"I'm telling you, Katsuya, it's not just a game! It's a lifestyle! A religion! The girls in Blue Archive are literal goddesses!"
I let out a long, exhausted sigh, staring straight ahead at the familiar paved sidewalk leading back to our neighborhood. The afternoon sun was warm, the cherry blossoms were doing their usual dramatic falling routine, and the air smelled like impending summer. It was a perfect, peaceful Tuesday afternoon.
Or at least, it would have been, if Tatsuki wasn't walking next to me, shoving his phone into my face every three seconds.
"Look at her!" Tatsuki yelled, tapping his screen so hard I thought his thumb might break the glass. "Look at the halo! Look at the smile! She called me 'Sensei' this morning, Katsuya! Sensei! Do you know what that does to a man's heart?"
"It makes a man's heart realize he's likely going to end up on a government watchlist," I said flatly, pushing his phone away with my index finger. "Tatsuki, we are sixteen. Those girls look like they just graduated from drinking out of juice boxes. They are minors. You are simping over digital middle schoolers."
"They're high schoolers!" Tatsuki gasped, clutching his chest like I'd just stabbed him. "And some of them are technically older! It's the lore!"
"It's a crime," I countered, crossing my arms. "I don't care if the lore says she's a thousand-year-old dragon trapped in the body of a third-grader. It's off-putting. If you're going to dedicate your life to women, at least aim higher. Mature women. Women with life experience. Women who know how to file their own taxes and make a decent cup of coffee."
"You... you uncultured swine!" Tatsuki pointed an accusatory finger at me. "You're completely blind to the beauty of youth! You're entirely blinded by the MILF agenda!"
"The MILF agenda is the only agenda I support," I replied smoothly. "A woman who can gently pat my head after a long day of work and ask me how my day was? That's peak. Not a girl who needs help with her algebra homework."
Tatsuki groaned loudly, throwing his head back to the sky. "You're impossible! Fine, if you hate my divine goddesses so much, what do you play? Huh? Let's see your home screen. I bet your gacha roster is full of boring old hags!"
He lunged for my pocket.
"Hey! Back off, you degenerate!" I smacked his hand away, but Tatsuki was surprisingly fast when motivated by pure, unadulterated otaku rage. He grabbed my wrist, twisting his leg around mine to throw me off balance.
"Show me the phone, Katsuya!" he shouted, pinching my side right where he knew I was ticklish.
"Ow! Stop it, you freak!" I grabbed a fistful of his uniform shirt and yanked him downward, trying to put him in a headlock. We stumbled sideways off the sidewalk, nearly crashing into a neighbor's hedge. "I don't play any of that garbage!"
Tatsuki froze. His hands dropped from my sides. He slowly stood up, brushing off his uniform pants, his eyes wide and completely horrified. The silence stretched between us, save for the sound of a passing bicycle.
"You... you don't play anything?" he whispered, his voice trembling as if I had just confessed to eating puppies for breakfast.
"No," I said, fixing my collar. "Nothing. I don't play any gacha games."
Tatsuki gasped. It wasn't a normal gasp. It was a sharp, dramatic intake of air that sounded like a dying Victorian child. "Nothing?! Not a single one?! Katsuya... you're a virgin!"
"Don't yell that in the middle of the street!" I hissed, looking around frantically. An old lady watering her plants across the street was definitely praying i was disciplined on the spot.
"A gacha virgin!" Tatsuki corrected himself, pacing back and forth on the sidewalk. "This is a tragedy. A travesty! Your youth is slipping right through your fingers! How do you survive the boring classes? What do you do on the toilet? Read the shampoo bottle?!"
"I live my life in peace without a gambling addiction, that's what I do."
"No, no, no." Tatsuki shook his head furiously, his eyes narrowing with a terrifying, missionary-like determination. "I can't let my best friend live in such darkness. I have to show you the light. If you don't like my pure, innocent students... fine! I have just the thing for your twisted, mature-woman-loving tastes!"
He whipped his phone back out, his thumbs moving at the speed of light. "Behold! The ultimate masterpiece! Goddess of Victory: Nikke!"
