Flashback – Three Years Ago
The gymnasium smelled. The energy was like rubber. Teenage efforts coming from vanity and this metallic clang of constantly hitting the rim.
Ari Toru stood at the free-throw line holding the basketball. It was heavy in his hands like a medicine ball. Sweat dripped down his temple ran along his gaunt cheek and fell down his chin —not from exertion, but from pure, distilled anxiety.
The middle school gym wasn't even half-full, just a handful of parents scattered across the bleachers like forgotten confetti, but it felt like the entire world was watching him miss.
"Toru! Any day now!" Coach Matsuda's voice echoed off the walls.
Ari bounced the ball once. Twice. His hands were too big for his thirteen-year-old body, all knuckles and awkward angles. He was already 6'2", taller than most of his teammates, taller than half the teachers at Sakura Middle School. People looked at him and saw a power forward. Saw potential. Saw a basketball player.
They were all wrong.
He shot. The ball sailed in a tragic arc, hitting the front of the rim with a hollow clang that seemed to reverberate through his entire skeleton. It bounced pathetically to the left, not even close to the basket.
" For god's sake, Toru." Matsuda wasn't even angry anymore. Just tired. "You're 6'2" and you shoot like you're throwing a grenade. How is that even possible?"
The other players snickered. Ari heard Kentaro whisper something to Daichi, saw them both laugh. His face burned, but he kept his expression flat. He'd learned early that showing emotion only made it worse.
"Run it again," Matsuda said with the enthusiasm of a man scheduling his own funeral.
But Ari couldn't run it again. He couldn't do any of it again—the missed layups, the turnovers, the way his body seemed to revolt against every basketball fundamental ever invented. He was tall and he loved basketball with a passion that bordered on religious, but his body had apparently never received the memo.
After practice, he'd stayed late in the gym, working on his form in the dark like some kind of basketball ghost. But it never helped. His shot never fell. His footwork never improved. His agility was just none existent. He was a 6'2" statue with the coordination of a newborn giraffe.
Two months later, he quit.
The memory of Matsuda's face—not disappointed, but relieved—still kept Ari up at night sometimes.
Present Day – April, Three Years Later
Ari Toru woke up at 5:47 AM to the sound of his phone alarm playing a jazz piano instrumental he'd downloaded specifically because it was the only thing that didn't make him want to throw his phone against the wall. He lay there for thirty seconds, staring at the ceiling of his small bedroom, mentally preparing himself for another day of being aggressively average.
At sixteen, he'd grown another four inches to 6'6", which should have been impressive but mostly just made him feel like a poorly-constructed tower in a city of normal-sized buildings. His body had remained stubbornly slender despite his mother's best efforts to fatten him up—78 kilograms stretched across that frame made him look like someone had taken a regular teenage boy and run him through a taffy-puller. His face was determinedly unremarkable: straight nose, full girly lips, high cheekbones that weren't quite high enough to be interesting.
Except for his eyes.
Ari had inherited his grandmother's eyes—intimidating, ridiculously upturned at the corners, with an intensity that made people uncomfortable. Like a Cat-like. Unsettling, his middle school guidance counselor had noted in his file (he'd seen it once when she left the room). They were dark brown, almost black, and when he focused on something, people said it looked like he was trying to see through it to the other side. And weirdly enough his pupil would contract and expand depending how excited dear old Ari was.
Ari had stopped playing basketball.
But he'd never stopped watching it. Never stopped analyzing it. While other kids were out being normal teenagers, Ari was on his laptop breaking down game film like a military strategist, memorizing plays, understanding spacing and ball movement with the kind of obsessive detail that would have made him a genius if he could actually play the sport.
He couldn't. So instead, he'd poured everything into academics.
His room reflected this pivot: walls once covered with basketball posters now held a single, faded Kobe Bryant print above his desk, surrounded by achievement certificates and a small bookshelf crammed with textbooks and study guides. His old basketball sat in the corner, slightly deflated, gathering dust like a relic from a past life.
Ari pulled himself out of bed, his black hair falling across his forehead in its characteristic mop-top chaos. He'd need a haircut soon, but haircuts required caring about appearance, and Ari had allocated exactly zero mental energy to that particular concern.
