An appointment is made. An appointment is missed. A girl attends Shujin Academy, grieving and broken and alone. Akira Kurusu has a talent for helping lost causes find their footing, but even the leader of the Phantom Thieves has his work cut out for him this time. How do you help someone who doesn't think they're worth helping?
— Masquerade Summary
Masquerade
is a Persona 5 Royal Alternate Universe Fic by Vellaen, published on Archive of Our Own in May and June of 2020.
The story is has a For Want Of A Nail effect where Sumire never actually went to counsel with Maruki regarding her grief and the butterfly effect that follows.
A one-shot sequel, Brave Step, followed in March 2023.
Masquerade provides examples of:
- Actually Pretty Funny:
- Akira brings up the difficulty he's likely to have in asking other students for information on Sumire.
Akira: Well, I'm often the only thing anyone who sees me can manage to talk about. And I still send most people running if I get within arm's reach.
Ryuji: Give 'em time, man. Once they get to know ya, they'll start runnin' soon as they see ya!
Akira: [smiling in spite of himself] Very funny.- When Akira and Sumire have lunch together in Inokashira Park, the subject of the rumour mill surrounding him comes up.
Akira: I mean, you’ve gotten the gist of why I'm here.
Sumire: Oh. You mean that run-in outside of the guidance office? Please give me some credit, Senpai. Even if I was inclined to give them any credence, the rumors about you are patently ridiculous. Burglary? Murder? Ivory smuggling? Even I know you don’t get probation for that.
Akira: [chuckles] I hadn’t heard that last one, yet.
Sumire: I've been keeping track, if only for amusement at how over-the-top they'll get. - Apologizes a Lot:
- Sumire, often in reference to her own emotional reactions or troubling Akira with her problems. Akira tries to discourage her from this.
- It's anticipated at one point by Sumire's coach:
Coach Hiraguchi: You’ve just turned fifteen. You became a gifted performer in a body that was changing on you every single day, until you just couldn’t keep up any more.
Sumire opened her mouth, but Hiraguchi stopped her with a single upraised finger.
Coach Hiraguchi: Young lady, if you apologize to me for experiencing puberty, I will make you run laps. - Be Yourself: When Sumire attempts one of Kasumi's routines, Coach Hiraguchi picks up on it and advises her against it. However, this only makes her issues worse in the moment, and the next time Akira sees Sumire's cognitive version of herself, she's inconsolable to the point of Troubled Fetal Position. Akira tries this as well later, with more success.
- Call-Forward:
- Ann's line about Ryuji sounding like he's talking about knocking over a bank is likely a reference to the Kaneshiro's Palace, which happens shortly after the timeframe of the story.
- Akira's solution of bringing Sumire into her own palace foreshadows what will happen to Futaba Sakura a few months later.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: After Akira steps up to rescue Sumire from a creep in Shibuya Square, he later tells Sumire he couldn't look the other way. "Maybe it’s just a habit." He doesn't elaborate on this, telling her that It's a Long Story.
- Dead Person Conversation: Sumire talks with her cognition of Kasumi in her palace just before awakening to Cendrillon. Morgana points out that it was probably her own Shadow.
- 11th-Hour Superpower: The climax has Sumire awakening to Cendrillon, enabling her to calm the Shadows down in her palace and save the Phantom Thieves.
- Establishing Character Moment: The story opens on Sumire's moment from the game where she tries to give her seat up to an old woman only for a man to steal it first, followed by Akira's offer to "wake him up".
- "Eureka!" Moment: When Akira and Morgana try to figure out Sumire's keywords, Morgana tells Akira he's been a good sport about them exploring of Mementos for his sake, saying, "Thanks for playing along." This triggers Akira's memory of Sumire talking about how it feels to interact with Shujin staff who had been hoping to work with her and Kasumi: "For months, our going to Shujin was all she talked about. Now they're stuck with just me, pretending it's enough out of sympathy. It hasn't been easy… playing along." Akira starts suggesting various keywords related to acting, finally finding the right one: "Masquerade".
- Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: Sumire's expresses her disgust of Kamoshida by not using an honorific, which surprises Akira: "Even my cat got a '-san'."
- First-Episode Twist: Towards the end of the first chapter, Akira searches for Sumire in the Metanav, finding her as a candidate, and Morgana tells him how to search for her in Mementos.Metanav: Conditions have not been met.
Akira: Right. So, if her name is a hit, but she’s not in Mementos, then…
Morgana: Yeah. It means exactly what you think it does. Sumire Yoshizawa has a Palace. - Fuzz Therapy: When Sumire breaks down in tears during an early conversation with Akira, Morgana coming out of his bag and letting her pet him helps to cheer her up a bit.
- Insult Misfire: A variant when one of the guards in Sumire's Palace tells the team that, "Unscrupulous gentlemen and unchaperoned ladies are not permitted within. Only couples may enter, invitees and their designated guests." Ryuji starts to reply, “Hey, who are you callin' unscrup—" before remembering that Ann had already been accepted and he had been accepted as her guest. "Oh, right. Not me. Wait, are you callin' my friends here unscrupulous?"
- Masquerade Ball: Sumire's palace takes the form of a country house out of a Jane Austen novel, which eventually starts holding a Masquerade.
- Maybe Ever After: The story, including the sequel, stops short of showing Akira and Sumire getting together or admitting their feelings, even to themselves (the most we get for Akira is a narration line saying "He loved her just as she was".)
- Oh, Crap!: When Joker sees a noose and a knocked over stool in Sumire's palace, with her cognition nowhere to be seen. "Cognitions don't leave corpses, was his lone coherent thought." He races back to the real world to look for Sumire.
- Point of Divergence: Because Sumire ran out on her appointment with Dr. Maruki, she ends up attending Shujin and meeting Akira as herself rather than as Kasumi.
