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The first thing he does is call Suou, because he’s the only one in their group with any real experience raising a kid. “It’s really not as complicated as you’re making it out to be, Bao—”
“Not my name,” Sojiro Sakura cuts in. “C’mon, Suou, we’ve already been over this.”
Katsuya makes a noise halfway between a sigh and a whine. “I feel sorry for your daughter already.”
Daughter, huh? It all feels so odd when he thinks about it — him, a single father with a daughter who can’t even look him in the eye. “Look, just... is it normal for a kid to not want to come out of their room? Did your brother ever get like that?”
“Well, there was that one time he ran away from home for weeks on end,” Katsuya says wryly, “but I’m sure you don’t need a rehashing of that story.”
“If you’re not going to be helpful—”
“Baofu,” says Katsuya on the other line in a voice so serious that Sojiro can’t bring himself to correct him. “It’s not normal. I wish I could tell you differently, but...”
Sojiro sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “That’s what I thought.”
“Is there really no one else?”
“I’m all she has left.” He lets out a bitter laugh at that, and very deliberately does not mention the uncle from whom he just barely wrested custody. “Isn’t that the most hilarious cosmic punchline you’ve ever heard of?”
“Philemon does have a rather odd sense of humor,” Katsuya concedes. “Listen... if there’s anything you need, I’m only an hour away.”
“Yeah... thanks. Maybe a discount at your place would be nice.”
“Only if I get one at yours.”
Sojiro laughs. “Send my regards to Ms. Amano, will you?”
"You really should write to us more, Baofu.”
“Wrong again. Bye, Suou.” He only half-hears Katsuya’s garbled protests as he presses down on the end button.
The name Sojiro had been Miki’s idea, at first. It was a small, bright vision for a future away from government work and the Taiwanese mafia where there would be a cat named Sojiro as grumpy and dignified as his name would suggest. Never mind that Prince was obviously a far better name for a cat.
The name Sakura had been Ulala’s idea. It started as a joke — Katsuya had gotten it into his head that the best time for yet another, hopefully more permanent identity change was spring — as if Sojiro was going to be a student starting a new school term at a new school, or something — and once he had Maya convinced, all bets were off. Sakura was a placeholder, or so Ulala had claimed, but then Maya said that the alliterative Sojiro Sakura had a pleasant ring to it, and it stuck.
Then, a couple years later, he was shuffled into a government facility where most of the workers wouldn’t recognize him and the ones that did had been given stern warnings not to let anything of his past slip. A very pregnant lady with black hair and glasses waggled her eyebrows at him with a knowing smile and said, “So you’re Sojiro Sakura, hmm?”
He sat her down after work that day and made her cup of decaffeinated coffee before making her promise to never call his name so suspiciously again. Wakaba Isshiki pointed a finger at him with a wicked grin, like she was the protagonist of a goddamned shounen manga, and said, “I knew you’d react that way!”
One crack about pregnant women and hormones was all it took for the coffee he’d so meticulously prepared to be flung back in his face — and all over his new dress shirt, thanks a lot Wakaba — before she stormed off and slammed the door behind her.
She didn’t accept his apology until three days later. When she did, she surprised him with a plate of curry that did not end up on his shirt. “Look,” she said, “I’m going to be bringing my daughter in a lot, and she doesn’t need anyone giving her the evil eye because they can’t get along with me.” He very wisely did not ask where the father was, or if there even was one in the picture at all. “You won’t... mind that, will you? Me bringing a baby into work every day. I’ll stop when she’s a little older, of course, but for a while...”
Sojiro took a bite of the curry, and chased it down with a swig of his own coffee. “So... you need help setting up a nursery, or something?”
Wakaba’s face lit up, and she nodded vigorously.
“Oh my god, you like her!”
“Shut up, Serizawa.”
“Oh my god! The Kaoru Saga—”
“Serizawa.”
“Fine, Sojiro Sakura. Just—you totally like her!”
“Can we not talk about this?”
“I’ll bet you already picked out names for your kids.”
“She already picked a name, so—”
“OH MY GOD, YOU DID NOT.”
The thing about cognitive psience was that he technically had the background to either confirm or deny everything that Wakaba was studying. The question was whether she’d believe him, or how she could even cite him in her research papers. Besides — it wasn’t like he could exactly hunt down Philemon so that she could interview him, or something.
