The 6th of July. Oh boy. How am I even going to go about this? I guess we'll start at the therapist's office where I was spending some time after school.

  I'd been somewhat obsessed with Madarame's palace since first seeing it.

  I know how it sounds and there's not a great way for me to explain it. Gold is my favorite color. That's a good starting point. I like the color gold. It's something about it that really gets my rocks off. The color looks good. It's the color of power. It's the color of richness. It goes nicely with a lot of things. I'd never wear it. I like the color gold.

  I think that I've mentioned multiple times that I was impressed with Madarame's palace. It's partially because of the gold. The gold was beautiful. The golden void was amazing. There were definitely parts that I thought were tacky but as a whole I loved how the color was everywhere. If I had a palace then it would've definitely had gold in a bunch of places.

  Gold is what I think encapsulates my mission. I think it's kind of ironic actually. It's the color of wrath to me, it's the color of the money that I'm chasing, it's the color of a ruler—the singular person who can enter the Metaverse and is changing the world by stealing one heart at a time. Forget the fake Phantom Thieves because they were really the new guys on the block. Did saving ten women from their abusers do more than taking down a megalomaniac art guy?

  The palace came to mind a lot during those days, especially when I was bored. Maruki liked going on rants a lot. Those rants were extremely boring. Therefore, I was bored when going to therapy on the 6th and thinking about the palace.

  A word was spoken that caught my attention.

  "Excuse me? What did you say?"

  Maruki was a man who was genial, with a face of plaster that kept a warmth to it. It's one of the reasons that I don't bring my sessions with him up in any detail. I remember a lot of my time there pretty fondly. It's one of the few times where I could do one of my favorite things: needlessly argue. Neither of us were going to change our opinion, maybe because neither of us really felt strongly about our stances in the first place. Not many were willing to put up with that. He reminded me of Akechi without the fakeness.

  Though I had to wonder if he was partially the product of watching women flush over how cute bishonen were when he was in college. The guy got flustered a lot and would cover himself in the least convincing way possible. It's kind of how I imagined Haru was too cute to be genuine. If it was genuine, I blamed it on trope-ification. Really, society is amazing. With how popular my shows are you'd expect more women trying to act like fictional women.

  Maruki didn't seem offended when I interrupted him. I bet that he wasn't so easily fooled by my half-hearted grunts. Really liked it whenever I showed the bare hint that I was paying attention. Hey buddy, I wanted to say at times, isn't this supposed to be my therapy session?

  "About my research?" he asked.

  "You used a word that was familiar."

  "Topology?"

  "No, the other one."

  "Surely you're not referring to 'cogpsi'," Maruki said.

  That's the missing puzzle piece. I took out my notepad, flipping through the pages of notes that I had started to get lost in. Some of these were written in code when they definitely didn't need to be. I didn't even remember how to translate one that was a mish-mash of Mandarin and Russian, only that it was saying I had 6 of those unlabeled drinks under my bed.

  "Cogpsi!" I repeated, finding the page. It all came back to me, excluding the reflexive anger. "Cognitive psience, right?"

  Maruki was blinking rapidly before standing up. "You know cognitive psience!? How?"

  "Not me. I think that my guardian worked on it at some point."

  I felt a brief flush of embarrassment. Thinking emphasized how bad I'd been flubbing that side of my life. Our relationship wasn't really normal considering how much leeway he'd given me. I didn't know anything past that him being a weird coffee guy.

  "Your guardian—" he cut himself off and loomed over me. "Your guardian has worked on cognitive psience before!? Can I talk to him? Where can I find him?"

  "Calm down, guy!" I yelled, annoyed.

  His hands were shuddering. They patted down against his coat like they were on fire as he sat back down. Like I said before, he was easily made bashful. He was slightly blushing because of a high schooler for goodness' sake. "My ap-p-pologies. That wasn't graceful of me."

  "No sh—" I bit down on my tongue. It hurt. "Shoooot. Look, just go down to Leblanc and ask him. Tell him that I sent you. I've got no idea if he'll entertain you 'cause he seemed pretty mad when somebody else brought it up. If you're really dedicated to it though then just buy a coffee and beg. I'm sure he'll do anything for another regular."

  "Leblanc. Leblanc. Alright!" He bowed to me in the chair. "Thank you, Kurusu-kun! If I can talk to a previous researcher in the field then this could be the breakthrough that I've been looking for!"

  I'm sure that for many this seems like a great thing that I did. There was no reason that I needed to help with my mandatory therapist's research and I did it anyway. Little did I know that this man would be my greatest enemy and this mistake the greatest that I've ever made.

  Kidding! Slightly. Only slightly.

  Outside I went through my actual therapy session. Taking a drink and finding a secluded place to rest gave me enough stimulation that I wasn't completely trapped in my head. Oh boy. Like I said, I'm not sure how to start this, but I think that it's kind of too important to not mention. Speaking about my internal process gives some context, I think. But I'd like to preemptively apologize because I know how some people feel about this stuff. I cringe too looking back on it.

  I was laying on my stomach, lazily scrolling through the internet about three or four years ago. It was at the height of my internet degeneracy and I was starting to feel unsatisfied. I'm not sure where it stemmed from; life, I guess, became boring when all I had to look forward to was hopping onto my computer everyday for a game that hadn't gotten an update for a while. I didn't want to hop online yet I felt a bit guilty leaving out my party members for a day but I really didn't want to play so the only excuse I could think of was browsing my phone. None of my hobbies really spoke to me at that point in my life.

