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It's a peaceful day at Leblanc. Sojiro has a couple customers in his shop, both sipping coffee, one eating a curry. Mellow music is playing, the lighting is cozy, and the coffee is as good as ever.
He nods a greeting as Akira enters the shop on her way home from school.
Akira waves as she passes, and heads upstairs to her attic room.
From safely in bed, she texts Sakura-san exactly two words:
He confessed.
Thanks.
She lies back in bed and looks over at her Ryuk poster.
What a thrill, honestly.
She looks over at her pack. There's still a loose thread to clean up, there — the gold medal she got from Kamoshida's Palace.
For the time being she tucks it under her futon. She doubts the police will have any reason to search her, and it shouldn't be missing from anywhere, right? It came from the Metaverse.
She kicks up her feet and waits for the customers to clear out. No doubt Boss will want a more full account.
"If I'll ever get my memories back. I have ideas about where to look, but..."
They shrug.
"No guarantees."
"There's a place called Mementos. It's basically everyone's Palace, and it's connected to everywhere. You can train with your Personas, practice tactics, change the hearts of people who are only a little distorted rather than enough to make their own Palace, and of course get loot like in a Palace."
"Huh. Cool!"
It's probably also somewhere she can take her estrogen in the Metaverse.
"Yeah! And I have a feeling that somewhere, deep deep inside, my missing memories are hiding in there."
Coffee, curry, tuna.
"So. The piece of shit owned up to everything?"
"Yeah. He called an assembly and confessed in front of all the students. He was clearly bearing a huge weight of guilt for everything he'd done. I was even a little worried we'd gone too far."
"Hm. With everything you said he did, you probably didn't. Good sign you care about that, though, kid."
He shakes his head.
"And this change of heart thing works on anyone?"
"It can't create new feelings or thoughts directly, only get rid of distortions that keep people from seeing the truth. How they react to that... depends on what the truth is. This gym teacher'd convinced himself that it was his privilege to abuse others and use them for his own gain. Take that away..."
"And the bastard is left with the memory of having done it but none of the self-righteous justification. Gotcha."
He sips his own coffee, looking thoughtful.
"What counts as a distortion?"
"I'm not sure how to put it precisely. After seeing what the gym teacher was like in the other world I have a sense of it, but give me a moment..."
She folds her arms. "I think... it's a matter of self-image. This gym teacher, in his own head, was a king with slaves to serve him. In the world he created, the students he harassed sexually were empty-headed and devoted to him, and the students he hurt physically were his prisoners, subject to arbitrary execution for any act of lese-majesté. It was really encompassing — a whole role he was acting out, complete with emotions that made no sense, like his contempt toward anyone who dared to resist him, and thoughts that were just plain incorrect, like characterizing Ann and Shiho as vapid. And all that, that whole world in his head where he was king, collapsed when we were able to take out the lynchpin that held it up."
"So to answer your question, I think anyone who's living off in a world that doesn't match to reality like that, inside their own head, could have the whole thing washed away by a change of heart."
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