Fanfic / A Year To Fill An Empty Home

Takeshi and Chou Kurusu aren't bad people. They never stopped loving their son, not for a single second.

A Year To Fill An Empty Home by Turandot (LostOzian) is an Elsewhere Fic of Persona 5, following the premise that Joker's parents are Good Parents through and through, just trying to handle a situation caused through no fault of their own.

Kurusu Takeshi and his wife Chou's lives fall apart when their son Akira was arrested, put on probation and sent away to Tokyo for a year. Unable to even make contact with him due to the non-contact order, all they can do is slowly move on with their lives in their quiet hometown and wait for him to return, but as the days go by, they find themselves wanting to do more, if for no other reason than to be strong for their son when he finally returns. While Akira is getting into who-knows-what miles away in Tokyo, his parents find themselves growing in new ways just like him, taking on new jobs, learning new skills, connecting with others, growing as people, and even changing the people around them.

What will come of the Kurusu's year-long endeavor to fill their empty home?

---

Tropes contained in A Year To Fill An Empty Home:

• Actually a Good Idea:
  • At the start of the year, Takeshi's boss puts him down for an overtime project (meaning he'll spend less time at their already emptier home) and when Takeshi mentions his wife's concern, just brushes him off by telling him to buy her jewellery. After he tells Chou, she replies that if she wanted jewellery, she'd get a job herself to earn it. When she thinks on it later, she decides that a part-time job would be good to occupy her time.
  • While Hana is studying for her exams, Takeshi suggests that she could imagine the Large Ham characters of her light novel screaming the subject matter to each other to better memorize them. Hana finds the idea stupid, but Takeshi can see her silently screaming her vocabulary words to herself later.
• All of the Other Reindeer: After Akira's arrest, what social circles the Kurusus had evaporated, leaving them with no-one to lean on apart from each other, and the people who they still interact with heaping nothing but scorn on them for the actions of their son. However, this could also be seen as a blessing in disguise, as it also gave the Kurusus space to take another look at themselves and slowly grow as people over the year.
• Animal Motifs: Takeshi and Chou frequently compare Akira to a chameleon, with his habits of always wanting to do what other people were doing, and changing his behaviour to match them. When their son finally comes home after a year surrounded by so many good and colorful friends, Chou describes him as a rainbow.
• Apologises a Lot: Chou's people-pleasing preference to be happy and nice gives her a tendency to overly apologize for everything, which plays into her Extreme Doormat tendencies. Even after she learns to stand up for her ideals and debate healthily with Morita, she still has that habit.
  Morita: You apologize a lot for someone who has no intention of changing her point of view.
• Apron Matron: Sachiko, elderly owner of the Red Ribbon bakery. Though she is brusque to her new employee/apprentice Chou and has more than a few hang-ups about her own family, she also intervenes when Morita berates Chou in the store, and allows Chou some time to collect herself afterwards.
• Ascended Extra: Given that Joker's parents are practically non-entities in canon, them getting actual names and personalities in this fic is this trope.
• Bittersweet Ending: Subverted. Akira finally returns home, after spending the drive with his friends and inadvertently derailing his parents' welcome-home celebration, but his reception is outright chilly because he spent the entire year thinking that his parents abandoned him, and it almost seems that their year apart has irreparably damaged their relationship. Luckily, a little cake and explanation helps clear things up.
• Blaming the Victim: In the first chapter, the Jerkass cop explaining the conditions of Akira's probation not-so-subtly suggests that his parents' behavior had some influence in him committing a crime, and uses it as pretext for sending him to Tokyo to "remove him from bad influences". This, along with Chou and Takeshi's Extreme Doormat personalities, has them taking the non-contact order at face-value and not contacting their son for a year. It's later suggested that the officer may have been on Shido's payroll and misinformed them on purpose.
• Book Ends: The Kurusus start the year trying to come to terms with their son being put on probation and sent away, with Takeshi going to work on autopilot while Chou dwells and falls to pieces at home with nothing to do. The end of the year has the Kurusus trying to manage their grief of Akira being arrested and sent to juvie, but this time in opposite ways: Fukuyama tells Takeshi to go home and process, and Sachiko encourages Chou to keep herself busy at the bakery.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Hana counts as one, unrelated to the main couple. She's smart-mouthed, a fan of occult and the Phantom Thieves, doesn't like being treated as a kid, and with her parents too busy quarrelling to pay attention, is often seen hanging out on the street late at night. The only unusual bit is her burgeoning Intergenerational Friendship with Takeshi, whose son is older than her.
