04/12

-Daytime-

I woke up in a hospital bed. It wasn't the first time I woke up there, but what I meant by "woke up" was that I actually felt like I was properly awake and aware for the first time since getting back to the real world. Up until that point, I'd been in somewhat of a dazed state, almost like I was in a trance. The weirder thing than being in such a state was that I could remember what happened during it, but it felt more like a dream than something that actually happened. Hell, the TV world seemed more real than what happened after I was forced out of it. And that's saying something when I was quite literally part monster there because one of the "Shadows," presumably the one that came out of me when I fell in there, had fused with me. Or something like that. I would've thought it all to be a dream, but the weird sun-like symbol I now had tattooed on my back looked exactly like the disk that floated above my coyote Shadow form's back. Also, I had apparently been missing for four months, give or take. I didn't even learn what day of April it was until just today, when I was allowed to watch the news that stated it. Though, if I wasn't in a daze, I probably would've been in complete and utter disbelief when my uncle found me walking along the side of the road and asked where the hell I've been for four months. It didn't help that my lack of expression as I told him I didn't know probably made him more suspicious of me, especially considering I was still wearing the coyote pelt. I had woken up in the other world with it wrapped around me like a towel and had no shoes. Apparently, even in my daze, I realized how utterly insane it would sound to say I fell into a TV and there was a world full of monsters and fog in there. Luckily, they didn't arrest me or anything and just took me to the hospital, where the doctors said I was probably in shock from something or other and repressed my memory. Unfortunately, they took my pelt and I hadn't been able to sleep or eat properly since. I asked the nurses for it almost immediately after it was taken, but they told me the police took it to run some tests on.

It didn't take long after I came out of my daze for the police to come by and ask me a series of questions I couldn't answer. I asked them for my pelt back, and they asked why I wanted it, to which I stated I didn't know, just that it felt important to me. They found it odd, but told me I could have it back if they didn't find anything suspicious on it. I couldn't find the energy to argue with that, likely due to the slight malnutrition I was currently being treated for at the hospital and not helping by not eating very much. My parents were allowed to visit me after the police gave the okay, likely having been kept from speaking to me so my testimony wasn't influenced by anything. Needless to say, they were relieved to see me alright, after having presumed the worst when no one could even spot me leaving.

Apparently it was a locked room case, in which I disappeared from my bedroom overnight without any trace of how or why since the door and windows were all locked from the inside with no sign of tricks to do so from the outside. They went from thinking maybe I had some reason to sneak out for the night and would be back sometime in the morning, to thinking I might've run away or been abducted or something. After they heard of how I was when I was found, they jumped to a theory that I had been kidnapped by some kind of cult. Well, my father was partially joking with the theories, but my mother was seriously looking for confirmation from me when I couldn't give her any and just repeated that I couldn't remember anything. Then, she asked me seriously if I had run off and joined the Yakuza or something, likely because of the medium-sized tattoo between my shoulder blades. I kind of laughed at that suggestion, responding with a sarcastic, "Yeah, drugs and gangs are totally something I would've wanted to be apart of."

She didn't appreciate that, scolding me because she was genuinely worried, but my dad chuckled at the thought of me, a shy video game addict who barely left her room without a reason to, going out of my way to join the Yakuza and get a tattoo. It sounded ridiculous, after all. Still, I took after my father more when it came to laughing things off rather than seriously getting worked up about them. Call it a defence mechanism, but I'm kind of glad I could still have it intact after pretty much losing my mind in the TV world for a while.

A/N: Okay, so I found this story while trying to thin out the unfinished ones sitting around on my computer and was a bit surprised to find it was actually finished. I'm not confident in my ability to write romance stories but I tried here. Parts of this one made me cringe a bit reading through it again, but I must've put a lot of effort in when I wrote it a few years back since this is pretty long. It spans P4G as well as some of the sequels/spin-offs, so...Anyway, I can't really say I'm satisfied with this story, but I thought I might as well post it since it's rare for me to finish any. Plus, I remember that part of the reason I wrote it was becauseI couldn't find many stories about Yosuke in particular, so here's one for anyone looking for that. Sorry if it disappoints.

If even just one person enjoys reading this, I think that will make it worth it to post instead of just deleting this story from existence.