Kurusu Akira had a beautiful dream.
He dreamed of starting his own organization, a superhero team similar to Marvel Comics' "Avengers," featuring a genius hacker beauty, a punk-style cool and elegant doctor, a hot blonde mixed-race model in a bright red latex suit, and a chaebol heiress who was incredibly wealthy but fell madly in love with him at first sight...
And every day, he would lead this bevy of beauties to punish evil around the world.
Girls with long, white legs called him
husband
Darling
Sweetly enough to make one's teeth ache, squeezing into a domineering Jeep or a private jet cabin, listening to passionate rock music while playing strip poker on their way to find villains.
Suddenly, the Jeep crashed into a reinforced concrete wall, or the plane collided with an American reconnaissance drone in the stratosphere; in any case, there was a violent, earth-shattering tremor, and all the ambiguity and charm filled with adolescent fantasies vanished.
Kurusu Akira, half-asleep on the floor, imagined a beautiful, domestic girl in an apron, holding a spatula, gently comforting him, saying, "Breakfast is ready; it's still early, you can go back to sleep for a bit."
Then he opened his eyes and saw only Sakura Sojiro's long, rectangular, hairy face.
Sakura Sojiro wore an apron over his pink work uniform, and the spatula in his hand gleamed with oil. "Breakfast is ready. It's still early, you can sleep a bit more."
Sunlight pierced through the gap in the curtains, and the beam spread over him, outlining the edges of his clothes with exceptional clarity, like an ultra-high-definition movie scene.
Even the few wrinkles on his face were clearly visible.
Kurusu Akira painfully covered his eyes with his hand, daring not to look at Sakura Sojiro again.
It was as if one more glance would immediately turn the Jeep and private jet he had just dreamed of into green-screen disaster movie effects, exploding spectacularly into fireworks.
Seeing Kurusu Akira lying on the floor, covering his eyes and not moving, Sakura Sojiro thoughtfully found his glasses on the bed and handed them to him. "There's no bedding here. Did you get a bit cold sleeping last night?"
"Maybe a little cold... Sorry, I lost my composure." It was actually lack of sleep.
Kurusu Akira took the glasses and put them on, then stood up briskly and checked the time on his phone. Six twenty, about two and a half hours until class.
That was enough time for him to figure out where the school was.
Sakura Sojiro, holding the spatula, asked Kurusu Akira, who was about to go downstairs, "Want to have breakfast before you go? It's on me."
Kurusu Akira, whose entire savings might only be enough to buy a few buckets of instant noodles, immediately stopped in his tracks. The plot of Romance of the three kingdoms flashed through his mind, and he nearly buckled at the knees, clasping his hands and uttering the timeless phrase, "If you do not abandon me, I beg to be adopted as your foster father."
"Walk slowly, don't fall."
Kurusu Akira, walking steadily down the stairs, quickly nodded, "Sakura-san, you're right."
This was the benefit of being a minor.
Even if he got lost, kind people would take him in, providing food and lodging.
If the person cursing the heavens and earth in the dark alley that night had been a scruffy corporate slave, Sakura Sojiro, passing by with a trash bag, would likely not even have bothered to glance at him.
----------------
A clear blue sky, utility poles covered with advertisements, clean and tidy street corner walls, red brick and gray walls showing a slight sense of age.
Kurusu Akira walked with his head down, holding his phone, on the dry concrete road. Old-style buildings continuously spread alongside him towards the end of the road, and dark power lines intricately extended overhead, forming a spiderweb-like structure in the gaps between houses.
This is Yongen-Jaya, where the outer areas appear modern, conforming to the urban landscape of Tokyo, but as one delves deeper, retro Showa-era streets can be found.
The bakery in the alley opened early, and a woman with more gray in her hair brought a tray of freshly baked cream buns to the display case. A bald taxi driver squatted at the noodle shop entrance, wolfing down a large bowl of noodles, and office workers strode purposefully with their briefcases... Elementary school students rode bicycles past Kurusu Akira, who was looking down at his phone navigation, the wheels grinding on the concrete road, and the clatter of chains echoing in the morning of Yongen-Jaya.
Walking on the way to the train station.
Occasionally looking up at the power lines that divided the sky, Kurusu Akira subconsciously felt like a frail, pitiful little beetle, carefully crawling with six legs in the world's shadows, wary of unknown predators. Once he hummed and flapped his wings to fly, he would fall into the entanglement of a spiderweb, then helplessly await the arrival of a predator...
This strange unease was not without basis.
Last night, he had scoured through unchangeable established facts like history, nations, and geography.
Unfortunately, NASA had clearly photographed traces of humanoid activity on the moon, televisions in Inaba City, Japan, were once portals to other worlds, and France seemed to be conducting biochemical research in the Seine River.
Up to this point, it still aligned with Kurusu Akira's understanding, but every subsequent search made him feel like a cataclysmic discovery...
What the hell, the Amazon River had reversed its flow, now running from the Andes to the Atlantic in reverse!
France, after the Revolution, surprisingly maintained its monarchy in a constitutional form, avoiding the guillotine's full wrath.
A team of inventors from ancient Alexandria rediscovered lost scrolls and built the first steam engine centuries ahead of schedule, kickstarting an early industrial era.
Beethoven, on the other hand, strangled fate, enjoyed good health, a happy family, established his own orchestra, and left behind countless musical masterpieces throughout his life.
...
But his favorite famous voice actor and artist, Takizawa Satoru, was nowhere to be found.
Mr. Jotaro Kujo, a first-class professor at Shinto Ocean University who loved fitness, had even become a manga character.
