Tokyo's street night was alive.
Neon lights bled across wet asphalt, colors running together like paint spilled on black canvas. The air was thick with sound: laughter spilling from bars, music pulsing behind tinted windows, the hiss of tires on rain-slick streets. Vendors shouted, signs flickered, lives overlapped in the chaos of a city that never truly slept.
At one intersection, beneath the glow of a red pedestrian light, a young man stood waiting.
Kaien Ota. Twenty years old. His hair was a mess of brown, untamed, falling over sharp eyes lit faintly by the glow of his phone screen. His body was tall and well-built, wrapped in black from head to toe—shirt, jacket, pants, shoes. He dressed like shadow but carried himself with a confidence that refused to vanish into the crowd.
The light stayed red, but Kaien barely noticed. His thumb flicked across the phone, eyes darting from screen to the road ahead. The rumble of an engine approached—a heavy one, a truck barreling too fast down the rain-slick street.
Kaien's lips curled into a faint smile. He almost laughed.
The light did not change. Still, he stepped forward.
Gasps broke from those around him. A woman shrieked, a man cursed, an old man rushed forward as if to pull him back. But Kaien walked into the crosswalk as though acting out a scene, his phone still in hand, his head tilted toward the oncoming glare of headlights.
The truck driver, slumped and half-asleep, jolted awake too late. His eyes widened, horrified, but what he saw on the young man's face was not fear.
Kaien Ota smiled wider.
His eyes, brown and burning, glittered with excitement—madness, even. It was not the smile of a victim, but of someone who had just discovered a secret. To Kaien, the world slowed. The headlights stretched into eternity, the engine's roar became a hymn. In his mind, one thought blazed with certainty:
Perfect. This is exactly how it has to be.
For the orphan Kaien Ota, he was chūnibyō in flesh and blood. Since childhood he had carried the delusion that he was chosen, special, a king hidden among fools. Reality was dull, gray, beneath him. Only through imagination did he feel alive.
And now he was reenacting the ceremonial moment—the infamous truck that so often ferried mortals into worlds of fantasy. He would be struck down, and he would awaken in another life, greater and grander than this meaningless existence.
The truck slammed into him.
The impact thundered through the night. His body twisted violently, bones shattering like brittle wood, limbs bending at grotesque angles. Blood burst across the pavement, streaking the crosswalk red. He was flung like a ragdoll, rolling across the asphalt until he came to a broken halt.
People screamed.
The old man collapsed in shock. The driver stumbled out of the cab, pale and trembling, curses spilling from his mouth. "No… no, no, Fuck no…" he muttered, voice breaking into sobs.
Kaien's chest heaved once, faintly, his broken face smeared with blood. But even as his consciousness slipped, his lips carried a faint curve. His last thought burned bright, wild, unrepentant.
This is it.
Then the darkness took him.
For a moment the world continued in chaos. Screams, headlights, rain, sirens faint in the distance. But then—silence.
The city froze. The driver hung mid-step, tears caught on his cheek like glass beads. The crowd stood petrified, mouths open in noiseless cries. Even the rain itself halted mid-fall, droplets suspended in the air like tiny jewels.
Above Kaien's corpse, reality tore.
A ripple spread across the air, jagged like a wound splitting skin. From it poured lightless colors, void twisting, the unbearable sight of something outside creation forcing its way in.
Through the rift stepped a figure.
It was vast, infinite, but compressed into human shape. Its body rippled with void, stars burning faintly beneath its surface. Constellations swam in its eyes, fiery and strange, their glow shifting in ways that no sane mind could follow. This was the Celestial who had quarreled against logic, the one who believed in imagination's chaos above all else.
He gazed down at Kaien's mangled body and the faint trace of a smile still left on bloodied lips. A low rumble passed from him, like the hum of stars collapsing.
"Yes…" the Celestial whispered. "This one is… perfect."
He crouched, the vastness of his form folding like smoke, and stretched a hand over the corpse. His galaxies spun faster, reflecting visions beyond mortal comprehension.
"This one carries no fear of death. He welcomes it. He embraces the absurd. Even now, he grins in the face of annihilation. A mortal who leaps into headlights not to escape, but to fulfill a fantasy. Madness such as this… is creation unbound."
From Kaien's chest floated a small orb, glowing faintly blue, pulsing erratically like a wild heartbeat. His soul. It shimmered with chaotic energy, trembling in patterns that no logic could chart. Even in death it carried the echo of delusion, the mad conviction that the world bent to him.
The Celestial's voice deepened, galaxies burning brighter in his eyes.
"His life looked hollow. A fool, they would say. A boy trapped in dreams. Yet within, his mind was aflame—twisting markets as games, chasing visions no sane man could grasp, seeing not the world as it was but as it might be. He is no broken thing. He is the spark of fire itself. He is creation given form."
The Celestial closed his hand around the orb. Power folded around it, wrapping the fragile glow in protective brilliance. The soul steadied, its wild pulse resonating against the eternal grip.
He lingered for a moment, his vast presence pressing against the frozen city. The lights flickered as though bowing. The suspended raindrops shimmered like diamonds under his gaze.
"My rival will have chosen his own," he rumbled. "Logic and invention. Cold steel and reason. But this one—ah, this one is mine. And he will prove that creative madness breaks all cages."
