(sorry for the wait, this one was hard to bang out and yknow LIFE and SCHOOL and junk. thank you for everyone leaving reviews though!)
I'm in a daze all morning, too busy thinking to focus on doing simple things like, oh, I don't know, not walk into doors. I'm clumsy. Yukari sees me checking out the red bump on my forehead in the restroom and laughs nervously.
"You're awake already, Celia?" she asks, turning on the faucet. I grumble in response, putting toothpaste on my dental cleaning device. We don't say anything else to each other for the rest of the morning, except for as we're leaving, when she checks to make sure I have everything and I've signed out. What a mom.
Fast-forwarding through the day again. It's outstandingly boring. I don't really know what to tell you. It's high school—droning teachers and snoring classmates. Junpei did get called on in class while he was dozing off though, which was fun to watch. He didn't, however, ask me what the answer was, unlike in the games, which I'm pretty okay with, because I wasn't really paying all that much attention either.
My classmates seem somewhat interested in me, but I guess I'm scary because no one comes up to me to make any sort of conversation. Maybe in a few months, after I've got a few Shadow bosses under my belt and my charm points are higher up.
After school, Junpei meets up with me again at the shoe lockers and he swiftly dodges my shin kick. I pout as he laughs and leans against the lockers, watching me as I absolutely fail at unlocking this thing.
"Need help with that?" he asks politely. I shoo him off with a growl.
"No, I can do it, I'm just… Agh!" I near punch the locker and step back. All I'm supposed to do is turn, turn, turn, click, but why the fuck isn't it clicking?! I swear to god, I am going to cut this lock off and throw it onto the monorail tracks, I really will. "I'm just really fucking bad at this."
Junpei leans over and starts undoing it himself, and I begrudgingly mumble the numbers to unlock it. He gets it done on his first try and I throw my hands up in defeat.
He laughs at my misery, leaning back again, getting out of the way so I could change shoes. "It takes practice. Didn't you have shoe lockers at your last school?"
"Well, yeah," I lie very blatantly. "But we could put our own locks on, and they weren't these pieces of metallic shit."
We make small talk on the way to the station again, the entire thing extremely similar to yesterday. We spoke of school, I made fun of his inability to answer things in class, he tells me he doesn't give a pole-vaulting crap about that class, we laugh, I kick him a couple of times, sitcom laughs tracks, good times, good times.
…I'm sorry, I know this is boring, but there's really just not much to say. In the video game, boring days could go by really quick, but actually living through it gives me a whole new respect for the characters. I could spend three minutes on the daily routine and spend four hours in Tartarus, but now I have to go through 16 hours of daily routine before I can even think of Tartarus. Actually, I can't even think of it now. I shouldn't even know what it is.
Walking back alone from the station to the dorm allows my mind to wander, and I find myself thinking about Igor and the Velvet Room. That little hooked-nose, beady-eyed, rat bastard. I will personally buy a thesaurus to come up with new insults for that fucker.
And, what were those rules? First off, why do I even need rules? Before even that, why the fuck am I here? Will I ever get a chance to go back home? The way he spoke made it sound like I had to finish the game the whole way through, which sounds absolutely tedious and horrible. I don't know if I'll be able to live through everything as impassively as I handle it playing the game. I mean, just look at Junpei. I don't like the kid! But, I guess I do, since Yukari avoids me and there is absolutely no one else talking to me. I've seen Mitsuru maybe twice? I don't even want to think about what's going to happen when I meet Shinjiro Aragaki, that hobo.
Back to the rules. What were they? Don't warn anyone of their future, don't tell anyone about your past, don't try to change major events, and no restarts. I guess they're all pretty self-explanatory. Warning someone of their future may be changing major events, and I'm not supposed to know any of this anyway. Man, that sucks. It'd be cool to pretend to be a fortune teller and warn them of dumb stuff, like when the school festival gets cancelled. But, yeah, that'd break rule 1.
Don't tell anyone about my past, though? Do I really have to be so tied to this fictional plotline that I have to throw away my own sense of self? It's not fictional anymore, though, I guess… I mean, I'm breathing, eating, sleeping, everything in this world. I don't really know if I can call it fictional now. If it is, anyway, god knows what I'm classified as.
