Since I rescued Yukiko early I have a lot of downtime before the next plot segment. I’ll use this time to pursue social links.
The next morning the gossip queens talk about part-time job listings. Apparently I’ll need a new social stat, “diligence”, to get the good ones. In class, Reverse Weeaboo gives us a lecture on the tulip mania incident in early Europe, then… immediately asks a question that she just answered in the lecture. Weird freebie compared to the previous questions, but I’ll take it.
Apparently jobs now train social stats in addition to earning you money, which is nice.
On the flood plain I find an old man who wants my fishhook to repair his old fishing rod. After I do so, he’s so impressed by my kindness that he gives me the whole rod, so now I can do the fishing minigame. I can only fish once due to my low diligence, which uses up the entire afternoon. So I guess I won’t be spending time on this until I get more diligence. I get a fish that… heals 10 HP. Wow, that was not worth it.
On Sunday the sport boys want to hang out. I’d rather hang out with my party members, but I regretted ignoring most of the weekend hangouts in P3 so I’ll go for it. We head to the train station, and Kou asks whether I prefer urban places or rural places like Inaba. I actually do prefer Inaba to the city from P3, so I say that. Kou isn’t impressed, but Daisuke appreciates it and says he likes Junes, even if it’s the only place to hang out. Daisuke apparently also thinks Yosuke is funny, and Kou says the four of us should hang out sometime.
On the 25th, cultural clubs open up. This time the choice is between music and drama. I pick drama because that has obvious relevance to Personas. The club president is incompetent, and the de facto leader is our new social link:
Her Arcana is… the Sun? Huh. Is she also going to turn out to be terminally ill?
At home, Nanako says she restocked the fridge, which unlocks a new activity: spending the evening making lunch for tomorrow. I try it out to see what it does.
The next day, the rumor mill speculates that if Yukiko was the intended next victim, the killer must be targeting people based on looks. Hm.
We meet a new teacher.
Oh god, she’s like the opposite of whatever the pharmacy lady has going on. She spends a while rambling about how this animal can rob the vending machines. So that must be what’s lurking in the shrine at night. A raccoon, perhaps? When she gets around to doing her actual job we learn she’s the math teacher. I have to identify which of amicable, betrothed, marriage, or sociable numbers don’t exist.
CHIE: I don’t think I’ve heard of any of these!
I haven’t either, honestly. I cheat by searching them all on the internet and discover marriage numbers is the only term that isn’t real. Is this the sort of thing they teach in Japanese high schools? Annoyingly, the teacher doesn’t explain what the other types actually are.
I can use the lunch I made to invite one of my social links over. I decide to go with Yumi since I have the fewest points with her. Unfortunately, she hates the dry ginger pork I made. I reload and make the ginger pork correctly, and this time she loves it.
I find Chie on the roof and go on a date with her. She wants to train her fighting skills, and feels upset to realize she had such an ugly side to her after confronting her Shadow. For some reason I’m given two consecutive opportunities to flake out of training with her, even if I agree the first time. After the rank up, she learns a special skill (Rebellion, which now only targets one ally).
It’s raining on the 27th, which seems to prevent all social activities. So it’s actually more optimal to leave the victims hanging until the last few days so it doesn’t compete with your dating time. The calendar system in this game is so bizarre.
On the 28th Chie finally gives me an update on Yukiko and says she’ll be coming back to school in two days, which is also when the fog is slated to roll in and so presumably was the deadline for rescuing her. I did wonder how they would handle integrating rescued characters into the story when you can choose when to rescue them; as I expected, they just put them on a bus until a given date.
I can tell Chie it’s thanks to her or that it’s thanks to me. I say the former because yeah, she was the only one who seemed to care about Yukiko.
A proper blush! She doesn’t light up, either. So girls are capable of blushing normally.
I hang out with the drama club. I’m told to memorize a line and I have to actually recall it correctly with dialogue options… but I can just cheat and pull up the dialogue history. Yumi goes next and blows everyone else out of the water with her performance. The club casts her as the protagonist of their next play, and conscripts me into being her opposite. When we practice together, she says she loves acting because it lets her become someone else and “All I need… is to not be me.” Hm.