personavelvetroomdr | a tale of two Harus

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a tale of two Harus

All right. Haru's claimed an apartment, had a couple... interesting conversations, and settled in well enough to raid her father's house for some of her gardening projects. It's time to get her rooftop garden back in order. But first: shopping around for other goodies.

Why this led her to the Inaba door, she couldn't articulate - it just... felt like something she should do. But she's glad it did. There are vegetables here that she hasn't seen before, and all of them look like they'd be useful in the Metaverse. Attack blockers, wheat stalks strong enough to function as lockpicks, status ailment cures - where has this stuff been all her Metaverse career?

She reaches for a pack of eggplant seedlings at the same time as someone else, and looks up to find - herself. Sort of. Maybe a little younger, definitely a little gothier - definitely, if Haru is any judge of her own face, a lot more burned by the world.

Her counterpart smiles, too brief and more amused than genuinely happy. "I really should have expected this, after I heard I was here twice."

"I hadn't heard that," Haru says, wondering who they've both talked to (or more likely, which version of Akechi-kun they've both talked to).

"Lucky me, then. Well, at least we can use our code names for clarity - 'Noir' is a little on the nose, don't you think?"

"That - that was the point." Haru's mind is racing. That answers one question, as she doubts Shujin Akechi or the Ren who helped her apartment-hunt would know that detail offhand, and raises about a million more. She decides to start with a simple and useful one. "What did you choose?"

"Rose," her counterpart says, after a moment too long's hesitation.

"No, you didn't."

"There's a half-dozen versions of my only friend here and none of them are mine. Can you blame me for keeping some information in reserve?"

"...No, I suppose I can't." And that answers several of Haru's unasked questions. Yusuke-kun did say once that any one of them could have taken a dark path, if they'd lacked support. She just tries not to think about how close she came to that.

Well, if their meeting place is any indication, at least her love for plants survived whatever hell her counterpart's father unleashed (even in her complicated feelings, Haru has no doubt he was ultimately responsible; there was a time she would have done anything for his approval).

"It's curious." Rose's attention is back on the rack of seedlings. "Why only four varieties of the paprika, when there are eight elements to shield from?"

"You know, that's a good question. Do you... think we could grow the other four?"

Rose grins, sharp and delighted in equal measure. "I don't see why we shouldn't try."

***

With their shopping done, the girls have decamped to the upturned crates outside Souzai Daigaku, the better to compare notes on their respective experiences. Bother?

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He turns back, a little mistrustfully. Does she mean it? "I really don't want to get in the way of your conversation. You seem to be getting on quite well."

And he glances to the other one, the one he met, the one who'd clearly prefer him to leave.

It's not... it just hurts, okay. Rose's Goro isn't here and this one is broken. The glimmers of what he should be - what all the others seem to have in common so far... she can only watch those disappear under the weight of whatever he thinks is happening so many times.

"I didn't mean to dismiss you out of hand," Haru says. "I just... truly don't know why you'd be looking for me."

Rose sighs. "I should be going anyway. I'll be in touch about the paprika project."

"If... if you're certain." But Haru doesn't push further, not with I can't do this a second time written all over Rose's face, plain as day.

She's up and gone before Broken Goro can protest, if he was planning to.

He doesn't protest. But he watches her go. He didn't mean to drive her off, but....

"I really do apologise." He turns back to her. "I didn't mean to interrupt the pair of you. It's just that you're the only other one of you I've seen."

"She... finds it difficult having so many people here who aren't quite someone she calls a friend, I think." And Haru can empathize with that, even if she finds the friend in question as odd a choice as it was Rose's only choice.

"You didn't do anything wrong."

It's just surprising that he'd willingly approach her at all.

"It means a lot that you'd say that much." But he thinks about it. It's not the different Harus and Rens that bother him, particularly, is it? It's more that they never know him. Or they look at him as if he's ... well, broken.

"Do you mind if I join you? It's the least I can do, since I've driven off your company."

Well, they do know him, after a fashion. Just... not him specifically.

"I wouldn't mind at all. The steak skewers are an interesting experience, if you're hungry."

"Interesting, you say?" He takes a seat nearby, on one of the crates—not the one other-Haru vacated—and lets his inner food critic show a little.

"Interesting enough to recommend, but not to praise, is that right?"

"I haven't decided whether I like them or not. They're cooked a bit on the tough side."

And they get cold while you're eating, but that could just be a factor of eating outside.

Oh yes, he wrinkles his nose at that. "I suppose I've eaten worse than that, if they taste good—they do taste good?"

Just checking in; the answer has to be yes to make it worth the struggle, right? "Then again, I suppose food's food, isn't it?"

"Good enough that I haven't given up yet, anyway."

The steak skewers... feel very much like the sort of food one might find in a small town, which Haru supposes fits the setting.