When Wakaba started focusing on something, the rest of the world — her daughter included — would fade away. She couldn’t help it, but that didn’t stop Futaba from sulking when she tried to call out to her mother and didn’t get even the slightest twitch in response. When Wakaba didn’t respond, Futaba called out louder, kept calling out until she was practically yelling — and when Wakaba didn’t respond to even that, that was when Futaba started getting physical. Needless to say, a child climbing onto your lap and pulling your face in their direction is enough to break anyone’s focus.
“Futaba!” Wakaba snapped, a little too much anger plain in her expression. “I don’t have time to deal with you right now, so either sit quietly or leave!” She didn’t really mean it, but that didn’t stop the hurt expression that crossed Futaba’s face, at that. Then, before Wakaba could get herself together enough to apologize, Futaba ran from the room. Wakaba sighed, and rubbed her temples. “Geez... I really set myself up for that one, didn’t I?”
“You want me to be honest, or nice?” Sojiro asked in response.
“Giving my daughter deep-rooted psychological scars, and she isn’t even ten yet. Excellent mothering, Wakaba-san!”
“Oh, come on,” said Sojiro. “She knows you love her.”
Wakaba gave him a strained smile, peering at him from the corners of her eyes. “Does she?”
Sojiro sighed. “I’ll go check on her,” he said as he retrieved a rather large laptop from his bag, and went to do just that.
Futaba, to her credit, didn’t sob or wail loudly like other children might have, in her position — he could only tell she was anywhere near tears by how her brow pinched together and the barely audible sniffles she couldn’t quite suppress. “Mom’s stupid,” she said, as he sat down next to her.
Sojiro opened the laptop and pulled up the terminal. “Remember what we were working on yesterday?” he asked.
“‘Hello world,’ right?” Futaba asked, inching closer to him to peer at the laptop screen.
“Can you show me how to do that again?” he asked as he gently pushed the laptop onto her lap.
It wasn’t like he was trying to turn her into a hacker — actually, Wakaba would probably have his head if she knew he was trying to nudge her daughter anywhere near his old line of work — but Futaba went about her code with a sort of clean precision he couldn’t find in many adults who’d been in the profession for years.
“Did you know you can draw with this thing too?” he asked once she’d successfully executed the program.
“Really?” Futaba asked, eyes wide.
“Yup! You’ve gotta command the computer to draw for you by telling it where to go, when to draw lines and when to stop...” He typed away for a bit, and then, in a new window that popped up, a triangle materialized.
“That’s so cool!” Futaba gasped. “Can I try?”
She didn’t get it right away — but by the time Wakaba finally emerged from her office-cave, Futaba’s previous upset was long forgotten. “Mom, look!” she called out. She tried to turn the laptop around to face her mother, accidentally pushing it so far off-balance that Sojiro had to grab onto it to steady it.
"Wow!” Wakaba gushed, clapping her hands together and grinning at the computer-generated doodles — something vaguely resembling houses and trees. “You did this by yourself?”
“Sojiro helped!” Futaba replied enthusiastically, and Wakaba smiled knowingly at him in return.
“What do you say we go get sushi?” asked Wakaba, a preemptive apology in and of itself.
“Yay!” Futaba cheered.
They have Personas. They’ve had goddamned Personas for months right under his nose, and Sojiro doesn’t know whether he wants to laugh at the irony of it all or punch Philemon in the face. (Philemon, who promised to fix everything after Nyarlathotep had been dealt with, but evidently didn’t promise that none of it would happen again. Fuck him.)
There’s always been something off about Ren — nothing to do with juvenile delinquency or lack thereof, but a slight doubt that turns Sojiro’s gut whenever he looks at the kid for too long at one stretch. It makes Prometheus start to whisper at the back of his mind, when he hasn’t heard his Persona in years. Odder still, that feeling had spread to Futaba, until—
—until he’s being dragged by both kids to the train station, Prometheus’s voice a roar at the back of his mind.
“Shadows, Sojiro,” Futaba corrects them as they walk to a less populated corner of the train station. “We fight Shadows, not demons.”
“Same thing,” he grumbles.
“No, there’s a difference,” Futaba replies. “The word ‘demon’ implies that these things came from elsewhere, but really they’re all just extensions of humanity. It’s basic cognitive psience!” The train station begins to warp and distort into something red and sprawling, and his hair stands up on end just as it had in Nyarlathotep’s twisted realm — though if what Futaba’s saying is true, then this place is exactly that, isn’t it?
“So how do you do it?” Sojiro asks, deliberately nonchalant. Ren and Futaba’s clothes have transformed into elaborate costumes — so elaborate, they would give Ulala a run for her money.
