#and then just spent the rest of the month hanging out with like. naoto and kanji- | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

misedejem · 4 years ago

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Date Nights

Series: Persona 4 Ship: Kannao (Kanji Tatsumi/Naoto Shirogane) Word count: 9196

If ever Naoto was feeling low, Kanji would try harder than ever to show her how much he cared. Little gestures of good will and love that would go towards easing the pain. It had been that way from when they first met, and was still the case after over fifteen years.

So when Naoto found herself with Kanji in a slump and a few hours to spare, she took it upon herself to do the same.

(Basically lots of domestic future headcanon shenaningans~ As a note, Naoto is genderfluid in my fics, and this one uses she/her. AO3 link in the notes)

It had been an awfully long time since the Shiroganes had been working away from home at the same time.

Kanji had become unemployed almost two years ago and had been pooling his resources into his online store since then. And Naoto had been on leave a full year now, because of Chihiro, and then the upheaval and transfer of half the Shirogane agency from Tokyo to Yasoinaba. Save the odd local case, she’d effectively been forced to hang up the detective cap until life calmed down enough for her to return.

It was… a much-needed break. They could mutually agree on that.

Then, less than a month between moving into a house and the agency reopening, Yu Narukami had appeared on their doorstep one evening with ‘encouragement bentos’ and a request. The middle school he worked in as guidance counsellor had suddenly lost a teacher temporarily due to illness. The art teacher. She’d probably need at least six months to recover, but the new semester started in September and it was far too tight a deadline for the board to submit a request for a replacement.

“I mentioned you used to work as an art teacher in Tokyo, Kanji, and they said to ask you as soon as possible.”

Neither of them could have foreseen such a thing… But in a week, their situation had changed from both of them being at home, to both of them returning to work just a day apart from one another.

One day.

What a rare commodity that was.

As much as she adored it, Naoto’s career had always been taxing, keeping her late at night and seldom offering her a chance to catch her breath. After all, the Shirogane agency was lauded all across the country. Grampa had made such a name for it before he had died, and the attention she had gained from the media as the ‘first Detective Prince’ had only served to bolster the Shirogane name’s shining reputation once she’d taken over. That, and the fact that it was the only remaining detective agency in the country that specialised in Shadow-related incidents. They’d become ever more prevalent since the mental shutdowns and the Phantom Thieves incidents a decade ago had made knowledge of them more widespread in the seedier depths of society, and the Shadow Operatives had ensured to keep her busy when the cases grew too complex for them to handle.

That’s why they’d come back to Inaba of all places. With the TV World still very much active, it was the most potent place for illicit Shadow activities to occur in all Japan. And with the murmurings of new information cropping up, the higher ups had figured it may be a good idea to have a team of investigators to hand.

The detective had a lot of work waiting for her when her leave expired.

So, for her to be the one left with the house instead of Kanji for a full day… Well, she couldn’t exactly waste such an occasion.

“Momo, no -! Don’t… climb in there…” Naoto sighed, watching as her orange tabby clambered her way into one of the cardboard boxes at the far end of the room. She knew it was a fruitless effort to try and stop her. Their other cat didn’t house much love for boxes, but Mochi had been found in one as a kitten and clearly had developed a natural affinity towards them as a result. Half their move had been spent trying to keep her out of them long enough to fill them.

“If you wish to help, the very least you could do would be to climb into the ones I haven’t yet searched,” she told her, crossing over to the box and hoisting Mochi out. “That way, I won’t be wasting any time by delving into boxes twice when I retrieve you.”

Unfortunately, Naoto’s request was not met with much approval. The cat just mewled indignantly, clearly unimpressed and unwilling to cooperate, and scampered behind the large pile in the centre of the garage, leaving the detective to continue her investigation on her own.

It was frankly impressive that all the miscellany crammed into these boxes had fit into their Tokyo apartment; big though it was, it had been severely lacking in storage. Half their belongings – all the stuff they didn’t desperately need - were all packed up in this room, waiting for a spare moment to be put in their rightful place. They’d had five weeks to unpack, and perhaps if they’d still been living as just the two of them, they’d have made more of a dent in it. That would certainly have made Naoto’s current task a considerable deal easier. But all the free time they had now was devoted to Chihiro. She was only just coming up on her first birthday, and she was still very much dependant on her parents every moment that she was awake. Even now, Naoto was only able to search the room because the infant was taking her midmorning nap.

She was looking for a binder Kanji had put together, containing a collection of their favourite recipes that he’d found online or written down over the years. Somehow, it had gotten separated from the recipe books when they had packed away their kitchen, and it had not yet resurfaced. This was a major blockade in her plan for the day. She needed that binder. Desperately.

Kanji had seemed rather perturbed as he’d prepared for work that morning. In fact, he’d seemed uneasy about it from the moment Yu had asked him to take it. It was… unlike him. He’d worked as an art teacher in a middle school back in the city for four years, and he’d loved every minute of it.

“Hmm? Course I want the job,” he’d told her when she’d questioned him about it over breakfast. “I miss this kinda shit, you know that.”

He had a smile on his face as he tried spooning a blob of mushed fruits into Chihiro’s mouth, but it was a strained smile if nothing else.

“You just seem tense, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well… So do you. Goin’ back to work after havin’ a kid is s’posed to be kinda rough.” He shrugged.

“I can’t deny that…” Naoto sighed. “Even knowing that your mother will be there for her, and that you’re only doing part time hours, the idea of leaving her alone at all is more taxing on me than I could ever have expected… That’s all it is though?”

Naoto could think of several other reasons Kanji might have to be nervous about this particular job. But on the off chance that they hadn’t crossed his mind yet, she refrained from bringing them up. The last thing she wanted was to make him feel worse.

There was a pause, filled only by Chihiro’s babbles and the sound of the cats zooming about the living room after one another in a burst of energy. As he scraped the last of the baby food from the pot and offered it to their daughter, Kanji’s face began to fall ever so slightly, and before long he was sighing.

“I really gotta… stop overlookin’ that I’m married to a detective. I am scared shitless of leavin’ Chihiro for the first time. If anythin’s wrong, it’s that most of all. But uh… Otherwise I’m just a little weirded out.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Middle school – this middle school – is kinda… where I started to get a bad rep… What… I dunno, what if they take one look at me and realise who I am and kick me out? Like, they don’t realise ‘Shirogane Kanji’ is actually ‘Tatsumi Kanji’ an’ once they do they won’t want me anymore? They don’t know why I resigned from my last job either, what if they think I did something bad an’–”

As his voice grew louder and more sporadic, his panic becoming so apparent that it was palpable, Naoto scooted her way over to him and slipped her arms around his waist, resting her head gently on his chest.

“You left on your own terms because you disliked the way the school was being run. You don’t have to disclose why. And Kan-chan… you don’t mean to tell me that I’ve kept you from your hometown for so long that you’ve forgotten what it’s like? Inaba isn’t overly massive – rumours spread fast. I daresay there isn’t a person here who doesn’t know that the Tatsumi boy married that Detective Shirogane person. Especially not with how much your mother talks about us.”

She held him close for a while, rubbing her hand across his back even after his heart stopped pounding so hard, and his muscles began to relax.

“Yeah… I know… I know it’s a stupid thing to worry about, an’ that there ain’t no point in getting’ worked up about it…”

“Well, it’s not… stupid. I’d say it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to be concerned about, given the impact it had on you in the past. But I can assure you of this: they wouldn’t have hired you if they thought you were unfit for the position.”

He nodded, and a smile appeared on his face again – a genuine one, this time. For the rest of the morning, his dour disposition had dissipated somewhat, and his spirits certainly seemed higher when he had left the house.

But even if she had managed to cheer him up, Naoto knew the day would be a challenge for him no matter how many positive sentiments she sent his way. Returning to a place you had been mistreated, even after nearly twenty years had passed, was difficult enough as it was, without the thought of leaving your baby for the first time nagging at you as well.

That’s why she needed that binder. It contained the recipe for one of Kanji’s all-time favourite curries, one she believed even she could produce, and she figured he might need something like that when he returned home.

He often did little ‘date nights’ from home for them, for birthdays or anniversaries, or even just when Naoto was struggling with a tough case and needed a distraction or treat. They would put on whatever was comfortable, sit down with a meal and a drink, and more often than not, end up in a snuggled-up heap on the couch with a movie flickering on in the background. She hosted her fair share of them as well, but admittedly hers often involved an expensive night out at a restaurant. Kanji was the better cook, and he considered it a hobby more than simply something one needed to do to survive, but Naoto lacked the skill or drive to make a hand-crafted date night even without her long hours.

But this night would be an exception. She suddenly found herself with eight hours at home without him, and she would be a fool not to use that time to surprise him in the same way he always would with her. She’d throw him a date night so damn enjoyable that he’d forget all about his anxieties, no matter the cost.

That was… if she could find the damned recipe she needed to carry out her plan.

And so, she perused box after box in her investigation, leaving not even one overlooked. Old case files she’d had sent over from the Shirogane estate that had once belonged to her grandfather. An assortment of holiday decorations that really needed separating by date. Kanji’s miscellaneous box of scrap material. A box marked for charity of Naoto’s old clothes that had stopped fitting since she’d had Chihiro. Plushies. More plushies. Even the container of extra crockery, things that had come from the kitchen itself, bore no sign of the item she sought. An hour passed as though it were seconds, yielding nothing of value.

Had Kanji already moved it? It wasn’t as though she could ask him… Had they forgotten it? No, that apartment was spotless when they’d moved out. She’d triple checked it herself.

She foresaw herself spending all day searching at this rate… but she didn’t have all day. He’d be staying late for a debriefing, but even so, Kanji would still probably be home for five o’clock, and she still had to go to Junes to fetch the ingredients she was going to need.

