die; you always want them to think that you have backup (and Chiaki would make much better backup than most sidekicks in horror films, that was for sure) so they think twice about cutting your head off and eating you. And he still isn't quite sure that this is Shin and not something that's going to kill him now that he knows Chiaki isn't lurking around the corner with an arsenal straight out of an American movie.
"Damn." Shin doesn't swear much, and it's strange to hear it from him now. He clenches his hands into fists in frustration, and doesn't make any move to kill Isamu or whatever it is the bizarre things wandering out here do to hapless high school boys who are unlucky enough to wander into them. "We'll have to look for her."
"We?" Isamu echoes dumbly, because his thoughts just aren't keeping up with what's happening. He's still stuck on the fact that Shin is a glowing freak and the street outside the medical center is a shattered wreck, and he can't process complicated new ideas like his accompanying Shin through this hell to find Chiaki.
"Of course. You don't think I'm going to leave you out here, do you?" Shin reaches out and puts one blue-branded hand on Isamu's shoulder almost hesitantly. Isamu flinches out of pure reflex, as if he's sure it's going to burn him right through his jacket and vest and shirt, but nothing happens except that Shin's hand is resting on his shoulder and he's got sort of a stupid expression on his face.
"...I guess not," he says finally, because he doesn't want to think about that possibility. Better to stay with the monster he might know than the ones out there that he most definitely doesn't. And who knows, they just might find Chiaki out there, or Ms. Takao. "No, I guess you wouldn't."
Shin takes him by the arm (and his fingers don't burn or chill or even feel very strange) and leads him down the broken remains of the road, and Isamu doesn't think he knows where they're headed, either.
III.
"No, Isamu," Shin says, and his voice is full of regret. "I can't help you. If your Reason is for you to stand alone, then you need to make it alone. If people really are meant to wander alone through the world, it can't be in a world that was built by two people working together."
"It won't be built by two people working together." Isamu's voice turns dark and angry. "You're not a person; you're a demon who can only follow a human's Reason. I should have known you wouldn't do it. You're just proving me right, though. You wouldn't help me when I was crawling half-dead out of Ikebukuro and you wouldn't help me when I was trapped in Kabukicho. Why should I have thought you would help me now, when something even bigger than my life is on the line? I was stupid to think that you might feel sorry about everything I had to go through because you and Chiaki and everyone else let me down, and even stupider to think that even if you did you might actually do something about it. Never mind, Shinya. Never fucking mind."
"Shut up." Shin knows that he can't really understand what happened, for any number of reasons-- he's not entirely human anymore, he doesn't understand what it's like to find a Reason and need to make it happen, he didn't go through what Isamu went through or anything really like it (and even if what had happened to him was worse in some ways, he can only look at it through his skewed new perception of half-a-demon)-- but that doesn't mean he's going to stand there and let Isamu say things like that about him. "That's not true at all and you know it. I went after you in Kabukicho as soon as I found out you were there, and you're the one who told me you didn't need me anymore! You're just saying all of these things because I won't make your stupid, hypocritical little world for you."
"I didn't need you then, and you know what? I don't need you now. I'll summon my god without your help, since it's so much trouble for you to give it to me." Isamu takes a step forward and Shin matches it, looming over him with his line of demons close behind.
"All right, then." Shin speaks slowly and loudly. "Summon your god for us, Isamu. But I don't think your new friends will follow you when your Reason fails you, and I don't think you'll be able to get away from them alone. No matter how well you know the Amala Network."
"Then I'll die alone, like you would have let me do a long time ago." Isamu smirks at him, hat drawn low over his eyes. "Isn't that what you want? For me to go away and take my hypocritical little Reason with me so you can find someone whose ideas you like better? So you can go and help Chiaki or Ms. Takao or someone like the fool I just got rid of instead of me? Fine, fine. You know what, you're right. I made myself what I am now alone, and I'll see it end alone."
