The Hills of Inaba Chapter 4: Reality, a persona series fanfic

Another wave of deep-seated exhaustion hit me, and I looked at my watch. 2:27 AM. I swore inwardly, but there was no real bitterness behind it. I really was running out of things to try.

My first experiment was to re-iterate what I already discovered: that I would not touch the inside walls of the television even though I should be. Even the top, sides, and bottom wall weren't there. I put particular focus on my own senses to look for any contradictions, but there were none that I could detect.

My second experiment tested this further. After facing my body to the side of the screen and hooking one arm through it, I closed my eyes and tried to clap my hands. I was prepared for my hands to hit each other by reflex, but I was instead treated to the uncanny sensation of both hands flying through each other. It felt completely natural until my left hand smacked into the television with nothing to stop its motion. It hurt, and I instinctively tried to cover that hand with my other one, but it once again flowed past. I even tried to stick my TV hand through where it thinks my chest should be, and it worked. All of my senses of body position were, in a word, impossible, since they felt like they occupied the same physical space.

The third experiment was to stick my head through and report what I saw. With a huge amount of trepidation, I did so, having no idea what I would find. Bright yellow fog stretched out in all directions with no reference point anywhere. I looked as hard as I could, but I couldn't figure out where all the light was coming from, since there didn't seem to be a single source anywhere. It was just equally well lit in all directions. In retrospect, I should've realized sooner that the thick fog might actually be dangerous to breathe in. Fortunately for me, it was actually breathable and I didn't feel any adverse effects beyond the utter astonishment at what I was seeing.

I shifted strategies at that point. All of my senses were in agreement, but that didn't necessarily disprove the Hallucination Theory, just made it less likely than before. I needed more objective data in order to start seriously shifting the probabilities around.

Fortunately, my cell phone had a video camera. Turning it on, I set it up to capture myself putting my arm inside. The contents of the video perfectly corroborated my own senses, showing a teenage girl pulling off quite an impressive magic trick that would be sure to win applause at any magic show.

Next, I upped the ante and put the phone itself into the screen, looked around with the camera, and pulled it back. The resulting video went: television screen, yellow light, television screen. That was a lot more convincing. If I really was crazy, I would have to be consistently hallucinating both videos over the real ones in order to produce these results. All of this, I wrote down.

I tried everything I could think of, but the universe, or at least my own perception of it, kept giving me the same damn answer. The Portal Theory endured like a mighty stone cliff as wave after wave of tests crashed upon it and broke into a thousand pieces.

'But still. What?'

I frowned and rubbed my eyes. The adrenaline had long ago left my bloodstream, and I was now tired all the way down to my bones.

'Screw it. I'll think of my brilliant next step in the morning.' I set my loudest alarm early, apologizing to my future self for needing the extra time before I left for school.

Frustrated, exhausted, and filled with a residual curiosity I could no longer quench, sleep did not come easily to me. Turning my back to my television felt like there was a demon behind me, and turning towards it would just make it impossible to keep my eyes shut.

The night continued like that for some time, until exhaustion won out over anxiety and slumber finally pulled me into its depths.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

The alarm clock blared in my ears, and I smashed the snooze button. It took a couple of moments of recollection, but the events of last night eventually came back to me, and I was as awake as I could be with how little sleep I got. I tried touching my screen again on the slim chance that last night was a dream, but my arm sank into it once again, much to my chagrin. The videos taken last night were identical as well.

'Alright, still very tired. Need to change that.'

Five minutes later, I was standing naked under the shower head, letting the wonderful hot water fall down on my body as I stared at nothing in particular.

'Okay, the fact that all of my observations this morning still hold true to my original observations last night adds more probability to the Portal Theory. I don't really know what the actual numbers should be, but I would conservatively give the Portal Theory around an 80% probability of being true. It goes against everything I thought to be possible, but it is becoming increasingly more improbable that I have suddenly developed a ludicrously thorough and specific hallucination without any previous… symptoms...'

I recollected my experience at the doorstep of the Dojima house just a couple of nights before. I thought I had felt someone's hand on my shoulder, when it was clear that there was no one else on the street. I had chalked it up to jumpy nerves over-reacting due to stress. 'But could it have been more than that?' I quietly raised the Hallucination Theory up, so the comparison was sitting at around 70% to 30% in favor of the Portal Theory.

'I'm starting to reach the limits of what I can test. There's only so much I can do when it's my senses themselves that are in suspect. What can I do about that?'