Perhaps she could look it up online again? That was where Kanji had found it originally…

She sat herself, cross legged, on an old rug and pulled out her phone, plugging in the name of the recipe into a search engine, lifting her arm so that Mochi – tired of hiding – could come and curl up in her lap. And then, running the fingers of her free hand through Mochi’s fur, she began to scroll and click every site she could find.

But she recalled vividly the constitution of the page she was searching for, and none of these were it. She’d never read the words herself – having never made the recipe – and Kanji had decided to crop the name of the site it was from to maintain the ‘aesthetic’ of the folder, but she knew what it looked like. The colours, the typeface, the accompanying picture.

Nothing.

It was entirely possible the site had been redesigned or deleted. In which case she was out of luck online… It wouldn’t work for her to try a different recipe, it had to be that one. If it wasn’t that one, it wouldn’t taste the same, and then it wouldn’t be his favourite. Irritation began to swell within her as her endeavour began to look more fruitless, and she had to take a few moments to breathe and calm a little before moving onto her last resort: checking with Mrs. Tatsumi, with Yakushiji, and the Investigation Team on the off chance that maybe Kanji had lent them the recipe at some point.

Nos all around.

The irritation grew stronger.

And then, as though a timer had gone off signifying the end of her allotted time, the baby monitor sprung to life.

***

“Are… You even listening?”

Naoto huffed and folded her arms, wearing her most devastating expression of disappointment as she shook her head. She’d been talking for a good ten minutes, and she was beginning to wonder if any of it had been heard at all.

“’Course we are. You want to do something cute and romantic for the big guy, because you’re secretly a massive softie, but your first idea went bust.”

Yosuke offered her a cheeky wink and raised his soda cup in a mock toast, before turning back to fawn over Chihiro in Chie’s arms.

“But I dunno how you expect us to concentrate on anything else when you’ve brought this adorable little muffin along,” Chie added, putting on a baby voice and ‘booping’ said muffin on the nose. Chihiro giggled, her tiny face absolutely beaming with delight.

“Oh, I expect you to manage perfectly. If I can – if Kanji can – despite seeing every cute thing she ever does, then it should be no problem for somebody only exposed to it for a short while.”

A couple of hours had passed since Naoto had given up her search for the original recipe and had elected to change tactic. She would simply have to find… a different meal entirely. One that would still mean as much to Kanji. But a quick scour of the recipe books they had on hand in the kitchen yielded nothing. And so, once Chihiro was fed and dressed appropriately for the late summer warmth, she walked her over to Junes to grab some supplies, hoping that by some pure miracle, looking at the ingredients on offer would spark some form of inspiration within her. Only, out of sheer coincidence, she had managed to time her visit perfectly with the end of Yosuke’s shift, and Chie’s day off.

The two of them could often be found talking in the food court on their off-hours. It had been that way since high school, through all the changes and remodels they’d made to the layout of the store over the years and would likely continue to be that way as long as Junes stood and they remained in Inaba. It was the secret headquarters of the Investigation Team, after all. It wasn’t a place you could so easily give up.

So, guided by tradition, they all sat together, sharing a Takoyaki selection in the summer breeze – a welcome change from the mustiness of the Shirogane residence garage – Yosuke and Chie completely spellbound by the baby while Naoto explained her predicament. She had hoped they’d be a little more attentive, and frankly more helpful, but… she supposed she couldn’t fault them. Chihiro was effectively their niece, and she’d been in Tokyo for the past year.

But at least they were making her happy. Seeing her so ecstatic, despite Kanji being gone for so long, certainly helped ease some of the anxieties she had been feeling about leaving her. Getting her acquainted properly with the people who would likely be babysitting her until well into her teens was certainly not a bad thing… although… Naoto was on a tight schedule.

“Aaanyway.” She rapped the table lightly with the tips of her fingers. “Regretfully my first idea – the one that was ah… ‘bust’, as you said – was also my only idea. I’m currently running at a loss on where to proceed from here…”

At the very least they were nodding along now, and looking at her as she spoke.

“…Chie-chan, do you have date nights? What do you usually do?”

“Hmm? Yeah, of course we do! But, uh… Yukiko and I always go out for ‘em. You know, because the inn keeps her so busy and I –”

“Can’t cook anything without it coming out tasting of cardboard?” Yosuke supplied, grinning. Chie shot him a mean look, but nodded nonetheless.

“Pretty much…”

“In most instances, that would be my go-to as well,” Naoto said, holding back a grin at Yosuke’s comment. “Hand-crafted anything is Kanji’s forte, not mine, but… we both agree the ones at home are more enjoyable, no matter how good the food may be in a restaurant.”

“You’re like… the most private people I’ve ever known, so that isn’t surprising.”

She gave an affirming nod. Lovely as it was to go all out sometimes at an expensive eatery, there were always… stares. No matter where they were, people would see them and notice. Sometimes they’d simply recognise the Detective Prince, and that was all they’d see. But other times their eyes would linger longer. They’d take note of Kanji’s piercings and spikes combined with the cute animals and soft colours, analyse Naoto’s dedication to old English fashion and deliberate lack of conformity to any gender, and then keep their gazes trained on the two of them as they attempted to pick apart every contrasting aspect. The way they looked and dressed alone, the way they looked and dressed together… it made going out in public difficult for two people who both struggled to some degree with social anxieties and a history of being scrutinised for the way they were.

Kanji had left the house worrying he was going to be judged. She didn’t want to put him through that twice in one day.

“Well, is there anything else you’ve made before that you know he likes?” Yosuke asked, helping himself to the Takoyaki

Naoto frowned. “Well, yes, but all of it is rather… typical? I have a small repertoire, you see.”

“So you want something different? Hmm… Why don’t you just go ham?” Chie suggested with a genuine smile. “Grab stuff you think’ll go together and make a totally new curry. Heck, doesn’t even gotta be curry.”

“That’s how you end up with Mystery Food X: Redux,” Yosuke warned, and Chie’s smile instantly vanished. “Though actually, Naoto… In your sensible hands you’d probably be okay. You actually know how to cook.”

“If I wasn’t holding a baby right now, I would kick you.”

“Without a recipe at all…?” For a moment, the detective was left perplexed. But before long, a thought came across her mind, and that irritation from earlier came grumbling back into her periphery. “Yosuke-kun. Please. I simply don’t have the time to spare for your… japes and mockery. I need you to be serious.”

She expected him to laugh, as he often would when she caught him out while he was joking. She didn’t do so very often, loathe as she was to admit it, and it had become something of a game to Yosuke to see how long he could keep pushing her buttons.

But this time he threw up his hands instead, with… was that his face now contorted in confusion as well?

“H-hey, I am being serious. Promise. If you genuinely have no other ideas, then I begrudgingly accept that Chie might be onto something.”

“And I’m supposed to do that without instructions?” She asked incredulously, raising her eyebrows. Was she being foolish and naïve? Or was Yosuke the one reeking of inexperience? “You act as though you believe I have time to memorise every food combination, and how to make them work. I am a detective, not a chef, Yosuke-kun. Recipes exist so that I don’t have to preoccupy my brain with trivialities such as cooking from memory.”

“Hey, it was Chie’s idea, not mine!”

“You should know better.”

The raised voices and snipes were a staple of any conversation involving Yosuke and Chie, and at this point Naoto had come to learn that it was largely performative. They ‘fought’ with warm regards. She’d even reached a point where she was able to go along with it without utterly deflating the mood. But to Chihiro, with no grasp of the concept of banter, it was all just loud, frightening noises coming from people she didn’t know all too well. The conversation very quickly had to switch courses when a crying spell threatened to rear its head.

“You know… you never asked me what I do for date nights,” Yosuke pointed out once the baby had been settled. She now lay propped up on Naoto’s lap, nodding off with her little head resting on her chest. Naoto constantly considered herself fortunate that Chihiro wasn’t especially fussy. Sometimes on a good day all she needed to calm right down was a cuddle.

“Hmm?” she looked up. If Yosuke had said anything before that, she had been too preoccupied with gently coaxing her daughter to nap to hear it. “Oh, no, I suppose I didn’t…”

Chie, who had moved into the more comfortable position of resting her chin on her hand now her arms were free, scoffed slightly.

“Dude. Maybe because you don’t have anybody to date?”

“Well… No, but I’ve been on dates. More than one with the same person. I have experience, I’m just… not experiencing it right now.” He rubbed the back of his neck, casting his gaze off to the side. “Dinner dates aren’t really my thing though…”

“So, why’d you even bring it up?”

“Hey! I’ve been on… like, one dinner date. I’m just not the guru of them!” He shrugged. “It’s an interesting story actually… I got set up a few years ago by my bandmates, and it turns out the guy isn’t my type at all. But I didn’t want to say no without at least giving him a chance, so… Y’know. He wants to go out to this fancy French place, but we get there and they’re closing early because of… Uh, I think the kitchen flooded or something like that? So, he takes me back to his place and leaves me there, runs off to go shopping, and comes back and cooks a three-course French meal himself.”

“And you didn’t marry him on the spot?”

“Nah. We did a couple more dates but it didn’t really work out. We weren’t super compatible...”

“Is this why you get Rise to vet anybody you’re gonna date now?”

“Pretty much. You guys know me best, so…”

The two of them continued to talk, but from Naoto’s perspective, their voices had been drowned by her thoughts into a dull and distant murmur. From the moment Yosuke had finished his story, the gears in her brain had whirred into motion, working their way into fabricating a plan formed from his words.

It had hit her at last. A wave of inspiration and relief, tantamount to the feeling she would have when she’d finally cracked the secret to a particularly arduous case.

A plan. Followed by a conjured image of how Kanji’s face might look when he saw it.

