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Yukari’s best friend, for all that she’s the top of the class at exam time, can be kind of an idiot sometimes. Case in point, she either hadn’t checked the weather at any point during the last week or decided some minor task was worth getting drenched for, and so now she’s spending the break sleeping or staring vacantly at the wall, sick out of her mind.
Yukari might have found it a little funny under normal circumstances, seeing their seemingly-indomitable field leader laid low by something as mundane as the flu, but Kotone is sick enough that it’s getting kind of concerning. Sicker than Yukari ever remembers being, at the least.
…It isn’t just her health, though. Yukari wasn’t expecting her to go on acting like absolutely nothing is wrong, of course not, but she also wasn’t really expecting this. Sick Kotone is weird. Taking care of her is weird, in the times they’ve gone to check up on her and make sure she’s still breathing.
The task falls mostly to her and Fuuka, and also Aragaki, weirdly enough. When the dorm collectively realized that their leader wasn’t really in a state to care for herself, they did try to set up something of a division of labor. Then they realized that very few of them were actually very qualified to do much of anything in that regard. The boys aren’t normally allowed in Kotone’s room in the first place, not that Yukari would trust most of them to be any help (or trust half of them, really, Ken’s surprisingly responsible for a kid and Aragaki is a lot better at this than she expected), and of the four girls left, Mitsuru is rich and Aigis is a robot. They learn quickly and can follow directions, but neither are terribly well prepared to deal with illness. Go figure.
So Aragaki lurks in the kitchen and pretends he’s only bothering to make anything because their leader is sick, and either Yukari or Fuuka deliver it and make sure that Kotone either consumes it or consumed it if she was asleep the last time they checked. They might stay a few minutes longer if she’s awake, see how she’s doing or if she needs anything else.
All this means that Fuuka is really the only person Yukari can ask, to see if she’s weirded out too by the way Kotone is acting. She hasn’t, yet, but she probably will.
It isn’t… she can’t really figure out how to describe it, other than she’s being very… not-Kotone. That eternal smile is gone, for one thing, and Yukari can definitely understand not being up for smiling if she felt as miserable as her friend looks, but something about it strikes her as more than a bit uncanny. Kotone took to all the supernatural weirdness around SEES like a fish to water, handled all the stress and new situations that came with being a transfer student with aplomb, and sank her teeth into all Iwatodai has to offer like she never left, all with that same forever grin… and the flu is what brings her down? That’s the problem, when bullies and shadows and creepy shirtless guys with handguns failed to scratch her?
It wouldn’t feel as weird if Kotone would just complain about it with her, if she would whine about her situation in such an over the top manner that Yukari could tell it was still Kotone under there. Instead, when she poked her head in to check on the girl yesterday and found her awake, she had seemed more or less lucid… and almost entirely blank. The vaguely foggy gaze was to be expected, but they way Kotone hadn’t said anything at all until she was spoken to? The toneless, monosyllabic answers the normally upbeat girl gave? As far as Yukari could tell (and she honestly had half a mind to go check the security footage to confirm), her friend hadn’t even been doing anything while she was awake. The busiest person Yukari knows was reduced to doing literally nothing. Sitting in complete silence alone in her room. Not even listening to music, which was unusual enough on its own. She obviously felt like garbage, true, but it still struck the archer as something stranger than just being that ill.
That isn’t why Yukari’s still awake, as the clock tries to tick over to midnight and abruptly stops. It’s the reason she volunteered to be the one to do it, but it isn’t why she’s making a point to stay up through the Dark Hour.
Kotone’s general weirdness might be one of Yukari’s primary concerns, but it does admittedly take a bit of a backseat to the stunt the girl had pulled the previous night. Iwatodai Dorm had gone to sleep listening to the pounding rain, and a few hours later woke up to Koromaru barking his head off from the lobby. Yukari hadn’t been the first one down there, because she lives a floor above Akihiko Sanada, a man that is apparently immune to being woken up in the middle of the night and also sleep deprivation in general, but she had arrived in time to see a completely delirious Kotone being herded away from where she was fumbling with the front door. Poor Koromaru had been gently trying to tug her back as well with the hem of her pajamas between his teeth. Good dog. Yukari doesn’t really want to think about what might have happened if he hadn't noticed anything.
