"Thank you for riding the Tokyo Metro. This train is down for... Shibuya Station."
The soft and flat female voice woke Kazawa from his sleep.
As he opened his eyes in a daze, Kazawa instinctively tensed the muscles in his back, instantly becoming alert.
This wasn't his bedroom. Just a moment ago, he had clearly been lying in his warm bed.
Realizing this, he immediately eased his breathing and lifted his head at a natural pace, glancing left and right.
A train packed with people shoulder to shoulder. An interior lined with ads and slogans. The slight shaking of a moving train and the regular noise of it hitting the tracks. Bright sunlight streamed in through the large windows, falling onto him.
A train. This was a running Japanese train. And he...
Kazawa lowered his head and secretly examined himself.
A light blue stiff jacket, a white dress shirt, a dark green tie — it looked like a school uniform. And at the moment, he was holding a black commuter bag in his arms.
He unzipped the bag and took a quick look — umbrella, glasses case, planner, tissues, pencil case, wallet — very standard student items.
There was also a black folder in the inner pocket. Kazawa glanced sideways at the other silent passengers glued to their phones, and didn't pull it out directly. He just used his fingertips to shift the papers inside.
Barely making out the file title, a jolt ran through Kazawa like electricity.
"Notice of Expulsion" and "Probation Supervision Report."
He had just saved halfway through his third playthrough before going to sleep — and he immediately understood.
He should be — possibly — inside the body of the protagonist from Persona 5.
Wasn't this the opening cutscene of P5?!
Kazawa had a very complicated feeling.
A bit excited, a bit confused. He felt like he should be happy — after all, he had the entire plot memorized. But he didn't know what to be happy about, since his future was kinda bleak.
But... if this was P5, shouldn't the school uniform be black? What was this outfit...?
Kazawa composed himself and pulled out the wallet, wanting to find more proof of his identity.
There were several ten-thousand-yen bills inside. When opened, he saw a student ID card tucked into the transparent pocket.
The moment he saw the card clearly, Kazawa's mind went buzz — his pupils shook.
Teitan High School Student ID
Grade/Class: 2nd Year, Class B
Name: Akira Kazawa (Kazawa Akira)
On the left was a two-inch ID photo. A boy with light brown hair and blue eyes stared straight ahead, expressionless.
A very handsome face — excellent features — but the upward slant of his cat-like round eyes and his raised brows gave the young face a sharp and aggressive aura.
Weird — just very weird. Like his own face had been mixed with the P5 protagonist's. Simply put, if they had a kid together, this would be the result.
Kazawa stared quietly at the boy in the photo.
As a tingling pain spread from the back of his head, fragmented memories flashed rapidly before his eyes.
A dark alley at night. Blinding headlights. A young woman calling for help. A middle-aged man reeking of alcohol, his face red, shoving and arguing — then crashing head-first into a flowerbed at the roadside.
Then came the flashing red-and-blue police lights, the interrogation room's cold, surgical-like lights, and the echoing thud of the gavel in a silent courtroom...
No doubt about it. This was the P5 setup. He had now become the boy who was wrongly accused of assault while trying to help someone. Declared guilty of causing severe injury, now sent alone to Tokyo to serve a one-year probation — essentially a supervised reintegration period, where his behavior would determine if he'd be sent to juvenile detention.
But what the hell was Teitan High School about?!
If he was thrown into the world of Conan — and considering how long a single year lasts in that universe — how many years would this "one-year probation" actually last?!
Tragic. Absolutely tragic.
Thanks to his excellent facial control skills, Kazawa didn't let his expression twist. He simply tightened his lips, took out the phone from his bag, and opened the front-facing camera to check his current face.
Maybe it was because of the youthful cat eyes, but the brown-haired boy in the camera looked even younger than his age — about fifteen or sixteen. His light brown hair was fluffy and fell to his cheeks. His eyes were a pale and vivid blue, making his pupils look like they were glowing — dazzlingly bright.
Having just been hit by this mental blow, he was now frowning in distress. His pursed lips made his cheeks puff up slightly.
Alright then. I'm good-looking. Maybe... a bit too cute.
The real Kazawa, who was older by a whole cycle (12 years), sighed and turned off the camera with a heavy heart.
