2026-01-05: World of Envy

• Cutscene: World of Envy
• Cast: Tamaki Uchida, Reiko Akanezawa, Ideo Hazama, Yumi Shirakawa, Shinji ‘Charlie’ Kuroi, Akira Miyamoto, "Lilith"
• Where: Karukozaka High School, Shinjuku Ward
• OOC Date: 2026-01-05
• IC Date: 2007-10-??
• Summary: Tamaki and Reiko journey through Ideo Hazama's newfound 'empire.' They reach the fourth strange world and are soon faced with their next trial.
• Content Warnings: Death by poisoning.

---

An October that never ends. Time remains frozen in this place. Tamaki Uchida has, once again, woken up in the hallways of the first floor of this distorted mirror version of Karukozaka High School.

It is far from the first time, and it will be far from the last.

---

The front doors of the school no longer allowed passage. Even when unlocked and open, passage through is impossible. The very air outside of the school felt entirely solid.

(Tamaki would later recognize this phenomenon during the Mikage-cho incident, but that's in a couple more years' time.)

Here, most of the students and teachers have managed to barricade themselves in relative safety in club and faculty rooms. The upper floors have Demons roaming about, as do the passages out to the gym and beyond. The occasional lone stray Fairy or Jack Frost makes its way past the defenses, but their temperaments are lighter and they are, more often than not, easy enough to turn back around after satisfying them with some form of play or gift.

The Demons to really worry about were the ones which remain further from the confines of safety, closer to the gym and beyond: beasts of legend, mythical figures from folk tales and history alike, demons written about in occult tomes, divine beings from the planes above. They were all manner of strange and terrifying entities, spun from the stories humanity tells itself, coalesced from mind into matter.

The gym now leads to a stone hallway and an expanse of doors, each one leading to strange realms according to the inscription carved above them. These were the worlds which Tamaki had explored, with the help of her fellow first-year, Reiko Akanezawa.

---

Before the school had been sealed off from the rest of existence, most of Reiko’s peers had considered her cold and intimidating. She was an honor roll student with a mature temperament, and she made no trouble for her teachers, but she had always kept quiet and distant from the rest of her classmates. At times, it seemed to them like she bore some grudge against them, but no one could recall having done anything to her, so most of them dismissed the feeling.

When the self-proclaimed ‘Divine Emperor’ had plunged the school into a Demon-filled purgatory of his making, it was Reiko who had sought out Tamaki. Reiko had seen that Tamaki had been asking others for help in figuring out some way out of their shared predicament. Others had ability on-par with Tamaki’s, but not the attitude.

Yumi Shirakawa may have appeared kind-hearted on the surface and wanted to return the entire school to normal, but she simply did not vibe with people who failed to neatly fit in with societal expectations. Yumi, notably, had let the feeling that Reiko held some grudge get under her skin. Behind Reiko’s back, she had called her a ‘stuck-up princess.’

Shinji ‘Charlie’ Kuroi was, on the other hand, a wild child who deliberately went against the grain. It wasn’t his criminal convictions that had disqualified him in Reiko’s assessment, but his selfishness. Unlike Yumi, Charlie had a ‘fuck you, got mine’ mentality, and he was simply looking to save his own skin.

Akira Miyamoto had designs of his own and no desire to return to the real world. It would simply be impossible for him and Reiko to work together.

From what Reiko had witnessed of Tamaki in their first semester together, she struck the right balance of characteristics: strength of mind and body as evidenced by her good grades and performance in the fencing club, the desire for overall social stability, and the compassion to reach out to those ostracized by their peers.

After Tamaki had asked high and low, running from room to room on the first floor, asking anyone and everyone she came across for help, Reiko saw her moment.

Before Tamaki could get to Yumi. Before she could get to Charlie. Before she could get to Akira. Now was the time.

Reiko slowly opened the doors from the Music Club room and beckoned for Tamaki to come closer.

“Akanezawa-san?” Tamaki’s eyes widened in surprise. She could scarcely believe it. The person she had figured as one of the least likely to cooperate with her had asked her for help, while everyone else she had asked had been too shell-shocked or selfish to do so.

Upon Tamaki’s approach, Reiko told her, “I know who's behind all of this, and I have an idea of what we're going to have to do.”