The naginata in her hand and the evoker on her hip painted a very clear picture of what the girl’s intent had been. Which, on one hand, was a good sign. It meant she probably wasn’t being lured towards Tartarus by the ominous whispers that seduced the Lost, not that that was anything they needed to really worry about for a Persona user as far as they knew. On the other hand, she had been about to kill herself regardless by marching out into a typhoon, never mind what could have happened if she somehow made it to the tower. So more of a better sign, then, not really a good one.
(That had been concerning enough, but the final nail in the coffin for getting back to sleep at a reasonable time, untormented by what if’s, was the grim hypothetical Mitsuru raised afterwards: had her sickness made Kotone addled enough to think a solo Tartarus infiltration was a good idea, or had it made her sloppy enough to get caught doing it?
The girl in question had been too loopy to give a straight answer. Something to ask later, then.)
Now that they know it’s a possibility, there’s no way Kotone is getting anywhere close to escaping the dorm again. While she may not be suited to much more than watching the girl, when watching the girl is all that’s needed Aigis has no competitor (she’s been caught lurking in Kotone’s room in the middle of the night enough times, for sure). She doesn’t need sleep and can’t get bored or sick, so SEES’s mechanical maiden is the perfect person to make sure their leader stays put.
Aigis initially wanted to stay in Kotone’s room as well, but Mitsuru managed to argue her out into the hallway. Something about how even though Aigis herself couldn’t contract any illness, she was still a surface that could potentially host the pathogen and infect the other humans around.
Really, Aigis is probably enough. Kotone will survive a single night without supervision, Yukari says to herself as she slips out her door, murmuring a quiet greeting to the gynoid lurking outside. Their leader is made of sterner stuff than that. When Mitsuru had floated the idea of a human observer checking in around the Dark Hour, it was really more of a suggestion than a command.
Still, just… something about the last day or so had Yukari unsettled enough that she decided she would do it. In the sickly glow of the hour after midnight, though, she’s having second thoughts. This was a dumb idea, she’s been living through the Dark Hour for months why is she so nervous, there won’t even be anything to see because Kotone’s probably asleep like any reasonable person—
And then she quietly cracks her friend’s door open, and she hears a voice.
“…so it sorta starts hijacking your cells to make more of itself, and… and your body doesn’t like that, because then it isn't working right,” Kotone speaks softly, enough that Yukari almost needs to strain to hear it, “so it starts heating up to try and kill whatever it is. Kills you too, but slower, so it mostly works out in the end. Or it’s supposed to, at least.”
Is she… sitting in the dark, explaining viruses to herself? Yukari’s mostly sure that's what she’s doing, but it’s been a while since that came up in class. Long enough that Kotone probably isn’t studying, at least, which would still be kind of an unhinged thing to do in this situation.
She can’t be on the phone, because those don’t work during the Dark Hour, and when Yukari pokes her head in she doesn’t see anyone else in the room. It’s just Kotone in her pajamas, sitting on top of her bed, looking at the blank wall near her desk.
Yukari is pretty weirded out, but she’s still about to announce herself and see how her friend’s doing when Kotone suddenly huffs.
“Yeah, it sucks,” she grumbles unprompted to the empty air.
…huh?
That’s… that’s also more than a little odd, but Kotone is sick and not really in her right mind. Is she hallucinating or something? Is she significantly worse off than they thought?
…but aside from talking to herself at midnight, aside from the flushed skin and foggy eyes, she seems… better. Not great, probably not even good, but better. Even if it’s still pretty far from normal Kotone, she’s more… animated, maybe, then the last time Yukari saw her awake. She’s considering it for long enough that Kotone starts up again.
“Well, it’s not exactly voluntary, but I guess so. Lucky you, you probably can’t even get sick,” she says with a faint tinge of frustration, flopping onto her back.
Alright, that’s even weirder, in a more worrying way. Yukari can kind of see the throughline of her previous statements, how someone merely thinking out loud may go from one to the other, but this is a total non sequitur. Also, who does she think she’s talking to? The rhythm of conversation is there, but there’s nobody else to respond. It can’t be Yukari, because she can definitely get sick, and on top of that she isn’t actually sure if she’s been noticed yet, but there’s no one else it could be either. Another point towards hallucinating. Not a good sign. She probably should announce herself.
“Pharos?” Kotone continues, oblivious to her watcher’s concerns (is that supposed to be a name?). Then, after a beat, “are you a ghost?”
And Yukari feels her blood turn to ice.