Kurusu Akira remembered attending his lecture, which was about the social behavior of dolphins.
Damn parallel world, without Takizawa's daily Twitter updates, who will provide the spiritual pickled vegetables he needs during meals?
Actually, all the above changes were within Kurusu Akira's acceptance. It showed that the world was still peaceful, and there were no chaotic and dangerous disasters about to break out... At least it allowed him to return to high school and enjoy the beautiful campus life of his youth.
However, he then discovered that this world seemed to have magical girls.
Because last month, the headline of the "Tokyo Daily" was "Tokyo's Genius Beautiful Girl Breaks National Record in Mitakihara City Youth Math League." Besides the black-haired girl with low twin tails, a cute middle school student with pink hair braided into pigtails also appeared in the shot.
Don't think I won't recognize you two just because you changed your hairstyles, Akemi Homura, Kaname Madoka!
It was bad enough that real people were put into manga, but how could anime characters come into reality?
That instantly scared Kurusu Akira wide awake. After a careful search, he found that the destruction caused by various battles in Puella Magi Madoka Magica did not appear in reality, which made him breathe a sigh of relief on the spot.
However, the seed of vigilance was planted.
'If only my Evoker were still here.'
Kurusu Akira thought with worry.
Kurusu Akira, having lost his Evoker, had successfully been downgraded from "superpower user" to "suspected superpower user."
If an unexpected disaster truly occurred beside him, he would be utterly defenseless and at the mercy of others.
The Phantom Thief couldn't stand this grievance.
He clenched his phone.
'Where is Igor? Where is the Velvet Room? Where is my lovely Lavenza? Why haven't you brought the Persona registry to see me!'
Special note: In Kurusu Akira's original world, there existed a mysterious place between the "material" and "spiritual" planes, called the Velvet Room.
Igor is considered the god of the Velvet Room. He has a large number of demigod lackeys under him, referred to as "Velvet Room assistants."
This might sound confusing, so it can be explained as a company's operating model, where the supernatural power of Persona is the "funding" distributed by the company to its employees.
Igor is the executive with funding allocation authority within the company, and above him is a virtually hands-off big boss born from humanity's collective unconscious.
Igor's daily job is to search the world for suitable humans, sign contracts with them, then generously allocate a sum of "funding" from the boss for the contractor to use, and secretly supervise them to correctly fulfill their contractual obligation of "defeating evil forces."
This is similar to the setting of "magical girl" manga: sign a contract, gain supernatural power, defeat monsters, save the world.
But what makes it different is that this company also assigns wives... probably.
Because Igor often has to work for the big boss and is too busy, he specifically dispatches a subordinate who perfectly matches the contractor's aesthetic and preferences in appearance and personality to reside in the Velvet Room, so that they can provide necessary support to the contractor anytime, anywhere.
Lavenza was Kurusu Akira's "assistant." She was a gentle, elegant, beautiful, kind, occasionally lively, and slightly mischievous... a perfect girl who combined countless virtues and possessed a beauty that pushed the limits of human comprehension.
'Unfortunately, Lavenza is not here now.'
'The Velvet Room hasn't contacted me either.'
'I hope the company doesn't go bankrupt; I really need this job.'
Persona are products of materialized hearts. Even if Kurusu Akira transmigrated, he still possessed this extraordinary power—
But this power from a parallel world was "abnormal," like illegal funds. If it wasn't "legalized" in the Velvet Room, it couldn't be used.
His Persona had not been registered in the Velvet Room, nor did he have a Persona summoning device.
This meant that, currently, he was just an ordinary, somewhat malnourished high school student with no power in reality.
Perhaps, at most, he was a bit handsomer than others.
Walking on the street, it was already eight in the morning. The number of pedestrians gradually increased, and the atmosphere became lively.
He finally arrived at the train station.
Kurusu Akira inserted coins into the vending machine outside the station gate and bought a can of coffee drink.
-
[Phantom Thief purchased a coffee drink - "MAX Coffee - Condensed Milk Flavor"]
[Phantom Thief's mood, +5]
[Phantom Thief's mental state, +5]
[Assets -200?]
[Current assets remaining: 1900 yen]
-
Kurusu Akira pulled the tab on the can, tore open the lid, and took a hearty gulp.
Then he followed the morning rush hour crowd into the train station, using his phone's navigation's "train route planner" to find the corresponding line.
Hmm? This is quite close.
From Yongen-Jaya Station, it's one stop to Shibuya, and then another stop to Aoyama-Itchome. The Private Shuujin Academy High School, which his counterpart in this world attended, was near the Aoyama-Itchome station platform.
The waiting area gradually became crowded.
When the train arrived, Kurusu Akira could only, like salmon migrating upstream, be swept along by the current and countless companions, squeezing forward into the narrow river mouth.
Why use the analogy of "salmon migrating upstream"?
Because in the evening after school, he would have to squeeze onto the train again during the evening rush hour.
Fortunately, he arrived early and was near the front of the queue, so the train car was still relatively empty.
Kurusu Akira quickly found an empty seat and sat down.
A group of white-collar workers swayed and squeezed in, and the train car still trembled slightly.
The tracks ahead of the train fixed all disembarkation points; which station to board, which station to alight, were all unchallengeable and error-free regulations. It was very orderly, like their monotonous, almost mechanical assembly-line lives, framed by rules.
Kurusu Akira, as a high school student, had resolutely joined this assembly line.
Simple, quick announcements sounded around, notifying that the train would depart soon.
Then, like an old, large animal shaking its body after waking up, the train doors closed with an exaggerated, trembling vibration.
The train seemed to have finally made up its mind and slowly pulled away from the station.
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