“Yosuke-kun…” she began, standing slowly so that she did not wake the baby and gently lowering her into the buggy she had parked next to her seat. “Would you be able to look something up for me? While my hands are full.”

***

January 19th, 2025. Little over a year and a half ago. London, England. They’d been abroad for a few weeks at that point, Naoto on a case for the Shadow Operatives, and Kanji taking advantage of her hotel room to table at an artist’s alley in a convention.

It was something of a special occasion. Kanji’s 29th birthday had been the original cause for celebration, but to him at least that was very much an aside. It was, what, only three hours prior to reaching the restaurant that they’d found out Naoto was pregnant.

There had been several sources for the reasoning behind Naoto’s choice in establishment, and unlike most of her destination picks while they’d been in London, none of them had a single thing to do with Sherlock Holmes. The ones that stood out the most: a churning in her stomach – simultaneously a mental and a physical reaction to her current condition – and a particularly mournful image of her mother-in-law from a few months prior.

“There was this little place my late husband and I would always take Kanji when he was young, if we had to travel to Okina. Italian, it was, family run. I just heard from a customer that it was recently shut down because the owner passed. It has me a little down to think of, that’s all Naoto dear.”

A precious memory from Kanji’s childhood was no small matter, harrowing as such a thing was to think. And Italian… parsing through her options in her mind as she browsed the local restaurants on one of those food apps, Naoto took note of how the one being advertised made her insides turn the least at the thoughts of it. It was one of those smaller, more community-based places, while the others were either going to be full of too-rich smells for her poor stomach to handle, or full of classy, antiquated rules and stares that she didn’t feel up to taking that day.

She didn’t want to make her husband eat hotel food on his birthday… And nor did she want to worry him all evening by being exceptionally edgy. So it didn’t take very long at all for her to have dialled the number for the family-run Italian place, and had booked them a table for two that evening.

The food had been… good. Standard fare for that kind of place. But Naoto was a harsh critic – even without feeling deeply unwell, she had been to Italy. And yet, in all the fifteen years she had known Kanji, she could not recall a single meal out where he seemed to have enjoyed himself quite as much as that. The rush of euphoria from learning he was going to be a father had apparently been enough to turn any experience he may have had that night into the best date night of his life. And Naoto knew the kind of man he was. Sentimental, perceptive, prone to dwelling on the little things. He’d remember, starkly, what he had eaten then.

It was just a pasta meal. She recalled it being made with chicken and a creamy, pesto-based sauce, and Yosuke’s internet search had quickly pulled up a recipe for something along those lines. It wouldn’t be the same – these places kept their recipes close to the heart – but that didn’t matter. Her plan had now become a case of finding something symbolic, over finding something that tasted good.

“I think he’s really starting to rub off on you,” Yosuke had noted as Naoto had prepared to rush off to grab the ingredients from the recipe he had found. “Kanji, I mean. In a good way.”

She’d queried him on that. Her own sharpness didn’t exactly extend to analysing herself.

“I just meant that five years ago, I don’t think you’d ever have thought to do something like this. I always took you for the… less cliché of the two of you. Didn’t you propose to him spontaneously in a cat café? If you don’t mind me asking… why is this the first thing you thought to do for him?”

A pause for Naoto to collect her thoughts. One that, much to everyone’s surprise, didn’t last nearly as long as it might have.

“It’s… because this is logical to me. A dinner date – it’s the simplest, most common activity in the books. It’s a cliché because its effective. Because food is one of those love languages that transcends barriers, and to somebody who struggles in most social situations, like Kanji, like me, you must understand that something like this is a life saver. It’s a change to our routine that really doesn’t change all that much.” She smiled to herself. “Kanji does this to make me feel happy. So many people do, for the person they love. It only makes sense to me that I follow their lead.”

It was that way for most matters of the heart, she thought to herself as she balanced a packet of chicken on the hood of the buggy. She had never known how to act in these situations, how to express the feelings she had. And while she’d devised some unique little ways that she had managed to convey to Kanji, oftentimes the most effective means of telling him that she loved him was to simply use another person’s idea as a foundation. She had her own experiences as proof that it worked. After all, Kanji was a person who had been so starved for and scared of affection as a child that now, almost anything that said ‘I care about you’ was enough to draw him to tears. And Naoto was no different. He was more physical than her, and really that was the only major way in which their feelings towards romance diverged. The things that made one of them happy was sure to leave the other in the same state.

***

Naoto loved Kanji more than she hated cooking. That was really the defining fact that made this entire plan of hers possible at all.

Because she really hated cooking.

“I’ll prolly be home in like… forty minutes,” Kanji had told her over the phone when she’d given him a tentative call at just gone four to gauge how long she had. Pasta wasn’t exactly something she could make well in advance – just the thought of reheating it or overcooking it made her skin crawl. It was one of those things she needed to be perfect. Kanji, thankfully, didn’t have a preference.

So, she’d had to leave making the actual meal until as close to Kanji’s arrival as she could predict. But it wasn’t as though she had time to spare… She had to make the table, feed the cats, feed the baby, put the baby down for a nap…

Then she had to cook the chicken and the pasta… that was fine, it just… radiated a lot of heat for a day that was already rather warm. Inaba’s houses were old, and they didn’t yet have much ventilation or air conditioning.

Then was the sauce, and she had to do some vegetables, but she had to keep stirring the sauce so it didn’t ruin the consistency, and she had to keep turning the meat and the veggies so they wouldn’t burn, and oh, the pasta might stick or become overdone if she wasn’t careful. Then it would just become stressful. Every meal, every time. No matter how methodical she tried to be, it would always devolve into this.

It was a focus thing, she was sure. When she homed in on a task or a detail, it became quite difficult to switch gears on the fly. A useful skill for analysing a murder case. Not so much for cooking.

It was why, when they were both at home, she and Kanji would often just cook dinner together.

But occasionally, and for the sake of somebody she cared about, it was worth it.

She was just at the stage where she was plating up the food, trying to get it to look as it did in the picture on the website, when the familiar sight of an old, dusty car that had at one point been purple staggered its way up their driveway, starkly contrasted with the shiny motorcycle it had pulled up next to. As Kanji climbed from the car, Naoto carefully studied his face, trying to glean from his expression how exactly he was feeling in that moment. But Kanji had a naturally angry look to him, so such a task was often difficult to undertake.

“You makin’ garlic bread, Nao?” he called from the porch almost as soon as the door had slid shut.

“You’ll see,” was all she said in response. With Kanji just moments away from seeing what she had done, she found herself buzzing with anticipation.

“Wuzzat s’posed to mean?” he asked, sticking his head around the door into the kitchen.

For a moment, his forehead crinkled as he took everything in, his eyes lingering on the table made up as closely to that of a restaurant as Naoto could manage, with cloth, candles, and an arrangement of Kanji’s favourite red roses (albeit that was rather haphazardly done).

And in that moment Naoto felt as though her heart had somehow managed to stall.

But the tension was brief, quickly dissipated by the biggest, goofiest grin taking up a huge portion of Kanji’s face.

He strode into the room and pulled his partner into a powerful hug all in a motion that was so fluid, you wouldn’t think it was Kanji performing it.

“I can see you’re ready to reopen the agency, huh?”

Naoto smiled and shook her head, before snuggling her cheek into Kanji’s chest. “Don’t mistake this for a fit of boredom – I’ve been anything but. Welcome to our first date night back in Inaba.”

“Huh? W-wait, hold up… Date night? You did this… fer me?”

His eyes threatened to grow wider than his smile had those few moments earlier, as the realisation of the circumstances slowly began to dawn on him.

Then, as was customary for Kanji whenever Naoto would do anything for him ever, his face turned a brilliant shade of scarlet, and he began stammering unintelligible gibberish.

“Quickly now, before it cools down!”

“Y…Yuh…”

This was… odd. Kanji seemed unequivocally, unprecedentedly broken. His movements as he crossed to the counter and grabbed his plate, were mechanical, shaken, even. They weren’t unheard of for him, but it was as though they had suddenly been transported fifteen years into the past once more. Before they had fallen in love, before they’d even been close friends, when Kanji was so overcome with embarrassment whenever they spoke that he would be unable to function.

Now they were married, it wasn’t exactly commonplace.

Had something happened to him at work which had left him overwhelmed?

“Kanji?” Naoto called out tentatively as they took their seats.

“…huh?”

“You seem… Rather out of it.”

He blinked a couple of times and shook his head. “Right. Yeah… Sorry…”

He cleared his throat and repeated the process of shaking his head.

“It’s just, uh… ‘M kinda at a loss for words. This is… Wow.”

A tension she hadn’t recognised until it was gone suddenly flooded from her body with a sigh of relief.

“For a moment there I was concerned that something was wrong, so –”

“More like… everythin’ is right. I never pegged you fer someone who’d do date nights Tatsumi style.”

“…Tatsumi style? So this…” she waved an arm across the table. “This is something you observed… what, from your parents?”

He nodded. Naoto didn’t realise it was possible for him to turn redder until just then.

“Ain’t really a lotta options for fancy restaurants like what you do out here. Ma and my old man always improvised at home. I know cookin’ yer partner a meal ain’t somethin’ my folks made up, they just ended up callin’ it that… Nickname kinda stuck.” He rubbed the back of his head.

“Well, I suppose I have rather adopted a Tatsumi way of behaving today. Our roles have been utterly reversed. Why, I daresay after dinner, I shall take up a crochet project, and you’ll lull our Chihiro to sleep by reading her more of ‘A Study in Scarlet’.”

“I love you, Naoto.”

“Eh?”

But instead of elaborating, Kanji simply left his partner to turn an equally furious shade of red while he took a bite of the food. Naoto found herself so flustered that she didn’t even have time to be nervous about him trying the dish.

But, she supposed, she didn’t really have anything to worry about. This was Kanji.

