Takeyoshi's Room, an hour later

I heard the door open and close, and frankly, found that I didn't care that much to check who it was. I was lying on my back on the hardwood floor, just staring at the light, and thinking. "For someone who's almost nude you seem very comfortable sitting with your whole body spread like that." Takeyoshi grouched as he maneuvered around my limbs to get to his laptop- the one that I had recovered for him and he was hiding in his room, since he was still grounded. "What if I just want to let you see my junk?" I glanced up for a moment, checking that the hospital gown hadn't moved or anything- there was no way to see my privates. Good enough. Turning to look up at the boy, who had come in the room with a broom and a dustpan, I stuck out my tongue. He replied something that sounded suspiciously like a Japanese curse, though I couldn't catch what exactly. "So Jeremy, what do we do now? You kinda left me on hold there earlier. I get that it's not an everyday occurrence but I kinda would appreciate being corporeal over here." I currently was sitting on a spot that had been soakedwith holy water, which probably wasn't too good for the hardwood floor, but it meant I could be here instead of sinking into it.

"...Jeremy?" "You know, the Code Lyoko guy. Which you remind me of." "..." he spun around on his wheeled chair, typing something up. After a moment, he sighed and went to grab something from inside his desk drawer- an english keyboard. "I look nothing like this guy." he turned around and frowned accusingly. I laughed. He had brown hair, instead of blonde, but he still wore glasses. However, instead of wearing comfortable clothing, he had made the unexplainable decision of wearing a two-piece suit, of all things- and having looked at his clothes, I knew that he owned only those and aggressively traditional Japanese clothes. In that regard, he actually looked a little bit more like Artemis Fowl, but… actually, hmmm. Scrawny barely adolescent kid, extremely formal dress code, clearly connected to some paranormal bullshit given that he'd somehow turned me into a ghost…

Okay, I'm going to stop now. Our first meeting had been the result of me… well, walking upstairs after I realized that I was invisible as well as incorporeal and the japanese couple could not hear or see me. How had I achieved that, you may ask?

I used the ritual circle's wax to wax my feet. And hands, but mostly because I found it was very difficult to maintain your balance only on two limbs when the only thing that was between falling and the floor was that wax, and that instead my body would fall through the stairs. Despite being a ghost, I had no intention of learning what falling two stories felt like.

So, after "stealthily" climbing up the stairs like Samara from The Ring, I made my way to the upper floor to find three bedrooms and a bathroom. Two of the bedrooms were empty… and one of them, was not. And I learned that because as I entered the room and closed the door behind me, the kid inside began throwing things at me. Several that passed through me- but some that didn't. And the fact that the kid's assortment of items was some of the weirdest shit ever didn't help.

Still, I'd be wrong if I said that beyond hurting slightly I was hurt in any meaningful capacity, so after he'd thrown twenty odd or so items and backed into a corner with a weirdly emotionless face and a cross with a magatama attached to it with a cord, of all things. Eventually, I managed to snatch something out of the air, looking at him accusingly.

"Are you done?" I asked, though I quickly realized that the kid most likely only spoke Japanese. Still, hopefully he could interpret my tone.

Surprisingly, he replied in perfectly spoken English, of all things, after a few moments where he stared at me less like an intruder and more like a science project. "Yes. I did not expect one of your kind to be so… relaxed."

I looked around me, staring at what I now recognized to be several objects of various religious significance- in more than one culture too. I could only assume the liquid now staining the floor and my feet was holy water, and I recognized a "reverse svastika", as I called it, another magatama, a star of david, and several other objects that I also didn't recognized. "...you were prepared."

Shouting in Japanese came from downstairs, and after a moment I heard Takeyoshi shout back. "Something fell! I'll clean it up!" before turning to me. "I assume you want answers."

"I was not prepared to wake up in a japanese home in a mostly incorporeal form, so… yeah."

"Alright. I will need my laptop first, though, since most of the readings of the experiment were there. Can you bring that to me?"

"...sounds simple enough?" I said, staring at my feet. The holy water had soaked a bit into my feet, and though it felt… tingly, I was definitely not melting or anything, demon style. My grip on the floor had also improved significantly.

Which brought us to the current moment. Staring up, I saw that Takeyoshi was done cleaning, and instead was typing something on his computer. Standing up, I glanced at… Japanese text. Of course. "Whatcha typing?"

"Well, since you barged into my room unannounced, I had to conduct an impromptu experimentation on what works and what doesn't as a deterrant for spirits. So, I'm logging everything that worked against you, as well as what doesn't, while I think of the religious and metaphysical implications of what that means."

"...how old are you again?"

He frowned. "Twelve. You?"