But, yeah, still, I have to keep everything secret. That blows. How much of my life has to be kept under wraps? Otherwise, they'll ask something harmless about me and I'll just have to feign amnesia. That's dumb. In the game, they never really asked much, and everyone else seemed to know more than the player ever did, but in the game Junpei didn't help me unlock my shoe lockers. I guess I shouldn't take the game as close a guide as I've been doing so until now…
Thinking about that is giving me chills. Uhg, I can practically map out my future because I've played this dumb game. Isn't that slightly worse than spoiling other people?
Well, probably not, but we're all the main characters in our own stories, so I figure spoiling myself should be worse.
I get to the dorm without realizing it, and the sign-in sheet says no one else is home yet, so I take this opportunity to run upstairs and take a bath.
It takes me three tries before the water is just right and I don't know if I want to take a full-on bath, so I just used the hand-held shower heads. I won't go into more detail, but I didn't soak in a bath like my head had planned. (My head had planned many things, and none of them have really come to fruition.) I was a little curious about why there was such a community-style bathroom in a modern Japan, since I figured everything had been westernised, but I guess maybe because it's a dorm-style living and dorms are communal and…? Yeah, I don't really know either, but I'm not about to ask Yukari and get weird looks.
When I get back to my room, the dorm is still silent, but that doesn't mean I'm entirely alone, so I decide to start unpacking in silence. I lose patience quickly again, but this time a box of clothes has been opened. I don't know if I should be using this adjective anymore for anything, but they're all surprisingly my own clothes. Like, I remember a lot of these from my closet back from the real world.
Real world. This is the real world now, I have to get that through my thick skull.
Anyway, the sight of familiar clothes is comforting, and I put some into my dresser drawers until I get too sleepy—what is wrong with me lately, I just keep going to sleep early—and then I lay down in bed and drift off.
Very boring day over, and another one started. The dorm came supplied with an alarm clock, so I set that for early in the morning to hopefully wake myself early enough to do homework that, yes, I was already assigned and, yes, I was totally ignoring.
It was mostly grammar work, which I ended up deciding not to do, because 1) I hate grammar work and 2) why am I doing English grammar work when I'm supposed to be Japan. This is such a weird language I'm having to use. The worksheet says Japanese, and the class itself is Japanese, but all the questions are in English with all of the participle pronouns and adverbs and, man, I don't really know. I should try speaking Japanese to someone and see if they think I'm speaking English.
Translations, man. How do they work.
When I've had enough of the homework, I get dressed and walk over to Yukari's room as I remember it from the game. She was right next door to me, right? Or down the hall? As long as I don't hit Mitsuru I'm sure I'll be fine.
She's awake, and is just starting to get ready when I knock, and we agree to leave together again, like what seems to be our new norm. When she comes down the stairs, I'm lounging on the oddly comfortable couches, and she signs out as I struggle to get myself to go to school again.
"Does Mitsuru-senpai always leave before us?" I ask while we're walking, still feeling the foreign sound in my mouth. It's not like I use Japanese honorifics in everyday speech, so this is gonna get some taking used to.
Yukari ponders over it a bit as we wait for a kid on a bicycle to cross us. "Well, not always. Sometimes we leave at the same time, but she's usually pretty keen on arriving at school early, so it's not like I walk with her. She's the Student Council President, did you know that?"
"Have they had the elections already?" I asked, absolutely certain that I wasn't supposed to have missed that yet. She has her speech after Junpei joins us, right? Or is my sense of time off because I'm actually sitting through full school days?
"No," Yukari admits. "Not yet, but she was the President last year and, well, why wouldn't she be?"
"Yeah, she seems like the kind," I say, not knowing that she had been President last year. Was that ever stated in the game? Which makes me wonder, is any of this actually real? Like, no, not that I'm in denial, but are all of these things happening because I remember it, or because they're supposed to happen? If I'm in a world caught in-between dreams and reality, then maybe my head is filling in all the blanks. Or maybe this actually all did happen.
In my daze, I trip into a mailbox and Yukari laughs at me.
Y'know what, I'm not even gonna mention school anymore. You know what it's like, I know what it's like, I'll keep you posted if anything interesting or cool happens. My teacher was a bit peeved that I didn't do my homework though, although it was more of a class-wide annoyance. Seems like I'm in the Slacker Class.