“…I better never hear the words ‘I’m not very good at cooking’ comin’ from yer mouth again.”

“Well… Regardless of the quality of the food –” she began, about to launch into a spiel about how the mess she made, and how stressful it was for her, suggested that she technically wasn’t exactly on the level of a master. But all it took from Kanji was a single glare, and she stopped herself.

This was supposed to be a pleasant evening. And he did hate when she was self-deprecating in any capacity.

“I’m glad you like it Kan-chan.” She smiled, taking her own first bite. Hmm. Not bad. She wasn’t sure how this was supposed to taste – she’d been feeling far too unwell that night in London to eat much at all, so she’d ordered a lighter dish – but how it did taste was pleasant.

“Better than it was on my birthday that one time. Dunno if you remember, but at that one Italian place when we were in England –”

“Where do you suppose I gained the inspiration to make this particular meal?”

“Huh? Well shit, haha. Last time I ever doubt yer memory.”

“Hm, well… I don’t think I’m capable of forgetting that day…”

Kanji slid his free hand across the table and placed it atop hers, rubbing his thumb soothingly over her knuckles. Strange, she noted, that the nail was still painted black; she was sure the school would make him take the colour off alongside his piercings.

A nagging feeling in her chest, her stomach, her mind was begging her to ask him how it had gone. But it was not the only train of thought on the feeling that she had. What if Kanji didn’t want to talk about it yet? What if it was best to simply… enjoy the meal in ignorant bliss? Was he waiting for the right time, or for her to say something?

He looked as though he were about to speak now, was that the subject he was going to bring up?

“How has Chihiro been today?”

No. Of course not. The subject of work would have to wait.

As with… most of their conversations over the past year, the rest of the meal was largely dominated with Chihiro. Naoto describing, in detail, exactly what she had done, and Kanji’s expression growing fonder and fonder with every word. By the time they were done eating, he looked as though he were going to cry.

“Kinda sad that this is our lives goin’ forwards…”

“Hm?”

“Nothin’… just been missin’ her at work is all.”

The nagging feeling was very quickly becoming anxiety. The first mention of his day all evening, and it was something negative.

“Kanji, was everything –”

A sound suddenly stole her words before she had the chance to finish. A baby crying, as audible through the walls as it was the baby monitor on the counter.

“Prolly needs changing, huh?” Kanji smiled, rising to his feet. “Mind if I take this?”

“Please… She probably misses you too.”

In the time that Kanji was attending to the baby, Naoto managed to load everything that needed cleaning into the dishwasher, and found her way to the living room, and then to the couch. But her mind wasn’t exactly responsive as she did so.

Kanji… was worse than she had anticipated… More than just a simple meal could possibly hope to fix. Why on earth… What delusion had she been under to think, with how he’d been these past few days, that a little romantic gesture would be all he needed to feel better.

Amidst the haze that was buzzing in her mind, she vaguely registered her hands clenching into fists.

At some point, goodness knew when, Kanji had reappeared in the room and had sat down next to her, taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“She’s back down. Heh… Wanted to play as soon as she saw me, the little tyke, but could barely keep her eyes open long enough to do it.”

“She’s had… a busy day.”

“Ain’t we all?” he said with an air of exhaustion about him, placing his glasses gently on the kotatsu in front of them and then sinking back into the couch. “You ready for tomorrow?”

“I’ve been ready for weeks. Waiting on other people…” Naoto mumbled in response. Her gaze had fallen as she’d spoken to her socks, and she could not bring herself to remove it until Kanji nudged her with his arm.

“Hey. You good, Nao?”

“…Are you?”

That brought the conversation to a standstill.

“Would ya believe me if I told ya I was jus’ tired?”

“Only… partially.”

He gave her a half smile and repositioned himself so that his head lay on her shoulder.

“It was… a pretty exhaustin’ day… Lotta new stuff. Lotta old stuff too… that school ain’t changed in twenty years. Amazing it’s managed so long.”

Naoto just made an affirming noise and let her hand come to rest on his shoulder, pressing her cheek onto the top of his head. Best just to let him speak, she thought.

“Ain’t none of the people I knew still there but… they knew who I was. Course they did… didn’t expect any different. An’ you know what?”

“Hm?”

“Most of ‘em just complimented me on the plushies. They knew me ‘cause of the shop, not… ‘cause of the delinquent shit.”

“Well, that’s… good, is it not? That’s what we hoped would happen.”

She felt him shift his head as though he were trying to nod. His arm had worked its way around her waist, and she felt him bunching up the fabric of her dress shirt in his fingers as he spoke. It was an unconscious habit of his. Most notable when he was nervous.

“Yeah… Never said it weren’t good. Jus’ that I was tired. And that I missed my kid. And you.”

Naoto drew a deep breath. “It seemed like something was wrong, that’s all. I’ve been worried about you. All day. All week.”

“…That why you’re not okay?”

“Yes! Effectively!”

Another brief standstill.

“Sorry ‘bout that… Really… Last thing I wanted was for my bullshit worrying over nothing to affect you too.”

Naoto squeezed his shoulder slightly.

“You should know by now that such a thing is impossible. The same can be said of you, to me. We’ve been in this partnership since we were in high-school, Kan-chan, we can’t simply… hide our true feelings any longer. We know each other too well to be caught out.”

“Yeah… s’pose you’re right… I did appreciate it though. Back before I went in today and realised my worries were a load ‘a crap. I… I dunno, I guess comin’ back to Inaba after so long had me thinkin’ that everythin’ was gonna go back to the way it was.”

“Kanji… You weren’t… Please don’t tell me you’ve been thinking that way since we first planned to come.”

Silence. Naoto’s heart dropped. Obviously, that meant she was right on the mark.

Good lord, she had still been expecting when they’d first discussed moving back! Their daughter was one in a week!

“’s in the past now though. All of it,” he said eventually. “Physically this place ain’t no different, but I guess the vibe has changed since we were kids. Maybe… Enough time has passed now that I ain’t gotta worry about… the guy I was.”

“Kanji… I rescind what I said earlier. About how it’s impossible to hide our feelings from each other. Please… when it’s something serious like this, I implore you to tell me.”

Her eyes stung, but she refused to cry. If she did, he’d try to make this about her, and dammit, she was tired of it being about her. The entire point of everything she had done that day was to make it about Kanji for once in his life.

“…’M sorry, Nao…”

After that, for a long while neither of them spoke. They simply adjusted themselves into a position where they could more easily cuddle and sat there, snuggled into each other as the dwindling oranges and purples of the twilight sky gave way to darkness.

Kanji was the one to break the silence, his voice so slick with sleepiness that it was demure in a way which was much unlike him.

“Hey Nao… Yer still awake, right?”

“Mmhmm…” she responded. It was… mostly true.

“Y’know, I’ve been thinkin’. I got a new goal now we’re back here… I wanna be able to look that bastard in the eye and tell him he ain’t me. Not because I’m denyin’ anythin’, but because he ain’t.”

“Him? Your Shadow?”

“Yeah. Like you can, y’know? If your Shadow popped their head back up and started sayin’ the same shit as before, you could just tell ‘em: ‘you’re wrong.’ ‘Cause they would be.”

“But they wouldn’t say something like that. My age and gender no longer cause me grief to the level they had in my youth, so my Shadow wouldn’t bring them up.”

Of course, they wouldn’t. Naoto thought that was obvious. She was thirty-one, very much an adult, and any doubt she had about whether she was a man or a woman were significantly eased when she had learned that she could be both and neither. She had no lack of confidence in those aspects of herself, regardless now of what other people thought, so there was no way the Shadow could use them as ammunition if they were to reappear.

But based on Kanji’s next statement, suddenly full of more vigour than his words prior, she wondered if perhaps she had misunderstood where he was coming from.

“Yeah, but that’s what I’m saying! The stuff your Shadow said back then… It ain’t even crossin’ your mind anymore. I wanna be the same… I mean… It’s not that I ain’t happy with who I am. I like cute shit, and sewing, and all the stuff like that. Shit, I’m bi as hell. I can say that stuff proudly. It’s…” he huffed. “For some reason, it’s like I can be confident in myself all I want, but in my head it don’t mean shit unless everyone else feels the same way. An' as long as I got a history as 'the guy who beats up bikers', it's like that day ain't gonna come... I’m… still scared shitless of bein’ rejected after all these years... It’s like… every time I meet a new group of people, I just end up wonderin’ how long its gonna be before they brand me a thug and cut me and everyone I care about off. Think that’s kinda the reason it’s been weighin’ on me again so much more recently. I start comin’ up with scenarios in my head where it gets outta hand and Chihiro gets hurt ‘cause of it.”

As he spoke, his hug became tighter.

“Kan-chan…”

“So, my goal is to get to a place where I don’t constantly worry about that stuff. Where if that bastard showed up again and said that kinda shit, I could deny him with my whole heart and know for certain that I’m right an’ he’s wrong. An’ before you say shit, I know that ain’t how Shadows work. That’s jus’ the image I use in my head to try an’ visualise what I’m itchin’ to do.”

He added that last part with a hint of a laugh to his tone.

So that was why he took a job he was so caught up about? As some concrete way of proving to himself that he would be okay if he did?

A self-destructive means of gathering evidence for a hypothesis… hm… perhaps Naoto’s inheritance of Kanji’s traits over the years had gone the other way as well.

“I didn’t realise it was possible to be so unbelievably proud of somebody, while simultaneously thinking them a fool…” Naoto ensured to keep her own tone bright, so that he would know she spoke in endearing terms. “You know I would have supported you through this if only you had told me –”

“Hah. Yer actin’ like you take me for the kinda guy who thinks this shit through… this ain’t exactly something I’ve been plannin’ or nothin’, it just sorta… came to me now.”

Oh, so it was a subconscious instinct?

