The new C-Rank insignia gleamed on its surface. Kerina gave her a final nod, then turned and led me out of the Guild hall, back into the warm afternoon air.
"Well," she said, a rare, small smile on her face. "Congratulations on becoming a C-Rank adventurer on your first official day."
She glanced at me, her expression turning more casual. "Since you've had such an eventful start, are you interested in going to a party tomorrow night?"
I raised an eyebrow. "A party? What's the occasion?"
"It's the biggest holiday of the year, Liberation Day. The anniversary of the day the last Demon King was defeated, ending the Great War." She started walking, and I fell into step beside her. "The festival starts tomorrow night at 23:00, but the real celebration begins with a grand feast at exactly midnight the very moment the Demon King is said to have fallen."
I processed the information. A massive, city-wide festival. It was a perfect opportunity for reconnaissance, but also a massive risk.
"Will there be a lot of people?" I asked.
Kerina gave a slight laugh. "A lot? Hayato, the entire capital will be celebrating in the streets. I'm not sure if any of the kingdom's official 'Heroes' will be there, but every adventurer and noble in the city will be."
We walked a few more steps in silence before I stopped, turning to face her. My expression was serious. "Kerina. About what I told you last night... the truth. About my origin, and the real nature of my power."
She met my gaze, her own expression turning serious as well.
"I need you to not tell anyone. To the rest of the world. I'm trusting you."
She looked at me for a long, quiet moment, her sharp eyes searching my face. Then, her serious expression broke into a small, genuine smile.
"Of course," she said, her voice soft but firm. "Your secret is safe with me."
***
Back in the quiet solitude of the inn room, I sat on the edge of my bed. My new Guild Card and the dagger from Erik lay on the small nightstand, tangible proof of the day's events. The city was a low hum outside the window.
Was it enough? What I did today... was it truly a success?
A strange hollowness echoed in my chest. In my old life, I had never thrown a real punch. I had never faced a true threat. My battles were fought with spreadsheets and PowerPoints in sterile, air-conditioned rooms. And today... today was no different.
Kerina saw a warrior. Reyn saw a fighter. The villagers saw a hero. But they were all wrong. I was never in the alley. I was never in the camp. I was never in danger.
All I did was orchestrate. I fought a battle with my imagination, a ghost in the machine moving a puppet. I told a clone where to stand, where to dodge, where to stab. It was just another project. A presentation with a flawless execution and a bloody, tangible result.
I looked at my own hands. They weren't the hands of a warrior. They were the hands of a man who moved pieces on a board from a safe, quiet distance. The victory felt real to everyone else, but to me, it was just another illusion.
I stood up and walked to the window, leaving the proofs of my new life on the nightstand. The sun was setting over Eldoria, casting the unfamiliar rooftops in shades of orange and purple. Down below, strangers in strange clothes hurried home. It was a world in motion, one I had been dropped into without a manual.
Staring out at the alien city, my thoughts drifted back to the one I'd left behind. Back to my death.
What happened to my body?
The thought was a cold, clinical one. I pictured my tiny Tokyo apartment, the one the size of a microwave. Did the landlord find me when the rent was late? Maybe a cleaning service, wondering about the smell. Just another overworked consultant who died alone.
Would anyone from the firm even look for me? They might notice my absence after a few days, annoyed that a project was delayed. But would anyone really care? I had no family to call, no real friends to wonder where I'd gone. I was just a name on a business card, a silent man who nodded in meetings.
No one would come looking. My existence there had been just as hollow as the duplicates I created here. Just a ghost in a different machine, blending in without trying.
***
My name is Kenta Tanaka. I stand at the back of the funeral hall, my cheap black tie feeling like a noose. They're all crying, but I wonder if any of them feel it like I do.
He saved my life, my career, my promise to my mother. And what was my final act of gratitude? I was the one who found his body.
It started a few days ago. Thursday, then Friday. Hayato Mikami didn't come to work. No email. No call. That wasn't like him. I was the only one truly worried; the section chief was just annoyed. After work on Friday, my worry got the better of me, and I went to his apartment.
