"I! Really want to become human!!"
In the night-shrouded Tokyo, on an old pedestrian overpass not far from a subway station, a girl's cry echoed.
"All that 'love and love' every day, you'll settle down after two days of work!"
Suddenly, an equally loud response came from under the bridge.
"Huh?" The blue-haired girl on the bridge was startled by the sudden human voice amidst the rushing traffic, while another short-haired gray-haired girl, who had just mustered her courage, shivered from the fright.
Seeing her companion's reaction, the blue-haired girl instantly puffed up her cheeks in annoyance, also feeling a bit embarrassed like a chuunibyou caught in the act. Like a cute blue octopus, she leaned her head slightly out of the overpass, letting the wind blow through her hair and black hairband, dancing into a glimmer under the moonlight.
She wanted to see who was talking back.
However, what she saw was a figure without a helmet, illegally driving a two-wheeled motor vehicle, speeding away as the motorcycle accelerated. The only striking feature was the blue and white hospital gown on the person, reflecting light under the vehicle's headlights.
...
Bustling, our city.
Letting the wind pull at his collar, making the buttons of his hospital gown pull the sides of his clothes like Spider-Man pulling a train, Keli sped on his motorcycle.
"Excuse me, can you spit me out?"
Hearing the voice in his mind, Keli couldn't help but marvel.
"As expected of fresh ingredients, it even talks after being eaten!"
Hearing Keli's reply, the voice from within his mind couldn't help but get agitated.
"You lunatic! Isn't your soul from another world? I told you, I'm not seafood! I am the offspring of an ancient god! My mother's corpse turned into ocean waves, and I was born on your shore! And you, while I was weak and listening to the sounds of your entire city to understand your civilization, you cooked me!"
"What? You think I haven't played Bloodborne?! I didn't expect your underwater spiritual and cultural development to be so comprehensive. Are there also many fish in Bikini Bottom who curse Hidetaka Miyazaki?"
The voice in Keli's head was clearly enraged by Keli's words.
"Have you ever seen an ordinary seafood that can talk?!"
"Of course not ordinary seafood, aren't you a mutated fish affected by nuclear radiation? This is Japan, I understand, that's much more reasonable than you being from the underwater city of Lalaye."
Keli's words left the voice in his head speechless for a moment.
After a while, the voice in Keli's head spoke again.
"Let me see your memories! What exactly is going on with you?!
Hmm... you are indeed not a soul from this world. Because of your outsider nature, you are often entangled by strange things. Let me see...
When you arrived in this world, your body was 15 years old, and you were already in a mental hospital as soon as you arrived.
When you were 16, a thing calling itself the 'World Modulation System' appeared in your head. That thing modified your brain, no wonder you can communicate with me and don't have your brain boiling like your peers when they hear our language.
That thing allowed you to freely edit the world, so you decided to add 'Cultivation, Incubators and Magical Girls, Magnetic Field Rotation, Spiral Power, Valhalla, Chakra, Trisolarians, Warp, Anti-Demon Ninjas, Cosmic God Thrones, Cosmos, Light of the Soul, Gourmet Cells, Duel Spirits, Cthulhu Evil Gods, SCP...' to the world and set yourself as the strongest in the world with fixed power. 0
When someone can break through the impossible limits and defeat you, you hand over the modulation system's authority to them, and you even think it's worth dying to see such a scene???"
Muttering to this point, the voice took a non-existent deep breath before continuing.
"When you were 17, your thoughts matured due to experience, and a thing calling itself the 'Love Simulation System' appeared in your head, automatically loading all language modules for you. Then you casually found a woman to simulate, and when you tried to simulate a future of global communism for the 178th time, the thing called the system ran away???"
The voice was already a bit numb.
"Then when you were 19, a thing calling itself the 'Underworld System' appeared in your head, stating that you only needed to constantly be lustful to gain more abilities, and gave you an initial reward of hypnotizing 10 people. So you immediately escaped the hospital and headed to America.