What could he do? He was already here — was he supposed to jump off the train now? People had to live, right?
Backing out to the home screen, sure enough, right in the center was the red-and-black icon for the Metaverse Navigator app. On a graffiti-styled background of red and black lines, a red eye stared out of the screen at Kazawa.
He tapped it. Nothing happened.
Tapped it again.
After smashing it seven or eight times, Kazawa gave up and turned off the screen.
Useless app. Won't open, can't delete. Tired. Let the world burn.
He didn't even know if he had inherited his own third-playthrough save file. Even if his stats didn't carry over, could he at least keep the Personas he fused so hard to get? Please, the story's already stitched together — don't make him waste his life fusing Personas in the Velvet Room again. That'd be inhumane.
In the moment he silently cursed, everything around him suddenly went quiet.
A black-clothed Phantom Thief turned and smacked into view — and the familiar P5 system interface opened before his eyes.
Kazawa stared blankly at the screen, then instinctively reached out and tapped the "Items" option.
"Whoa!" Seeing the jam-packed inventory, Kazawa shouted in delight.
P5's New Game Plus didn't keep character levels, but it did keep the entire inventory, money, and all fused Personas from the Persona Compendium.
Amazing — he was the fully maxed-out Joker from his third run! He could survive this!
And he was rich!
This was his save file with max money!
Although many menu options were still grayed out, Kazawa felt much more at ease.
His cheat was here!
He closed the interface, and the ambient train sounds returned. Seeing that none of the passengers even glanced at him, Kazawa completely relaxed and leaned back into his seat with a sigh.
Only now did he have the peace of mind to check the phone in his hands carefully.
Maybe it was a new phone, or maybe it was a result of the transmigration, but the phone was basically empty. The photo album was bare. The contacts list only had "Father" and "Mother." He didn't know if he had no classmates or friends at all — or if, due to his juvenile record, all his previous social ties had been cut off.
There was only one email in the inbox — from his father. The tone was cold and formulaic. It mentioned he'd arranged a boarding place for Kazawa in Tokyo, saying it belonged to an old friend who ran a shop. The attic was unoccupied and could be used for a year. The old friend currently lived overseas, and the store was managed by family and employees. It was close to his new school.
And as for a son who was about to live alone in Tokyo, the email only had two cold lines:
"Report to your supervising officer regularly and follow the rules."
"Don't cause trouble this year. If something happens, you won't get a second chance."
"What the hell..." Kazawa read through the email line by line, his fists clenching more and more. "Is this really something a father would write?"
It wasn't just cold — it felt downright hostile, as if he really was an irredeemable criminal.
Kazawa took several deep breaths, suppressing his growing anger and kept scrolling, finally seeing the destination address at the end of the email:
Tokyo-to, Beika Town, 5-Chome, No. 39 — Café Poirot.
Kazawa stared at the address in silence.
He should've known — sleeping in a café attic was probably some kind of unchangeable fixed setting.
What a coincidence. There's a café right under the Mouri Detective Agency!
If he remembered correctly, once the plot reached the Bourbon arc, Amuro Tooru would come to work at the café.
In other words—
He was about to become classmates with Mouri Ran and Kudou Shinichi, neighbors with Ran, and... Amuro Tooru's coworker?
How could it be like this.jpg
Going by Conan's plot logic, as someone around the main characters, he'd have to be either a suspect, a victim, or the culprit. Not picking one would just be impolite.
Thinking carefully, with his current backstory, he was especially suited to be a culprit.
Wrongly accused, thrown out like garbage to live alone, all social ties cut — someone full of grievance and resentment. He was practically born to be a revenge-driven criminal.
Being the victim? That'd depend on whether the scumbags who framed him wanted to silence him by using his case as leverage. Counting roughly: the corrupt politician, the female employee he saved, the police and prosecutor involved — none of them were clean.
As for being a suspect? That was the easiest. With his background, if the Investigation Division didn't shortlist him four or five times, they'd be underestimating the weight of his "violent offender" label.
While Kazawa's thoughts drifted wildly, the broadcast announcing the upcoming Shibuya Station pulled him back to reality.
This train's final stop was Shibuya. He had to get off and transfer to go to Beika Town.