I raised an eyebrow, tentatively leaning in to look at the screen. The artwork was undeniably high quality. The characters were definitely older-looking, clad in futuristic, tactical, yet incredibly impractical outfits.
"Alright," I admitted slowly. "I'll bite. The art isn't terrible. What's the gameplay like? Is it a strategy game? Turn-based RPG? What makes it so good?"
Tatsuki looked up at me, a shit-eating grin spreading across his face. "Bro."
"What?"
"Whenever they shoot their guns..." Tatsuki made a gripping motion with his hands, his eyes rolling back slightly. "Their asses shake. It's glorious. The recoil physics are a technological marvel."
I stared at him. Just stared. For a solid ten seconds, the only sound was the rustling of the cherry blossom trees.
"That's it?" I finally asked. "That's the selling point? Artificial butt jiggle physics?"
"It's not artificial! It's art!" Tatsuki protested.
"I'm declining," I said, turning on my heel and walking away. "Find another hobby. Pick up a sport. Learn knitting."
"Wait, wait!" Tatsuki sprinted after me, grabbing me by the shoulders. "I have others! I swear! Give me your phone!"
Before I could react, he dove into my pocket, successfully wrestling my phone from my grasp.
"Give that back!" I shouted, trying to grab it, but Tatsuki held it high above his head, dancing backward out of my reach.
"For your own good, Katsuya! I'm installing the starter pack! Fate/Grand Order, Genshin, Honkai... oh, and this one!"
I finally managed to tackle him, bringing us both down onto a soft patch of grass near a park entrance. I pinned his arm down and snatched my phone back from his hand. I unlocked the screen, expecting to see a bunch of anime game icons downloading.
There were several downloading, yes. But my eyes immediately zeroed in on one particular icon that had already finished. It featured an absurdly proportioned elf woman wearing absolutely nothing but a few strategically placed leaves, and the title was something I wouldn't even dare utter out loud.
I slowly looked down at Tatsuki, who was still pinned under me, grinning like an absolute idiot.
"Tatsuki." My voice was dangerously calm. "Why is there a hentai game on my home screen?"
"It's not just a hentai game, Katsuya! It's an interactive visual novel with deep lore!"
Tatsuki wheezed, trying to squirm out from under my knee. "I put it there so you can truly experience the roaring youth of a teenage boy! You need to expand your horizons!"
"I'm going to expand your face," I growled, grabbing his cheeks and pinching them as hard as I could.
"Ftop id! Ftop! Dat hurts!" Tatsuki muffled out, slapping my arms.
"Delete it! Delete it now or I'm throwing your phone into the river!"
"Never!"
Four Years Later
"Thank you, please come again."
I bowed slightly as the bell above the cafe door chimed, signaling the departure of my last customers for the evening—a young couple who had spent the last two hours sharing a single slice of strawberry shortcake and staring into each other's eyes like they were trying to perform telepathy.
I let out a long breath, untying the dark green apron from my waist.
Twenty years old. I survived high school, survived Tatsuki's relentless attempts to turn me into a gacha addict, and now I was a college student working part-time at 'Cafe Serenity'.
It wasn't a bad life. The pay was decent, the owner was a sweet old man who let me take home leftover pastries, and the uniform wasn't totally embarrassing. I grabbed my backpack from the staff room, waved goodbye to the manager, and stepped out into the cool night air.
The streets were relatively quiet. Streetlights buzzed softly overhead, casting long, moving shadows as I walked. I popped in my earbuds, hitting play on a random jazz playlist, and stuffed my hands into the pockets of my jacket.
I was exhausted. My feet ached from standing all day, and my brain was fried from trying to memorize historical dates for my upcoming finals. All I wanted to do was go home, eat some leftover curry, and maybe scroll through a forum looking for some decent mature-women appreciation posts.
Tatsuki's ridiculous anime obsessions had never rubbed off on me, but my own preferences remained rock solid.
My route home took me past a large construction site. They had been tearing down an old, multi-story commercial building for the past few weeks to make way for a new shopping center. The site was cordoned off with heavy chain-link fences and warning signs, illuminated by harsh white floodlights.
I strolled past it, humming along to the saxophone in my ear.
