Chapter Text
Yosuke Hanamura’s face always broke out into a smile every time he got a call from his best friend, Yu Narukami. It had been months since they last saw each other, Golden Week was an unforgettable yet distant memory. After those events, all the boys had was their cellphones. While it stunk, it was still better than nothing, at least until Yu came back to Inaba.
So, as you may imagine, laying on his bed after working at Junes, Yosuke smiled wide on the first day of July when he got a call from Yu. The phone didn’t even ring twice when he picked it up and put it to his ear with an enthusiastic “Hey partner!”
“Hey, Yosuke.” Something was off. His partner, while not the most expressive person, always sounded at least happy to hear him when he picked up the phone. Today, his voice sounded strained. Yosuke’s smile immediately fell.
“Something wrong? You don’t sound like yourself.”
“Well, it’s just,” Yu hesitated and Yosuke could hear a static sigh through the phone. “My parents apparently didn’t like me going back to Inaba for Golden Week, you know how they are, and because of that I’m not allowed to go back during summer break or winter break…” his voice trailed off.
“H-huh? What’re you talking about? Your parents can’t do that to you! That’s just unfair!”
“Yosuke… they’re my parents and, while I don’t agree with their decision, I can’t just run off to Inaba. I’m sorry.”
“Wha- but I- erm- we- had so many plans for you this summer! What’s wrong with your parents anyways?! Do they not like us or something? They’re never even home, you told us yourself! They can’t make decisions for you like this, that’s just fucked up!” Yosuke was enraged now, the weight of the situation stirring up anger.
“Yosuke, please calm down. I know, and trust me, I don’t like it either. But, we’re only in school for another year. I’ll do everything I can to make it back to Inaba after then, I swear, my parents can’t control my life forever,” that last part came out as more of a sigh than anything. “I haven’t told the rest of the team yet, I figured you should be the first to know."
Yosuke took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “Ok, it’ll be ok,” He was talking more to himself than his friend. “So long as you promise that we’ll see each other again because, man, I don’t know how I’m going to survive this year only texting and calling you.”
“I promise.”
A Good While Later
I promise. Bullshit.
It was a late Saturday night, only a few days before graduation. University was so close, he had been counting down the days in his head, the days until he could see his best friend again. Or so he thought.
“Come on, please respond,” the boy whispered into his phone screen, his latest attempt at contacting the old friend staring back, the old smiling profile picture of his lost partner driving needles into his heart. “Please.”
Tears welled in the corners of his eyes, out of grief or rage, he didn't know. It had been months, months of missed calls and unread texts.
Yet, somehow, it only took two weeks for the team to give up on their leader.
“Well what if he just moved again, like outside of Japan and had to get a new number or sumthin’?” Kanji had suggested. That wasn’t right, he would have told them if he was moving again.
Chie caught the distressed look on Yosuke's face. "It's probably something dumb, I'm sure the guy's alright. I mean he did lead us in the TV world and we all know how dangerous that was."
Rise, hugging her knees tight, apparently didn't hear Chie. “I - I hope nothing happened to Senpai.”
"Narukami is fine. It has been a long time, however, if he was in danger he would have found a way to contact us. If something were to have happened I would be the first to hear from Dojima about it," Naoto affirmed the group. "There is no need to panic. It is, quite possibly, his parents doing. Remember what he told us last year?"
The group nodded.
"It's probably for the best we don't go looking for him. If his parents were too..." Yukiko's voice trailed off, but everyone knew what she was implying. They had no clue what situation he was in and if they weren't careful, they could make it worse.
That fact didn't help Yosuke's anger. How? How could they just leave him. He could be in trouble, what if he was dead?
Yosuke shook his head, stopping that train of thought from spreading, and looked down at his phone once more, realizing he scrolled all the way up to last May.
~May 17th 2012~
1:25pm Yosuke:
hey partnr, gldn wk was awsum n we all miss u. whn u coming nxt?
1:30pm Yu:
Not sure, my parents still haven’t said much about the trip. I honestly expect the worst.
1:31pm Yosuke:
:(
1:31pm Yu:
Hey don’t be like that, I’m sure we’ll see each other soon enough! Until then, at least we still have our phones right?
