To start with a cliche opening, it was a normal day in Sumaru City. And by 'normal day', it means 'rumors becoming reality'. The sun was shining bright, the birds were singing a merry tune in the sky, and not a cloud in the sky was going to make terrible weather. Best of all, nothing supernatural was going on in the city (and yes, that including the end of the world. Just look at 'rumors becoming reality' for that). It was a great day to do something fun and exciting, like enjoying personal time with friends.
Unfortunately, for the eight adults that will be focus on very soon, it was just the opposite. Six of the eight adults were getting verbally getting attack from the other two adults (at the moment, it more like one, but she was clearly speaking for the both of them). It honestly wouldn't be that bad...if it weren't for the fact they were all in public for people to see.
"You know very well what you all did!"
"What the hell are you talking about, Yuka?"
"Don't lie to us, Reiji! You know what we're referring too."
"No, we don't know what you're referring too at all. Can't you give us a hint or something?"
"Why should I be giving you a hint if you know what we're referring too?" Yuka would have thrown the glass cup at Reiji if someone didn't grab her wrist in time.
"Yuka, can you please lower your voice, you're making a scene." The man (who honestly ought to take off his damn motorcycle helmet when inside) snatches the cup away from the frustrated woman and places on the counter. There was no way he was going to pay for that.
"You well deserve getting all of this attention, Nanjo! After all, you six made a scene here yourself!"
An awkward silence rang out in the room. It sure narrowed down what the two bitter adults were referring too.
"You...you two saw the six of us here before?" Nanjo asked the slightly calm down but still obviously pissed off woman.
"Yeah, we did." Yuka's silent companion answered to him. His nose was sniffling, and his eyes were slightly puffy. "The two of us saw you here a little after shit when down a few months ago. The seven of you were quite enjoying yourself. Granted, you lot did order the expensive wine and meals though. You must have paid for them, right?"
"Of course I paid for them! I volunteered after all. But-"
"Just shut up."
"Mark, you didn't even let me finish."
"I don't want to hear another damn word from that smug face of yours."
Yuka and Mark turned their back on the others, and didn't speak for a good five minutes.
"...Yuka? Mark? Are you okay?" Well, someone had to break the silent.
"It's obvious that they're not okay, Elly. I wouldn't blame them. To them, we broke our promise."
"We didn't do anything of the sorts, Maki!"
"But just think about it from their point of view. The nine of us promised we would meet up again, and we promised all nine of us. Not six, not seven. All nine of us. We only had you, me, Nanjo, Yukino, Reiji, Brown, and of course, our former leader present at the time. To them, we betrayed our promise for excluding them."
"Gee Maki, thanks a lot for thinking of our feelings! Being a therapist sure worked well for you."
"You're welcome, Yuka," replied Maki, wisely choosing to ignore the sarcasm in that last sentence.
"It's too bad you didn’t thought of it sooner when you broke said fucking promise!"
The six adults groan in response. It might be time to keep Yuka from speaking from this point onward. Yuka can well...to excuse the bad language, a bitch at times. This was one of them.
"Yuka, you know that we would never forget you! You’re our favorite person, what with your outstanding personality and all. We wouldn't want to leave you out at all. Believe us when we say we would never exclude you! You-what the hell are you doing, Mark!"
"Screw you, Brown!" Mark grabbed the glass cup Yuka had earlier, and threw it at the poor man in front of him. Luckily for Brown, a tall curly hair woman intervened and caught the cup before it shattered into thousands of tiny pieces.
"This is the second time you did this! Like hell, do you guys honestly forget I'm here?" Mark's eyes were watery again, most likely out of anger.
The curly hair woman, who just ordered a nice, chill spritzer from the same cup that was going to be broken, handed it to Mark. "Just calm down, Mark. You know how Uesugi can be painfully ignorant of other people feelings at times."
Mark didn't say anything, only glaring at Brown and taking small slips of the spritzer.
"If I have to honest, this is getting ridiculous. Mark, Yuka, don't you think you're overreacting?"
"Me and Mark are not overacting, Yukino! The two of us have every right to be pissed off with all of you!"
"It's not like we forgotten about you two. In fact, it's impossible to forget you guys." Yukino knew better than to flatter one or the other, so she tried to play it safe by flatter both of her friends.
It didn't work as plan.
"Well it sure look like you did!" exclaimed Mark, finishing the last of his drink. "Do you know how much time and effort we wasted for our surprised visit to Sumaru City?"
Hm. Wonder how the others are going to reply to that.
"Surprised..." started Elly
"Visit?" finished Nanjo.
"What do you mean by that?" Brown asked the two.
"It's exactly what I mean! All of you, except our former leader of course, were all here! Yuka and I felt terrible that we haven't seen each you all in what, almost two years? We planned to surprise everyone after we figure out our busy schedules. I ditched the chance of going to an art gallery for you guys!" Mark stood up and grabbed Brown by the collar, stretching out the man’s shirt a bit. Brown struggled to get loose, only for Mark to grab his collar tighter.