With that, his form folded into the rift, slipping back into the void. The tear sealed itself shut, reality knitting together as though nothing had happened.
The city resumed.
The screams of the crowd erupted once more. The driver collapsed to his knees, clutching his head in despair. The old man sobbed into his hands. Sirens wailed closer, red and blue lights soon to bathe the scene.
But Kaien Ota's body lay empty, an abandoned husk. His soul was gone—taken beyond their reach, claimed by the infinite.
The second candidate had been chosen.
______________________
The moon lay silent.
Its pale surface stretched endless and barren, scarred by craters that had watched eons pass. No wind stirred, no sound carried—yet upon that still and airless desert sat two beings vast enough to eclipse the craters beneath them.
They were Celestials. Colossal forms of living night, their skin woven from nebulae, their eyes spiraling with galaxies. To gaze upon them was to look into eternity itself, infinity compressed into silhouettes that resembled men only by convenience. They faced each other across the moon's gray expanse, seated like gods upon thrones of nothing.
Their voices were not sound, yet they shook the void like storms.
The Celestial who believes Logic Reign Supreme spoke first. His voice was steady, exact, heavy with certainty.
"I have chosen."
His counterpart, the Celestial who believes Creativity Reign Supreme, tilted his star-wrought head, constellations flickering like laughter in his eyes. He said nothing, waiting.
The logical one continued, his tone carrying the sharp edge of a blade through stone.
"Aoshi Minamoto. A frail human, thin as a shadow. Orphaned. Forgotten. His body was weak, his life insignificant. Yet within his mind burned a relentless fire. Calculation upon calculation. Weapons designed but never forged. Engines and equations beyond his world's grasp. He lived in obscurity, tied to nothing, bound to no one. He died with nothing but his knowledge. This… is perfection."
He paused. The galaxies in his eyes swirled with faint pride.
"This human embodies my truth: that progress lies in discipline, invention, and the clarity of reason."
For a moment silence held. The stars flickered faintly across their vast skins.
Then the Celestial who believes Creativity Reign Supreme, his voice rolling like strange music across the void.
"And I," he said, "have chosen one far different."
He leaned forward, galaxies burning brighter, a strange delight in his tone.
"Kaien Ota. A young lonely man who smiled as he walked into death. Who stepped before a roaring truck as though it were a stage prop, and greeted annihilation with joy. Not accident, not despair—choice. He believed he was chosen, destined, the hero of his own mind. He died laughing at the headlights, certain that rebirth awaited him. A madman, yes—but a true madman."
The Celestial who believes Logic Reign Supreme faltered. His galaxies stilled, uncertain. "A human like that… exists?"
"He does," the other answered, voice gleaming. "And he is mine."
Silence returned, heavy as the void. Yet within it, the truth could not be denied. Kaien Ota was madness incarnate, a perfect mirror to Aoshi Minamoto's cold logic.
At last, the Celestial who believes Creativity Reign Supreme rumbled with approval. "This little human is fortunate. His fantasy of reincarnation—today, it comes true."
For a time, they sat in stillness, their colossal forms etched against the dead light of the moon. Two gods of opposing belief, bound now by a single wager.
The logical one spoke again, voice cutting sharp as obsidian.
"Then let us decide where. A world worthy of the test. Not peace. Not comfort. Strife. Struggle. A crucible where neither of them may live quietly, but must claw their way through blood and ruin."
The other inclined his vast head, constellations dancing like sparks. "Yes. A stage worthy of both genius and madness."
Together, they closed their galactic eyes.
They searched—not outward, but inward, through memory stretched across eternity. They recalled worlds they had wandered: planets aflame, wastelands of ice, seas where leviathans slept, realms of sorcery spilling fire through the sky. Yet each they cast aside. Too simple. Too pure. Too empty.
They sought balance. Steel and blood. Sorcery and soot. War without end.
And then—they found it.
Buried deep in their eternal recollection was a world not of this universe but of another. A realm where kingdoms devoured kingdoms, where factories bellowed black smoke into poisoned skies, where engines of iron and engines of flesh both screamed across the battlefield. Where magic burned through men like wildfire, and death was not exception but law.
This was no paradise. It was a forge.
The Celestial who believes Logic Reign Supreme opened his eyes. "This is the place."
The Celestial who believes Creativity Reign Supreme grinned, constellations alight like wildfire. "Yes… let them loose there. Let invention and insanity bleed together. Let us see which survives."
Their gazes met. For one instant, the two infinities aligned, vast and terrible, yet perfectly in accord.
They rose.
The surface of the moon trembled beneath their impossible weight, though no stone cracked, no dust stirred. With hands of galaxies, they reached out—not to the stars, but to the fabric of reality itself.
Together, they tore.
The void split. A wound opened across the sky above the moon, folding and twisting in on itself, spilling light that did not belong to this universe. The edges burned like molten glass, the core swirling with alien brilliance.
They looked into it.
Without a word, they stepped forward.
The tear swallowed them whole. Their colossal bodies dissolved into the blaze, leaving the moon behind, silent once more, its scars unchanged, as if no gods had ever sat upon it.
Beyond the wound, they entered the place they had chosen.
The world of endless war.
The stage where their wager would begin.