He takes his hat off and his mouth flattens out of the smirk. He looks serious and vulnerable the last time Shin sees him, as if he wants to ask Shin to come back and help him but knows that he can't do that now, it would never work.
Shin leaves the Amala Temple. He doesn't see Isamu again, and when he's next in Ginza the spirits in Nyx's bar are whispering something about the end of the Reason of Musubi.
IV.
Shin can feel Isamu's pulse under his hands, fast and faint in comparison to the pounding noise of blood in a demon's veins. His skin is warm and dry and dusty, as if the magatsuhi the Mantra took from him had taken away part of what made him a human and left him a little more like the only other remains of the human world already decaying into nothing around them. Isamu is looking out at the demons that follow Shin but at least trying to be surreptitious about it-- they must know that he's looking, of course, but a wrung-out little human who isn't overtly threatening them isn't worth a fight with their leader. Still, he can feel the flutter under Isamu's skin pick up every time one of them shifts or speaks.
"I'm their leader. They aren't going to touch what's mine." Not so long as they know Shin is the strongest of their group, and he has no intention of letting them lose that knowledge-- and not just because he has Isamu beside him now, all human frailty but the inspiration they'll need for a Reason, but because Shin's own life depends on it as well.
"But I'm not--" Shin shoves a hand over his mouth before he can finish, because that is the one thing Isamu does not want to say right now (or ever, really, but it's worse now before they have a Reason to follow and really need to have a human around for the sake of having a human around, not just because he was friends with Shin before the Conception).
"As far as they're concerned, you are. Trust me, that's what you want right now." Shin keeps his palm where it is, pressed against cracked lips almost as dry as the rest of his skin feels. "Once we've got our Reason, it will be different, I promise, but for now they aren't going to listen to anything else." He moves his hand and Isamu licks his lips in a futile effort that's only going to make them chap worse in the long run. Up close he doesn't look completely the same as before, like Shin had thought at first. He looks exhausted, his eyes dull and dark and his face paler than usual without the shadow of his hat to hide in.
"...all right," Isamu concedes, too tired or too defeated to argue. That should be worrying, because the Isamu Nitta who dressed like a punk and chased after his teacher would never have given in so easily. But whether it's a natural reaction to everything he's been through or a perception colored by Shin's very different outlook from before it doesn't strike Shin as anything to be concerned about. The important thing is that he's given in and they won't get any trouble as long as Shin is strong enough to uphold his end of things. Then Isamu sags forward, practically onto Shin, as if he doesn't have the strength to hold himself up anymore-- no, no as if, there's no way he could after making it out of Ikebukuro. It's a wonder he's still conscious and lucid, with as little magatsuhi as he must have left. "Do you have any water?"
He already knows that he doesn't, but he fumbles through his cache of collected items until he finds the closest thing. Shin has no idea what a chakra drop is going to do to a human, but he uses it anyway. He unscrews the lid and is careful to measure out a much smaller dose with the dropper than a demon would get, and as soon as the tiny drop of liquid hits Isamu's upturned face (splashing onto his forehead and evaporating almost immediately) he straightens up and seems better.
"What is that?" Isamu asks, hoarse but audibly better than before.
"Chakra drop. It takes some getting used to, but it's hard to find water out here. I'm surprised you managed as long as you did, wandering around like that." Shin was never this talkative as a human, and it probably surprises Isamu to hear him now. "Did you find your Reason out there?"
"I thought I had," Isamu admits. "But I was wrong. I'll have to keep looking. I... well, don't worry about it. I was wrong about the world that I wanted."
"We'll help you." Shin gestures out towards the assembled demons that still made Isamu's adam's apple jump as he swallowed hard at the sight of them. "Only a human can make the Reason that will shape the new world and summon a god. Or at least, that's what they tell me. We'll help you stay alive, and you'll make our new world for us. That sounds fair, right?"
V.
