Part 1: The End
The apartment was quiet—too quiet.
Yamada Kenji sat alone on his worn couch, the blue glow of the TV flickering across his tired face. At forty-two, his life had become a predictable routine: wake up, commute, work, return, repeat. The only color in his gray existence came from the manga volumes stacked against the wall and the anime figures collecting dust on the shelf.
When did I become so... empty?
He took another sip of beer, the third can of the night. Tomorrow was Saturday, which meant he'd spend it the same way—alone, reading, watching, existing but not living. No wife. No children. No close friends anymore. Just him and his hobbies, the only things that never judged him for being boring, unremarkable Yamada Kenji.
The rom-com anime on screen showed a father playing with his daughter in a park. The man lifted the little girl onto his shoulders, her laughter bright and pure. The mother watched them with a warm smile, the picture of a complete family.
Something twisted in Yamada's chest. Not quite jealousy—he'd long since given up on that dream. More like a dull, persistent ache. A recognition of what could have been, if he'd been braver. More social. Less afraid of rejection.
I wonder what that feels like. To be needed. To matter to someone.
The father on screen caught his daughter as she jumped from the swing, spinning her around while she shrieked with joy. "Papa! Again! Again!"
Yamada finished his beer and crushed the can slowly. The aluminum crinkled in his grip, the sound loud in the silent apartment.
When did I stop trying?
He stood up, swaying slightly. The convenience store was still open. He needed more beer if he was going to make it through another weekend of solitude. Maybe he'd pick up the new manga volume that came out this week. At least fictional characters wouldn't judge him for his pathetic existence.
The remote fell from the couch as he shuffled toward the door. He didn't bother picking it up.
The night air was cool against his flushed face as Yamada walked down the empty street. It was nearly midnight—the time when Tokyo shifted from bustling metropolis to eerie quiet. The convenience store's fluorescent lights beckoned like a beacon in the darkness, the only bright thing on the entire block.
His footsteps echoed off the buildings. A cat yowled somewhere in an alley. A distant train rumbled past on elevated tracks.
This is my life, Yamada thought, hands shoved in his pockets. Walking alone to buy beer at midnight. Going home to an empty apartment. Waking up to do it all again.
The intersection ahead was completely empty. No cars. No people. Just him and the blinking traffic light cycling through its colors for an audience of none.
He started across, not bothering to check for traffic.
Then he heard it.
Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.
A red ball rolled into the intersection, glowing under the streetlights like a drop of blood on asphalt.
"Ah! My ball!"
Yamada's head snapped up. A little girl—no older than five—ran into the street after the ball, pigtails bouncing, completely oblivious to the world around her. She wore a bright yellow dress that made her look like a small sunflower, and her face was scrunched up in concentration as she chased her toy.
"Where are you going?! Come back here!"
A woman's voice, panicked, coming from the sidewalk. The mother—young, harried, juggling shopping bags and trying to grab the girl. But the child was faster, already in the middle of the intersection, bending down to pick up her ball with a triumphant laugh.
Then Yamada heard it: the roar of an engine, the sound of a car moving far too fast for a residential area.
His head turned.
Headlights blazed around the corner, blinding white. A black sports car, low and sleek and moving like a bullet. The driver's face was visible for just a moment—young, male, looking down at something. A phone. He wasn't watching the road.
Time slowed.
Yamada saw it all with terrible clarity. The little girl standing in the center of the intersection, clutching her red ball and smiling. The car barreling toward her, maybe fifty meters away and closing fast. The mother on the sidewalk, frozen in horror, her scream building in her throat.
The driver looked up.
His eyes went wide.
Tires screeched as he slammed the brakes, but Yamada knew—knew—it was too late. Physics didn't care about regret. The car would hit the girl before it could stop.
Three seconds until impact.
Yamada's body moved before his mind could catch up. The beer cans fell from his hands, clattering on the asphalt. His legs—weak from years of desk work and poor diet—somehow found the strength to sprint. His arms—unused to anything more strenuous than lifting manga volumes—pumped at his sides.
Two seconds.
The little girl looked up, finally seeing the car. Her smile vanished. Her eyes went wide with confusion—too young to understand death, but old enough to recognize danger.
One second.
"Get out of the way!"
Yamada didn't know who shouted it—himself, the mother, the driver. His vision tunneled to a single point: the little girl in the yellow dress. His legs burned. His lungs screamed. His heart hammered against his ribs.
Just a little further—
His shoulder slammed into the girl's small body. She felt impossibly light as he shoved her with every ounce of strength he had. She flew backward, away from the car's path, hitting the asphalt hard but safe, alive.
Then the world exploded in pain.
The impact was nothing like the movies. There was no dramatic flip over the hood. No slow-motion arc through the air. Just sudden, catastrophic force—like being hit by a train.
Yamada felt bones break. Felt his body crumple and twist in ways it was never meant to. Felt himself lifted and thrown, ragdolling across the asphalt.
He landed hard, skidding to a stop in a broken heap.
Oh.
So this is it.
