FRIGHT ZONE.

before P5 came out i was already really into Persona bcs we had P3 on my cousin's PS2 i grew up with.... they also pre-ordered P5 when it first came out and were very kind to give me the Shujin Academy schoolbag that had come with it, bcs the bag that i had been using fell apart right before i started 8th grade...

this was also the time where i had to stop riding the bus because urrrhmmm. bullying got so bad for me and all my stuff was regularly being stolen/vandalized/broken (my parents were done when they had to buy me a 2nd laptop for school) soooo I was staying with my aunt thru the week so i could be dropped off / picked up. & so while me and my cousins finished P5 together, i started replaying the second time around by myself at aunt's while they were out doing extracurriculars n such

⬆️ important to this story bc i remember it taking place while we we're all outside waiting at the doors for school to open and it was COLD. i went to like, a Christian K-12 school, and there was this guy maybe 16-17, who was always trying to start conversation with me over anything. And he noticed I was using a persona bag for my backpack.

at that age of course all i was thinking about was, older guy wants to be friends with me since we share interests... (that was Not Actually the case) and i was a lonely kid, so i'd indulge him on whatever he'd talk about anyway despite being really fussy re: COLD. but when he brought up Persona 5 for the first time, he had asked me directly who my favorite character was; & like from day one i was always really casual about it being Akechi LOL. this was something even my cousins groaned about so it wasn't unexpected to me he also groaned about it.

this situation is why i remember so starkly when Persona 5 first came out most people REALLY HATED Akechi because he so wasnt into that he stopped talking to me afterwards hhnkskdh. but also like. that guy ended up getting arrested later a few years down the line for trying to get with middle schoolers. massive bullets were dodged