#Kind and Gentle Presence (Haru Okumara)

[oraclememehacker]

Haru and Futaba’s Bonding Moment

“I’m surprised that you’re still around Futaba. Usually, you’re squirreled up in your room at this point.” Sojiro remarked with a good-natured chuckle as Futaba was sitting at one of the booths with her switch out. Who knew what she was doing but apparently it was important as she was laying on her back and playing it pretty intently. Her mind was an enigma to the old man, but she mattered to him immensely. “Oh, I’m here for a reason. One of the others is coming over.”

One of the others meant her friends, the group that she hung out all the time. Sojiro knew that much anyways. “Ah. Which one?” He was more curious than anything, and with Futaba, he never knew what the answer was going to be. “You’ll know when they arrive.” She told him in a casual fashion as she was playing on her switch still. As always, she wanted to be cryptic. Oh well. “Should I prepare them the usual then?”

As he asked, the familiar chime of the door could be heard as the door opened, and who was it? None other than Haru Okumura, who was here for the express purpose of seeing Futaba. They had chatted via text about meeting up, and now was the time. There was a warm radiating energy coming off Haru that seemed to have the ability to cheer up even the most disheartened individuals. It was like a superpower really.

When Haru saw Futaba at the booth, she immediately got more excited. “Futaba-chan!” Futaba put her switch on the table and got up, seeing the floofy woman. “Haru!” The two rushed towards each other and gave each other a big hug, getting caught up in the moment as the two were simply really happy to see one another. It had been a little bit, and now they were going to just chat it up. Whilst playing Stardew Valley, which was the main plan.

“You want the usual, Okumara-san?” Sojiro asked and got a little nod of confirmation. “Coming right up then. You two enjoy yourselves.” The two of them let go of the hug and were beaming. “I haven’t had a chance to play this with you in a while Futaba-chan. I’m glad we’re getting back together for this.” Whilst Haru didn’t play many games, Stardew Valley really did hit the spot for her, and playing with a veteran like Futaba made it all the better.

“I know. I’ve been making sure the farm is doing alright. Just a few little things, don’t worry. We haven’t missed any major milestones or anything. Okay, let’s get to it then.” They would sit in the booth, getting ready as Haru joined via local play. Then they would start things up, tending to their farm which was coming along quite nicely with it still being the first year and all that. As they were chatting amongst themselves about their plans for the rest of fall in game, Haru spoke up.

“So, how have you been Futaba-chan? Has school been well for you?” Haru figured with a genius like Futaba, she probably wasn’t having much trouble academically speaking. The problem was with the socialization. She had heard about how much Futaba was bullied in school growing up, it was part of what lead to her to being so anti-social after all. “Yep, school’s been fine. Honestly, I think it’s been quite dull.”

“Well, I guess dull is better than having a bunch of bad stuff happen. Are your grades doing well?” When she got the answer of yes, that made her feel good. “Good. I bet you’ll be top of your class easy. You’ve taught me so much about computers and other assorted things.” Like the fact that booting didn’t mean kicking it with a boot. Though the term did come from bootstrap, so it had more to do with a boot than one would expect. Along with just some other basic computer maintenance stuff.

“You didn’t make it easy though.” Futaba told Haru with a sweat drop. “No offense.” Of course, there was no offense taken. “But you learned pretty well all things considered. I tried to teach some people on the internet through forums and it was like trying to teach a cat how to not hate water. Some people can be so dense and stupid I swear.” That just got a good hearty laugh to come from Haru. “Anyways, yeah, things are going well. How about you?”

“Me? Just fine all things considered. I’m getting ready to head to college for business. That way when I take over the company properly, I’m well versed in the ways of keeping the company going. Plus I want to open those cafes and keep growing my own food.” For Futaba that was like learning Greek, but she was quite proud of Haru for all of that. They both had goals and were heading towards them. It was quite nice.

Sometime would pass, and they kept playing, Haru eating her curry that was prepared by Sojiro, getting towards the end of fall in game. They loved their little bonding session, as it was a way for them to just relax, and for Haru to not have expectations placed upon her. As they were playing, a curious question entered Haru’s mind. She wasn’t sure why it did, but it was nagging at her and if she didn’t at least ask it, it would probably bug at her heavily. “Hey Futaba-chan, I have a question. It’s a weird one, but I’m curious.”

“Hmm? What’s up?” Futaba had an inquisitive tone to her voice as she was wanting to know what this weird question was. “I know boss is your father basically at this point, but have you ever wondered about your biological dad? You only seem to talk about your mom after all.” Well, that was certainly a weird question anyways. And one that was out of left field.

But it wasn’t like she hadn’t thought about it before. Hell, it was something that she asked her mom a long time ago. She had seen plenty of parents with mothers and fathers, but Wakaba was an only mother. Even when Sojiro was in the picture, they just stayed colleagues for most of it, even though it was clear there was quite a friendship, and had circumstances been slightly different, possibly been together romantically.

