Baofu (P2-EP) 13/ 06

When you were young, you thought you were invincible, in the way of " losing is something that happens to other people." You thought you had things figured out costing through school, the bar exam, and case after case. You drank to your success, to your brains, to whatever seemed like a good occasion for drinking. Before you you would have called it confidence, After you would have arrogance, and now you call it what it is, a heady cocktail of both.

Before, is the time before summoning your Persona. A time where you went with the flow of what was expected of you and excelled at it. A flow that took you into law, a river that took you to good places up until it took you to a waterfall, and you changed between the space you found yourself in the air, and the hard slam into the water below.

(You were always better at hiding then I was at finding you)

You first played the Persona game in a study group meant to be studying for the entrance exam. Some of the kids who played have summoned a persona, while others have gone their entire lives without knowing it existed. You can have that strange dream of a butterfly, but without the trauma, the danger, it will just that, a dream.

Summoning a Persona is a response to tramua, and exactly what triggers it is different for each person.

Persona summoners know other summoners, their masks an almost tangible thing that even people without personas can sense. Something is leaking from them, almost an emotional wound that still bleeds. Some people ooze charisma to their benefit, where others bleed danger with every step they take. A well adjusted person makes the most of it, but few persona users are as well adjusted as they pretend they are.

Your affinities for arcana will shift over the years as you grow and learn to wear different masks, but what does not change is your ability to summon the mask you wore in that moment of trauma. Some people would have changing their backstory upon hitting the water, but you never found it hard to take up the persona of Baofu. Kaoru Saga exists everytime you summon Odysseus, and for a while you hated him. The hatred became bitterness which turned to tired resignation with time.

(There are many things I wish I could tell you, but the most important is that there is nothing I need to forgive you for. )

You have become a man tired in his own body, old before your time. You hide your face behind a screen, your name behind a new one, and your past in the grave of another, but each mask you wear carries a piece of Kaoru Saga. And you are not yet ready to forgive him.

So you hide behind the screen, the man of rumors rumors, unknowing that the rumor you spread with a desperate wish in your heart came true.

You need to forgive yourself.

Sadly it's too late for that.

This time.

Forgiveness comes after the reset (not that you will remember that), and after you try to save the world, and come to find some mercy for the man you once were.

But that comes next time.

You have to stop hiding behind your online handle, and go meet a journalist, a cop chasing justice, and a woman who feels out of place in adult life and resents her friend for seeming to have it easier.

Sumaru City is the city of rumors, where people go to be lost and found new, and that will be true.