Chapter One – Waking Up in a Manga World
Little by little, (Tokito) regained consciousness.
A low groan, more air than sound, escaped his lips as the stubborn veil of unconsciousness began to fray at the edges, then tear.
It was not a gentle awakening, but a clumsy surfacing from deep, murky waters of oblivion.
His eyelids, heavy as stone slabs, fought against an immense gravitational pull before finally fluttering open.
The world that swam into view was blurry at first, a messy watercolor painting of unfamiliar shapes and a stale, oppressive atmosphere that clung to the back of his throat.
He tried to move, and a symphony of minor aches protested—a stiff neck, a sore back pressing against a hard surface, the vague, lingering echo of a deeper pain now retreated.
Slowly, with the deliberate care of something fragile, he pushed himself up onto his elbows.
The rough, scratchy texture of a cheap, threadbare carpet greeted his forearms, biting into his skin through the thin fabric of his sleeves.
He looked at the place he had woken up in.
And was struck dumb with astonishment.
The sight that solidified before his eyes was so profoundly, fundamentally wrong that his brain stuttered, refusing to process the information for a long, suspended moment.
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The place resembled a small studio apartment, a single room that bore the heavy, melancholic weight of profound neglect.
It hadn't been cleaned in weeks, perhaps months.
A fine layer of dust coated every surface, glowing softly in the thin, sickly light filtering through a single grimy window. It danced in the still air, disturbed by his movement.
Dust motes, like tiny galaxies of neglect, swirled in the slanted beams.
Empty instant ramen cups, their insides stained with the ghost of broth, were piled precariously next to a small trash bin that had long since overflowed.
Crumpled papers, ads for dubious part-time jobs and unpaid utility notices, formed small, pathetic mounds in the corners, like papery tumbleweeds in a desolate urban landscape.
The air itself was thick and stale.
It carried the sour-sweet tang of old food left to rot, mixed with the sharp, chemical scent of cheap cleaning products used ineffectively long ago, and underneath it all, the faint, metallic dampness of a room that hasn't been properly aired.
In addition to the general filth, there was a bed—a simple, metal-framed cot shoved against the wall.
Its sheets were a rumpled, grayish landscape, tangled and spilling onto the floor.
There was a door that presumably led to a bathroom, standing ajar to reveal a sliver of cracked white tile and the faint, ever-present smell of mildew.
And tucked into a nook was a small kitchenette, its countertop cluttered with unwashed dishes and a single-burner hotplate, its cord coiled like a dead snake.
There was absolutely nothing that resembled his home. Not a single item, not the quality of the light, not the smell, not the very feel of the space.
This monumental, catastrophic change in location made (Tokito) unable to believe his eyes.
His gaze darted from the dusty window to the stained ceiling, from the pathetic ramen towers to the sad, lonely bed, desperately seeking a familiar anchor and finding none.
The sheer, vertiginous wrongness of it all squeezed his chest.
"W-what is going on?" he whispered, the words feeling alien in his mouth.
"How did I get to this place? Am I dreaming?"
Of course, when he said that out loud, he was surprised again.
The voice that left his lips was not his own.
It was higher pitched, thinner, lacking the slight gravel and assured depth of his twenty-eight-year-old self.
(Tokito)'s voice now sounded more like that of a teenager, a boy whose voice had only recently settled, still holding a trace of youthful uncertainty.
It was the voice of a stranger speaking from his own throat.
He froze, the air in his lungs turning to ice.
Creak.
The floorboard under his shifting weight let out a soft, protesting whine.
"What… what is happening?" he tried again, listening to the eerie, high-pitched echo of the question.
"Why are my hands… so small?"
He lifted his hands, bringing them into his trembling line of sight.
They were not the hands he knew.
His hands—his real hands—were broad-palmed, with calloused fingers from years of manual work and weightlifting, with a faint scar across the knuckle of his right index finger from a long-ago biking accident.
These hands were slender.
Pale.
Almost delicate.
The fingers were long and thin, the skin smooth and unmarked, the nails neatly trimmed. They were the hands of someone who did little heavy labor, the hands of a much younger person.
A wave of nausea, cold and slick, rolled through his stomach.
"In addition to that…" he mumbled, his new voice trembling, "what the hell is going on?!"
The question hung in the dusty air, unanswered, growing more terrifying by the second.
He needed to see. He needed proof beyond these unfamiliar hands.
Pushing himself up fully, his body feeling oddly light and unbalanced, he stumbled to his feet.
Thump. Shuffle.
His movements were uncoordinated, as if he were piloting a marionette with tangled strings. He took a shaky step, then another, the rough carpet prickling against his bare feet.
He went directly to the mirror that was hanging on the wall—a small, rectangular mirror with a cheap plastic frame, one corner cracked.
A fine film of dust coated its surface, blurring the reflection.
With a hand that shook violently, he reached out and wiped the dust away in a rough, frantic arc.
Then he looked into it.
His eyes—his new eyes—contracted.
The pupils shrank to tiny pinpricks of black against a shocking field of color.
They began to tremble, a rapid, uncontrolled vibration.
