The room was silent but for the faint hum of the refrigerator and the drone of the ceiling bulb.
Kiyotaka powered on the desktop again. The operating system greeted him with a sterile login screen, his name preloaded. He entered the password — password123. Too obvious. Whoever had arranged this hadn't cared about subtlety.
The desktop unfolded, clean and minimal. A web browser icon waited in the corner. He clicked it.
The connection was immediate. A status bar flickered green.
The homepage was a news site: Brockton Bay Times.
He scanned the front page, eyes narrowing slightly. Articles about dockworkers striking. A protest over factory closures. A local boardwalk renovation project stalled due to crime.
He clicked into the sidebar. The date sat at the top of the page. June 18, 2009.
He stared at the numbers for several long seconds, no movement in his expression.
2009. Not 2016. Not Tokyo. Another inconsistency stacked atop the rest. New geography. New identity. New timeline.
His cursor drifted back to the headlines. Crime statistics. Mentions of gangs: the ABB, the Empire Eighty-Eight. Foreign names, foreign conflicts.
He opened a new tab. Typed slowly: Japan.
Search results appeared. Japan existed. Tokyo existed. The globe was familiar. Yet when he searched Chiba, the details differed. Neighborhood names missing. Rail lines altered. Some companies never founded.
The framework was Earth — but not his Earth.
He sat back in the chair.
Parallel world. Alternate history. Simulation remains possible but probability decreases with every consistent detail.
Another search. Advanced Nurturing High School. No results. He tried Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School. Nothing.
The screen glowed, reflecting faintly in his gray eyes.
He opened the preloaded bookmarks. Most were mundane: bank portals, email, weather reports. One stood out: Parahumans Online.
The title alone drew pause. He clicked.
A stark forum interface filled the screen. Threads listed in rows: New Hero in Boston, ABB activity increasing?, Protectorate vs. New Wave, Speculation on the Triumvirate.
His eyes lingered on the usernames, the back-and-forth discussions. Talk of powers. People describing capes. Not as fiction, but as present reality.
He opened a random thread: "Are Wards allowed to date civilians?"
The posts spoke casually of Wards, the PRT, hero teams. As though these were government institutions, not stories.
He switched to another: "Villain capes sighted near the Docks."
Photos accompanied the post — grainy, but clear enough to show figures in costumes. A man in a white mask with flame motifs. Another in insectile armor.
Not fiction. News.
He leaned forward, reading deeper. Acronyms surfaced again and again: PRT, Protectorate, Think Tank, Tinker. Concepts alien to his world but internally consistent here.
Powers. Superhuman abilities. Codified, categorized, institutionalized.
And the forum stretched back years, archived threads dating to the early 2000s. Thousands of discussions, countless users. Too vast to fabricate.
He searched parahumans definition.
The result: "An individual with superhuman abilities, generally triggered under extreme psychological or physical duress. Commonly referred to as 'capes.'"
He let his hand fall away from the mouse.
Another layer revealed. A world not only divergent in geography and time, but populated by individuals with extraordinary powers. Organized. Named. Known.
The glow of the monitor lit the quiet apartment. He remained motionless, processing.
Someone placed me here, prepared this identity, provided tools. The question is no longer whether this is real. It is. The question is why. For what purpose?
The forum scrolled on, endless conversations about heroes, villains, powers. He scanned a thread pinned at the top: "Event Timeline: Parahuman History." It charted decades of recorded cape activity — from the first known appearance in the early 1980s, to recent incidents across the United States.
He read without pause, absorbing everything.
The words blurred slightly as he considered the implications.
If powers exist… if they are commonplace… then the entire social fabric is reshaped around them. Military, politics, even day-to-day survival.
He shifted back in the chair, the faintest narrowing of his eyes.
This is not Japan. Not Earth as I knew it. Not the past. This is a constructed stage — or a transfer to another world entirely. Whichever it is, the conclusion is the same: I have been inserted into a reality where power is the only currency that matters.
The refrigerator hummed on, the bulb buzzed faintly overhead, and Ayanokouji Kiyotaka sat in silence before the glowing monitor.
The words on the screen remained fixed at the top of the forum page, a banner declaring the community's purpose:
Parahumans Online — Discussing Capes and Their World.