The room was wrong.
Kiyotaka opened his eyes to a ceiling he did not recognize. The fluorescent bulb above him buzzed faintly, casting a yellow glow over cracked plaster walls. The bed beneath him sagged in the middle, lumpy and uneven. He had gone to sleep in the comfortable single of the Advanced Nurturing High School dormitory. This was not that bed.
He sat up without hesitation, scanning the room in silence. No windows, only a single door. A cheap wooden desk against the far wall. A backpack in one corner, partially unzipped. A refrigerator and a sink tucked into a cramped alcove.
No panic. No outward expression. He breathed evenly, as though this was nothing unusual.
First: assess the situation. Second: gather information. Third: act only once the framework of reality is understood.
He rose and crossed the room, inspecting the desk. On top of it lay a neat stack of papers.
The first sheet caught his attention: a birth certificate. His name. Ayanokoji Kiyotaka. The format was unfamiliar — issued in English, not Japanese. The seal read Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Beneath it: an identification card with his photograph. Below that, a lease contract for this very apartment.
His eyes lingered, expression neutral. The details were complete. Signatures. Stamps. Laminate security features. Holograms. Flawless.
Too flawless.
He flipped to the next document. An enrollment form for Winslow High School. His supposed grade: sophomore. Starting immediately.
Convenient. Suspiciously convenient. A new environment, complete documentation, and a prearranged role to play. Why? Who benefits?
He set the papers aside and unzipped the backpack. Inside: a water purifier, packaged rations, a bedroll, spare clothing. A folded map slid out. He opened it slowly across the desk.
Not Tokyo. Not Chiba. Not even Japan.
Brockton Bay.
The city was coastal, its districts carefully marked. He studied the English names: Downtown, the Docks, the Boardwalk. All foreign, none familiar.
He looked up, scanning the room again.
The refrigerator hummed steadily. He opened it. Milk, bread, and cheap packaged food — all labeled in English, yet he understood them perfectly. A detail worth noting.
Back at the desk, the desktop computer drew his attention. He powered it on. The screen glowed to life, the operating system clean, efficient, written in English but intuitive to navigate.
Files waited, neatly arranged. Digital bank records under his name. An email inbox full of mundane messages stretching back months. He clicked through, testing for inconsistencies. None. A complete digital history, as though he had lived here for years.
On the desk beside the monitor sat a portable drive. Its label: IHack. He did not plug it in immediately. Instead, he examined it under the desk lamp. Manufactured, not hand-assembled. The casing was pristine.
He placed it back down.
He spent the next half hour testing the environment. Under the bed, behind the refrigerator, along the plaster seams. No hidden microphones, no cameras, no obvious surveillance. The arrangement suggested privacy, but its very neatness was a red flag.
Finally, he returned to the documents and reread them from start to finish. His name. His history. His supposed future. All accounted for.
A trap? A test? Or perhaps something broader… relocation, not fabrication. The geography, the systems, the language itself—unfamiliar, yet internally consistent. If it were a simulation, flaws should already have surfaced.
The map remained spread across the desk. He traced the letters again with a fingertip.
Brockton Bay.
Not Tokyo. Not Japan.
And the realization settled with the same cold precision he had always carried:
This isn't the world I knew.
He leaned back in the chair, hands folded loosely in his lap, eyes narrowed slightly in thought.
The stage had shifted. The rules were unknown. The audience hidden. But none of that mattered.
He would adapt.
Always.
The refrigerator hummed on, the bulb buzzed overhead, and Ayanokouji Kiyotaka sat alone in a borrowed life, staring down at the name of a city that had never existed in his old world.