"You really thought I didn't remember?" Isamu asks suddenly as they're doing their homework in Shin's living room. His parents are out of town and Chiaki had declined to come along. She has some fancy cram school that she goes to, since her parents are sending her to a much more prestigious university than either the Nitta or the Hirai families could afford. Ms. Takao had offered to tutor them in preparation for their own exams, but they had both declined her help. Up until this moment, Shin had thought they'd turned her down for very different reasons.
"You weren't supposed to." Shin knows exactly what he's talking about, of course, and he doesn't insult Isamu by pretending not to. "I didn't, for a long time."
"Neither did I, for awhile." Isamu puts down his pencil slowly and deliberately. "I don't remember all of it, I don't think, but I know a lot of things."
"Do you think I made the wrong decision?" Shin wonders sometimes if he did the right thing, by restoring their world when it's really only a lie. Even if he thinks this is much better than the Vortex World, well, there's still the nagging fact that he knows what Aradia really is and in the end he used her power to build this new world (old world?). "Sometimes I do."
"I don't know." Isamu shrugs. "I don't think I was right, anyway. I mean, I asked for help to make a world based on not needing help?"
"Yeah, that was pretty stupid." It really feels like they shouldn't be sitting here and talking about this like it was any everyday thing. "...I can't believe we're having this conversation."
"Me, either." Isamu pauses. "I don't think Chiaki remembers anything." Or maybe she does, since Chiaki keeps things to herself much more skillfully than Isamu ever did. Maybe she's remembered longer than either one of them and they just haven't noticed, because there's nothing different about her cool, amused expression. She wouldn't be dwelling on something that they were supposed to lie to themselves about and pretend had never happened. And maybe Isamu is right and Chiaki is lucky enough to be living Aradia's lies with everyone else. That doesn't seem likely, though, since how could anyone who saw the truth do that?
"I think you're right," Shin says, and that's that. Except for the part where it isn't, because there's no way that will ever be that. This is always going to be hanging over them.
He's glad that Isamu remembers, though. It's selfish because if anyone deserves to forget and immerse himself into a happy lie it's Isamu, but Shin couldn't go through with fulfilling his friend's Reason because he doesn't like being alone and that's still true now.
And, if you want to read the notes:
Notes.
I felt the need to include this because there are so many things I want to explain about these vignettes-- I'm used to writing the demi-fiend (AKA Shinya "Shin" Hirai in my writing) because he's the one I can ascribe anything I want to, and the center of the action and therefore the more compelling story subject. Since Isamu actually has a character I need to keep, this presented a challenge. And ironically enough, more of these are from the demi-fiend's POV than Isamu's (I and II are Isamu, obviously, but III-V are the demi-fiend).
I. Is probably the most screwed-up potential world possible, because there is no demi-fiend, period. I must admit that I have a fascination with the fact that Isamu gravitated to the Amala Network and managed to make his power base-- as a lone human-- in such a place and make a damn good job of it. I've dealt with it before (see: this in-progress weirdness on my draft filter), and I definitely wanted to deal with it again here.
II. Needs the least amount of explanation. The demi-fiend runs into Isamu before he gets caught by the Mantra and goes batshit. It would probably serve as a lead-in to something not unlike scenario IV, with the demi-fiend's group being to Isamu what Nihilo is to Hikawa or Mantra (eventually) is to Chiaki: namely, they keep him around for his Reason. Which, incidentally, I have no ideas about. It obviously wouldn't be Musubi, since the events that shaped that Reason haven't happened.
III. Is the most in line with game canon. The demi-fiend says no because Isamu is a dirty hypocrite who wants help with GTFO Musubi. Although all the demi-fiend has done here is prove that poor Isamu was right about him (and maybe the nature of the world) all along.
IV. Sounds like a bad porn setup. But anyway, basically it's a form of the scenario from the notes about II; namely that the demi-fiend and posse follow Isamu's Reason. Because hey, that's about the only thing that would keep a human alive in a group of demons here. I'm not sure whether it would be Musubi or not, since while he's been with the Mantra he hasn't been to Kabukicho yet. It probably wouldn't be, exactly, but obviously what he's been through would have some influence. ...I still think it sounds like a bad porn setup, though.