It took her a little bit to get over her surprise of the question before shaking her head. “I haven’t really put much thought into who my actual father was. Because my mom only told me he was “a scumbag who didn’t want anything to do with her” and told me not to worry about it.” Haru was slightly dumbfounded by that, but also curious. “Huh, she must have had her reason for that.”

“Yeah, she did go into a bit more detail about it.” Now that Futaba didn’t have the truth of things clouded from her mind due to all the guilt, she remembered so much more from her childhood. Even things that didn’t really think about all that much before her death. This was one of those things. “My mom had gotten her master’s degree and was planning on working on a doctorate when she met him and ended up getting pregnant with me.”

She went on to explain that whilst the pregnancy wasn’t really in the cards at the time, and she was worried about how this would affect her future, in the end Wakaba found that taking care of a child could be a good challenge, and that she wasn’t planning on having an abortion or anything like that. And then apparently, he told Wakaba that he wasn’t going to take care of said child and they got into a massive argument and left. From there, they never spoke again and of course, that was the story of how Futaba was born. Hearing that made Haru frown, but she also understood, at least a little bit.

But that didn’t make what that guy do acceptable, at least in Haru’s eyes. And she now understood fully why Futaba’s mom didn’t really want to bring it up. “Yeah, I get it. Sorry if I brought up anything uncomfortable.” She didn’t want Futaba to feel bad or to ruin the mood or anything. It just popped up in her mind after all. “Nah, I was young and after the explanation she gave me, I mostly stopped thinking about it. That’s why I said I didn’t put much thought into it.”

Though now that she was thinking about it, the thought about Haru’s father came up. How he had put her in that awful arranged marriage, how he treated his employees like they were robots, and his unfortunate death thanks to Akechi killing him, all for the sake of putting a target on the Phantom Thieves back. She wondered how Haru was feeling still, since the pain of that was farther away now.

“You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but how do you feel about your father and what happened to him, Haru?” That definitely changed the subject a bit, and Haru just let off a sigh. “Now that I’ve had time to really think about it, I mostly still just feel angry about his death.” It was a perfectly reasonable feeling to have, considering the circumstances.

“When I think about all the awful things that my father did, you would expect for me to hate him. And there’s definitely a part of me that does. There’s however a bigger part that knows that he wasn’t always that way and needed to be showed the errors of his ways. That’s why I don’t regret helping you all change his heart. And it seemed like he was going to have to face all the sins he did head on.

But of course, that wasn’t the case, and he died, live on air. While she was understandably upset at it, the fact of the matter was, in her mind anyways, she saw this as an escape for him. It was a way for him to ultimately get away from dealing with his guilt. It was like a get out of jail free card and that made her more frustrated than anything. She just wanted him to get better and deal with the consequences of his actions.

And instead, he was robbed of that. It made her grit her teeth momentarily before she calmed herself down. “All because of Akechi. I know he’s a victim just like the rest of us but…he still willingly did what he did. It wasn’t like Shido put a gun to his head and made him do all of those stuff.” A sharp exhale escaped her nostrils before she managed to calm herself down fully.

“Yeah…” Was all that Futaba could muster, at least initially anyways. Her feelings about Akechi were complicated as well. On one hand, he was someone who was incredibly talented and smart, and she could respect him for the stuff he managed to do. But on the other hand, he hid behind masks and his true self rarely showed. And who knows if the Akechi they saw whilst Maruki had the ideal reality going was his true self.

As Haru said, even though he was a victim like them, he made his choice when it came to that. He did what he did in order to gain favor with his illegitimate father who was merely using the power that he acquired in order to gain more and more power, and to ultimately put Japan in ruins. Futaba could never claim that she would willingly want to be friends with Akechi, but she wouldn’t outright state how much she hates him. Merely mess with him in the way that she always did.

Futaba then did pull Haru into a hug as the two were calming each other down. The conversation had gotten quite personal and upsetting, so they needed this. “Let’s just agree that Akechi was a complicated person, like a heavily multi-faceted person, and agree that we don’t hate him, but can’t exactly forgive him either.”

That seemed to be one thing that they both agreed on. They could never forgive him, not fully for the crimes he committed, but wouldn’t downright hate him either. That would be the way they would feel about him for the rest of time, since he seemed to not be coming back, due to being well, dead. But if he did somehow come back to life, that’s how they would feel.

Pushing that aside, they finished playing Stardew Valley, and had to stop as their Switches were going to die. Plus Haru had to get home so nobody would be worried about her. They both got out of the booth and gave each other another tight hug. They really did enjoy their time together like this. And Haru even gave the orange nerd a kiss on the cheek. That made her cheeks turn a slight shade of pink.

“Thanks for having me today Futaba-chan. We must do this some other time, sooner rather than later.” An agreement was made on that. “Oh and thank you for the meal boss.” Sojiro shrugged it off like it wasn’t all that big of a deal. “I’ll see you later, you two!” And with that, she was off, back home. Futaba just let off a little happy sigh before heading back to her house as well, opting to lay on the bed in her room and just think about things. A lot of things.