Junpei, for some reason, doesn't show up at the shoe lockers after class, and instead I run into the pink sweater of my dormmate. I hadn't seen her here before, so I'm a little taken aback and I wonder if it's actually her when I go up and get her attention.
She jumps when I touch her shoulder, and I frantically apologize as she tries to slow her heart. "No, it's fine Celia, really, I was just so busy thinking, I didn't…"
"I'm sorry," I say again, my mouth and brain feeling dumb. "I just never see you here, so I thought I'd come over and say hi."
"I normally have Archery practice," she says, closing her locker. "So I normally stay behind for a while. But since today's a Thursday, we don't have practice. Besides, I need to go to the mall and pick up some supplies."
"I know that mall," I say, wracking my head for the name. "Pawlonia? Powlonia?"
"Paulownia," Yukari corrects me. "Oh, that's right, you are new here! Do you wanna come with? I can show you around some of the shops—it's pretty much the place to get practically anything here. Well, there's a strip mall near the station, but it's more food and trinkets than, like, actual stuff."
"I can get some socks," I say sadly, looking down at my bare shins. A teacher had actually stopped me that day to ask me why I was out of uniform, but when I told him I was new, he gave me a week to become proper. Whatever that means.
"We can get you socks," she agrees, patting me on the back. "We can also get you more notebooks so you're not using one for all your classes."
We're walking now, heading out of school and into the scary world beyond our safe school gates. "I like my notebook, but, yeah, I do need more. How did you even know that? Are you watching me during class? Yukari, I'm sorry, but I don't return your feelings."
"That's—! Uhg, no, I'm not watching you! You're just new and all, so I get worried, and…"
"It's okay, I won't judge."
She groans and rolls her eyes.
Junpei is notably more fun to play with, but Yukari isn't that bad of a tour guide. The mall is way fucking bigger than it seems in the game, but I'm sure you've already picked up on the disparity between game size and real life size. It's an actual mall! With department stores, a food court, and little shops everywhere! Yukari keeps blabbering on and on about some of the unique stores in here, passing over the brand-name ones, but there are a few "recognizable" ones that I have never before seen in my life.
We get to a little clearing with a fountain in the middle, and I instantly recognize it as the only part of the mall we saw in the game. The familiarity gets my shoulders to relax some and Yukari notices, wrongly assuming it was from the little café tucked away in the corner.
"Yeah, it's pretty amazing that a mall this size has such a quaint little café, right?" We wander a little closer, scoping out the menus taped to the glass windows. "It's a favourite of the girls at Gekkoukan, and it is pretty good. They have this great drink that's supposed to, like, have pheromones or something? It's got these natural things in it that makes you really pretty to guys."
"Pheromones," I confirm, but then I laugh. "That is such a weird concept. What am I, an animal in heat?"
We laugh for a bit and she shows me around to the arcade, warns me to stay away from the nightclub, gets interested in the idea of working at the spa as a part-time job until she groans about club duties, and then we walk out of the area to find a place to buy socks.
I try my best to ignore the dim blue light glowing from the end of an emergency exit hallway.
With the help of Yukari's fashion sense and memory of our school rules, we manage to pick up a few pairs of socks so I don't have to walk around school awkwardly and improperly. Highlight of my life. When it came time to pay I suddenly remembered that things cost money and holy shit do I have any money with me? The wallet in my bag says yes, although I do have to leave behind a pair due to lack of full funds. We leave without buying any school supplies because of said problem, and Yukari assures me she can come again another day. I still spend about half an hour apologizing.
(In case you were wondering, yes, it was yen, only leading to my utter confusion in what sort of halfway American-Japanese world I was stuck in. When I see Igor again, I'm gonna ask him how money is gonna work out for me. I guess I should take that part-time job at the spa.)
Anyway, that little fiasco over, we take the train back to the dorm, Yukari telling me some stories of our classmates, as a way of introduction, I guess. I tell her some vague stories of my past, since I'm not sure how much I can safely release, but I'm sure some generic middle school stories should be enough to fill in any suspicious gaps.
When we're back at the dorm, we sign in and then head to our separate rooms to do whatever we need to do, I guess. I decide to change clothes, take out my homework, and promptly fall asleep.