Then perhaps he would be safe from her bad influence for just a little while longer…

“Well… regardless of how much preparation has gone into it… it is a good goal to have in mind, so long as you’re comfortable with the pain it may bring in the process.”

“Yeah. No problem. Anyway…” he sat up and looked her in the eyes. “What was that you were implyin’ with the whole ‘you know I would have supported you’ bull you just said?”

Naoto frowned. “It’s the truth –”

“Yeah, I know it’s the truth. Because you have been supportin’ me, dumbass. You ain’t ever stopped.” He thrust his arm in the vague, general direction of the kitchen, a wild delight dancing in his eyes. “You spent the last day of yer maternity leave makin’ sure I’d have a good evenin’ because you thought I needed cheerin’ up.”

Naoto felt her cheeks heat up. “I… I only did what you would do for me…”

“Yeah, but it ain’t like I made you do it. You still made the decision. It’s amazin’, an yer incredible, and adorable, an’ you make a freakin’ awesome pasta, an’ I can’t believe how lucky I am to have you.”

She knew she was blushing harder and harder with every word, to the point where all she could think to do was bury her face into his shoulder.

“Feel kinda bad that we kinda got side-tracked from the ‘date night’ though… Sorry if you had anything else planned.”

“No, no, don’t feel bad. I did this because I thought you needed it, Kanji. And I don’t suppose I’m wrong in suggesting that you very much needed this talk as well?”

“…You ain’t wrong… Not at all.”

“And do you feel any better for having it?”

“Mmhmm.”

Naoto lifted her head and gave him her warmest smile. “Then I can safely declare this date night a resounding success.”

“Damn right, you can! But uh… I don’t wanna take away from anythin’ else you mighta wanted to do, so –”

The heat in her cheeks returned as quickly as it had vanished, and she sheepishly averted his gaze. Right. Date night was usually more than a meal.

“Uhm... About that. Kanji, I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I… I was so caught up in trying to find a recipe for dinner that it never even occurred to me to look for a movie or something to do afterwards.”

She offered him an apologetic look, but his immediate response was only to laugh and hold her closer.

“Don’t think I coulda made it through a movie anyway… I’m beat…”

“As am I. I think I may drift off here…”

It quickly became apparent that each of their ideal end to the evening would be to turn in early and hope to gain a restful night – something that was near impossible with a small child. Whether such a thing was an indication of how eventful their day had been, or whether it was simply a sign of them getting older, neither really cared to consider. Instead, they just ensured the house was secure, called the cats to follow them, and moved upstairs as quietly as they could so that their footsteps wouldn’t cause Chihiro to stir.

It wasn’t until Naoto had switched her outfit for one of Kanji’s old shirts and was brushing her teeth in the upstairs bathroom that it dawned on her: there was still one aspect of her day that had yet to be cleared up.

And now that it had come to mind, she feared she may be unable to sleep until she had an answer.

“Kan-chan?”

“Hm?”

“You know the binder you keep with recipe print-outs…? Do you have any idea what box it’s in?”

His face was mostly buried by the bedsheets by now, but she could tell from the part she could see that he was thinking hard.

“Uh… Oh! My car.”

“…Your car?”

“Yeah. I didn’t want the other kitchen stuff to squash it, so I put it separate. I see it every time I go in there an’ I keep saying I’ll bring it in and never do. How come…?”

Naoto heaved a great sigh and flopped on the bed besides him. It wasn’t until her face hit the pillow that she realised exactly how exhausting her day had been. “So you had it all along… I never would have found it.”

“You were lookin’ for it?”

“I was. I wanted to make you that curry instead, the one you called your favourite.”

“Ohhhh. I getcha now." He laughed. "That woulda been a good choice. But y’know anythin’ would have been fine. I got a real soft-spot for Italian food, hehe.”

“I like that curry myself though,” she added, as she shuffled under the covers. “It’s rare to find something spicy that you can handle as much as I…”

“You do, huh? I see.”

There was silence for a while. And then…

“Hey, Naoto…?”

“Mmm?”

“When’s your next day off?”

“My next day off…? That would be Sunday… Why?”

But Kanji didn’t answer. Instead, he just leaned over to kiss her goodnight, and then, with a sleepy smile, he rolled over and went to sleep.

#persona 4 #kanji tatsumi #naoto shirogane #kannao #misede writes

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forkanna · 4 years ago

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ALSO READ ON: [AO3] [WATTPAD] [QUOTEV]

WARNINGS: Petplay, exhibitionism, cunnilingus, watersports(kinda). This chapter is going to remind people that I once co-wrote My Sister's Mistress, haha… though honestly it's not that bad.

Happy December!

I'm very sorry to all three of you waiting for the epilogue of this fic. I was feeling fairly dissatisfied with my writing, so I took some time off for reading, and NaNoWriMo to focus on my original work (expect news about that soon). Though some mental fog remains, I'm feeling a little sharper and more capable now to continue delivering updates. And to that end...

Prepare yourselves for WE'LL FACE OURSELVES: GOLDEN! This will not continue the story of Yukiko and Chie, though they will be around here and there; instead, it will focus on another unlikely ship entirely. I'll begin posting that in about a month, or sooner if I find time. You may also want to keep your eyes peeled for more content pertaining to another fandom of which I am a part...

Thanks so much for sticking with this until the end. If you'd like to look me up on other platforms, please check out my Carrd!

Until we meet again, Jessex

EPILOGUE

A horrific day that everyone hoped would never come had finally ambushed the Investigation Team. Yu Narukami was leaving Inaba.

Not a dry eye was to be had at the Yasoinaba station as they watched their gray-haired friend bid fond farewells to all the other friends he had made throughout the year. Chie herself was a little shocked to see just how many there were — hell, even after almost a year she was still shocked that Rise Kujikawa, the real Risette, was one of them! An internationally known pop idol! But there she was, hanging on one of Yu's arms and sobbing into his jacket.

"Yu-kun, don't gooooo!" she blubbered, long auburn pigtails trembling with her movements. "I wanna get to spend G-Golden Week with you, Senpaiiiiii!"

Naoto and Kanji weren't much better. They made for such an odd-looking pair, the rough-and-tumble yakuza-wannabe letting fat tears roll down his cheeks as he was comforted by the small, reserved boy-who-was-not-quite-a-boy. Even after finding out Naoto was a woman, not much had changed; she still dressed like a boy and even behaved like one in most ways. All of Rise's attempts to "girlify" her had fallen flat. Chie really had wound up with a colourful assortment of friends, but she wouldn't change that for the world.

"Yeah, man, you can't take off," Yosuke chuckled. Trying to suppress his feelings with humour; they all knew he was going to miss Yu as much as anyone. "Your girlfriend's gonna miss you, and that ain't cool."

Not that he was pointing at Rise. No, his finger was levelled at Nanako — the little girl she and Yukiko had run into once upon a time who turned out to be Yu's cousin. She was currently hiding behind the leg of her father, Detective Ryotaro Dojima, coming over shy after he had reprimanded her for being too clingy with the boy she had dubbed her big brother. Not that he could control Rise doing the exact same thing, despite having nearly ten years on the second-grader.

"Oh, shut up," Yu grunted — though his motivation was pure, as always. "Don't tease her."

"Whaaat? I'm teasing you, not…" But at the glares from everybody, Yosuke sighed and deflated. "You guys are no fun."

Rise pulled back, her large doe eyes shining with tears — on purpose, Chie knew. She was a top notch actress. "Can't you give me a little kiss goodbye? Something to keep me from… from dying from missing you?"

"Oh please," Yukiko muttered under her breath with a begrudging smile.

But Yu obliged. Sort of. Instead of sweeping her into a graceful dip and really planting one on her, he kissed her forehead. It was a tender gesture, though, so Rise couldn't complain; a much more genuine little smile pulled at her pouty mouth, and she hugged him around the middle.

"Excuse me? What do you think you're doing?"

They all pulled back to see Ai Ebihara approaching, hands on her hips. This bitch again? However, something was different about her compared to their last run-in. She was still glamorous, but Chie couldn't help noticing it seemed like her outfit was a little more… conservative?

"What is who doing?" Rise protested, clinging a little tighter to Yu's arm.

"You! Little trollop!" The teen queen stomped over to the two of them, getting right up in Rise's face. She was a little taller and therefore more imposing, but Rise didn't seem scared in the slightest. "Get your greedy little paws off my boyfriend!"

The idol stamped her foot and snapped, "HEY! I don't see your name on him anywhere!"

Yu gulped and began to back away. "Uh…"

"Really?" Ebihara scoffed. "What makes you think you have any claim to him, slut puppy? He went to the festival with me — and spent Christmas Eve with me, too! And for your goddamn information, we got pretty close!"

Poor Rise. Though she was flirty and manipulative toward Yu and Yosuke, it was in a playful way; she did consider them both friends but couldn't seem to suppress her impulses. And here Ai was making all kinds of accusations and getting legitimately competitive. Her lip wobbled, though Chie was fairly certain it had as much to do with losing out to Ai as it had to do with losing Yu himself.

"Senpai, say that's not true! How could you, when I… I let you… you know!"

"Hey, it doesn't count when I'm just sitting there and you plop your butt down on my hand," he protested at her. "And Ai-chan, we hugged a little; please don't tease her by making it sound like more."

Both of his would-be girlfriends pouted and averted their eyes, cheeks turning pinker. Ai seemed a little more genuinely hurt than her rival for the boy's attentions.

"Whew," Yosuke exhaled, wiping his brow. "Don't know how you get away with it, juggling two chicks like that."

"That's not- I didn't…" Yu sighed, shaking his head as he facepalmed. "Maybe I'm glad to be leaving."