Reiko hesitated as she once again went over the possibilities in her mind. She stuck her head out of the door and gave each side of the hallway a nervous glance before she returned her focus to Tamaki. She stared at her pleadingly while she searched for her own voice once again.

Having finally once again found it, Reiko implored Tamaki, “You're the only one I think will be able to help. So please, give me a hand!”

---

Tamaki Uchida has, for the first time, woken up in the hallways of the first floor of this distorted mirror version of Karukozaka High School,

entirely alone.

For the first time since they had teamed up, Reiko was no longer with her.

It would not be the last.

---

Together, Tamaki and Reiko had ventured beyond safety and into the gym. There, they found a formidable Demon: Melusine, a serpentine spirit of fresh water, said to be found in sacred springs and rivers. Upon Melusine’s defeat, she faded away and left behind a ring: a simple copper band. Carved on the inside of the ring was a single word: humility.

In the center of the gym was a newly-erected doorway, its foul energy leaking into the school. Presumably, this was the source of what had kept them trapped here.

The pair entered this door and had soon found themselves in a different realm – not separate from the school, but now connected to it, now a part of it. Before them, they saw what appeared to be an ancient tomb, its imposing structures carved out of stone in some design both alien and familiar. The layout of this place consisted of a circular hallway with multiple closed doors on the outer wall and a large pillar in the center.

Inscribed above each doorway was the title and description of what existed beyond:

BEYOND HERE LIES THE WORLD OF PRIDE

FOR THOSE FOOLISH ENOUGH TO RELY SOLELY ON THEIR OWN STRENGTH.

MAY YOU CEASELESSLY PERISH UNTIL YOU TRULY COME TO UNDERSTAND JUST HOW INADEQUATE YOU ARE.

BEYOND HERE LIES THE WORLD OF GLUTTONY

FOR THE EXCESSIVELY RAVENOUS WHO CONTINUE TO CONSUME FAR BEYOND THE POINT OF NECESSITY.

MAY YOU BE CONSUMED BY ONE WITH AN APPETITE GREATER THAN YOUR OWN.

BEYOND HERE LIES THE WORLD OF SLOTH

FOR THOSE CAPABLE WHO DO NOTHING EVEN IN TIMES OF IMPENDING CRISIS.

MAY YOU TOIL FOREVERMORE UNTIL YOUR SOUL BREAKS FROM THE TEDIUM YOU PLACED ON THOSE WHO TOOK ON YOUR BURDENS.

BEYOND HERE LIES THE WORLD OF ENVY

FOR THOSE WHO TAKE THEIR OWN BONDS FOR GRANTED AND ARE BLIND TO THE DESIRES OF OTHERS.

MAY YOU WANDER ALONE BEREFT OF COMPANY.

BEYOND HERE LIES THE WORLD OF GREED

FOR THOSE WITH HOLLOW HEARTS WHO AMASS WEALTH UPON WEALTH YET REMAIN UNSATISFIED.

MAY ITS LUSTER NEVER ILLUMINATE THE EMPTY DARKNESS WITHIN YOURSELF.

The Worlds of Wrath and Lust had inscriptions containing only their title, but no doorways and no description. Perhaps they were under construction … or the contents of the hallway were more tailor-made for its visitors.

---

“Sooo … you said you know what we have to do? Do you have any idea what this occult stuff is about?” As they both stood in the stone hallway, Tamaki inquisitively looked up at Reiko and waited for her answer. Given how stand-offish Reiko usually was, it made sense to Tamaki that her classmate might have some odd interests no one knows about.

Unfortunately, Reiko was just as bewildered as she was. “Eh?! What? I mean, I do, but in more of an abstract sense. Closer to the end of things.” Reiko’s eyes bounced from door to door to Tamaki to door to Tamaki again as her nervousness grew. “I don’t know what any of … this … is about.” She trailed off as she admitted, “I don’t know the way to reach there …”

Reiko peered up at the hallway and continued. “... but this place is like a temple. It’s like Hazama to build something like this.”

A look of confusion appeared on Tamaki’s face. “Huh. Okay, then.” Unsatisfied with that line of inquiry, she turned her attention to her environment. She paced around the hallway and read the inscriptions above each door. After having completed a lap, she commented to Reiko, “Well, these are all cardinal sins, at least according to some western religious ideas. If they’re ‘locked’ by a sin, then maybe the ‘key’ has something to do with the corresponding virtue?”