  It was at the start of the gigantic Youtube boom so there was no end to the longer videos that were getting pumped out then. Experimental ones that lectured you about life advice from channels purporting to be the experts in that stuff existed right alongside popular clips of people petting their dogs. There was a video by a small creator that popped up, got a bunch of replies making fun of him. Well, as anyone who's played video games knows, either you're the greatest contrarian in the world or you're the greatest conformist; I think that you guys already understand which side of the aisle I'm on. I got angry that people were brushing him off without watching the video and started doing my part. Not sure if he's still around. I think that the guy himself fell off because of some scandal with multiple women at some point?

  His entire channel was about what it meant being a man in the modern world. I started watching because my brain had leaked out of my ears a long time ago. You know the feeling, when your body has been fully consumed by the internet and it's the algorithm itself which has taken control of where your fingers tap, consciousness and free will nothing else than your lack of desire to do something. Everybody has it. People deny having it yet I think that they're trying to block out the times that it does happen because it's embarrassing.

  I came to attention in the middle of a video that autoplayed. Colors outside my phone became sharper right when he started talking about how to make your life exciting again. I don't remember his exact words and it's the other part why I stopped watching them after this guy. They can talk all they want about taking control of your life, making money, getting all the chicks, yet when it comes time to make it sound desirable it's like they're unwilling salesmen for chopping blocks. Sure, the stuff is doing the heavy lifting—who didn't want a new chick to bang every night?—but if it really were desirable enough to motivate me to get out of bed then obviously it'd be doing that. Make it sound desirable and avoid the dull words which bring to mind a desk job rather than sweaty hot nights spent shoving 100 dollar bills (more sexy than yen) into a girl's thong.

  It's not as if he didn't try. The words 'conquer', 'rule', and 'shogun' were used multiple times. Something worked because I clicked on a few more of his videos. I couldn't really understand what I was doing. Eventually I came across one about how to bring success into your life. He talked about how it's a dog eat dog world, that men are only transactions and women are there to uphold the world, essentially. You've got to be constantly looking for opportunity. Underhanded tricks are bad because you're not dominating the other man. Stuff like that.

  I stopped watching after that. The video scared me. I realized that a few friends I knew at the time were watching him and wondered how many of them saw me like that. I became obsessed that other people saw the world like that. I became obsessed that even one woman genuinely only saw men as a way to make money. I'm not sure how much of my life changed because of this single stupid video but I definitely can say that I became a little less trusting after watching it. I stopped going outside so much and I fully embraced my more reclusive hobbies. All of this stemmed from getting scared people were constantly looking to backstab me. Of course I don't believe in this anymore, and I didn't believe it when going to Tokyo. I wasn't backstabbed. The system's just fucked.

  Nevertheless, there were a few things that I'd picked up from it. The guy's whole philosophy was centered around making sure that you do things. From what he said, back when the world made sense, there was a singular ruler. The number one has power. Make sure that you're the number one, leave yourself as the sole ruler in your life, order your life's habits around the number one and your life will be full of action.

  I don't know if you guys want to hear it, but I kind of follow that. It's why I continued going to the Metaverse even when I didn't want to. Doing it once means trying; doing it twice means that you should make it into a habit. The logic doesn't make much sense but it's the rule that made me fight past becoming a complete internet degenerate, and I was unwilling to leave it alone.

  Also provided was actually a pretty good method that I considered my actual therapy. I did it back when I was first shipped to Tokyo. With so many burdens falling upon me, I decided that it was time for a refresher: what were the top five worst things that I'd done and what was I doing to fix them?

  I'd broken into Yusuke's house, assaulted him, then essentially assassinated his mentor. To fix this I was actually studying my next targets and was trying to personally make it up to him.

  I'd gotten into a public fight with the school president where I acted unwisely because of my ego. To fix this I apologized to her and was trying to clean up my act.

  I didn't save the girl at the beginning of the year because I dragged my feet with the palace. To fix this I was being much more proactive than I was at the beginning of the year.

  I'd yelled at a random woman, even if she was a bitch who also had a palace. I wasn't sure if I should've bundled this with another one but I decided to leave it there. To fix this I was trying not to be on a hair trigger.

  I continuously kept pushing the boundaries with Sojiro. To fix this I needed to do something that wasn't with the explicit purpose of pissing him off, something nice, because there wasn't a chance that I'd take down two palaces without getting injured again when the typical shadows were stronger than I was.

  What was the connecting thread here? The singular thing that I could work on? I spent my time sitting around before the job trying to find it.

  Eventually I came to it: my impulsiveness. Wanting to do things fast. In response, slow down! It'll never hurt adding a minute or two when making sure that something is done right.

  That actually segued to my next point: I had a lot of things to do. List them out again:

  I needed to study.

  I needed to infiltrate Sae's palace.

  I needed to infiltrate Okumura's palace.

  I needed to grind more.

  I needed to find a way into this new target's palace.

  I needed to research the new target.

  I needed to clean my room.