• Broken Pedestal: Hana admits to feeling a little like this about the Phantom Thieves after Okumura's death. Although she still believes in and roots for them, she now understands that sometimes heroes can let you down, and that you have to take command of your own story instead of being fixated on someone else's.
• Call-Back:
  • When Takeshi's boss put him down for overtime on a project, he brushes off Takeshi's concerns about spending more time away from his wife and just told him to buy her jewelry with the extra money. At the end of the year, Chou does indeed get jewelry - one of Morita's pearl necklaces as a Christmas gift.
  • During a conversation with Sachiko, Chou says that if Akira disappoints her, she'd be sad, but she'd keep living. In December, when the Kurusus are informed that Akira had been sent to juvie, Chou is completely distraught until Sachiko comes to her house, reminds her of her promise, and gets her off her feet and to the bakery.
• Calling the Old Man Out: When Akira gets home, he confronts his parents on why they abandoned him for the year (they mistakenly thought that contacting him would violate his probation and send him to jail - something Makoto figured out instantly after being told their side of the story). His second question to them in a year is an Armor-Piercing Question all on its own:
  Akira: Did you question it at all? Even once?
• Cast Herd: With a bit of Geodesic Cast included; Takeshi and Chou interact with each other at home, but each of them have their own social circles that generally don't intermingle. Moreover, they each have two pseudo-Confidants whom they help and learn from, one more initially antagonistic (Fukuyama and Morita), and one more neutral from a different generation with Parental Issues (Hana and Sachiko). The two circles only mix when they're all helping support the Kurusus through the news of their son's remand to juvenile detention.
• Character Development: There's a lot of it, on all sides.
  • Both Takeshi and Chou learn to not just be Extreme Doormats, but to stand their ground, speak their truth no matter what, help others, and take risks for the future, all to be strong for their son. This is in addition to the other skills and interests they cultivate throughout the year - Takeshi with solar energy, Chou with baking.
  • Fukuyama learns from his mistakes, tempers his ambition and actually learns from his senior Takeshi, and eventually understands that success is more than your position at a company, but also the good you do for others.
  • The brusque Sachiko, after a day with her family to clear the air, understands that she's been letting her love of baking drive a wedge between her and her family, and decides to step away from her bakery more often and spend more time with them.
  • With Takeshi's support, Hana stops just drifting along aimlessly on the street or fawning over the Phantom Thieves, and discovers her newfound passion of writing, and through it, determination.
  • Morita undergoes a full-on Heel–Face Turn, turning from a Sadist Teacher obsessed with rewarding the smart and demeaning the mediocre and lower to an educator who rewards the improvement of all and who has rediscovered her dream of true meritocracy.
• Chilly Reception: Akira and his friends give this to Takeshi and Chou when they bring Akira home, because they were under the impression that his parents deliberately broke off contact for the whole year. As such, they are taken off guard at Chou's excited welcoming hug.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: When Akira returns home alongside his friends, Makoto points out that the non-contact order of his probation would only punish the contacters and not Akira himself, meaning that the Kurusus could've remained in contact with their son for the entire year if they'd been willing to take the consequences - which they would've done so in a heartbeat. Moreover, they would've found this out if they'd just made the effort to contact him or question the order, but because they were too weak-willed to do so, they kept away from Akira to avoid putting him in prison and thus made him think that they'd abandoned him.
• Darkest Hour: After an entire year of self-improvement and anxious waiting for their son to come home, the news of Akira's arrest comes in and drives both his parents into despair (on Christmas no less). They relapse into their old coping habits and stop checking days off the countdown calendar, until their friends come to check on them.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Hana's Confidant route is like this, starting off as a listless middle school girl trying to get away from her arguing parents and latching onto the Phantom Thieves as a means of escape. Her interactions with Takeshi eventually helps her discover her goal in life - to be a light novel writer.
• Doomsday Clock: Inversion. After Akira is sent away, Chou makes a year-long wall calendar to count down the days until her son's probation is over and he can come home. She and Takeshi make a daily ritual of crossing days off of it.
• Dramatic Irony: Because Akira's parents are Locked Out of the Loop when it comes to their son's exploits with the Phantom Thieves, a few of their comments come across as such.
