Persona 5: Kitagawa Yusuke x Reader

Chapter 8: Distortions

Wow, you've made it to the 8th chapter! Thanks everyone for sticking with me, and I hope you enjoyed my 3 chapter bundle. Sorry for the long wait! Yeah, I realize the last couple chapters started developing some more drama than usual, but I wanted to create a plot-based story this time rather than a pure romance fanfiction. Sorry if it wasn't what you wanted, but I'm just trying to practice, experiment and find out what works. So, thanks again for sticking with my writing whims! Again, I just wanted to reiterate my huge thanks for all the views. As my thanks, I'll be writing a special Yusuke X Reader X Ryuji oneshot, to be posted separately from this story, but to create it, I'll be taking the first suggestion/request in the comments to have 2 other people support it. If I don't get any suggestions, I'll probably just write something anyways :P. Welp, this is the last chapter of my 3 chapter bundle, and I hope you enjoy!

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Your head ached. Your legs were sore. Your voice croaked when you tried to speak. How did you get here?

"You're awake."

A booming voice commanded you to look up.

"Grandpa? Where am I?"

You looked around at the extravagant scene around you. A lavish throne room with red velvet carpets, curtains with glistening golden tussle lightly swaying in the soft breeze. Paintings framed around the room- many of which, you recognized. They were your own, from your old studio. How did they get here?

"I see you've finally realized what this place is."

A figure that seemed to greatly resemble your grandfather sat on the throne at the end of the room, although he wasn't dressed at all like the grandfather you knew. Rather, to put it simply, he was dressed like a king from those fantasy action games you liked to play.

What did he mean you knew where this was? You had no idea how on Earth you would have ended up in this dreamy looking palace full of your old paintings.

Ah.

Your eyes widened when you had that thought, as the memories came flooding back. You entered your own Palace, and were trying to figure out how to get into the house in the sky. It was then that the purple flying carpet, a friend in many of your dreams at night, greeted you and brought you to your destination. You remembered opening the door, being presented a key that would unlock each side door, allowing you to watch your own dreams play out. You remembered finding a door with the same notch in it as the one in the real house where you used to sleep. It was easily passable- a door with a detail only you would have noticed. The room was filled with shackles and chains on the walls, strange tools on a rollable cart in the corner, traps and sharp things in the ground. You wondered why you would have imagined your old room this way in the depths of your heart. You remembered a shadow approaching, turning around only to see a blunt object forcefully coming down at your head, and then-

Your memories stopped there. You had just woken up in this strange room with a cognitive version of your grandfather as the ruler of a Palace. Your Palace. Meaning this place was likely the core of your distortions, and you had a pretty good guess about where that would be in that old house-your art studio. Well, it did make sense, and it would explain the paintings on the wall as well as the presence of your grandfather, since he, too was a core part of whatever distortion was in your heart.

Although you would never admit it, you've always felt shackled by the presence of your grandfather- as if he alone held the key to your hopes and dreams of being an artist, and at the same time dictated that you would never reach them. He and your dream would always be far away up high, living a life of status and wealth, while you would always be a peasant. No matter what, you would always be in his shadow no matter how hard you tried- and the harder you tried, the more you would bring your grandfather down with you, just like you did when you nearly ruined his career all those years ago.