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'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.

Haru would really like to know how whoever set Akechi's apparent reality into motion landed on the conclusion that she should be good friends with him. Maybe that's the bias of her onw experiences talking, since it's not like they would've had absolutely nothing to bond over... but still.

And there's something else she's more interested in following up on. "Is... something wrong with Akira-kun as you know him?"

It is strange, and one of those things you wouldn't quite predict—that the two privileged children (outwardly or otherwise), who live behind masks and keep so much inside, would gravitate to each other when all obstacles were removed....

Akechi, though, fades a little at her question—not in that way that blanks out the life in his eyes, but in an altogether more human fashion. "He's.. not well. He's not quite there with the rest of us, if that makes sense. We keep trying to figure it out—Haru and I, I mean."

"That is unusual, compared to everything else you've described. Why would he not be as wholly invested as everyone else?"

Especially if Everything Is Fine Here.

His shoulders droop, as he tries to keep the image of Ren in front of him. "My alternate—the one who goes to Shujin? He suggested that my friends and I unsettle Ren, the same way I unsettle all of you.

"That would make sense, in a way." But it's not a pleasant idea—that Ren might feel as alone and isolated as Akechi now does. For a start, why would he be that way?

"It's just... hard to imagine a world where everything went as smoothly as you say it did." And supremely weird to see Akechi without any motivation. Without the fire, what's left?

(Not a lot, that's what.)

"But if he's that unsettled, maybe... not everything is going that smoothly, somewhere out of sight."

He looks down at the ground, thinking about that—seemingly allowed to think about it, which may or may not be telling. "But we've tried to help him. We talk to him. We spend time with him. We invite him out, and he comes with us, but..."

Something tells him this will be another thing she doesn't relate to. "It's as if he isn't part of us. Not really. He doesn't join in, and so we forget about him." He's so puzzled by this—not least because he knows, at some level, that he should forget himself before he ever forgets Ren.

"Really? He's not exactly a forgettable person."

But the fact that Akechi was allowed to think about it is interesting.

"No, it's not like that. It isn't about him. That's just how things are." How to explain it to her?

"Haven't you—I suppose you must have had many unpleasant thoughts. Are you just trapped with them? Don't you find something more pleasant, to make them go away?"

"In my experience, it isn't that simple. Escapism doesn't make the problem go away - it just distracts you for a little while. And if you're forgetting he's there, how is it not like that?"

As unsettling as this conversation is, she wants to try to understand.

"I don't want to forget he's there." It's a tough admission. "If he's there, and he's suffering—I want to do something.

"And you don't understand why I don't, do you?" He rests his chin on one hand, doleful. "Honestly, now that I talk about it. I'm not sure I understand. It's as if there's the world, and all of its people—" he gestures to one side with that hand he was resting on—"and then there's Ren. Alone.

"We can't see him because the world is in the way."

"I understand wanting to make sure your friend isn't suffering alone. That's one of the things that brought my group of friends together to begin with." It's just that the starting point for each of them was so, so bleak.

"I can understand that." It's automatic, more than it's intended; he understands, deep down, that idea of how shared misery can end up bringing people together. But then he thinks about it a little more; a confused crease appears between his eyebrows. How did they all meet?

Well, no point bothering too much about that. He blinks at her. "That's... how you did it, isn't it? Each of you faced a hardship, that drew you together."

"Can you?" It's the things like that automatic response, and the stuff he hesitates around, that suggest his whole world wasn't always like this. The real question is how hard it's worth it to push.

"It is, yes."

"Because—you needed each other, yes? You needed someone to rely on. No matter what." I'm glad you're still normal, even in this bizarre situation... He doesn't remember the words, but he feels sick, abruptly, for no reason he can think of

(we're taking the offer

there's nothing left i can say our deal's off)

His voice drops and sharpens, brittle and, possibly, terribly familiar. "But it's nonsense, isn't it? It can't possibly work that way. You can't build a friendship on nothing but trauma. The whole idea is absurd." let yourself count on someone, trust someone, even for a moment, and when you need them most....

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