Persona: Devil Summoner

Persona: Devil Summoner

Author: You Xifeng

Summary:

Greed, anger, ignorance, desire, hatred, arrogance, jealousy, rage, laziness, greed, gluttony... Human nature is complex and confusing, and everyone hides their emotions under a mask. So... if this mask is removed - what kind of emotions are you hiding under the mask?

In 20XX, Tokyo, Japan, the disabled are rampant, and under the glamorous appearance, there is a numbness of indifference. A group called the Phantom Thieves of the Heart quietly arrives, unveiling the hypocritical mask, exposing the dirty desires, and performing a modern adventure story in the magic city called Tokyo.

Jiang Tianwei, a Chinese student studying abroad, didn't know at this time that he was also a member of this numb crowd. He didn't know... his future fate...

Chapter 1 Beating Workers

＊＊＊Before reading, because this story is about a Chinese student studying in Japan, he occasionally speaks Chinese. When you see the format of "【Speech content】", it means he is speaking Chinese. ＊＊＊

Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan.

The boy hurriedly ran on the asphalt road. In early spring, the wind still carried a slightly cold dampness and the unique fragrance of the earth when everything revived. With the evergreen trees on the side of the street, and the pedestrians dressed in gorgeous clothes hurried by the lazy atmosphere of the Sunday holiday, the painting of these many elements should have been a harmonious scene of spring breeze sending warmth to Tusu. Unfortunately, the boy had no heart to appreciate it.

He looked no more than eighteen or nineteen years old, but he had long lost his childishness. His black hair was neither highlighted nor curled, maintaining its original look. Under his thick eyebrows were eyes that were exceptionally bright, like obsidian, deep and delicate.

However, at this moment, an anxious expression covered his face, and his eyebrows and eyes were almost burning with anxiety. He kept mumbling in Chinese: "[I'm going to be late... I'm going to be late... Shit...]"

Next to him was a beautiful girl with long brown hair, about fifteen or sixteen years old, with a high ponytail and a teardrop mole at the corner of her eye. As we all know, language is a very rigorous subject, and every word in the word "beautiful girl" is very important, especially the first modifier. Her bangs left a soft and delicate shadow on her forehead, and her big, lively eyes were as pure and bright as those of a small animal, with a small teardrop mole at the corner of her eye. It is said that girls with teardrop moles are often delicate, and I don't know which expert made this discovery. Her nose was soft and her lips were light pink. No matter how you look at her, she was a well-deserved beautiful girl, and her youthfulness was so strong that it was hard to open your eyes.

Judging from her height, the girl was a bit shorter than him. She was wearing a black and yellow sportswear that was just right for this time of year. She followed him closely and listened to him complaining. She said with embarrassment, "I've already said it. I don't understand what you're saying in Chinese..."

In countries other than China, if you hear an Asian speaking Chinese, you can basically determine the nationality of that person. Yes, the boy running eagerly on the streets of Tokyo, Japan, blurted out Chinese.

This language system, which is incompatible with the streets of Japan, is like a sharp breeze that blows away the layers of clouds in the sky.

"Fangze, I was just complaining: I'm going to be late!"

The young man sprinted at full speed, gasping for breath, while trying to squeeze out a response. While running, he took out a worn leather wallet from his jacket pocket. With a jingling sound, the keychain fixed on the wallet scattered the sunlight casually. He looked around and took out a handful of them and held them in his hand.

Strangely enough, in people's perception, men are always better physically than women. The evidence is that in physical tests, boys have to run 200 meters more than girls. Those who demand women's privileges under the banner of "gender equality" have never thought of asking themselves to run meters more, which shows that this perception has been deeply rooted in people's minds.

But what I didn't expect was that the young man was sweating and panting at this time, but the girl behind him seemed fine. She was still following him slowly and leisurely, even with a leisurely look, looking relaxed as if nothing had happened.

"I see! Chinese is really profound!"

She even had the heart to study the language system of this foreign country. She tried to spell the Chinese sentence with Japanese kana and asked, "Does it sound similar?"

“Like, like, like…”

The boy was too lazy to complain about the fake Chinese language imitated by Japanese 50-sound sounds, so he just answered a few words and continued to run on the streets of Shibuya. The girl saw that his face was full of perfunctory, and she was bored, so she pouted and ignored him, just following him silently.

The destination of the two people's trip was a restaurant with a sign that read "Chinese cuisine - the excitement of the Celestial Empire! The best cuisine"...

From the name of the restaurant, which neither Chinese nor Japanese can understand, we can tell that this is definitely a Chinese restaurant targeting non-Chinese people.