  • One discussion has Chou confident that Akira can get through his probation by surrounding himself with good friends to help him through it, but Takeshi internally worries (and figures that his wife knows already) that their social chameleon of a son could just as easily blend into the wrong crowd as the right one. Fortunately, they have nothing to worry about.
  • Partway through the year, Takeshi and Chou agree that as a welcome-home present, they'd allow Akira to get a pet cat. When Akira comes home, Chou is elated to see that he already got one in the form of Morgana.
  • One good thing about Akira's parents being Locked Out of the Loop means that they don't worry too much when they read about the Phantom Thieves' leader's suicide. The news still gives Chou an awful feeling, wondering if the deceased had any family that would miss him.
  • Because of the non-contact order, Takeshi and Chou regretfully cut off all contact from Akira so that he wouldn't go to jail. In actual fact, nothing of the sort would happen to Akira, meaning that from his perspective, his parents abandoned him like all the rest, which puts his risking of his life throughout the year into a new perspective.
• Elemental Motifs: Unusually for a stoic like Takeshi, it's electricity. He is an electrician by trade, he gets a feeling of lightning down his spine when he feels like he has to say something, and Hana even bases a character in her light novel called the “Lord of Thunder” after him. He also later takes on the “innovative” aspect of this element when he decides to learn more about solar power.
• Elsewhere Fic: This story takes place completely in Akira's hometown, with the only look into Tokyo's goings-on being news reports. The Phantom Thieves don't even show up until the last few scenes.
• Empty Nest: The Kurusu's are hit with a harsh, involuntary, year-long instance of this when Akira is sent away, and the whole story is about how his parents try to fill that empty space. When Akira finally returns at the end of the story, they can see how many bonds he has made in Tokyo and are perfectly happy allowing him to leave, as long as they never lose contact again.
• Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry: Morita's iconic pearl earrings and double-stringed pearl necklace are clear indications of her being a raging snob. After Chou manages to connect with her and change her worldview, she gifts her one of her pearl strings as a Christmas gift.
• Evil Is Petty: When it's revealed that the Kurusus were possibly misled into cutting themselves off from their son for the whole year, Akira's friends suggest that Shido had enough influence to get the local cops to lie to them about the non-contact order's details, all in a further attempt to isolate Akira.
• Extreme Doormat: At the start of the story, Takeshi and Chou are both like this (with Takeshi more as The Stoic and Chou more of an Excessive Apologizer), too passive to protest their son's arrest very strongly or defend him when others put him down as a delinquent. A lot of their year-long Character Development is them overcoming this.
  • In Takeshi's case, this is how his stoicism is viewed by his boss, and he doesn't argue when his boss puts him down for overtime on a project that would force him to spend more time away from his wife, despite his inner monologue lamenting how he spent the days after his son was sent away acting as normal. However, things change from that point on, starting from when he stands up to his inexperienced, insubordinate assistant when it would've been easier just to let him run roughshod over him.
  • Chou even admits as much when it's revealed that they could've contacted Akira without him being punished (they were mistaken or directly misled about the specifics) and Akira calls them out on not protesting harder - that they were weak at the start of the year and took what they were told at face-value.
• Failed a Spot Check: What leads to Fukuyama's Pride Before a Fall moment. He notices a sale on electrical wiring that would lead to a big discount and goes behind Takeshi's back to purchase it, but fails to notice, unlike his more experienced senior, that the wire on offer was the wrong gauge for the job. As such, when the wire is installed, the difference in voltages causes a fire, putting Fukuyama in hot water with both the client and Sato.
• Fictional Document: Hana's fantasy light novel “Riko, the Black Witch of Pure Heart”, about a young witch who uses the dark power of a demon to save the world, that Takeshi encourages her to write over the year. Takeshi reads a chapter or two in-story (particularly the one where a character based on him shows up), and Hana gives him a printed manuscript at the end of the year.
• First-Name Basis: After their relationship improves, Fukuyama asks Takeshi to call him by his first name, Jun, an act that Takeshi reciprocates.
• Freudian Slip: As Takeshi and Fukuyama discuss the latter's ambitions of starting a new electrician company, Fukuyama points out that unless they innovate, their company would fail. Takeshi instantly picks up on "their" company, and although Fukuyama does a Verbal Backspace, they start giving the idea more thought.
