Chapter Four - Choices
After Junpei filled in Minato's name, the scene returned to the young boy they had met earlier. Ominously, he said, as he closed the clipbook, "No one can escape time. It delivers us all to the same end." He brought the clipbook up to eye level as the screen cut to a shot of his eyes boring deep within the soul of the audience. "You can't plug your ears and cover your eyes." He turned his hand over, and the clipbook vanished. The bright, yellow lights that had once illuminated the room then faded away, allowing the monstrous, vile green of the Dark Hour to return.
The boy then stretched out his hand, darkness enveloping him, and forebodingly setting the tone for this miserable experience everyone was in for.
"And so, it begins..."
Yukari shifted in her seat, majorly put at unease because of how...creepy the boy had made everything. Despite having fought the end of the world personified, she would still find herself searching under her bed cautiously whenever the threat of ghosts or supernatural creatures would invade her mind. Shadows existed, who was to say ghosts didn't? She didn't like dwelling on it further, though, so she did not.
Junpei didn't say it. He didn't want to say it, but he was sure everyone else in the room was thinking the same thing; the boy had directed his statement at Minato...but it could easily have been applied to them, as well. The game had already mocked them over a hundred times, and yet it was only the first few minutes of the very first cutscene. Really, was this even fair? Of course not.
If there was anything Junpei had learned from his past, it was that life wasn't as fair as the world wanted it to be.
A chord pierced the air, as Minato stared at the empty space the boy had been in. And suddenly, a frightened voice called out, "Who's there!?"
Well, I know that voice.
Junpei turned his head over to Yukari, who was being the object of everyone's attention at the moment, because they all knew that voice as well. Yukari herself shrank slightly in her seat, her eyes focused on the screen and her face contorted in a mired mix of embarrassment and anxiety.
So, this is how they first met...
Junpei refused to make a comment, as this...really wasn't the time. But he'd be lying if he were to say that discovering that this was how she had first come in contact with his old friend wasn't even a little funny.
A girl appeared in the scene. She was wearing a pink cardigan, and got into a battle stance upon seeing the main protagonist. Her breaths were heavy, and she looked like she was staring down death itself. Minato stared at her like a deer in headlights, but was abject horrified upon seeing that she had a gun strapped to her thigh.
Yukari couldn't help feeling really uneasy with this. Basically everyone was witnessing their first meeting - a moment of her old shame. She had been so unused to the whole prospect of fighting Shadows, and so when he had suddenly entered the dorm, in the middle of the Dark Hour...she had been told that easily being frightened was a symptom of awakening to your potential, but that hadn't made her feel any better. She had overreacted, and she had felt still the fool for having done so. And she had never even imagined that he would end up being the man she'd...
She let out a deep sigh and decided not to think much more on the matter. Of course, she knew why he had to sacrifice himself - she had understood, years ago. But, understandably so, she still had bouts of feeling morose over it every once in a while. The first cut is the deepest, they say. He had cut exceptionally deep, regardless of whether he intended to do so or not.
Fuuka and Aegis said nothing, having figured the same as Junpei on it not being in good taste right now. Akihiko made an awkward noise as he cleared his throat, and Ken was just blinking. Mitsuru was unaffected; she had already been there, when the two of them had met.
Yukari was about to tear the gun out, when suddenly!
"Takeba, wait!"
The girl whipped around, and the camera panned upward slowly, revealing a new character from behind the black. Interspersed with this introduction were transitions detailing the Dark Hour shifting back into the normal hours of the night, as the music returned to the scene.
/Burn my dread.../
Yukari smiled at this new character, Minato in the background and now appearing to have recomposed himself. A woman with purplish hair was giving a smile as the camera slowly zoomed outward from her face.
And then, the scene shifted.
Junpei's phone rang; a text had been sent to him. Everyone else had been too occupied by the wonders of the cutscene to pay attention to the ringing noise.
He opened it, and the text simply read:
I shall instruct you on what to pick when new dialogue options appear.
...Wait. What!? Dialogue choices-!?
And then he stopped himself. This was an RPG. Of course there were going to be dialogue choices! They'd given him a name, of course the game was going to go so far as to include dialogue options...!
