2026-01-27: Unending Coda

• Cutscene: Unending Coda
• Cast: Tamaki Uchida
• Where: Aoba Ward, The Velvet Room
• OOC Date: 2026-01-27
• IC Date: 2012-09-16
• Summary: Tamaki makes her prodigal return to the Velvet Room. Nameless teases her for the length of her absence, but she gets over it.

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(BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9U7JTGJLWM Void Stranger OST - Voided)

        With no university classes scheduled today and no immediately pressing work obligations, Tamaki had found herself with some free time on this particular Sunday afternoon.

        She had found that keeping her mind and body occupied with some activity was a necessity – during moments of otherwise idle introspection, she often found herself prone to ruminating on old regrets, uselessly picking at old scabs. Since high school, paying attention to her bodily needs of food, hydration, and fitness had served as Tamaki “Muscle Freak” Uchida’s primary means of diverting her thoughts.

        She now found joy in the banality of minor inconveniences and annoyances, grateful that she only had to reckon with the occasional stubbed toe or computer trouble. These mere everyday trifles were nothing compared to the more severe trials which she had had to endure some years ago.

        Her choice of remedy today was exercise: a change into lighter clothes and a jog through the streets of Aoba Way. There was a period during August when she had dropped the habit – when she had to temporarily drop the habit.

        She doesn’t like to recall why.

        Despite her best efforts to avoid reminiscing, there was one blue-painted door which existed on Aoba Way, visible to a select few, detached from any building, simply standing out in the open. It was a kind of door which Tamaki was intimately familiar with from a prior context.

        On every other routine jog, Tamaki had simply ignored it. She had done everything in her power to avoid entering its hallway once again – she had already done enough, or so she had thought. The degree of her avoidance was severe to the point that when it came to Skill Cards, she had preferred to utilize the services of a different vendor, the Time Count in his Castle over in Rengedai Ward. This preference of hers had overridden the convenience of this door’s closer proximity to her apartment, university, and workplace, all tidily located in Aoba Ward within walking distance from each other.

        This time, however, the sight of this door to the Velvet Room had caused her to slow her pace to an eventual stop and blankly stare in its direction for several moments (perhaps causing some onlookers to wonder what she was looking at, unable to see the door themselves). Try as she might have to outrun her thoughts, they had caught up to her.

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(SFX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URqW615hjes Void Stranger OST - Per aspera...)

        Why now? What was the difference?

        Her own future was more uncertain now – roughly half a year ago, she had once had the rest of her life planned out, right up until her fiancé and his family received some unexpected news which would require his incredibly extended absence. Thoughts of the past had come flooding in to fill the vacuum left by this change of plans.

        Perhaps it was a practical concern. The report she had heard from Hyousuke Suzuki about Dimitri Tachovsky’s Shadow in Tartarus had knocked loose some memories of the Demon Painter. She had sent Hyousuke his way, but was there any reason she shouldn’t pay him a visit herself? Does an adult woman such as herself really need to send a boy in her stead?

        Her recent interactions with the pair of cousins-in-law Yua Ijuuin and Miho Ijuuin had brought on another surge of memories within Tamaki. As an avid sabre fencing hobbyist, Tamaki had been struck by the insistence of Miho’s oath to find and rescue Yua from whatever plight she had fallen into, televised on the 2008 Olympics. It had caused Tamaki to wonder – both then and now – if she had given up where Miho had succeeded, if she had made the wrong choice in her own life to respect the wishes of an old dear friend and move on.

        Tamaki had found that Eriko Kirishima had a knack for stirring the parts of her heart which she had personally preferred to remain silent. Her old St. Hermelin High School fencing club teammate knew exactly how to renew her interest in the wonderful world of Personas, Demons, Shadows, and other supernatural phenomena. What had once seemed to be an impossible undertaking felt feasible once more in light of Eriko’s infectious enthusiasm, causing Tamaki to muse if she had mistaken what she had called pragmatism for what was actually cynicism.

        Tamaki had once thought herself immune to the same concerns that had plagued a motorcycle-riding young man, the red leather-clad student with a Mark who Umie Akabane had once tutored. She had believed that she could serve as his example, she had told Umie that she aspired to be the kind of role model to others who she had wished she had in the past herself – these words had apparently stuck with Umie, who now endeavored to do the same. Tamaki had told the boy to later return to the Kuzunoha Detective Agency, listen to what she had gone through, and then tell her if he could relate to her or if she was, in her own words, “full of shit.”

        She hadn’t seen that boy since – the invitation seems to have scared him off entirely.

        Perhaps most painfully, Eikichi Mishina had made his way into the Kuzunoha Detective Agency’s office to request that he be informed of the Joker Killer’s whereabouts so that he may give him a proper thrashing. The Kasugayama High student’s request was innocent enough, but the fact that he was a musician was an unfortunate association, and it dredged up some long-since-buried feelings in Tamaki.