  What was the easiest thing to do here? Obviously it was cleaning my room. Then, what was the easiest of those left? It was to research my target. Then it was to study. Then it was to grind just to figure out how hard that was. Researching the target was on a time limit with the Medjed debacle so I couldn't let that fall by the wayside, as was studying for the finals.

  Despite how much I wanted to, dealing with the evil people's palaces wasn't on a time limit. They could wait.

  Deal with things one at a time. Leave behind the one hardest thing. Reduce your life to one and it becomes easier to tackle. That's what I was thinking when I was deposited in my job with the typical apron covering my front. Have I mentioned that I wear an apron to the job? I wear an apron to my job. Plants are very planty. Bastards like spitting their green gunk on you. Before Tokyo I wore one pair of clothes for home that were intentionally darker so I didn't have to worry about that.

  My hands were submerged into one of the vases when there was a semi-familiar person who walked up. There were regulars for the flower shop as there were any other place. Breaking down the people to their most recognizable aspect got me pretty far in discerning a difference between them. It's what happens when there's a limited pool of people who buy flowers. Skinny guy with clean everything and carrying around a sketchpad brought me a name. Having to explain to every single person about my strange condition was exhausting in ways I think I don't have to explain.

  He looked around as though he'd popped into reality.

  "Strangely, I had not made the connection how it was you working in this impressive flower stand. It is strange as you're not of a very plain appearance," he greeted.

  "...is that a hello?"

  Yusuke cupped his chin before shaking his head. "No, I do not think it is. Hello, Kurusu-san. It is a pleasure to have found your company on this sunny day."

  I'm not sure if I have to repeat this but I was working in an underground mall.

  "How's it going?" I asked.

  He again cupped his chin. "As of late? I suppose that it could be going worse. The break that I've been partaking has turned into creation itself, which then transitioned into self-reflection. Truthfully I do need another method of spending my time and that had made me distracted for a while until I came to a conclusion: if I like spending my free time as such, there is no higher standard that I have to reach other than my own entertainment—it is called 'free' for a reason."

  "Uh huh."

  "Entreading upon art as such has given me a different perspective too. Generally I've found much the world around me little better as sources of inspiration." Frustrated, he started shaking his head. "It's only now with this different perspective that I've wondered how I could've done so. I've been thinking about the purpose of art and the world, and I've started thinking about questions that I never would've brought up before. How much can I truly represent without having a personal feel for what I'm drawing? It's as though my entire life's work is currently relegated to an observer. Valuable in its own right, surely leaving aside a key aspect of what I've thought myself as able to capture. It's only because I had discovered a couple who were pressing foreheads in an alleyway that I had come to this conclusion. Capturing their imagery for nothing else than my own pleasure made me realize something about my sketch: it's banal. Without the extra effort, I've got a drawing more fit for a local band's album art. If my most base observation has no worth then it's only through technical skill that I've sculpted true art."

  "Uhhh huh."

  He shook his head with a self-satisfied grin.

  "Well! I believe that's been the extent of my problems, at the very least the most pressing."

  "So you've got other problems?"

  His expression turned sour. "As does anyone. The couple seemed mad that I was immortalizing their brief spark. I'm a bit peckish right now too. I've found myself new living circumstances yet haven't acclimated to my dormmates yet. They've eaten everything in the fridge and I have not yet seen fit to replace the food that the barbarians have stolen. Buying food has never been interesting to me however, thus I will not use my free time for such a mundane act."

  It started being put together why he was so skinny.

  "How many meals have you skipped?"

  "Only two."

  I relaxed. "Oh, you haven't eaten yet today? I've had to do that a lot too. Shit sucks."

  "Indeed. Though I hadn't had a lot for lunch, so I'm a little hungrier than I normally would be."

  Maybe it was because I wasn't studying, but the math was put together laboriously slowly. Eventually the pieces fit and my eyebrows started raising.

  "Lunch? But you skipped it."

  "I meant yesterday's lunch." He was oblivious to the looks that he was getting from me and Hanasaki as he started openly using his fingers to count. "I'd stopped by a 7-11 and bought a nikuman. It wasn't very good and had the size comparable to a bit of candy but the price was something magnificent. If I saved the receipt then I'd be able to tell you."

  Math continued getting carried out in my head. If he didn't consider breakfast a meal, then he'd also only eaten a single bun the previous day, and was running around the city during his free time.

  Apparently I'd signed up for taking around a tomadachi. My shaky finger jabbed towards the wall.

  "You know what? I haven't eaten much either. I'm starving. Why don't you do your thing and I'll treat us to ramen after this?" I asked.

  The way that he perked up felt more desperate to me than it probably was intended to be. "Are you sure? Very well! I'll wait in eager anticipation!"

  "And I'll wait in annoyance," I mumbled when his back was turned. Rubbing my forehead didn't get rid of the sympathetic headache that was forming. Running into these palaces with a single meal in the past two days backing me up sounded like suicide. A hungry Akira would've shredded Makoto instead of merely yelling at her.

  Hanasaki gave me a beatific smile when she noticed my frustration.

  "You've got a lot on your plate, Akira-kun."

  We didn't talk about anything interesting while eating out, so don't ask.

  Afterwards I cleaned my room. Then I went outside to buy a drink. I considered studying before deciding that I was too tired. I spent the rest of the day sitting at the counter playing on my phone. When Sojiro went home I went upstairs and sat where there used to be a trash pile. Going to bed made me satisfied that one major task was finished.