"That's something, isn't it?" But then his face falls. He never used to think about things working out or not, he thinks; they just did it. The way he remembers it, he never worried about giving up not because it was out of the question, but because he never needed to.

He tilts his head looking over at her. "How do you like her? The other you, I mean?"

"She's..." Haru falls silent for a while, trying to figure out the best way to say it.

"I can't say I approve of all of her choices, but I do understand how easily her life could have been mine. And we do both enjoy gardening, so we have some common ground that isn't distressing for one or the other of us."

Rose was the most upset about Haru's complicated feelings for her father - but she never got closure, which only complicated things further. They agreed to disagree.

"I see." And ordinarily, he'd get distracted, and flit onto something else like a bee to a flower, something brighter and shinier and altogether more pleasant. But he's begun to learn, in his short time here. And it's a Haru, if not his Haru.

He frowns a little, as if he has a slight headache; he curls his finger to his chin. "She was a little..." How to put it? "... violent in her speech. When I spoke to her before.

"But then, I upset her." He seems matter-of-fact about this, if a little downcast.

"...I think she would have been like that whether you said anything to upset her or not. She hasn't had an easy time of things." Haru may not understand everything Rose has been through, but she can sure see where that lack of trust came from.

He's heard enough from the other-him in the Shujin uniform to know how it works. One person after another, whose experiences have changed them from the one he thinks he knows.

"So it's like that. I'm starting to lose hope that anyone else comes from a world like mine. I'm guessing you haven't had an easy time of things, either?"

"...Not to the same extent," she allows. "But enough that, though my father showed a bit more restraint in my case, I can easily see how her circumstances came to be."

It really wouldn't have taken much for him to offer her up as a guinea pig, if he'd thought he could get something for it. Haru suspects her own father didn't hear about the cognitive-world stuff until an easy way to get rid of his rivals was already in place.

There is just a brief moment of uncertainty about him as she mentions her father. Then he blinks, and stretches a little, hands on his knees like a cat.

"Sorry, I think I, ah..." Which is to say he notices now, when it happens. "You were talking about... other you? And her circumstances?"

"...It's not like you to lose the thread of a conversation so easily." For better or worse, that's a Fact. "Are you all right?"

"Thank you, I'm fine." What a sweet smile, too. It's lacking something, like there's barely a mind behind it. Or a very different mind there indeed. "Or rather, I was fine at home, but now I'm here things are a little different. But please don't be concerned."

Isn't that just like Haru, though? To see something wrong, and want to fix it? "I think another of me mentioned your father. That. in his world, he didn't treat you as well as he should have. I must say, I find that very hard to believe."

"You... do?" Haru sounds very skeptical (because she is). "But he hadn't cared about me in years aside from what using me as a pawn could do to advance his own goals, and then he died before we had an opportunity to sort anything out."

She's starting to understand why Rose just up and left, now.

And of course, there's that moment of dizziness again, more intense. Except that when he comes back, he blinks, and—he remembers. Just the surface statement, as if the patch took place deeper down, or in a thickened tapestry.

"I'm sorry to hear that. My mother died as well, you know, when I was young." He could be talking about the weather. And then he looks her in the face, and falters. He's definitely done it again.

"Perhaps we should talk about something else? You mentioned gardening? Something about paprika?" Or maybe he really should leave, and just... stop talking to people who don't think like he does. Wall himself up with the other "cognitions".

...yeah okay this is officially one of the most surreal conversations Haru's ever had. What version of Akechi would be so... unaffected by losing his mother, when as far as she can tell that's a foundational piece of trauma for him?

"As did mine," she says, but she doesn't pursue it any further. Even though she thinks her mother and grandfather dying so close together exacerbated her father's downward spiral.

"Yes, there's a wider variety of vegetables available here than either of us have been able to find in Tokyo, but the paprika doesn't have... quite the range of options we thought it would. We're going to see if we can persuade it to cover those bases."

She's coming apart right in front of him. The things he says, the thing he is—none of them have any place in this world he's found himself in. People's eyes skip over him like all of theirs skip over Ren, back home.

"Breeding plants, is it? The two of you together? That sounds like quite the accomplishment. Haru—my Haru—talked so much about her garden. She had such plans for the spring, you know."

My Haru—possibly among the least welcome things he could have said.

It's not skipping over, exactly. It's... trying to make sense of this.

"Are you close?"

Life floods back into his face. "We're friends, yes. We have a lot in common. The others too, of course—" as his face abruptly falls—"and Ren. Well, you probably call him Akira." Ren, yes, who just isn't there with the rest of them. Isn't happy like they are.

"But yes, Haru and I talk a lot." About nothing in particular, but a lot. "Another privilege of my world, I suppose."

Except—he doesn't quite say it like he believes it's a privilege, any longer.

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