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?