  In the morning of the next day I researched my next target and was somewhat disappointed to find nothing on him. This was a problem. I recognized that there was a problem in general with all of the small fry targets that didn't make it a habit of burning children alive: how was I going to prove that they were evil? Most people's capacity for evil was stealing. Being a crook was way harder to prove from a cursory inspection than not. When Sae and Okumura were being evil, I had the assurance that one was the arm of the law (while the other arm was trying to choke me) and one was a literal business mogul.

  My target worked in accounting. I'm not an expert in accounting, but I think that the worst you can do is cook the books for the Yakuza. It's the pinnacle of a boring desk job. It's not as though I had a method of stealing the heart yet, but thinking about it really made my brain feel as though it were overheating. For most of the school day I was obsessed over how I was going to prove that he was evil and how I was going to catch him in the first place. Biking home let me appreciate how the seasons were changing.

  I bought a drink and initiated the study method. My phone was locked away. The blinders were shut. Classical music played. Used that crappy television next to me with an old tape of an awesome live orchestra performance. For about two hours I gained the knowledge of an erudite through rereading the notes that I'd taken for the past month. Beating Madarame's palace brought the Renaissance of notes to my fore. I was a note taking machine despite not paying attention in class every other day.

  The study session ended because of a particularly strong waft of coffee that broke my concentration. Grumbling, I dressed and walked downstairs. It really was night and day. Night, remaining dredges of dust promising a third day of deep cleaning. Day, the soft sounds of a conversation heard over the drone of the television and gurgling coffee machine. Sojiro was holding his forehead in those old person hands as the person in front of him was talking so animatedly that his entire body bounced around with his cadence.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He noticed me and gestured to the nuisance. "Why did you send him my way? Hell, how did you even know what I worked on?"

  "That lawyer," I said. There was a slight twitch in his eye, probably ruing the day that woman found him. "She mentioned the term and I remembered it while this guy was ranting about his research. I wasn't sure how you felt about it."

  "You didn't even think to ask first?" he asked grouchily.

  It's not like Maruki needed to be some kind of guru using his psychology powers to break down the nuances of our conversation. Without me replicating the tone I'm pretty sure you guys could tell the room was turning a little awkward.

  "Erm, if there's a problem, Sakura-san, then I can show myself out. Um, I'd like a to-go cup though. And maybe another coffee?"

  With one last tired glare towards me, Sojiro turned back to his guest with his resting scowl instead of the slightly annoyed one. "There's no need for that. I'd prefer if this research remained dead and buried, but I can't stop the march of progress when it's knocking on my door like this. Might as well send you on the right path. You'll do better things with the research than she would at least."

  "Um," Maruki stuttered out.

  "Though I don't want this to be connected with me. You got that?" Sojiro has a real mean glare and it wasn't only reserved for idiots who lived with him. An actual trail of sweat worked down Maruki's forehead. "That life is over for me. If you're going to be waking a sleeping evil then I don't want any of that near me. You found this by yourself. If that's unbelievable then just say that you went back to old sources that have already existed. Leave my name and Wakaba's name out of this. Understand?"

  "Y-Yes, sir," Maruki mumbled.

  It was kind of odd watching a person in a position of authority bending the knee. I didn't like it. Smacked of those American trends which were infecting their video games—moral grayness, and the like. Except this was something a little more sinister. Power grayness?

  Hey, I'm not a consistent guy. I play video games for fantasy, not to be preached to. I've gotten enough "is this really a good thing to do?" to experience than the average person. Didn't need my cute waifu to talk about high-minded moral issues which had no clear answer because that wasn't cute. It was depressing. I'd rather my waifu tell me that breaking into a bad guy's house and assaulting someone was morally justified and anybody who disagreed was an idiot.

  Sojiro stopped me right before I left. "Isn't it a little late to be working out?"

  It wasn't too late that I couldn't spend a little time exploring Mementos and I needed a break from my hard two hour study session.

  "I guess, but I'm feeling restless." I made a show of popping my shoulders. "Hate studying for too long."

  "Hrn."

  That weird noise was all he said but I didn't dare leave. That wasn't approval. Finally he reached underneath the counter and threw it at me. It felt cool snatching it out of the air.

  "There's a key. If this place isn't locked up when I come in the morning, you're out. If there's anything missing when I come in the morning, you're out. If there's another person in, you're out. No fooling around with girls. Well! You can fool around with girls. Just don't do it here." His head lowered like a bull. "If you come in bleeding again then make sure that you don't stain the floor."

  "Bleeding!?" Maruki exclaimed.

  We both ignored him.

  "I'll try not to disappoint you," I said. That was a bit too tall of an order I realized, and so it had to be amended. "I'll try not to disappoint you too much. Ehe. Uh, I think that's a little more honest."

  "Just don't break those rules and don't be an idiot. And bring in more people like that Kitagawa kid and the student council president instead of hanging around places where you get stabbed."

  "Stabbed!?"

  "You know, I think that I'd prefer them too."

  Going out to Mementos with my bike felt freeing. This was it. I hadn't been able to do my flower-gathering job and wouldn't be able to fully dedicate myself towards it when there were palaces that I knew about. Still, I was finally going to see the full effects of my little fib spreading the rumor.