But the minute he said so, even if it was in jest, all faces wore expressions of deep sorrow. Nobody really wanted him to go. They had all known his stopover in Inaba had been temporary and yet it was still a terrible shock that Yu would no longer be hanging out with them on a daily basis, going to school, having roundtable discussions in the Junes food court.

"The end of an era, man," Kanji grunted, trying to look tough and only partially succeeding.

"Aww, cheer up, guys!" Teddie proclaimed, bouncing up and down on his heels so hard his blond locks bounced with him. "We'll see Sensei again! Bet on that!"

"There you go, Teddie," Yu laughed quietly, nodding his direction. The bear-shadow-turned-human beamed.

"And in the meantime, I can look after all the girls for you! You don't have to worry about a thing!"

Rise stuck her tongue out at the well-meaning bear. "I don't want you, I want Senpai!"

As the squabbling only grew worse, other classmates began to approach to wish Yu bon voyage. Some girl from his drama class, those guys from the basketball team… even some young boy and his clearly married mother, though she did seem a bit too young to have a child of that age. Their team leader really had left an impression in the short year he had lived there.

When the train whistle signaled that it was about to pull away, the bickering came to an end so they could truly see their friend off. A lot of tearful hugs and well wishes were offered before he was inside, looking out the window at them as it pulled away from the station. They ran after him all the way to the end of the platform until they ran out of space, then stood waving after him until the train was completely out of sight.

Chie was amused that it turned out to be Rise comforting Ebihara, and Yosuke comforting Teddie. Those were some pretty mismatched pairings. Ryotaro took a sobbing Nanako home, and that seemed to be an unofficial signal for them to disperse from the station.

While Kanji was busy throwing an arm around Yosuke's shoulders, proclaiming loudly that they were about to go drinking despite the fact that neither of them had easy access to alcohol at their age, it was Naoto of all people who started drifting closer to Chie and Yukiko. At first, Chie assumed she just wanted some company, but it turned out…

"Forgive my curiosity, but I've been wondering about something for a while now."

"Hm?" asked a bleary eyed Yukiko. She hadn't sobbed the way Rise did, but she wasn't completely unaffected by the parting. "I'm sorry, what's that?"

"Why have you been wearing a dog collar for the past several months?"

Both girls stopped dead in their tracks. If this were an anime, there would have been a record-scratch sound effect. Yukiko flashed a nervous half-smile at her girlfriend, who was busy tugging at the neckline of her shirt and gulping.

"W-well, it's… a fashion statement," the junior innkeeper finally told her.

"Uh… huh." Her sharp eyes looked between the two. "You may have forgotten in all the excitement of defeating Adachi and Izanami, but I am a detective. Do you want me to simply state what I have deduced from my observations, or would you like t-"

"Okay, okay, already!" Chie hissed, waving back and forth rapidly with her hand. "Can you maybe keep it under that crazy blue hat of yours?!"

Before Naoto could respond to the crack about her belted newsboy cap, a throat was cleared behind the three of them. Ai had broken off from the others and approached them, looking penitent and uncomfortable.

"Yes?" Yukiko prompted her in mild surprise.

"I… thought I should say… I am sorry." She swallowed hard, brows furrowed. The expression still made her look angry and snobby, despite her tone of voice being gentle now; she just had resting bitch face. "Probably too late. But I was really going through some things when I sidelined you two in Aiya, and being rude is second nature to me. Can't be the most stunning girl in school without it going to your head, can you?"

"You say that like I would ever know," Chie snorted.

"Right. And… normally I would be agreeing with you and belittling you, Bowl Cu- I mean, Satonaka. I have a lot of practice." Grimacing, she growled, "Got so used to being queen bitch that it's so hard to just be nice."

After a brief silence, so awkward that it felt as if any sound would have been preferable, Yukiko laid a hand on Ai's arm, gentle and reassuring. "Please, Ai-san. We all have darkness inside of us; nobody is a perfect person. So I think it's very admirable you're seeing your flaws and that you're trying to improve. I am the same, and so are my friends."

"Oh yeah?" The girl let out a wet-sounding laugh; indeed, tears were budding at the corners of her eyes. "How the hell aren't you perfect, Miss Goody Two-Shoes? I mean… I've always been so jealous of how the boys talk about you. No 'buts'."

"No butts?!" Chie burst out. "What do you mean? She's got a GREAT butt!"

Ai chuckled a little more heartily at that. Naoto was the only one who tapped her chin while noticing Yukiko's slight blush from the compliment; the others weren't paying it any attention. "No, no, not her ass. Which fine, sure, it's fantastic. I mean like, they describe both of us as really beautiful, or hot or whatever. Same words for both of us. But with me, it always had a 'but she's such a bitch', 'but she's stuck up', 'but she's psycho' attached. Yukiko… a couple of guys said you were snooty if you turned them down for a date, but the rest of them saw through that. You're a good woman and I'm just a good-looking woman. I did so much work to be beautiful so boys would like me, but I'm just… ugly on the inside."

Though clearly, Yukiko was about to speak up, Chie beat her to the punch. "So that's it, huh? You're pathetic."

"Excuse me?"

"C'mon, Ebihara. You're made of tougher shit than that. Where's that girl who slammed her leg up on the table in Aiya and demanded we appreciate it?"

Though the teen queen had been firing up, being reminded of that moment in the diner made her squirm and fold her arms tightly over her chest. "That was stupid. Do you wanna know why I did that?" When Yukiko nodded, she pushed ahead, "Thing is, I was a... when I was little, I was nowhere near the adorable Ai you see before you now. Fat and hideous, got told I had pig hooves. So like, I'm sure it sounds really stupid to you guys, but having dainty little feet now is super amazing to me still."

"You were fat?!" Chie demanded, looking her up and down afresh. "No way! I call bullshit!"

"Yep, a total blimp. And I got hella teased because I didn't match up with their… whatever. Yu already knows all this stuff, but pretty much I decided to reinvent myself when I found out we were moving to Inaba. Obviously it went to my head, but… at least I'm better now. Getting better all the time."

None of them knew what to say. Chie, for her part, was stunned that Ebihara turned out to be more than a one-dimensional prima donna; she had never given any indication otherwise, even in Aiya when her interests in Yu were revealed to be genuine. Maybe he was the one responsible. After all, while the team had been doing their best to save the victims from dying inside the TV and stop further kidnappings in the first place, Yu Narukami had touched all their lives, brought about an awakening of sorts to their inner beauty that they likely would never have found within themselves without him shedding that light. It just seemed to be one of his latent talents. Unsurprising that he had done the same for the entitled fashionista.

"There seems to be only one solution for this predicament," Naoto was stating firmly with a small nod, finger tapping her chin. "We must return to Aiya to remember our departed friend, and strengthen our bonds with each other."

"Oooh, a party!" Rise piped up with an excited little bounce, despite the light drizzle that was beginning to fall. "Yes please!"

"I guess that's a plan," Chie agreed as Rise, Kanji and Yosuke joined them. "What do you guys think? We catching the portal to the meat dimension?"

Grimacing, Yosuke demanded, "Do you have to call it that every time, Satonaka?! Geesh! Sounds super nasty."

"Bet you can't even handle it."

"Wha- OH YEAH?! BRING IT ON!"

~ o ~

"Ohhhhh, I couldn't eat another bite," Yukiko groaned as they slid open the door to her bedroom at the Amagi Inn. They had whiled away many hours at the diner before the fellowship was broken, and they began to drift their separate ways. Rise was the most afraid to be alone out of any of them, and seemed to want to hang out with Ebihara, despite their strife over Yu's affections. Naoto went off by herself to think, Kanji and Yosuke reinitiated their quest for liquor, that girl from drama class was hanging out with Daisuke and Kou from the sports clubs… and the two illicit lovers had paired off with no one questioning why. Probably because they had already been best friends for their entire lives.

"Well I could," Chie laughed in response as she grabbed a pair of paper slippers. "But you know me, I can always eat."

Yukiko giggled as she began to strip off her remaining clothing. "You and Yosuke, I swear. Your appetites are bottomless."

"Hey, I'm a growing girl!" she said, jabbing herself in the chest with a thumb. "What's his excuse? He doesn't even do martial arts!"

Once fully divested, lithe form fully on display for the other woman in the room, the junior innkeeper approached her side and slid her hands up to gently perch on her shoulders. "Mmm, yes of course. So very strong."

It was impossible for Chie to keep the blush fully out of her cheeks. "Y-yeah. I mean, strong when you're not making my knees weak."

"But Master shouldn't say things like that in front of her pet. She might think she can control her Master, and that isn't very good, is it?"

"True, yeah." Chie shook her head with a vague smile on her lips. It was funny; she was supposed to be the one in control, but most often it was Yukiko who reminded them of their play. The roles they were to serve for each other.

"Mhmmm. Alright." Even though she was clearly a little nervous, she crossed to her dresser, slid open a drawer and began to rummage behind the various undergarments arranged there. "I think we're both ready now."

Poor Chie didn't even bother to ask "ready for what?", because by the time the words began to form on her lips, her best friend was turning around, dropping to the floor and crawling toward her… with a long leather leash dangling from between her teeth.

"A-ah."

"Wrgh dng hrrg trh," Yukiko said — before Chie took the leash from her to allow her room to speak. "I m-mean to say, this is only if you feel up to it, or are interested. But we've spoken a lot about it in the past few weeks, and… and I feel like I would be alright with it."

"Okay, whoa whoa," she laughed nervously. "Listen, I… know you think nobody will see us, but c'mon, the inn gets guests all the time! And like, what if your mom sees us?!"

Sitting up a little straighter, the puppy-girl reassured her, "No, no, I have a plan. Do you know the forest behind our property? It's a little bit of a walk, and I know it might seem silly to take a walk before my walk, but we will probably be free from prying eyes out there. So… so do you want to?"