• A Friend in Need: With his insubordinate assistant Fukuyama getting reamed out by their Mean Boss Sato due to his screw-up, Takeshi, making a choice to change his behaviour and not keep quiet any longer, tells the boss that if he doesn't stop berating Fukuyama, he'll quit. Fukuyama is completely befuddled by the gesture, but Sato, caught between keeping on a screwup or losing his most experienced project manager, backs down.
• Friendship Trinket: Just like Akira and his Confidants, the relationships developed between Takeshi, Chou and their newfound friends is punctuated by them giving the Kurusus a Key Item-esque gift at the end of the year, once their friendship is fully cemented.
  • Fukuyama's gift to Takeshi is a cap with the logo of their new electrician company, "True Power". The royal blue and gold colors give Takeshi a sense of change and responsibility when he accepts it, and when Akira sees it, his silence makes it obvious he's thinking about a pair of blue, hat-wearing twins that also symbolize strength.
  • Sachiko gives Chou a key to the Red Ribbon bakery, showing Chou how much she trusts her with her workplace. It also shows Sachiko's willingness to step back from her work to spend more time with her family.
  • Hana's Key Item to Takeshi is her completed light novel, “Riko, the Black Witch of Pure Heart”, which Takeshi encouraged her to write all year.
  • Morita takes half of her iconic double-stringed pearl necklace and gifts it to Chou as a Christmas gift, so that she can show her son that his mother is someone of excellence.
• Goth: Hana has some shades of this, wearing dark eyeshadow, being rather sullen and snarky, and having a fascination with the occult (particularly whatever the Phantom Thieves use to change hearts). Later on, she uncovers an artistic streak as a fantasy light novel author.
• Graffiti of the Resistance: Midway through the story, Chou sees that Morita's house has been vandalized with a symbol of the Phantom Thieves, and she decides to help clean it off. This is partially because she feels the sigil looks too bloody and violent for the Phantom Thieves, even if their reputation took a nosedive after Okumura's death.
• Green-Eyed Monster: After Hana starts staying at the Kurusu house more often, Takeshi notes that she refuses to speak to his wife Chou, staying quiet until Chou leaves the room. Hana says it's because she finds her kindness and attention condescending, but after it's revealed that her own parents spend all their time yelling at each other, it's clear that she hates that her parents don't have a connection like the Kurusus do.
• Grew a Spine: This is a major part of both Takeshi and Chou's Character Development; becoming more willing to speak their mind and stand their ground for what they believe in.
  • Takeshi decides to make his change when he sticks up for his colleague to their boss, despite the fact that said ambitious colleague had been trying to get him fired. This becomes the start of their burgeoning friendship.
    • In particular for Takeshi, he is frequently described as having lightning running up and down his spine when he feels like he has something to say. Before, he used to just hide it under his usual stoicism, but as the year goes on, he starts to listen to it more.
  • Chou's moment comes when, after one put-down too many from Morita, she lays out a full "The Reason You Suck" Speech for putting academic excellence above all else and ignoring the mediocre students under her care, and declares that she'd rather Akira stay behind a year instead of studying at her cram school.
• Hanlon's Razor: In a case of Dramatic Irony, Akira thinks that his parents abandoned him to his probation for the whole year and never bothered to contact him, when actually they were just mistaken on the specifics of his non-contact order. If there was any actual malice involved, the other Thieves suggest that it might've been officers on Shido's payroll who deliberately misinformed them.
• Happily Married: Probably the only thing less in doubt than Takeshi and Chou's love for their son is their love for each other. They lean on each other to get through the year, share little rituals like crossing off their countdown calendar, and have their own celebration when they hear that Akira will come home on time after being sent to juvie late last year.
• Happiness in Minimum Wage: Not even minimum wage; the Red Ribbon bakery doesn't get enough customers to pay for even part-time work, but Chou doesn't mind. She takes the job because she can't stay at home to do nothing all day, and she eventually grows to enjoy her new baking skills, the air of community around the bakery, and her boss, Sachiko.
• Heel Realization: Morita has a couple of these that make her realize how her meritocratic ideals warped into contempt for mediocrity and mistreatment of her students; first when a student who vandalized her house is pleased when she expels him from her cram school, and second when she looks on the Phan-site and sees how many requests there were for the Phantom Thieves to change her heart.