  The lobby was as creepy as ever. Checking my string traps felt a little superfluous. All of them were broken. Whoever was going inside went all the way inside. It confirmed what I already knew. The only other explanation would've laid at the feet of the girl who was pretending not to watch me.

  "Did somebody pass through here?"

  "You have, multiple times."

  Without much else to say, I went down the staircase. The comforting hum of my motorcycle spoke loudly over the general weirdness of the place. My foot gently pushed against the pedal. Vrm vrm vrm vrm. Each sputter of the engine made me fall in love. I considered getting an actual motorcycle once I got out of this whole child convict situation. The exhaust that drifted over my head smelled like candy. Finally shooting ahead was the high that I was waiting for.

  Every turn I leaned down until my shoulder was nearly skidding against the tracks. My whoops were lost to the wind. Shadows barely had time to turn as I had raged past. Asphalt turned into brimstone. Smoke billowed through the tunnels. Chained doors suffered a single shot from Arsene and were burned straight through. Dangerous u-turns made my wheels skid when I ran into a dead end. What had been a journey that once took hours took a mere five minutes. Absolutely nothing was slowing me down except the few times I had to dismount my bike.

  On the third floor I decided that optimizing my time could be made fun. Each staircase was on a platform, which usually required that I dismounted. The Metaverse had magic which made me into a superhero though. So at the last second as I came out of the tunnel, I sharply swerved to where I was nearly perpendicular with the rails. The front wheel bounced against the steel. As expected with the speed I was going at, I started flying. What wasn't in the cards was that the momentum worked similar enough to real life that I started flipping.

  My breath held as my head barely cleared the platform's step. The top of my scalp tingled, electricity bouncing between me and the tiles. The rest of the flip went fast, too fast for me to react. It all worked on instinct as the next few seconds could either go exactly as I wanted or I'd be split against the wall. I sharply turned the handle over in anticipation to bounce against the floor. Nearly spilling, I became more horizontal than intended as I swerved against the wall. The tire I'm pretty sure rode the meeting point of the wall and floor.

  I didn't fall. I heard something metallic screech but I didn't fall. The second that I righted upwards, my muscles tensed. My feet hooked underneath the pedals and hands tightly gripped the handlebars. The first step was clear, my forehead nearly splattered on the opening's top ridge, and then the rest came like I was on a rollercoaster. My vision slightly tilted. I wasn't sure how to land so I just braced.

  The wheels bounced once. That's all they allowed themselves. My skeleton bounced against my tensed muscles. The second by second sequence was over. I'd cleared the entire staircase by driving off its top step. I whooped again, smashing my hands against the handlebars. Nothing compared to that rush. Driving off the platform nearly had me tilt onto my face but everything else was golden.

  Though for reference, I was accelerating nearly the entire time. I wouldn't do that again.

  While I was pulling off tricks, there was another reason that I was traveling around the Metaverse. See? I knew how to multitask. I was gathering flowers, having fun, testing out how far I could travel, and studying the shadows to find one that didn't feel weak. I found out that those who couldn't put up a fight had the opposite feeling of the ringing in my ears. Instead they were little malleable balls of clay that my invisible limb gleefully rubbed against. When I withdrew, they spread out, like any other one of the souls that I found, yet remaining thin. It's like instead of turning into the gas that I mentioned, they turned into an incense that colored the air. Maybe it's the same as like blood in the water for a shark instead of pouring oil into the ocean. I don't know. I'm not very eloquent.

  It was such a high that I nearly ignored how new signatures entering the area felt. When I already had the whole place in mind, it felt like another plume of colors plunging straight into the center of the soup. At first I thought that they were shadows and ignored them. Finding Jose to try to drop off my flowers was the priority. Let's not try and pretend that my end goal of replacing my personal effects was sidelined just because of the amount of distractions that had been happening.

  I turned the corner. For some reason I didn't hear the puffing of an engine until the headlights glared at me. We locked eyes. The two people in the vehicle turned to look at me as I sped by. I swore that the lights were trailing me too.

  I turned my bike and stuck my leg out. Puffs of dust kicked up from the points of contact. It felt awesome.

  Watching the bus felt like I was seeing an eldritch monster wake. Once the two occupants jumped out, it started folding into itself. It was like when you stuffed a cloth into a ring, pushing down the center so more cloth is folded, except I was watching something that started as metal flow like fat. When it was really going to become horrific there was a cartoonish puff of clouds that replaced it with a familiar little monster.

  "You!" he yelled.

  It was the cat thing back from Kamoshida's palace. Apparently it was an eldritch horror but the girls (I was pretty sure they were girls) didn't react so I didn't because that would've been embarrassing.

  "You!?" both the girls (whew!) yelled.

  "I found you, faker!" I yelled back.

  "Faker!? What are you calling us that for?" the cat yelled back.

  Slightly put out, I continued on as if something momentous didn't pass. "That's what you usually call somebody who steals your name, cat. It's not like you created the Phantom Thieves."

  "But it fits us more than it fits you," Morgana said, smirking. It was strange watching that mouth move around. It was exaggerated to the point where his smile nearly became an actual ':3'. Could you imagine making that yourself? Amazing! "Far as I can see, you still don't have any teammates. What kind of thieves are you?"