V. Was actually supposed to be the bad porn setup! But it turned all character-driven instead, because the post-game porn was getting too long. The porn will be its own fic. I don't actually think that they would be nearly so calm or rational about things, which is why this is part of five things that never happened instead of a normal post-game story.
Shin (full name Shinya Hirai, which is referenced once or twice) is my demi-fiend's name. I've chosen to use it over "Naoki," because my characterization of the demi-fiend is not the drama CD's characterization of the demi-fiend.
Pure and Cruel
or, five things that never happened to Isamu Nitta.
title courtesy of this song, which is a song I always associate with Isamu.
I.
Isamu is the only one who goes to the medical center to visit their teacher, because Shin has to help his mother with something and Chiaki has cram school to attend (because even with all of the money her parents have, she'll have to pass the exam to get into the fancy university she'll undoubtedly attend). Ms. Takao doesn't seem very ill to him, but who is he to judge? He's too busy trying to telepathically convince her to start acting out his worst pornographic teacher fantasies (which she doesn't) to worry about things like that, anyway. All in all, it's a very unsatisfying visit in more ways than one, even for someone as deluded in regards to his teacher's affections as Isamu is.
Isamu is the only one who goes to the medical center and thus the only one to come out again after the Conception. At first he thinks he's going to die in the middle of the broken concrete, until he manages to duck inside a building and finds a man standing inside.
"I remember you," Jyoji Hijiri says, hands running up and down a stone cylinder. "Now get out of here. You won't do anything but get in my way."
"Like hell I'm leaving," Isamu says, and if it was a little bit rude, well... a guy who told someone to go back outside in the middle of whatever it was going on outside really deserved it. "I'm not going to bother you, whatever it is you're doing. I don't care about it."
And he really doesn't, not at first. But as time goes on he gets interested in this thing that Jyoji Hijiri the reporter is studying so obsessively, and he starts paying attention. As he does, Isamu slowly comes to realize that he understands much more about it than Hijiri seems to-- he can almost read what's carved into the sides, and Hijiri's muttered questions about the mysteries of it sound stupid to his ears in a way that he can't really articulate or explain.
"Let me," Isamu finally says in frustration, pushing past Hijiri and putting his hands on the terminal (because that's what it is, one of the words Hijiri was grasping for but couldn't quite come up with). Whatever's inside the Amala Network, it has to be better than sitting in an old building with insane Jyoji Hijiri and waiting for something to come along and kill them.
II.
It's not hard for Isamu to slip past the big, ugly... well, whatever it is that's lazing in the way of him leaving the medical center. It doesn't even seem to notice him, and he counts that as a very good thing until he gets outside and sees that maybe, just maybe, he should have stayed in the medical center.
"Isamu, wait!"
Isamu's relieved beyond belief to hear his friend until he turns around and sees that Shinya Hirai's voice is coming out of something that looks like it came from the same bad movie set they're standing on.
"You-- what--" Isamu manages before the distance between them has been bridged and Shin (that is totally not Shin) is standing right in front of him. Close up, he can see that the guy's skin is glowing and that just makes things even stranger. People don't glow, especially not people who talk in his friends' voices and know his name already. "Shin?"
"It's me." Shin sounds so relieved to have found one of his friends that Isamu can't help but think maybe it is him under that alien skin. "Someone said they saw you get out of the building, and I was afraid I wouldn't find you or Chiaki again. Have you seen her?"
"She wasn't with me when I left." Isamu shakes his head. You never tell the monsters details like that in movies unless you want to die; you always want them to think that you have backup (and Chiaki would make much better backup than most sidekicks in horror films, that was for sure) so they think twice about cutting your head off and eating you. And he still isn't quite sure that this is Shin and not something that's going to kill him now that he knows Chiaki isn't lurking around the corner with an arsenal straight out of an American movie.
