Prologue: Departure

Yu Narukami was tired. He had never felt quite right after the final battle.

At first he had barely noticed it. It had started as a nagging feeling in his gut, and then it had slowly grown and festered until he had woken up one morning feeling just empty. Then it got worse.

Loss of appetite, dizzy spells, headaches but most of all just a total lack of energy. Before he knew it he was spacing out for long periods of time and dozing off in class. It was becoming a struggle to keep his eyes open and every word he said seemed to sap a bit more life away from him. He had never been the energetic and talkative type but it didn't take long for his close friends to realise something was wrong, but whenever they asked he just laughed.

"Yeah, today's PE was intense man,"

"Nah, I was up till 3 reading Magical Witch Detective. Why are you giving me that weird look?"

Or when Rise complained about him not paying enough attention to her recently: "I'm a popular guy, dear. I can't help it if all the girls want me," and he would get a friendly punch in reply.

He didn't want them to worry. Not after everything they'd been through.

It wasn't totally unexpected that there would be some side-effects after using such an awesome power, but the length and the severity of them surprised as much as it took a toll upon him. He resolved that once he got back to Tokyo he would get some serious rest and that (hopefully) would be the end of it, but in the meantime he would just have to continue fulfilling his social obligations and pretend as if nothing was wrong even if he was dying inside. It seemed as if everybody wanted a piece of the campus star before he left them for maybe forever. Popular people had their problems too.

But at last it was time to go home.

The farewell was something straight out of a Japanese movie with the cherry blossoms in bloom and their petals swirling in the spring breeze. As the train pulled out of the station he leaned out the window and waved at the seven figures waving back and watched as they slowly shrank until they were but specks in the distance and were all at once blotted out of sight. As he sat down, pair of glasses in hand, Yu felt strangely at ease.

Just under a year ago he had sat in this very train worrying about whether he was going to make new friends, whether he would survive in a place totally unlike the one he was used to, and then a chance encounter with a gas station attendant changed his fate forever. They had fought the good fight, nearly lost a few people along the way but finally won. Intact. These were moments he would cherish and hold dear in his heart for a long time; heartwarming ones at the Dojima residence, dark ones at the hospital, and even embarrassing ones at the inn. The last in particular brought a grin to his face. No way he was gonna forget that.

As a person too, he had changed, no – metamorphosised. He had arrived a quiet and cold individual, and he left, well, still relatively quiet but by no means emotionless. And he had learnt the power of friendship. He had always considered himself a loner before, so the enthusiasm and ease with which he thrust himself into his new role when he awakened to his abilities surprised him greatly. Social links were always going to be an end to greater power, but he gradually came to enjoy the means as well. To someone who once upon a time thought he could live out his entire life without human interaction, there was something inexplicably exhilarating about having people depend on you and more so when you found you could depend on them as well.

And he just kept getting better at it. Shifting seamlessly from fearless leader to caring senpai to romantic heartthrob; it was no different from switching Personas in the middle of a battle. It was not about who you wanted to be, but who they wanted you to be. After a while it became so easy he almost felt guilty doing it.

But too much of a good thing is not a good thing. Soon enough he had developed a need to feel needed and like a drug, he became insecure without it. Meeting his Shadow changed that. He was forced to conquer his fear of abandonment and accepted that he would have to be separated from his friends when the time came.

And so here he was, alone in a train carriage speeding along somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It was oddly fitting that as he came alone, he left alone as well.

Yu yawned and glanced at his watch. Ten past one. It was three hours to the next transfer and another three after that, and finally another three on the Tohoku Shinkansen such that he would arrive in Tokyo at eleven. His parents would be waiting with a car to fetch him. There might be an awkward handshake from Dad, maybe a hug from Mum and a half-hour drive back to the apartment in Shinjuku. If he felt up to it he might broach the topic of returning to Inaba, but there was no hurry. He knew that as long as he got his grades his parents wouldn't care where he was or what he was doing.

That was a problem for another day. For the first time in a long time, Yu Narukami had absolutely nothing to do. No test to study for, no battle to fight and nobody to entertain. His mission was finally over.

He could finally let go.

