— “it’s certainly flashy,” yusuke agrees, observing the costume in question. “however, it’s incredibly well-made.” he folds his arms, tilting his head. “i know you’re simply playing the character, but… you seem like the real, true pink argus.” he wouldn’t be surprised if she whipped out a bow right this moment, ready to vanquish evil-doers on the streets of tokyo. “admittedly, i’m a bit jealous. i wouldn’t mind wearing something like that.” though he does overheat quickly… he’s not good with heat at all. “ah - forgive me. you wanted a drink, didn’t you, takeba-san?”
❛ Oh, do you really think so? I’ve had this role for a while, but if I’m honest, it’s still kind of embarrassing... But you certainly look the part of Black Condor yourself! You totally give off that tall, brooding and mysterious vibe, you know? Maybe I could help you get recruited. ❜ She’s joking, of course, if the teasing grin on her face is anything to go by. Getting recognized and approached in the street would never stop being novel, if not a little tiring, to her, but she finds peace of mind in the boy’s gentle presence. Laughing a little, she rummages through her purse for her wallet. ❛ Did you want a drink too? Let me treat you... Um, sorry, I didn’t ask your name. ❜
EMPATHY AND TRUST, or: how yukari only truly connects with people when she finds something in them she can relate to.
yukari is, without a shadow of a doubt, incredibly selfish. it’s not a conscious thing, and it’s not something that can place upon her a label of “bad person” by any means. it’s a real flaw she can never shake off no matter how hard she tries, and she really does try. anger is a comfortable state of being for her because it’s both a shield and a weapon. a shield to protect herself from vulnerability she hates displaying and a weapon to scare away anyone who tries to venture into a part of herself she isn’t ready to share. and maybe she never will, not unless she finds something in you that she can see herself in. she gets so caught up thinking she’s the only one suffering she fails to consider other people’s feelings more than once.
she’s popular at school due to both her looks and her incredibly friendly disposition. she’s not the smartest or the most talented, but she’s always cheerful and positive. this yukari is the one that friends outside the dorm will only get to see, because her loneliness isn’t something she broadcasts to the public.
yukari’s arcana is the lovers, which represents a balance in relationships. through her entire life since eiichiro’s death, yukari has felt incredible (and more often than not, detrimental) bitterness towards “full” families that have both parents and their children, since she grew up without either of those. her father died and was made to take the sole blame for the incident, and with him gone, the public could only direct their rage at his remaining family. at 6 years old, yukari had to endure the wrath of the people who believed her father to be a murderer. it had gotten to the point she and her mother had to move away multiple times to escape the harassment. whereas yukari clung to the belief that her father was innocent, her mother’s grief led her to jump into the arms of many men that she would bring home without regards for yukari’s comfort and neglected her.
thorough the entirety of the game, and even her whole life, we see yukari truly connecting with only five people: the protagonist, fuuka, mitsuru, junpei, and aigis.
for the 10 years they were estranged, yukari has had no one to share her own feelings with until she meets the protagonist. for the first time in those excruciatingly lonely 10 years of her trying to take on the world by herself, she meets someone whom she can relate to, someone she feels comfortable sharing her past with. she’s never felt an equally balanced relationship between her and her mother and her friends at school, but she does with the protagonist when learning about how they experienced similar losses and how they lived without a “full” family. she can relate to their story, and so it’s with this empathy that she opens up and begins to trust them. they’re the very first person whom she feels she stands on equal footing with. in her own words: “Each time I open my eyes, it seems like I’m one step behind. But when I’m with you, I don’t feel that way...”
the second one is fuuka, though it’s much more subtle than how we’ve seen yukari connect with the protagonist and mitsuru. after learning about fuuka’s disappearance, yukari overhears their bullies making fun of her and is rightfully angry, but it actually touched a very sore spot for her: harassment. it reminds her of how she herself as a child was at the end of the public’s anger upon believing eiichiro to be the murderer of their loved ones. so yukari becomes protective over fuuka, but once she sees her determination to fight, she steps back and they become very good friends, because, once again, yukari has found a balanced relationship between them as she saw something in fuuka she could relate to, even going as far as to trust her with something as vulnerable and personal as her father’s video.