"Damn." Shin doesn't swear much, and it's strange to hear it from him now. He clenches his hands into fists in frustration, and doesn't make any move to kill Isamu or whatever it is the bizarre things wandering out here do to hapless high school boys who are unlucky enough to wander into them. "We'll have to look for her."
"We?" Isamu echoes dumbly, because his thoughts just aren't keeping up with what's happening. He's still stuck on the fact that Shin is a glowing freak and the street outside the medical center is a shattered wreck, and he can't process complicated new ideas like his accompanying Shin through this hell to find Chiaki.
"Of course. You don't think I'm going to leave you out here, do you?" Shin reaches out and puts one blue-branded hand on Isamu's shoulder almost hesitantly. Isamu flinches out of pure reflex, as if he's sure it's going to burn him right through his jacket and vest and shirt, but nothing happens except that Shin's hand is resting on his shoulder and he's got sort of a stupid expression on his face.
"...I guess not," he says finally, because he doesn't want to think about that possibility. Better to stay with the monster he might know than the ones out there that he most definitely doesn't. And who knows, they just might find Chiaki out there, or Ms. Takao. "No, I guess you wouldn't."
Shin takes him by the arm (and his fingers don't burn or chill or even feel very strange) and leads him down the broken remains of the road, and Isamu doesn't think he knows where they're headed, either.
III.
"No, Isamu," Shin says, and his voice is full of regret. "I can't help you. If your Reason is for you to stand alone, then you need to make it alone. If people really are meant to wander alone through the world, it can't be in a world that was built by two people working together."
"It won't be built by two people working together." Isamu's voice turns dark and angry. "You're not a person; you're a demon who can only follow a human's Reason. I should have known you wouldn't do it. You're just proving me right, though. You wouldn't help me when I was crawling half-dead out of Ikebukuro and you wouldn't help me when I was trapped in Kabukicho. Why should I have thought you would help me now, when something even bigger than my life is on the line? I was stupid to think that you might feel sorry about everything I had to go through because you and Chiaki and everyone else let me down, and even stupider to think that even if you did you might actually do something about it. Never mind, Shinya. Never fucking mind."
"Shut up." Shin knows that he can't really understand what happened, for any number of reasons-- he's not entirely human anymore, he doesn't understand what it's like to find a Reason and need to make it happen, he didn't go through what Isamu went through or anything really like it (and even if what had happened to him was worse in some ways, he can only look at it through his skewed new perception of half-a-demon)-- but that doesn't mean he's going to stand there and let Isamu say things like that about him. "That's not true at all and you know it. I went after you in Kabukicho as soon as I found out you were there, and you're the one who told me you didn't need me anymore! You're just saying all of these things because I won't make your stupid, hypocritical little world for you."
"I didn't need you then, and you know what? I don't need you now. I'll summon my god without your help, since it's so much trouble for you to give it to me." Isamu takes a step forward and Shin matches it, looming over him with his line of demons close behind.
"All right, then." Shin speaks slowly and loudly. "Summon your god for us, Isamu. But I don't think your new friends will follow you when your Reason fails you, and I don't think you'll be able to get away from them alone. No matter how well you know the Amala Network."
"Then I'll die alone, like you would have let me do a long time ago." Isamu smirks at him, hat drawn low over his eyes. "Isn't that what you want? For me to go away and take my hypocritical little Reason with me so you can find someone whose ideas you like better? So you can go and help Chiaki or Ms. Takao or someone like the fool I just got rid of instead of me? Fine, fine. You know what, you're right. I made myself what I am now alone, and I'll see it end alone."
He takes his hat off and his mouth flattens out of the smirk. He looks serious and vulnerable the last time Shin sees him, as if he wants to ask Shin to come back and help him but knows that he can't do that now, it would never work.
Shin leaves the Amala Temple. He doesn't see Isamu again, and when he's next in Ginza the spirits in Nyx's bar are whispering something about the end of the Reason of Musubi.
IV.