While the system regretted that you didn't like Asian tastes and wanted some European and American style, it discovered that you wanted to use the hypnosis quota to hypnotize the president during a presidential speech, then use him to introduce more politicians, bureaucrats, and capitalists, hypnotizing them all to achieve your true goal of making them stop supporting certain invading countries while sending troops to Africa and Mexico to eliminate local forces and help them develop stably.
The system was so enraged by this functionally normal but utterly Slaanesh-less thing that it fainted and left???
"The reason you escaped the mental hospital now is because you calculated the time was approaching and were preparing to go to Nara to witness the live assassination of Japan's number one gunman and take photos as a memento???"
The voice, which had originally been filled with righteous indignation, gradually softened, until finally, it let out a sudden, relieved laugh.
What can I say?
This guy is truly a god among men.
"I've seen your memories. Do you really want the power to change the world?"
"Can you shut up? You're being too loud!"
"What if I can give you that power?"
"Godfather, is that true?"
"You, all you think about is everyone!"
At this moment, Keli had arrived at a sparsely populated roadside and parked his motorcycle, which had run out of gas.
And that voice spoke again.
"However, you don't actually need my help. Since you can digest my flesh and not die, you can obtain an immortal and ageless body."
Hearing the voice in his head, he replied unhurriedly.
"What? Isn't that an Onmyoji meme? Next time you use it, remember to cite your source. Just because you were cooked by me and looked like you came from Innsmouth before, doesn't mean I'll treat you like a Deep One!"
In 15th-century Japan, a legend circulated in the Hokkaido region about a woman who accidentally ate mermaid flesh and lived for 800 years without aging or dying.
It seemed Keli's reply was too abstract, as the voice in his head seemed to stutter for a moment before replying.
"Hehehehe, but immortality alone isn't enough, so I've also arranged a few companions for you, and you will all be tormented by endless hunger. This can be considered the curse for you killing my body..."
It seemed that thing was truly reading Keli's memories, and as the amount read increased, its way of thinking and tone became more human-like.
As the voice faded, Keli felt as if some information had been inserted into his mind.
That information stated that he could not be killed, and even if he were killed, he would revive in a random corner of the Earth. He would not be injured, and even if injured, he would heal instantly. However, he would be tormented by hunger and unable to die. Even if the Earth and humanity perished, he would drift alone in the universe...
This was a curse, and it also represented the resentment of the entity that cast it. Since your mind is full of everyone, then go protect these people. If one day humanity disappears from this world, then you will endure endless torment and solitude.
Keli looked left and right, and after the voice disappeared, he gently stroked his chin.
"Sigh! Could it be that Doctor Asagami was telling the truth? Why do I always have these strange auditory and visual hallucinations, and why are these upper and lower sections connected?
I really hope I can recover soon, otherwise, it's too strange that such a normal person like me is confined in a mental hospital and has to outsmart the caregivers just to go out.
No, this outfit is a bit too conspicuous for wandering around Tokyo."
As he spoke, Keli looked down at his chest, where a sign hung that read "Tokyo University Hospital, Department of Psychiatry," with a line of red Japanese text below it: "This subject is an extremely dangerous psychiatric patient. Citizens who find this subject should immediately call..."
As Keli pondered, his keen eyes spotted a slightly tipsy salaryman, clearly just finished with entertaining clients, walking under a distant streetlamp. Keli's eyes immediately lit up.
Keli walked over openly, and as he approached, he could hear the salaryman's complaints.
"Damn it! These relaxed generations! Because they don't marry and have no pressure, they dare to talk back to their seniors and quit if they're not satisfied! They don't consider seniority or student loan debt at all! They don't understand how hard it is to find a job in society now!
He just dumped all the work on the newcomers, and he dared to disrespect me in front of so many people! What an asshole!"
It's unclear if it was due to Japan's unique culture of "drunken words are just words," but the salaryman was shouting quite loudly at the moment.
As this office worker walked forward, seething with anger, he saw Keli walking towards him.
"Another brat wandering around! Don't you people have jobs? Don't people who don't even have entertainment get lectured when they go home? The future of Japan is being ruined by you!"
Upon seeing Keli, the salaryman, still filled with that earlier resentment, couldn't help but say a few more words.