the next is mitsuru, the most blatant example next to the protagonist. yukari felt inferior to mitsuru for a good amount of time, and through the game we see her acting unnecessarily hostile and confrontative towards her due to her own inferiority and jealousy. not only did mitsuru seem to be perfect at everything she did, but she actually had a father and was the heir of the group whom she believed had framed her father in some way. for the longest time yukari doubts mitsuru’s truthfulness and her intentions, and she constantly failed to think of mitsuru’s own feelings and circumstances because she was so caught up in her own problems. when takeharu dies, yukari snaps out of her bad judgement because she had lost her father the way yukari had lost hers, and with this new balance in their relationship, yukari steps up to fix what she could and to support mitsuru the way no one had supported her as a young fatherless child.
now, yukari and junpei’s relationship is very complex and yet not, but what is often misunderstood is that they really are friends. vitriolic friends, sure, but friends nonetheless. they’re the type to mutually tease and playfully insult the other, and junpei doesn’t mind yukari’s jabs just as yukari isn’t actually that annoyed at his antics unless he actually steps out of line. junpei is usually the very first person who notices when yukari seems off or comments on it, and yukari often notices his changes in mood as well and expresses concern. they’re not best friends, and i’m sad they didn’t get to connect within the game, but when junpei loses chidori, yukari noticeably softens her edges around him and does her best to comfort him. just the way she lost someone she loved, he goes through the same thing and it’s that empathy that brings them closer.
with aigis, it gets a little more personal because the wounds of the protagonist’s death are still very fresh. yukari is bitter and she’s jealous and she’s mourning. she’s still in love with him and takes it out on aigis: aigis who stayed by his side during his last moments, who didn’t show up to his funeral, who inherited orpheus and his role anyway. she comes around after losing the fight against her and metis, and apologizes to aigis for failing to see that they were the same, hurting and lost and unable to move on. again, yukari finds a balance in their relationship and opens up to aigis, even offering to become roommates at the end of the answer and becoming closer friends than they were during the game.
yukari’s anger is explosive and hurts a lot of people, and she’s so concerned over her own problems she forgets other people are hurting too. she’s selfish and self-centered but incredibly kind, only worn and torn due to the aforementioned abuse she had to deal with. she knows she’s short-tempered and apologizes so much afterwards for it because it’s something she can’t control at the heat of the moment, but it’s hard for her to trust anyone since the only people who knew of her past have done nothing but hurt her.
“ Oh I’m sure Junpei didn’t mean to ruin your
homework. “
Minako mused, a hand raising to rub her face. She sighed as she pulled out the worksheet she had spent all night working on. It would seem that she didn’t mind if Yukari borrowed it for a little while. After all she had already learned the material.
“ Just…. go ahead. “
❛ Sure he didn’t. ❜ The only thing sharper than her voice is the anger lit across her eyes, fingers tracing what was left of her hard work. The paper stinks of the coffee that had been so carelessly spilled on it, and hours of effort are now illegibly wet ink. She looks up in surprise.
❛ Oh…are you sure? I feel terrible copying off of your work... Didn’t you spend a while on this? You look exhausted. ❜
The clarity of Kyoto greets her with a pleasant surprise she had not been expecting from a home she long thought left behind in her search for a truth that proved too big for her to find alone, but even more surprising was the girl sitting before her whom she had previously regarded as someone to be cautious of.
Grudges had been forgotten but their memories remained fresh, and Yukari’s never been good at mending what she’s broken with her own hands.
❛ Hey, since we’re being honest... ❜ A downwards shift of her gaze speaks of a shame her words cannot convey, and only through a bitten lip and fingers skirting the sleeves of her yukata does she gather the courage to continue. ❛ I know I’ve said a lot of... messed up things to you before, and I’m really sorry about that, but there’s one thing that I really couldn’t get out of my mind that I need to talk to you about... ❜
❛ It’s not an eyesore, is it? ❜ Spontaneous breaks were not a rarity within set during summer filming, but even with the threat of melting under her Pink Argus costume, she had chosen to head out quickly to find the nearest vending machine that could provide her any kind of cold refreshment. She gives her unfortunate companion a sheepish grin, regretting not getting changed first. ❛ Though I guess the flashiness is part of the charm... ❜
An inferno, one that left merely one survivor to tell the tale. The flames surrounding the car, gasoline impregnated in the air and the smoke not allowing him to breath. Everything had been a nightmare from the moment it had begun and his innocence had been claimed instead of his life — the consequences still hang in him, the results of an empty heart that cut ties with the world and everything to survive the emotional wreckage. The truth wasn’t far off now from what he had barely remembered over the years, only named him the actors of the stage play.