Shin can feel Isamu's pulse under his hands, fast and faint in comparison to the pounding noise of blood in a demon's veins. His skin is warm and dry and dusty, as if the magatsuhi the Mantra took from him had taken away part of what made him a human and left him a little more like the only other remains of the human world already decaying into nothing around them. Isamu is looking out at the demons that follow Shin but at least trying to be surreptitious about it-- they must know that he's looking, of course, but a wrung-out little human who isn't overtly threatening them isn't worth a fight with their leader. Still, he can feel the flutter under Isamu's skin pick up every time one of them shifts or speaks.
"I'm their leader. They aren't going to touch what's mine." Not so long as they know Shin is the strongest of their group, and he has no intention of letting them lose that knowledge-- and not just because he has Isamu beside him now, all human frailty but the inspiration they'll need for a Reason, but because Shin's own life depends on it as well.
"But I'm not--" Shin shoves a hand over his mouth before he can finish, because that is the one thing Isamu does not want to say right now (or ever, really, but it's worse now before they have a Reason to follow and really need to have a human around for the sake of having a human around, not just because he was friends with Shin before the Conception).
"As far as they're concerned, you are. Trust me, that's what you want right now." Shin keeps his palm where it is, pressed against cracked lips almost as dry as the rest of his skin feels. "Once we've got our Reason, it will be different, I promise, but for now they aren't going to listen to anything else." He moves his hand and Isamu licks his lips in a futile effort that's only going to make them chap worse in the long run. Up close he doesn't look completely the same as before, like Shin had thought at first. He looks exhausted, his eyes dull and dark and his face paler than usual without the shadow of his hat to hide in.
"...all right," Isamu concedes, too tired or too defeated to argue. That should be worrying, because the Isamu Nitta who dressed like a punk and chased after his teacher would never have given in so easily. But whether it's a natural reaction to everything he's been through or a perception colored by Shin's very different outlook from before it doesn't strike Shin as anything to be concerned about. The important thing is that he's given in and they won't get any trouble as long as Shin is strong enough to uphold his end of things. Then Isamu sags forward, practically onto Shin, as if he doesn't have the strength to hold himself up anymore-- no, no as if, there's no way he could after making it out of Ikebukuro. It's a wonder he's still conscious and lucid, with as little magatsuhi as he must have left. "Do you have any water?"
He already knows that he doesn't, but he fumbles through his cache of collected items until he finds the closest thing. Shin has no idea what a chakra drop is going to do to a human, but he uses it anyway. He unscrews the lid and is careful to measure out a much smaller dose with the dropper than a demon would get, and as soon as the tiny drop of liquid hits Isamu's upturned face (splashing onto his forehead and evaporating almost immediately) he straightens up and seems better.
"What is that?" Isamu asks, hoarse but audibly better than before.
"Chakra drop. It takes some getting used to, but it's hard to find water out here. I'm surprised you managed as long as you did, wandering around like that." Shin was never this talkative as a human, and it probably surprises Isamu to hear him now. "Did you find your Reason out there?"
"I thought I had," Isamu admits. "But I was wrong. I'll have to keep looking. I... well, don't worry about it. I was wrong about the world that I wanted."
"We'll help you." Shin gestures out towards the assembled demons that still made Isamu's adam's apple jump as he swallowed hard at the sight of them. "Only a human can make the Reason that will shape the new world and summon a god. Or at least, that's what they tell me. We'll help you stay alive, and you'll make our new world for us. That sounds fair, right?"
V.
"You really thought I didn't remember?" Isamu asks suddenly as they're doing their homework in Shin's living room. His parents are out of town and Chiaki had declined to come along. She has some fancy cram school that she goes to, since her parents are sending her to a much more prestigious university than either the Nitta or the Hirai families could afford. Ms. Takao had offered to tutor them in preparation for their own exams, but they had both declined her help. Up until this moment, Shin had thought they'd turned her down for very different reasons.
"You weren't supposed to." Shin knows exactly what he's talking about, of course, and he doesn't insult Isamu by pretending not to. "I didn't, for a long time."