The landlord let me in. The room was small and tidy. Hayato was sitting at his low table, his head slumped forward as if he had nodded off while eating. A half-eaten cup of instant noodles was on the table beside his phone, which lay screen-down.
The first thing that struck me was the smell. There wasn't one. The air was still, not like it should have been after two days. I called his name, "Mikami-san?" When he didn't move, I touched his shoulder. He was cold. So incredibly cold.
The paramedics said he had been gone for nearly forty-eight hours. They called it a sudden aneurysm, but they couldn't explain it. They couldn't explain why he was just... preserved. As if his body hadn't died, but had simply been switched off. I keep replaying it in my head. I saw him in that Wednesday meeting. He was fine. And then I find him sitting at his table, his last meal grown cold, looking like he could wake up at any moment. It doesn't make any sense.
My name is Saki Tanaka, and I was scrolling through my social media feed during a late-night work break when I saw his face. It was a formal, sterile portrait, the kind used for corporate profiles, attached to a post from a mutual acquaintance from high school. The caption was simple:
"Tragic news about Mikami Hayato. Gone too soon."
I stopped breathing for a second. Mikami? No, it has to be a mistake.
But it wasn't. An online obituary confirmed it. Sudden aneurysm. 28 years old. A respected consultant. The comments from his colleagues all said the same thing:
"He was so quiet,"
"a true professional,"
"always so composed."
I stared at the picture, but the man in the photo wasn't the one I knew. The Hayato I remembered wasn't just a quiet suit. I remembered him in our second year of high school, sitting on the school roof with me, fiercely debating the strategy of a complex board game, a rare, brilliant smile on his face when he finally cornered my king. He wasn't loud, but he was sharp, passionate, and underneath his quiet exterior, he was fiercely alive.
We drifted apart after graduation, as people do. University, then jobs. Our last contact was a brief, awkward "Happy New Year" message three years ago. I always meant to reach out, to ask if he ever had time for one more game.
I looked at the comments from his coworkers again. "So quiet." "Composed." A wave of profound sadness washed over me, a regret so sharp it felt like a physical pain. It wasn't just that he was gone. It was that somewhere between that sunny school rooftop and this cold, formal photograph, the Hayato I knew had already disappeared long before he died.
I pushed away from my desk and walked to the large window of my small studio apartment, looking out at the city lights beginning to sparkle as dusk settled. High above the buildings, a single, small cloud drifted, its shape impossibly, perfectly, like a heart.
The sight sent a sharp pang through my chest. It was his thing. Hayato was the one who was always finding shapes in the clouds.
A memory, vivid and warm, surfaced from my high school days. We were on the school rooftop, the afternoon sun warm on our faces. I was complaining, agonizing over a girl I had a crush on, too shy to even send her a simple message.
"Look," Hayato had said suddenly, his voice quiet. He pointed to the sky. "There's one."
I followed his finger and saw it a perfect, heart-shaped cloud, just like the one outside my window now.
"Take a picture," he had insisted, a rare, small smile on his face. "Send it to her. It's a good excuse to start a conversation. Just say you saw it and it made you think of her."
He was always doing that. Finding excuses, creating strategies, quietly helping me build up the courage I lacked. He helped so much, and I was so wrapped up in my own teenage drama that I don't think I ever properly thanked him for it. I took the picture that day. And it worked.
As the last of the prayers were said, the crowd began to disperse. The late afternoon sun cast long, somber shadows across the cemetery as Hayato Mikami's colleagues walked back towards their cars. They left in small, quiet groups, their faces sad. Even those who barely knew him felt the loss. Murmurs of his quiet favors followed them—a complex spreadsheet he fixed without being asked, a crashing computer he brought back to life in minutes. Even though he was quiet, he had always helped them.
One person remained long after the others had gone. A young woman from the HR department named Mizuki stood before the fresh grave, clutching a single white lily. The others were sad, but Mizuki felt a profound, personal ache.
