dwellsinthedetails | OOM: After the Spaceport

Haru keeps the group posted on her father’s health after the change of heart is carried out; he’s not doing well, but it seems he’d been under a fair amount of stress anyway, and it’s not as though Madarame did a lot in the time between the actual change of heart and his press conference. It doesn’t sound dissimilar enough to inspire worry, at any rate.

The night before their deadline – at least Haru’s fairly certain she won’t be forced to her fiance’s home, thanks to their work – Akira texts the group for an urgent meeting in Shibuya. He shows up from one of the westbound lines, looking more than a little worried, and what he relays about the conversation he just had with Mishima is frankly disturbing. The fact that Mishima himself was apparently aware enough of how ‘let’s purge all the forum users who disagree with you’ sounds to ask if the Phantom Thieves were coming for him next is a little promising, but only a little.

It doesn’t take much for the group to agree to go into Mementos after him, though Mishima’s Shadow insists on talking to Akira alone. Fortunately, it doesn’t devolve into a fight; Yusuke just hopes it was enough.

The next morning, Yusuke wakes to a text from Haru, asking if he’d like to help her with a project after school. As he has no pressing engagements, he agrees; Haru meets him at the school gate, and leads him up to the roof, ignoring the ‘no students allowed’ sign posted on the door.

“I was asked to take responsibility for the school’s planters,” she explains. “It’s… helped me to keep my head up, this year, and I’ve always enjoyed working with plants. But I thought you might want to help me with the composition of a few of them.”

Yusuke grins. “I would be honored.” Frankly, he’s surprised she wants to start any projects in October, never mind the vibrant planters already present on the roof; she must have something above and beyond a green thumb to do this well in the middle of Tokyo.

They’re still working when the others join them, eager to discuss the press conference Okumura’s holding this evening, as well as the matter of celebrating the team’s newest member and the full cessation of hostilities between Ryuji and Morgana. (Not that they don’t still needle each other, but to Yusuke, it feels more like when Futaba prods at him than the vicious bickering they used to do.) They’re unable to settle on an appropriate destination, especially since the consensus is that they need to top going to Ginza for fancy sushi – and then Haru casually suggests Destinyland, of all places.

Yusuke never would have thought to suggest a theme park, especially not one of that caliber. Tickets are prohibitively expensive for most of their group, after all, particularly on such short notice as this, and ordinarily such a place would be far too crowded for the kind of celebration they’re best at having. But Haru steps aside to make a phone call, and returns with good news: Okumura Foods had previously rented the entire park for a company party, since canceled because of the scandals the company’s been embroiled in.

“We’d hardly get anything back if we canceled the reservation now,” she says, and with that, the group is sold. It makes for a fun, if very surreal, evening, given that the eight of them have the run of the park and time for a very relaxing dinner under the stars and fireworks.

The mood sobers somewhat when Okumura’s press conference begins, all of them watching the video feed on their phones. It starts normally enough, for a change-of-heart conference; at least, it tallies well with Madarame’s confession, which is the only one Yusuke has as a reference point. Kamoshida apparently interrupted a school assembly at Shujin, Kaneshiro turned himself in to the police directly, and Medjed, as Futaba puts it, was an outlier and should not be counted. But there’s one question they weren’t able to fully resolve in the Palace – the matter of the mental shutdowns – and Okumura plans to address it.

“I—” But he gets no further before suffering some kind of attack, his eyes apparently rolling back in his head and black blood oozing from his mouth. Understandably, the broadcast cuts off, leaving them all to panic.

They did everything the same. What went wrong, and why now?

In the midst of the others trying to make sense of what just happened, Yusuke notices Futaba hyperventilating. “What’s wrong?”

“That – that was just like – what happened to my mom,” she manages to say, neatly answering one question: Okumura’s been subjected to a mental shutdown, and the Phantom Thieves have been left to take the blame for it.

Haru excuses herself, understandably so. Despite her assurances that they should try to enjoy the rest of their evening, the rest of the group disbands and heads home shortly after her. It wouldn’t do for them to raise suspicions by being caught somewhere they shouldn’t be, after all, not when everything’s been pulled out from under them.

How can they possibly begin to recover from this one?