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Yusuke isn’t sure where he went wrong.
He lays on the futon in Ren’s attic bedroom, retracing his actions from the day and trying to figure out if he made some kind of social faux pas. Certainly his request to move in with Ann had been rather sudden, but that was why he’d bought those expensive Japanese sweets as a present (despite the protests of his now-empty wallet). He doesn’t understand why everyone reacted so strongly to the suggestion, and he can’t help but hear Ryuji’s words ringing in his ears yet again.
“You’re the impossible one!”
It must be his fault, then. Somewhere along the way, he must have made a mistake and he can’t fathom what it could be. Perhaps he should have let her know in advance—after all, he knows all too well how frustrating unexpected changes can be—but she had said her parents would never go for it, not that it was too sudden. It was also possible that he was misunderstanding what parents were like, since he didn’t have much experience in that area, but he can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to it than that.
The idea of moving in with Ann had seemed so rational to him. She had been decently receptive to his requests to have her model for his art so far, and she also seemed like the sort to keep her room clean enough that it wouldn’t get on his nerves. Plus, Ryuji would have been too loud to deal with at all hours of the day and he’d been too uncertain about Ren’s living situation to consider asking him then. Thankfully Morgana had stepped in and saved him the embarrassment of returning to the school dorms.
Living with Ren doesn’t seem too bad now that he’s here, though. The leader of the Phantom Thieves is quiet and doesn’t force Yusuke to engage in small talk, and he doesn’t mind listening to occasionally one-sided conversations about art (at least Yusuke really hopes Ren doesn’t mind and isn’t just pretending in order to be polite, because he’s not very good at telling the difference). Morgana isn’t an unpleasant roommate either, despite his chatter, and Yusuke can’t pretend he doesn’t find the cat’s habit of stating the obvious useful since he’s sometimes prone to overlooking simple things.
Why then, does it feel so wrong?
Yusuke rolls over to stare at the ceiling of the attic. By his estimations, this room should be far more comfortable than the dreaded school dorms. It’s quieter, for one, and the faint smell of coffee is much more pleasant than the overbearing smell of sweaty teenagers that permeates the halls of the dorms. But it’s a much smaller difference than he’d anticipated and he finds himself wishing that he was back in his room in the “shack”, as Ryuji had called it. To have slept in the same room as long as he could remember only to have it unexpectedly taken away from him makes him sick to his stomach, and Yusuke frantically tries to wrestle his mind away from that topic before it gets worse. But it’s too late and suddenly the bare attic walls are closing in on him and the noise of the traffic outside is unbearably loud and he feels like the world will end if he doesn’t do something about it…
“Yusuke!”
The sound of his name being shouted pulls him back in the present, and he’s shocked to find himself backed into a corner of the attic like a cornered animal. Ren is standing in front of him, though he seems to have stopped a respectable distance away (which is a blessing because Yusuke doesn’t think he could handle being crowded right now). His pulse is racing, and his chest is heaving as if he’s just narrowly escaped being chased by a Shadow.
Ren seems to sense that he now has Yusuke’s attention because he asks, “Hey, is everything alright?”
It’s clearly not alright, or else Yusuke would be sleeping like he should be, but he doesn’t want them to know that. He tries to open his mouth to say he’s fine, but his body is refusing to cooperate. Instead he stares at the floor, wishing it would swallow him up somehow.
“He doesn’t seem alright,” comments Morgana.
Ren tries again. “Yusuke, are you okay?”
Panic rises in Yusuke’s chest. He has to say something, because if he doesn’t then they’ll know something is wrong. Which it clearly is, anyways, but he thinks that if he could just talk he’d be able to convince them that everything is fine. He feels frozen in place—no, his whole body is frozen, just like the Shadows sometimes get after a well-placed Bufu.
“I don’t think he’s going to say anything,” Morgana says. “You should do something, Ren.”
Ren takes a hesitant step forward, and apparently Yusuke isn’t actually frozen because he can’t stop his whole body from flinching back.
Ren stops immediately. “I think we should give him some space,” he says, probably to Morgana.
“Yeah, but he really doesn’t look good.” Despite keeping his gaze firmly on the floor, Yusuke can feel Morgana’s piercing blue eyes boring into him. “Should we get Sojiro?”
Yusuke wills himself to shake his head, and is surprised when his body actually listens to him this time. The movement is a little more frantic than he intended, but it gets the message across.
“Oh good, he can still hear us,” says Morgana.
“Yusuke, why don’t you sit down?” Ren suggests. “Then we can talk this out.”
