The night air pleasantly cooled his face, carrying the scents of cooling asphalt, damp foliage, and a faint trace of gasoline. Jin walked unhurriedly down the quiet street, the plastic bag with his modest supper rustling barely audibly in his hand. A light, unfamiliar muddle reigned in his head.
He was recalling the face of the girl from the convenience store. Her large, frightened yet curious eyes, the blush that had flooded her cheeks, her desperate, almost childlike shout at his back. It had been so... normal. Stupid, clichéd, but within it lay some forgotten, simple human warmth.
Could it be... she actually liked me?
Yet no sooner had that thought taken shape than the instincts of his new body instantly erased any sentimentality.
The hair on the back of his neck stirred. The sensation was sharp, unfamiliar, and strangely conscious — someone else's gaze on his back. Approach. Jin did not slow his pace, did not alter his lazy gait, but his entire being instantly reconfigured. His hearing sharpened to the point that he effortlessly picked out, from the noise of the nighttime city, the scuffing of five pairs of sneakers a couple dozen meters behind. They kept their distance, but moved in sync with him, trying not to draw attention.
The guys from outside the store.
Jin looked ahead, and a predatory, anticipatory grin began to spread across his lips of its own accord. He was tired of sitting within four walls. And these idiots, it seemed, had decided to volunteer themselves as training dummies.
A couple of minutes later, he turned into a narrow, poorly lit alley between two windowless brick buildings. He walked to the very end, until he hit a dead end, and slowly turned around. The bag of ramen still hung just as casually in his hand.
Toward him, blocking the exit, moved five of them. They tried to look menacing: a loose, threatening swagger and crooked smirks plastered on their faces. A classic gang assault, meant to instill paralyzing terror in the victim.
"Well, nothing new."
...
"Well, nothing new."
The words sounded not merely calm — they oozed outright boredom. The leader, a guy named Shido, froze. He'd expected fear, a trembling voice, an attempt to buy his way out with spare change. But this blond stood as if he'd been approached for directions.
Shido sucked in a chestful of air, ready to bark a threat, but, raising his gaze, met Jin's eyes. The words lodged in his throat like a lump of broken glass.
The violet irises in the alley's gloom seemed bottomless. There wasn't a drop of fear in them. Only absolute, inhuman indifference. Shido felt his knees weakening, and a clammy, cold sweat running down his back.
He watched as the guy slowly walked up to him. Watched as his hand descended onto his shoulder. The palm was warm, but the touch... It was unbearably heavy. Shido went pale. It felt as though it wasn't a teenager's hand on his shoulder, but an entire mountain. He couldn't move. Not from physical pressure, but from the primal terror that paralyzed every muscle. He froze and was afraid to even lift his head, let alone look that monster in the eyes.
Jin clapped him twice on the shoulder. Amicably. But at that gesture, Shido nearly lost consciousness.
Noticing their leader's stupor, one of his cronies, a bruiser named Takeda, decided to take the initiative.
"Shido! The hell are you frozen for?!" he barked, and, snatching a heavy metal pipe from under his jacket, charged at Jin with a roar. He put his entire weight into the swing, aiming straight for the insolent blond's head.
And at that moment, for Jin, the world changed.
Time didn't simply slow down — it turned into thick, viscous jelly. Jin saw Takeda's face twisted with rage, saw the drops of sweat slowly tearing from his forehead. He heard every beat of the bruiser's heart, every creak of his joints. The rusty metal pipe, which should have been flying at insane speed, descended toward his head with the grace of a falling autumn leaf.
So that's how it feels, — the thought slid through Jin's mind, crystal clear.
He wasn't in a hurry. There was no need. Smoothly, almost lazily, he raised his free hand and placed his open palm in the path of the strike.
A DULL RING.
The pipe slammed into his palm. Jin closed his eyes, fully concentrating on the sensation. He had expected anything, but he felt absolutely nothing. The kinetic energy of the blow — enough to cave in a man's skull — simply dissolved, shattering against his skin. His hand didn't even flinch, didn't shift a millimeter backward. The body of Sakamaki Izayoi absorbed that impulse as easily as a stone absorbs a drop of rain.
Takeda, however, screamed. From the monstrous, unnatural recoil, his wrists crunched, his fingers unclenched on their own, and the pipe clattered across the asphalt. The bruiser staggered back, cradling his numbed hands.
Jin opened his eyes and looked at his palm. Not even a red mark remained on the skin.
"Doesn't even itch," he muttered with genuine amazement.
And then something clicked inside him. A wave of pure, undiluted interest surged to his head. It was intoxicating. Absolute, crushing invulnerability. Power that, in his past life, he couldn't have even dreamed of.
He wanted more. He wanted to test the limits of this vessel.
Jin bent his knees slightly and pushed off the ground.
A BOOM.
The asphalt beneath his feet exploded into rubble, covered in a dense web of cracks. Jin instantly crossed the space of the alley and found himself on the wall, five meters above the ground. Gravity no longer existed for him. He kicked off the brickwork — the wall groaned and cracked — and hurtled toward the opposite one.
For the thugs, that moment turned into absolute nightmare. The person who had stood before them a second ago simply vanished. The alley filled with the roar of displaced air.
Jin didn't hit them. He had no need. Maiming such insignificant wretches would be an insult to his new power. He simply moved. He began darting between them, around them, from wall to wall, increasing his speed with every second. He calibrated his movements, learned to brake without destroying the asphalt, learned to turn at unthinkable angles. His body worked flawlessly: his muscles didn't burn, his breathing remained even, and his reaction time allowed him to calculate every millimeter of his trajectory.
The air current generated by his movements turned into a hurricane. A dense, squalling wind tore at the high-schoolers' clothes, knocked the caps from their heads, filled their eyes with dust. They were tossed from side to side, falling to their knees, covering their heads with their hands, deafened by the whistle of the wind and the crash of cracking walls. They were helpless grains of sand inside a tornado whose center was a single teenager who had decided to stretch his legs.
Jin reveled in it. Rapture — primal, pure rapture — flooded his consciousness. He felt every muscle of his perfect body. He was faster than sound, stronger than steel. He was absolutely, terrifyingly free.
By the end of this insane performance, they were all sitting on the asphalt, unable to stay on their feet. They trembled from fear and disorientation. They didn't understand what that had been. They simply knew they had encountered something that shouldn't exist.
Only the leader, Shido, still stood in the same spot where he'd been left. Frozen like a statue, paralyzed by the initial terror.
Jin stopped unexpectedly. The wind died. He appeared right in front of the high-school leader, as if he'd always been there. He surveyed the guy's pale, cold-sweat-covered face and smirked.
"Ha. Good man."
He clapped him twice on the shoulder again. Shido shuddered, and the stupor broke. The leader's eyes rolled back; letting out a pitiful, choked wheeze, he went limp, collapsing onto the cracked asphalt, sinking into a deep, merciful faint.
Jin's laughter gradually faded. He swept his gaze over the unconscious Shido and his cronies whimpering in the corners, who were afraid to even lift their eyes.
"Wimps," he stated with mild disappointment.
Snatching up his bag of groceries from the ground, Jin turned and, with an unhurried, relaxed stride, walked out of the alley and leisurely made his way off into the night dark.