Even taking my exhaustion into account, it took an embarrassingly long amount of time before realization hit me like a brick to the face and the obvious and practically definitive experiment came to mind. The only way to get an objective view on my own senses was to get outside help. That meant involving other people. Specifically, that meant showing someone else and asking them to report what they saw.

For all I knew the reaction to be foolish and illogical, my chest still tightened at the thought of showing what that television could do to another human soul. 'They'll either think I'm insane, and be completely right, or see me do something impossible. Who knows what they'll do at that point? And besides, who can I even trust that much?' I pondered this question, and could only provide grim responses to my own query. 'Okay, ignoring the problem of personal trust, this is a bit too important to be dictated by my admittedly isolationist tendencies. Putting aside the question of whether I should show someone, I need to figure out who it would actually be first.'

My first thoughts went to Hanamura and Satonaka, as they both presumably also saw the Midnight Channel last night. 'Did they experience anything like this? I really need to get some info from them today, regardless of anything else. Just one of them experiencing the same thing would practically prove that this portal is real. They don't have my same TV, but maybe it happens to televisions that the Midnight Channel shows itself on. All of this business began with that broadcast, so the two may be connected.'

'If they ended up having not experienced the same thing, would they be good candidates for showing this to? I really don't know either of them well, but Chie does not appear to possess a great amount of restraint or subtlety. Yosuke seems alright, but, again, I am not particularly close with either of them. And besides, I would have to get them to my own television first. So, they're not terrible options, but less than preferable if they only saw the broadcast.'

There wasn't anybody else I knew of that saw the Midnight Channel, so my mind cycled through everyone else I knew here who hadn't, which was a very short list. Besides my uncle and Nanako, the only people I'd even spoken to had been the woman at the school office, a couple of teachers, and Yukiko Amagi. I knew all of them even less than Yosuke and Chie.

I revisited Dojima as an option. While the idea felt like a foreign and alien concept in my mind, some part of me was just nodding in firm agreement. 'What would be the actual downside to telling the person who is in charge of taking care of me, and has been respectful and welcoming since I got here? Alright, let's extrapolate the two possible outcomes of this experiment if he is the subject. If I'm actually hallucinating, I think I can trust him to be responsible and check me into the hospital. If all of this is real, however...' I groaned. I had no idea how my guardian would react to an outright violation of reality's laws under his roof perpetrated by his teenage niece. I didn't even know what I was going to do if it was true. It was possible that Dojima wouldn't listen to my requests to keep quiet about it, if I ended up deciding to go that route.

I quietly thumped my head on the shower wall in frustration. This needed some careful thought, so I sat down under the water, closed my eyes, and began to think.

An idea flashed, and was discarded soon after. I really didn't have it within me to just ignore this whole mess for the rest of my life. I continued thinking.

Several minutes later, I opened my eyes and smiled.

'Oh. Oooh. That could work.'

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

I ate my breakfast silently, and quickly. I needed to have a little extra time this morning to put my experiment into action, and Nanako started eating her breakfast before I did because of my long shower. She was already putting her dishes by the sink by the time I scarfed down the last remaining piece of toast. I glanced at my watch. 'Five minutes to go, plenty of time.'

"Hey, uh, Nanako," I said as I set my plate on the counter. "Do you want to see a magic trick before we go?"

Nanako gasped and her face lit up with excitement. "A magic trick!? Okay!"

"Alright, we gotta do it my room though. Come on." I led her up to my room, and that was when I started getting second thoughts about this plan. 'No, stop it. You've already thought about all of this ahead of time. Last minute nerves is not a good enough reason to put this thing on hold. Just remember. If she's awed and amazed, the portal is real. If she is confused or concerned, you're literally insane.'

Well, showtime.

I stopped next to the television and turned around to an expectant-looking girl.

"Alright, Nanako," I began, and held up my right hand. "You gotta keep a real close eye on my hand, alright? Don't lose sight of it."

She nodded excitedly and her eyebrows furrowed as she focused hard.

'Here we go.' With a quick inhale to calm my nerves, I straightened my fingers and slowly inserted my fingers into the television, a look of concentration on my face that I didn't need to fake. My hand sunk in as expected and small ripples spread across the screen. I kept moving until it was up to my wrist, and threw a glance at Nanako.

Her mouth was open, and her eyes sparkled with glee. I quickly removed my hand, which started to shake from either fear or relief. I struggled to keep my voice steady as I said "Pretty good, h-huh?"

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

If I'd thought that it was difficult to concentrate on Morooka yesterday, it was nearly impossible to even focus on Ms. Sofue today for longer than a minute without my mind flashing back to my current situation. Most of my thoughts were variations of 'You have got to be kidding me,' and 'Portal? Really?'

