The phone screen was still lit.
Hypnosis.
Originally, it was a legitimate psychological technique—one of the tools used in therapy.
But after modern humans started "optimizing" their brains in all the worst ways, it had been thoroughly twisted into something… unspeakable.
The app interface was a loud, aggressive red-and-black palette. Flashy, bizarre, and unapologetic. There was only one icon on the screen:
A huge eye.
A huge, mocking eye.
Not the pink, heart-throbbing setup people usually imagined. No coy animations. No "romantic" UI.
Just that eye.
Outside the window, the cicadas screamed—shrill enough to scrape the nerves raw.
Raiden Mei maintained her elegant posture, but her hands had already clenched together so tightly her knuckles looked pale. Her gaze flicked between Bai Qian's refined face and the phone screen. The sorrow and heaviness she'd accumulated after learning the truth about her father were now blown apart by a sudden surge of humiliation.
A hypnosis… app?
Mei drew in a shaky breath. Her eyes lowered slightly; long lashes cast trembling shadows against her cheeks, as if she were clinging to the last shred of dignity she had left as the Raiden family's young lady.
"Um…"
Her voice was soft—every word like it had to be pried from between her lips.
"What you mean is… that kind of technique that usually only shows up in late-night TV, or… certain unhealthy books?"
By the time she reached the final words, her voice was almost inaudible. The tips of her ears flushed pink, the color spreading like watercolor down her neck.
"Pff—cough, cough, cough!"
Neither Talulah nor Melina reacted, but the ones who'd lived modern lives immediately understood what Mei was implying.
Toyokawa Saki choked on her barley tea and started coughing violently. She wiped her mouth in a mess, then glared hard at Bai Qian.
"Are you insane? You call this saving someone?" Saki finally forced the cough down, pointing at him with a trembling finger. "This is straight-up disaster looting! Even capitalists would cry watching this!"
Rin crossed her arms, leaning against the floor-to-ceiling window.
"I don't know much about modern apps," she said coolly, "but where I'm from, that kind of blunt implication gets you a visit from the police. Are you sure this isn't just… sexual harassment?"
Only Kiana's reaction was completely different.
She sprang off the sofa so violently the leather wheezed in pain. Her blue eyes went wide enough to swallow the sky. Her mouth fell open like she'd just witnessed the universe reveal its final secret.
"Boss!! You were hiding something like THIS?!"
Her voice shot up an octave from sheer excitement. She dashed to the coffee table, palms slamming onto it, practically trying to vault it to get to the phone.
"Does it actually work?! Like—like—waving a pocket watch in front of someone's eyes and then they'll do whatever you say?!"
"This can really save the world?!" Mei shouted in a mix of shame and fury, her face so red it looked ready to drip. "What are you even saying?!"
Bai Qian calmly looked at the room full of wildly different reactions. He didn't argue. If anything, he seemed to enjoy the misunderstanding.
Because it was hypnosis.
No matter how many heroic slogans you slapped on it—"saving the world," "reforming hearts," "making someone repent"—the reality was terrifying. Raise someone's alert to 100, steal their "treasure," and a person changes.
That was horrifying.
If Bai Qian were the sort of guy overflowing with repression and bad intentions, he could've turned into a fully-qualified "dark side protagonist" ages ago.
But as the saying goes…
Power itself isn't evil.
It depends on who's holding the knife.
"Even though it's basically the same ability as a hypnosis app," Bai Qian said, "I prefer calling it a change of heart."
"This is a change-of-heart tool. Otherworld Navigator."
He spoke evenly, like he was explaining a normal app feature.
"Put simply—when a person's intense desire and twisted cognition accumulate in the sea of collective unconsciousness… it forms a Palace."
"Raiden Mei, Cocolia is waiting for your negative emotions as fuel."
"Anxiety. Fear. Suppression."
"All of it piles up—until it explodes."
"When you become a Herrscher, the darkness inside you—your second self—will take over. If I'm right, that can also be seen as a person's Shadow."
