Chapter Four: The Velvet Bar Opens for Business

The attic of Cafe Poirot is, at the very least, an improvement over LeBlanc.

Karasawa, currently tidying up his belongings, felt quite relieved. It wasn't large, and it lacked windows, but it had a proper bed and a private bathroom—those two points alone were enough to satisfy him.

A bit of trivia: the bed the protagonist of P5 sleeps on is made of several plastic beverage crates topped with a wooden board.

The possessions of his predecessor had been packed into three cardboard boxes and shipped to the cafe ahead of him. Aside from a change of uniforms for Teitan High School, there were three or four sets of clothes for various seasons, shoes, loungewear, some stationery, and that was it.

...It was too strange. Was the predecessor a vacuum of a person with no personal hobbies or private effects? Not a single item that reflected a past life?

Then he thought about his brand-new smartphone.

Could it be that all of his original belongings had been confiscated?

Come to think of it, that was highly likely. With Bourbon already here, there was a good chance that every electronic device, book, and scrap of paper belonging to Akira Karasawa had been seized.

Thinking of this, Karasawa opened his commuting bag and took out the planner inside.

Sure enough, it was a blank, new notebook.

Karasawa sighed and tossed it back into the bag. Very good, perfect. Whoever did it, their professional skills were outstanding; they had cleaned everything out thoroughly.

Oh well, his long year of life was about to begin; there was no need to rush.

He was so hungry. He hadn't eaten lunch or dinner. There was a kitchen downstairs, but he couldn't just use the cafe's ingredients; he at least had to say something first, right?

He didn't have any on him...

Wait, no, he did!

Thinking of this, Karasawa sat bolt upright. Right, should he try out his fourth-dimensional pocket?

To be cautious in case Bourbon had installed surveillance equipment in the attic, Karasawa pretended to reach into his bag and fumble around.

He scrolled through the long list of items and selected the cheapest rice ball.

The next second, his right hand gripped the cold plastic packaging.

...It actually worked. That’s something.

Karasawa held the cold rice ball up to his eyes and squeezed it; it was firm and resilient, a solid rice ball indeed.

However, could food with no expiration date really be eaten? To be honest, he still had the super-spicy LeBlanc curry from the game’s timeline, which had been cellared for two years—the one he made in his first playthrough. Let alone eating it in reality, he had been hesitant to eat it even inside the game.

Rubbing his aching stomach, Karasawa opened the packaging, closed his eyes, and took a bite.

There was no strange taste; the rice grains were sweet and plump when bitten. It was actually quite delicious.

Karasawa quickly polished one off. He looked down at the size of his commuting bag, felt that hiding another rice ball was reasonable, and so he polished off a second one.

Very powerful. He would try to see if he could stuff other things in later. If he could move things in and out freely, he would be half-invincible. There was nothing left to fear!

The fourth-dimensional pocket is the best.

Once his nerves relaxed, fatigue washed over him. The mental pressure brought on by a day of information overload was hard to describe.

Digging out his loungewear, Karasawa slowly shuffled toward the bathroom.

***

He was exhausted; it was time to sleep.

***

Blue—boundless, endless blue spread out before his eyes.

The crisp sound of wind chimes and the noise of a door opening and closing followed in quick succession. As Karasawa opened his eyes, he found himself standing in front of a dimly lit bar counter.

The deep blue checkered floor tiles, the walls covered in a blue diamond pattern, and the bar counter covered in a Klein blue tablecloth, illuminated by a few spotlights—all of these signified one thing...

"Welcome to the Velvet Room, honored guest." The bartender standing behind the counter turned around, took a stemmed glass from the rack, and gestured for Karasawa to take a seat.

"A bar, huh..." Karasawa raised an eyebrow, his expression peculiar, but he chose a barstool and sat down. "My Velvet Room is actually a bar? I stopped drinking heavily a long time ago."

"An excellent irony, don't you think?" The blond-haired, gold-eyed bartender propped his arms up and leaned casually against the counter.

Karasawa sized him up, scanning from the blue jazz hat to the blue bowtie and vest.

He was quite handsome, his golden hair combed back into a sleek, slicked-back style. Though his face was that of a typical Asian, his features were sharp and lean. This made him look relatively mature; if one were to guess his age, most would say twenty-seven or twenty-eight. His demeanor and the retro tone of the bar background were a perfect match.

However...

"Regardless, it’s not appropriate to let a minor into a bar, is it?" Karasawa leaned his youthful face toward the other man.

"That’s not for me to decide, guest. The Velvet Room is a reflection of the guest's inner self. An ordinary minor wouldn't reflect a bar." The bartender chuckled. He adjusted the brim of his hat and gave a formal, slight bow to Karasawa. "My name is Leon, and I am your assistant."

Here it comes—the time to go through the motions and play the part.

Karasawa blinked rapidly. "So, are you going to recite those lines?"

"What lines? Something like, 'This place exists between dream and reality, mind and matter'? You already know all of this, so there's no need to waste time on that." Leon didn't satisfy Karasawa's chuunibyou desire for a script; instead, he shook his head slightly and pushed the stemmed glass toward him.

"Ah, so you really do know everything, including 'manga,' 'games,' 'transmigration,' and so on." Karasawa tapped the empty glass, his tone not particularly surprised.

From Leon's previous response, it was clear he understood the subtext of Karasawa's words, which meant he knew of Karasawa's true life experiences.

Leon nodded and admitted it quite simply: "That is correct. Anything you know, I know."

Karasawa exhaled in relief, accepting this premise easily; he even felt his luck was quite good.

