#AND. YEAH. I LOVE SUMIREEEEE.

[tamaharu]

okay i am going to explain my kasumi!lives au to you now if you click on this readmore imagine you are tied to a chair trapped in a room w me as i explain. get into the mood. okay.

so they both survive the accident and sumire is naturally horrified/apologetic and refuses to tell kasumi anything more abt her negative thoughts while kasumi is so rattled + has no mental health awareness that she sort of just lets it slide without much further examination. 

school starts and sumire takes advantage of the privileges given to them as honors students and just. utterly throws herself into practicing, desperate to distract herself from her own horrible thoughts and hopefully get better to negate these thoughts altogether. while kasumi is like okay….. shes practicing harder.. to get used to her growth spurt! yay :D im glad shes doing completely fine!! 

kasumi on the other hand in acting how ‘kasumi’ did in canon, i.e. not taking advantage of practice time so others wont think less of her. despite this, when put to the test she still manages to beat sumire from the combination of regular practice + natural skill. and you can imagine how much that stings for sumire.

meanwhile, kasumi becomes rens confidant! (sorry sumire i love you so but i dont think her being a confidant in this au would work very much) kasumi is his faith confidant and maruki still gets hired after kamoshida like in canon! (sumire goes in to talk to him about her woes.. hes the only one she feels comfortable confessing her dark thoughts to..) kasumi teaches ren gymnastics, and theres probably an element of not letting the other students negative opinions of her (or sumire) drag her down. 

we see kasumi around pretty frequently but sumire is really rare. the only times you are guaranteed to see her are a part of kasumi and marukis social links that have some implications of.. something going on but without the ability to deal with it too directly. she is very quiet/serious abt practice. Kasumi is confused and worried abt sumires behavior, but she seems relatively stable after coming to shujin/seeing maruki so.. its probably fine! (IT IS NOT FINE)

anyway the general plot progresses pretty much like normal. kasumi goes into the myyyysteryyy palace w ren and awakens to cendrillion like normal. you can probably get kasumis confidant to level like six or seven before third sem stuff but at that point it is locked from progressing until the story gets further into gear.

meanwhile the stuff with sumire progresses further and further and. blah blah blah AND. EVENTUALLY: sumire develops a palace. (at this point we are like. in third semester territory calendar wise more or less. idk how theyd discover the palace/how theyd realize there was still mementos BUT ITS FINE.)

the palace is a weird distorted theater or something that encompasses the school where kasumi is idolized and fawned over to um. A Creepy Degree!! Lots of headshots and photos of old performances and actors and stuff and its just endless kasumi w sumires likeness destroyed in various ways.

then you meet the palace ruler/shadow version of sumire thats like im the understudy for the next performance.. i HAVE to live of to kasumis legacy. no matter how hard i try, im never as good as her. and yet, she stays with me, encourages me, clings to me.. saves me, even if it puts herself at risk.. it terrifies me. im only dragging her down, and if i cant bring myself up to her level, then one of these days im going to ruin her life. if i cant be like kasumi-- itd be better if i just died!!

and its like. oh. well thats a lot to unpack. um. theres a gymnastic competition coming up soon. oh okay. i get it now. if she doesnt do better than kasumi in it she is going to like. straight up kill herself.

kasumi is SO CONFUSED like i thought she was getting better??? shes been so chill and relaxed recently??? meanwhile sumire has actually just achieve the eerie calmness of someone who has decided to commit suicide

kasumi: well shes been practicing really hard!! maybe she'll get it this time

ren: (lays a gentle hand on her shoulder) what have we said about mental illness

kasumi: (hangs her head) that it doesnt always work in logical ways

theres some plot reason why they cant do the palace until the last minute idk. so sumire gets the calling card and obviously immediately shows it to maruki and hes like. hm. thats crazy. unrelated i have to go. run some errands.

anyways during the boss fight they are so close to overpowering ruler!sumire and stealing the treasure when all of a sudden tentacles shoot from the ground and grab the treasure and steal it before the pts can. and sumire is screaming in pain and despair, but the tentacles just surround her, preventing the thieves from going and helping her. eventually they just have to leave her there without the treasure because the tentacles are pulling the palace down/the palace is crumbling around them and they dont know why.

then they wake up outside of the palace area. and sumire wakes up and slowly staggers to her feet. and then she straightens. she smiles, pleasant and polite, as she takes her glasses off and puts her hair up. and she greets them like theyre friends. and she looks through kasumi like shes nothing more than glass. and thus, sumire becomes kasumi.

WOOOAHHH SHOCKER MARUKI CHANGED HER COGNITION (plot twist) taking that desire to either become kasumi or die trying very literal. and w her cognition change reality finally and truly shifts.

so marukis palace is pretty different than in canon - more elaborate, more labyrinthine. rather than having to wake up from their fake reality to fight, they already know whats going on and the thieves have to traverse through rooms of paradise, tailor-made for each of them individually, as thats where all the puzzles and stuff are. what if god said that he forgave you, that you could return to the garden?

meanwhile sumire keeps swinging by both to check on their ‘therapy’ progress, but also to encourage them to stay and fighting them if they get real mouthy. the first time they find her they try to tell her whats going on and bring her back with them but instead she… calls on her persona, cendrillion. if shes kasumi, then she is going full kasumi.

anyhow in each of the paradise rooms are pieces of sumires treasure that was split apart and when they reform it the treasure turns out to be. get this. an apple. because they are ALWAYS drinking that damn apple juice !! and as it comes together its like the princes heart from princess tutu where she starts to understand what happened/her own emotions more as more pieces are put together.

the final choice basically is either for the thieves to eat the apple themselves, effectively permanently destroying sumires distorted heart + letting them live in paradise (resulting in more or less the typical maruki end). or, they can give it to sumire for her to eat. THE FRUIT OF KNOWLEDGE!!!!!!!!!!! WHO IS THE SNAKE!!!!!!!!!!

when sumire eats the apple it formally gives her back ALL her context/memory and she is Upset. and it triggers the maruki fight more or less. and she joins in to help because shes pissed!!! except, the only problem is.. the longer the fight goes on, the less and less effective her persona becomes. because its cendrillion. because its not hers, not her true self.

but in the end her final thing is (reminiscent of the “shooting god in the face” thing/sort of what they do to him in canon) to take a giant sword from the fading cendrillion and bring it straight through the maruki/persona fusion’s heart. (you can even still have the section with ren and maruki punching each other in the face while the palace disintegrates after that!)

and after that, things come back to normal. sumire is���. not better. not by a longshot. but for the first time in a really long while, shes ready to trust her sister, and she ready to trust herself: sumire yoshizawa.

even in a version of the story where both kasumi and sumire survived the car accident i still believe sumire would have the capacity to be fucking insane ❤️ love and light