"So we just… correct it."
He paused, eyes sweeping across Mei's dazed expression.
He didn't care whether it was "Stigma Persona" or "Herrscher Persona."
Either way—
Throw hands first.
"So what we're going to do," he concluded, "is use the Navigator to enter your inner world… and fix it."
"Wait—hold up!" Herta snatched the phone from Bai Qian and stared at it like it was a lab specimen. "So THIS is what you used to swap bodies with me?!"
"Yeah," Bai Qian said. "Why?"
"Why didn't you tell me earlier?!"
Herta looked like she might explode.
"If you'd said it was this thing, we could've just tried again! I wouldn't have had to run around like a headless chicken!"
"Uh…"
Bai Qian rubbed the back of his head and looked away from her furious face.
"Aren't you a genius?"
"Geniuses aren't omnipotent!" Herta hissed through clenched teeth. Bai Qian's male voice coming from his own body somehow sounded eerily sharp now. "Without information, how am I supposed to research anything?!"
"Are you saying geniuses have no shame?!" she kept going. "Did it not occur to you what could've been done with my body?! You said it yourself—you're a male high schooler!"
"Calm down, calm down."
Bai Qian raised both hands in surrender—while still gripping the phone like his life depended on it.
"Think positive. You got to experience high school life. Isn't that useful research material?"
"And I've been taking care of your body just fine. Also… I literally saved you once, didn't I?"
Herta exhaled sharply, then flipped her hand dismissively and sat back down, crossing one leg over the other.
"That's exactly why I'm only venting. I'm not seriously holding it against you."
She really did have emotions—but not enough to become irrational.
After spending time together, it was obvious Bai Qian was basically… a decent person.
And unlike Kiana, he didn't seem terminally "emotionally constipated," so Herta hadn't spiraled into the worst assumptions.
"Um…"
Mei weakly raised a hand, like a student asking permission to speak.
"I still don't fully understand what happened between you two, but… can we go back to my problem now?"
"Right. Back to business."
Bai Qian nodded briskly.
"Think of it like antivirus software."
He pointed at the app icon, then—completely shameless—winked at Herta.
"Except this time the virus is… you."
Mei froze.
She didn't understand most of the jargon: collective unconscious, Palaces, Shadows.
But she understood that metaphor.
"Antivirus…"
She looked at the red-and-black icon.
It looked dangerous. Ominous. Wrong.
And yet, the heart that had been floating in panic—always afraid she might "explode" someday—settled strangely back into her chest.
"So…" Mei asked softly, hands slowly releasing the wrinkled skirt fabric, "it's like… having a dream?"
"Exactly," Bai Qian snapped his fingers. "A very 刺激 dream. Facing the real you."
"And it's not just dreaming—your body goes in."
"Plus it's co-op multiplayer. My Persona awakened in a Palace too."
"I'm going!" Kiana shot her hand up instantly, eager like an overexcited elementary schooler.
"If it's Mei's dream, I have to be there! What if there are monsters? I'll protect Mei!"
"I agree we should all go," Rin analyzed with folded arms. "If it's a manifestation of the subconscious, it won't obey real-world physics. More people means more options."
"Then I—"
Saki opened her mouth and got cut off.
"You should think carefully," Bai Qian said, raising a finger and wagging it.
"I really don't want to see a JK mid–'Don't bully the poor youth' storyline skip straight to 'the dead are respected' before she even reaches 'don't bully the poor middle-aged' and 'don't bully the poor elderly.'"
Saki's shoulders slumped.
"I knew it. I'm the mascot slot."
"But even I want special powers!" she protested with her palms pressed together. "What if I awaken a Persona too? Just… take me with you?"
Melina, who'd been quiet in the corner, finally moved.
"Dream or reality," she said calmly, "if I am needed, I will go."
Talulah's voice followed, low and steady.
"Same."
Mei stared at the group—strangers she'd met less than two hours ago.