It turns out there are worse possibilities than their leader being too sick to accurately perceive reality! Go figure!
It isn’t—she knows, okay, she knows that it's silly to be so terrified at the prospect of spirits, considering all the other horrors she’s already fought and killed. Would a ghost really be that much scarier than the surreal tangle of arms and knives that was the Magician? As dangerous as the Chariot and the Justice, as corruptive and bizarre as the Lovers? She fights monsters on the weekly in a giant hell tower made out of their school! She shouldn’t be so afraid of ghosts!
All the logic in the world doesn’t melt the frost in her veins, and in the background, Kotone keeps talking.
“Not much, really, I've just been thinking about… being human, lately. And don’t think I missed that you didn’t answer my question.”
Does it make her a bad friend if she kind of hopes Kotone is just delirious to the point of delusion rather than being haunted?
But if anyone in the dorm is…
(She still remembers the night the Magician attacked, and the monstrous dark thing that had torn Orpheus apart from the inside. She still remembers coffins and chains and white gloves and black leather, and a jagged steel skull howling triumph to the pale sky.
How could she forget?
They still have no idea what that was.)
“You… you would tell me if you were him, right?”
Okay, okay, Yukari needs to calm the hell down, right now. Treat this as an information-gathering mission; the last time she was really involved with one of those, it turned out that there wasn’t even a ghost. SEES’s spectre count is a cool zero out of one. There’s no need to panic, she just needs to figure out what’s going on with her friend.
(Apart from the hallucinations. Which are definitely hallucinations, and not a ghost.)
Easy starting point: there was absolutely something going on just then. Kotone sat back up, she narrowed her eyes, and something in her voice was a lot more serious than for anything she’d said prior.
Whatever it is, it has to be about “him.” Whoever that is.
(Some distant part of her mind notes that Kotone thinks whoever she’s talking to either is or might be a boy. In her room. Mitsuru would freak, and the mental image of the heiress trying to get onto a ghost for breaking dorm rules—if anyone could do it, it would be her—does go a ways towards calming her down.)
Yukari did get a bit of an overview of her friend’s history from being part of the discussion about the new dorm member and potential Persona user, which is why she knows about the whole orphan thing, but she never actually read the creepy personnel file the chairman put together so she doesn’t really have any great idea of who it might be. Her dead dad? That doesn’t fit terribly well with how she’s been behaving. That’s not how Yukari would act if it was her dad’s ghost, at least.
Whatever answer Kotone gets (whatever answer she thinks she gets, there’s no ghost here, zero ghosts), it at the very least relaxes her. Some of the tension leaves her frame, and the girl’s next words come out alongside a quiet yawn.
“Good, that’s… that’s…” she trails off, curling into herself.
Kotone seems pleased. Sort of. More or less. Does that mean the not-ghost is him or does it mean it’s not him?
“…it’s not… I’m not afraid, I just… I wonder what he’d think,” she says slowly. “Of all this. Of what he missed out on… That’s also been on my mind, I guess. What it would be like if it was him instead. If it would be…”
She’s never heard Kotone so… introspective, before. She certainly seems to have it together a lot better than Yukari, at least, and SEES’s field leader is so effortlessly confident in basically everything she does that listening to this almost feels wrong. Very… very not-Kotone.
Something in Yukari’s stomach twists.
…who is she talking about? Yukari’s leaning pretty strongly towards the delusion not being the boy in question, but that’s one question answered and several more raised. Him instead? What the heck does that mean?
It clicks a second later, and the she bites down a gasp before she can interrupt the solemn silence of her best friend’s room. He was potentially the identity of something Kotone thinks might be a ghost. He is clearly not around anymore, having “missed out” on apparently everyday life. It’s obvious that he’s dead, but that isn’t the really concerning part.
What the hell is instead supposed to mean, Kotone? If it would be what?
There’s no actual change in the environment, but Yukari feels so much colder all of a sudden. It isn’t like the ice that shadows in Tartarus throw at her, more of a creeping, internal chill than that violent bite. Sometimes, when Mitsuru is in a mood, the older girl actually lowers the temperature around her by a few degrees, not that she’s aware that she’s doing it as far as Yukari can tell. It’s more like that type of cold.
Kotone lets out a single, bitter laugh, almost mocking.
“Yep. The more pointless the hypothetical, the better…” The sardonic grin on her face fades as quickly as it had appeared. “There’s no use wondering about how things might be different.”
