A.N. (1/21/21) - NOTICE!!! Double release today! This is the second chapter.
Please go to the previous chapter if you haven't read it already.
Prologue (37) - A Sudden Call
-Several Months Later-
BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*
Nagi groaned as the alarm clock on his bed woke him up, holding his pillow to his ears. He forgot to change the alarm so that it wouldn't go off on the weekdays anymore.
Pressing a button, the room was silent once more. Nagi kept his eyes half-open as he stared at the ceiling.
"...I should probably get up now."
Ten minutes later, Nagi walked downstairs and greeted his uncle.
"Morning."
"Good morning," his uncle replied. "Looks like you're taking advantage of your break."
Nagi nodded and moved to get himself something to eat. His uncle didn't mind, quickly leaving to do his own thing.
Right now, it was the beginning of his spring vacation. The school year ended a few days ago, and Nagi was about to enter his third year in middle school.
A lot has happened in the past few months. Juggling his school life with the irregular schedule of being a phantom thief's henchman, while exploring the Dark Hour every now and then. There were just too many things for Nagi to summarize.
A lot of that had to do with assisting Dark these past few months. Fighting vampires, meeting ghosts (real ones this time), time travel, etc. Really, Daisuke lived an interesting life.
He's also learned to develop his newest power during that time. After fighting dozens of artworks, he's been able to find several more items that he gave to Igor to convert into what he called Sub-Personas.
He felt the roster of Personas within himself.
Unicorn - Based on Mr. Unicorn from Misaki's Painting.
Jack Frost - Created from the Drop Item of a Wandering Maya.
Incubus - Born from the Adonis of the Promise Garden.
Hope Diamond - Born from the Draconic Spirit of the Cursed Violin.
Apparently, whenever an incident with a particularly troublesome artwork occurred, there was the chance of a special item dropping at the same location during the Dark Hour. Nagi just had to check those places out after each incident to see if he got a new Persona. The Jack Frost was the only time he's ever gotten a new Persona from defeating a Shadow.
Strangely enough, Nagi never found another separate world similar to Misaki's painting. He mostly just hunted regular Shadows whenever he encountered them.
Putting his weird extracurricular activities aside, his normal life definitely changed from a few months ago.
Nagi found himself settling into his school life. He still hung out with Daisuke and Saeha— Takeshi. And recently, Takuto's joined their little group during their breaks as a new friend.
Sometimes, Nagi met up with Risa to talk about various things, with her sister Rika joining once in a while. Most of the time, their conversations ended up being about Dark in some way or form. Recently, they mostly discussed ways for Risa to improve her cooking skills after her most recent set of failures during class.
Mari and Takuto continued to work well with him during class, and the three of them found themselves in a small competition with each other to see who would be the better cook.
Hiwatari still hasn't returned to school, still busy with trying to capture Dark. Nagi saw him a couple of times whenever he had to help out Dark, but the two never met directly.
The biggest change so far was that his uncle seemed a lot happier. The man seemed to have found a new purpose in life, possessing an energy that made him look younger by a decade or so. As the months passed and the two got closer, Nagi was finally able to see the man as an important family member.
Nagi never really knew his family in this life. His mother died giving birth to him, and his father was never really around during most of Nagi's life.
Until he moved in with his uncle, he didn't even know that he had any other family members. His father never mentioned anyone to Nagi, and Nagi's knowledge of family only amounted to the list of names his case handler rattled off when they were trying to figure out where to move Nagi after his father died.
So he was happy about his relationship with his uncle. It wasn't what he expected, but he accepted it nonetheless.
}-{
*brrring* The sound of the phone ringing in the living room could be heard echoing.
"Nagi, could you get the phone for me? I'm busy with something at the moment."
Nagi replied, "Alright, I got it."
He ran to the room next door and found the ringing item in question. Picking it up, he answered the call.
"Hello? This is the Nishizawa household."
It took a moment for the other person to answer. The sound of a young girl replying confused Nagi.
"—U-Um, yes? I-Is Uncle Nishizawa there?"
Uncle Nishizawa?
The voice on the other side… could it be someone from his Uncle's family?
Maybe it was even someone related to him. Since she said uncle, that means she's the same generation as him. So that would make her his cousin?
He realized that he wasn't answering, leaving the other person waiting for him. Embarrassed, he replied to the receiver, "He's busy at the moment. If you want, I can pass the message to him when he's free?"
His probably-cousin took a moment to reply. "—Oh, err… Dad told me to remind him that Uncle should come over for the family gathering next week."
Family gathering?
"I'll make sure to remind him," he told the other person. "Thanks for calling us."
"—Y-You're welcome."
D'awww, she sounds adorable. Judging by her voice, she seems like she's in elementary school.
"—But who are you? I thought Uncle Nishizawa lived by himself."
"Oh." Guess he forgot to introduce himself. "My name is Nagi Kujikawa. I've been living with your uncle for the past few months. Nice to meet you."
"—Kujikawa?" The girl repeated. "—That's funny, my name is Kujikawa too!"
So the girl really was related to him. How come Nagi's never heard of her until now? And if she has the last name as him, that means she's related to his dad's side of the family.
"Really? That's interesting. So what's your full name?"
It wasn't until the girl introduced himself that Nagi realized something.
Something so obvious, he was embarrassed that it took him this long to figure it out.
"—My name is Rise. Rise Kujikawa."
Rise? Why does that sound so familiar—?
Nagi's body froze as he processed the words he just heard. All of a sudden, his mind completely collapsed. All he could do was stand there in shock as he realized how he recognized that name.
There was no doubt now. He's an idiot after all.
"—Hello? Why's it so quiet? Did the phone stop working?"
Why else would it take him this long to find out that his last name was the same as someone from the Persona games?
So I'll explain a few things that happened in this chapter and the last.
To the best of Nagi's knowledge, he doesn't know anything about the Persona spin-off games. I took the idea of Sub-Personas from the PQ games, which do not give any stats and only give a few skills plus a minor increase in HP/SP. Since he's never played PQ, he's never heard of Sub-Personas. The Sub-Personas are based on what each artwork is most similar to (in my opinion). In the case of Jack Frost, he's just my favorite character.
I had the story go through a time-skip because I really don't want to go through each episode one by one. This is a bit of a cop-out in response to that, and I hope that I summarized enough that I don't have to worry about the missed events.
And finally, the last part of the chapter. The reveal that Nagi Kujikawa is actually cousins with Rise. I've been planning on a way for Nagi to somehow get involved with the events of P4, and this was my solution.
Anyway, this is where I'll stop for now. I'll be taking a break from this fic while I work on other things. I'll see if I can get back to this in a few weeks or not.
That's all from me! This is Mister PurpleBook, signing off.
