Chapter Text
Blue.
A deep blue, permeating everything in the room, underscored by a piano playing a haunting tune. That’s all that I could make out as the room shifted around me like it was deciding what to be. A room covered in blue velvet. An ironworks factory. An elevator traveling upwards, never ceasing. A limousine traveling through a thick fog. A prison cell.
Eventually, the room settled down, shifting between the last three and leaving just me and the figure in front of me as the only constants.
The figure was a man, or almost a man, with a long nose and a suit. His head was bald save for the tufts of grey hair that were on the back of his head and as I slowly came to he studied me with almost-shock in his bloodshot eyes, his thick eyebrows rising high on his face.
“How curious,” he said to himself, his voice high pitched, before he saw me looking at him and smiled, steepling his hands in front of him. “Welcome… to the Velvet Room.”
I didn’t say anything, as consumed as I was with confusion, and he took that as a cue to keep going.
“My name is Igor,” he said, “and I am delighted to make your acquaintance.” The smile on his face only grew as he raised his hands high, gesturing to the room around us. “This place exists between dream and reality, between mind and matter…”
My voice was hoarse as I tried to speak. “I know,” I managed to croak out, as I sat up further in my chair.
Igor nodded slowly. “So you do,” he said. “And yet, you have never been a guest here before.”
It wasn’t phrased as a question but I felt as if I should nod anyways.
As I waited for his next response, I took stock of myself. Normally I was quicker than this, but I felt slow and sluggish—like my brain was only half-working—and I wondered if it was the dream like nature of the room. Or perhaps it was because of whatever I was doing before this? Where was I, anyways? The last thing I remembered…
“How very curious,” Igor admitted, cutting my thoughts off, and I refocused on him instead. “As you know, this is a room that only those who are bound by a contract should be able to enter.”
I shrugged. “But if the rules are being thrown out already…”
Igor chuckled. “Then that may very well not apply, indeed,” he agreed. “The nature of things, tossed out, just as the next game begins. How interesting.”
I nodded, trying to wrap my head around… all of this. I guess Persona was real. That was fine. I wasn’t a Japanese transfer student to anywhere new– I was still getting by just fine as a normal high school senior in the American midwest– but maybe that meant that my wacky journey into the collective unconscious was only beginning?
“What does this mean?” I asked. “Am I a wild card? Will I be awakening my own Persona?”
Igor shook his head. “I cannot say,” he said.
With a flourish of his hands, a deck of tarot cards appeared on the desk or table in front of him. He dealt out an array of cards and waved his hand over them, each flipping over, before frowning.
“Your destiny appears entwined with that of another guest,” he said, “but the shape of your journey has yet to appear before this world.”
I frowned at the realization of what that meant. Rarely did you want to hear that your future wasn’t able to be read by beings from outside of the normal flow of time and space, after all.
“There is but one thing I can tell you,” Igor said, and he picked up the central card and showed it to me. It was a red card and grey card with the figure of a bird-headed man on it, yellow eyes peering at me, and I read the label on it with a shaky voice. “What you represent.”
“The Aeon,” I said.
Igor nodded, setting the card back down, and I shook my head to refocus myself. Wait, there was something more important here! “Wait, my journey has yet to appear in this world?” I asked, stressing the term.
Igor nodded, steepling his hands. “You were adrift in the sea of souls before finding your way here,” he told me. “When you leave this room, I cannot say where—or even when—you will wake up, save that it will be the location at which you are needed the most.”
I blinked. I was getting thrown into the world of Persona at some point in the games. Sure. That was so vague as to almost be unhelpful, but I didn’t condemn Igor over it—there were some rules that even he had to follow as steward of the Velvet Room.
“What, so I’m getting isekaied?” I asked.
Igor chuckled. “That is one word for it, I suppose,” he said. “But I must warn you: you are not quite real, nor are you a product entirely of the metaverse. You are between mind and matter, and as you interact with the people on either side, you will find yourself drawn to one or the other.”
I frowned. “That sounds bad.”
Igor chuckled again. “It is not an untenable situation,” he told me. “I suspect that it will be something that you will find some use for.”
I nodded.
We sat there in silence for a few moments, the aria of the Velvet Room echoing around us, and I studied Igor. Did he know what he was going to go through, in the future? What Yaldabaoth would put him through? How the God of Control will cheat?
The room shifted forms a few more times as I watched him, remaining blue—always blue—until Igor finally spoke once more.
“There is great trouble ahead, this coming year,” he said, more serious than before. “The game is about to begin.”
I nodded and smiled. “I know,” I said. There was always a game afoot, just like there were always Persona users to serve on the side of humanity. This time wouldn’t be any different. “But you should know, just in case-”
Igor held up a hand to cut me off. “It is not my place to interfere,” he said. “Even if the enemy stacks the game against humanity, I have faith that there will always be opposition. For every authority that rises up, a rebel will act in return.”
I shut my mouth. If he wanted to play it like that… then I would trust Igor. And that was as good as confirmation that I was falling into Persona 5, wasn’t it?
But I couldn’t warn him, even if I wanted to. We were out of time.
Around me, at the edges of my vision, the room started to fade to white, and I tried desperately to hold onto my memories of everything as it ran through my fingers. The last thing I saw was Igor’s smile, his bloodshot eyes filled with what looked like genuine mirth.
“Until next time…” he called through the haze.
And then I woke up.