"Thank you for riding the Tokyo Metro. This train is bound for Shibuya Station. This train is down for, Shibuya..."
The gentle yet flat female voice woke Tang Ze Zhao from his sleep.
The moment he groggily opened his eyes, Tang Ze Zhao instinctively tightened the muscles in his back, instantly snapping awake in alarm.
This was not his bedroom. Just moments ago, he had been lying in his warm bed.
Realizing this, he immediately eased his breathing and naturally raised his head, sweeping his gaze around.
The train was packed shoulder to shoulder with passengers. Advertisements and slogans covered the interior walls, while the carriage swayed faintly as it ran, its wheels rhythmically clattering against the tracks. Bright sunlight streamed through the large windows and fell across him.
A train. This was a moving Japanese train, and he...
Tang Ze Zhao lowered his head and discreetly examined himself.
He wore a crisp light-blue jacket, a white shirt, and a dark-green tie. It looked like the uniform of some school, and he currently had both arms wrapped around a black commuter bag.
He unzipped the bag and took a glance inside. An umbrella, glasses case, planner, tissues, pencil case, wallet—standard student supplies.
There was also a black folder in an inner pocket. Tang Ze Zhao glanced sidelong at the passengers around him, who were silently looking down at their phones, and decided not to pull it out and inspect it directly. Instead, he merely pried it open and thumbed through the papers inside.
When he barely made out the document heading, Tang Ze Zhao jolted as though electrocuted.
"Notice of Expulsion" and "Protection Supervision Disposition."
Having just saved a third-playthrough file that he had only half finished before going to sleep, he immediately understood.
He had probably, possibly, transmigrated into the protagonist of Persona 5.
Wasn't this the opening cutscene of P5?!
Tang Ze Zhao's feelings were extremely complicated.
He was a little excited, but also a little confused. It seemed like he ought to be happy, considering he knew the plot by heart. But he did not know what there was to celebrate, since his future was still kind of miserable.
But if this was P5, shouldn't his school uniform have been black? What was this outfit...?
Tang Ze Zhao steadied himself and took out his wallet, intending to look for more proof of his identity.
There were several ten-thousand-yen bills inside, and when he unfolded it, he saw a student ID tucked into the transparent side pocket.
The instant he saw the card clearly, Tang Ze Zhao's mind buzzed and his pupils trembled.
Teitan High School Student ID Year and Class: Year 2, Class B Name: Tang Ze Zhao (Karasawa Akira)
On the left was a two-inch ID photo. A brown-haired, blue-eyed boy stared forward expressionlessly.
It was an exceptionally handsome face, with excellent features. Yet the upturned corners of his round, bright catlike eyes and the raised shape of his brows gave the young face a sharp, aggressive edge.
It was strange. Very strange. He looked like a mashup of Tang Ze Zhao's own face and the P5 protagonist's. Put simply, if they had a child, that child would probably look like this.
Tang Ze Zhao silently met the boy's gaze in the photo.
A radiating pain shot through the back of his head, and fragmented memories flashed before his eyes.
An empty alley in the dead of night, blinding headlights, a young woman crying for help, and a red-faced middle-aged man reeking of alcohol crashing headfirst into a roadside flowerbed amid an argument and shoving match.
Then came the alternating red-and-blue police lights, the piercingly cold lights of an interrogation room like surgical lamps, and the thunderous echo of a gavel striking in a silent courtroom...
That was it. This really was the P5 setup. He had become a juvenile offender who had acted bravely to save someone but was falsely accused, convicted of aggravated assault. He had now arrived in Tokyo alone to complete one year of protection supervision—essentially a probationary period in which he would continue living a normal life under supervision. His behavior during that time would determine whether he had to serve time in juvenile detention.
But what was with Teitan High School?!
If he had transmigrated into Conan's world, then by their standards, how many years would this protection supervision last?!
Tragic. Utterly tragic.
Only his excellent control over his expression kept Tang Ze Zhao from making an incredibly twisted face. He merely pressed his lips together, took out the phone in his bag, and opened the front camera to look at his current face.
Perhaps the catlike eyes made him look younger. The brown-haired boy on the screen looked a little younger than his actual age, around fifteen or sixteen. His fluffy brown hair fell to his cheeks, and his eyes were a pale, rich blue, making his pupils seem to glow with dazzling brightness.
Still reeling from the mental blow he had just suffered, he was frowning in distress. His tightly pursed lips puffed out his cheeks.
Fine. I'm pretty good-looking. Just a little too cute.
Tang Ze Zhao, whose actual age was now a full round older, sighed and wearily turned off the camera.
What else could he do? He had already transmigrated here. Was he supposed to jump off the train and kill himself now? People had to keep living.