- Publicly Discussing the Secret: Ryuji's tendency toward this is lampshaded:Ryuji: We should hit another you-know-what. The share from the first place was sweet. It was nice havin' a little pocket change without havin' to beg my ma, y’know?
Ann: Ryuji, when I see you two standing together, I don't want to overhear a conversation that sounds like you've just knocked off a bank.
Ryuji: What? I was bein' all discreet and shit.
Akira: You get points for trying, at least. We should work out some code words.
Morgana: I second that idea. True Phantom Thieves should be proficient at disguising their conversations in public.
Akira: Says the one member who doesn't have to worry about being overheard. - Tempting Fate: Morgana's reaction after Akira brings Sumire into her own palace.Morgana: There's no telling what kind of effect that will have, especially since her distortion was already uncertain. I honestly have no idea how this could get any worse.
With an ear-ringing slam, a set of doors on the balcony above them were thrown open. Sumire gaped as a pair of figures charged inside, wearing uniforms straight out of a history book on the Napoleonic Wars. She might have described their movements and proportions as comical, except there was nothing the least bit funny about the bayonetted rifles they both bore.
Joker: Mona, when we get out of this, remind me to tell you about Murphy’s Law. - Umbrella of Togetherness: Chapter 1 has the scene where Akira shares his umbrella with Sumire, which here leads to him accidentally upsetting her by reminding her of Kasumi. He stays with her during her breakdown to try and shield her from the rain.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Overlapping with Talking Down the Suicidal, Akira attempts this when he confronts Sumire in the gym.Akira: Sumire Yoshizawa, your sin is self-doubt. With every thought you deny your own worth, and raise a false idol in your place. You are not your sister, and you do not have to be! You are my friend. You are brilliant and beautiful. You are compassionate and kind. And I will use all my power to make you admit it with your own mouth. This is a message from the Phantom Thieves of Hearts."
Brave Step provides examples of:
- Dramatic Irony: After Sumire tells her mother about the incident in Shibuya Square a few weeks ago, she thanks Akira, saying, "I lost one of my daughters three months ago. I almost lost the other and didn't even know it." Both Akira and Sumire immediately think back to how close she came to suicide that day.
- Excellent Judge of Character: Both of Sumire's parents, with Aoba being quick to trust Akira and Shinichi's accurate analysis of Masayoshi Shido (who Aoba brings up when she draws a possible link between the timing of Akira's arrest and a cancelled booking that Shido was responsible for). "Those last-minute cancellations when Congressman Shido had some undisclosed family emergency played merry hell with our schedule. Especially since that man doesn't have any family he wouldn’t happily trample in exchange for a sound bite."
- Fridge Horror: In-Universe, when Sumire belatedly learns the truth about Akira's criminal record, she's horrified to realise what must have been going through his mind in the previous story when he rescued her from a creep in Shibuya, as well as what happened later that day.She had never been ungrateful for what he’d done for her that day, it was true. But even then, she’d never truly understood just how thoroughly he had understood her predicament. What he’d risked, in that moment, to be the one person in the crowd who didn't look away, and knowing it when he came to her aid. How brave he had been, to take that step. [...]
He had saved her, and nearly watched her throw it all away later that same day. Sumire felt shame digging into her soul like shards of broken glass. - Holding Hands: Sumire talks about how it's been lonely riding the train without Kasumi and recalls holding each other's hand to keep from getting lost in the crowds. Akira wordlessly takes her hand and holds it until they get to Kichijoji.
- Immediate Sequel: The story picks up at Leblanc, immediately after Akira and Sumire's conversation about joining the Phantom Thieves.
- Internal Reveal: Sumire's mother, being aware of the rumour mill surrounding Akira, asks him for his version of events, a subject he never elaborated on to Sumire in the first story. The narration notes that it wasn't such a long story after all:Akira: I stopped a man from doing something he wanted to do to a woman who didn’t want him to do it. Unfortunately, it turned out that the man was more important than me, and he knew it.
- Ironic Echo: Sojiro admits to Sumire that Akira is a good kid but asks her to keep that "our little secret". When Akira uses the same words minutes later at the train station, it takes Sumire some time to stop laughing.
- Meet The Inlaws: Akira is forced into accompanying Sumire home to meet her mother Aoba, though her father Shinichi is stuck at work. He ends up staying for dinner, having helped cook it, and makes a pretty good impression considering his circumstances.
- Open-Minded Parent: Aoba Yoshizawa comes across as accepting of her daughter's friendship with (and probable crush on) Akira, and while she does question him about his criminal record, she makes it clear that she cares more about hearing it from him rather than rumours, and would likely have been willing to believe his side of the story even before Sumire vouched for him by telling her about the incident in Shibuya Square.
- Parents as People: Aoba realises she and Shinichi have been distant from Sumire since Kasumi's death and starts to take steps to amend this, thanking Akira for helping her see that.Aoba: You never spoke about it, and I should have known… I didn't remember. I didn't let myself remember that it was always Kasumi who came to us crying, or told us so boldly when she fought back… But you were always my stoic little girl. My brave little violet. I'm so sorry.
- Saying Too Much: In a text to her mother, Sumire lets slip that she travelled on the train with someone ("We just arrived in Kichijoji. I'll see you soon."). When her mother picks up on it ("We?"), Sumire clarifies that she was with Akira and Aoba sends back a message telling her to bring him home with her.
- Shipper on Deck: Sojiro shows signs of this for Akira and Sumire. Aoba as well, being rather more open about it in her conversation with Shinichi: "She's fifteen, Shinichi, and brave enough to learn. Brave enough to live. Let her be in love."
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Akira again tries to assure Sumire that she's braver than she gives herself credit for, with help from Aoba.