He cupped his head with his right hand and the grip his left hand had had on the controller was loosening.
What next, is the game gonna let me pick his girlfriend, or something?
He paused.
...No. It wouldn't...right? But...? He then widened his eyes in fear. The game...was sixty hours long for a reason. And it must have been real special if they said it was the "best RPG of 2007."
And he had to stop right there because he remembered that if it was in fact released in 2007, that would mean that this game had been sold in stores two years before everything went horrible and that was a huge can of worms he didn't want to open up yet. And so, he focused on the content that may or may not have been in the game. The content that could have showed something...dreadful.
What if...? No, no, that's just...that'd just be...
He then felt immensely bitter, and decided not to pursue the matter. They had yet another cutscene to power through. One set inside the lobby of their former dormitory, with character models depicting Arisato, Kirijo, and Takeba talking to each other - each model with a rather oversized head, and an animesque image serving as a character cut-out over the text.
[Redhead: I didn't think you'd arrive so late. My name is Mitsuru Kirijo. I'm one of the students who live in this dorm.]
[Brunette: ...Who's he?] She asked that with an air of nervousness and uncertainty.
...
Mitsuru wondered if she had always looked so...old, and Takeba wondered if her eyes indeed were that big. And both were particularly concerned about their hairstyles...were they really that extravagant?
[Mitsuru Kirijo: He's a transfer student. It was a last minute decision to assign him here. He'll eventually be moved to a room in the boys' dorm.]
[Brunette: ...Is it okay for him to be here?]
[Mitsuru Kirijo: I guess we'll see...this is Yukari Takeba. She'll be a junior this spring, just like you.]
[Yukari Takeba: ...Hey.]
And then the options appeared.
{Nice to meet you.}
{Why do you have a gun?}
{Is this the girls' dorm?}
Junpei groaned, as everyone immediately turned to him. "The game...it wants us to make a personality for the guy!"
"What do you mean?" Aigis asked him quizzically.
"These kinds of games allow the player to inject their own personality into the player character," he explained tiredly. "It helps get people invested in the game - and they do this by giving the player character dialogue options in response to story events."
"So...then..." Akihiko looked back at the screen and back to Junpei. Screen, Junpei, screen, Junpei. "Does that mean that...? Like, something...controlled him?"
"I don't know!" Junpei blurted out.
"This doesn't make any sense!" Yukari exclaimed. "If he was being controlled, then by what? And for what? Why? What exactly would-!?"
Ring, ring.
Junpei's phone. He groaned and opened it, having received a new text.
"Why do you have a gun?"
He slammed his thumb on the directional button facing down.
{Nice to meet you.}
{Why do you have a gun?}
{Is this the girls' dorm?}
"I hate this game," was all Junpei could mutter out as he pressed the X button.
And he muttered that as Takeba remembered something from long ago, way back then.
[Yukari Takeba: Huh? Um, well, it's sorta like a hobby... Well, not a hobby, but...]
[Mitsuru Kirijo: You know how it is these days... It's for self-defense. It's not a real gun, of course.]
[Yukari Takeba: No, it's not, but... Umm, how should I explain it...?]
[Mitsuru Kirijo: Unlike the other buildings, this one's co-ed. It's not your typical dorm, though. I'll explain it to you later when I get a chance.]
[Mitsuru Kirijo: It's getting late, so you should get some rest. Your room is on the second floor, at the end of the hallway. Your things should already be there.]
[Yukari Takeba: Oh... I'll show you the way. Follow me.]
Yukari's eyes widened in realization.
"Mitsuru, do you remember...?" Yukari turned to her friend, who nodded in response.
"What is it?" Junpei asked, practically dead inside, while keeping his eyes glued to the television.
"I believe the response you had chosen, Iori, is what Arisato himself had said that very night."
And at that, the cogs in Junpei's head began turning. The same...thing?
The phone rang again. Another text. Junpei opened it.
The choices I'm making you pick
Are the choices he had made, a long time ago.
...Whoever this person was, he certainly knew how to make people really want to kill him. "The guy said to make the choices Minato made."
Junpei shook his head before returning to the game, Minato and Yukari's avatars having made it to the second floor.