Then, the ground vibrated.
It wasn't a small vibration, like a heavy truck driving by. It felt like the earth itself had hiccuped. I paused, taking out one earbud.
A horrific, deafening sound split the night air. It sounded like a massive groan of tearing metal, followed by the rapid-fire snapping of thick cables.
I looked to my left. High above the fences, illuminated by the floodlights, the massive yellow crane stationed next to the half-demolished building was tilting. No, it wasn't just tilting. The foundational supports holding the remaining shell of the concrete building had given way, and the entire structure was cascading inward, pulling the crane down with it.
Time seemed to slow down, but not in a helpful, "I can dodge this" kind of way. It slowed down just enough for me to process exactly how screwed I was.
The building was collapsing outward. Right toward the sidewalk. Right toward me.
Massive slabs of concrete, twisted steel rebar, and a terrifying amount of debris blotted out the night sky.
"Well," I said aloud, my voice completely lost in the roaring avalanche of destruction. "That's inconven–"
———
Everything went black.
There was no pain. That was the first thing I noticed. Honestly, getting crushed by a commercial building should have hurt a lot more.
The second thing I noticed was the absolute silence.
I opened my eyes—or at least, the spiritual equivalent of my eyes. There was no physical sensation, just a sudden shift from darkness to a vast, endless expanse of deep twilight. I was floating weightlessly in a starry void. I looked down at my hands. They were translucent, glowing with a faint blue outline.
'Ah,' I thought, staring blankly at my glowing fingers. 'So Tatsuki's annoying anime tropes were actually real. I've been isekai'd.'
Before I could fully process the fact that my life as a twenty-year-old cafe worker was over, the space in front of me rippled.
Two massive, glowing structures materialized out of thin air. They looked like giant casino roulette wheels, towering thirty feet high, made of ornate gold and silver metal. The wheel on the left had a floating neon sign that read: [POWER / CHEAT]. The right one read: [DESTINATION WORLD].
I'm being reincarnated by a gacha system, I realized, a deep sense of irony washing over me.
CLACK. CLACK.
The wheels began to spin. The glowing panels blurred into streaks of color, accompanied by the loud, ticking sound of the flappers hitting the pegs. I watched quietly, my translucent arms crossed. I didn't bother calling out to whatever cosmic deity was running this rigged casino; if my life was in the hands of a roulette wheel, complaining wasn't going to change the physics of a spinning disc.
Tick... tick... tick...
The massive wheel on the right ground to a halt first. The glowing flapper came to rest on a panel flashing in a bright, obnoxious blue light.
[WORLD: PERSONA 3]
I stared at the glowing letters. My eye twitched.
Persona 3. Tatsuki had practically shoved that disc down my throat years ago. I remembered the premise: teenagers running around at midnight during a hidden 25th hour, shooting themselves in the head with fake guns to fight monsters. It was a miserable, high-mortality-rate world.
But then, a second thought surfaced. A silver lining.
Isako Toriumi.
The overworked, perpetually exhausted homeroom teacher who secretly spent her free time playing an old-school MMORPG. She was the absolute pinnacle of my mature-woman agenda. I had actually bought my own copy of the game, completely ignored the world-ending depression narrative, and dedicated my entire playthrough to maxing out her Social Link.
Tick... tick...
My attention shifted back to the left wheel as it gave a final, agonizingly slow click and locked into place.
[POWER: ARCHETYPES (METAPHOR: REFANTAZIO)]
I blinked. The magic was flashy. As far as cheats went, it was powerful.
Then my brain caught up with the actual mechanics of the game.
I remembered the cinematic. To activate an Archetype, the characters literally had to rip their own bloody hearts out of their chests.
A cold sweat that I didn't physically possess broke out on my glowing forehead. I had a remarkably low pain tolerance. A papercut could ruin my afternoon. I once stubbed my toe on a coffee table and had to sit on the floor for ten minutes questioning my life choices. There was absolutely no way I was performing impromptu, agonizing open-heart surgery on myself just to cast an ability others would get.
'No,' I decided immediately. 'I'm never using that. I am completely boycotting my own superpower.'