When he returned to the home screen, he unsurprisingly saw the red-and-black Otherworld Navigator APP icon right in the center. A red eye had been hollowed out of a graffiti-like background of red and black lines, as though it were watching Tang Ze Zhao from beyond the screen.
He tapped it once. Nothing happened.
He tapped it again.
After jabbing it six or seven times in a row, Tang Ze Zhao gave up and turned off the screen.
Garbage software. He could not open it, and he could not delete it. He was tired. Let the world burn.
He also did not know whether he had inherited his own third-playthrough save file. Even if his stats did not carry over, could the Persona Compendium he had spent so long grinding skills for come with him? Please. The settings had already been stitched together like this; making him spend the rest of his life tediously fusing Personas in the Velvet Room would be a little inhumane, would it not?
At the very instant of his silent complaint, everything around him suddenly fell silent.
A black-clad Phantom Thief turned and slapped a hand against the screen, and the extremely familiar P5 system interface unfolded before his eyes.
Tang Ze Zhao stared blankly at the interface and instinctively reached out to tap the item option.
"Whoa!" Tang Ze Zhao cried out in delight when he saw the packed inventory.
P5's New Game Plus saves did not carry over character levels and such, but they retained all the equipment and money in the inventory, as well as resources such as records of Personas fused in previous playthroughs.
Wonderful. He was a fully stocked third-playthrough Joker! He could survive this! He was rich now, too!
This was his third-playthrough save file, where he had grinded his money to the cap!
Although many options were still grayed out, Tang Ze Zhao felt much more at ease.
His cheat had arrived!
Once he exited the interface, the sounds around him returned. Seeing that none of the passengers around him had even glanced at him twice, Tang Ze Zhao finally relaxed. He leaned back in his seat and let out a breath.
Only then did he have the leisure to carefully inspect the phone in his hand.
Whether it was a newly replaced phone or an effect of his transmigration, there was almost nothing on it. The photo album was empty, and the only contacts were Father and Mother. He did not know whether he truly had no classmates or friends, or whether his status as a juvenile offender had almost completely severed his previous social connections.
There was only one email in his inbox, from his father. In an indifferent, formulaic tone, the man described the lodging he had found for him in Tokyo. It was a shop owned by an old classmate he was on good terms with, with a loft suitable for living in. The old classmate currently lived overseas, while the shop was managed by family members and staff. The loft was completely vacant and could be lent to him for a year. It was also very close to his new school.
As for his son, who was about to live alone in Tokyo, the email contained only two cold sentences: "During the supervision period, contact the review officer regularly and remember to follow the rules," and, "Do not cause trouble for others this year. Stay out of trouble. If anything happens, you will not get a second chance."
"What the..." Tang Ze Zhao read through the email line by line, and the farther he read, the more his fists clenched. "Could an actual father really write something like this?"
It was not merely distant. The tone was practically hostile, as though he really were some irredeemable criminal.
Tang Ze Zhao took several deep breaths, suppressing the anger rising in him, and continued scrolling. At last, near the end of the email, he saw the address of his destination.
39, 5-Chome, Beika Town, Tokyo. Polo Cafe.
Tang Ze Zhao stared at the address in silence.
He should have known. Sleeping in a cafe loft was probably some unchangeable fixed setting.
What a coincidence. There was a cafe right below the Mori Detective Agency!
If he remembered correctly, once the plot reached the Bourbon arc, Tooru Amuro would come work at the cafe.
Which meant—
He was about to become Ran Mouri and Shinichi Kudo's classmate, Ran Mouri's neighbor, and Tooru Amuro's... coworker?
How could this happen.jpg
Given the usual logic of Conan's plot, he had to be either a suspect, a victim, or the murderer. Otherwise, it would be rude.
Thinking it over carefully, his current setup made him especially suited to being the murderer.
Wrongfully convicted, cast out to live alone like trash, social connections severed—someone filled with grievance and resentment like this was practically a chosen murderer, born to seek revenge against society.
As for being the victim, that depended on whether those scum who framed him would regard the original owner's case as leverage or a stain. Counting roughly, there was the politician involved, the female employee the original owner had saved, the police officers and prosecutors who participated in the case. From top to bottom, not one link in that chain was clean.
Being a suspect would be even easier. With his record, if the First Investigation Division did not put him into the three-suspect lineup four or five times, it would be disrespecting the sheer weight of an aggravated-assault juvenile offender.
Just as Tang Ze Zhao's thoughts began to wander, the announcement that Shibuya Station was the next stop pulled his attention back.
Shibuya was the terminal station for this train. It was time for him to get off and transfer to Beika Town.
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