She isn’t looking at the wall anymore. Kotone isn’t really looking at anything anymore, head bowed and eyes dull in a way that can’t just be attributed to her sickness.
Another few seconds of silence pass.
“They shouldn’t be… I don’t deserve them…”
For the first time in her life, Yukari wishes she could see a ghost (NOT THAT GHOSTS ARE REAL). She’s already practically paralyzed with terror halfway through stepping into Kotone’s room, and she is somehow willing to make it worse for the sake of hearing the other half of this conversation! Something is horribly wrong here, because those words in that tone of voice (seriously, she sounds more robotic than the actual robot outside!) cannot possibly mean anything good.
(Somewhere deep inside, Io is crying.)
And… and she’s already heard so much, but she needs to hear the other half, whatever words Kotone believes she’s hearing, because… because Yukari doesn’t understand it. And that means that either her best friend is so sick that she’s completely lost her grip on reality… or that Yukari doesn’t actually know her as well as she thinks.
Case in point. Yukari wasn’t sure what exactly she thought would follow up would be for Kotone’s previous statement, but it sure wasn’t the soft, warbling little laugh that falls from her like a baby bird from its nest.
“You little charmer…”
…is Kotone flirting with a ghost? Is a ghost flirting with her? Yukari is less and less terrified by the prospect of a haunting in the dorm if this is what it’s like.
But then Kotone wilts, and whatever ember of life that had come back into her voice dies. She’s looking off at nothing again, but towards the wall at her right now, not her desk. On one hand, she’s facing directly away from Yukari and is therefore less likely to glance over and catch her eavesdropping. On the other, Yukari can’t see her face anymore even a little bit, so she’s got even less to work with to make sense of this.
“…hey, Pharos? Can I ask you something?” That same gravity from earlier returns to her voice, that same solid intensity as when she’d asked about her conversation partner’s identity. “You said you’re kinda… always watching, right?”
And that same freezing fear returns to Yukari. Back to praying Kotone’s just delusional, because “always watching” is one of the most concerning ways to describe anything ever, let alone a boy, let alone a ghost.
“So, if that’s true, then, and you’ve seen…” she trails off, and then sluggishly waves a hand to indicate her entire being, “…do you think there’s a real me?”
What?
“Just, with all the ‘I am thou’ and ‘thou art I’…” Kotone continues almost immediately, though all that strength from only a handful of seconds ago seems to have left her. “If Personas are supposed to be your real, inner self or something, and I’ve got so many of them… then what does that say about me? The wild card is like a zero, right, isn’t that what Igor said? Nothing on its own?”
…does… does she really feel this way? About her power?
It isn’t like the question hasn’t crossed Yukari’s mind as well, and she’s pretty sure the rest of SEES would agree. Not in those words exactly, not in the way Kotone seems to mean it, but her ability to hold so many Personas is something the archer just can’t understand. Io is… she doesn't know how to describe it other than to say that Io is her, and even that seems so laughably simplistic. Io might be more Yukari than Yukari herself, sometimes, considering the lack of capacity for self-deception. She can’t imagine anything else fitting the shape of her soul like that, much less the dozens her leader goes through.
She has wondered what that means for Kotone’s picture of herself on occasion, but her friend seemed to be doing fine.
Keyword being “seemed”, Yukari is now realizing.
(Also, less relevant but still important information, that’s another name Yukari doesn’t recognize. First Pharos, and now Igor, both of whom Kotone feels comfortable talking about Persona stuff with?)
“I… not exactly,” she shrugs almost defensively, “but you get what I mean. Like, Orpheus is me, but so is Black Frost, and Lachesis, and Samael, and even just, like…being. If every mask I pick up fits perfectly, is there even a face underneath?”
It’s an eerie echo of Yukari’s train of thought, or perhaps its warped reflection, because she had come to basically the opposite conclusion any time she’d put much thought into it. She would say it was Kotone's raw force of personality and inner strength that let her reshape her soul on the fly, that the masks became her rather than her becoming the mask.
Kotone just thinks that… there’s nothing below them? That it’s masks all the way down? That can’t be right, she’s so… oh no.
Kotone sighs loudly as a deeply disturbing possibility occurs to Yukari. Not that she doesn’t know the girl she considers to be her best friend as well as she thought, but that she doesn’t know the real Kotone Shiomi at all.
Do any of them?