Reiko nodded at Tamaki’s reasoning, then retrieved the humility-inscribed ring from her bag. “Then this one unlocks the door about pride, right?”

Tamaki looked up to read the inscription above the door to the World of Pride, then turned back to Reiko to confidently beam at her. “Yeah! Give it a shot!”

Reiko stepped in front of the door to the World of Pride, the ring held in both of her hands, and concentrated. She felt the ring lift into midair of its own accord. At the same time, the door’s stone slab and the ring began to exude light – moments later, they vanished into a mist of bright motes.

As their way forward had been cleared, Tamaki broke out into triumphant laughter, her voice ringing through the stone hallway. She turned to Reiko with a bright grin and proclaimed, “I don’t think we have to worry about the warning, either. We aren’t alone, we’ve got each other!”

Reiko paused to peer at Tamaki curiously before she replied. Her blank expression broke out into a timid smile, and she answered, “Yes. We certainly do. It’s a shame no one else wanted to help, but you did ask around first …” Tamaki noticed Reiko’s hesitation, but she had attributed this to a notion that Reiko had still been in the middle of finding her own resolve until Tamaki’s had shone brightly enough to reach her.

A grinning Tamaki grabbed Reiko by the hand and pulled her forward as she ran. “C’mon! We’ve got this!”

---

Eventually, Tamaki and Reiko had made their way through the Worlds of Pride, Gluttony, and Sloth. Each of them held their own challenge and punishment. Pride did, indeed, require the cooperation of more than one person. Gluttony and Sloth seemed to instead be designed for other people within the school – Gluttony for the faculty, Sloth for the students –  and Tamaki and Reiko rescued the others from their torment.

Prior to Tamaki’s most recent re-awakening in front of the nurse’s office, they had begun exploring the World of Envy. Most of the mazelike passages were blanketed in thick fog, and no matter how they tried to track their steps and form a map of the area as they went, the walls defied the conventional laws of physics. They wandered blind for what had seemed like ages, but miraculously, they had managed to remain together until the fog before them had faded.

At the sight of the walls of the World of Envy – literally anything besides fog would have done – Tamaki collapsed to crawl on the ground and cried grateful tears of laughter and relief. “Thank goodness ..! I was going to go crazy in there, hahaha … how are you holding up, Reiko-chan?”

Reiko stood beside her, but she remained silent as her eyes remained transfixed on another person in front of them. A boy, one of their upperclassmen, stood in the hallway in front of them. He reached a hand forward and called out, “Reiko! I’m so glad you’re safe. Come here, and let me watch over you now.”

Tamaki wiped away the moisture from her eyes, and her smile flattened into a skeptic look at the boy. “Hey, how did he get here? I thought we were the only ones who had gotten this far – ”

Reiko’s feet slowly drifted forwards towards the boy, the object of her affections. Her body slackened, and the light had faded from her eyes. Tamaki’s voice rose in alarm as she hurriedly stood up. “Reiko-chan?! Reiko?! What’s with you – ”

Reiko coldly turned back to Tamaki. “I don’t need you anymore. I’m satisfied with him.”

Tamaki stood in stunned silence. She couldn’t bring herself to speak. She could scarcely believe what she was hearing. She felt something burn in her heart.

Reiko continued. “You’re a girl. What will you do for me? Will you protect me the same way he does? Will you show me the same kindness?”

Tamaki started to protest. “I have done nothing but – you were the one that asked me to come along! We’ve come so far!”

Reiko silently stared at Tamaki in the same manner that she had done so many times before. Probing. Searching. Testing. What Tamaki had mistaken for appreciation had, in reality, been disappointment. “You haven’t done what’s most important to me. I may have made you come with me, and I had hoped you would prove to be up to the task before us, but …”

“I’m done with you now.”

The words crushed Tamaki’s spirit like a pile of bricks had fallen on it. She boggled incredulously at Reiko. That didn’t feel to her like some cruel thing Hazama had put in Reiko’s mouth as part of some teenage boy’s idea of a mind game.

It felt like she had meant it.

The handsome boy stepped forward and brushed aside his hair to reveal his smug self-aggrandizing smirk. His appearance was different, but his voice was that of the ‘Deity Emperor’ responsible for trapping the school in this realm. “You've got me quite entertained. It's beautiful to see two friends helping each other, but I'll show you how brittle and fleeting the bonds between humans are!”