• Heroic BSoD: Chou almost has one when Makoto points out that they had gotten the details of the non-contact order wrong and that they could've contacted Akira at any point in the year without risk of putting him in prison, and from her son's perspective, his parents had abandoned him out of pure selfishness.
• Hypocritical Humor: In the epilogue, Sojiro gets in contact with Takeshi and asks when the Kurusus will reach Tokyo, because Akira's friends are getting impatient and are pestering him with questions. When Takeshi replies that they don't want to say goodbye yet, Sojiro remarks that the kids should know how that feels, since they were late returning Akira home the previous year because they didn't want to say goodbye yet either.
• I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: With Akira's friends only dropping him off late in the evening, the Kurusus offer to put them up for the night. When Chou realizes how few of them are actually calling parents (single mother, single father, older sister, housekeeper, dorm staff, and no-one at all), she mentally informs her husband that they're adopting all of them this instant.
• In-Joke: Hana's light novel is about a witch bonded to a demon and using its power to save the world. As Futaba reads it to her friends, all of them smile and laugh like the subject matter resonates with them for some reason.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Two of the Kurusu's Confidants count; Hana is a middle-schooler young enough to be Takeshi's daughter, and Sachiko is an elderly baker old enough to be Chou's mother.
• Mean Boss: Sato, Takeshi's boss at Sato Electricians. He's completely unsympathetic to his employee's family matters, writes off Akira as an irredeemable delinquent without a second thought, puts Takeshi down for overtime on a big project without asking him first, and when one of his other employees screws up, he browbeats him mercilessly and doesn't stop until Takeshi intervenes.
• Meaningful Echo: In December, Takeshi and Hana coin an In-Joke of “Shido got a calling card” as a reminder to each other that nothing is impossible. Hana uses this to keep Takeshi's hopes up after the news comes in that Akira had been arrested and put back in prison.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Takeshi's name means “Strength”, and his nature as The Stoic means that he is the rock for his family. Fukuyama takes some liberties with this meaning and the meaning of his own name (“Truth”) when he coins the new name of their new renewable energy company, “True Power”.
  • Chou's name means “Butterfly”, which shows in her overall cheerfulness and how, although she starts off passive and delicate, is able to brighten up everyone's day. It might also be a reference to the butterfly motif of the Persona series as a whole.
  • One meaning of their family name Kurusu is “coming to roost”. This plays into the overall theme of the story which is Takeshi and Chou trying to better themselves and their home to welcome Akira back after a year.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • In Chapter 7, Takeshi is busy reading through Hana's light novel, when all of a sudden, Hana panics because she just witnessed Okumura's death in the middle of his public confession.
  • At the end of the story, Akira's heartfelt reconciliation with his parents suddenly veers into comical shock when he reciprocates by telling them that he's the leader of the Phantom Thieves.
• Ms. Exposition: As a fan of the Phantom Thieves, Hana is Takeshi's main source of info on the unusual goings-on in Tokyo, beyond the regular news reports.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Jun Fukuyama, Takeshi's assistant at Sato Electricians, has the same name as Joker's video game voice actor.
  • Just like the Sayuri getting put up in Café Leblanc, a painting meaningful to Yusuke ends up in a place meaningful to Akira - when at the story's end, Yusuke's "Desire and Hope" painting gets put up in the Kurusu's home in place of the old countdown calendar.
• Not Afraid of You Anymore: A more amicable version happens in Chapter 8. Chou started off the year being too terrified of Sadist Teacher Morita to ever call her out on her words, but the two of them eventually develop a mutual respect of each other with Chou becoming more willing to speak her mind and Morita becoming more open to her point of view. After one spirited discussion, Morita comments that Chou would never have said anything before Akira's arrest.
  Chou: I was terrified of you back then.
  Morita: Are you terrified now?
  Chou: ...No. No, I'm not.
• Now, Let Me Carry You: After Takeshi and Chou are devastated by the message at Christmas about their son's arrest, their friends immediately organize to help them through the days, by cooking, cleaning, keeping them company, and even keeping up Takeshi's paycheck. Morita's statement says it all:
  Morita: You and your wife have been very strong this past year. It's about time everyone else woke up and followed your example.
• Now You Tell Me: As Takeshi and Fukuyama are walking away from their latest housing project, Takeshi mentions a few ideas for how solar panels installed in such a housing project could both make it more eco-friendly and be more economical in the long run. Fukuyama is a bit peeved that his colleague didn't speak up until then.