She knows a vague outline of her history. Lived in Iwatodai before the accident ten years ago, bounced around between distant relatives before eventually landing in the foster system, and finally returned to the city that killed her parents earlier this year. Not that she heard any of this from Kotone herself, this was all from the briefing. It isn’t like Kotone point-blank refuses to talk about her past, she just… doesn’t. She never brings it up, just like she never really brings up much of anything about herself, Yukari is realizing. Any of her struggles or fears or dreams for the future… nothing. Nothing real, at least, nothing serious. She’s the type of person that’s so easy to talk to, so easy to spill your soul to that you never once notice what she doesn’t say.
“You know why I went to you and not them,” Kotone says flatly, and Yukari has a second to hysterically think do I? before the immediate, frustrated follow up. “Yes! You do!”
It almost feels like mockery, these words not meant for her. Yukari doesn’t. She really, really doesn’t know where any of this came from.
She’s supposed to be the healer.
“Because… because they don’t see…this,” the girl continues, a slight tinge of tired bitterness in her voice. “This isn't part of what ‘Kotone’ is to them… and it shouldn’t be. They’ve all got,” Kotone interrupts herself with a slow yawn, “their own stuff going on…”
Okay. There’s… there’s a lot there. It isn’t just that SEES are collectively terrible friends for not noticing that she’s struggling, Kotone is actively hiding parts of herself… because she believes they’re all too busy with their own problems. They might still be terrible friends.
…but is that really all? Instead and if it would be float through her head.
(Io remembers watching a girl put a gun to her head and pull the trigger.)
“Yes,” is Kotone’s terse reply to no one, to a question Yukari can’t hear. “Hypocritical, I know. That’s humans for you. But it isn’t like…”
She trails off into nothing. Yukari leans in closer. She’s almost entirely in Kotone’s room now, there’s no hiding behind the door if the girl turns around.
Even then, she struggles to hear the quiet words. “…are you going to leave too? If we end the Dark Hour?”
…what? What does that even mean? Yukari doesn’t… she’s maybe willing to believe that Pharos is actually real and that Kotone isn’t just hallucinating an entire conversation. The Dark Hour is weird, Shadows are weirder, maybe some ghost stories are true, and if this spirit really exists then it very well might be tied to the Dark Hour’s continued existence. What that says about Pharos, Yukari isn’t sure. What this says about Kotone, on the other hand…
“If” we end the Dark Hour. That doesn’t really sound like a question of SEES’s competence. They’ve been handling the full moon Shadows well enough. It’s almost more like the madness Strega is peddling.
No, that can’t be right. She’s just concerned about her friend(?) disappearing. And her other friends abandoning her? Is Yukari interpreting that correctly? Why would she think that? Has Kotone just been… operating under the assumption that SEES is only using her to destroy the Dark Hour and that they’ll kick her to the curb as soon as it’s dealt with? That she isn’t actually their friend, just a convenient weapon?
That’s insane… but it’s also pretty much exactly what Yukari thought about Mitsuru a couple of months ago. So, not that insane in retrospect.
Oh.
“…thanks for being honest, at least…” Kotone says quietly. Yukari is spiralling, she doesn’t quite have the bandwidth to analyze that right now, whether Pharos answered in the positive or the negative, or to what degree of negative because that didn’t sound much like he was confirming one way or the other.
Maybe Kotone’s sickness is making this worse. Maybe that creeping unreality of the Dark Hour makes even her least rational fears seem more tangible. Maybe that’s wishful thinking on Yukari’s part.
Because Kotone is struggling. There’s no denying that, even if all of her experience with the other girl prior to tonight says otherwise. She doesn’t know the severity, or all the particulars, but Kotone is apparently actively hiding it from the people she claims to care about—and that phrasing sends a spike of shame into her gut. Whatever she thinks she really is, Yukari can’t doubt that Kotone cares. She wouldn’t be concerned about adding to their problems if she didn’t, she wouldn’t make friends as easily as she breathes. SEES and plenty of classmates and those bookshop owners and a local nine-year old and a dying boy and an alcoholic monk and a shady businessman and that weird, ethereally handsome blue bellhop person she’s seen Kotone walking around with occasionally (who is that guy?) would all back her up.
She’s their friend, and she’s apparently afraid that they aren’t hers. How could she even think that? Kotone is obviously worse off than they all think, but how deep does it go?