This thing is like there is no Mr. Li's Beef Noodles in California. It is a pure scam to foreigners. Local people will only feel confused. The most terrifying thing is that such stores often do good business. It is really the most difficult to understand confusing human behavior in the 21st century.

He ran into the back alley skillfully, took out his phone and put the key he had been holding in his hand into the keyhole, unlocked the door with a click, and entered the back kitchen of the store. His dark eyes glanced at the screen of his phone, which clearly read 8:28. He then took a deep breath and pressed his fingerprint on the clock in machine.

drop!

The screen of the time clock clearly read: "Jiang Tianwei, clocked in successfully." The boy finally breathed a sigh of relief. The store opens at 10 a.m. and the staff are required to be on duty at 8:30 to start preparations. He was not late this time.

Just in time, his phone vibrated twice. When he turned on the screen, he saw a text message: "The world is about to fall into chaos. If you need the power to change the world, please click the link below."

"【Fuck you!】".

Seeing that it was a harassing message, Jiang Tianwei didn't say a single nice word. Without any psychological burden, he turned all the anger that had been pent up in his heart for a while into a barrage of curses, and then without hesitation, he sprayed it out at the guy who sent the group text messages from somewhere.

He put his phone away and opened his closet. In the closet were his work clothes and a small mirror for checking his appearance. At this moment, the figures of three people were clearly reflected in it.

"Hey! Chinaman, you're late again today!"

Behind Jiang Tianwei, two Japanese men, one on the left and one on the right, hooked their arms around his shoulders. One had blond hair and earrings, and the other had a mustache. A strong smell of tobacco emanated from both of them, causing Jiang Tianwei to frown.

"I'm not late today."

"If I say you're late, you're late, Chinaman! Come one hour early next time! Give me some sense of time!"

The blond man with earrings spoke while laughing exaggeratedly, his shoulders moving up and down like a smug duck.

"Hit him! Swish! Use Chinese-gong-fu!"

Behind Jiang Tianwei, the girl named Fangze laughed as if she was afraid that the world would not be in chaos. She clenched her small palm into a fist and punched the air twice. Jiang Tianwei curled his lips and said:

"If you weren't the store manager's son, I would have beaten you to death long ago!"

"Brother Nakano, what is this kid saying? He speaks in a foreign language!"

The man with a mustache who was obviously one of his subordinates chimed in. Jiang Tianwei said without even raising his head, "I said: I know."

The blond man with earrings obviously wanted to say something, but then he heard a voice from inside the store: "What are you all doing in the back?" He knew that it was the owner of the store, his father, who was complaining. He clicked his tongue and punched Jiang Tianwei hard on the back. It looked like an action between teenagers to encourage each other, but it was extremely powerful and made Jiang Tianwei stagger.

Brush.

The door of the store opened, and a middle-aged man wearing a chef's uniform and looking burly was standing at the door with a frown on his face: "You three lazy bastards, why are you still staying in the lounge? Go clean it up!"

"Oh, Dad, I'm educating the new guy! Tell him not to be late next time! - Did you hear me? Don't be late next time!"

The blond man with earrings obviously has no status in the family. He got scared when his father yelled at him, so he quickly threw the spearhead at Jiang Tianwei, deliberately yelling and scolding him in person as if to seek credit. When the boss heard this, he glared at Jiang Tianwei and said, "You lazy bug, why are you late every day? This month's performance will be deducted by 2000 yen! Get to work now!"

When Jiang Tianwei heard what was going on, he could no longer suppress the anger in his eyes. Fortunately, Miss Fangze kept comforting him, saying that these guys didn't know what was good, that they were just low-class hooligans and he shouldn't bother with them.

What makes people feel strange is that no matter when the little girl instigated Jiang Tianwei to beat up the two men at the beginning, or when the boss came over to count the heads just now, he selectively ignored this little girl.

This is not because the little girl has a low sense of existence and can be a point guard on the basketball team, nor is it because she has any superpowers... but because...

Fangze was obviously on Jiang Tianwei's side, and her little pink fist aimed at the heads of the three people and hit them! As the saying goes, even rabbits bite when they are angry, let alone a primate? The little girl's fist landed on the bridge of the three people's noses with incredible precision - and then passed through them very naturally! It was as if they were hit by a 3D projection.

From the beginning, these three people did not ignore Fangze, but did not see her at all! Similarly, Fangze could not touch these three people physically. From Jiang Tianwei's perspective, it was like a poorly made 3D game cutscene with the characters passing through the model.

This invisible and intangible characteristic... easily makes people think of a special word that I'm not sure whether it should be called a profession...

ghost.