“We’re practically magical girls, Sojiro!” says Futaba. “Watch and learn.” At once, they rip their masks off as shimmering, translucent figures materialize behind them. “Behold: Prometheus! My pride and joy, and my totally badass inner self. Pretty neat, huh?”
Prometheus, huh? “What about you, kid?” Sojiro asks Ren.
“He’s special!” Futaba answers for him. “Unlike us plebs, he can summon multiple Personas?”
For the first time, after years of burying his past identities, Sojiro slips up. “Isn’t that normal?” Futaba and Ren exchange a look, and Sojiro runs a hand down his face. “What, is Igor not helping you out, or something?”
“Who’s Igor?” Futaba asks at the same time that Ren bows his head and whispers, “He only helps me.”
What the hell is Philemon thinking? Sojiro barely stops himself from saying — but it doesn’t do much good, because his next instinct is to laugh. “When did the rules change?” he chokes out between hysterical giggles. “Why did the rules change?”
He knows, abruptly, that it’s the wrong thing to say because Futaba’s starting to shrink into herself and Ren’s face goes so impassive and expressionless that it can’t be anything more than a front. It takes an embarrassingly long time for him to collect himself, but the damage is already done: he can barely see Futaba, with the way she’s hiding behind Ren, and Ren poker-faces his way through an awkward, clunky: “Are you okay, Sakura-san?”
Aren’t you supposed to be the adult? he chides himself, running a hand through his hair to calm his nerves. Then a demon — Shadow, he corrects himself — starts slithering behind Futaba and Ren, poised to strike. Reflexively, he reaches into his pocket for the few coins he can’t seem to get rid of, years later. This is my job, he thinks as he flicks a coin directly into the Shadow and relishes its cry of pain as it dissolves into nothing. This was always supposed to be my job, not theirs.
Futaba and Ren’s unease dissipates at once. “Cognition is amazing,” Futaba gasps.
“Just... with one coin...?” Ren whispers, dumbfounded.
Sojiro shoves the coins back into his pocket and rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “Not my first rodeo, kids.”
When they go back to Leblanc, he talks, and the lines between Sojiro, Baofu, and even Kaoru begin to blur. He tells them about Miki, about why he needed to leave Kaoru behind. He tells them about his work as a rumormonger back when things couldn’t just go viral so easily like they do now, in a world that no longer exists. He tells them about Maya, about Ulala, about Katsuya and Tatsuya — and how they somehow managed to convince him to leave Baofu behind and start over for real.
They already know everything that came after that.
“Wait, so if you have a Persona, that means you can help us!” says Futaba.
Sojiro sighs. “I wish I could,” he says, defeated, “but I couldn’t feel him at all in that place.” Hear him, maybe — but not in a way he could access him, like he used to.
“You said...” Ren says slowly, hesitantly, “... that Igor helped... all of you? Not just one person?”
“Yeah, about that,” Sojiro says sharply. “Sorry for kind of... losing it, back in there. But it doesn’t make sense that he’s helping only you out and not everyone else. Maybe it’s because there’s too many of you...?” He sighs again. “Look... I might not be able to help you with fighting demons—”
“Shadows,” Futaba and Ren correct him in unison.
“Shadows. But I can still drum up some of my old contacts. Weapons, armor, healing items, skill cards, whatever. We can help.”
“Roger!” says Futaba.
“And good god, tell me if things start to get too serious. You think you’re summoning gods, but once you start dealing with actual gods? That’s a whole different mess.” This doesn’t produce quite as enthusiastic a response as the previous statement — which is fine. Hopefully, they’ll never have to truly understand.
“Have you?” Ren asks. “Dealt with actual gods, I mean.” He looks up at Sojiro just barely, not quite meeting his eyes, and Sojiro can’t bring himself to lie to that face.
He sighs and rubs the back of his neck, and says, “Like I said: not my first rodeo.”
“So what was yours?” Futaba asks. “If you had a Persona like us.”
“Prometheus,” he answers, and wonders if he really should have when both Futaba and Ren’s eyes fly wide open.
“W-Wait...” says Futaba. “That’s mine! Mine’s Prometheus, too!”
He ruffles her hair at that. “I’ll take that as a good sign.”
They’ll be fine, he tells himself over and over again, as he looks at Futaba and Ren and thinks about the months they’ve spent doing this — longer, probably, than even he did, all those many years ago. And if they’re not, then there will be hell to pay.