So many little things she’s noticed over the last few months are being cast into a newly worrying light. Has her friend ever actually rejected her, for herself? Like, every time Yukari has ever asked to hang out with her, every time Yukari can remember anyone asking to hang out with her, Kotone accepts without hesitation, unless she already had plans with someone else. She’s never heard the girl say no for any other reason. Does that mean something? Is it just that she’s never seen Kotone in a scenario where she’ll prioritize her own desires over someone else’s, or does it suggest there isn’t one?
Or what about Tartarus? There are places she’s actually expressed a little concern, only to have them waved off by things that sounded so reasonable at the time. Kotone takes hits, fighting Shadows, more so than most of SEES and at least partially because she insists on being so up close and personal with everything. Yukari just doesn’t quite get it because she’s a ranged fighter, and besides, out of any of their crew Kotone is probably the best for it considering how she’s capable of swapping out her Personas on the fly. Attacks that could down teammates and potentially worse might not do much to her if she plays it right. That’s what she said, when Yukari asked.
It is reasonable, it’s the kind of decision that makes complete sense coming from their field leader.
But she also pushes herself to points that she won’t let others, and she knows she’s not crazy because she isn’t the only one that’s seen that. The Dark Hour is exhausting, and Tartarus is worse, so it isn’t a rare occasion that they wind down infiltrations when someone is running out of gas, even if they technically have more time. Kotone has cut expeditions short when she sees that someone took a heavy hit or is too drained to continue, even if the person in question (read: mostly Sanada, and once Ken) insists they can continue. Never for herself, though. And sure, she’s a step above all the rest of them when it comes to Personas, but she still has her limits. There was an incident last month where she’d been reaching them, as far as Yukari could tell, where the girl had grown noticeably paler and very slightly shaky in the way you get when spiritually exhausted, but throughout it all she kept a bright smile and maintained that she could keep going.
Fuuka’s cautious words of concern had been waved aside. Mitsuru’s slightly more pointed inquiries had been similarly ignored. It was Junpei in the end that succeeded by coming at the problem from a different direction and exaggerating his own fatigue, so Kotone had called the night shortly after. No problem.
Yukari didn’t really put too much thought into it at the time, considering the matter solved, but now she thinks she really should have.
“With the… oh, like archery bow, Yukari.”
The half-heard conversation had sort of lost her attention as she tried to make sense of it all, but hearing her own name snaps Yukari right back.
“Don’t say it like that, she’s my friend,” Kotone almost chastises. “I mean, I’m not against the idea, but…”
This is punishment. This is Yukari’s karma for eavesdropping. Not being able to hear half of the conversation has been bad enough, but this is so much worse now that they’re talking about her… which, thinking about it, probably does make her sort of a bad friend. This is, objectively speaking, not nearly as concerning as quite a few other things she’s heard tonight.
Recognizing this does not make her feel better. Said like what, Kotone? Against what idea?
“I didn’t realize you were so interested in her.”
The world seems to go still for a moment as Yukari’s heart stops, because what is that supposed to mean why is Pharos interested in her, and then slowly, achingly slowly, like something straight out of a horror movie, Kotone turns around to look directly at her.
For a long, long moment, there is silence.
Yukari can’t breathe.
Kotone blinks.
“Oh. Yukari. When’d you get here?” Her voice is slightly slurred, gaze slightly unfocused. Better than yesterday, but still not quite healed.
Yukari isn’t really thinking about that right now, she’s busy panicking over how to respond. After another lengthy silence that probably comes across as incredibly suspicious (that Kotone is hopefully too loopy to suspect), her internal debate ends with a crystal clear decision: lie.
“Uh, just now!” she squeaks out. God, that was so obvious, she’s going to be caught immediately, might as well follow up with I didn’t hear anything about your emotional issues!
There’s a slight tension in Kotone’s frame, and the girl doesn’t respond for a moment. Instead, she subtly turns her head to her right, eyes sliding over towards nothing. Towards nothing. Towards Pharos, oh god she’s about to get sold out by a ghost, is a hallucination better in this scenario or worse, she’s so screwed—
And then Kotone relaxes again, looking back at her. Yukari releases a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. She’s fine? Her friend’s spirit buddy/hallucination backed her up? Logistically, if Kotone didn’t already know she was there, would a delusion born from her own mind be able to tell her? But if it’s actually a ghost, did he also just miss that Yukari’s been standing there like an idiot for the last five minutes? Would he lie?