Downstairs, his parents were already awake.
Toru Hideaki sat at the kitchen table reading the morning paper with the focused intensity of a man who still believed in print journalism—who even reads newspapers in 2025...do they even still exist. He was forty-three, with silver threading through his black hair and reading glasses perched on his nose. He worked as a mid-level accountant at a manufacturing firm—steady, reliable, utterly unmemorable work that paid the bills and kept the family comfortable. He wore his white dress shirt even at breakfast, as if preparing for work was a ritual that began the moment consciousness did.
"Morning, Ari," he said without looking up from an article about interest rates.
Toru Michiko was at the stove, making tamagoyaki with the precision of someone who'd made the same breakfast for sixteen years. She was smaller than her husband, petite and energetic, with smile lines around her eyes that came from years of finding joy in mundane things. She worked part-time at a local library, which suited her perfectly—she loved order, loved books, loved the quiet contentment of a well-organized life.
"Ari! The eggs are almost ready. Did you check your email last night?" Her voice had that particular frequency that all mothers seem to unlock—bright, cheerful, and somehow conveying multiple layers of meaning simultaneously.
"Not yet." Ari poured himself a glass of water, his height making him duck slightly under the kitchen light fixture that had been installed for normal-sized humans.
"Check it now." His father finally looked up from the paper, and there was something in his expression that Ari couldn't quite read. "There should be something important."
Ari pulled out his phone, thumbing through his emails with the mild interest of someone who expected nothing but spam and school announcements. Then he saw it.
Subject: ACCEPTANCE – Yoshimura High School Scholarship Program
His thumb hovered over the email for three full seconds before he opened it.
Dear Toru Ari,
Congratulations! After careful review of your academic records and entrance examination scores, we are pleased to offer you a full scholarship to Yoshimura High School for the upcoming academic year...
Ari read the email three times. Then a fourth.
Yoshimura High School.
Yoshimura High School.
It was one of the most prestigious boarding schools in Japan, a private academy that consistently sent students to Tokyo University, Kyoto University, all the top-tier institutions. It was the kind of school that appeared in articles about "Japan's Educational Elite." The kind of school that had a waiting list longer than most schools' actual enrollment.
It was also, Ari knew with a sinking feeling in his stomach, home to one of the best high school basketball programs in the entire country.
"Well?" His mother had turned from the stove, wooden spatula still in hand, her face bright with excitement. "Did you see?"
"I got in." The words felt strange in his mouth.
"YOU GOT IN!" Michiko practically launched herself across the kitchen, pulling Ari into a hug that his height made awkward but his mother's enthusiasm made inescapable. "I knew it! I knew your scores would be good enough! My brilliant boy!"
"It's a significant opportunity." His father had stood up now, folding the newspaper with careful precision. "Yoshimura's academic reputation is exceptional. The connections alone would be invaluable for university applications."
"And it's a full scholarship!" His mother was still clutching his arm. "Room, board, everything! Do you know how much that saves? This is incredible, Ari. This is incredible."
They were happy. Genuinely, unreservedly happy.
Ari felt like he'd swallowed a stone.
He spent the morning in a daze, mechanically going through his routine at his current high school—a perfectly average public institution where he was a perfectly average student who happened to be very tall. His friends (the few he had) congratulated him with the kind of enthusiasm people reserve for things that don't directly affect them. His teachers nodded approvingly, as if his acceptance validated their own teaching somehow.
But Ari couldn't shake the dread pooling in his gut.
He knew about Yoshimura. Everyone who followed high school basketball knew about Yoshimura. Their team had won the national championship twice in the last five years. They produced players who went on to university programs, sometimes even overseas. Their gym was state-of-the-art. Their coach was legendary.
And their student body, according to every forum and social media post Ari had ever seen, was a hierarchy of athletic excellence and social status that would make a medieval feudal system look egalitarian.
At Yoshimura, basketball players were gods. The starting five were celebrities. Even the bench players had social clout. The school's culture revolved around the team—their games, their victories, their drama.
And then there would be Ari: 6'6", the exact physical profile of a power forward, surrounded by basketball excellence, and completely, utterly, hopelessly talentless.