"...Eighteen. I got everything you said, I'm just… impressed." I paused for a moment, digesting what he'd just said. "Wait, did you say spirit?"

He tilted his head at me. "Yes. The… well, I'd much rather call it experiment but since my basement is hardly a controlled environment of science, the ritual I was conducting was meant to summon a soul from the dead, contained in the cage that would act as a portal. My grandparents, however, opened it while I was conducting it, closing the connection..."

"...say what now?"

A week later, Kichiyoji

Walking around the streets of Tokyo was... interesting and boring at the same time. First of all, simply because of the magnitude- Tokyo was called a city, but exploring it was a massive endeavor.

I walked through men and women alike, uncaring of the fact that I logically should not be able to phase through them. They didn't even look at me, or notice my presence. It was disheartening, to say the least. At times, I'd bump into something such as a bead collar, or a holy symbol, but no one seemed to care or notice for longer than a few seconds.

...to be honest, I did not expect being a ghost to be such a sad experience.

I'd begun feeling hunger and thirst a long while ago, but only as a muted sensation that didn't really do anything. Three days without drinking would've killed anyone. A week, and I was still here. Never really had the time to ask Takeyoshi for a sanctified burger. And look where that got me now.

The japanese blabber of people speaking is reduced to incomprehensible white noise that only serves to remind me that I am not home. Perhaps it's better that I have been called as a spirit here rather than there, it would be incredibly disheartening for me to be around the people I love and be unable to interact with them.

...to be honest, I expected more spirits around here. Japan is a rather spiritual place, and... well, to be honest, being the only ghost around as far as I can see seems particularly weird. But then again, maybe ghosts are unable to see one another and are bound to live- well, not live, forever in solitude until the end of time.

That sounds incredibly depressing.

I began wandering around Tokyo after Takeyoshi admitted to me in not really uncertain terms that he'd been grounded for practicing rituals inside of his home for… who knows what reason, or how he came into knowledge of them anyways. But his entire family- or rather, him and his grandparents- are particularly religious and live in a "peaceful", for a given value of the word in Tokyo, neighbourhood in the town of Musashino. Where exactly in the fuck was that was anyone's guess, but anyways, it just meant that their nephew was grounded for making a "mockery" of religion and that thus, he was no fucking help at allbeyond having gotten me into this situation to begin with.

He also seemed pretty disappointed but curious about the fact that I did not "recall dying", since I had not fucking died in the first place, but that was the least of my concerns. As I finally remembered something after days of just wandering the neighbourhood and doing… well, mostly peeping into houses and annoying the boy (who did not know why only he in particular could see me beyond guessing that it was because he conducted the ritual/experiment), I decided to wander.

Especially because the sensations- and sometimes, lack thereof, was getting to me. My hair was growing, and with no more access to holy water after breaking the only phial he had on the floor, there was no cutting it beyond ripping it off myself. I was also getting visibly thinner- obviously, and for a while, I panicked and cried about actually dying, which was… not my proudest moment.

A week into things, both me and Take breathed a sigh of relief because beyond a mild sense of being thirsty if I actually thought about it, there was nothing. Still, I kept walking, because… I needed to know something.

Hearing english words being spoken, I turn around to whoever's speaking. It was a young woman wearing a yellow and red outfit with a sign in hand that had a goofy burger mascot and pointed towards a nearby restaraunt.

But it was the words that had tripped me up. Originally I thought she was speaking in broken english, but instead… she was saying the name of the place to an uninterested man in front of her. "Biggubanbāgā e yōkoso! Kūkan ni hiru mo yoru mo nainode-" she spoke more but at that point I was frozen and she was speaking too fast for me to understand.

Big Bang Burger…? No, I must've… it's probably just a real chain of restaraunts. But as I kept staring at it, it looked more and more like the thing in Persona 5. Persona 5 the videogame, the thing that was not real.

...just as unreal as the idea of becoming a ghost was.

I kind of had already discounted the theory that I was in a pharmacological coma and this was a hallucination caused by it- not because I could disprove it, but because it was like contemplating the idea that a gamma ray burst could ultimately just wipe us all out at any moment and there would be fuck all we could do about it, and so it was ultimately meaningless.

I went forward, approaching the commercial district, focusing this time on the contents of stores, on sounds that I heard on the TV; anything that would either deter or intensify the dread that I was feeling.

A series of toys of some Power Rangers looking guys… with NEO in English and some japanese text under it. Neo Featherman? But NEO Power Rangers seemed also likely...

A doll, clearly shaped like the Persona appearance of Jack Frost- but maybe it was just a store selling random games merchandise?

Passing by a train station, with a sign that said, in english, that there was a split line heading either from Kichijoji towards Chinatown or Yongen-Jaya, which I knew not to be a real place?