"And I manage to get a small vacation away from my family!"
"You just had bad luck with the timing!" Maki managed to separate the two men apart, and forces Mark sit back in his seat.
"Yeah, we figured out that much. Everything may have been a mess, but we still decided to set out our plan. When we visit every one of your workplaces, or in some cases, hotel room, we all got the same message: 'They’re not here right now,' Yuka said to Maki, crossing her arms. "But it wasn't until we ran into Yukino's co-worker did we learn where you were all at. Everything made sense after that."
Yukino felt a small pit grow into her stomach. "She wasn't wearing an outfit that has hearts on her chest, was she?"
"Yeah," scoffed Yuka, looking at her nails. "She was in a rush herself, but she was kind enough to give us the location where you went."
Yukino gave out a small groan, rubbing the temple of her forehead, as if she was trying to get rid of a headache (if not already). "Maya..."
"Yuki? What are you doing here?"
Speak of the devil!
"Oh, hello there Maya!" Elly quickly greeted the woman with a small hug.
Nanjo would have greeted the woman as well, but honestly, he had other things on his mind. "As much it is wonderful to see you again, I am curious. What are you doing here?"
"Our boss wanted to know why Yukino was taking so long with her lunch break, so I volunteered to find her. Oh, it's nice to see you all again! And it's you two from before! How did your little surprised play out?"
No answer.
"Oh. Um, did something happen?"
"Yeah, something happen," snapped Yuka. "Our so call friends broke a promise we made together!"
"Wha-"
"And now we're having a call out party! Like honestly, you could have at least told us about the damn party beforehand. Was a simply 'hey you two, we all reached our dreams at an extremely bad time, and while we promise all of us to be there when it happened, we decided to exclude you two just for being in different parts of the fucking world' too much to do?" Yuka shouted at the top of lungs, and unknowingly in her rage, grabbed the empty glass Mark drank from earlier.
Everyone took a few steps away from her, including Mark.
"Yuka, I think they might have earned their lesson," Mark said to her, hands out in the open. "I mean, Brown is close ruining his pants."
"Hell no I'm not!"
"You know what I mean!" Mark snapped to him, before turning back to Yuka.
"Beside, I think you're going to go ballistic again."
"What, no I'm not!" Yuka pushes Mark into the counter.
"Yes you are!" Mark tries to take the cup away from her.
"No I'm not!"
"Yes you are!"
"No I'm not!"
"Yes. You. ARE."
"No. I'm. NOT!"
Reiji, until this point purposely decided to stay quiet, could no longer handle their childish behavior anymore."Mark, Yuka, can you please stop fighting before-"
SMASH!
The cup smashed into thousands of tiny pieces.
Mark and Yuka looked at one another, and then at the others.
"You're going to make me pay for that, aren't you?" asked Mark.
Yuka bluntly nod her head.
After cleaning up the mess and Mark paying for the broken cup, the adults were politely removed (re: kicked out) from the premises. Mark and Yuka did the correct (and mature) course of action and apologize to their friends.
"We may have overreacted," Yuka said, "and honestly, breaking that cup was a dumb move on my part."
"But honestly guys, you could have at least called us or something. I mean, we schedule our visit around the same time everything went to hell, so when we first tried to get to Sumaru city, we panicked when we couldn't get in," explained Mark, scratching the back of his head.
"And when the city pretty much flew off into the sky, well, we got super panicky since we figure 'oh no, not another Persona related event'. And we pretty much felt...useless," admitted Yuka, looking down at the sidewalk.
"You were worried about us?" Maki asked in a soft voice.
"Of course we were!" Mark exclaimed. "We knew you guys could have handled whatever was going on, but when everything was done and over, and with no calls, well, we kind of presumed the worse."
"You do realize it's going to take more than that to kill us," Reiji pointed out to the two, shaking his head in disbelieved.
"How do you know that though?" asked Yuka.
She (sort of) has a point.
"So the surprised visit doubled as a 'thank god you're all alive' visit? That's one of the nicest thing you two could ever do!" Brown pulled up his sleeve to make sure no tears were falling on his face (it’s not every day that someone would do such a heartwarming thing).
"That's so beautiful!" gushed Maya, finding the action heartwarming as well, and honestly, there was a fifty/fifty chance that you forgot she was even here.
"If you had just told us that when we found you two, this entire situation wouldn't have happened," snapped Nanjo, pushing his glasses upwards.
"You caught us in a very emotional state," answered Yuka.
"You know, I think once everyone is done with their jobs for the day," began Elly, "I think it would be lovely if we could hang out at Aoba Park. What do you say to that? It’s not a party, but it’s a nice day to be out with friends, and well," Elly paused, taking a small glance at Maya, "friend of friends."
Mark and Yuka turn their back to the others, whispering to one another. After a few minutes of debating, the two looks back at the others with their answer.
"Yeah,"
"That's cool."
The rest of the day went smoothly after that.