She remembered the panic of a looming deadline when her computer had frozen, and how Mikami-san, just passing by, had silently taken her keyboard and fixed the issue with a few arcane commands before walking away. She remembered struggling with a VLOOKUP formula for an hour, only for his finger to appear over her shoulder, pointing to the single, simple error in her syntax.
More than that, she remembered a month ago when she was desperately short on rent, trying to whisper discreetly on the phone. The next day, an unmarked envelope was on her desk with just enough cash inside to cover the difference. There was no note, but she knew. She had always known it was him.
Tears welled in her eyes as she looked at the newly turned earth. "Why? Why did you die, Mikami-san? I handled your personnel files. You had no serious diseases, no chronic conditions. You never even took a sick day. It doesn't make any sense."
Mizuki was so lost in her own sorrow that she didn't notice the large figure who came to stand beside her until his shadow fell over the grave. She didn't look up, just knew someone else was there.
Then, the silence was shattered. THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
The man was stomping his heel into the earth beside the grave, again and again, his powerful frame shaking with a violent, contained rage. Mizuki jumped, shocked out of her grief. "Hey! Stop it!" she cried, grabbing his heavily tattooed arm. "What are you doing?!"
He stopped, turning his head to look at her. His face was intimidating, a roadmap of old scars, but his eyes were watery, brimming with unshed tears. His expression was one of pure, desperate anguish.
"Coward," he snarled, his voice thick and cracking. He wasn't talking to her. He was talking to the grave. "I can't forgive you for dying. You... you helped me find my way. You were teaching me how to be a man."
He tried to pull away from her, his body trembling as he yelled down at the freshly turned earth. Mizuki held on, trying to steady him.
"Don't you remember, Mikami-dono?!" he roared, his voice finally breaking into a sob. "You helped me get out! Out of the yakuza! The only reason I left that life, the only reason I'm trying to get redemption, is because of YOU!"
He sagged against her, his anger spent, replaced by a wave of utter despair. "And now you're dead," he choked out. "I... I don't have anyone left to ask. How am I supposed to be a better man in this world now?"
Mizuki held him for a moment, a silent pillar of support as his sobs wracked his large frame. But then, he pulled away, his grief hardening back into a simmering, bitter anger. He didn't stomp this time. He paced back and forth in front of the grave, his tattooed hands clenched into tight, white-knuckled fists.
"He just leaves," the man snarled, his voice a low, ragged growl directed at the headstone. "He makes me promise. He shows me there's another way, a better way, and then he just... checks out. Vanishes. Without a single word."
He stopped pacing and glared at the freshly turned earth, his entire body trembling. "What am I supposed to do with that? Huh? He made it all sound so simple, like one of his damn business plans. But he was the only one I could ask. The only one who didn't see a yakuza monster when he looked at me."
His shoulders slumped, the rage finally burning out, leaving nothing but a hollow. "He was the only one," he whispered, his voice finally breaking. He sank to his knees before the grave, his head bowed, the fight finally gone from him.
***
The sounds of the city were different tonight. Louder. More joyful. Kerina had called it a festival, and she hadn't been exaggerating.
From the edge of the main plaza, I watched the celebration. A massive bonfire roared in the center of the square, its flickering light dancing across the faces of hundreds of people. They were singing, drinking, and laughing, their voices rising to the night sky in a chaotic but happy chorus. The air was thick with the smell of roasted meat and spilled ale.
I stood in the shadows of a side street, an observer, just as I had always been in the crowded plazas of Tokyo. The noise was a wall, the shared joy a language I didn't speak. It was just another sea of strangers, always in motion.
My eyes scanned the scene, my mind automatically analyzing the crowd dynamics, the guard patrols, the potential exits. But for a moment, the strategist in me went quiet. I saw an empty spot on a bench, just at the edge of the firelight. It wasn't in the middle of the chaos, but it wasn't in the total darkness, either.
I wondered if I could just go there. Sit down. Just for a moment. Blend in without trying.
To Be Continued.