Yusuke is already lowering himself to the floor when he realizes that Ren probably meant to sit down on the futon and not the floor. Pressing his back into the corner behind him is comforting, however, and he’s not entirely sure his shaky legs would have made it to the futon anyways. To his relief, Ren decides to sit where he is as well, even scooting back a bit so that there’s more space between them. Morgana follows his lead and curls up beside him on the floor.
“You deal with this one, Ren,” he yawns. “Wake me if you need my expertise.”
“Gee, thanks Morgana,” Yusuke hears Ren mutter.
The silence stretches between them, and Yusuke counts the car horns in the distance in an effort to calm his mind. One. Two. Three. Is Ren ever going to talk, or should he try to say something? Four. Five. It’s actually working, he can feel some of the tension leaving his body.
Ren is the first one to break the silence. “It’s okay if you’re not ready to talk yet. But I’m here to listen if you feel you can.”
Had Ren read his mind? No, he must simply be reading the situation, thinks Yusuke, though that seems just as far-fetched as mind-reading if you ask him. Two more car horns, he decides. Then he’ll try to say something again.
Six.
Seven.
Yusuke takes a deep breath. His lungs seem to be working properly again, which is a good sign. “I’m sorry,” he manages to croak out, though he can’t bring himself to look at Ren just yet.
It’s probably not what Ren expected to hear, but to his credit he doesn’t hesitate before saying, “Don’t be sorry, I’m sure this isn’t your fault.”
Yusuke wants to believe him, but he can’t because he knows it’s his fault. He’s the one who misunderstood everything and now he’s here having a meltdown in front of one of the few people who have actually been nice to him.
“Was it a nightmare?” tries Ren. “I, um, get those sometimes and it can be pretty spooky.”
Ren sounds almost hopeful, which seems odd to Yusuke. He wonders if lying and saying it was a nightmare would be easier—after all, it did kind of feel like one—but the idea of lying to someone who’s trying so hard to help doesn’t sit well with him. The thought of the truth is equally scary, however, and he fights a brief internal battle as he struggles to decide what to say.
“I can’t tell you,” he whispers finally.
“Well, you don’t have to,” says Ren, shifting his weight slightly and making a floorboard creak. “I’ve just never seen you lose your composure like this and to be honest, you’re worrying me.”
Yusuke stares at his hands. “He told me—he told me I should never tell anyone.”
“Who told you?”
Yusuke wants so badly to get it out there, get it off his chest so he doesn’t have to deal with all this alone, but he can’t even bring himself to say the name. Instead he says, “Him.”
Ren draws in a sharp breath. “The one we just fought?”
Yusuke is very grateful that Ren is better at reading minds—sorry, reading situations—than he is. He nods his head a bit too vigorously, and the next sentence comes tumbling out. “He told me that everyone would leave me if they found out how awful I really was.”
“Yusuke,” Ren says, “I’m pretty sure there’s nothing you could tell me that would make believe that you were an awful person after what I’ve seen you do. And I’m definitely sure that the others would agree with me.”
Yusuke doesn’t understand what he means. Sensei—no his former sensei—had always been very insistent of this fact, just as he’d been insistent that Yusuke should look him in the eye and not cower when he shouted too loud. He hardly registers that he’s now hugging his knees to his chest as he repeats, “He told me they would leave me.”
“We’re your teammates,” Ren reassures him. “Remember what we were talking about earlier today? You belong with us, and we’re not going to leave you anytime soon.”
“Oh,” is all that Yusuke can say as he tries to process this new information. He wishes he had his sketchbook so that he could do something with his hands and focus on something other than Ren’s expectant gaze, but it’s all the way over in his bag.
Ren stands up, disturbing the sleeping Morgana in the process (who grumbles in protest and takes off to curl up in the middle of Ren’s bed). “I could really use a glass of water. Would you like one?”
Yusuke suddenly notices how parched his throat is, and he nods.
“Okay, I’ll be back in a minute. You can decide then if you’re ready to talk.” He’s almost at the stairs when Yusuke calls out.
“Ren?”
His footsteps stop. “Yes?”
Yusuke looks down again. “I—I’ll tell you when you get back.” His heartbeat speeds up again when he says it so he doesn’t quite hear Ren’s response. Instead, he focuses all of his energy on taking deep breaths. After a minute, he’s actually calm enough to pull himself shakily to his feet and he makes his way over to the futon, pausing to pull his sketchbook out of his bag on the way.
Soon Ren reappears with a glasses of water in each hand, and he looks around before spotting Yusuke on the edge of the futon. He hands one of the glasses to him and pulls up a chair instead of sitting next to him. Yusuke is glad because he’s not sure he’s ready for someone to be that close to him, and makes a mental note to thank Ren later. He takes a sip of the water and feels a little bit of energy coming back to his weak limbs.
“I apologize for the outburst, Ren,” he says, and is relieved to find that he’s starting to sound like himself again. “Believe me when I say it was somewhat out of my control.”