Any fool in Chie's position could have been able to tell that this girl wanted nothing more than to take her love into the woods so they could play. Even if the type of play they wanted to do was highly unorthodox. How could she say no to those big, baleful eyes?

"Yeah, of course. So um, maybe just put this around your waist under your kimono?"

"YES!" she burst out — before calming herself and clearing her throat. "I mean, yes, that is a good plan. I'll get dressed, try to keep the leash on."

In no time at all, they were strolling through the grounds behind the Amagi Inn, seeming to the single gardener they passed as if they were merely two high school friends out for a stroll. Nothing telltale from their appearances to suggest otherwise — except the collar, and even that wasn't immediately noticeable.

"Okay," Chie whispered once they were in the treeline. "Are you really sure about this one? Cuz like, if you wanna bail on the idea, you can, right now, and I won't give you any shit. I swear."

But Yukiko was already shaking her head from side to side, even before she got halfway through speaking. "I've been looking forward to trying this for so long! Maybe it hasn't always seemed like it, but… how can we know whether or not we enjoy it if we don't try?"

That, as they say, was that.

"Okay…" Chie cleared her throat and tried not to feel too overly self-conscious. "Then take it all off so we can get started."

By far the most difficult thing to endure was watching Yukiko slowly disrobe — which she was clearly doing on purpose, adding to the anticipation. She even did that thing where she paused with the yukata halfway down her back, looking at Chie over her shoulder with a coquettish flutter of her eyelashes. 'Nosebleed City, population: me,' Chie thought to herself. Then she let it drop all the way to the forest floor, pooling amongst the grass and leaves.

Nude… except for two leather straps. One around her neck and another trailing down her back.

"Gooooood," she managed to groan. Then she shook herself and caught up the end of the lead. "Okay, so like… what now? I just take you for a walk?"

"Master, come on," she giggled. "You're not being a good Master." But when Chie frowned, Yukiko fidgeted and added, "I'm sorry. That was supposed to sound teasing, but instead… well, I really am sorry. I was trying to say that you weren't playing your role yet."

"Okay." Taking a deep breath, she cracked her neck and tried to shove away those feelings of inadequacy that had begun to brew. "So you mean I'm supposed to start being a dog owner for real? Like, until we decide we're done and wanna go back inside?"

"Yes," she sighed in obvious relief that Chie wasn't upset with her. "How about this: I'll get on hands and knees, and that's when we start? And I'll stand up if I need to stop."

"Sure yeah, that sounds pretty simple. Go for it when you're ready."

With a small nod, Yukiko stepped out of her zori and into the grass, toes flexing as it tickled them. Her lips quirked into a reassuring little smile before she dropped down to all fours, perky little ass high in the air. Chie wanted to dive right into that inviting sight now — but she could wait. They had a game to play; they could have sex pretty much anytime they were alone together, as long as they were careful about noise levels. And door locks.

"Okay girl, let's go!" she commanded her in a more cheerful tone. This wasn't their first time playing in this way, or even their tenth. They just had never taken the playing outside of a locked bedroom before.

And miraculously… they went. Yukiko started walking along on her hands and knees, making little panting noises now and then. Just to maintain the illusion. Chie was both disturbed and turned on, but that happened a lot during their more adventurous encounters. The more they learned about this strange new culture they were a part of — thanks to the internet — the more intrigued they were, but Chie wasn't as good at taking it in stride as her puppy was.

Her puppy, Yukiko. Still bizarre to her.

"What is it, girl? You like that one?"

"Wan wan!" she yipped joyfully as she continued to mime sniffing a tree.

"Then it's all yours," she laughed easily, reaching down to scratch behind her ear. Her girlfriend hummed at the pleasant sensation, and even tried to jiggle one of her legs. With some success. Then she unclipped the leash from her collar. "Wanna play fetch, Yuka?"

More gleeful barking. So she found a stick and wiped it quickly on her sleeve — which, obviously, she wouldn't do for a real dog like Muku, but she figured she owed Yukiko at least that much.

"Go get it, girl!"

As Chie watched Yukiko, a real human being, bound off into the brush after a stick, she couldn't help feeling that her life had really gotten off track at some point. Mostly, she just wanted to be a semi-normal girl who went to school, hung out with her friends, practiced martial arts. Lately she had been toying with the idea of going into law enforcement when she grew up. Maybe it was because of all their adventures inside the TV, and saving Inaba from the menace of a vengeful god who had judged humanity as both too complacent and too volatile. She had found that not only did her kung fu training really pay off, but she also had enjoyed the idea of saving people more than she expected. And it was important work.

But seeing Yukiko creeping back from the bushes with the stick between her teeth gave her pause. Surely a cop didn't do things like this. Or maybe they did and she was just naive. No matter how many times they discussed the fact that she obviously loved her little Yuka, it still felt foreign and weird to order her around, treat her like property.

Even if they both got off on the roles of master and pet.

They had probably been playing fetch for about twenty minutes when Yukiko dropped the stick at her feet, then reared up to rest her "forepaws" on her master's hips. Barking at her. It was as cute as it was bizarre. Privately, she kept wondering if it hurt her knees to romp around like that, but Yukiko never complained. So she crouched down to scrub all over her hair, disheveling it so badly that she would definitely need to brush it out when they got back to the inn, and her girlfriend responded with more happy yips and licking all over her face.

"AH!" she giggled, trying to push her away without any success. Yukiko could be pretty strong when she set her mind to it. "Cut it out, Yuka! Ewww!"

Of course, this wasn't the first time the kisses had turned to doggy kisses. Though it was still a little icky, it was also highly entertaining for both of them so they had slowly incorporated it into their play. Yukiko's wet pink tongue slathered all over her cheeks, lips, chin… anywhere she could reach. Until finally, Chie grabbed her by the collar and held her back.

"Okay, girl! I love you, too." Yuka barked again so she grinned and pushed their foreheads together. "Who's a happy girl? Huh? Who's my sweet, sweet, happy girl?"

The junior innkeeper's ass wiggled from side to side. They had discussed getting her ears and a tail to help complete the illusion, but decided it would be a lot harder to explain those versus the collar and leash, which could just as easily be for Muku as for Yuka. Besides, she was pretty good at wagging a non-existent tail.

Chie was distracted from her thoughts when she noticed her girlfriend was sniffing around the hem of her skirt. She saw a coy smile grace her lips just before her face shot beneath to nuzzle against her center.

"WHOA!" she gasped — and went down hard on her backside. "Oof!"

When Yukiko's face reappeared, she looked very concerned. Still, they had agreed she was not to break character unless Chie had made it clear that she should.

"I'm okay, girl," she reassured her pet with a shaky laugh. "Just, uh… did not expect you to go for it like that. What is it, girl? Smell something good?" Yukiko gave a very human nod before remembering herself, and letting out a bark instead. "Yeah? Um, y-you want a treat from Master for being so good?"

That prompted a very strong bark, and her girlfriend gave a pronounced wiggle from stem to stern, to make sure there could be no question she really wanted that treat. So Chie leaned back against her elbows, allowing her thighs to fall open. Within a single second, her face was right back between those thighs, snuffling around and making sure her lips and nose were pushing into everything firmly.

And God help her, it was so hot. Every time they played like this, she still expected to feel disgusted regardless of how often she enjoyed it. And then was still surprised again. Maybe she really did have a learning disability of some kind.

When the nuzzling began to feel a little more pointed and purposeful, she realized that Yuka had hit an impasse. Sliding a hand down between them, she shakily tugged the crotch of her panties aside to grant her pet access. No time was wasted. After only a couple of sniffs, a warm, wet tongue was pressing into her needy flesh.

Chie really hoped nobody else would suddenly decide to take a walk through the woods. Not with her screaming out in ecstasy like that, a buck naked girl's face between her legs.

After a few months of trial-and-error, Yukiko Amagi was nothing less than a professional when it came to cunnilingus. That tongue knew every little fold and crease of her lover's sex, and she was an expert at finding the ways to set her off. With almost brutal efficiency, even if the touches were sometimes so light and delicate. Chie gave herself over completely, reaching down to grip her raven locks and hold her in place as she began to buck her hips against that insanely gifted mouth.

So close… "I'm coming! Good girl, Yuka! More!"

Well, she most definitely got what she asked for. At this point the game had been suspended while Yukiko ate her out with all the skills she had learned over the past several months, almost as if someone had challenged her to do the deed as quickly and spectacularly as possible. Her tongue almost seemed to be in two places at once.

Birds took off flying from the treetops when Chie cried out from the climax rocking her entire body, back arching off the forest floor. It was beyond mind-blowing. And all thanks to a good little doggie.

"Tapout!" she finally gasped a few moments later. That was the codeword they had developed for when their eager clits had been overstimulated to the point they couldn't handle any more. Yukiko's tongue disappeared, and she breathed a sigh of relief as her entire body shook and shivered. "Nnhh… oh GOD, that was… super intense!"

A little giggle spilled from the shining lips of her love as she crouched over her. Looking at her with bottomless affection. Just a moment for that to be made known — before she bounced a little. "WAN!"

"Y-yeah… good girl… c'mere…" She patted her chest and Yukiko crawled up to lick all over her face. "AWWW, NOOOO! Yuka, down! C'mooooon!"

Of course, it didn't take long for her to shove her puppy off and to stand up again, though her knees were a bit wobbly. A few deep, cleansing breaths cleared her head enough to clip the leash to Yuka's collar again and set off walking around the woods with her.

"You did such a good job!" she told Yuka — and Yukiko, really. Though she knew she couldn't talk back while they were in the middle of play. "I'm really happy. And even though Narukami's gone, I mean, he'll be back… and the rest of our lives are pretty great. Kinda kicking ass and taking names lately."

"Wan, wan!" Yuka replied. Too cute.

