Persona 3: Never To Leave

Learning To Live

“Keep watching over me, ne?”

Once Minato and the rest of his friends left Tartarus, the once haunting structure collapsed into rubble behind them. The last billowing clouds of dust had finally dispersed and the green sky that they had known as the Dark Hour had disappeared.

Navy blue curtains of night sky replaced the emerald from before, and the tiny white specks that were stars emerged from the deep darkness. The moon had returned to its original size, shining as brightly as it did before.

Before long, the rubble of Tartarus vanished and in the prison’s place Gekkoukan High School appeared. From any person’s view, the night of January 31st was like any other normal night. It was almost like nothing had ever gone wrong.

Little did those people know, everything within the group of SEES had changed.

Mitsuru who was cold towards Minato in the latter parts of his journey had become the kind and loving girl that he had known ever since his childhood. It was as if the icy barriers she had created had melted.

Akihiko and Shinjiro, who had been avoiding Minato, were now about as close as any guy friends could be. Just like before. They were the Akihiko and Shinjiro that Minato recognised to be just like when he was younger in mind, when they hung out all the time.

Minako was bubbly as ever, and seemed even closer to Minato if that was even possible. Aside from their increased closeness, it appeared that nothing else had changed. Haruno was alive, which probably contributed to the family’s closeness.

Yukari and Junpei who weren’t involved too much in SEES the last time that Minato had tried to ‘fix’ the timelines were now close friends with him, akin to the bonds that Minato shared with Akihiko and Shinjiro.

Aigis was the same as ever, the friendship between her and Minato still strong. Koromaru had the same playful nature that Minato remembered as well. Fuuka was once again close to Minato, and her cooking no longer caused any casualties. The last time Minato had interacted with Fuuka in the tweaked timeline, her cooking showed no signs of improving. None further than that, because he didn’t hang out with her that often, if at all.

Richard had somehow mysteriously disappeared. He appeared just as briefly in Minato’s life as he did the first time. Minato wasn’t exactly sure where he was, but whenever he talked to Mitsuru in French he could remember him. Not as a troubled Persona user but as a good guy that gave him some advice on how to charm a girl. Needless to say, Minato found it quite amusing and always laughed a little at that.

Ray didn’t seem to be appearing any time soon, though something told Minato that she didn’t need to be worried about. The reason, he could not put his finger on though.

Even Minato’s old friends like Kenji, Hidetoshi, Chihiro, Yuko, Kaz, Rio, Saori, Akinari, Mamoru, Bebe and Keisuke were extremely close, even though Minato hadn’t socialized much with them when he was fixing the timelines.

Other friends like Mutatsu, Maiko, Ken and even Tanaka he was still on good terms with, even though like all his other friends, he hadn’t talked with them much.

As Minato aged, he took more to spending time with his friends than anything else. With that promise of his in mind, he took it upon himself to make the limited time he had as meaningful as possible.

He stayed with his friends and family until the end, not wanting to question why everything was so different than the last time. It was basically what he could call the perfect reality, forged around his wishes.

Remembering his previous commitments as they became more apparent, he helped Mitsuru with her work to monitor Shadow activity.

After some time, and with his proposal from long ago, he and Mitsuru were married.