  Fukuyama: (angrily, with a smile) Damn it, Kurusu… brilliant ideas don’t count if you keep quiet!
• The Paragon: In their endeavor to be strong and improve themselves for their son, Takeshi and Chou find themselves having a positive influence on others, both friend and enemy.
  • Just like in the Persona games, Akira himself serves as a Greater-Scope Paragon for his parents, both as their son and as the leader of the Phantom Thieves. Takeshi and Chou's mantra of being strong for their son helps them get through the days until he returns, and the Phantom Thieves' actions of changing hearts is what inspires Takeshi to take a stand against his boss and rescue his ambitious but inexperienced assistant.
    The only heart I can change is my own.
  • Later on, while trying to figure out why some students are withdrawing from Morita's cram school, Chou runs into a parent who tells her that the Kurusus' actions in handling Akira's arrest were what inspired them to put their son's happiness above his studies, and allow him to withdraw from the cram school rather than keep pressuring him.
    "Your son got arrested, and you still value his happiness over pushing him to succeed. It put things into perspective, y'know? So long as my son is happy, then everything else will be okay."
• Parents as People: Takeshi and Chou are unquestionably Good Parents and love their son completely and unconditionally, but their passiveness causes some issues throughout the story, including their son Akira thinking that they abandoned him when they didn't look into the details of the non-contact order. This changes over the story.
• Parental Abandonment: For the entirety of Akira's probation, he was under the canon impression that his parents did this to him like everyone else in his life. So, he founded the Phantom Thieves, risked his life multiple times throughout the year, and when his probation finally ended, he traveled back home with his friends resigned to a miserable year counting the days to return to Tokyo. As such, he is completely caught off guard when his parents welcome him home with open arms, and only finds out now that they had been mistaken about the details of the non-contact order and stayed away to keep him safe and out of jail. While they might've been misled, Akira is still rightfully distrustful since they never questioned the order for the entire year, which his parents admit to being too passive and weak to do so.
• Parental Neglect: Hana's parents spend more time arguing and screaming at each other than paying attention to their daughter, leading her to find other places to go and other things to do just to get away from it all. She even starts sleeping at the Kurusus' home when things get too awful. Things finally change at the end of the year (possibly due to Yaldabaoth's defeat) - they finally decide to go for marriage counselling and resolve things, one way or the other.
• Plot Parallel: This fic is this to Akira's own personal growth in Persona 5, miles away in Tokyo. Just like their son, Takeshi and Chou start off the year as passive people just trying to stay out of trouble, spending the year doing what they can to take up their time, finding new jobs, learning new skills, reading new books. Along the way, they grow as people, overcome their shortcomings, and even make their own pseudo-Confidants and help them improve as well. They even get Friendship Trinkets from them as hallmarks of their growth. Also, when Akira is arrested at the end of the year and the Kurusus fall into despair, it is the support of their Confidants that get them through their Darkest Hour.
  • Chou and Morita's relationship has similar parallels to Akira and Akechi's relationship, with both of them having an initially antagonistic relationship about a particular social topic (in this case the importance of education and merit), which slowly evolves to a mutual respect for each other's perspective. Luckily for Morita, this relationship doesn't end tragically like Akechi's.
• Poor Communication Kills: Due to a police officer who was either too judgmental or actively corrupt when he told the Kurusus about the non-contact order for their son's probation, Takeshi and Chou went the whole year believing that if they tried to contact Akira, his probation would be violated and he'd go to jail, when in fact Akira wouldn't be punished at all if that happened. Moreover, they were too passive to question, let alone protest the order and thus took it entirely at face value, and because they didn't manage to talk to Akira before he left, he spent the whole year thinking that they abandoned him.
• The Power of Family: Takeshi and Chou's love for their son Akira is the force that gets them through the year, even while he is miles away in another city, unable to be contacted. It also helps Akira reconcile with them when he comes home thinking that they abandoned him - and even prompts him to tell them that he's the leader of the Phantom Thieves.
  • This is what encourages Chou to find Sachiko's son Hayami and encourage them to repair their strained relationship, because she wants to repay Sachiko for giving her that sense of community and she doesn't want to see another family torn apart.
• Pride Before a Fall: Fukuyama, Takeshi's junior and assistant on a new project, starts off as an ambitious upstart who is openly insubordinate to Takeshi, tries to undermine him as project leader, and goes behind his back to do the project his way. Then he screws up and causes a fire on site, and his boss tears him a new one.