"You like taking walks with Master?" She paused to turn and look up at her, panting with her tongue out; a doggie smile. "Awww, I'm so glad! Sweet baby!"

Yukiko put her paws up again, but this time Chie pointed at her and said, "Down. You know better than that, girl." In response, she let out a little whine and got down on all fours again, looking up at her with large, baleful eyes that would have melted glaciers. "I'm sorry, but you have to behave; I can't have you jumping up on my friends!"

Not that there was any chance of that happening. Even after Naoto had figured it out, they still agreed this was only something for the two of them — nobody else.

Mostly obedient, Yuka pouted a little longer before she resumed trotting through the grass. Once or twice she winced when she crawled over a stick or a rock, but mostly she picked her way around them; they already established their rules for this interaction were no permanent injury. Chie wouldn't begrudge her that, even for the sake of "committing to the role".

They came to a stop nearly half an hour later when Yukiko began sniffing around a white pine tree excitedly. Chie couldn't blame her; evergreens smelled amazing. But as she sniffled… a memory of a previous conversation came back to her master. Were they ready? Most importantly, was Yukiko?

"Okay," she suddenly said, though she could hear the nerves in her own voice. "Mark it so we can go home."

Yukiko's look of surprise was priceless. Even while in Yuka-mode, she couldn't seem to fully suppress that deep level of alarm. But she didn't argue or stand up.

"Go on… if you, um, you need to."

There was a brief moment where it almost looked as if her girlfriend would either cry, or stand up and tell her off. Then she raised one leg…

And let out a golden stream against the bark of the pine's trunk. Chie felt her stomach disappear: she really did it. Her girlfriend, poised, refined innkeeper that she was, a true classic Japanese beauty… was pissing like a dog on a tree. Curiosity spiking, she took a further step to her right to get a better view, and was greeted with the sight of the thin arc of urine issuing from the top of her flawless pink pussy — two fingers on either side, to help keep the liquid from catching on the flushed lips.

Flushed from arousal, from going down on her? Or did she like this? Maybe "like" was too strong a word: Yukiko found it satisfying to be degraded in very small ways, so long as they played into her role of belonging to a loving master. By now, Chie had figured out — thanks in part to her shadow — that this was due to her desire to be cared for, cherished. To belong. Perhaps having to pee like a puppy in the woods pushed the boundary of what constituted a small way, but it wasn't so overboard that she broke character. In that way, it had been a perfect thing to demand of her.

As her thoughts bumped around inside her skull, the stream petered out. Yuka shook her raised leg a little, to rid herself of lingering droplets, then lowered it back to the ground. She was trembling all over, and she winced, but still made no comment.

"Very… good, Yuka," she told her in a distant voice. "Oh wow…"

A whining noise came from her puppy-slash-girlfriend, and she made baleful eyes up at her. Not very often had she witnessed Yukiko's cheeks flushed as they were in that moment. But the moment Chie began to frown, she nuzzled her leg — reassuring her that she was not upset with her. Just that the experience had been a strange, unsettling one.

"Okay, um… well, you did your business, so I guess we, like… should head back? Y-yeah…" But she instead dropped to one knee, pulling her in for a hug. Yuka leaned into the contact gratefully but didn't embrace her back, since dogs didn't use their forelegs like that.

In a flash, she knew what she could do to make her feel better. It was so obvious! After petting over her hair and back a few times, she started sliding her hand all the way back to her rump, then angling downward.

"Wan?" Yuka barked, the noise holding a very human question even if it was animal speech.

"Shhhh, shhh," she soothed her, petting along the damp folds. "Master saw you were really wet back here, girl. I-is it okay if I clean you up?"

Her girlfriend let out some very sensual dog-whines. Which apparently were possible. Chie felt her stomach turn a tiny bit at knowing this wasn't just excitement she was playing around in, because some of it was pee, but probably not much. And either way… it was Yukiko. She didn't mind.

And clearly, neither did Yukiko. As her attentions grew more pointed and firmer, fingers parting the lips and dragging up toward her ass, then back down toward her pulsing clit, the puppy panted and moaned, hips squirming from side to side as if to shake her off. Their past experiences had at least taught them to stop taking that involuntary reaction as a sign that their partner actually wanted them to stop; there had been a few touch-and-go moments thanks to miscommunication. Practice makes perfect, after all.

Kissing the top of her head, Chie whispered, "It's okay, Yuka. Master's gonna take care of you. Just let it feel good, okay? Like you made Master feel good before!"

By now, Yukiko was full-on baying — when she wasn't making more human sounds of pleasure. They were terribly hard to suppress in that state. Her hips were rolling into the contact, begging for more. Not for the first time, Chie wished she had a cock to slam into her — and they had considered buying one, many times. Probably would soon. Maybe even one that had two ends…

Once she started in on her clit, it only took another minute of blistering punishment before Yuka couldn't suppress her climax anymore. Her back arched and she let out a howl as the pleasure racked her body, nearly sending her face-first into the leaves and grass. And even doing something so base, she looked as elegant as always. The magic of Yukiko.

"Gooooood girl!" Chie praised her, kissing between her shoulder blades as her other hand pet up and down her neck. "So good, you were amazing! I'm so proud of my pretty Yuka!"

There was a much more subdued little "Wan" that fell from her lips before she gave a weak wag of her hips from side to side. But at least she was clearly happy.

As they continued their way back to the spot where they left the yukata, Chie was all smiles, and kept praising Yuka or commenting on what they might do later in the day. They had fallen into the habit of Yukiko using happy barks and whines to show her approval or disapproval of their various plans; that way she still got to put in her two yen without fully breaking character. Maybe it was cheating, but who cared?

"God, I could use some lemon soda," Chie sighed as the clothes came into view. "Oh — there we go. Did you have fun out here today, Yuka?"

"WAN!" she barked with a huge, panting grin, bouncing a little. Then she winced. "Nnn…"

"Yuka?" But she shook her head, so Chie sighed and pulled her closer to the clothes. "Mkay, let's get outta here; we still have time to play some Famidrive. Bet I can whoop you in Power Intuition!"

But as Yukiko drew almost right up to the clothes, which would be the official end of their play, Chie suddenly stopped and held the leash taut. There was a quiet gag before her girlfriend turned around to look up at her curiously.

"Wait… um… I was gonna do this later, but I think… I wanna do it now. While you're still on your walk, Yuka." Meaning during play. She actually had been going to wait for her birthday, but that was almost a year away — and she hated that she hadn't thought of it before the last one. Oh well, better late than never.

"Wan?" Yuka asked in concern.

"Huh? O-oh, right! I got you a little something." Kneeling down, she produced it from her jacket pocket and held it out. "Hope you like it, girl."

It was a dog tag. Not just any tag, but a bamboo tag with an elegant burned-in design of flames on one side. When Chie's nervously twitching fingers turned it around, the kanji "優花" were emblazoned on the back: Yuka. Gentle flower.

There was a very real gasp from her girlfriend before she squealed, "CHIE!" and threw her arms around her, bouncing with happiness. Her owner just began to laugh when she suddenly drew back and cleared her throat. "W-wan!"

"It's cool," she laughed as she reached for her collar. "We were almost done, anyway, right? Hmm…" Then she delicately began to attach the tag to her pet. The big grin and the way she could barely keep still was too adorable — and doglike, which continuously surprised her. Even if Yukiko was a beautiful debutante in so many ways, she was also the world's cutest puppy. "There!"

And no sooner had she finished than she was pounced upon, licked all over her face amid a flurry of giggles. After a minute or two, she managed to push the girl away and stood up.

"Okay, you can stand up too now."

"Ohhhh, Chie, it's gorgeous!" Yukiko gushed as she finally rose to her feet, catching up the yukata along the way. "Where did you get it? How long have you been hanging onto this?!"

"Few days," she told her shyly, watching her slip her zori back on. So cute the way her little toes wriggled to slip the thong between them. "J-just… you got me that necklace for White Day, and I don't know why, I didn't even think about-"

"Stop that," she cut her off. "We already discussed this, I told you I wasn't even sure if I should get you something. Since we aren't boyfriend-girlfriend, we are two girls; the rules aren't the same. So you didn't disappoint me!"

Shrugging as she helped her slide the light kimono around her body, she muttered, "Y-yeah, but you still deserved a gift. And we've been going out for like a whole year, so…"

"Almost a year," she whispered back with a twinkle in her eyes. One that made her suspicious.

"Um… you're not planning some kinda crazy thing next month, are you? Like, because it's our anniversary?"

Trying to sound innocent, she pressed a hand into her clothed chest — now that she had finished tying her yukata, naturally. "Why, Chie-chan! Would I do that?"

"Yep. Okay, okay… I guess I do wanna celebrate it, but don't go wacko! Just like, find us something fun. Maybe we can have a nice din-"

"Don't you worry about a thing," she reassured her lover as she linked their arms together. "Just don't be too busy that day and everything will come up roses. Okay?"

Letting out a loud "UGHHHHH", Chie tried to be grumpy as they headed for the edge of the woods, and toward the Amagi Inn beyond. But she still ended up leaning over to whisper, "Fine, I'm excited. Just don't tell anybody."

"Because our relationship is anyone's business as it is," she giggled. "Hmm… are you sure this is the right way?"

As Chie Satonaka stared at the pretty little innkeeper, the shafts of light filtering through the trees, her heart stopped for a moment as time froze. Because her priestess was there, and warm, and real, and so sweet and beautiful. Because they were there together.

"Everything's right, Yukiko," she whispered with a huge, goofy grin. "Everything."

~ THE END ~

#We'll Face Ourselves #chiko #yukiko x chie #persona 4 fanfic #jess the writer #nsfw-text #tbh i almost didn't post this bc i got a bunch of hate on wattpad #on an old fic #idk maybe i should just stop

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