Kenji's life was not his own. It belonged to his family. Every day was the same long road of work. He woke up tired and went to bed even more tired.
His father was dead. He left behind memories and bills. Kenji was now the man of the house. It was a heavy job for a young man.
His sister, Hana, was smart. She needed to stay in school. School cost a lot of money. Kenji had to find that money.
His mother was sick. Her body was weak, and the sickness was winning. She needed medicine to fight it. The medicine was very expensive.
So Kenji worked. He took any job he could find. He did not have time for friends. He did not have time for fun. His only goal was to make money.
In the morning, he worked at a small bookstore. The store was quiet and smelled like old paper. He put books on shelves and helped customers. He was just a shadow moving between the aisles.
He saw people buy books about adventure and magic. Those worlds were not for him. His world was real and hard. A book was just an item to sell.
After the bookstore, he did not go home. He went to a park or a library to do his second job. This job paid the most. It was the job that kept his family alive.
He drew pictures for a manga. A strange author sent him stories every week. Kenji never met the author. He never even heard his voice.
The stories came in a plain brown package. The instructions were always short and clear. Draw these words. Make them into pictures. The money was always good.
This author was a ghost. A rich ghost who paid Kenji to be his hands. The work was hard, and the hours were long. But Kenji needed the money too much to say no.
When his drawing was done, he rushed to his third job. He worked at a ramen shop in the evening. It was loud and hot. The smell of soup was always in the air.
He washed endless piles of bowls. His hands were always wet and sore. He served food to people who were happy and laughing. He felt like he was watching them from behind a thick wall of glass.
He would finally get home very late at night. The small apartment was always dark. He would look in on his mother. Her breathing was soft and low. He would look at his sister, asleep with her books.
Seeing them gave him the strength to do it all again the next day. This was his life. Work, worry, and a deep, quiet pain. He felt more like a machine than a person.
The story he drew was famous. It was about a hero who saved the world. But Kenji did not like the story. It felt wrong to him. It felt cruel.
The author made the world seem simple. Good people won and bad people lost. There was no room for mistakes. There was no room for forgiveness.
Kenji really hated the villain. His name was Azrael Ashveil. The author wrote him as a bad person from the very first page. A dark soul with no good in him.
But Kenji read the words and saw something else. He saw a boy who was hurt by the world. Azrael was not born a monster. The world turned him into one.
Azrael had a hard life. His parents were dead. He only had one family member left, his older sister. She was in charge of their family name now.
She acted cold and distant. She never showed any love for him. But Kenji could see in the story that she cared. She just did not know how to show it. She protected him in her own quiet way.
Azrael fell in love with a girl. She was the only good thing in his life. He told her that he loved her. He opened his heart to her completely.
She said no. She chose the hero of the story instead. The hero was handsome and strong and good. Azrael was just a sad boy from a dark family. Her rejection broke something inside him.
Soon after, he had to get married. He was only eighteen. It was a political marriage, a deal his parents made before they died. His sister made sure he went through with it to protect their family's standing.
His wife was a young girl from another noble family. She was forced into the marriage, just like him. She was scared of him. She was always quiet and sad.
The rejection and the forced marriage made Azrael bitter. The small bit of hope he had was gone. He started to act like the villain everyone thought he was.
But he was not a great villain. He was just a minor problem. He did not try to take over the world. He did not kill people.
He just said bad things about the hero. He was jealous and angry. He made small, stupid plans to make the hero look bad. He tried to cause trouble for the girl who rejected him. He was a bitter, heartbroken boy.
The story, however, treated him like a major threat. The hero decided he had to be stopped. For the crime of being a nuisance, the hero came to punish him.
The punishment was death. The author decided that Azrael had to be killed for his small crimes. It was not fair. It was cruel.
The hero defeated him easily. Azrael was not a fighter. He was just a sad noble. He was brought down in front of everyone.
The worst part was seeing who stood with the hero. The girl Azrael loved was there. She held the hero's hand and looked at Azrael with hate. She was happy to see him punished.
Then he saw his wife. She was standing behind the hero. She looked scared, but also relieved. She was happy he was being taken down.
He was being thrown away, and the two women in his life were there to watch. It was the ultimate betrayal. It destroyed him completely.
He had been changing, slowly. Living with his quiet wife, he started to feel something for her. He understood her pain because it was like his own. But he never got the chance to explore that feeling.
He knew in that moment he was completely alone. The world never gave him a chance. It wanted a villain, so he became one. Now it was time for the villain to die.
As the hero prepared to kill him, Azrael fell to his knees. He was not a villain anymore. He was just a broken man.
He looked at the sky and begged God for help. He asked for another chance. A chance to do things differently. A chance to find some small happiness.
God did not answer. The hero's sword came down. Azrael's life was over.
Kenji drew the last picture. His hand was shaking. The image of Azrael's face, full of pain and regret, burned in his mind. He felt so angry at the story.
He felt a strange link to Azrael. Both of them were trapped. Both of them were suffering in a world that did not care.
That night, Kenji felt very strange. The room started to spin. All the sounds from the street outside faded away. His body felt weak and light.
He fell to the floor. He thought he was dying from working too hard. He closed his eyes and waited for the end.
But he opened them again. He was not on the floor of his cheap apartment. He was in a big, beautiful room. He was lying in a soft bed.
He got up and looked at his hands. They were not his hands. They were not rough and full of cuts. They were soft and clean.
He walked to a large mirror on the wall. The face looking back at him was not his. It was the face of Azrael Ashveil. He was inside the story. He was the villain. And then, everything went black.