Ren rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, I kind of guessed that.”
“In truth, there is something I must confess,” continues Yusuke, his pencil starting to dance over a fresh page of his sketchbook. Talking while drawing is a lot easier, he notices. “I hadn’t exactly planned on telling you—at least not like this—but it’s only fair that you know after what happened tonight.”
Ren nods, and takes a drink from his own glass. He doesn’t seem like he has anything to say so Yusuke presses on.
“The truth is, I have a… ‘condition’, as one might call it. A rather severe one that makes certain things very difficult for me.” Yusuke took a deep breath as he prepared to say the words that had never been uttered outside of the psychologist’s office and his former sensei’s angry rants. “I—I’m on the autism spectrum. I was tested as a child and that’s what they told me.” The panic flares up inside him once again and he presses his pencil a little harder, the lines coming out darker than he intended. Oh well, it wasn’t like he was expecting some masterpiece in his current state of mind.
“Oh, that’s not even close to as bad as I was imagining.” Ren’s answer is so matter-of-fact that Yusuke temporarily forgets his fear. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
He looks up in shock, his pencil hovering above the page. “It’s not!?”
“No, it’s not,” confirms Ren. “And I can’t imagine who would have put that idea in your—wait.” He sets down his now empty water glass a little too forcefully. “Is this the thing that Mada—sorry, your former sensei—said would make other people abandon you?” His voice has an intensity that Yusuke has only ever heard in the Metaverse, and another rush of adrenaline leaves him unable to do anything but nod his head in response.
Then Ren—the gentle, soft-spoken student who never seems to lose his composure whether he's facing an angry teacher or a terrifying Shadow—Ren lets loose a string of expletives in which Yusuke can distinguish very few normal words other than “ableist pig”. He wonders at first if he’s done something wrong and instinctively slides a little further back on the futon, and when Ren notices he stops immediately.
“It’s okay, I’m not angry at you,” he clarifies. “I just can’t believe that people like him exist in the world.”
His voice is pure venom, and Yusuke has never seen him so angry, not even in battle. Then he realizes that all of this anger is on his behalf, and he doesn’t quite know how to react to that when he’s so used to being the target of anger. “I—I’m sorry,” he stammers. “I didn’t mean to upset—”
“No,” interrupts Ren. “I’m glad you told me. I only wish I’d known earlier so that I could have strangled his Shadow with my own bare hands.” Yusuke flinches at that and Ren sighs, running his hand through his hair. “Sorry, I got a bit fired up. People like him make me so mad.”
“It’s fine,” says Yusuke, wide-eyed. “I didn’t know there were people like you in the world.”
Ren gives him a look that he can’t quite decipher. “Yusuke, you know we would never abandon you for something like this, right?”
“I didn’t until tonight,” admits Yusuke. “But if you’ll pardon the request, would you mind not sharing this with the others yet? I’m not quite ready for them to know this.”
Ren nods. “You have my word.” A moment of silence follows before he speaks again. “I actually know a little bit about the autism spectrum so don’t worry about explaining everything to me. But I wouldn’t mind hearing from you about whatever was causing you so much distress earlier.”
“Ah, that…” Yusuke allows his voice to trail off as he searches for the words to explain what had just happened. “Have you ever experienced a disruption to your daily life so large that it turned everything upside down?”
“Yusuke, I have literally been arrested and forced to move cities because I was expelled from school for it.”
“Ah, my apologies,” Yusuke says quickly. “I had forgotten.”
“Well, that makes you the first,” replies Ren with a heavy sigh. “Go on.”
Yusuke eyes his sketch, which seems to be taking the form of a sleeping cat. “I am not very good at handling disturbances to my routine. This whole affair has been rather… taxing for me, as fun as it’s been.”
“Is that why you were unhappy in the dorms?” asks Ren, and Yusuke is once again amazed at his ability to put seemingly unrelated pieces of information together.
“Precisely.” He absent-mindedly traces a hand along the edge of the page. “It is somewhat embarrassing to admit, but I am feeling rather homesick for my old room, as depressing as that place turned out to be.”
“That’s completely understandable,” says Ren. “You know, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like if it’s more comfortable for you.”
Yusuke takes a deep breath. “I do appreciate the offer. However, I believe it is best for me to attempt to adapt to the school dorms, as filthy and noisy as they may be.”
He’s known that all along, really. He barely has the means to afford daily necessities as it is and he can’t bring himself to be a burden on Sojiro, who had treated him so kindly earlier. Plus, there can be no doubt that it provides a valuable chance to learn more about what people are like (which is turning out to be a much messier task than he originally anticipated, but he knows that it’s important if he intends to represent them in his art).