But I had already done my definitive experiment. Nanako had been amazed and spent the majority of our walk together gushing about how cool my 'magic trick' was. The probability of it all being an hallucination was, as far as I could judge, quite small. I couldn't really test any further without seriously involving someone else in my secret. For now, at least, I was done experimenting.

Now what?

I took a quiet and deep breath. 'Alright, back to sanity. What are my options, assuming that the portal is real? First off, as counterintuitive as it feels, I could figure out some way to contact a scientific authority and get them to take me seriously long enough for me to give them definitive proof of what is going on. I am obviously out of my depth here, and the potential implications of this discovery are staggering. Should I get even deeper proof before going to them? Possibly. I would have to tell Dojima anyways,' My breathing actually caught at that. 'So I could first use him to verify this further than I already have.'

This was seeming like a good idea already, except for what could happen to me afterwards. If this was real, and the news did break out, would I be known as the person who discovered it? That sort of fame might've appealed to most of the people around me, but it certainly didn't appeal to me. I spent a fair amount of effort into being as invisible as possible, and that level of public scrutiny would be a nightmare.

'But is that so important to avoid that you would hide this from everyone?' a small mental voice asked, and I had to concede that point. Hiding this discovery of monumental significance because of the attention it would bring went way beyond self-centeredness.

'Alright, that seems like a good plan for the future. There is still the issue of Yosuke and Chie, and what they might have seen last night. Today's priority is to get as much relevant information from them as I can. If the Midnight Channel is connected to this, they are the only immediate way I can think of to prove it.'

That would have to wait until lunch break, at least, though I could feel Chie's smug smile without even looking at it. That was evidence in itself, but it would be better to wait until she stated it outright before I started making guesses.

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As it turned out, Chie also thought that lunch break was a great time to interrogate Yosuke and myself. The only criteria probably being that it was the earliest possible time she could bring it up without disturbing classes or being overheard by every other student present.

Most of the class were opening boxed lunches or leaving to eat elsewhere when Chie finally turned to the two of us and spoke up. "You guys saw it too, right? The Midnight Channel?"

I turned around to see Yosuke give a reluctant nod before giving a nod of my own.

Chie fist-pumped in victory. "Hah! See, Yosuke? I told you it was real."

Yosuke frowned, then sighed. "Yeah yeah. There's definitely something weird going on. Not sure if I buy the whole, uh, 'soulmate' thing." He looked rather uncomfortable at that part, for reasons I couldn't guess at, but continued. "But you win this round."

'Hmm. They don't seem as bothered as I was when the portal thing happened, but they definitely saw the Midnight Channel. Did they see the same thing as I did?'

I forced myself to speak. "Hanamura-san. What did you see, exactly?"

Yosuke blinked at me, then averted his eyes to his desk. "Well, I, uh…" he hesitated visibly. "There... was a girl on screen with sorta long hair. It wasn't really up for that long, so I couldn't tell who it was, or anything," he said quickly.

"Huh? I saw a girl too!" Chie exclaimed. "She was, like, moving across the screen for like a few seconds and then she was gone! What does that mean though? My soulmate's a girl?" Yosuke looked at her with a slight smirk and looked like he desperately wanted to say something, but declined to comment. Probably a wise decision.

It seemed that they had both seen the exact same thing that I did, and the 'soulmate' part of the rumor was probably just something made up when someone first saw the Midnight Channel, but there was a distinct lack of sci-fi technology in either story. I ventured another question. "Did anything else happen after that? Something, well, strange?"

They both turned to me with raised eyebrows. Chie frowned in concentration. "Hmmmm, not really. After that, the screen just got kinda static-y and the TV turned back off. Kinda hard to fall asleep for a bit 'cause of how weird it was, but that was pretty much it."

Yosuke nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, it was basically the same for me. Did something else happen for you last night, Naoto-san?"

'Oh hell. They have no idea what I'm talking about.'

"I, um..." I floundered for a moment, mind whirring - 'No time for a lie, stick with just part of the truth.' - and continued, "... I just got a really bad headache after it was over."

Chie looked at me, the pity clear in her eyes. "Yikes. You feeling well enough to come to Junes today?"

I nodded before realizing what I was implicitly agreeing to.

'God. Dammit.'

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"All right, so the Midnight Channel is apparently real," Yosuke began, after returning with the drinks he bought for us. "What now?"

Chie shrugged, as if it wasn't entirely her fault that I was in this mess. "Not really that much to do, is there? I was right," she smirked, "and The Mighty Yosuke was wrong."

