~ 5th March, 2025.
~ Wednesday
The bus to Yoshimura High School was rather comfy. A large black motorcoach. It was chartered for new students. It was to pick up scholarship recipients and regular first years from various districts around the Niigata prefecture. Ari had bade his parents goodbye. And like everyone else he had his luggage with him. He had a nice place by the window. Even now in this spacious seating, his long legs still struggled for space.
His large green duffel bag was on the seat next to him. It serves both as luggage and a nice social barrier. For Ari made sure the duffel bag stood straight and high to block the sight of him from others. He was such a shy person.
There were maybe 50 other students on this bus. Most were chattering excitedly and comparing acceptance letters. Even now they were so free and were forming the beginnings of friendships. AriToru sighed deeply to himself.
*I wonder how they do it*
A few of said students were on their phones. One girl was reading, completely absorbed in her book. But him, he stared out the window, watching the cityscape gradually shift to suburbs, then to the more rural area where that told you Yoshimura was getting closer. In a way he was at least minutely eager to feast his eyes on the school. People said it was around 10,000+ acres. And such: half of that was used for the students. Maybe they were carrying out evil experiments in the other half.
But most of the school was free for the students exploration, at least that's what the Google page said when AriToru read it. Such a beautiful large boarding school Yoshimura was. And yet it was said to be a Merciless place.
And then the memory of her face flooded AriTorus mind. His mother had cried when he left. Proud tears, Both happy and sad. His father had shaken his hand and assured him that everything would be okay. He told him to work hard, make them proud.
*But everything won't be okay*
Ari had smiled and nodded and felt like a fraud to them. He was going to suffer here. He was going to suffer in Yoshimura.....He could just feel it. He could feel it at the back of his mind while he leaned on the window and watched.
He saw countryside rolling past, green land and green trees. It was late afternoon so the sun started its timely plunge for the day. Oh did it paint everything in warm golden light. A light that made the world look kinder than it was.
A LOUD Opera aria played suddenly.
*Ugh..no no* Ari rushed to clasp his phone. It was his ringtone. Why didn't he remember to put it on silent. *Stupid stupid_Stupid!", he tapped it furiously to decline the call.
His duffle bag blocked his own view of the other students but he could tell they were looking at him.
Then he saw a text from his phone.
A single laughing emoji from his mother.
"Got you didn't I"
That's right, it was a prank.
Ari could not help but smile and text back.
"Don't do that mom. Everyone heard my ringtone."
He saw the loading three dots.
Another laughing emoji. "So what. It's a powerful tune. Any man who has a ringtone as an opera song is a powerful man".
Ari's face cringed in near laughter as he read the text.
"Now your class mates know not to mess with you".
He rolled his eyes. At this point he was sure his mother just enjoyed bugging him. But it was a painful thing for Ari. Already in the bus he missed his mother. And he wished he could actually just speak to her instead of texting her on the phone.
Michiko didn't know what else to send to her son. And Ari saw how silent the other side was. No floating three dots so he knew she wasn't at the second preparing a new message. But....he could feel his mother was still there, behind her phone.
Then Michiko heaved a deep breath and sent her son a message.
"Be safe my boy! Call us when you arrive! We're So proud of you!"
And she saw him type back quickly.
"I will."
Then he 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 of
.....re.min..d him of.
How unlucky can you be AriToru. Or will this be your final event. Will you die not knowing what you could have become. Or crippled because of the incompetence of a violent driver. A man of no empathy. Would you be his victim?
A large truck.... HAD COME FOR THEM.
The bus driver's SHOUT. The SUDDEN swerve. The HORRIBLE HORRIBLE METAL crunch of IMPACT. There were 56 boys and girls in this car....would they all die?
The WORLD tilted sideways. Someone was SCREAMING. The window EXPLODED and incoming was a SHOWER OF GLASS. Sharp and puncturing...Blood.
He felt blood.
This malignant sensation of weightlessness, of being airborne, of his body slamming against something stone like. Pain, bright and absolute. Consuming everything.
Blood covered his eyes. warm with a fading sting. Just gushing out.....and the blood became so thick. So cold. And now all The Pale One saw..... All AriToru saw was red... And then all he saw was darkness.
∆BLESSED YOU ARE OH BEAUTIFUL GIFT BEARER
∆SANCTIFIED YOU ARE OH DEAR HOLLOWED ONE
∆REJOICE
∆REJOICE
[I SEEK TO HEAL HIM]
∆AS YOU SHOULD MY HELPFUL SERVANT. AND YOU SHALL WATCH OVER HE.
∆AS I SHALL ENJOY THE SHOW
[A LUCKY LUCKY BOY]
[TO HAVE BEEN CHOSEN BY YOU]
∆I AM THE GEAR
~ 8th March, 2025
Shinmei General Hospital.
The first thing Ari heard was beeping. Steady. And loud as if it was inches from his ear. The second thing was a voice. His mother's voice. Speaking to someone he couldn't see. Ah, He couldn't see anything.