I'm sadly jerked out of my dreamless sleep with some loud slamming and muffled yells, and by the time I stumble out of bed, my blood runs cold. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, it's tonight isn't it? The night that the huge Shadow attacks the dorm? I rummage through my drawers and pull on a jacket before opening my door and quietly running down the hall. When I reach the stairs, the yelling gets louder, and I have to steady myself before jumping down the steps, multiple ones at a time.
Oh god, I don't know if I'm prepared for this yet—I'm not very athletic? I mean, yeah, I'm luckier than a lot of people because I can at least run for a little while, but I'm not very strong or anything, so if I have to take this down alone with only that weird staff thing, we're all fucked.
I finally reach the lounge, and everyone turns to stare at me. My heart is pounding really fucking loud, and before I can ask dumbly what's going on, Mitsuru takes charge.
"This isn't a time to joke around, Akihiko! Takeba—take Arisato somewhere safe!"
I see Akihiko behind her, cradling his ribs with his hand and—wow wow wow. One, he's really fucking hot, and two, he does not look very good. In the game, his sprites weren't anything different, but he's actually all… beat up. He's scruffed up and his clothes are dirty and torn, and he's got a swollen cheek with this gash on his forehead that seems to have been patched up with a ripped piece of cloth from his sleeve.
I feel an even deeper chill when I realize that people actually get injured by Shadows—that I'm going to get injured.
The humungous coward in me wants to break down sobbing, but Yukari grabs my hand and keeps me steady with her own terrified look. Well, it doesn't really inspire courage in me, but the knowledge that I'm not the only person freaking out really does help.
"Mr. Chairman, please head for the common room! What are you doing, Takeba—run!"
"But, Mitsuru-senpai, what are you going to do!" Yukari pleads, squeezing my hand tightly.
She looks at us very coolly, speaking very calmly. "We're going to stop it here. Akihiko led it to us, so I'm afraid he'll have to help me fight."
Akihiko scoffs, his eyes rolling. "Oh yeah, like I had a choice?" When he realizes we're still standing here and absolutely fucking petrified to move, he waves a hand and winces, shouting, "What are you waiting for? Go!"
We sprint off.
There's noises and banging behind us, but Yukari just grabs a broom and thrusts it into my hands. "I know it's not much but—use it to save yourself! We're going out the back door!"
"Wait, what the fuck is this supposed to do?" I yell at her when we resume running. Okay, I know it's probably really weird for her to just give me that staff-weapon-thing like in the game with no fuss, like, oh, here you go, we had some weapons lying around, you might want to use one, but, really, a broom? What is she expecting from me? For me to beat it to death with the wimpy plastic handle?
"I don't know, just—just keep running!"
The back door is too far away from the front area, but when we get there, Mitsuru's piercing voice cuts through the air and yells, "There's more than one enemy!"
I wheeze and Yukari's face drains of all colour. The door beside us bangs and she jumps in the air, actually screaming. I decide to just fuck it all, grab her hand, and run up the stairs.
I know, she's supposed to be the one leading me and telling me what to do, but she's very openly sobbing from fear and I know I want to just curl up and cry as well, but I'm not going to die here. I'm going to fucking play this game through and I am going to kick Nyx's ass and I will get back home at all costs.
First step, though, is beating the massive thing attacking our dorm.
"Is there access to the roof from the fourth floor?" I yell, panting from the burst of adrenaline and the flights of stairs.
"Y-yeah, there is! Do you think we'll be safe up there?"
Of course not, I want to say, but that wouldn't do any good, so I just keep running.
When we finally get up there, Yukari shakily locks the door with a set of keys she pulls out of her skirt—I just realized, everyone was still wearing their school uniforms, wow, I must look like a dork in my sleep clothes—and pretty much collapses against the door.
With a really unsteady and breathy voice, she moans, "I think we're safe for now."
I don't have it in me to tell her we're actually not, and I don't have to, because there's a giant thud and an ear-piercing shriek and I think I almost vomit.
"No way," Yukari sobs. "It climbed up the side."
My knees decide to stop functioning as I turn to look and… Fuck.