“Oh yeah,” Kotone suddenly says, her hand twitching in a way that looks like she tried to snap and just completely missed, then gestures off to her side. “That’s Pharos, by the way. He shows up sometimes.”
“Um.” Yukari has no idea how she’s supposed to react to this. Considering her friend’s secret vulnerabilities and their ominous implications did pretty well to distract from the phantom elephant in the room, but she’s not going to be able to keep it together if she has to get too involved. “…hi?”
A soft frown crosses Kotone’s face for a moment as she glances back over at nothing. “…right, you can’t see him. I know how you are about ghosts, but I promise he’s friendly and might not even be… actually, wait. You never said you weren’t a ghost, you just said you weren’t my brother.”
“You have a brother?" Yukari asks without thinking, and then winces as her brain catches up with her. She shouldn’t have said that, she is entirely capable of putting two and two together and those words clearly weren’t meant for her, but even knowing what must have happened doesn’t quite blunt—
“He died,” Kotone says simply, casually, tonelessly. Like she’s talking about the weather. Yukari isn’t sure if that was meant to be such a conversational guillotine, but it was at the very least an extremely clear sign that she should not ask about it.
That might be the first time she’s ever gotten that sensation from Kotone. Strangely, after all she’s heard, it’s almost comforting.
The smile that slides onto Kotone’s face is too. She still doesn’t look great, still foggy and flushed, but she’s definitely improved since the last time Yukari saw her. This is more like what she had expected to see from her friend being sick.
And that thought stops her cold.
This is what she expected to see because this is what Kotone wants her to see. This is the proof that she’s doing better, because she’s recovered enough to remember her mask. Yukari had just listened to half a conversation about how Kotone hides things from her friends, she watched the mask slide on, they had talked about her dead family two seconds ago and she still almost bought it hook, line, and sinker.
Kotone is good at this. Scary good. Concerningly good, in a way that sends a shiver down her spine and erases what little vestige of warmth had just been ignited.
Oh, this is really a problem.
“So, what are you doing up so late? We were just talking about you, you know,” Kotone asks, and then for some reason hums a few bars of the Tanaka jingle under her breath. Then she does that little amused hiss noise she makes when she doesn’t want people to know she finds something funny (knowing this particular detail about her friend, unfortunately, also means she knows someone she generally respects actually likes some of Ikutsuki’s jokes).
She has a real reason to be here. She can just say it, finish her check up, and leave to go figure out what the hell to do next.
“…you were? What about me?”
…but also she really wants to know what they were saying about her.
Kotone, though, hesitates a moment, and her smile misses a beat before widening again. “Nothin’ much, he just felt like complimenting you, I guess. Not in a creepy way, more like… uh, friendship, mostly, but… what’s the word?” She goes quiet for a moment, glancing to the side. “Vicariously, yeah, thanks. Sort of a friend-by-proxy type thing. He likes all you guys, pretty much.”
Cool. Great. Fantastic. Kotone’s ghost friend has opinions on SEES and her and is always watching in Kotone’s own words, she didn’t need to sleep tonight, it’s fine, she’s just going to barrel right past this.
“Um, neat,” Yukari says, failing to keep the panic out of her voice. “I, uh, I was just checking up on you to make sure you were okay and all, ‘cause you’re sick, and… actually, do you remember what you were trying to do last night?”
Kotone frowns at that, and her already dull eyes glaze over a little more. “…no? Did something happen?”
As Yukari debates on whether or not to tell her, her friend fully turns to the side where Pharos apparently is.
“I did? That sounds like a bad idea… oh.”
So maybe it was legitimately just the fever cooking her brain and not a regular thing? Yukari’s just going to focus on that because the alternative is thinking more about how this is really looking more like Pharos is an actual thing that exists and Kotone isn’t just delusional.
“Oh, sorry for worrying you, but—” Kotone interrupts herself with another massive yawn, “but I’m fine for now.”
“I can tell, you do seem better than yesterday,” she responds quietly. It’s true in the physical sense, or if you get really pedantic about the word ‘seem.’ “Just keep resting, and I’m sure you’ll be back to normal in no time…”
Yukari can’t quite keep her voice from wavering at the end, but Kotone doesn’t look like she notices. Back to normal indeed.
…confronting her about what she heard would be a bad idea, Yukari is sure. It’s not the time or place right now. But she can’t just…
“…hey, Kotone?”