A strangled sound, something between a gasp and a whimper, died in his throat.
The hair that had been black—a deep, common Japanese black he had never given much thought to—had changed.
It was now a stark, snowy white.
Not the elegant silver-white of an anime protagonist, but a pale, almost sickly white, like bleached bone or unspun cotton, sticking up in messy, sleep-tousled tufts.
In addition to that, his eyes, which had been dark brown, suited to a Japanese person, had transformed.
They were now red.
A vivid, piercing crimson.
Not the warm red of autumn leaves or rust, but a sharp, unnatural red, like fresh blood or lit coals.
They looked like the eyes of a vampire from a horror movie, glowing with an unsettling inner light in the dim room.
And his skin, which had been a healthy, sun-kissed tan from weekends spent outdoors, had become pallid and white.
The color was wan, bloodless.
It was the complexion of someone who rarely saw the sun, someone who might be chronically ill. It stretched taut over the bones of his face, making his new, red eyes seem even larger and more startling.
His body, which he could now see in the mirror wearing simple, loose sleep pants and a thin t-shirt, had become slender and thin.
Gone were any traces of muscles.
The biceps he had painstakingly built up through countless hours at the gym, the defined shoulders, the solid chest—all of it had vanished completely, leaving behind a frail, willowy frame with sharp collarbones and narrow wrists.
All these factors combined made him unable to believe it.
His mind screamed in denial, a cacophony of panic and disbelief.
He opened his mouth to say something, to scream, to curse, to do anything that might break this nightmare.
But he couldn't utter a word.
No sound emerged.
Only a gust of hot, panting air escaped his lips, fogging a small patch of the cold mirror for a second before fading, uncontrolled and thoughtless.
He stood there, trapped in the silent, screaming horror of the reflection, his pale face a mask of shock in the dusty glass.
After a few simple moments, the denial in his mind seemed to solidify, to become a physical pressure inside his skull.
He began to feel pain in his head.
It started as a dull throb behind his eyes, then rapidly escalated into a sharp, drilling agony, as if an ice pick were being driven through his temples.
Throb. Pound. Ache.
(Tokito) let out a sharp gasp and brought his hands—those small, alien hands—up to his head, pressing his palms hard against his temples as if he could physically resist the pain, could push the invading memories back inside.
He squeezed his eyes shut, the red world disappearing behind a veil of swirling, colorful static.
A floodgate burst open behind his eyes.
Not memories of his own life—of his office job, his tiny apartment, his favorite coffee shop—but a torrent of other moments, other feelings, seen through different eyes.
Flashes of a childhood in a quieter neighborhood.
The lonely walk to a school where he was always on the periphery.
Hours spent alone in this very room, staring at the ceiling.
The feel of a different kind of loneliness, sharper and more resigned.
The vague, frustrating attempts to use a peculiar, faint power that others mocked…
This pain, this violent influx, was not just physiological. It was the brutal, forced integration of another consciousness, another lifetime, into the fabric of his own.
He stumbled backward, away from the mirror.
Thud.
His legs gave out, buckling beneath him as the headache reached a crescendo.
He fell, his body hitting the rough carpet with a soft, heavy sound.
He lay on the ground, curled into a fetal position, hands still clamped to his head, riding out the storm of agony and foreign recollection.
Whimper. Rustle.
The pain was intense, overwhelming. It felt like his identity was being scraped out with a rusty spoon and replaced with something else, something incomplete and sad.
This pain continued for a few minutes—minutes that felt like hours in the silent, dusty tomb of the apartment—before it began to recede, fading from a screaming siren to a persistent, dull ache.
Slowly, tremulously, (Tokito) rose from the ground.
He pushed himself up, his arms shaking with the effort, his breath coming in ragged, wet-sounding pulls.
Shhh-click. Scrape.
After falling and lying on the ground from the severe pain he had been suffering, he now sat on his knees, staring blankly at the dust motes dancing in a sunbeam that suddenly seemed cruel in its normalcy.
But this time, his eyes, which had been full of shock and terror, transformed.
The shock melted, drained away like water into sand, leaving behind a vast, empty flatness.
Despair.
It was a cold, heavy despair that settled in his bones, that made the very act of breathing feel like a chore.
And that despair then twisted, curdling into something harder, sharper.
An intense, furious refusal to believe.
A rejection of reality so potent it vibrated through his frail new body.
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It had become clear.
The truth, delivered not with a whisper but with the sledgehammer of another's memories, settled upon him with a weight that threatened to crush him completely.
He had been transported to another world.
Not a world of knights and magic, of grand castles and epic quests, but to the world of a manga.
A specific manga.
One he had read in his previous life, during lunch breaks and on crowded trains, to kill time.
And he hadn't just been dropped into it as a visitor.
He had replaced someone.
He had been swapped into this body, this frail, white-haired, red-eyed vessel, and its original owner was… gone. Subsumed. Overwritten by the violent merger that had just shattered his skull.
All of that had happened.
In addition to that, he had obtained the memories of the body's original owner, whose name was also (Tokito), but the family name was different.