With a sigh, he dropped back into his seat and let the exhaustion he had been holding back overcome him.

He closed his eyes and was asleep in seconds.

An iridescent blue butterfly flew in from the open window and landed on the window pane, beside the custom-made grey spectacles he had left there. He didn't notice.

...

It was nighttime at platform 23, Tokyo Main Station. Slumped against one of the nondescript concrete pillars at the north end was a solitary train worker, blue baseball cap pulled over his eyes. It had been a long day.

The train worker was almost a year into his new job but every day wore him down just as much as the previous one. Some of the old-timers suggested catching a few Zs between trains, which he was not very good at but still trying to do, and others swore by the cigarette, but that was not an option. He knew he'd never be able to quit once he started, and he had a girlfriend to think about too. "Definitely not an option," the man mused out loud with a chuckle. With the cool night air tickling his goatee and the humming of thousands of commuters' voices from other parts of the station a lullaby the worker could feel the first feelers of sleep pulling him in. But it was not to be.

Demonstrating typical Japanese efficiency, the E5 series of Hayabusa 38 glided smoothly into the platform at exactly 2304 hours and all 453.5 tons of the train came to a perfect stop without making so much as a squeak. Then with clockwork precision all 20+ doors on the 10 cars blasted open with a whoosh of pressurised air releasing the 731 passengers within. Sighing, the railway worker got to his feet, adjusted his cap and rubbed his tired eyes. Here we go again.

There were the usual business-types in their smart suits pulling their monochrome hand-carries, groggy students trying to get home for spring break and the odd foreigner or two. The crowd began to thin as quickly as it formed, and one of the last passengers was a girl who could not have been more than five sound asleep on the shoulders of a man who was presumably her father. As the train worker watched, he could clearly see dried drool glistening on the corner of her mouth. "Must be way past her bedtime," he thought as he couldn't resist cracking a tired smile.

When the final passenger disappeared up the escalator, the railway worker yawned and stretched as he entered the lead car, and he swore that his coworkers grabbing the trash removal kit and vacuum way back in the store could've heard his joints snapping back into place. He fought his lethargy as he moved methodically through each car, hands feeling in the overhead compartments, eyes scanning over chairs for misplaced belongings. There was slightly more refuse than one would expect on the last train of the day, but that wasn't his problem. He could already feel the warm water and familiar contours of his bunk as he strode into the final car and spied half a head of grey hair peeking above one of the seats at the end. With some trips lasting in excess of five hours encountering sleeping passengers was not that rare of an occurrence and the train worker had done his fair share of waking people up. This time, however, would not be like the rest.

As he approached the sleeping figure the worker could see that it was a man not much younger than himself, probably a second- or third-year student. He was wearing a plain black jacket, grey turtleneck shirt and black pants, but there was something oddly unsettling about the soft, peaceful expression and the contented smile on the teen's face.

"Excuse me, sir, but you've arrived at your destination," the worker began. He waited for a response but none came, and now the worker could feel a faint but palpable feeling of unease creep in which he couldn't quite explain. He was sure he had seen this face or a similar one somewhere before but he couldn't put his finger on it. "Sir, you have to get off the train," he continued. Silence.

Sweat was beginning to form on his brow as the worker finally reached for the teen's shoulder and shook it hard a few times. There was a curious yet familiar feeling of desperation as he hoped that those eyes would suddenly snap open and make everything okay, but some part of him knew that they wouldn't. And they didn't.

He began to panic.

The sweat was flowing now, the heart was racing, the tiredness all but forgotten. The voices in his head began to speak as his eyes were inexorably drawn back towards the teen's face.

Dude, this is freaking me out! Look at that face! Totally relaxed, not a damn care in the world. Like someone who died happy.

Wait, what?

Like someone who died...

At that moment everything clicked into place, and he could feel his heart drop all the way into the bottom of his gut.

Index and middle finger reached for the side of the neck and he counted ten seconds, which felt more like a minute.

Nothing.

The worker cursed audibly as he dropped his pig key holder while his clammy fingers fumbled for his HT, all the while feeling like throwing up from the nausea of deja vu.

Shit. Not again.