He had forgotten — for his sanity, and the blessing disguises as a curse, or vice versa, had come to clutch its fangs on him. Why had he forgotten his mother’s last smile? His father’s arm hanging lifeless against the window? The smell of gun powder and the sensation of wrongness in the bridge? of everything going from worse to the worst.
“She was more concerned for me than for herself.”
The words bump but he doesn’t rush them, timing them perfectly as he pushes away, crushes any leftovers of kindness and empathy. Those wouldn’t bring his parents back, he understood but ten years of accumulated and discarded feelings had finally a figure to be send to and he was done. He was so done at lying or pretending everything was fine — nothing was and nothing would be. Yukari’s fondness for her father was tainted in a child’s unconditional love and disillusions of the bigger picture, what he no longer had.
What was kindness? What would a boy who had not shown a single emotion for years know about that? Empathy claims him to stop, to not judge and let Yukari be but he shuts it up. Yes, Yukari isn’t the one responsible for her father’s sins but no one had spoken of her father’s crimes and he — he was far too gone into every emotion, too overwhelmed and feeling the need to let out everything. He was finally mourning after a whole decade the parents he had lost.
“Your father may as well have killed her.”
When her hands raise without her permission and strike the table between them, she’s overwhelmed by a memory that visits her at night every time she tries to forget it. In it, she’s six years old and clutching a strap between shivering hands, and there’s people around her yelling, yelling, yelling: Murderer! Killer! It’s all his fault!
She hides behind her mother who does nothing but watch, and when they start throwing things at them with the intent to harm the way they believed her father had harmed them, Yukari finds no shelter other than her own arms wrapped around herself and the baseless trust that he could not have killed anyone.
She knows now her father was not innocent. She knows now how heavy his hand laid in the plans that had brought nothing but misery to the world, but it had been an accident. He hadn’t known the true consequences until it was too late, and he gave his life to stop it. That’s what she fights for.
❛ You don’t get to say that to me. ❜
Not you. Never you.
❛ Take it back! ❜ But her voice cracks and her lip quivers, and the sting in her eyes have less to do with the intensity of her glare and more with the pain of his sharp words that pierce right through her resolve.
Perhaps she had been naive. Perhaps it had been stupid of her to believe that they were kindred souls, that he could understand her, that simply because they both had lost their parents, be it to death or to grief, they were the same. Perhaps she had projected onto him a little too much, but apologies are the last thing on her tongue when he shot accusations that weren’t entirely untrue. She should have tried harder to understand him beyond what she perceived him to be, should have inquired further about the circumstances she had so readily believed were the same as hers.
‘This isn’t like you’ gets stuck on her throat and never comes out, because she never knew him at all, did she? She had assumed without asking, had barged into his life and declared facts that were true to her only. She had been desperate for a connection that went beyond superficial pleasantries and after school meetings at karaoke that could only be enjoyed for so long before she became suffocated in the laughter of friends who didn’t truly understand her.
Her palms hurts, but not as much as her heart, and she’s never known how to hurt quietly. Her voice raises and doesn’t stop shaking.
❛ That’s not true! That was an accident! You know it was! ❜
❛ … ❜ his lack of response is more than enough to answer her question; he certainly has not been studying. ❛ have you? ❜
❛ Um, perhaps not as much as I should...but it’s not too late! ❜ A little last-minute studying never hurt anyone, she hopes. ❛ I mean, it’s kinda hard to focus on schoolwork with everything that’s been going on. Doesn’t it tire you out? You always seem really calm about everything. I’m kinda jealous. ❜
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