He'd be a walking target. A joke. The tall kid who couldn't play. In a school where basketball was everything, he'd be nothing.
Worse than nothing—he'd be a disappointment. A waste of good height.
That afternoon, after school, Ari walked through the small park near his house, hands shoved in his pockets, trying to figure out how to tell his parents he didn't want to go. They were so happy. His mother had already started planning, talking about what he'd need for the dorms, about visiting during breaks. His father had actually smiled—really smiled, not the polite expression he usually wore, but something genuine.
How could he tell them he'd rather stay at his mediocre public school than go to Yoshimura?
The basketball court in the park was empty, the chain nets swaying slightly in the spring breeze. Ari stopped, staring at it. Some kids had left a ball behind, sitting at the free-throw line like an invitation.
Almost unconsciously, Ari walked onto the court, picked up the ball. It felt foreign in his hands now—it had been three years since he'd seriously held one. He dribbled once, twice. His form was still terrible. He could see it in his mind's eye, all the mistakes: too much wrist, not enough leg drive, his release point inconsistent.
He knew everything about basketball. He just couldn't do any of it.
Ari shot. The ball hit the backboard and bounced away.
"Of course," he muttered to himself.
He left the ball where it rolled, walking away from the court with his hands back in his pockets and his future feeling like a weight around his neck.
Two Weeks Later
The bus to Yoshimura High School was comfortable, modern, air-conditioned. It was specifically chartered for new students, picking up scholarship recipients from various districts around the prefecture. Ari had a window seat, his long legs cramped even in the spacious seating, his duffel bag on the seat next to him serving as both luggage and social barrier.
There were maybe fifteen other students on the bus. Most were chattering excitedly, comparing acceptance letters, already forming the beginnings of friendships. A few were on their phones. One girl was reading, completely absorbed in her book.
Ari stared out the window, watching the cityscape gradually shift to suburbs, then to the more rural area where Yoshimura was located. The school owned a massive campus—dormitories, academic buildings, sports facilities that rivaled small universities.
His mother had cried when he left. Happy tears, proud tears. His father had shaken his hand like Ari was going off to war, told him to work hard, make them proud.
Ari had smiled and nodded and felt like a fraud.
The countryside rolled past, green and peaceful. It was late afternoon, the sun starting its slow descent, painting everything in that particular golden light that made the world look gentler than it was.
Ari's phone buzzed. A message from his mother: Be safe! Call us when you arrive! So proud of you!
He typed back a quick response, then returned to staring out the window. In a few hours, he'd be at Yoshimura. He'd be surrounded by excellence he could never achieve, by a culture that would remind him daily of his failure, by—
The truck came out of nowhere.
Later, Ari wouldn't remember the details clearly. The bus driver's shout. The sudden swerve. The horrible, metallic crunch of impact. The world tilting sideways. Someone screaming. The window exploding inward in a shower of glass.
He remembered the sensation of weightlessness, of being airborne, of his body slamming against something hard. Pain, bright and absolute, consuming everything.
Then darkness.
Yoshimura Medical Center – Three Days Later
The first thing Ari heard was beeping. Steady, rhythmic, mechanical. The second thing was his mother's voice, low and worried, speaking to someone he couldn't see.
"—said he should be waking up soon. No permanent damage, thank god, but the shock—"
"Michiko." His father's voice, calmer but strained. "He'll be fine. The doctor said—"
Ari opened his eyes.
The hospital room swam into focus gradually: white ceiling tiles, fluorescent lights, medical equipment clustered around his bed like concerned metal relatives. An IV in his arm. Bandages on his left shoulder and forehead. Everything hurt, but distantly, like his body was reporting pain from far away.
"Ari!" His mother's face appeared above him, and she looked terrible—eyes red, face pale, hair pulled back in a messy ponytail so unlike her usual careful appearance. "Oh thank god, thank god—"
"How do you feel?" His father was there too, standing beside the bed, and he looked like he'd aged ten years in three days.
"Like..." Ari's voice came out raspy, his throat dry. "Like I was in a bus accident."