In the game, I know they were just these black blobs with dumb faces and arms, but… It's so much more than that. The black isn't just black, it's… It's nothing. It's the absence of colour and light, and it's the darkest black I've ever seen in my life. It's bubbling and moving and alive, and you can't look into it because it's just so… disgusting. I really don't know how to describe it. It's just really fucking disgusting and the realization that I have to fight it makes my gag reflex start working.
Yukari weakly raises a hand and points at it, turning her head away in what I'll assume is disgust or fear. "That's the thing… That's attacking us. We call them Shadows."
She very weakly leans forward and gets onto her hands and knees, very slowly getting up. "I… I have to fight it. I… I can do this… No…"
She hits the ground again. "Problem."
"Oh god, no, Yukari, please get up," I beg, my knees going weak again. "Please, you have to help me, please."
She didn't seem this weak in the game. She didn't seem this scared. But in the game, everything was a bit more detached, and I was ready to fight this villain, I wasn't almost about to puke. It's still crawling up, its grotesque hands coming closer to us, and Yukari struggles to get back onto her feet. Everything is so much more real, because it is real, and I see her pull her Evoker out from her skirt's waistband.
She lifts the gun—because that's what it is, it's a fucking gun—with both her trembling hands to her forehead and takes a steady breath. I see her mumble something, probably to steady herself, and I grip the broom tighter, on the verge of tears again.
There's another loud thud as the giant Shadow finally pulls its entire body up onto the rooftop, which makes Yukari yelp and drop the gun.
I absolutely can't handle it anymore, so, before my body or survival instincts or common sense kicks in, I grab the gun, level it against my temple, and pull the trigger.
It's a very odd sensation. I hear a very loud crashing noise, like glass against tile, and this pressure forms in my head, right against the barrel of the gun and then falling into the read of my head, like dipping it into a pool of water. My eyes are still open, but they flutter shut for a moment with the pressure reaches the centre of my head, and then when I open them back up I see Orpheus in front of my, like my guardian angel.
Orpheus looks very soft and kind, her very presence calming, and she tells me very caringly, "Thou art I… And I art thou."
And then the pain actually kicks in.
I drop the gun, falling to my knees when the sudden stabs of pain hit me, striking behind my eyes in the fucking worst cluster headache I've ever experienced. My ears are ringing, my head feels like it's going to blow out of my eyes, my teeth and sinuses feel like they're going to explode, and there's this faint screech in the distance, like a wounded animal, and it takes me a good while to realize it's mine. I curl up on the ground, sobbing, positively bawling, barely able to register the change in my Persona, only knowing it must be kicking the shit out of the Shadow from prior knowledge.
When the pain subsides, I hear Yukari calling my name, her hand on my shoulder, shaking me frantically. "Celia, oh, god, Celia, you have to get up, it's not all gone yet, Celia!"
I want to yell at her to do it herself, my body completely drained of energy, but I somehow push myself back up, tears and snot and drool still running down my face. I must be sight for Mitsuru and Akihiko up in the control room, but I just scrunch my face up and reach for the Evoker again.
The smaller Shadow isn't nearly as imposing, I fire another gunshot to my head with some command to Orpheus to "destroy that fucking thing", she blasts it with fire, and before Yukari can catch me, I'm on the ground again.
I wake up in the Velvet Room, with absolutely no aching, but I still groan like a little kid being woken up early. Igor is smiling with his fucking shit-eating grin and I resist the urge to stick my tongue out at him.
"It's so nice to see you again," he says, and I decide to actually go ahead and stick my tongue out at him. "You became unconscious after awakening to your 'power'. I see it was Orpheus that heeded your calling."
"I fucking know what a Persona is, Igor," I snap, not really having an excuse for my snippiness. "It's a facet of my personality. What I want to know is why, when it changed, it hurt so goddamn much."
"When you have to call upon deep power, when you find yourself against a very strong enemy and you have to reach deep down inside yourself for unknown control over yourself… Well, of course it's a little painful."
A little, my ass, I want to say, but I just curl up onto the sofa and moan again. "Can I wake up soon? How long have I been out?"
Igor chuckles and I decide I fucking hate him. "Time marches on in your world, Celia, dear. I shouldn't keep you here much longer. From now on, whenever we meet shall be of your own accord."
I want to tell him I'm never coming back, but we both know that would be bullshit so I just close my eyes and listen to him as he bids me farewell.