1:32pm Yosuke:
tru, but still i wnna c u
1:33pm Yu:
I know, I want to see you guys too. I have to go, parents are calling. Tell Ted I say hi.
1:33pm Yosuke:
k... l8r
He scrolled some more, until getting to the last texting conversation where his friend actually responded.
~December 15th 2012~
4:07pm Yosuke:
ur parents r asses
4:07pm Yosuke:
its stupid
4:08pm Yosuke:
they cnt make decisions like tht 4 u. u shood b able to come bk if u wnt
4:32pm Yu:
I know. Trust me, I know. Like I said, once high school is over I’ll be there.
4:32pm Yosuke:
promise, partnr?
4:35pm Yu:
Promise.
Beyond that, The text log was full of text after text with no response, each one more desperate than the next. He continued scrolling.
~January 1st 2013~
12:00am Yosuke:
hppy new yrs partnr!!
12:05am Yosuke:
dnt tell me ur sleeping alrdy
12:20am Yosuke:
nerd ;)
~January 6th 2013~
1:22pm Yosuke:
hey partnr its been awhile u ok?
5:09 pm Yosuke:
pls respnd soon were worrid
His thumb was now flicking through messages, stopping only every once and awhile, watching as he dropped his shorthand in favor for clearer texts. Maybe if he looked serious Yu would finally respond. Like that actually made a difference.
~February 17th 2013~
2:03am Yosuke:
Yu, seriously, please respond to me. The rest of the team is really worried.
~February 20th 2013~
4:12 pm Yosuke:
Please.
He reached the last message sent, the one he typed out only a few minutes ago.
~February 27th 2013~
11:32pm Yosuke:
graduation is soon n I hope u remember ur promise, partnr.
(Message failed to send. Hold to retry)
No matter how hard he tried to will the message to send, every time he tapped the retry button, the message would only come back unsent. That meant this was it. His friends number was no longer in service. Any hope that Yosuke was holding onto shattered, the tears started spilling out of his eyes.
“But you promised,” he looked up at the screen, it felt as if he had just figured it out, the shock now just setting in. His best friend was gone for one reason or another, and he would likely never see him again.
~~~~
~March 4th 2013~
2:32am Yosuke:
Dear Partner, i miss u. graduation passed n ur still not here. i no its only been a day bt still i rembr u prmisd me ud see me aftr u wernt contrld by ur parents. i also no u wont respnd 2 this bc ur phones off but imma prtend u will c this bc-
Yosuke stopped, looking at his half-finished text. Because why? Why did he want to pretend his old best friend would read his unsent messages?
-bc i dnt wnt u 2 b gone. i wnt u 2 still b here w every1. bc i wnna no wht uni ur going 2 n i wnna no what ur studying n i wnna no where ur at bc i miss u partnr n i wnna tell u-
His tears fell freely onto his pillow now. Everything he wanted to tell his best friend would be left unknown to the other boy, and sending a text that was months too late to be received was as much closure as he was going to get.
-i wnna tell u i lov u. n ur smile is amzing n i wnt u 2 b hppy no mattr what ur doing n i hope u do what u love n find some1 2 lov n i just wish i new if ur hppy or nt
It was by far the most sappiest thing he’d ever texted out. Not even the only girlfriend he had for over a month got shit like this. He pressed send.
(Message failed to send. Hold to retry)
It wasn’t like he expected anything else, or even wished for anything else given the contents of the message, but getting a ‘Message failed’ as the only reply still sent a pang of hurt through his heart. Despite this, he finally felt as if he could actually fall asleep for the first time in what could have been forever. Plugging his phone into his charger, he rolled over and closed his eyes, accepting that his new life freed from high school, his parents, and the hope of finally seeing his best friend again started in less than a month.
~~~~
As he expected, the month flew by. It was all finalizing the apartment, packing, donating the junk he kept in his room to charity, finally throwing away the under-the-futon goods (to hopefully be replaced with better ones from the city), and an effort to contact the friends who had drifted apart that last year of high school just to say goodbye.
Except everyone was busy.
Chie had moved to city halfway through her senior year after being accepted to some police training academy. They rarely talked since.
Yukiko was training to run the inn, she would take over for her mother this year, as well as taking online college courses for a business degree.
Kanji started an online knitting business and the first month proved he would be swamped with orders for probably the next year. There were also talks of him taking up his grandma’s textile shop.
