Persona: All the World's a Stage

Editing

While Naoya was worrying over Elizabeth, a woman not too far away was awoken by the same nightmare. In the much louder and busier city of Sumaru, within a small apartment close to  Yumezaki, Maya Amano cried out in her sleep.

The shock of the dream was just enough to cause Maya to fall off of the bed. On the floor she sat, wrapped in bed sheets, skin slicked with sweat. Her heart was beating so fast it felt like it was going to explode. She didn't remember where she was until she took time to focus. 

Deep breaths. Calm. She needed to slow down. It wasn't real. It was a dream. 

"Miss Amano, are you alright?"

"I-I...Yep. I'm good." She didn't know the voice, but by its tone and personality, she could assume it was someone she could trust. "I'm gonna make a wild guess and say you're Theodore, right?" 

It was the only man who'd reasonably be in her room, unless her new roommate's fling lost his way to her bedroom. 

The polite voice floated through the darkness. "I am. Would you like for me to fetch you anything?"

Maya pulled herself off of the floor and unwrapped herself from the sheets, hands shaking, body still covered in a sweaty sheen. Deep breaths. She just needed to be calm. Theodore was obviously a friend of Igor's, so therefore he was a friend of hers. And that meant she was going to be a good hostess. 

"Stay right there. I'll set up a bed on the pullout couch from you." 

She navigated her bedroom floor, dodging the various boxes and bins of files, newspapers, dirty clothes, and old plates that used to hold food. People used to yell at her for her room's dirtiness, but nowadays her roommate didn't care and she rarely invited people over.

Her shoulder brushed against someone, and even though she knew it had to be Theodore that she bumped, she still flinched instinctively. "Sorry!"

"It's alright, Miss Amano! Please, do not worry about my needs." How sweet. He was...different from Nameless and Belladonna and the Demon Painter in a way she couldn't really pinpoint. The youth? The energy? She didn't know.

She shook it off and got to the door. Swiftly, she flicked on the light switch on the wall beside the door, and the room suddenly lit up. In the middle of the room, dressed in the iconic blue of the Velvet Room, was the golden-eyed...man? Boy? He was older than a teen, but younger than a man, like that weird transitioning period that some go through in college. 

But that wasn't what her eyes were drawn to. No, it was the dark bruises that wrapped around his visible skin like a snake. It must've been from the chains that she saw in the Velvet Room, but...why was he chained at all?

He apparently didn't seemed bothered by it, instead insisting on her own health and well being first. Right, if something traumatic happened, she'd let him decide when to talk about it. She walked out of the room, went straight to the closet, and pulled out old linens she'd saved over the years. The mismatched patterns and textures were certainly odd, but it would at least add something between the couch and Theodore. 

"Hey Theodore, there's some old t-shirts and sweatpants in my closet. Help yourself." She called, pulling out an old pillow and fluffing it up. There was an odd brown stain on the pillow that was the color of some sort of coffee, but it'd been there so long that it no longer mattered. Plus, a pillowcase would cover it up. She grabbed a soft blanket, the sheets, and the pillow and bumped the closet door shut with her hip. 

Making her way to the couch, she began to pull it apart to assemble the bed. Despite not looking directly in the kitchen, the lime-green 4:06 AM glared at her from the darkness, as if scolding her for being up so late.