Before I could even formulate a way to ask the void for a reroll, the two wheels flared with a blinding, terrifyingly bright white light. It swept over me in an instant, swallowing the twilight whole.
Clack-clack.
Clack-clack.
The rhythmic, mechanical sound of metal rolling over tracks slowly pulled me out of the darkness. My senses returned one by one.
First, the vibration beneath me. I was sitting on something relatively soft, but definitely cheap. Second, the smell. Stale air conditioning, faint ozone, and the distinct scent of public transit.
I slowly opened my eyes, blinking away the heavy grogginess.
I was sitting by a window on a nearly empty train car. The lights overhead flickered slightly, casting a dull, yellowish glow over the empty seats around me. Outside the window, the world was a blur of dark cityscapes and passing streetlights.
I let out a quiet breath, slumping back against the seat. 'So... Not a dream?'
I looked down at myself. I was wearing a crisp, black high school uniform. A red armband was loosely stuffed into my pocket.
Then, I caught my reflection in the dark glass of the train window.
I froze.
Staring back at me was a face I recognized, but it definitely wasn't mine. I had wild, choppy blue hair that looked like it had never seen a comb, and two bright, perfectly matching blue eyes. I looked exactly like the protagonist from that Metaphor game, minus the mismatched eye colors.
I patted my pockets, searching for clues. In my breast pocket, my fingers brushed against a thick, folded envelope. I pulled it out. It was a transfer letter for Gekkoukan High School, attached to a small student ID card.
Name: Katsuya Akiya.
At least I kept my name. My eyes flicked down to the next line.
Year: 1st Year.
I wiped my thumb over the plastic card and read it again. First year.
I stared at the card, the exhaustion morphing directly into deep, simmering irritation. Isako Toriumi taught second years. If I was a freshman, I wouldn't be in her homeroom. My entire foolproof plan to romance the exhausted teacher of my dreams had just been severely handicapped by the cosmic administration.
The train hissed, jolting slightly as it pulled into Iwatodai Station. An automated voice crackled over the intercom, announcing the final stop.
I grabbed the dark duffel bag resting on the seat next to me—presumably holding all my worldly possessions—and slung the strap over my shoulder. I walked toward the doors just as they slid open with a sharp mechanical whir.
I stepped out onto the platform.
The station was completely deserted. It was late, pushing past midnight. As my sneakers hit the pavement, the air pressure suddenly shifted, plunging my eardrums into a heavy, suffocating silence. The faint buzzing of the station lights died instantly.
I glanced up. The sky, which had been a normal, smoggy city black just a minute ago, had turned a sickly, glowing greenish-yellow. The moon hanging above the skyline was massive and entirely the wrong color. I looked down. The puddle of water near the edge of the platform had turned a thick, viscous red.
And standing perfectly upright next to the ticket machines were three massive, black coffins.
I stopped walking. I stared at the coffins. I stared at the green sky. I stared at the blood puddle.
'Okay,' I thought, taking a slow, measured breath. 'Stay calm. Just pretend you don't see the giant funeral boxes.'
I desperately wanted to say something, to shout about the apocalyptic color palette, but a vivid memory of Tatsuki's gameplay stopped me. The original male protagonist of this game—Makoto Yuki, I think his name was—had literally stepped off the train during this exact sequence, looked at the bleeding world around him, put his headphones on, and walked away like it was a perfectly normal Tuesday.
I pulled my bulky, early-2000s flip phone out of my pocket, focusing entirely on the tiny, pixelated screen as I blindly navigated toward the exit.
I was so focused on acting nonchalant that I rounded the corner toward the ticket gates and walked straight into someone.
Thud.
"Oof!"
I stumbled back a step, dropping my duffel bag with a heavy thump. "Oh, my bad. I wasn't looking—"
"Ow! No, no, it's totally my fault!" a cheerful, brightly pitched voice interrupted.
I looked up.
Standing in front of me, rubbing her forehead with a sheepish grin, was a girl around my age. She had auburn hair pinned back with a few silver clips, striking red eyes, and a pair of bright red, clip-on earphones resting casually around her neck. She was wearing the exact same black school uniform I was.