  "Just a bit of misdirection, as a true thief would do. I think that this whole business doesn't really need teammates and was pretty much right," I said. "I've done well enough for myself so far."

  "The Madarame heist is what you call 'well enough'?" one of the girls said.

  They were dressed strange enough that I have to bring it up. Don't get me wrong—when I say that they're dressed strangely, I don't mean to compare our outfits. My own was an edgy teen's idea of cool which fits me to a depressing degree. The two of them however must've been cursed by an ancient god to have costumes like those. The one on the left was wearing baggy pants that sort of looked like a red diaper with how puffy they were. The rest of her legs were covered in normal black stockings, cool. What didn't make sense was how she was wearing a vest that let her chest stick out. I'm not saying, you know. I'm saying that the shirt underneath was both a different pattern and bright color, and the vest hugged her a bit like a corset. Her chest was sticking out.

  It would be hypocritical at this point to act like I'm some kind of shocked grandfather. I've said that women should show off their curves, yes. What I didn't say was that they needed to have their stuff be particularly highlighted, as they have attractive properties in themselves. I've always had sympathy for girls in this regard. Swimsuits should always strive to cover as much as possible. That's why I wore shirts while swimming. It couldn't have been comfortable having their magic powers decide what was shown.

  Which is what especially came to mind with the other girl. The whole motif of the first girl at least came off as cute, with a dastardly thief with a Zorro hat, complete with a feather on top, prancing about with grenades strapped to her hips. The other girl was wearing a black skin suit that hugged her way too well. If the first was highlighting, then this was advertising. If it weren't for the spikes that jutted out at multiple parts of the armor then I wouldn't know where to look.

  So, since it would be far from the first time that I saw both of them, I decided on the most polite way I could figure out which was which. One became cool hat. The other became shoulder spikes.

  Anyways, it was Spikes who said that. The second hand embarrassment from seeing her costume didn't shield her from my ire.

  "Well enough, yes. It's not like any of you saw what was inside there. It could've been handled a little better. Oh well! You three could at least get another palace under your belt before criticizing me."

  "You're excusing your own mistakes?" Cool Hat muttered.

  For good reason, I was becoming defensive. You've all heard how emotional I got after the palace. I didn't really want to admit that or, worse, relive it in front of strangers who could've been dangerous.

  "I'm excusing nothing. And really? It's none of your business. We're separate groups even if you stole my name." It was petty and they weren't meant to hear it. I mumbled under my breath, "it was such a cool name."

  Spikes glared at me. I couldn't really tell through the mask. It was a feeling that I got. "Are you not also trying to fix society? We're working together with that common goal, and If either of us are failing then I think that we're obstructing each other's goals."

  That was a sentence out of nowhere. All I could do was mutter, "huh?"

  We were staring at each other like we thought the other was the specimen. It was probably how it felt going to the zoo and locking eyes with an orangutan. Something so alien encroaching into your habitat that you couldn't help but try to comprehend it.

  'Justice'. I hope that I haven't given off that I'm anti-justice or anything. In fact, I was thinking about justice a lot, thinking of myself as a wretch as I was exploiting this power more for my gain than fixing any ills with society. But pro-justice? That felt icky to describe myself as. I never saw it as reforming society. It was revenge. It was work. It was opportunity. It was obligation. It had to be done somehow by somebody. Never did I delude myself into thinking that it was real justice and it made me suspicious hearing someone else think that—because who could think that they were committing justice when they killed so many things which screamed for their lives, assumedly looted money that they used for personal uses, became used to violence, and thought of themselves as the sole keepers of justice by bypassing everything that society puts in place for these kinds of things?

  That was what my mind caught on the most. It was the thing that I had to avoid. I couldn't dispense justice because otherwise that made me alone who decided what was and wasn't just. Stealing a heart wasn't based on my judgement but the fact that they managed to create a palace in the first place.

  "Reform society? Is that what you see it as?"

  The others warily watched as I spread my arms wide.

  "We're not reforming anything! We're taking down scumbags who are so evil that they literally create pits of evil in another dimension! We're making people afraid that they're next! This is the reform that's carried out by a dictator, not anybody benevolent! Robin Hood stole from people who were rich. What's the link between the people whose hearts we steal? That they're evil? So what! Everyone thinks they're good and those that don't are in the right mindset to judge themselves anyways!"

  "Do you even hear yourself?" Spikes yelled, taking an imperious step forward. Each spike dully shined against the natural light of Mementos. Her body was slightly angled. Despite the distance, I knew better than to discount that her fist flying wouldn't somehow hit me. "Yes, we're doing good because they're evil and no adult does anything to stop them. Are you suggesting that we're the real bad guys? What does that make you?"

  It didn't hurt saying it out loud. "I'm a bad person. I'm doing this because it's practically a job. I deal with a palace and get paid to do it."

  "You're doing this…" Cool Hat trailed off, swallowing the disgusted notes that leaked out of her tone. "You're doing this for money?"

  Though for some reason it hurt when it got thrown back into my face. I hastily tried to correct that. "Because it has to happen. It can't be healthy for these palaces to exist. You're right about one thing: if nobody is working to clean them up, then it has to come down to us, but it's not about being good against evil. It's just what has to happen. Is an electrician a 'good guy' because he fixes a power line?"

