[It's a scene that he's familiar enough with by now. Even though it's been nearly a year since then, it's still a feature in his dreams that weren't interrupted by the Velvet Room. It's the moment that changed the trajectory of his life, and that means it's burned into his mind's eye.

After all, how could he ever forget what it feels like for his soul to burn with the need to stop injustice?

Except... something seems wrong. He can hear whispers coming from people he's never heard before, people that weren't there, whispering things about wrath and patience or pride and humility. There's no time for him to figure it out, because he feels the sharpcuttingburning pain of ripping his mask off of his face.

It hurts. It hurts so much, he can't stand it, he almost forgot how much this hurts- but he also doesn't understand why he's remembering it beyond how everything looked. Akira's remembering it like he's living it all over again.

And just when he summons Arséne... it starts all over, from Kamoshida spitting on Ryuji. Again. Again. Again.

Right when he feels like he can't take anymore, one of those voices speaks a virtue or a vice for the last time - their voices go silent, the scene pops like a soap bubble, and Akira...]

[...Akira comes to right as he hits the water.

There's a moment of panic and disorientation, the leftover sensation of feeling weak and pained after summoning his Persona for the first time, but he can't afford to waste a moment being bogged down in those feelings when his head is under the water. He can see sand, and as he twists, the sparkle of the sunlight above him; he's not that far from the shore, nor is he far from the surface. He swims towards it and breaks out with a gasp.

The place he's in... he doesn't recognize. His hometown is near the ocean, but this looks nothing like it, might not even be Japan. He doesn't recognize the clothes he's woken up in either as he swims towards the shore, taking note of them as he pulls himself out of the water.

It's on the beach that he finally takes stock of the bracelet on his wrist, markedly different in its appearance from the rest of what he's wearing. A little bit of investigation shows it hasn't been damaged by his tussle with the sea, and Akira begins to piece together a little bit of what's going on.

As his fingers roam over stones and shells that he frees of sand and slips into his pockets, he wonders if the story it holds is the reason he feels a tug in his chest while reading about the mariner's friend.

Soon enough, Akira won't have time to figure it out anymore anymore. A young girl waves at him as she approaches.

"There you are, oh prince of hearts! How much longer do you intend to dawdle? You'll be late to your own wedding!"

Akira blinks at that. Then once more for good measure.]

I'm not- you have the wrong person. [The girl walks up to him, seemingly no longer listening to what he has to say. She grabs him by the wrist and immediately begins pulling. Akira's voice pitches up slightly.] You really have the wrong person- I'm already married. I'm a dad?

[It works every time (source: ?)... Except right now it's really not, because she's still insistently pulling him towards the city.]

[After Akira either gets married or (apparently???) continues to evade his own marriage, he happens upon a soap bubble that reminds him of the one from his memory. And when he touches it... he's suddenly freefalling through the air, no time to move as he crashes onto a casino table.

His dramatic entrance works out, though. Even if he feels like he's being sized up in an uncomfortable way and is probably about to be cheated out of everything he owns, he has a little more knowledge and even a fancy new treasure map (warranty may apply). Akira re-enters the Amplitheater...

...but he doesn't arrive as a human the way he did before. Instead, for all his troubles he gets a nifty black and red merman tail and some skeletal men trying to hunt him for dinner or worse.

It takes a while to get away, but he does. Unfortunately, it's out of the frying pan and into the fire, because the next thing he knows is the fog washing over the rock he's resting against and stealing something vitally important.]

Hey! [He's had repeated silly impulses to sing of all things since he winded up in here again, but even that is obliterated in his sudden urgency to chase the orb of light just out of his reach. It's important, Akira knows it is, it has something to do with-] If I don't have that... I can't do what I'm supposed to...

[This day? It's already been a lot in multiple ways. So when he finally retrieves his memory and escapes from the Amplitheater, winding up in front of one the cat-shaped nap peddlers doesn't phase him too much. Not only because of said-long day, but also because he's lived with a cat-shaped best friend for a year... and because winding up in front of a person offering naps of all things sounds like divine intervention.

In no time at all, Akira can be found sprawled out on one of nap café cushions. If you needed him for something? Good luck waking him up. If he happened to sprawl on you and you need to get up? Good luck with that, too.]

((want to do something else? feel free to throw it at me! if you'd like to plot something out, you're welcome to reach out to me either via Yamadori or through PMs to Akira's journal))