His name in his previous life had been (Tokito Tokinari).
And now he was (Tokito Kaito).
A person living in the city of Tokyo, in Japan… but a fictional Japan. A Japan drawn with ink and shaded with screentone, where the rules were subtly, terrifyingly different.
A bitter, hysterical laugh bubbled up in his throat but died before it could escape.
Of all the isekai scenarios… I get the depressing, slice-of-life drama one? he thought, the internal voice a confusing blend of his old sarcasm and this new, youthful despair.
Furthermore, it seemed he had gained not only the memories of the original body's owner, but he also discovered that he had obtained special abilities.
His heart gave a feeble, hopeful jump. Here it is. The cheat. The game-breaking power. The thing that makes all of this bearable.
But the hope was short-lived, dashed against the rocks of the memories he now possessed.
Because these abilities weren't the cheat abilities that all the time-travelers or world-transfers got in the stories he'd read.
No, what he had obtained seemed to be, pitifully, the original body owner's own abilities.
(Cloud Formation).
The name floated up from the new set of memories, accompanied by a wave of frustration and shame that wasn't his own, but felt intimately familiar.
This was the original body's special ability, which was essentially the ability to form and create clouds from his hands and feet, where he could shape clouds whenever he wanted.
And those clouds… possessed the same properties as normal clouds.
They were wet. Fleecy. Insubstantial. They could maybe provide a bit of shade if he made a big one indoors, or get everything damp. They were utterly, completely useless for anything other than perhaps winning a "most pathetic superpower" contest.
(Tokito)—the new one, the old one, the confused amalgamation—looked at his hand.
The pale, slender hand trembled in the dusty air.
Driven by a morbid curiosity, a need to confirm the final, humiliating piece of this nightmare, he tried to form a small cloud.
He focused, reaching for the strange, tingling sensation he found in the new memories, a feeling like static electricity gathering just under the skin of his palms.
Poof.
With a soft, almost inaudible sound, like a sigh, a small puff of white mist appeared.
It hovered just above his palm, a tiny, perfect, cartoonish little cumulus cloud, about the size of a teacup saucer.
It was faintly translucent, its edges softly blurring into the air. A single, microscopic wisp detached from its side and drifted away, dissolving into nothingness before it traveled an inch.
It was undeniably a cloud.
A cute, pathetic, completely useless cloud.
He stared at it, this absurd, fluffy proof of his new reality.
After this moment, he was certain.
He really, truly, was not dreaming.
He had tried pinching himself earlier on the floor, a hard, desperate twist of the skin on his forearm that had left a red mark.
He had felt it. The sharp, clear pain.
He hadn't woken up.
This… this damp, dusty, cloud-producing hell was real.
With a defeated slump of his shoulders that made his bones feel like they were made of lead, he turned from the mirror.
Shuffle. Drag.
His feet seemed to weigh a thousand pounds each.
He went and sat slowly, so slowly, on the dirty bed.
The worn-out springs of the cheap mattress let out a long, tired groan as he settled his weight onto it.
Sproing. Creeeeeeak.
He sat there, and his life felt like it was moving slower than anything else, trapped in thick, sucking tar.
After he reached the bed and sat down, he couldn't believe his eyes or what had happened.
The evidence was irrefutable: the unfamiliar room, the stranger's body in the mirror, the fluffy, idiotic cloud still dissipating over his palm, the foreign memories etched into his mind like graffiti on a tombstone.
The finality of it crashed down with a silence that was louder than any explosion.
His gaze, those unsettling red eyes, swept over the pathetic domain of (Tokito Kaito).
The ramen cups. The dust. The cracked mirror. The window looking out onto a cityscape that was both familiar and eerily off, like a photograph slightly out of focus.
A cold, hard knot of disbelief and rage tightened in his stomach.
He opened his mouth, and this time, words came out. They were quiet, flat, drained of all energy, yet carrying the weight of a collapsing world.
"How…" he started, his voice a dry rasp in the silent room.
He swallowed, the sound painfully loud.
"How did I end up in this damn manga, for hell's sake?"
The question hung there, addressed to the uncaring walls, the dancing dust, the universe that had played this cruel, unimaginative trick on him.
"Am I crazy… or is the world crazy?"
He looked down at his pale, thin hands, turning them over as if expecting to see answers written on the palms.
Nothing.
Just smooth, unfamiliar skin.
A deeper, more visceral frustration boiled up, cutting through the despair.
His hands clenched into fists, the knuckles turning even whiter.
He brought one fist down onto the thin mattress.
Thump.
It was a weak, impotent sound.
"What…" he whispered, his voice gaining a sharp, desperate edge, the red in his eyes seeming to glow brighter in the dim room.
"What in the actual hell… am I supposed to do?"
The final word echoed slightly in the small, filthy room, a plea and a curse aimed at nothing and everything, before being swallowed whole by the oppressive, dusty silence of a life that was no longer his own.
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End of Chapter.
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Author's Note:
Thank you for reading this first,rather disorienting step into (Tokito)'s new, cloudy reality. Your time and attention are deeply appreciated. ❤️ :)
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