"—said he should be waking up soon. No permanent damage, thank god, but the shock—"
AriToru opened his eyes.
The hospital room swam into his ocular senses. Gradually, he made out the details of where he was: white ceiling tiles, luminous lights, medical objects clustered around his bed. An IV in his arm. Bandages on his left shoulder and forehead. Everything hurt, but it was distant. Like his body was reporting pain from far away. And yet the pain was pulsing, weakening.
"Ari!" His mother's face appeared above him, and she looked terrible. Ink eyes and the white of it was now worryingly red, her face was pale, her pixie-cut hair seemed so dry. So unlike her usual perfect 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 from a dry throat. "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. The right one, the one without the IV—and she 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. "It hit the bus. You were thrown—" He stopped, and he 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 rising, worry from his mother and a contained grim anger from his father.
"What about 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 a firm thing. "You were the most seriously injured."
*I guess this is why sit belts are important.*
But Ari's parents wouldn't scold him on that....yet.
Ari lay back and he processed this occurrence...he could have sworn that his head was busted open. Or ....*maybe just a fever dream*. *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 us," his mother said, wiping her eyes. "They said to take all the time you need to recover. Your spot is secure."
"That's good." Automatic words he spoke, automatic words.
His parents stayed for another hour, his mother was fussing over his blankets and pillows, his father was asking the nurses questions that were definitely more than they could handle. *He's so worried.*
Ari could tell no matter how hard his stoic father tried to hide it.
Eventually, a nurse gently suggested they let Ari rest, that visiting hours were ending.
His mother kissed his forehead. His father wouldn't stop looking at him with an ashamed expression on his face. Ari was sure his father had some tracked this all back and made himself believe this was his fault.
That maybe he should have just driven Ari to Yoshimura himself other than let him enter the bus.
But nothing could change it. And their worry only made Ari happier now.
Then they were gone, and Ari was alone in the hospital room with the beeping machines. Beeping machines and the hateful smell of antiseptic.
He looked up 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 most definitely kicking in. He should sleep. The doctor had said rest was important for....
AriToru blinked. Blinked again. The text was still there, floating in the air about two feet from his face, glowing faintly blue-orange like a holographic display. Translucent and beautiful.
[I AM INITIALIZING...]
[10%... 47%... 89%... 100%]
[INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]
"What the—" Ari tried to sit up again in fear. But the pain of his body laid him helpless in the bed. 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.
[WELCOME, ARI TORU]
[YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED]
"No," Ari whispered. "No, this isn't—this... I have brain damage"
[SYSTEM ACTIVATED: I AM THE SERVANT]
[THE GEAR SENDS HIS GREETINGS]
[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
BASKETBALL 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 was pounding. This wasn't real. This couldn't be real. He'd hit his head, he was hallucinating, he was...
"Help!" AriTorus voice was like a strangled panicked. "HELP! Doctor!"
The door burst open. A nurse rushed in, followed quickly by a middle aged doctor with a concerned face.
"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 one medical professionals give eachother when a patient is not doing well at all. Or just when a kid who was in a bus accident swears he's seeing numbers.
Must be Math and Calculus PTSD.
"Ari, can you tell me what you're seeing?" The doctor's voice was calm.
"It's like... like a video game interface. Numbers. It's saying—" He stopped, seeing their expressions. The concern. The medical 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 a blue page design...lined by orange reddish outlines. 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 was talking quietly with the doctor in the corner. More tests were ordered. Everyone was very concerned, very, very sure that Ari was experiencing some kind of post-traumatic breakdown.
And through it all, the display remained implacable.
[TORU ARI]
[DO NOT PANIC]
As if that was helpful advice.
Eventually, his parents left again. His mother was very reluctant, his father promised 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.
It was night time. The system was still there.
He took a deep sigh and AriToru forced 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 growing up. But he grew past that phase when he was 14. He was 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]
[TIME LIMIT = NONE]
He took time to really take it all in. These translucent messages. It was insane. This was unreal. 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 in front of him. It went right through again. 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 trust in sanity.
But AriToru 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/servant, to himself, to the universe. To the GEAR.
"I won't freak out." He did his best to heave himself up to a sitting position. So he now stares directly at the system.
"And if you're real..." The Barbarous Obsidian eyes of AriToru did not blink when he gazed upon the servant. "If you're real, then I'll let you make me King."
So the Servant acknowledged the Pale One.
[WISE CHOICE]
[REST NOW, TORU ARI]
[YOUR EVOLUTION HAS BEGUN]
Ari laid back against the pillows, his broken collarbone was throbbing even more now. Sitting up was a terrible idea. His head, which was still covered in bandages, felt like it wanted to burst out open and spill his brain fluids.
His future was now dark as it was now bright.
Outside his window, the moon stood at its peak. A white sentinel rock surrounded by darkness. Somewhere he heard the sound of a basketball
And For the first time in three years, the sound didn't fill him with regret.
It filled him with hope
[THE GEAR IS ACTIVE AND AWOKEN]
[THIS'LL BE FUN]