Some were loud. Some cold. Some honestly looked suspicious.
And yet right now, they were discussing how to enter her heart.
How to save her.
It didn't feel bad.
"Alright," Bai Qian said, raising the phone and tapping the air like he was activating a menu. "Get ready."
"We're entering Raiden Mei's Palace."
The Otherworld Navigator was already primed. The search was complete.
He wasn't even sure whether it would pull them into Kiana's Palace or Mei's—
but it didn't matter.
If it needed reforming, he'd reform it.
Herrscher of Thunder, you're about to have a very bad time.
As his last words fell—
the environment changed.
The Japanese living room dissolved like mist. Darkness swallowed the edges of vision.
A wave of dizziness hit, like stepping on air where a stair should've been—heart leaping into the throat—then the world flipped into a freefall.
When their focus returned…
the cozy living room was gone without a trace.
In its place:
A ruined kendo grounds under a canopy of dark purple thunderclouds.
The air reeked of scorched metal. The ground was broken asphalt, collapsed utility poles, severed cables. In the distance, the shattered outline of Chiba Academy leaned like a corpse.
"This is…?"
Herta didn't even look at the apocalypse scenery first. She raised her hand and stared hard at her palm.
Slender fingers. Pale skin.
Not the broad-knuckled hand of a male high schooler.
"Back," she breathed. "So my hypothesis was right."
She exhaled, then—almost reflexively—ran her fingertips along the purple skirt fabric, confirming the tactile feedback.
"Hmph."
Her mouth twitched upward, then she crushed the expression flat and adjusted her bangs like nothing happened.
Then she turned toward Bai Qian.
He stood on the highest broken slab of rubble, ordinary casual clothes snapping in the storm wind.
He didn't look back at Herta.
He didn't comfort Saki's pale face.
He didn't comment on Talulah already drawing her sword.
Bai Qian's gaze was locked forward.
At the end of the ruins—
beneath a torii gate built from crackling lightning—
a figure hovered.
It was Raiden Mei.
And yet—
it wasn't.
Armor of unknown design wrapped the body. A purple-black oni mask crowned the head. That presence radiated pressure like a storm given form.
Mei's second self.
The future Third Herrscher.
"How… are you here?"
The Herrscher of Thunder stared at them, genuinely thrown off.
Even Mei herself didn't know she existed.
She'd always been watching through Mei's senses—feeling every emotion, every insult, every whisper.
So when these people approached Mei speaking nonsense—
she'd assumed it was lies. Manipulation. Another kind of cruelty.
Entering someone's heart directly?
Impossible.
If it was hypnosis, she would resist—break it—stop Mei from being affected.
So why—
why were they really here?!
This was her home.
Illegal entry.
Robbers.
Heart-thieves.
"T-That… is me?"
The real Mei stood at the back of the group, face drained of color, both hands clamped over her mouth.
"That's also you?" Kiana's eyes sparkled as she looked back and forth between the two Meis. "Are you twins?! No—she feels super strong! Does that mean I can have TWO Meis?!"
"Now is not the time to clown," Bai Qian said, voice cutting clean through the thunder.
"That's her Shadow."
"Raiden Mei's second self."
He drew a breath—and his entire posture shifted.
This was his domain.
For the first time, no scouting. No trash mobs. No annoying puzzles.
He'd been dropped straight into the enemy's living room.
He didn't care about the details—front, middle, back—whatever.
What mattered was this:
A Palace.
His stage.
His home court.
Here, he didn't need the Evoker.
Here—
he was the leader of the Phantom Thieves.
"Now," Bai Qian said, throwing his arm wide, "I only need to declare one thing."
"Your distorted desire…"
"Will be taken—by us."
A presence bloomed behind him.
A towering figure—golden horns, three wings of black spreading like the night sky unfolding.
Samael.
The Herrscher of Thunder saw only the demon's warped grin—
and the rapier in its hand.
A bullet fired from the blade like a verdict.
…And that was when the storm truly began.
-------
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