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        Every now and then when the tug of gravity reminds her of the weight of the choker around her neck, a loop tied through the center of six coins in the rokumonsen Buddhist funerary custom, she remembers a tale regarding the Song dynasty author Su Dongpo and his teacher Fo Yin.

        Su Dongpo had composed one such poem:

I bow to the Buddha,
Whose light of wisdom,
Shines on us all.
Sitting on my golden lotus,
Even the eight winds,
Cannot move me at all.

        Believing that his teacher would be pleased with the poem and his student’s progress towards transcendence, he sent it across the river to the temple that his teacher resided at.

        Fo Yin, in turn, vandalized Su Dongpo’s poem with a word which can either mean “nonsense,” or more crudely “fart,” then sent it back across the river.

        Enraged, Su Dongpo travelled across the river to demand the meaning of his teacher’s insult.

        Fo Yin looked his old student directly in the face and skeptically posed the question: “The eight winds supposedly cannot move you, yet a mere fart blew you all the way across the river to me?”

        Upon hearing this, Su Dongpo realized his mistake. Fo Yin had returned his humility to him.

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(BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9GkTgg-Ou4 Velvet Room - Persona 2 Eternal Punishment (2000))

        Having now been humbled once more, Tamaki stepped towards the doors of the Velvet Room and finally – finally – walked through to re-enter it again. She winced upon hearing the song performed by the enigmatic ever-present figures of the blindfolded Nameless on the piano and Belladonna on the microphone, the same as it was back then. The Demon Painter paid Tamaki no mind, though her eyes went to him first, as her immediate business here was with him.

        With a knowing twinkle in his eyes, Igor’s soul-piercing stare bore through Tamaki as he gestured from his seat to greet her, “Welcome, once again, to the Velvet Room.”

        She tried to stifle any sardonic tone in her reply: “I’m home.”

        Nameless spoke up next, though he didn’t turn from his seat nor interrupt his song. A teasing grin danced onto his face as his fingers continued to dance across the keys. “Assuming a rate of 92 beats per minute and a 4/4 signature, one particular coda has continued on for a minimum of 59,019,840 measures, or 236,079,360 beats – or 1782 nights, or 4 years, 10 months, and 16 days, or almost 64 full moons.”

        His grin widened as he lifted his 10 fingers for 3 measures’ worth of silent full rests– precisely 18.4 seconds, according to that song’s characteristics. (Belladonna continued on uninterrupted.) “Did you finally return to pick something up from the lost-and-found?”

        Yeah, Su Dongpo’s humility, grumbled Tamaki’s inner monologue. The song wasn’t doing her mood any favors, but its absence unsettled her even more. Instead, she tilted her head to give Nameless an upward nod. “Keep playing,” she insisted, not wanting him to pay her mind any further.

        That’s a ‘yes,’ Nameless surmised as he snickered and picked up the tune where Belladonna had continued it. “Or in other words, it has been at least – ”

        Tamaki exhaled a sigh in aggravation, pinched the bridge of her nose, and shut her eyes. “Don’t say it.”

        “ – as many days and nights since – “

        Tamaki flung her arms to her sides and glared at Nameless as she protested again, more sharply this time, “I said don’t say it!”

        “ – you had tried in vain to shutter the doors of your soul.”

        They had still been open this entire time – or at least unlocked, only covered by Tamaki’s futile soundproofing efforts.

        Tamaki loudly groaned as she buried her face in her hands and muttered a muffled curse, “AAAUUUGHH. Uggghhh. Damn it.” She seemed to deflate, her shoulders now slumped in defeat and resignation.

        Despite her apparent irritation having reached a fevered pitch, she accepted that there was nothing to be done for it. When she had fully regained her composure, she dusted her hands before she folded her arms to indicate her annoyance with Nameless’ antics.

        Knowing precisely what he had returned to Tamaki, Nameless quietly smiled and returned his full attention back to the piano before him. Roughly a minute later, now mollified by the aria which forever plays within the Velvet Room, Tamaki had relaxed enough to lower her arms and leaned against the wall to simply listen.

        The ‘coda’ mentioned by Nameless had not ended with Tamaki’s prodigal return – no, her voice was separate from what he had meant. The start of this coda and the time of her departure had occurred at the same moment – the latter had now ended, but the former still carries on.

        After they had completed several refrains of the song, Tamaki softly offered to Nameless and Belladonna, “Thank you.”

        Soon, she would converse with the Demon Painter, but she was content to stay here for a while – here, at this intersection between thought and reality, mind and matter.

        Tamaki now once more hoped that if she stayed here long enough, she would learn to pick up on what Nameless was able to perceive.

        She had no firm proof of this, she had no scientific (nor psientific) basis for it, but she believed that Reiko Akanezawa’s voice might one day finally reach her ears again.