• Pull the Thread: When Hana shows up one night asking to stay the night in Takeshi's house, she initially says that it's because a pipe broke in her house. Her story eventually falls apart when Takeshi starts talking about calling a plumber he knows, and he eventually gets the real reason out of her.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: One random encounter in public with Morita and her once again putting down her son as nothing more than a mediocre delinquent with few future prospects is finally more than Chou can take, and she lets Morita have it.
  Chou: Stop talking. Every single time you see me, all you talk about is how terrible my son is! You're nothing more than a petty bully! And I can't stand the way you behave at your cram school! I couldn't stand it when Akira was there, and I can't stand it now! You call yourself an educator!? You're supposed to help children improve, but instead you pick your favorites and you discard the rest!? I'd rather see Akira be held back a year than attend another minute of your terrible school!
• Rewatch Bonus: Throughout the year, the Kurusus encounter people whom they slowly form bonds with over throughout the year and who give them gifts at the end, mirroring the progression of a Confidant/Social Link. If one re-reads the story, they can count each scene with one of those characters (including the more antagonistic ones) and finds that there are 10 for each character, perfectly mirroring the levels of progression for a Confidant.
• Running Away to Cry: After the topic of caring parents comes up too many times for Hana's liking, Takeshi picks up on the mood and tells her where the bathroom is. After she dashes in, he doesn't hear her crying, but he does borrow his wife's eyeliner and slide it under the door.
• Sadist Teacher: Morita, the snobbish and meritocratic manager of the town's only cram school, is like this. She holds a lot of contempt with mediocre or academically failing students (of which Akira was the former), and doesn't hesitate to harp on Akira's perceived delinquency right to Chou's face.
• Save the Villain: For the first part of the year, Takeshi has to manage the ambitions of his insubordinate assistant Fukuyama on a new project, who wants to get him fired and himself promoted. But when Fukuyama makes a mistake and gets in hot water with their Mean Boss, Takeshi threatens to quit if their boss doesn't stop yelling at Fukuyama, defusing the situation.
• Shared Family Quirks: Watching how Takeshi and Chou handle their son's probation to Tokyo, with them taking on new jobs, learning new skills, making new friends/Confidants and even learning to stand up for what they believe in, you can very easily see where Akira gets his desire to do the same in Tokyo from.
• Shout-Out: When Futaba sees Chou's welcome-home cake for Akira, she exclaims, "ButtsPie, full heal!"
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: Discussed by Chou and Morita about the Phantom Thieves' victims and how some of them started out as decent people with dreams that slowly grew more distorted over time, and how Morita can avoid that same fate by remembering why she wanted to open a school.
• So Proud of You: Chou finally gets the chance to say this to Akira when he finally comes home.
• Spotting the Thread: The moment Makoto hears about the non-contact order that kept Takeshi and Chou from contacting their son through the entire year for fear of sending him to jail, she points out that violating a non-contact order like that wouldn't punish the person being contacted, putting Chou into a Heroic BSoD when she realizes that she could've stayed in contact with her son the entire past year and not gotten him in more trouble. The other Thieves surmise that the cop who told her about the order in the first place may have deliberately lied about the details.
• The Starscream: Fukuyama starts off like this as a project assistant to Takeshi, trying to get him fired and himself promoted. His ambition causes him to do things like speak to the builders before Takeshi, always try to get the last word in, and buy materials without consulting with Takeshi first… which comes back to bite him.
• Start My Own: Takeshi and Fukuyama's job at Sato Electricians is none too pleasant, with their Mean Boss Sato having no respect for his workers and being all too eager to berate them if they screw up. They eventually decide to start their own electrician's company, with a focus in renewable, solar energy.
• The Stoic: Takeshi is often teased by his wife for being too stoic for his own good. His work colleagues, however, view his silence as him being an Extreme Doormat, or “a cog of the strong” as his boss puts it.
• Stunned Silence: This is Akira's reaction when he returns home to a welcoming hug from his mother, because he was under the impression for the whole year that his parents had abandoned him.
• Tarot Motifs: Some All There in the Manual examples; just like in canon Persona 5, the four pseudo-Confidants that Takeshi and Chou bond with over the year are based on aspects of the Tarot; specifically the suits of the Minor Arcana.
