The first time Riki Yamade saw the sun, it was filtered through layers of smoke, plastic dust, and the shimmering haze of heat that rose from the heaps of garbage surrounding East Benevalant. To most of Tokyo, this was the place people didn't talk about — a stain behind the glowing walls of progress. To Riki, it was home.
He was seven years old when he first learned that garbage could burn differently depending on how much poison lived inside it. He used to watch his parents, both garbage cleaners, sort through piles of refuse the way other children might see farmers sorting grain. His mother's hands were always bandaged. His father's voice was a steady hum that blended with the buzz of flies and the distant rumble of transport trucks.
"Riki," his father would say, "the world throws away what it doesn't want. Our job is to make sure it doesn't kill itself doing it."
Riki never understood what that meant. Not until the killing began.
The "East Benevalant" was called that as a joke — a cruel one. The name came from an old propaganda slogan decades ago: "Tokyo's Benevolence lies in the East." What it really was, was the world's largest dumping district, filled with chemical rot, plastic ash, and rusted bones of machines and human. Riki's family lived in one of the "high-stake towers" — a stack of metal scraps welded into rough apartments. The floors creaked like dying animals. The air shimmered with fumes that burned your throat when you spoke too loudly.
Still, Riki laughed a lot back then. He'd chase the wild dogs that scavenged in the pits. He'd help his older sister, Hokurine, steal broken toys and pretend they were treasures from some faraway world. They had a dream once — to earn enough credits to move west, to where the sky was blue and the water didn't burn your skin.
But the poison didn't care about dreams.
It started slow. First, his mother began coughing. Then, his father's hands swelled until he couldn't hold a shovel. By the time Riki turned eight, they were both gone — taken by a sickness everyone said was just "the cost of living in Benevalant." The government called it "Air Decay Syndrome." Riki called it murder.
After the funerals — if you could call tossing ashes into a landfill a funeral — Riki and Hokurine lived on scraps. She was fourteen, but already fierce enough to scare off gang kids twice her size. She'd work at night sorting chemical plastics, while Riki stayed home, patching the holes in their roof with broken tarps. He'd fall asleep listening to her hum lullabies over the crackle of the fires outside.
Then the soldiers came.
They arrived in the middle of the night — masks, gas tanks, and white suits that glowed like ghosts. The people of Benevalant thought they were rescue workers. They were exterminators. They claimed the toxins were "contagious." They came with flamethrowers.
Riki still remembered the smell — not just burning plastic, but flesh. He remembered his sister screaming his name, pushing him under a metal beam as their home went up in flames.
"Run, Riki! Don't look back!"
He looked back anyway. The last thing he saw of Hokurine Yamade was her silhouette framed in red and black, clutching the doorway as it collapsed. Her voice broke in the fire. And then there was silence.
Riki survived by crawling under the corpses of his neighbors, hiding among the dead until dawn. When he finally escaped the city, no one stopped him — no one even noticed him. Just another piece of garbage in the garbage district.
He wandered for weeks. The poison in his lungs nearly killed him. His body ached with fever, his mind blurred with hallucinations. He dreamed of Hokurine's voice, laughing and scolding him, calling him a crybaby. He woke to the sound of rats gnawing on bones.
By the time he was found — not by rescuers but by a group of street thugs who ran a scrap-smuggling ring — Riki was no longer the same child. His eyes had gone quiet. His hands no longer trembled when he saw blood.
The gang leader, a stranger named Jiro, gave him food, a new name, and a knife. "You've got hate in you, kid," he said. "Hate's a good fuel in this city. Use it before it uses you."
Riki took the knife and nodded.
For years, that was all he knew. Fighting. Stealing. Running.
He learned to swing pipes harder than children twice his size. He learned how to smile when lying. He learned that the world didn't want you unless you could bleed for it. By thirteen, he was infamous in the backstreets — "the Garbage Prince," they called him, a joke whispered in the smoke-filled alleys.
He built his own gang — "The Death Team of Riki." They weren't killers, not at first. Just broken kids trying to feel like something. They robbed stores. They tagged walls. They laughed too loud and slept too little. For the first time since his sister's death, Riki almost felt alive.
Almost.
Then came Farina.
Farina was the sister of one of the local gang bosses — a sharp-tongued kid with a smile that could cut glass. She was always watching him, taunting him, calling him "trash boy." Riki thought she hated him. Maybe she did. Maybe she also understood him.