Yes, this girl named Fang Zexia is actually a ghost!

Finally, my mental state has recovered to the point where I can start a new book... If you like it, I hope you can join the group, discuss, chat, and give me some encouragement and motivation. Thank you~

Edited on September 2023.9.26, :

0. If you think this book is OK, OK, or OK after reading it, please be sure to encourage me with your recommendation votes~ This is very important for the creator~ Thank you everyone~~

1. The protagonist of this book is not a time traveler. (Good brothers who cannot accept this, please be careful to avoid it)

2. This book is the same as the original story, with multiple female protagonists. In the end, the Joker and the protagonist will celebrate Bloody Valentine's Day and discuss countermeasures together. (Brothers who cannot accept this, please be careful to avoid it)

3. Because Qidian.com always swallows comments, and the number of words in comments is limited, if you want to have a long discussion with me, please join the group... I really don't want to swallow replies while controlling the number of words to answer things... It's so troublesome...

(End of this chapter)

Chapter 2 Yin Yang Eyes

The main business hours of a restaurant are collectively referred to as [meal times]. Because breakfast is too early, some restaurants will use lunch and dinner as their main selling points to adjust their working hours.

This so-called Chinese restaurant where Jiang Tianwei works feels just like that.

Like all [foreign restaurants], the food is not only bad, but also expensive and full of stereotypes of one country against another.

Let me tell you a secret, why did this restaurant hire Jiang Tianwei? It is because if a Chinese restaurant can have a Chinese waiter, it will definitely deepen the public's trust. It's just like if you open a Japanese restaurant in China, you must hire a few Japanese.

In Japan, under normal circumstances, if cute girls can be hired, they will be hired, and the main focus is on the cuteness of the second dimension. Why didn't this restaurant hire a Chinese girl but a Chinese man? The main reason is because of the Chinese students. No one thinks that cheongsam and bun hair are symbols of China. As a result, the boss bought a set of women's work clothes that he couldn't use.

From the opening at 11 o'clock, there will be a period of idleness, then it will start to get busy around 14 o'clock, and then generally it will be busy until about o'clock. Because it is idle, you can take turns to rest in the back.

The boss had tried to probe Jiang Tianwei several times, hoping that he would voluntarily give up his rest time to work overtime, but he politely refused.

What a joke, who would voluntarily give up their rest time! Come to think of it, this lunch break is a good thing! Want him to give it up? You have to pay more. Unfortunately, the boss didn't want to give him even one more steel plate, so he could only let him take a rest.

After all, in the legal sense, it is symbolically stated that ethnic discrimination is not allowed, so the boss dare not go too far, for fear that he will go all out one day, which will have a bad impact on him.

It was already past two in the afternoon when Jiang Tianwei returned to the staff lounge. Yawning, he sat on the uncomfortable chair, stretching lazily. He felt that he could hear the crackling sound of his tired body under his skin.

"It's finally lunch break! I'm so bored."

Fangze said this and flew in front of him, half of his body buried in the table. At first glance, he looked like some cult anime figure.

Jiang Tianwei sighed and shrugged. Although he wanted to talk to her, he opened his mouth and fatigue came over him. His words turned into another yawn. Fangze saw him like this, pouting angrily, and put his hand into Jiang Tianwei's mouth. Jiang Tianwei didn't care at all. Anyway, these two people couldn't interfere with each other, so he just let her go.

It was really a coincidence that I met this girl.

As a healthy adolescent male, Jiang Tianwei naturally had quite a lot of fantasies, thinking that he had some super powers, but as time went by, he had to accept that he was just an ordinary person.

As a result, a few years ago, my father went to Japan for work, and my mother and I followed him to this strange land. I thought this was the beginning of a new life. To be honest, Jiang Tianwei had dreamed of coming to Japan more than once. At that time, I could play as many games as I wanted and watch as many movies as I wanted without worrying about whether the online resources would suddenly disappear.

In the end, reality slapped him hard in the face.

When my father first came, everything went smoothly, but he died in a foreign land just one year after he arrived. When the family of three was driving, he suddenly lost consciousness, the car crashed through the guardrail and sank to the bottom of the sea. My mother and I escaped death, but my father will forever sleep in the blue sky.

Afterwards, the mother was so sad that she remarried.

In this situation, Jiang Tianwei was just a burden and naturally not liked. So it became like this, Jiang Tianwei could get living expenses from his mother every month, and then live alone in a cheap apartment building.

It's said to be every month, but I only stuck to it at the beginning. Now it's starting to become once every three or four months. When was the last time I received this grant? I can't remember.