“Hm?”
“Just… I just want to make sure you know that we’re here for you, alright?”
Kotone doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then she quietly nods. Yukari doesn’t know if it’s the truth. She never really needed to doubt before. And it’s not—it isn’t like—she doesn’t know what to do, she hates this sudden subtle poison in her mind, this new need to wonder and question if anything she’s seeing is real. Kotone doesn’t deserve for her every move to be analyzed to hell and back like this to figure out how much of her is a lie… or who Yukari thinks Kotone is doesn’t.
See? It’s insidious.
She can feel tears beading in the corner of her eyes, shame coiling in her stomach. Yukari needs to get out of here.
“A-anyway! I’ll, uh, I’ll let you get back to bed. See you in the morning,” she manages to stammer out, stepping backwards to the door. Kotone weakly waves and mumbles her own goodbye, though she can’t make out the specific words.
She’s trying to pretend this doesn’t feel like a retreat.
… and as she closes the door, halfway into the hall, she stops. Pokes her head back in. It isn’t… this is another supremely silly impulse, and she’s still internally hoping that it means nothing, that her friend was absolutely just talking to herself… Whether that conversation was entirely an illusion or not, it did help her gain a better and also so much worse understanding of Kotone. She feels the strangest need to do something about that.
“Oh, and, uh,” Yukari swallows heavily. She looks towards the blank wall to Kotone’s side. “It was… nice to meet you?”
Kotone responds with a soft giggle, and after a moment of silence, “He says thanks.”
And then Yukari shuts the door.
God.
What now?
She sighs, slumped against the wall, then straightens up. She should… she should at least go back to her own room to think, not just stand out in the hall like a lunatic.
“Status report?”
Yukari does not scream, but she does jump a bit.
“Oh! Aigis, I forgot you were out here!” she says. She really did forget that Aigis has been standing silently in the hallway all night… and probably just saw Yukari lurking in the doorway for several minutes straight, she might have even heard parts of… whatever that was. “Did you… did you hear any of that?”
“Negative. I have been instructed to cease personal surveillance of Kotone’s room,” Aigis responds. “Has her status changed?”
Okay, neat. She’s just concerned about Kotone being sick, not about Yukari standing there like a creep and watching Kotone sleep (though if anyone won’t ask questions about standing there like a creep and watching Kotone sleep, it’s Aigis). Not that she was sleeping, though.
“Oh, she looks like she’s doing better. Actually, she was awake for a bit. We talked.”
Aigis nods. She seems content to leave it there and continue her vigil, and Yukari is inclined to let her.
She could… she could ask Aigis about this. If she’s seen anything weird about Kotone, if she’s ever caught her talking to herself in her stalking sessions. Or if she’s gotten any indication that Kotone isn’t actually feeling what she presents herself as.
After a second, she dismisses the thought. Aigis is getting better, slowly but surely, but she’s still a long way off from human. If Yukari hadn’t seen anything wrong, she doubts the robot would have. Plus, it feels kind of wrong to violate Kotone’s privacy like this. More than she already has, she means.
“…uh, thanks for keeping an eye out for her. I’m going back to bed.”
“Affirmative. Goodnight, Yukari.”
And then she’s back in her room, alone with her thoughts.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that Kotone is her friend. Screw whatever distance she quietly thinks might exist, whatever parts of the self Yukari has seen that aren’t “real,” Kotone is her friend and Yukari isn’t going to believe otherwise until she hears the girl say otherwise herself. That’s the thing she can’t let herself forget.
The second thing is… the second thing… she has no idea.
Should she just… ask? About the emotional issues? About Pharos? That seems like a bad idea without preparation. She could try asking other members of SEES what their thoughts are, but most of them seem like they’d be about as prepared to handle this as they were for her sickness. Also, the aforementioned privacy issues. Yukari certainly would hate it if Kotone started telling everyone else about her problems, especially if Yukari hadn’t even told her in the first place.
She knows she can be kind of bullheaded sometimes (pun not intended, Ikutsuki has soured her on the concept forever), but this… this isn’t something she can just jump blindly into. It's too important for that. She doesn’t know what to do.
It’s kind of funny, in a sad sort of way. The person she would normally ask about this type of thing is the one person she can’t, because she’s also the one that’s already lying to her about it.
Yukari doesn’t get much sleep that night.