Yamada found himself on his back, staring up at the night sky. Stars twinkled between the buildings—when was the last time he'd looked at the stars? He couldn't feel his legs. His arms wouldn't respond to commands. Everything below his chest felt distant, like it belonged to someone else. Warm liquid pooled beneath him, spreading in a dark circle.
I'm dying.
The realization was strangely peaceful. No fear. No regret. Just... acceptance.
Faces appeared above him, swimming in and out of focus. The driver, pale and shaking, his phone forgotten on the ground. A woman—the mother?—her face streaked with tears. And the little girl, clutched in her mother's arms, crying but alive, safe, whole.
"Someone call an ambulance!"
"He came out of nowhere—I didn't see him—"
"Sir! Sir, can you hear me?! Stay with us!"
Sirens wailed in the distance, but Yamada knew they'd arrive too late. He could feel it—the cold creeping in from his extremities, climbing steadily toward his heart. Each breath came harder than the last. His vision was dimming at the edges, darkness encroaching like a curtain falling.
The little girl broke free from her mother's arms. She approached him on unsteady legs, tears streaming down her chubby cheeks. Up close, she looked even younger—maybe four? Her yellow dress was torn at the knee from where she'd hit the ground. A small price to pay.
"Mister?" Her voice was high and trembling. "Mister, wake up! You saved me! You're a hero! Heroes don't sleep!"
Yamada tried to speak but only managed a weak cough. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. The mother pulled the girl back, holding her tight, but the child kept reaching toward him.
"Thank you," the mother sobbed. "Thank you, thank you, please—you have to hold on—"
But Yamada was already smiling. It hurt—God, everything hurt—but he smiled anyway.
I did something that mattered. Finally.
Forty-two years of existence, and this moment—these few seconds—outweighed all of it. The lonely nights. The empty weekends. The decades of feeling useless and invisible. None of it mattered anymore.
Because that little girl was alive.
Because her mother would tuck her into bed tonight.
Because somewhere, somehow, he'd made a difference.
If I could have one more chance, Yamada thought as his vision narrowed to a pinpoint, I'd want to do this again. Protect more smiles like hers. Be someone's hero. Be someone's...
Someone's...
Father.
The thought came with surprising clarity. Not biological necessity, but the desire to be needed. To matter. To protect and nurture and give someone the safety and love he'd never quite found for himself.
If I could do it all again... I'd want to be a father. A real one. The kind that kid deserves.
The darkness claimed him.
The last thing Yamada Kenji saw was the little girl's face, tear-streaked but alive, reaching for him with small hands.
Then—nothing.
Part 2: The Void
There was nothing.
No light. No sound. No sensation. Not even the feeling of floating—just... existence. A consciousness without form, aware but untethered, drifting in an infinite expanse of absolute emptiness.
Is this death?
Yamada Kenji—or what remained of him—existed in the nothingness. There was no fear. Pain had ceased the moment his heart stopped. There was only the strange, detached awareness of being without being anywhere.
Am I in heaven? Hell? Purgatory?
No answer came. No divine judgment. No tunnel of light. Just the void, stretching endlessly in all directions that didn't exist.
Time had no meaning here. He might have drifted for seconds or centuries. There was no way to measure it, no way to mark the passage of anything in a place where nothing passed.
I suppose this is better than I deserved. I lived selfishly. Died doing one good thing. Maybe that's enough to earn... whatever this is.
He tried to remember details of his life—his apartment, his job, his routine—but they were already fading like dreams upon waking. Faces blurred. Names slipped away. Soon there would be nothing left but the core of who he was: a lonely man who saved a child.
Will I disappear completely? Is this what comes after?
The thought didn't frighten him. After forty-two years of feeling invisible, maybe true invisibility was fitting. Maybe this was peace.
Then—
LIGHT.
Something blazed across the void like a meteor, trailing particles of impossible colors—gold and silver and hues that didn't exist in any spectrum known to living eyes. It moved with purpose, tearing through the nothingness like a knife through fabric.
Yamada's consciousness recoiled instinctively. What—
The light seemed to sense him. It curved in its trajectory, bending impossibly, tracking toward his position like a heat-seeking missile.
No—wait—
There was nowhere to go. No body to move. No way to flee.
The light struck him with the force of a cosmic hammer.
Pain—
Not physical pain, but something deeper. Something fundamental. His consciousness, his very self, compressed and twisted and changed. He felt himself being torn apart and reassembled, unmade and reformed, scattered across dimensions he couldn't comprehend and then snapped back together.
What's happening to me?!
The light wrapped around him, through him, becoming him. He felt something vast and incomprehensible trying to integrate with his soul. Information flooded his mind—too much, too fast. Glimpses of other worlds, other lives, other possibilities. Chains of cause and effect stretching across realities. The weight of infinite choices and infinite consequences.
And beneath it all, a single purpose:
PROTECT.
The word resonated through his entire being like a bell tolling in an empty cathedral.
NURTURE.
Another toll, deeper, more profound.
SURVIVE.
The final toll shattered something in the void, and reality exploded around him.