Kotone Shiomi...the female protagonist's in persona 3 portable
"I was totally spaced out," she laughed, picking up a silver MP3 player that had dangled from her pocket. She dusted it off and looked up at me. Her bright red eyes widened slightly as she took in my face and my hair. "Oh! Wait a second. You have the uniform too! Are you heading to the dorms?"
"Yeah," I said, bending down to pick up my bag. I gave her a polite, reassuring smile, surprised by how naturally it came to me despite the bizarre situation. "Iwatodai Dorm. I'm Katsuya Akiya. First year."
"Kotone Shiomi!" she chirped, giving a small, energetic bow. "I'm a second year! Wait, you're a first year? Well, nice to meet you, Katsuya-kun! Since we're heading to the same place, we should walk together. It's kind of easy to get lost in the dark."
"I'd appreciate that, Senpai. Lead the way," I replied warmly.
We walked out of the station and onto the unnervingly quiet streets of Port Island. The reality of the situation was impossible to ignore, but we were both doing a fantastic job of it. Giant, upright coffins stood like morbid statues on the sidewalks, and the sky remained that awful, glowing green.
We walked side by side in relative silence. Kotone was happily humming a pop tune, her red earphones bouncing slightly against her collarbone with every step. She seemed completely, utterly unbothered.
'Is she seriously not going to say anything?' I wondered, casting a sideways glance at her. 'Is she pretending too? Or does the protagonist buff just make you completely oblivious to the fact that we are walking through an active horror movie?'
Whatever her reason, I kept my mouth shut.
"Anyway," Kotone said suddenly, pausing her humming to look over at me with a bright smile. "Your hair is really cool! Is it naturally blue, or did you dye it for the new school year?"
"Natural," I answered, deciding to just roll with the anime logic. "What about you? What brings you to Iwatodai?"
"Just transferring in! I moved around a lot when I was younger, but it looks like I'll be staying here for a while," she said, her smile never faltering. "I'm hoping to join a few clubs. Maybe meet some cool people. What about you, Katsuya-kun? Any clubs you're interested in?"
I opened my mouth, a sarcastic joke resting on the tip of my tongue about avoiding work and finding a quiet place to read manga. But the words died in my throat.
A strange, steadying warmth settled in my chest. I looked at Kotone's bright, hopeful face, and suddenly, the idea of being a cynical, self-serving loner felt completely wrong.
It seemed that when I inherited the appearance similar to Will, I hadn't just gotten a cool fantasy aesthetic. I had inherited a piece of his inherent goodness and modesty, too. The overwhelming urge to be genuinely helpful washed over my usual snark, blending with my own personality into something new. I still appreciated the mature beauty of women, sure, but right now, I just wanted to be a good person in this crazy world.
"I haven't really thought about specific clubs yet," I found myself saying, my voice much gentler than I anticipated. "To be honest, I just want to live quietly and help out wherever I can. If there's a club that focuses on volunteering or just supporting people, I might look into that. Otherwise, I'm happy just being a reliable friend to the people around me."
Kotone blinked, her steps slowing for a fraction of a second as she processed my answer. The bright, overly energetic smile softened into something incredibly warm and genuine.
"Wow," she said softly, her red eyes shining a little brighter in the dim, green light. "That's really sweet, Katsuya-kun. You seem like a really kind person."
I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling a strange but pleasant flush of embarrassment. The old me would have deflected with a joke. The new me just felt genuinely happy to make her smile.
"I just think the world has enough problems," I said honestly. "Might as well try to make things a little easier for the people around me, right?"
"Well, I'm really glad we bumped into each other," she said, stepping a little closer so our shoulders lightly brushed as we walked. "If you ever need help navigating the new school year, just let me know! Us transfers have to stick together."
"I'll hold you to that, Shiomi-senpai."
"It's right up ahead," Kotone said suddenly, pointing down the street.
Looming at the end of the block was a massive, brick building that looked more like an old European hotel than a high school student housing complex. The windows were dark, save for the faint, warm glow emanating from the glass front doors.
We stepped up the paved walkway toward the entrance.
"Well, we made it," I said, offering her an encouraging nod. "Ready to head inside?"