personavelvetroomdr | Cherry Blossom Evening Party

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Throughout the week, Hamuko has messaged the vast majority of people she's met so far - and eagerly invited them to come meet at Inokashira Park starting at 5pm.

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You're invited to an evening sushi-party-turned-hanami-picnic-party! I've organized a bunch of cognitive chefs and performers to come to that park on the listed date/time. I've sent this to you because you were part of one of the three teams that helped with fighting Fatalis or rescuing Falcon and Wolf (or are Falcon and Wolf themselves!!) - we've all busted our butts a lot lately, so I think we deserve to have something nice together too! Of course, the party is open if you have any +1s or more. But before spring turns into summer, let's celebrate what we've all accomplished together!

.🌸˚𑁍.ೃ࿔*:･

The Venue...

Inokashira Park has a lovely river and trail and a phenomenal collection of cherry blossom trees. They're in the tail end of their season, filling the air with petals like snowfall.

In a large open area, Hamuko's arranged a ton of picnic blankets for people to claim and sit down on, though each blanket is HUGE to accommodate people sitting with as many people as they can handle! There are cozy pillows for sitting on too, stacked neatly to be borrowed.

There's a truly humongous row of tables laid out with an impressive amount of sushi presented. With a few trucks nearby, it seems there's a few sushi chefs making fresh platters of it to lay out through the night.

Similarly, there are food carts along the trails if you're not in the mood for sushi and would rather have some more traditional fare like dango, taiyaki, matcha, takoyaki... it's got the place lively and smelling fantastic! There's sake for the adults, and some cherry-blossomed themed mocktails for minors.

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Activities

There's a few set out activities besides just chowing down and socializing or walking along the lantern-lit trails under the cherry blossoms! Inoshikara Park has always had cute little swan pedal boats or regular rowboats for 'rental' (not that money matters here).

The area is SO pretty, perfect for taking pictures to have as keepsakes. There's even a booth to claim a yukata and privately change into it, if you want to go the extra mile!

Finally, in lieu of a traditional band or modern concert, Hamuko has picked out a large set of speakers connected to a small karaoke stage and screen - menace the party with your sing-along! Get a little boost to your Guts!!

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He laughs a little, barely there but real enough. "Sounds like you're an old hand at this sort of thing."

But he takes the hint. Sometimes you just need to be with someone, and that's enough.

"You go to enough parties, you learn what makes someone stay in the background. Plenty of people want to talk up the young girl who's at this random fancy party. Even when she came with a young man." She toyed with her plate.

He turns to look at her, again reminded forcefully of his mother. "Did that sort of thing happen a lot?"

"Not too often, but enough. Goro had plenty of press events, I just tagged along for recon and making notes about who could be a target. Never get attached to someone."

"Pieces of shit," he mutters. "You deserve your vengeance, sooner or later. Whatever it looks like for you."

He'd told Ann the same, after all. He'd left the decision to her. Futaba deserves no less.

She gave a laugh, one full of pain. "What is it even worth anymore? Just get used up one way or another."

His eyebrows arch, but he keeps his tone quiet. "That's not true."

"In what way is it not true? People use you, personas use you, gods use you. Is there even a free will? People will do crazy thing."

"We have free will." He squints at her, warming to the topic. "The situations I've been in—I may have been manipulated, I may not necessarily have chosen them. But I made my own decisions, for better or worse. And I wouldn't change them. Most of them.

"I know what it's like, though," he adds, more softly. "For someone to feel like they have no way out."

"Then you know it's hopeless." She sighed.

"On the contrary." He's torn inside. Should he tell her something he's barely even shared with Ren?

"Would you like to know a secret?"

She glanced at him. "Sure," if anything she was willing to learn. It was the only thing that kept her brain active after all.

And his knowledge of her checks out: if anything would stir her from despair, it would be the promise of knowledge. He steels himself. "My mother has a Palace."

hm, strange. A palace wasn't something she'd ever considered her having. The ratio of them having mothers to not, however that could have been the cause of most of the loss of life. "You can explore it here, maybe you will be able to deal with it home then."

"Well, that's the thing." It had seemed so immense, hadn't it, that first time he saw it? A tangle of silver, like a finely-spun birds' nest, or a fairy carriage. Except for the pale, sickly light it had glowed with. "It got smaller. I sat with it for months, watching it, and it got smaller and smaller, as she herself began to sound happier. Sometimes, before I got here, I almost felt I could hold it in the palm of my hand."

Unlike his father's Palace, of course, which had bloated over the year like some sort of poisonous toad. But he doesn't bring that up.

She hummed. She didn't know what could cause that. "Palaces are distorted. If that distortion goes away, it's entirely possible the palace could as well. But the shadow inside probably never did. It would have just shifted to mementos where all the other's are."

"That would make sense. Everyone has a Shadow in Mementos, the way I hear it." Not that he likes the idea of his mother, any part of his mother, down in that place—much less after what he's learned since he came here, about Yaldabaoth and all.

"Do you understand what I'm saying? My mother's distortion was her despair, I believe. But it's passing. And her Palace is passing with it."

"Your mother... she's a special case. You are one of the few lucky ones. Not just with her, but having a mother at all. Persona users don't get shadows. Not without the cost of their own personas. I have mine. The two are not equivalent."

"I am lucky," he agrees. "Not just in having her—I don't know what can have been so different, or what I did to earn that. But in having come to meet my friends—Haru and Makoto and the others. And Ren. And you, Futaba."

She hummed, back to toying with her plate. "Back to the will of the gods. Your fate was bound to you. That's what makes you different. We are all different versions of each other. We are doomed to see ourselves in each other. We know what should make them tick." And yet, here she was. She always saw herself in them. She more often saw her brother. They were happy. They were... able to continue.

"I'm not saying there's fault in your thinking. But I am saying that I'm not one of them. You saw what Fatalis did to me. I was benched after that. There is no more."

And there it is: not the root of the problem, but its nub. A wart on the surface, going deep. "No end to it, you think? To your despair? At all?"

"I'll be honest." She sighed, her eyes leaving the plate and looking at him, that hazy gaze, the one that had held at least some spark when she killed, the one that held a spark any other time looking at those she dared to call family. "There's nothing there. No despair. Nothing. I am empty."

He thinks about that, looking into her hazy eyes; familiar eyes, though the colour is different. The words echo back through time, or ones very like them. "I always rather thought that was what true despair was. Anguish is different. That's at least something. It burns. You feel it. But when everything is taken from you—your dreams, your aspirations, your most simple hopes for tomorrow, or your ability to feel at all...."

She didn't have too much to say on that. It felt too... strange. "Apathy." She could only guess. "I think despair is suffering. I am not."

Yeah, he'll believe that the day Igor sends them all home, with a billion-yen cheque in each of their back pockets for their pain and suffering. "No?"

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cybermask - 2025-04-15 01:21 (UTC) - Expand