At his age, he also had some of the stubbornness that teenagers have. He couldn't accept his mother's betrayal of his father, nor was he willing to accept help from unkind people, so he simply started working on his own. He fed himself and his family.

By the way, he was forced to apply for a leave of absence from the Shujin Academy where he was studying because of the pressure of life. In fact, his stepfather said that he wanted to support him to go to school, but he refused sternly. The result is that now he does not go to school, but works hard to make a living.

Delivering newspapers every morning, working in a Chinese restaurant during the day, and being an assistant instructor in aerobic boxing at the gym at night. These are the life directions he finally decided on after weighing many factors. How did he weigh them specifically? - Of course, it was the hourly salary!

This is why he endured the discrimination against him in that Chinese restaurant. To put it bluntly, the salary is high.

He has a very boyish dream in his heart, which is to save enough money, transfer to a game company related to game production, and one day go to his favorite game manufacturer to make popular games.

Alas, it's just that people always compromise with society. He could have refused his stepfather's financial support, but when he was working, faced with the trade-off between money and poverty, he could only bend his hard spine and endure those racist bastards. It's really sad.

Then, the next day after he started working so hard, he saw this girl wandering around the streets of Shibuya with a confused look on her face.

At that time, she was staring at the crepes in the cupboard through the glass with an obsessed look on her face. In the spirit of giving roses to others, the fragrance lingers on your hands (actually, because the other person is really cute), Jiang Tianwei went up to talk to her... and ended up being pestered by her. In Chinese, it is said that she is possessed by a ghost.

It was not until this moment that Jiang Tianwei realized that he had the ability to see ghosts! Isn't this the legendary Yin-Yang eyes?

Although being haunted by a ghost is a bit scary, this female ghost is neither ugly nor scary, and does not produce any weird sound effects. It is much better than the ones in the cinema.

Moreover... as a child who has been influenced by traditional Chinese ghost culture, in his impression, such beautiful female ghosts are basically the type who will fall madly in love with scholars. If you flip through "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio", you can easily cite a lot of examples... I have to admit that Jiang Tianwei felt that he had made a profit.

As it happens, this female ghost named Fang Zexia has no memory of her life, no obsession with death, no place to go, no one to talk to, and can't remember anything except her own name. For a girl of this age, if no one cares about her, she will be bored to death every day. This time, she finally has someone who can see her and talk to her. Naturally, she is unwilling to leave. Jiang Tianwei doesn't know any ghost-exorcism skills, so a strange human-ghost partnership is formed...

I don’t know if it was because I was too tired, but Jiang Tianwei, lying on the chair, felt his eyelids twitching. When he closed his eyes, he became confused and at a loss.

In the dream... I couldn't tell up from down, left from right, as if I was in outer space, my body was light and floating without a fulcrum. Unexpectedly, Jiang Tianwei could clearly know that he was dreaming. This was probably the so-called lucid dream.

In this chaotic space, I saw a man in a red suit sitting in a wheelchair in front of me. I didn't know what he was saying to me... The more I looked at his face, the less I could see. Was he a man or a woman? Was he old or young? The more I looked, the less I could tell...

Jiang Tianwei felt his consciousness suddenly sink, and he knew nothing.

(End of this chapter)

Chapter 3: A Stranger in a Strange Land

There is a Chinese saying that goes, "What you think about during the day you will dream about at night."

If this was true, Jiang Tianwei would have to think carefully about what he was thinking about during the day to dream about a man in a wheelchair in a red suit...

Moreover, I felt as if I had seen him somewhere before. He looked familiar... wheelchair, suit, man...

"【Isn't that Hawking!】"

Jiang Tianwei woke up from his sleep and stood up while complaining loudly.

The slightly cold air conditioning in the lounge made his hair stand on end and his shoulder muscles twitched unconsciously. His back was sweaty and he shivered when the cold wind blew.

"You scared me to death - hey, even though I was dead a long time ago! - What's wrong with you?"

It can be seen that Fang Zexia was also a person who liked to joke when she was alive. She even joked about her own death...but...

(Why can't a spirit who can even joke about death become a Buddha? What is she obsessed with?).

Jiang Tianwei thought about this and casually told her about his dream. He took out his cell phone and took a look. There was another new message in the message bar.

"The world is about to end, and humans need the power to change the world. Please click the link below.

I feel like the content of this message is much more serious than the previous one."

Fang Zexia also came over curiously...but after taking a closer look, she found that the Chinese characters on it were square and although she seemed to have seen most of them before, she didn't understand their meaning at all.