The final nail in the coffin, ultimately, was hearing Goro Akechi's name on one of the many public TVs blasting out sounds. One look and I instantly recognized one of the guys speaking as a real-looking version of the homicidal detective prince.

My head hurt, and I stopped. It began to grew heavy and hurt as I thought this, the realization crashing against my head, hard as a sledgehammer. My vision began to blur.

The sensation of bile rising within began scalding my throat, my stomach knotting itself.

What… what's going on… this world is just… a game… why am I here?

With those thoughts swarming my head, I suddenly felt my knees give out on me as I fell to the ground. My head kept swimming, pounding, as though something was trying to force its way out of my skull.

Several hours later, Kichijoji

When I woke up, it was the middle of the night- despite my best efforts to stay awake, I'd managed to pass out. Groaning, I came to a rise, hearing a faint music in the air. I wasn't sure what the song was supposed to be, however.

Getting up, I froze almost immediately at the sight that greeted me; it was the same place where I had passed out, but… cartoonified. Graphics reminiscent of a PS3 game met my eyes, and as I went to stare down at my own hands, I found the difference between my hands being normal and the concrete being a low poly rendition of it.

Where am I?

As I got to my knees, I also noticed on the ground a black phone, also of a cartoony design. No brand, a charging port with no sort of cable that I could recognize, and two buttons on the side, one for the volume and the other for turning it on and off. More imporantly, however, it was fully charged (or looked that way, at least), it was playing the music, and I could touch it. It also looked vaguely like my previous phone, lower resolution besides.

The screen read "Now Playing – Kichijoji 199X"

The applications on it seemed to be the default browser, the various default apps like clock, calculator, options, music, et cetera, and nothing else. Thankfully, though, the Big Bang Burger I passed out next to seemed to have free wifi. I sat down on the sidewalk next to it, and I began searching.

Searching Persona offered this: "Persona: plural personae: a character in a fictional presentation (such as a novel or play) usually used in plural."

So next I searched Persona 5, 4, 3. Same thing.

Searching Shin Megami Tensei offered only a few random bullshit results that clearly weren't connected to the thing I was looking for.

Searching Atlus told me that it was a bankrupt videogame developing.

From then on, I fell into a rabbit hole of searching things that I could think of. Dark Souls was still a thing here, but Hollow Knight wasn't. McDonalds never took hold in Japan, instead being substituted by Big Bang Burger. Power Rangers… was not a thing. But when I looked for Neo Featherman, that was basically it, alright.

After that I just kind of turned off my phone, looking to save the battery for emergencies, quietly processing the information while trying not to break down.

So. Was this any worse, ultimately, than just being a regular ghost summoned by a japanese kid? Yes, very. And at the same time, no. This is… a game world. And judging by today's date, April 2nd 2016, I am most likely in a time prior to Persona 5, though whether that's by years or mere days I didn't know. Which was a good thing, given that I haven't played the fourth and third installment, but also bad, because apocalypse.

...man, out of all the games I could wind up in, why was it the one about abused children?

I looked down at the generic phone. No Metanav. Of course not, it was an app created by… either Igor or Yaldabaoth, I do not remember which. I also don't think I ever learned how they did it in the other games, except for the fact that P4 had something to do with television channels and the ones in P3 went "suicide is badass".

I was not keen on pointing a gun at my head to try and summon a Persona.

Which begs the question of how exactly Morgana did it prior to joining the team anyways. And how did the kid summon me anyways? I know for a fact I don't remember such a character- I know that cognitive psience is a thing that exists here, but it was never expanded upon.

...but this is the world of the game, even the places that the camera doesn't focus on. Is it expanded, then?

Ugh. So many questions, so little answers. For now… I would go back to Takeyoshi's house, except that I don't know where it is except somewhere in the near vicinity of Kichijoji. I've been travelling for a week now. At least he told me that he could find me at the train station if I ever got lost, after his house arrest was lifted. How a twelve year old kid was independent enough to just go was another mystery, but one probably explained with "anime logic"- ten year olds were Pokemon trainers, after all.

...wait.

Pokémon: searching results for poké mon.

Shit, It's all just hawaiian sushi.

This story is going to dive a bit more in the details of the Metaverse, and get very involved with flipping canon the bird. Still, for that to happen, of course, our protagonist needs to get into the Metaverse and start doing things. That's going to happen soon... just not too soon.

Friendly reminder that on the place of patrons I post 3 chapters ahead, and furthermore, I am now open to commissions! If you're interested, you can PM me here and any other place I post my stories at.

Drink water, stay awesome. Nick of Name, out. :)