He sighed. "Yes, Chie, I already said that. But there's no way that something, like, actually magical is going on. There's gotta be some other way to turn TV's on remotely." I raised an eyebrow at that, and chided myself for thinking that I was the only one who would try to think of a reasonable explanation.

She shrugged again. "Well, count me out of playing detective. You can do that on your own." And in contrast, I truly could not imagine myself easily ignoring a phenomenon as weird and surreal as the Midnight Channel without even trying to figure it out, like Chie was. Admittedly, I had actually only spent a few minutes thinking about it since it happened, but I was somewhat distracted. Its possible connection to the portal also made it more likely to involve physics-breaking bullshit, which made the answer a lot harder to deduce using ordinary methods.

"Fine," he bit out, and turned to me. "How 'bout you, Naoto-san?" He looked at me expectantly.

"I… uh," I paused awkwardly, and stared at my drink. "N-no thanks. Sorry." 'Sorry, but the Midnight Channel is the least of my problems right now, and I don't trust you with the information.' I sank further into my chair at that, though I knew that it was completely true.

I didn't dare look at Yosuke's face, but I could hear the incredulity. "What? Seriously?" I didn't answer. "Man, I can't believe you guys. One of the first actually interesting things to happen around here since I got here a year ago, and you guys just ignore it. Fine, then. I'll figure it out myself."

Chie chimed back in with a grin. "Oh, cheer up, you big baby. Saki-san's coming our way."

Yosuke's head whipped around so fast that it nearly broke the sound barrier, and Chie only lasted a few seconds before her willpower broke down and she started giggling helplessly. Yosuke paused, then slowly turned to glare at her dangerously. "Shut the hell up, Chie." he said testily.

Obviously, she did no such thing. "Haha, oh man, you are so easy!" She giggled some more.

Yosuke folded his arms onto the table and shoved his face into them, grunting incoherently.

Chie sighed contentedly. "Aaah, that totally made my day." She wiped water from her eyes with exaggerated motions, smiling the whole time. Then she perked up even more and stood up. "Oh yeah, I told my folks I would look for a new TV here today. Mind giving me the tour of the Electronics Department, Yosuke-kun?"

Yosuke mumbled something that sounded remarkably like "Go to hell", but I couldn't be certain.

"How rude." Chie shook her head with mock disapproval, and looked to me. "You should come with me, Naoto-san. Let's leave Mr. Grumpy to pout on his own." She walked away cheerily, leaving the two of us at the table. I got up to follow her.

A new pang of guilt hit me when I glanced back at Yosuke. 'Sorry, Yosuke-san. I would feel just as frustrated in your situation, but I just can't tell anyone.' I repeated it in my head, but it didn't really make me feel any better.

Spotting Chie was easy, and we waltzed over to the Electronics Department. She talked enough for both of us, switching easily between gushing about how nice the televisions were to complaining about how pricey they were. I practically tuned her out when it became clear it wasn't a conversation.

A flash of blue from the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I turned.

A butterfly?

'What on earth-'

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Pain filled my awareness and I gasped aloud. My mind burned with a fierce ache and I gasped and coughed. My eyes snapped open, and were filled with yellow light. I couldn't see anything, except the floor I was now lying on. And the floor was… 'red and blue?'

I sat up in shock, headache forgotten, and looked around to see nothing of the department store I was just in moments ago. Instead, an uncomfortably familiar yellow fog stretched out in all directions around me. Bright stage lights shined down on me, attached to some apparatus I couldn't see through the fog, and strange visual designs of body outlines and a gigantic black-and-white target sprawled across the floor.

I noticed the unmoving bodies next to me and my heart leapt to my throat. Worst-case scenarios rose to the top of my mental attention, and I scrambled over to Yosuke and Chie and checked their wrists for a pulse. Both were alive, but unconscious and unresponding.

I stood up with shaking feet.

It wasn't a particularly difficult deduction, but I still desperately reached for anything other than the obvious implication that my location was probably within whatever place was on the other side of the TV portal. The fog that surrounded me was a clue that was just impossible to miss. Unfortunately, that was my only conceptual reference point. Beyond that one probable suspicion, I had little else to go on, other than the fact that I was in deeper shit than I had ever thought possible.

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A/N: Still working on that whole 'regular publishing schedule' thing, but it should go faster now. Most of the causes for this chapter's lateness are no longer an issue. My goal is to get Chapter Five, where things start to actually get interesting, out by New Years.

Beta for this chapter is Unnegated Positive. What a swell guy.