Chapter Text
In hindsight, Ren should have realized something was up from day 1, when his roommate never came back.
The dorm they were living in didn’t have a strict curfew, and it was even more lax in the summer when most of the students had gone home for the break. But it was still an elementary school dorm for the best school system in Iwatodai, so the staff were pretty good about making sure that everyone was back by evening. Yet nobody seemed to bat an eye when Ken Amada never showed up.
Morgana had spent all night hiding in the shadows under Ren’s bed, a task made easier by the fact that he was mostly black, and also currently small enough to be carried in one hand. When Ren woke up the next morning, it was to the sight of a grumpy kitten sitting beside his pillow.
Seeing Ren’s eyes were open, Morgana puffed up and hissed, “You said he’d be back for sure! But he never came, so I’ve been stuck in the dust under your bed for nothing!”
Ren blinked blearily, his mind taking a few moments to remember who Morgana was talking about. And also why Morgana was tiny and had an even more boyishly high-pitched voice than usual. Once his brain had caught up to what happened over the past day, he sat up and said, “Wait, Ken never came back?” His own voice was also a lot higher than he was used to. It was going to be weird being stuck as a kid for the next several years.
Lashing his stumpy tail, Morgana cried, “No! Nobody came in all night! I could have been sleeping up on the bed with you like usual!”
As Morgana continued to complain, Ren looked across the room at the other bed. It really was empty, with no signs of anything having been moved. Cutting off Morgana’s tirade, Ren said, “Weird. Maybe something happened to him?” Glancing at the clock, he said, "It’s about time for breakfast. I can ask the dorm mother if she’s heard anything.”
Morgana perked up at the mention of food, his complaints immediately forgotten as he said, “Oh, I wonder what we’re having!”
Of course, cats were not allowed in the dorm, so they had to hide Morgana. Ren didn’t think he could easily slip Morgana food if he was hiding in Ren’s backpack, so he ended up wearing a hoodie instead and letting Morgana ride in the front pocket. The middle of summer was not really hoodie weather, but the dorm was air conditioned, so he could get away with it.
As he collected his breakfast in the dorm cafeteria, Ren asked, “Did something happen to Ken-kun? He never came back last night.”
The dorm mother gave him an odd look as she answered, “Did you forget? He was moved to another dorm for the summer.”
Ren had forgotten. He’d remembered that Ken moved dorms mid-year, but not that most of his stuff stayed in this dorm for a while. But this brought a bigger question, so he asked, “Why?”
Shrugging, the dorm mother said, “We weren’t told, just that he’d be living in a different dorm for a while.”
It seemed she was as clueless as he was, so Ren just went to go sit down. As he ate, he used the sleight of hand he’d learned as a Phantom Thief to slip bites of food to Morgana. A child’s portion of food wasn’t that big, but fortunately Morgana ate a lot less than he did when he was full grown, so there was enough for both of them.
After breakfast, Ren had the day to himself. Once he went back to his room, he told Morgana, “Guess I won’t have a roommate for the rest of the year, after all. That’ll make it easier to hide you, but you have to remember to keep quiet.”
Morgana popped his head out of Ren’s pocket to shoot him an offended look, saying, “Who do you take me for? I’m a Phantom Thief! They’ll never even know I’m here!”
So Ren put Ken out of his mind and went to figure out how to spend the summer. Since the two of them were in different classes, he might never even see Ken again.
It took Ren a few days to get used to sleeping in a proper bed again, but once he did, he found he slept a lot better. He rarely woke up in the middle of the night any more. At least, until about three weeks after he’d returned to the past, when Ren woke up one night and realized something was strange.
When Ren opened his eyes to see it was still dark out, he thought the vaguely uncomfortable feeling meant he had to use the bathroom or something. But as he stared out across the room, he thought something seemed unusual. For a moment he just lay here, blinking the sleep out of his eyes as he tried to place what was different. But once he realized, it seemed obvious: everything looked green.
He sharply sat up, making Morgana slip from where he’d been curled up on Ren’s chest and tumble into his lap. Over the kitten’s mewed protests, Ren said, “Sorry. But look, something weird’s going on.”