Rise was somewhere in America right now on tour, she would be there for another year or so filming a whole TV show with, on top of that, a movie deal.
Teddie went with Rise to America, the agency loved him and he said something about how him being back on the TV was fate or something.
Naoto had moved to Tokyo at the end of her first year, disowning her title as the Detective Prince. Something about needing a new start with more opportunities in the city. Maybe he could meet her there.
Yu… was somewhere. Wherever he was, he was ok. Yosuke knew that. He had to be.
After checking his phone one last time for any last minute replies, to which there was none, he sighed and started towards the station.
He paused at the spot he waited, almost every day in the summer, for the 8am train, the one coming from Tokyo, the one his friend promised to get off of one day. It was almost ironic that Yosuke would be taking the train going the other way today.
Most of the ride was spent looking out the window as music blasted through his headphones. If someone tried talking to him, he wouldn't hear it. Yosuke figured he should try to figure out his situation, but he was sure he'd be able to figure at out once he got to the station, it wasn't his first time in Tokyo after all.
Boy was he wrong.
How much you can forget about a place in just two and a half years is crazy. Or at least that’s what Yosuke thought as he stood at Shibuya station armed with a suitcase, a train pass, and his old orange headphones, now silent and hanging around his neck. Through his parent’s connections, he managed to get a pretty affordable price on an apartment somewhere in the backstreets of the country’s capital. Having lived in the middle of Tokyo most of his life, he knew his way around pretty well, but anyone would have trouble after being thrown out into the boonies for over two years and then immediately thrown back into the concrete jungle, just all alone this time, right?
He took out his map and squinted, trying to figure out what line he had to transfer to. Back when he lived here, he left all of the directions and train transfers to his parents or his friends. It never actually occurred to him that he actually had no experience with the subway systems until now. Once he was pretty sure he had his bearings, he grabbed the worn orange suitcase and made for the depths of Shibuya Station.
It was getting late and the sun was starting to set, yet Yosuke still couldn’t find his stupid little apartment. Deciding he had sucked up his pride long enough, he made his way to a little cafe in the backstreets of a part of the city he knew nothing about in order to ask for the help he desperately needed. The sign outfront was faded, but it said something close to “Lblan” or “Leblanc” or “Elblank”. It was already too tattered and made nearly impossible to read in the fading light. He reached for the door, but backed away as a woman and her daughter emerged from the place.
The little girl, maybe 11 or 12, ran out of the door, under her mother's arms, and stopped to look at Yosuke, a curious look painted on her face. “Whoa! Cool headphones!” her face lit up as she exclaimed and her mother held the door open, “those’re the old Music Technicas! Right?”
“Oh, uh, yeah,” Yosuke fumbled his words, taken aback by the girls interest in his dingy old headphones. She giggled and ran off.
The mother sighed. “Futaba! Come back here, it’s dark outside,” she then turned to face Yosuke and sighed. “Sorry, she can be a little high strung sometimes. Uh, have a good evening!” She ran off after her daughter.
And with that, Yosuke entered the little hole-in-the-wall cafe.
It was a small little cafe, with about 5 booths backed by ugly worn puke-green leather and a small bar area lined by diner-looking chairs with red cushions. The dull lamps that shined above the booths were straight out of a mom-and-pop diner that only served microwaveable dinners. An old CRT tv was placed almost precariously on a shelf in the back of the cafe, mumbling background noise. The same shade of dark brown wood lined everything and somehow pulled the whole place together. Everything about the cafe was ugly upon first glance, but weirdly homely. It was completely out of place in the middle of the city, but it reminded Yosuke of the old interior of the buildings in Inaba.
“Oh hey, I was just about to close up, you’re just in time. What’ll it be?” The barista turned to look him. It was an older gent, probably mid to late thirties, with the posture of a 60 year old and the goatee of a pimp. Certainly not someone you’d normally find behind the counter of a coffee shop.
“Oh, uh, actually I was wondering if you knew how to get here?” Yosuke took out a piece of paper with the address to his apartment scribbled on it and showed it to the older man.
The barista frowned and shook his head. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
“I mean, kinda I guess. I lived here up until I was 16 but then my parents decided to drag me out to-” he was rambling again, “I mean, I’ve never really tried to go anywhere alone here.”