His eyes began to glow yellow as his face contorted, and his body melted into amorphous dark ichor before reforming into an androgynous woman, unclothed save for the large snake coiled around her body. This Shadow wore the guise of the Demon Lilith, but Tamaki didn’t know the distinction.

All Tamaki had cared for at that moment was Reiko.

“What did you do to her, you ..!” Righteous fury growing inside her, Tamaki rushed forward to Lilith and brandished her sword, the two-headed form of her Persona manifesting beside her: Janus, Roman god of duality and doorways.

The corners of Lilith’s mouth turned upwards into a malicious knowing grin.

In her haste, Tamaki failed to notice the snake wrapped around Lilith uncoil. It struck, sinking its fangs into her and sending its venom coursing through her veins.

In truth, this snake had bitten Tamaki long, long ago.

“Foolish girl,” Lilith cooed. “It’s so unbecoming for you two young ladies to fight over me. Alas, I chose her, not you.”

Tamaki’s advance slowed to a stop and she doubled over in pain, but still stood for a few moments more. She turned her head up to sneer at Lilith and the entranced Reiko through vision growing more blurred and dark by the moment. She was no stranger to her own death by now, and her expression was not of shock, but of stubborn defiance.

In-between ragged breaths, Tamaki struggled to reply and could only coarsely whisper through a grimace and grit teeth, “What – the hell – are you talking about ..?” Lilith’s claim made no sense to her: the Demon spoke as if Tamaki was envious of Reiko.

Lilith reared her head back, and her confidence faded for a brief moment. “I had it wrong?” She peered more closely at Tamaki, and having discerned something, she leaned forward again with keen interest and a cold smile. “Ohh? Jealousy does still cloud your heart, after all. I see, I see. How hilarious!”

In her last moments, this incarnation of Tamaki remained silent until she collapsed and her body succumbed. Lilith’s raucous laughter echoed through the golden stone hallways of the World of Envy.

---

Tamaki Uchida has, once again, woken up in the hallways of the first floor of this distorted mirror version of Karukozaka High School.

It was far from the first time, and it will be far from the last.

Unusually, Reiko was not with her anymore. She was, as she said, “done with her.”

Strangely, Tamaki still felt some burning in her veins, even though the poison from Lilith’s snake no longer coursed through them. She sat up against the wall and pulled her knees close to her chest. Out of habit, Tamaki held the necklace of coins around her neck.

This string of coins is otherwise known as a rokumonsen as per Buddhist funerary custom, symbolizing the fee paid to the ferryman in payment for transit across the Sanzu River. Just as it appeared in the dreams she had each time she died, this is the item which her Guide had imbued with the power to summon her Persona.

Janus did not appear. In his place instead was a white horse with a spiral horn protruding from its forehead: the mythical Unicorn, a steed which lets pure-hearted humans ride it and whose touch is said to cleanse poison.

The fact that it was different from Janus was no surprise to her by now. A new cycle of death and rebirth in this Deity Emperor’s expanse sometimes means a new Persona. Each time, she was shattered and reforged, unmade and remade anew.

What did surprise her was that she had once had Unicorn as her Persona before Janus. She had regressed. She had backslid. She had grown weaker, not stronger. Not only did this mean that she would have to find her way back to Lilith alone, she would have to do so at an even greater disadvantage than when she had initially entered the halls of the World of Envy with Reiko.

At this realization, Tamaki leaned her head back to hit the wall with a forceful thud. She didn’t relish the thought of the hardships placed before her.

What hope do I possibly have now?

Tamaki’s face contorted into some expression inscrutable to herself. She didn’t want to think about what she’s feeling. She didn’t want to be conscious of it. She wanted to put it as far away from her mind as possible.

In one moment, Unicorn vanished into thin air as Tamaki pulled the six-coined necklace off from her neck.

In the next, she hurled it against the far wall of the faculty hallway. The coins clatter loudly and land to the floor, leaving a dent in the wall where they struck.

For the next few hours, Tamaki simply sat there with her head bent down into her arms and knees, and she could only barely manage to muffle her sobs.

The World of Envy had been squarely meant for her, and it had struck unerringly true in the heart of its intended target.