Morgana quieted down to take a look at their surroundings. A moment later his eyes grew wide and he hissed, “It feels like the Metaverse!”
So that’s what that odd feeling was. Now that Morgana had pointed it out, Ren could recognise it; the air felt strangely heavy, so thick that it pressed down on him and made it harder to breathe. He’d felt it a lot last year. (Or would that be 7 years from now? Time travel was confusing.) The feeling had been worst the first time he went into Kamoshida’s Palace, then lessened once he’d Awakened his Persona and got his mask, but it had still been noticeable every time he went into a Palace or Mementos.
“Did we fall into a Palace somehow?” Ren wondered. “I don’t even have a phone, so I couldn’t have accidentally triggered the app.” He looked down at Morgana and asked, “Did you bring us in? You dragged Haru in with you by accident once, right?”
“No! I didn’t do this!” Morgana protested. Then added uncertainly, “...I think.”
Ren gave him a flat stare. Morgana hurried to defend himself by saying, “I mean, how could I? I didn’t know the Metaverse even exists right now, much less that there’s a Palace here. And I’ve never entered the Metaverse when I wasn’t trying to! So it couldn’t have been me.”
After keeping up the skeptical look for a moment, Ren sighed and said, “Well if it wasn’t you, what was it?” He looked around, trying to figure out what kind of place this even was. He observed, “My dorm room looks the same. And I don’t have my mask or outfit.”
Puffing up proudly, the way he did whenever he was about to share some tidbit he knew about the Metaverse, Morgana declared, “The ruler probably just doesn’t think of us as a threat yet!”
But Ren glanced down at him and asked, “How does that explain why you still look the same as in the real world?”
Morgana looked at his own little paws and muttered, “Oh yeah…” He opened his mouth, clearly trying to come up with an explanation, but grunted when nothing came to mind.
Well, that was no help. But they still needed to figure out how they got in here, or at least out to get out. So Ren asked, “Should we try exploring a little?”
But Morgana vehemently shook his head and insisted, “We don’t have any weapons! What if there are Shadows? Can you summon a Persona?”
Ren was sure he could, and he was about to say so. But as he reached for his mask out of habit, he stopped. Right, he had no mask. And now that he was paying attention, he couldn’t feel any of his Personas, not even Arsene. So he had to admit, “I don’t think so…” Still, they weren’t going to get out of this by just sitting here, so he said, “You can sense Shadows, right? So you just tell me where they are so we can avoid them.” Despite Morgana’s protests, Ren started to get out of bed.
Suddenly the world turned back to normal. The sickly green light streaming into the room turned back into the orange glow of the nearby streetlamp, and the pressure in the air vanished. Small sounds that Ren hadn’t realized were absent, like the chirping of insects and the hum of the HVAC system, started up again.
Ren froze, then looked down at Morgana. The kitten looked just as surprised as he felt. Just to be sure, Ren asked, “Any idea what happened?”
Morgana shook his head. “I didn’t do anything. And I don’t think you starting to stand up would have changed anything.”
The two of them just sat there, wondering what was going on. Then Morgana sighed, scratched his chin with one hind foot, and said, “There’s no use thinking about it now, when we don’t have any more information. Let’s just go back to bed.” And then he refused to listen to Ren when he said he wasn’t tired.
Ren laid back down, but sleep didn’t come easy for the rest of the night. He couldn’t help wondering what had caused all that, and what he could do if it happened again.
In the morning, nobody seemed to have noticed anything strange had happened. Ren spent the day peeking at the news in papers and on TV, or listening in on random conversations in the mall. Noone ever mentioned the sky turning a different color, the power going out, or even weird dreams. It seemed like somehow, only Ren and Morgana had experienced whatever it was.
That night, just like every night, Morgana was as strict about bedtimes as ever. And actually, now that Ren was younger, Morgana made him go to bed even earlier than before. But Ren was still uneasy, and he spent so long tossing and turning that Morgana gave up trying to sleep beside him and ended up moving to the foot of the bed. Yet eventually Ren managed to fall asleep.
He woke up to find a perfectly normal morning. Morgana hadn’t noticed anything overnight, either. They could only hope that whatever had happened, it was a one-time thing that wouldn’t be repeated.