personavelvetroomdr | 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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"Oh, I know the one you mean. Shujin Goro, but younger," Haru adds, for Noir's benefit.

"I see. That must get especially confusing for the pair of them."

Haru shrugs, though she agrees. This is confusing enough.

"When Raven does something, Crow remembers doing it," he tells the Harus. "But Crow forgot everything he didn't do yet. Even though he already did it. Because it didn't happened yet. But it did happen." That's definitely extra-confusing to Goro. He is frowning even as he says it. Did he get that right? He thinks so...

"...Because it hadn't necessarily happened to Crow yet, I'd bet." If Haru had to deal with her literal younger self here, she might actually scream.

(What she would do is go on a rampage in her father's Palace, since enough people here are aware of its existence for it to also exist.)

Goro lost himself entirely by the end of his explanation, so he's relieved that Rose seems to know what's going on. He nods, despite clearly having no idea what anyone is talking about anymore, including himself. "Yes."

"I see. Well, I'm glad you have somewhere safe to stay." Haru imagines Rose might've tried to tackle the problem, otherwise. For all she seems to have an aversion to children (not... entirely unwarranted), she equally has a soft spot for Akechi.

"You can visit. If you want. Someday." Some of his confidence deserts him as he says it, leading to all the many qualifiers he tacks onto the end. But he likes the soft comforting Haru, and he likes Rose, who's sharper but who still smiles at him and says nice things. "Crow cooks really good."

He doesn't know of any reason why either of them might not want to hang out with several of the Goro Akechis wandering around the area.

"Does he?" Haru doesn't know enough about Akechi generally to speak to his cooking skills, though she can't imagine he had much time to devote to the kitchen as she knew him - but the one who attends Shujin has clearly led a different life, in some respects.

(Enough so that should could, eventually, call that one a friend. And the kid's doing nothing wrong with the suggestion.)

Rose shrugs. "I might, sometime."

Of the two of them, Rose is the one who's going to have more patience if 'Magpie' shows up.

"Yes," he tells Haru seriously. "He made us ramen and it was really good. And gyoza. And tonkatsu."

To Rose, he gives a big smile and says, "You can meet Akira-chan, too! He knows sign language."

"I've been meaning to ask if anyone else was studying sign language, since Akira-chan has need of it, actually. It's not fair to make him write everything down all the time."

Rose raises an eyebrow. "I don't recall anything from home about Kurusu being deaf."

"Not deaf," Haru says. "This one called it selective mutism, so it's just that he struggles to speak out loud."

"I see." (What she's thinking is that Noir is a soft touch for children... and maybe she is. Mostly it's that her empathy hasn't been burned up like Rose's has.)

"I am! Akira-chan is teaching me. And I have books. And Crow found DVDs. Watch." Carefully, he signs, "Hello. My name is Goro Akechi."

"Very nice!" ...She has no idea what that was meant to say, but! "Would you and your friends mind another person joining the lessons?"

"Yes!" From his enthusiasm it's clear that he actually means no, they wouldn't mind. "Akira-chan would be happy. He gets sad sometimes because no one knows sign language."

"I can imagine. Who should I contact for that?" Little kids do sometimes have phones these days, but that doesn't mean Goro-kun does.

Goro has to think about that for a second. "Crow? Or I can say when we're gonna have a lesson, if you want? I have a phone now. It does stuff when I poke it."

"I do already have Crow's number." But she won't object if Goro-kun wants to give her his number as well.

(He's a child. Nothing has gone wrong yet.)

Goro is a little sad that Haru doesn't seem to want to exchange numbers, but that's all right. "Okay. Call Crow. Or, or send him a message. Where you type it out. And he can tell you."

Goro is from before the smartphone era and was too young and preoccupied to have much awareness of things you could do on the newly widespread "cell phone" technology at home, such as texting.

Rose is the one to catch it, but maybe that's to be expected - she's the one who's fluent in Goro, after all, even if this is considerably younger than she normally works with. "Were you hoping to share your phone number with more people? I wouldn't mind taking it."

"Oh! Neither would I." Noir just jumped to the contact she already has, whoops.

He brightens again at once! "Okay!" He gets out his phone and navigates carefully to his contacts like Crow taught him before handing it to Rose first, because she said that first. You give people your phone and they put in their info. That's what Crow said.

Rose accepts Goro's phone and inputs her contact info, after a little grumbling about the 'world code' thing (which she has to get out her phone to check). Then she passes it to Noir, who follows suit.

a tale of two Harus

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