  Spikes' lips pursed when I said that. "I see. You're not bad. You're just stupid. You're reducing our role to the point where it becomes overly abstract. The situations you're referring to aren't even equivalent."

  "That's why I call him Idiot, though I didn't think that it went this far," the cat said.

  Cool Hat seemed to be the most affected, pressing her fists against her head. "Oh dear. I was a little afraid for a moment. I suppose with this logic firefighters, police officers, and rescue teams are not doing good because their position calls for it?"

  "Why would they? They're doing their jobs," I said.

  All of them were looking at me like I was the idiot.

  Despite them being wrong, this was an opportunity. It took me the first lull in the conversation to recognize it. Palaces were too much work, risk, and so on for the dubious payout that they gave, yet they also needed to be solved. My last excursion nearly killed me while the ones that I had lined up were absurdly strong. The world didn't run on video game logic. Perhaps palaces continued getting stronger infinitely, making me have to think of creative methods or spend days grinding until I could actually challenge the next one. And none of these had deadlines! What if there was a ridiculous situation where a powerful palace was owned by somebody who was going to have access to the nuclear codes within a week?

  Heroes stood in front of me—maybe heroes. Maybe these were heroes, maybe not. They definitely thought they were heroes. I'd only know when they were faced with opposition whether their values were real.

  But they couldn't know that they were being tested. It had to feel organic. My grin widened as I played up a persona. Hope was the thread holding the act together, hope that my mask hid enough of my face that would cover up my horrible acting.

  "If that's what you all believe, then how about a game?"

  "Really," the cat said.

  Cool Spikes smacked a hand over her face.

  "Really really. Let's say that I have a little birdie who's about to give me a target. The problem is that I know the target that they want is somewhere out there, but I don't know how to find them. Help me find the person whose heart I have to steal and there's a palace in it for you."

  "You believe that a palace is work. Why would we accept work from you?" Cool Spikes asked.

  This was the kicker! I crossed my arms behind my back and swayed. "Because that's not what you believe, is it? Unless you have another palace that I don't know about, you're currently free. If you believe me incompetent, then you wouldn't want me doing it. If you believe me to have the wrong mindset, then would you be happy with me completing palaces? Show me that you have conviction through a race. Show me through beating this palace before me."

  "Now hold on a moment!" the cat yelled. "This is completely uneven! It's not as if we have different progressions through the palace. If there's a section which is tedious but needs to be cleared, then we could wait until you come along. It'd needlessly stall the process of infiltrating a palace!"

  Cool Hat pulled down the brim of her cool hat. "No, that's not true at all. That'd be proving him right."

  "What!?" the cat asked.

  It was good that at least one of them got it. Even Spikes was staring at her friend in contemplation, letting out a light gasp when it finally came together.

  "Because then we'd be proving that we care more about winning a bet than justice," she breathed out.

  "Then it's completely uneven against us. We have to not stall and complete the palace?" The cat shut its mouth, putting one of its paws against its mouth. "No, I'm missing the point, aren't I?"

  The point? I barely understood the first part. I was just trying to nudge them into wanting to complete this palace. Very quickly this was evolving into a fantasy version of myself.

  Spikes didn't notice my distress. "Indeed you are. What he's saying is that justice is impossible. He believes that reforming society through stealing hearts is impossible. In this instance, what's impossible is for our justice to win against his avarice. That's what he wants to believe."

  "He could be watching us as we go through, realize when we have to change his cognition, and could keep a closer watch on the palace until the roadblock clears. It couldn't be about stealing the treasure or else it wouldn't be a race. We'd both have the ability to send a calling card and both be able to react to the other."

  The cat nodded along. "Which means that it's a race to the treasure. It's not 'if' he's waiting around—it's 'will'. He will be waiting for us to uncover the path to the treasure. We have no choice but to beat him at a disadvantage to show that our justice can do the impossible."

  Cool Hat giggled into her hand in a strangely familiar pose. "See? We can do this! We can do anything as long as we're working together!"

  I didn't mean any of that. I wasn't going to observe them that rigorously. I wasn't even going to be waiting at the final change of cognition. But it seemed to have gotten them fired up so mission accomplished? I've been killing so many birds with a single stone that it had turned into a meteorite and was approaching terminal velocity—and yes, the meteorite was still in space reaching terminal velocity. It was starting to get concerning how much the pieces were falling into place.

  Keeping up the act meant pretending that I had control over the situation. Repeating the stupid deal may have made me bust into laughter. Instead I gave a little bow.

  "So you all agree?"

  The thieves looked between themselves.

  "We do," Morgana finished.

  "Then, uh, let me make sure that you're good enough for the palaces. They're pretty dangerous, even for me." I took out the phone and waggled it around. "You're completing those tiny requests, right? Show me how to do it. I completed that poem that was on the Phantom Thieves' site and got a request for a heart to be stolen. Do this together with me and you'll get the palace's name."

  "You don't know how to do that?" Morgana smugly asked.

  "I know that there's many ways to skin a cat," I growled back.

  It completely upturned his personality. The little thing nearly leapt up to my chest's height as he meowled.

  "I am not a cat!"

  I vaguely remembered that it said that during our first confrontation too. With a shrug, I said, "youkai, whatever."

  "Human!"