"Neither did I, for awhile." Isamu puts down his pencil slowly and deliberately. "I don't remember all of it, I don't think, but I know a lot of things."
"Do you think I made the wrong decision?" Shin wonders sometimes if he did the right thing, by restoring their world when it's really only a lie. Even if he thinks this is much better than the Vortex World, well, there's still the nagging fact that he knows what Aradia really is and in the end he used her power to build this new world (old world?). "Sometimes I do."
"I don't know." Isamu shrugs. "I don't think I was right, anyway. I mean, I asked for help to make a world based on not needing help?"
"Yeah, that was pretty stupid." It really feels like they shouldn't be sitting here and talking about this like it was any everyday thing. "...I can't believe we're having this conversation."
"Me, either." Isamu pauses. "I don't think Chiaki remembers anything." Or maybe she does, since Chiaki keeps things to herself much more skillfully than Isamu ever did. Maybe she's remembered longer than either one of them and they just haven't noticed, because there's nothing different about her cool, amused expression. She wouldn't be dwelling on something that they were supposed to lie to themselves about and pretend had never happened. And maybe Isamu is right and Chiaki is lucky enough to be living Aradia's lies with everyone else. That doesn't seem likely, though, since how could anyone who saw the truth do that?
"I think you're right," Shin says, and that's that. Except for the part where it isn't, because there's no way that will ever be that. This is always going to be hanging over them.
He's glad that Isamu remembers, though. It's selfish because if anyone deserves to forget and immerse himself into a happy lie it's Isamu, but Shin couldn't go through with fulfilling his friend's Reason because he doesn't like being alone and that's still true now.
And, if you want to read the notes:
Notes.
I felt the need to include this because there are so many things I want to explain about these vignettes-- I'm used to writing the demi-fiend (AKA Shinya "Shin" Hirai in my writing) because he's the one I can ascribe anything I want to, and the center of the action and therefore the more compelling story subject. Since Isamu actually has a character I need to keep, this presented a challenge. And ironically enough, more of these are from the demi-fiend's POV than Isamu's (I and II are Isamu, obviously, but III-V are the demi-fiend).
I. Is probably the most screwed-up potential world possible, because there is no demi-fiend, period. I must admit that I have a fascination with the fact that Isamu gravitated to the Amala Network and managed to make his power base-- as a lone human-- in such a place and make a damn good job of it. I've dealt with it before (see: this in-progress weirdness on my draft filter), and I definitely wanted to deal with it again here.
II. Needs the least amount of explanation. The demi-fiend runs into Isamu before he gets caught by the Mantra and goes batshit. It would probably serve as a lead-in to something not unlike scenario IV, with the demi-fiend's group being to Isamu what Nihilo is to Hikawa or Mantra (eventually) is to Chiaki: namely, they keep him around for his Reason. Which, incidentally, I have no ideas about. It obviously wouldn't be Musubi, since the events that shaped that Reason haven't happened.
III. Is the most in line with game canon. The demi-fiend says no because Isamu is a dirty hypocrite who wants help with GTFO Musubi. Although all the demi-fiend has done here is prove that poor Isamu was right about him (and maybe the nature of the world) all along.
IV. Sounds like a bad porn setup. But anyway, basically it's a form of the scenario from the notes about II; namely that the demi-fiend and posse follow Isamu's Reason. Because hey, that's about the only thing that would keep a human alive in a group of demons here. I'm not sure whether it would be Musubi or not, since while he's been with the Mantra he hasn't been to Kabukicho yet. It probably wouldn't be, exactly, but obviously what he's been through would have some influence. ...I still think it sounds like a bad porn setup, though.
V. Was actually supposed to be the bad porn setup! But it turned all character-driven instead, because the post-game porn was getting too long. The porn will be its own fic. I don't actually think that they would be nearly so calm or rational about things, which is why this is part of five things that never happened instead of a normal post-game story.