Persona Point
.1 : Midnight Dreams
"Ah... it's been quite some time since you last came here, hasn't it?" The deep blue and calming atmosphere, plush surfaces, and long but cramped space were all too familiar to Souji. Igor's disturbing face was always a welcome one despite the looks, but the problem was that he didn't remember coming here by choice, and that was rarely a good thing. Arriving to this place through his dreams was usually followed by travesty.
Margaret, sitting to the side with compendium in hand as per usual, looked a little surprised. "Master... the door is locked."
"Oh? So he was forced into the velvet room... how intriguing." Igor smiled wide. "It seems someone wants to bend your destiny yet again, with a little more force this time. How about we read your fortune?" A swipe of his hand over the table before them both, and a set of seven blue cards spaced themselves evenly in a diamond shape, face down. He flipped the first card;
"The Empress, in the downward position." Igor stared intently at it. "Where the upright position would suggest a time of improvement and heightening scale, this says you are already amid a state of downfall, decay... What exactly is falling apart around you, only you can discover." Igor moved on, flipping the next card.
"The Lovers, in the upright position -..." Before their eyes, the card shifted on its own, tilting to skew itself slightly off center. Igor looked down at it more intently than the first. "In the... crooked, position. Which does not exist, but... I suppose anything can happen to our esteemed guest. This would suggest... bonds in need of creating, in need of reinforcing, and not necessarily just yours."
The next card was turned over, and he waited for a second to be sure it wouldn't move. "The Hanged Man, in the upright position. Whatever the trials awaiting you, they must simply be accepted as they are with feelings of helplessness and loss in tow. If you persevere from within, however, you may end up with more than what you lose along the way..." Igor let the cards vanish, glancing up at Souji.
"It would appear that you are being drawn toward the suffering of someone you care for, and to grant them your aid will be a long and arduous road, one you won't leave unscathed. There will be no end in sight, the path to follow will be difficult to trust, and the outcome of this journey unpredictable." Igor made a face that Souji couldn't remember seeing before, and couldn't quite place because of that. Sadness? "As always, we welcome you as our bonded guest to this place, and will help with all that we can. Margaret, the key, please?"
"Certainly." The velvet key, something that had lost it's soft blue glow years ago, sparked to life against Souji's chest on the string he wore it with around his neck. She smiled slightly upon seeing the light. "I see you've kept us close all this time."
Igor spoke up a little as Souji's vision began to fade, likely because he could tell the boy was on the verge of waking; "Not all of your travels will be yours to lead, but reaching the truth takes more than just initiative... to guide others, to guide yourself, is to step forward –not in front."
/
Eyelids fluttering open with reluctance, Souji awoke to exhaustion. He'd gone to sleep only after crunching the company's VIP accounts and filing the necessary transfers of stock referentials for maybe three others besides himself. Being the floor manager at the brokerage side of Japan's top Bank was a job he'd clawed his way into through hard work and raw enthusiasm, but the amount of paper and ink to go through never lessened. He enjoyed having his time filled this way, but the late nights could kill him softly on the weekends. He knew the feeling he had, and could hear the echoes of syllables in his mind that had lost their form as full words, but the glow at his chest was enough to tell him what had happened. He sat up and shimmied out of the covers into his high-rise condo, the linoleum tile kissed his feet with a cold touch. He cringed as he walked to the fridge, neon lights of innumerable buildings trying to scale the windows from just below.
One hand popped an energy drink he was saving inside the bottom shelf on the door of the refrigerator, and his other felt around in the darkness beside the fridge for his home phone. He picked it up, auto-dialled his own office, and left a message with his secretary that would ruin her day this morning; "Get Jushigi to fill in for me. I'm going on a vacation to Inaba, tonight."