"Hello, may I borrow some clothes?" Keli asked very politely, wondering to himself, 'Aren't Japanese people supposed to dislike troubling others?'
"Stop joking around! Are you trying to pick a fight, kid?"
Keli's behavior seemed to infuriate the other party. He stepped forward and raised his hand in a pushing gesture.
This was also commonplace in Japan. In the current era, even the once-feared yakuza who dared to assassinate political candidates were like stray dogs on the street. They could be arrested on the spot by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department for simply asking for a price too loudly at a convenience store.
Even if everyone was filled with negative emotions due to immense life pressure, they wouldn't actually resort to violence. At most, they would make such provocative gestures. If the other party was provoked into striking, retaliating would be self-defense, and not even retaliating could lead to severe extortion.
Similar tactics included 'air head pats,' which in practice were like sending the 'head pat' emote in Naruto, the 'taunt' button in Shadowverse, 'weak' in League of Legends, or 'four question marks' in Battle Spirits. Countless young people fell for these, got into fights, and were then extorted.
However, because such incidents became common, fewer people fall for them now. So it's just picking a fight. Usually, in such situations, either both parties engage in a 'virtual patting' session where nothing happens, or one party endures and leaves.
However, Keli was clearly not an ordinary person.
"I only need one sentence, and you will give me your clothes."
Looking at the salaryman, who was waving his arms up and down in front of him like a wall-climbing doll from Pokémon, Keli spoke calmly.
"Huh? What do you think you are? One sentence? You kids are really ruined by light novels! Do you think there's anything supernatural in reality? When I was at Waseda, I was also the vice president of the Karate Club..."
Keli pulled out a gleaming dagger from his pocket and pointed it at the salaryman's chest.
"Hello, this is a robbery!"
...
A few minutes later, Keli, dressed in a salaryman's suit, held his phone and hid in a blind spot from surveillance cameras.
He hadn't expected the other party to be so warm-hearted. After learning that he was drifting alone in Tokyo, the man not only gave him his clothes but also handed over his mobile phone and two Fukuzawa Yukichi bills from his wallet.
This made Keli feel a warmth in this cold, foreign land.
It just meant his route to Nara would need to be re-planned. Taking the bullet train or anything similar would surely lead to arrest, and then he would be beaten to his knees and dragged back to be a miserable slave, just like those Black patients he used to whip with restraints to extract cotton from their blankets.
Earlier, at the hospital, he seemed to have heard from a patient in the next room, who supposedly developed cognitive impairment from playing Yu-Gi-Oh!, that the outside world was now in a "great girl band era."
Keli immediately decided that if he were lucky enough to get a Bong Dori world Crossing card, then after seeing how Tsuchimikado-酱 went from prime minister to former prime minister, he would definitely go to a Roselia concert to hear a live version of "Fire Bird."
For so many years, besides the mental hospital's general education films, he hadn't really seen much of this world's situation.
With anticipation, Keli opened the phone, which he had unlocked using the kind old man's fingerprint, and started reading the news.
The first news item that caught his eye was particularly striking.
"Breaking! Multiple male high school students in the Tokyo area involved in unexpected incidents! Citizens, please do not believe the circulating rumors..."
Seeing such a headline, Keli clicked on it, very curious. Was it some kind of homosexual crime? How could something like this be on the front page of a news website?
Then Keli saw several related terms.
"Male high school student Sato XX, walking on the street, suddenly hugged a little girl on the road, suspected of wanting to act heroically but was scared to death by a tractor..."
"Male high school student Re:Zero X, disappeared under convenience store surveillance footage while buying cola downstairs..."
"Male high school student Ryuguin XX mysteriously disappeared during school lunch break..."
Keli looked closely and confirmed that this was indeed a news website, to the extent that NHK might even charge cable TV fees because this website allowed access to related reports. So, he exited that message and scrolled through other news.
"Megure Jusan, Inspector of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, Criminal Investigation Department, First Investigation Division, Third Violent Crime Investigation Section, due to solving numerous bizarre cases over the past several years, has now been promoted to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's Sexual Crimes..."
Big-headed Fukuwa is making moves, huh?