They'd argue for hours, throwing insults like punches, but when the others weren't looking, she'd slip him food, patch his bruises, or tell him to stop getting himself basically killed.
She wasn't what she seemed. Riki found that out too late.
Farina was an undercover agent, planted to bring down her brother's operation. But before she could expose anyone, the plan went wrong. The boss — her own brother — discovered her secret. He planned to kill her and everyone involved in the robbery they had arranged. Riki overheard the plan by accident.
That night, chaos swallowed the alleyways. The Death Team tried to run. They didn't make it.
Riki hid again — under a pile of broken crates — as gunfire and screams filled the night. He saw Farina die protecting him, her last look one of guilt and regret. And when the silence came again, Riki's hands were wet with tears and blood.
He told himself he'd never trust anyone again. Not the government. Not the gangs. Not even himself.
But fate wasn't done with him. When he was fourteen, the news broadcast a name that froze his blood.
"Sheriff Hokurine Yamade appointed as top investigator in City District 3."
His sister. Alive.
At first, he thought it was a lie. But the face was hers — older, colder, eyes sharp as blades. Riki didn't believe it until he saw her in person.
It happened during a raid. His crew was ambushed by police. Bullets tore through the air. And there she was — leading them. His sister, the same being he'd buried in his nightmares.
"Hokurine!" he screamed. "It's me! It's Riki!"
She didn't hesitate. The gunshot echoed before his name finished leaving his lips.
The bullet tore through his arm, spinning him to the ground. He stared up, numb, as she reloaded — emotionless, efficient, like a machine. His crew dove to protect him, shouting for him to run. He didn't.
From his hiding spot behind a steel beam, Riki watched her execute them one by one — laughing as if it were a performance. Something in her had broken. Or maybe it had been broken all along.
He couldn't move. He couldn't scream. All he could do was watch. Helpless, weak as ever.
When it was over, he ran. Again. Always running.
He never forgot that night. The sound of his sister's laughter haunted every dream. The smell of blood followed him like perfume. And the next day, when the news reported her death — shot by a criminal during an investigation — Riki didn't know what to feel.
He cried. Not for her. Not for the crew. For the little kid who used to believe people could be good.
That was the day he decided the world didn't deserve forgiveness.
By the time Riki turned fifteen, he was just another delinquent haunting the edges of Tokyo's light. He eventually entered high school, and transferred from school to school, always getting into fights, always alone. People called him a monster. He preferred it that way.
He'd laugh when teachers told him to "behave." He'd punch walls instead of answering questions. Every bruise felt like proof he still existed. Every suspension felt like freedom. And yet… deep inside, beneath the ash of his anger, there was something still alive. A small, stubborn ember that refused to die.
That ember would later take the form of a teenager named Akio Hukitaske. But that was still in the future.
Riki's life before Akio was a cycle — fight, skip class, smoke behind the gym, repeat. He'd watch the other students talk about dreams and futures and roll his eyes. What was the point? The world burned down once already; it'd do it again.
Still, sometimes he'd catch himself staring at the sky, wondering what it might look like without smog. He hated that feeling — that yearning. It made him feel weak. Human.
One day, when he was hanging around the back of the school, a voice cut through his haze.
"Hey! You're Riki Yamade, right?"
He turned. It was a kid his age at least one age older — clean uniform, messy brown hair, bright eyes that didn't belong in this kind of world. Akio Hukitaske.
"What's it to you?" Riki muttered, lighting a cigarette.
Akio smiled. "Nothing. Just wanted to know the kid who keeps beating up half the class."
Riki scowled. "You got a death wish or something?"
"Maybe," Akio shrugged. "Or maybe I just think you look lonely. Because you keep bothering me all the time for some reason."
Riki blinked. For the first time in years, someone had said something that didn't sound like an insult or a threat. He didn't know how to react. So he did what he always did. He shoved the kid.
"Mind your own damn business, sunshine."
Akio just laughed.
That was how it started — a stupid, awkward, almost comedic moment that would later reshape both their lives. But that was for Episode 2. For now, Riki walked away, hands in pockets, pretending the warmth creeping up his hollowed heart wasn't something dangerous. Pretending that the world hadn't just shifted by an inch.
And somewhere deep inside him, that old ember — the one that refused to die — flickered once again.
TO BE CONTINUED...