  "Human?" I looked him over and made a decision. "You know what? A'ight. I'm still gonna call you a cat though because you look like a cat right now. Probably will call you that after too."

  Cool Hat seemed more incredulous about that. "You believe him?"

  "Why not? We're dealing with magic here. He's got a Persona, probably, which means—"

  "And how did you know that?" Morgana interjected.

  "Because why wouldn't you? We're in the Metaverse, it's—" I kind of gestured at the tunnels. "I don't know, have you seen any other kind of magic here? No? Then it's Personas and shadows. Look, you want another heart to steal or not?"

  "We'll take it!" Makoto said.

  I was given a front row seat of watching the transformation happen in reverse. It was just an explosion of smoke and presto! Van. It didn't help with the impression that the cat was a sinister figure.

  The inside of the cat van was not nearly as strange as you'd believe. The seats were plush and air conditioning was blowing through the vents. It had a black and red motif that was comforting. No radio was playing. My bike was chucked into the backseat. Both of the girls were sitting up front while I sat on the seats behind them. It was a very big van. I wasn't envious because my bike was awesome. The engine sounded like it was dying from the first yanks of the keys, the keys which belonged to the van which could only come into existence from a cat transforming.

  The bumps in the road were much more pronounced. As a tradeoff any shadow that met our grill was turned to paste. Apparently Spikes knew how to drive. The drive was quiet. It gave me focus. I tried not looking constipated or assuming the pose of a zen monk or doing something which would make me look conspicuous.

  "So you manipulated us?"

  My hand shook against the chair. Manipulating people didn't work when they knew they were being manipulated!

  "No," I said, before I realized that it was more suspicious how I immediately responded and said, "I don't even know what you're talking about."

  "The number for the poem," Cool Hat clarified.

  She wasn't turning her head in my direction. She continued staring out the front window. It was something, I guess. It was just the same setpieces repeated ad nauseum. It got tiring to look at by the third floor.

  "I didn't organize it, if that's what you're asking. I don't know how to hack," I said unsurely. I didn't know what she was asking about.

  The two exchanged a glance. Cool Hat continued, "I meant about how you got the numbers."

  "Oh! Did you see that? It was some girls from school. One of them really likes puzzles so I exploited that to get the numbers and then sent her in front of a camera. Now the person who sent the poem knows that they were bait while my identity is still unknown," I said.

  "Bait!?" Spikes said. Her slight twitch made the whole car swerve a little. The cat protested through whatever method he could do that. Maybe a little mouth still existed behind the exhaust.

  "Let me explain: the hacker was looking through a camera to see the real identity of the Phantom Thieves. When you solved the first puzzle, they had another one that would get you caught into the trap. I managed to avoid it through that method."

  Once again they shared a glance. I guessed that the two normally looked at each other for support.

  "Through some g-girls?" Cool Hat asked.

  "Yeah. Were they your friends or something? Or are you against me using normal people for this?"

  I didn't get a response back so I kept practicing. Sensing other Persona users proved enlightening: humans hardly had different signatures from shadows so it was easy to lose them within the mesh once I lost focus on them. It was the same analogy as earlier. There was definitely a different texture—let's say milk, even if that's disgusting—which humans comprised of, though I think that it'd be more worth saying 'Persona user' since the cat had a similar globe.

  Reading deeper into the signatures gave me a deeper read into their persons. This process was what took the longest. 'Contours' was what made a person unique, I could tell. It was like a hairstyle, personality, eye color, voice, intonation, digestive systems, yet more than any of those singular pieces. It was enough that I had to breathe deeply through my nostrils to repress my first reaction. I was starting to wonder if the reason why it was harder for me to pick things out was my face memory issues.

  Thinking of them as data points on a graph helped me to remember once I looked away. Finding what exactly each of these contours meant was the next step. The Fake Thieves' signatures were all memorized to the point where I was fairly sure that I could recognize them in a crowded room (of shadows). There had to be more about the sense that I was still missing after a twenty minute drive, and far be it from me to say that I was an expert after so little time!

  We stopped in front of a wormhole, one that reminded me of when I first visited Mementos months ago. Months! No nostalgia washed over me. I was definitely happier then than then, you know?

  Everybody dismounted and stood in front of it.

  "This is definitely where he is. Is everybody ready?"

  No, because there's a reason that I didn't leap into a black hole. The others went first. Thus I had to follow.

  It occurred to me immediately that maybe I was right about it being a proto-palace. The railroad had been pinched into a point where dozens of sundered tracks twisted into a gigantic knot. Red pulses ran down along them, giving the impression of blood pellets flowing through veins. A red aura emitted from the aether around us, like a horror movie or a scene of debauchery where the protagonist was about to ingest a bunch of drugs. Reason would say that's all the red energy that was getting sucked into the void; me, being a trope-literate and Metaverse veteran, knew that there was no such thing as logic in the Metaverse except the logic of halflogic, and thus decided that the place was red because the public thought it was the color of evil. Wasn't that purple? It was in my opinion.

  If any doubt existed before, it was expelled by the person standing in front of us. He was a stocky man with a suit sloppily shrugged on. Topaz eyes manifested their color through the filter.

  The others handled the talking. I already got the gist of how these shadows worked. Tell them they're bad, they deny it, then the last man standing is good.

  The shadow exploded. A horrific ringing pressed against my eardrums.