Why Is He The Cutest And Squishiest Boi

why is he the cutest and squishiest boi

Redraw from Twitter!!

xiao is a man ruined by jealousy.

he spends a lot of his time simply watching not only you, but how you react with everyone around you. he follows you around (from a distance, of course, he'd never let himself get too close) to just... observe. he can't help but note down every single little detail of how you interact with anyone who isn't him. his heart aches whenever he realizes he'd never make you smile or laugh in the ways others do. he's far too creepy to make you feel safe in his arms. he's too guilt-ridden to ever hold a conversation with you. and he knows, deep down, that he could never make you happy, atleast not like this, not with how he naturally acts.

and yet he is fueled by desperation, the need to make you feel like others do. he thinks about all the things you like and all the things he is not. he thinks about how he could change for you but he was never great at putting on an act. he digs and digs, looking through everything he can to find a bit of someone else's personality to sew into himself even if the pattern doesn't belong to him.

sometimes he finds himself looking at himself in the mirror as he pretends to be more cheery or give more than just dead-panned answers in conversation. sometimes he mimics the voice and tone of someone you frequently talk to. other times he tries out different makeup styles to try to emulate the look of someone else. all the time he is unsatisfied. he can't pretend to be someone you would like, let alone love, and it drives him insane, pushing him closer and closer to the edge (and he was never that far from it to begin with).

xiao wants to be the best. he wants to be the one who steals your heart, who makes your eyes crinkle at the edge from laughter, who makes you smile so big your cheeks hurt. he wants to be so good you never think of anyone else, and you especially don't think about the long lists of faults he has. but he can't be, not when you have so many points of reference as to what the 'best' could be. if he took you away from everyone else, maybe then the fiery licks of jealousy wouldn't burn up his insides. if you had only him, he'd have no competition, no one to try to mimic, no one who'd get in the way between you and him, who'd serve as a constant reminder of what you deserve and how xiao could be better. if you had no one but him, he'd automatically be the best, right?

right?

he hopes that, in atleast one universe, even if he has to create it himself, he's the 'best'.

More joker cat, as promised :3

Reading from left to right

I also just want to draw Black Mask has cat joker at gunpoint :3

*holding my hand out to akechi* let's take melatonin together <3

why everybody is wrong about the unlock date for akechi's rank 6 (and why it matters)

So It Is Known that Akechi's rank 6 unlocks on 9/3, right? That's the first day he'll show up in Leblanc to go to the bathhouse and tell you about his sad backstory (again). That is his unlock date. R...ight?

Game says no.

This is the function that (usually) tests Akechi's rank 6 time lock, SUB_COOP_TIME_[L]OCK6(). What does it do? It sets a bit, 0x1 831, if we fail the check. Which we will unfailingly do on every single day within a specified date range. And what is that range?

That range is between 4/1 and 8/28.

Read that again. Not 9/2, the day before 9/3. 8/28.

The same 8/28 we all know and love for, uh, some reasons:

That's right. The reason Akechi's confidant is locked until 9/3, the reason he has not one but two "let me tell you about my backstory" events inside of a week, is that one triggers the other.

Akechi shows up at Leblanc on 8/28. He finds a listening ear, and a shoulder to cry on—because, remember, we're smack in the middle of Akechi Hate Month:

This kid, who is so desperate for attention and approval that he's become a mass-murderer over it, is now in the middle of a public hate storm. And on 8/28, you listen to him. You make him welcome. You accept him for who he is—at least, for a little part of who he is.

And so he comes back less than a week later. On 9/3.

if he unlocks on 8/29, why 9/3?

Akechi's availability is often quite limited. Between 8/28 and 9/3, he's only available on one day, 8/30—though if you're already at rank 5, you can't do anything with him then.

Why doesn't he come to Leblanc on 8/30?

The Leblanc field (areas in P5 are technically known as fields) calls a very long, very unedifying function called NPC_FLAG_SELECTOR(), to see which NPCs it should load when. In short? It does this by testing the day of the week.

GET_DAYOFWEEK() returns a number between 0 (Sunday) and 6 (Saturday). So, because Akechi will only come to Leblanc if GET_DAYOFWEEK() returns 6, Akechi will only ever come to Leblanc on Saturdays.

And the first Saturday after 8/29? It is, of course, 9/3.

why does this matter?

Does this change anything? In practical terms, no. Akechi is still always going to be inaccessible for rank 6 until 9/3. But does it confirm anything about him? Well, yeah.

Akechi's rank 7 unlock really is on 11/2, the morning he tells you "I was working last night, so I'm tired today"—that time lock terminates on 11/1. His skill checks (Knowledge and Charm) are all exactly what you think. He even has a hidden lock for rank 8 (still called a time lock by the code) which verifies that he's currently a team member and won't let you proceed otherwise; that, too, acts exactly as you'd expect.

It's rank 6 which turns out to have this secret, to truly be as closely connected to 8/28 as it always appeared. Akechi comes to Leblanc in his hour of need, and he finds something—and then, the next day, he wants more.

And so he comes back—the very next evening he can get away to spend time in Yongen-jaya.

(Incidentally, I'm pretty sure Akechi lives in Kichijoji, and this kind of backs that up. It's the sort of super-trendy place he'd make a show of liking, and in fairness, he clearly does like it. He can only come to Yongen on Saturday nights because it's a lot of travel, close to an hour each way in the early evenings. But Kichijoji? He can hang out there far more often—because it's right on his doorstep.)

revision history

Click here for the latest version.

v1.0 (2023/12/26)—first posted.