One had to know that the foundational settings of the Persona game series were derived from Jungian psychology, carrying a heavy, mystical, cult-like flavor. Most characters who knew the truth of the world were "Keepers of Secrets," specializing in speaking in riddles.

He chose a more relaxed posture, resting his head in his propped-up palm, and let out a long breath. "Whew—that's great. It would be torture to have to listen to a riddle-monger while dreaming. Since you understand everything, let's be frank. There is no Igor here, is there? Is it because this world is stitched together in such a strange way?"

Igor, the master of the Velvet Room who appeared in several titles, was a long-nosed old man with white hair. According to the lore, he was a puppet created by the manifestation of human rationality, playing the role of a "wise man guiding the protagonist," connecting the intermissions with cryptic riddles.

In P5, his character was a key plot element. The absence of this role allowed one to conclude that the world Karasawa was currently in had completely diverged from the plot of P5.

Leon spread his hands with an innocent expression: "I'm not entirely sure, perhaps that's the reason? But it doesn't matter; anyway, we are destined to be 'off-the-books personnel' now."

When the words "off-the-books personnel" were uttered, Karasawa's face turned black.

"There's no need to mock me like that."

"My apologies, it wasn't intentional." Leon's smile didn't look "unintentional" at all. He just shrugged again, looking indifferent. "Don't take it to heart, it's all a matter of a 'past life' now."

"Don't make it sound like I've been transmigrated for a long time. Yesterday I was still at home being a happy couch potato, and then I closed my eyes and opened them, and it became a 'past life'." Speaking of this, Karasawa thought of the game he hadn't finished and the manga and novels he hadn't caught up on, and couldn't help but clutch his chest in heartbreak. "I haven't even played Zelda 2 yet!"

He had originally been leading a life free of worries, a salted fish that could lounge until retirement. In the blink of an eye, he had been fast-forwarded to graduation from life. Who could have expected that?

***

"But you're actually quite happy, aren't you?" Leon chose not to play along with Karasawa's fake wailing, choosing instead to pierce through his true thoughts.

Karasawa's face stiffened. He coughed awkwardly twice, lowered his hand, and resumed his lazy posture. "...You can actually know that much?"

Indeed. A sudden transmigration is a disaster for many who live stable lives and don't want to seek excitement, but for Karasawa...

An unchanging, stagnant pool of water, a future where one could see the grave at a glance. His "going with the flow" was just resigning himself to fate; it wasn't that he liked the mundane.

Thinking this, Karasawa subconsciously stroked his now intact, smooth-curved knees.

"I am your assistant, your mirror, and even more so, your companion and accomplice." Leon tipped his hat in tribute and then gestured to the empty glass in front of Karasawa. "It is now the bar's business hours. Would you like a drink?"

"So, I already said I don't drink heavily anymore..."

"I understand, so would you like one?"

"Ahem, yes."

Not surprised by Karasawa's "true fragrance" behavior, Leon took out a bottle of liquor.

The reddish-amber liquid poured into Karasawa's glass. He leaned in to smell the mellow grain fragrance of the liquor and raised an eyebrow again: "Is this Bourbon whiskey? Are you hinting at something?"

"It's not a hint." Leon turned sideways, revealing the liquor cabinet behind the bar counter. It was very empty now, with only a few bottles of Bourbon whiskey of different brands, tall and short, placed on the first shelf. "It's just that this is all we have for now."

"Because I ran into 'Bourbon'? Such a simple and crude reason?" Karasawa clicked his tongue, but still picked up the glass and took a sip.

The smooth, sweet scent and the long-lost alcohol made him narrow his eyes, his mouth curling upward uncontrollably.

"This is terrible. Quitting drinking isn't easy, and now if my alcohol craving acts up, I can't even buy beer. I'm still a minor, after all." Karasawa grumbled while happily taking another sip.

"Don't worry, it won't affect your reality. Just consider it a reward-style Easter egg, okay?"

"A reward? To encourage me to contact members of the Black Organization so I can drink more alcohol?" Karasawa gave a disapproving "tsk." "Isn't that looking down on me a bit?"

"It's just an Easter egg, consider it collecting achievements." Leon naturally knew how to smooth things over for Karasawa, and one sentence calmed him down.

As a completionist gamer who went for all trophies and platinum achievements, Karasawa immediately felt respected. He stopped caring about the strange functions of the room and began to ask the core question: "Fine, so what is my mission? Do I also have to fight in the Cognitive World and stop the Cognitive World and the Material World from merging?"

Karasawa understood P5, and he understood Conan. But stitching them together? He was a bit lost.

The worldview of P5 was supernatural, though it was a supernatural of a psychological nature—it equated to manifesting human cognition into an inner world. Those who possessed the ability to influence the Cognitive World could naturally, in turn, influence the real world. It had strong symbolic significance, but it was still supernatural.

The main plot of P5, at the level of worldview, was actually about exploring the relationship between cognition and reality, and then making a choice at the end, relying on fearlessly facing the truth to save the world.

As for Conan, although the coffin lid of Newton had been completely blown off here—kicking satellites and being a One-Punch Man—the manga still stubbornly pretended to be materialist, not engaging in strange, supernatural occurrences. It was a formal-style detective manga.

Its main plot was spy thrillers and police-versus-thieves stories. The main parts were the battles of wits between the red and black sides—"I anticipate, I anticipate your anticipation"—plus the "Black Organization Mystery Solving Three-Choice Competition," pushing the protagonist step by step to understand the Black Organization and defeat it.

What would happen when these two combined?

It was very strange.

Leon shook his head, denying Karasawa's thoughts, and gave the first answer of the night that left him shocked.

"That won't be necessary. In this world, they have already merged together."