Fall Fates

Journey

Sunday, 9/24/12, Port Island Station Resort, Early Evening...

"Ditto." A strange, silly word, likely of Latin origin, usually used informally to communicate that something already said is applicable a second time.

Foreign as it was, the word was slowly consuming Naoto's thoughts the longer she lay on her hotel bed. Her laptop hummed quietly at the hotel-provided desk across from the bed, her email open but no longer receiving incoming mail as the work day was over. In addition, there was a single web page open that had a dictionary listing for "ditto" along with its etymology. Like most times when Naoto became hyper-focused, she had researched and stuffed her head so full of information that would most likely be of no use to anyone else. She could just imagine Yosuke laughing at her getting all worked up over it.

That would still be a more tolerable outcome than him saying "ditto" to her again.

It was a recent phenomenon of the past couple of weeks, but Yosuke had taken to replying "ditto" in any instance where she said "I love you" during their phone conversations. He would giggle nervously whenever he said it, but Naoto didn't happen to think it was very funny and it didn't take long to convince herself that something was wrong. There was a chance she was off base; decoding meaning and intent from conversation was not easy for her, particularly if she couldn't at least try to read body language. Moreover, as she had learned throughout the past year of having real friends, she wasn't the best at conveying her own feelings and emotions in her speech.

Case in point: for her, declaring her love (or referring to him as her "love") was dead serious, but she didn't know if that was coming across. Being that this was the first time she had held such strong feelings for someone, she often wondered if there was a "correct" way to say those kinds of things. If she were to go by Rise's example, a potentially useful way was to use a sultry or cutesy voice, followed by an excessive amount of touching and hugging and kissing. While that seemed effective, Naoto knew her limits and couldn't fathom doing any of that. She wanted to be herself, but...what if "herself" wasn't good enough? After all, if he didn't want to say he loved her back, would it not be reasonable to believe that it was because he didn't feel as strongly as her? Could it be that what she thought of their relationship and what he thought were on different wavelengths? She suddenly missed her hat, which was so easy to pull down and bring her to darkness, but it was still with Yosuke, along with her heart. Even through the unpleasantness, the simple truth that she loved him dearly was impossible to deny.

Even then, she wasn't so socially unaware to not notice how...tense their recent calls had been getting, as if they were in a standoff instead of lonely lovers. Their Saturday call had ended abruptly when Naoto, in a fit of rage, hung up when Yosuke giggled a little when she called him her love; she blamed it on a poor signal from the hotel. That wasn't an uncommon occurrence; as Naoto began to be less confident and more afraid of her actions, the fear naturally led to anger. The anger was mostly reserved for herself, although Yosuke's everyday irritants, normally worth simply an unseen eye-roll, were like nails on a chalkboard when she was in that kind of mood. He'd gotten the blunt end of that anger a few times and only sometimes would Naoto catch herself and apologize, at which point she'd be overwhelmed by anxiety and concern for his feelings. She had wanted to say something about him saying "ditto," but she was terrified of coming across like some vindictive shrew, especially since it was almost always after-the-fact. It was a tricky and exhausting journey, which had only just begun.

With all of that piling up it was a shock she was able to focus on her work at all, but at least the end did truly appear to be near. Mitsuru had finally determined, after some espionage on the part of Labrys and Naoto, who in the Kirijo Group had funded the operatives carrying out Labrys' abduction, and was in the process of having them sacked from the company so they could no longer access the valuable data stored at its headquarters. It was imperative to Mitsuru, however, that Naoto discover a method of handing the executives over to the law that didn't involve divulging information about shadows or Personas. Thankfully, with the help of Aigis' vast databases and Fuuka Yamagishi's technical wizardry, Naoto had uncovered that the funds used to pay off the specialist group that had taken Labrys were made when the traitors sold stock before an unexpected market plunge. As it turns out, the group had helped orchestrate the plunge by knowingly botching contract disputes in order to distract from their activities. It was a small crime, but insider trading was to be the needle through which Mitsuru would then thread a host of lawsuits based on their internal sabotage. The court case would take a while to settle and the perpetrators would be removed from the company and forced to deal with legal windfall from one of the biggest companies in Japan. They were dead men walking, whether they knew it or not.