Kazawa held the memory card he had picked out from the fabric, turning it over and examining it carefully.
The square memory card's front had inward-pointing triangular arrows on the top, bottom, and right sides.
His memory told him this was a mark his father made during graduate school to distinguish his own experiment data, representing the first letter "K" of Kazawa's Romanized name. This habit had been passed down and was easy to recognize.
The mark was too distinctive; if it was exposed, it would be discovered. Kazawa decided to stash it in his item inventory later—hiding it anywhere else wouldn't feel safe.
He loaded the memory card into the computer and carefully opened its contents.
As soon as the folder name appeared on the screen, Kazawa felt like he'd been struck by lightning.
"Cognitive-ka-ology?!"
Kazawa stared intently at the characters on the screen and couldn't help but whisper them aloud.
"'Cognition' as a psychological concept refers to the process through which humans acquire, process, and express information with their brains—that is, the basic mental function of 'processing information to reach conclusions.'"
In the Persona universe, however, it is a very key and unique concept, because there exists an otherworld formed by the human mind—the cognitive space—and the various supernatural powers related to it. The study of how it operates, the underlying logic of cognition, and how cognition in turn affects reality, is called cognitive-ka-ology.
In Persona 5, Futaba Sakura's mother, Wakaba Isshiki, is a scholar who researches related theories. The upgraded final boss, Takuto Maruki, is also involved, though his research leans more toward practical application.
Unfortunately, just like the Black Organization now targeting Kazawa's parents' research, Wakaba Isshiki was also targeted by villainous forces; her research was stolen, and she herself was killed.
From this perspective, this really is a high-risk research project. After all, an innocent man carrying treasure often gets into trouble—this kind of theory that can fundamentally control the world and manipulate society is bound to attract the greed of evil forces.
"Damn, this is deadly," Kazawa muttered quietly to himself. "Even worse is that I actually possess this ability."
Thinking this, Kazawa's expression grew serious.
He wasn't even sure whether the person wielding the Persona ability was himself, who had traveled through worlds, or "Kazawa Akira," or if there was some even stranger situation, like he had actually crossed over long ago but just hadn't awakened the Persona before the story started…
But in any case, objectively speaking, the fact is: "Kazawa Ichikawa and Kazawa Leona, scholars researching cognitive-ka-ology, have a son, Kazawa Akira, who has the ability to alter cognition through certain methods."
"That bastard Leon! I bet he did it on purpose!" Kazawa thought, wanting to immediately lie down in the velvet room and beat up his useless assistant.
The moment they met, Leon told him, "In this world, the real world and the cognitive world have already merged," and lightly said it was no big deal, nothing serious.
But it's a huge deal! Many experiments that could never yield results in the real world now can be directly observed without even entering the otherworld!
It's even possible that "Kazawa Akira's" ability was created or induced by his parents' academic research!
No wonder the organization is torturing a high schooler to death. Even Kazawa thinks, with this kind of role, he's bound to end up going to Mihama Elementary School with Conan someday.
Besides…
Taking a deep breath, Kazawa adjusted his mood and opened the folder to start browsing its contents.
Just after reading the index, Kazawa felt his temples throb; the worst-case scenario had really happened.
The merging of the cognitive world is like a flow of mind-level information into reality. Thus, changing a person's psychological cognition will directly affect reality. Hypnosis, brainwashing, and other psychology-related techniques will get an epic boost.
Kazawa's parents had long realized the risks of cognitive-ka-ology in these areas, but what they wanted to research was no longer up to them.
"Brainwashing machines, lie detectors, interrogation drugs… So the patents they hold are for these? Sounds pretty serious…" After flipping through these catalogs, Kazawa's hand trembled slightly.
The organization now has black tech in these fields far more outrageous than in the original story, though it seems they still can't stop the fake alcohol from spreading. Still, it sounds much more brutal.
To put it simply, Kazawa's only thought right now is:
"Amamiya Rei, Akai Shuichi, danger."
Scrolling further down were many experimental reports and papers, all authored by his parents independently, full of theoretical knowledge.
No time to read those long articles in detail, Kazawa simply skimmed the summaries and was shocked to find—
They had already touched on the existence of the cognitive world.
Using treatment samples from multiple patients with mental illnesses, Kazawa's parents, over more than a decade of research, gradually described an abstract world made up of cognitive concepts. They believed the human collective unconscious has boundaries that can be touched and explored, and it can be used to influence the very existence of reality itself.
Later applications, such as memory modification devices, were all based on this solid theoretical foundation.
Simply put, if it weren't for the lack of the designated otherworld navigation "cheat" making it impossible for them to access the true cognitive space, they would have already organized Persona 5's worldview setting.
It's fortunate, though—most people understand their theory more as a metaphor for an abstract world, not truly believing another world exists, so Kazawa is still safe for now.
This complete core theory is his parents' most important legacy and exactly what the organization wants to get from him.
With this guiding theory, who knows what kind of major chaos the organization could create.
No, he had to do something.
Kazawa touched the memory card plugged into the computer, recalling his alternate identity plan, and smiled slyly.
He first copied all the data into the computer, then reopened the papers on the memory card.
As a hardcore gamer, Kazawa had played all the Persona series and read many weird soft sci-fi that didn't exist in this world. His mind was full of strange fringe scientific concepts.
Academic inventor Kazawa was about to start.
"First, I'll stitch together the concepts from P3, P4, and P5. If you dare, try shooting yourself in the temple," Kazawa's fingers danced on the keyboard as he rewrote a theoretical index. "Then add some weird stuff. Let me see, 'morphogenetic field' sounds just right, the concept of 'cure' is good too, just call it quantum mechanics… Then toss some cyberpunk stuff in—cyber eye dream detective sounds cool, Koutarou Tatsugoe, my superman…"
Muttering to himself, Kazawa pulled together a bunch of psychological concepts from various works and quickly patched together a crazy soft sci-fi masterpiece.
The white light from the screen flickered softly on Kazawa's grinning, mischievous face.
"I'm actually kinda curious what this reverse practice fragment can train out." He flipped through his nonsense work with satisfaction. "You better not research something serious. After all—
"All content above is purely fictional. Any resemblance is just bad luck."