It was a stupid joke, but his mother laughed anyway, a wet, relieved sound that turned into a sob halfway through. She grabbed his hand—his right one, the one without the IV—and squeezed hard enough to hurt.
"You scared us," she said. "You scared us so badly."
"What happened?" Ari tried to sit up and immediately regretted it..'my poor back'. He cried inside
His father gently pushed him back down.
"The truck ran a red light," his father explained. "Hit the bus. You were thrown—" He stopped, swallowed hard. "You hit your head. Broken collarbone, concussion, lacerations. But you're okay. You're going to be okay."
Each word came after the other with a raising worry from his mother and an almost grim anger from his father.
"The other students?", Ari asked.
"Minor injuries, mostly. One student broke their arm. The bus driver has whiplash. But everyone survived." His father's voice was firm, grounding. "You were the most seriously injured."
Ari lay back, processing. Broken collarbone. That meant no basketball for—he almost laughed at himself. No basketball. As if that mattered. As if he played basketball.
"The school called," his mother said, wiping her eyes. "Yoshimura. They said to take all the time you need to recover. Your spot is secure."
"That's good." The words felt automatic.
His parents stayed for another hour, his mother fussing over his blankets and pillows, his father asking the nurses questions with the determined precision of someone who needed to feel useful. Eventually, a nurse gently suggested they let Ari rest, that visiting hours were ending.
His mother kissed his forehead. His father squeezed his shoulder—the good one. Then they were gone, and Ari was alone in the hospital room with the beeping machines and the smell of antiseptic.
He stared at the ceiling, thinking about how strange life was. Three days ago, he'd been dreading Yoshimura. Now he was just grateful to be alive.
His eyes felt heavy. The painkillers were probably kicking in. He should sleep. The doctor had said rest was important for—
The text appeared in his vision.
Ari blinked. Blinked again. The text was still there, floating in the air about two feet from his face, glowing faintly blue like a holographic display from a science fiction movie.
[GEAR INITIALIZING...]
[10%... 47%... 89%... 100%]
[INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]
"What the—" Ari tried to sit up again, ignoring the pain. The text moved with his vision, staying centered no matter where he looked. He waved his hand through it. His hand passed through empty air, but the text remained, perfectly clear, perfectly impossible.
[WELCOME, ARI TORU]
[YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED]
"No," Ari whispered. "No, this isn't—this is a concussion. This is brain damage. This is—"
[SYSTEM ACTIVATED: I AM THE GEAR]
[ANALYZING HOST...]
A new window appeared, filling his vision with text and numbers:
[HOST STATUS]
NAME: TORU ARI
AGE: 16
HEIGHT: 198 CM (6'6")
WEIGHT: 78 KG
POSITION: POWER FORWARD
PHYSICAL STATS:
POWER: 23/100
STAMINA: 31/100
VERTICAL: 18/100
SPEED: 35/100
BASKETBALL STATS:
SCORING: 12/100
DEFENSE: 15/100
ATHLETICISM: 22/100
IQ: 67/100
PASSING: 28/100
SKILL: 8/100
[CURRENT ASSESSMENT: CRITICALLY UNDERDEVELOPED]
[POTENTIAL: CALCULATING... ERROR... RECALCULATING...]
[POTENTIAL = LIMITLESS]
Ari stared at the numbers, his heart pounding. This wasn't real. This couldn't be real. He'd hit his head, he was hallucinating, he was—
"Help!" His voice came out strangled, panicked. "HELP! I need a doctor!"
The door burst open. A nurse rushed in, followed quickly by a doctor—young, professional, immediately concerned.
"What's wrong? Are you in pain?" The doctor was at his bedside, checking his vitals.
"I'm seeing things!" Ari pointed at the air where the system display hovered. "Text! Numbers! It's right there!"
The doctor and nurse exchanged glances. The kind of glances medical professionals exchange when a patient is not doing well. Or just when a kid who was in a bus accident swears his seeing numbers.
Must be Mathe and Calculus PTSD.
"Ari, can you tell me what you're seeing?" The doctor's voice was calm, carefully neutral.
"It's like... like a video game interface. Stats. Numbers. It's saying I have a 'system'—" He stopped, seeing their expressions. The concern. The professional worry.