  • The Pentacles suit represents wealth, career and vision. Fukuyama starts off as an ambitious upstart colleague of Takeshi's, whose desire to get promoted makes him impulsive and mistake-prone. After Takeshi saves his bacon from their boss, they start listening to and learning from each other more, and in the end, the two of them make plans to start a new renewable energy company of their own.
  • The Cups suit represents creativity, emotion and relationships. Sachiko is a baker who's extremely passionate about her craft, but the fact that her family doesn't share her passion has strained their relationship. After Chou sees how much of a community her bakery has built up, she encourages Sachiko's family to patch things up to repay the favor, allowing her to appreciate The Power of Family more.
  • The Wands suit represents passion, motivation and determination. Hana starts off as a listless middle schooler who keeps following Takeshi home to get away from her argumentative parents, and buries herself in being a Fangirl of the Phantom Thieves. Takeshi gives her space in his home and encourages her to write a story before Akira returns as motivation to keep up with her studies, and her witnessing Okumura's death on live TV is a jolt to her system that makes her decide to take control of her own life. By the end of the year, she's a driven girl who's found her passion of writing.
  • The Swords suit represents conflict, intellect and communication. Morita starts off as the most antagonistic Confidant, being a Sadist Teacher that constantly belittles Chou and her son's mediocrity. Chou finally standing up to her and arguing her viewpoint eventually makes Morita revise her outlook and rediscover her dream of supporting talented youths, and the two of them become friends who often debate teaching styles.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Non-malicious example. Sachiko has a tendency of brusquely shutting down conversation, changing the subject or ordering Chou back to her duties whenever her chitchat turns to her issues with her family. Chou later does something similar and tells Sachiko that she doesn't need her help for the day and will leave, so Sachiko can't use her as an excuse to turn her children away, who have come to help at the bakery for a few days and want to clear some long-unresolved issues with their mother.
• Tastes Like Friendship: When Akira finally returns home, despite the initial Chilly Reception on their part, the other Thieves are quickly won over by Chou's welcome-home cake.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Applies for a couple of the Kurusu's more antagonistic Confidants.
  • Fukuyama, through learning from Takeshi instead of undermining him, gets his ambition tempered and becomes good friends with his senior, offers financial advice, and even discusses starting a new renewable energy company with him.
  • Morita, through actually listening to Chou's criticism of how she over-pressures her cram school students, has another look at her meritocratic philosophy and how it became warped, and revises her outlook on students' merit as a result.
• Turn the Other Cheek: Even after snapping and upbraiding Morita in public, Chou still doesn't want there to be any misunderstandings between them, so she bakes Morita a cake and sends it with a clarifying letter, offers to help Morita with a problem with her students even after Morita accuses her of causing it, and even tries to help clean Morita's house after it's vandalized.
• Unishment: After Morita finds out that a student of hers had vandalized her house with a Phantom Thief sigil, she decides to expel him in lieu of pressing charges since he confessed willingly - which the boy is completely pleased about since he'll finally be free of her. This gets Morita to take another uncomfortable look at herself.
• Victory Sex: Double subverted by one day. After getting the news from Nijima Sae that Akira's name and record have been cleared, he'll be released from juvenile hall and that he'll be home on schedule, Takeshi and Chou are so ecstatic that their Smooch of Victory leads them right to their bed, but they stop before they end up giving Akira a little sibling.
  The next day, after a trip to a pharmacy, is another matter.
• "Well Done, Dad!" Guy: For almost the entire year, the mantra that practically gets Takeshi and Chou out of bed in the morning is, “You need to be strong for Akira.” When Akira finally returns home, his initial Chilly Reception at the perceived abandonment nearly breaks his mother's heart, and it takes a deep, personal conversation for them to reconnect.
  Takeshi: You have every right to blame us for being fooled. But your mother and I spent every day you were gone working hard.
  Akira: Working for what?
  Takeshi: To become worthy of calling you our son.
• Why Couldn't You Be Different?: As Chou works at the bakery, she notices that her new boss Sachiko has some hangups about her children, considering how much she talks about children disappointing their parents. Indeed, when Sachiko's son Hayami shows up for a surprise visit, it's revealed that she has issues with him following his wife to Tokyo instead of helping her with the bakery, and a later conversation with Hayami reveals that he shares some of the same concerns. Chou does her level best to help mend that rift.

---