“Well, if you’re sure about it.” Ren leans back in his chair. “Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”
“Actually, there is one other matter I wish to ask you about,” confesses Yusuke. “I, er, seem to have made a social faux pas yesterday and I’m not entirely sure where it was. I was wondering if I could borrow your insight to attempt to identify where I misstepped.”
“A social faux pas?” Ren thinks for a moment. “Oh, are you talking about when you asked to move in with Ann?”
Yusuke feels his cheeks heat up slightly at the reminder of his prior embarrassment. “Yes, that would be the one. I believe it was Ryuji who said that I was the impossible one?”
Ren winces visibly. “Ah, I can see how that might be upsetting. Though I can assure you he didn’t mean it in a rude way—well, other than his normal rudeness, that is. He was just a bit shocked. We all were, to be honest.”
Yusuke sighs. “I admit that I probably shouldn’t have sprung it on her like that. I myself was rather shocked at the intensity of everyone’s reaction, however.”
“Yeah, um, let me think of a good way to explain this.” Ren is silent for a moment, presumably thinking. “Adults can sometimes… overreact to teenagers sleeping over. I think that’s what we were all thinking of when you said that.”
“Oh, but Sojiro wasn’t concerned at all when you asked if I could stay, was he?”
Ren heaves a sigh. “For some reason, it’s much more of an issue if it involves a boy and a girl. It’s a little outdated, but you know what adults are like.”
Yusuke can’t exactly say he knows what adults are like after the most prominent adult in his life turned out to be, well, not exactly average, but he nods anyway. “I see. It eases my mind somewhat to know that I could not have predicted that, even in my wildest dreams.”
“I should clarify that none of us are upset with you,” says Ren. “You do have a reputation for being a little, um, oblivious of social norms. Not that that’s a bad thing,” he quickly adds, “and I know now that it’s not something you can really help. It’s almost an endearing part of your personality, honestly.”
Yusuke frowns. “What do you mean?”
“It’s just one of the things that makes you you, you know? Just like the interesting observations you make and your frankly admirable passion for art.”
“Oh.” Yusuke has never thought of his quirks as anything other than shameful (except for his art of course, he is quite proud of that one) and to hear them described in such a positive manner makes him a little embarrassed. “I have never considered it in that way before,” he says truthfully. “Then again, I have never heard it described in a way that wasn’t mocking or scornful.”
“That is maybe the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” Ren’s hands curl into fists for a moment before he notices and releases them. “Please don’t listen to anyone who says that from now on.”
“I assure you, I try not to listen to them already.” Yusuke shifts his legs to change the angle of the sketchbook on his lap and as he does, he accidentally kicks the forgotten water glass by his feet. It doesn’t break, thankfully, but it does roll across the floor with a noise that resonates in the quiet attic.
The raspy voice that calls out from Ren’s bed makes them both jump. “Hey, what’s with the midnight party? You both need your rest so we can keep looking for the next target tomorrow!”
“Ah, sorry Morgana!” exclaims Ren. “I was just making sure Yusuke was okay like you asked me to.”
“Well hurry up and get to bed!” orders the cat, and he grumbles something under his breath about silly teenagers as he rearranges himself on the bed.
Ren looks back at Yusuke and shrugs in defeat. “Sorry, I should probably do what he says. He gets kind of grumpy when I don’t listen to him.”
“Of course, I am getting rather tired myself. Things like this, er, ‘episode’ of mine take a lot out of me.”
Ren nods solemnly. “I would imagine so. Let’s get some sleep, and we can keep talking later if you’d like.”
“I would quite like that.” Yusuke takes a moment to scrutinize his half-completed sketch, which is a bit clumsy but not terrible considering the circumstances, before flipping the sketchbook closed. “Say, Ren, would it be a bother if I came to you for advice on situations like today, should they occur again?”
“Not at all,” replies Ren without hesitation as he stands to make his way over to his bed. “Though knowing you, that’s probably more of a ‘when’ they occur again.”
The light clicks off, and Yusuke grins sheepishly into the darkness. “You may be quite correct on that observation.”
“Well, I’m only ever a text away if you need me, being a teenage cellphone addict and all.” He hears Ren yawn and the rustle of bedcovers. “Goodnight, Yusuke.”
“Goodnight.” Yusuke responds. “And thank you, by the way.”
But Ren is already asleep. Yusuke makes himself comfortable on the futon, bits of the conversation replaying in his head. One phrase keeps coming back in particular, and he clings to it even as he feels his consciousness slipping into the realm of sleep.
“You belong with us, and we’re not going to leave you anytime soon.”
“I belong here,” he murmurs to himself, softly for fear of waking Morgana again, and falls asleep with a faint smile on his lips.