They thought he was crazy. Or brain damaged. Or both.
"It's probably a combination of the concussion and the stress," the doctor said, pulling out a small flashlight to check Ari's pupils. "Visual hallucinations aren't uncommon after head trauma. We'll run another CT scan, make sure there's no swelling we missed."
"I'm not hallucinating!" But even as Ari said it, he could see the system display, still floating there in bright white writing and an orange design. Some sort of transparent dark blue canvas, visible only to him. The doctor and nurse were looking right through it.
The doctor said something to the nurse about medications, about observation. Ari caught words like "traumatic stress" and "monitoring."
His parents were called back. His mother was crying again, his father talking quietly with the doctor in the corner. More tests were ordered. Everyone was very concerned, very professional, very sure that Ari was experiencing some kind of post-traumatic breakdown.
And through it all, the system display remained, patient and implacable.
[ARI TORU]
[DO NOT PANIC]
As if that was helpful advice.
Eventually, his parents left again—his mother was reluctant, his father promising to be back first thing in the morning. The doctor adjusted his medications. The nurse checked his vitals one more time. Then Ari was alone again.
The system was still there.
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to think. Okay. Either he'd seriously damaged his brain, or something impossible was happening. Given that the doctors couldn't see the display, option one seemed more likely. But the alternative...
Ari had read web novels. Watched anime. He knew the tropes. Systems. Litrpg. The "chosen one" suddenly gaining abilities through some game-like interface. Becoming all powerful and having harems. He'd consumed hundreds of stories with that exact premise during his years of basketball obsession, living vicariously through protagonists who had the skills he lacked.
"If you're real," he whispered to the empty air, "prove it."
The display shifted.
[CONGRATULATIONS, ARI TORU]
[YOU HAVE BEEN GIFTED THE GEAR SYSTEM]
[IT IS IN YOUR BEST INTEREST TO MAKE FULL USE OF IT...]
[...AND BECOME THE MVP OF MVPs]
Then, as if the system had a sense of timing:
[INITIAL QUEST UNLOCKED]
[QUEST: "FIRST STEPS"]
[OBJECTIVE: RECOVER FULLY FROM YOUR INJURIES]
[REWARD: 10 SKILL POINTS, SYSTEM TUTORIAL]
[TIME LIMIT: NONE]
[FAILURE CONDITION: NONE]
Ari stared at the words, his mind racing. This was insane. This was impossible. This was everything he'd ever dreamed about and never, ever thought would actually happen.
Or he was having a mental breakdown in a hospital bed, and none of this was real. He reached out weakly with those long arms of his trying to scratch and touch the interface Infront of him. It went right through. He couldn't feel a thing. It just blurred the words where his hands touched....or didn't touch.
The smart thing to do—the sane thing to do—would be to tell the doctors, let them run their tests, accept whatever medication they prescribed. Trust in modern medicine and rationality.
But Ari was sixteen years old, had just survived a bus accident, and was staring at a system interface that promised to make him into something he'd never been: a basketball player. No...The MVP of MVPS.
He made a decision.
"Okay," he whispered to the system, to himself, to the universe. "I won't freak out. I'll recover. I'll keep this quiet. And if you're real..." He paused, his cat-like eyes intense even in the dim hospital room. "If you're real, then show me. Show me what I can become."
The system display pulsed once, as if in acknowledgment.
[WISE CHOICE]
[REST NOW, ARI TORU]
[YOUR EVOLUTION BEGINS SOON]
Ari lay back against the pillows, his broken collarbone throbbing, his head aching, his future suddenly impossibly uncertain and impossibly bright.
Outside his window, the sun had fully set. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear the sound of a basketball bouncing on pavement—someone playing in the hospital parking lot, probably, the rhythmic echo carrying through the spring night.
For the first time in three years, the sound didn't fill him with regret.
It filled him with something else entirely.
Hope.
[END EPISODE 1]
[CURRENT STATUS]
[HOST: RECOVERING]
[SYSTEM: THE GEAR IS ACTIVE AND RUNNING]
[NEXT QUEST: PENDING RECOVERY]
[THIS'LL BE FUN]