Cutscene: Wish It Was Sunday
Monday, January 31st, The First
The sky is dark, the air fresh with recently hatched conspiracies and the placenta of terrible ideas. A boy exits the stronghold of his enemy, with a resolve to prevent a worse fate from occurring. Knives are nervously held in pockets, as if to ward off disaster.
The trip home is uneventful, and Yosuke eventually makes his way home. Rest is found in the surety of his bed, his remaining key faithfully around his neck. Time passes, the morning hours still not stale with the incoming repetition.
Yosuke wakes. Takes a trembling step from his bedroom to the new day. His left foot aims a little too far off the edge of a carpeted stair, and the boy is sent sailing unceremoniously down its ziggurat to an undignified pile below.
Monday, January 31st, The Second
Midnight strikes, and Yosuke is...awake. He stares again, into the eyes of his foe and his employee. Both parties are /immediately/ aware of the circuitous nature of what has taken place, and Hanamura is reminded of the importance of his mission to ensure that the Special Extracurricular Execution Squad does not retain the six keys. His belief is reinforced by sleep deprivation.
There is a brief conversation, wherein Yosuke expresses regrets that Persona users are affected more than non-Persona users by this time-loop thing, and that it is /stupid bullshit/. More pressingly, that Kandori should just send his soldiers over to do this, it would make so much more sense. He is promptly informed that he would not get the keys back if Hanamura did not successfully do this himself. Shot /down/.
In his exuberance and newfound zealotry, he presses a foot, pointed downward, on the edge of one of the stone steps of the KNOWS complex, and immediately assumes a horizontal position on the floor. Some fates are inherently unavoidable.
His mission to procure the keys for himself would fail miserably; not so much by his own hand, but by the hand of extradimensional life-draining horrors from another dimension. For some reason, that excuse would fail to be considered relevant for any reason, whatsoever.
At home, he looks into the mirror. For a moment, it almost seems as if the reflection in the mirror is much more muscular, and his eyes bright yellow. There is a brief discussion Hanamura has with himself, a reassuring one that this is not about pride, this is not about his ego. Nobody is surprised that he cannot win this argument with himself, and the mirror shatters for it.
Monday, January 31st, The Third
The midnight hour rolls around, and the two enemies look tiredly at each other. Hanamura, again, has been denied rest, and lacked the foresight to rest at an earlier time. His movements drag; though the physical results of his trip to the SEES dormitory have been erased, the memories have not; this is a fallout he does not look forward to. His trip home is mostly uneventful, as is most of the day.
On the way up the stairs of his house, hurried by desire for rest, and careless, he steps into the side of a stair, falling flat forward, and slowly sliding back down on his face. His eventual and unenviable downwards trend a pittance compared to the eerie reality of its omnipresence.
The later discussion with Souji Seta about his previous attempt on SEES that would will have happened three hours in the future but not happen because it already will have happened three hours prior on the same day was less frustrating than expected, but still a harrowing experience.
The mirror at home shows Yosuke a darker version of himself again, for a brief, glimmering moment. Yosuke again prevails his innocence to the glass, before finally consoling himself by tearing the mirror off the wall and throwing it out the front window. There is an argument with his father that continues until midnight.
Monday, January 31st, The Fourth
Yosuke cooly takes the cigarette from Kandori. He isn't about to be a complete sucker and turn it /down/, even if smoking was bad for you. God. He carefully inhales as he walks out the door.
And promptly coughs his lungs out the moment Takahisa was not looking. To ensure no awkward notice of his sudden respiratory illness, he hurries down the staircase. This staircase is familiar; it is one he had pulled a remarkable stunt on in his earlier endeavours here. It also has a familiar trick to it; it turns into a slide. Yosuke only burns himself twice on the way down, before awkwardly sliding into a table with a groan.
There is a brief moment where he looks into a mirror, and for a moment he sees not his own reflection, but that of Daigan's. This does not culminate in an awkward back and forth conversation, as previous times has. Yosuke merely dips his head, and admits his foolishness. His sleep-deprivation-conceived hallucination fades. Daigan is dead, long gone, everyone knows it, shut up.
Monday, January 31st, The Fifth
Kandori makes Yosuke an offer. It is a pleasant one, involving employment with a group that thus far seems to be fairly cognizant of Yosuke's skills, and will even get him into law school. On the other hand, Yosuke still has a pretty awesome plan to get into law school, and still has a pretty awesome plan to bash Kandori over the head with a chrome-plated wrench. The offer is civilly denied.
Yosuke takes a trip to Sumaru City; not to purchase anything, but to plot a route for the following day. He has an /idea/, one that will, at the very least, make him a significant chunk if he times it right. It will assist in his eventual plot to buy a motorbike, because he is very responsible and can handle a motorbike. It will be superior to his fallen bike in the clutches of the Midnight Channel.
Upon returning, he missteps off the train platform, catapulting down the measly few steps, smacking into the ground with a vengeance. At this point, he is relieved to know that his seeming daily obligation is over.
Monday, January 31st, The Sixth
There is a mild conversation. Apparently Kandori has had success in procuring the rest of the keys. Yosuke is not sure whether this vindicates his original 'betrayal', but he's certain at this point noone will notice. Chizuru and him have a brief conversation regarding the realities of fortunetelling. A cat paws at his foot for some reason.
It is probably notable that Yosuke takes the elevator, today. He sleeps on the couch on the first floor of his house in the morning. He takes the subway to Sumaru and practically holds up the line at any given set of stairs, the glacial, careful pace at which he takes them. Vast purchases are made in Sumaru, but it is no matter: Wholesalers do not have access to the /lucrative Dark Hour profits/ he is going to make.
It takes an excruciating amount of time to transport his several backpacks worth of goods to Gekkoukan High School, from the subway. Goods are sold. Money is procured. The remaining goods and money are dragged all the way back to Inaba.
There is a single step to Yosuke's door, and he manages to snag his foot on it, falling across his home's threshold with an embarassing thump. Truly, some things are unavoidable.