“I can tell. You realize this is Yungen Jaya, right?”
Yosuke snatched the map back as he sat at one of the bar stools, his eyes growing wide. “Aw crap, you mean I gotta somehow make it all the way to the other side of the city in like,” he looked down at his phone, his eyes becoming impossibly wide, “fifteen minutes?!”
“Think you’ll be able to make it?”
Yosuke put his elbows on the table, resting his head in his hands and let out a muffled “there’s no damn way. Even if I could get there in the dark I think the last train already left.”
Yosuke sat thinking for what had to be at least 20 minutes, looking up train times and taxi fares, sputtering out how screwed he was tonight when he finally looked up at the older man. “Well, do you know anywhere I can spend the night? Somewhere cheap around here? Because man if I have to sleep out on the streets…”
The barista light a cigarette and held out his hand. “Sojiro Sakura.”
Yosuke looked up confused for a second, but then grabbed the man’s hand “Yosuke Hanamura.”
Sojiro shook Yosuke’s hand and then started walking over to the coffee machine, the cigarette hanging from his mouth.
“Well, kid, now that we’ve introduced each other I’ll tell ya what. There’s a small room upstairs with a futon and some blankets. You can use it tonight if you want.” He walked back towards Yosuke, placing a cup of coffee in front of a grateful looking Yosuke. “But if I come back tomorrow and this place is ransacked then I have your full name and apartment address so don’t try anything funny. Also, coffee’s on the house.”
“Really? Wow, thank you so much Sakura-san. You’re a lifesaver.”
Sojiro huffed. “‘Sakura-san’ sounds too formal,” he trailed off for a second before a smile flashed across his face. “Just call me Boss.”
Yosuke lifted his coffee and nodded towards Sojiro. “You got it, Boss.”
“Alright, there’s a bathhouse across the way if you need to decent up. Try to leave the room the way you found it, but it’s a mess up there anyways so that shouldn’t be too difficult. I’ll stay here for another half-hour or so if you need anything, but past then I’ll leave my number by the public phone down here. Call from there if you need something. I would say just use your cell but I don’t like to keep guy’s numbers on my phone.”
Yosuke nodded along, a curious look passing his face at the last statement.
Between sips and small talk, he managed to finish his coffee without a rush and thanked Sojiro before checking out the room upstairs. It wasn’t much of a room, actually, in fact it was more like an attic. Surprisingly, it still had room for a couch, a futon, and a few storage shelves. Yosuke started by digging his own blanket out from his suitcase and laying it over the futon. It already felt like home.
The dust, however, was still horrible, making him sneeze a few times before he was finally able to dig his pajamas out from the bottom of his suitcase.
“I’m leaving! Don’t cause any trouble,” Sojiro shouted from the bottom of the stairs.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll try my best,” Yosuke joked back. He could practically hear the barista smirk as the front door jingled shut. Maybe he just met the man, but the coffee didn’t seem poisonous - it was actually really good - and he didn’t seem like a bad guy, so everything was turning out alright, even if his first friend back in the city was a 30-something-year-old man who pitied him enough to give him a place to sleep for one night.
Yosuke slipped into his pajamas and threw the blanket over himself before turning to his phone.
~April 7th 2013~
10:45pm Yosuke:
Hey Partner, lifes well ovr here. i got lost in tokyo evn tho i livd here at 1 point n most of my lfe at tht. lukly a old dude took pity on me n let me sty in his attic for 1 nite. tht snds creepier typd out lol. bt no hes a cool dood, evn mde me free coffee. yah btw thts rigt, i like coffee a lot now. a lot chnges in a yr doesnt it?? anyways i still miss u. i probs woldnt hve gotten lost w/ u or at lst we wuld have been in this situ 2gther. remebr 2nd yr when we said wed get an apprtmnt 2gther for uni?? i wish we still did its gonna be lonly.
Sent.
(Message failed to send. Hold to retry)
Every night for nearly a month. Texting a ghost was becoming a nighttime ritual at this point. He wasn't sure why he did it, it wasn't like his friend was going to respond or anything, especially since the messages weren't even sending, but he couldn't just forget the most important person in his life like that.
Yosuke set down his phone. Tomorrow would be the first official day of his new life away from Inaba, away from his old painful memories.