The river beneath the bridge was narrow.
Not the kind of riverside walkway designed for tourists. No paved paths, no decorative railings, no carefully arranged greenery. Just a thin gray strip of water forced between the city's concrete ribs.
Old cement guardrails lined both sides.
Their edges were chipped. Rusted steel bars protruded through cracked corners like exposed bones.
Above it all stretched the overpass.
Whenever a vehicle passed overhead, a low vibration traveled through the structure. The sound resembled distant thunder that never truly faded—only rolled endlessly across the concrete sky.
The wind was weak.
Yet the surface of the river never stayed still.
Small ripples constantly traveled across the gray water, moving without direction.
Seven walked slowly along the riverbank.
He had already become accustomed to using the soles of his feet to understand the ground.
Pebbles. Sand. Broken fragments of concrete.
Each texture transmitted itself into his nerves before his weight fully settled.
He did not hurry.
He simply followed the river's line.
This was one of the few areas where people were not immediately chased away.
He stopped near one of the bridge pillars.
The river reflected his silhouette.
Seven lowered his head and looked at the figure in the water.
The face staring back at him was thinner than the one in his memory.
His cheekbones were sharper.
The line of his jaw had hardened.
His hair had grown back long ago, though the color had faded slightly under the sun. His skin had roughened after long exposure to heat and dust.
But the most noticeable feature was his eyes.
There were no pupils.
It was not a trick of light.
They were simply missing.
The white of his eyes filled the entire visible space, like two glass spheres that had lost their focus.
Yet he could see.
And he could see with terrifying clarity.
Slowly, he lifted his head.
His gaze moved beyond the bridge pillar, beyond the guardrail, toward the distant sky.
Several birds circled high above.
Distances that would normally be impossible to distinguish with the naked eye were now absurdly clear.
The color of feathers.
The frequency of their wingbeats.
The thin trails cut through the air as they glided.
He could even see the slight adjustment of tail feathers when one bird shifted direction.
Information flooded in.
Not brightness.
Density.
It felt as if someone had taken compressed data and forcefully decompressed it directly into his visual system without any buffering.
Seven's breathing stuttered for a moment.
Then the dizziness came.
Not a loss of balance.
Something deeper.
An overload rising from the core of his consciousness.
It felt as if the world's resolution had been suddenly increased, while his brain had not yet upgraded its processing speed.
He closed his eyes instinctively.
The moment darkness replaced the visual flood, the dizziness faded quickly.
Seven leaned against the bridge pillar and slowly steadied his breathing.
"…Too much information."
The conclusion surfaced almost automatically.
He hadn't reasoned it out.
The judgment simply appeared in his mind, complete and precise.
Seven paused.
The phrase itself should not have belonged to him.
He had never studied these concepts.
The orphanage only taught the most basic literacy and arithmetic.
Yet in that brief moment, he had not only understood the concept of information overload—he had instinctively completed the entire chain of cause and effect.
He muttered quietly to himself.
"How would I know that?"
No one answered.
The river continued flowing.
Traffic above the bridge formed a constant layer of background noise.
Then something else happened.
More unfamiliar and complex terms began surfacing in his mind.
Neural load.
Visual sampling rate.
Feedback loop.
Physiological response delay.
They did not appear one by one.
They surged forward in clusters.
Like a full technical manual that had always existed inside a system—suddenly unlocked.
Seven did not panic.
He simply observed the phenomenon.
Then a more direct sensation rose from deep within his body.
Not a voice.
Not language.
More like a status notification written directly into instinct.
—First Stage Ability Activated.
—Body Enhancement.
There was no external announcement.
No sound.
He simply knew.
At the same moment, the burning sensation returned in his eyes.
It wasn't pain.
It felt more like internal friction generated by structures awakening.
Seven opened his eyes again.
This time, he noticed something new.
At the edges of his vision, a horizontal dark line had appeared.
It stretched across both eyes like a rough carved groove.
A crude horizontal mark.
It replaced the position where his pupils should have been.
A new central axis.
A reference line embedded directly within the visual feedback layer.
Seven straightened his body.
No one was nearby.
The space beneath the bridge was empty.
Wind moved across the river.
He took a step forward.
Then another.
Then a third.
His movements felt lighter than before.
The ground's reaction force against his feet had noticeably decreased.
He began to run.
Not a sprint.
Just a normal pace.
But the change in wind resistance was dramatic.
The scenery began to stretch.
Guardrails. Bridge columns. Streetlights.
The distances between them compressed rapidly within his field of vision.
He was not consciously exerting himself.
He was simply running.
Yet the speed already exceeded anything he remembered his body being capable of.
It wasn't merely fast.
It was proportionally wrong.
He clearly understood something.
His current physical performance had already surpassed that of any ordinary adult human.
If converted into a straight sprint metric—
His speed would likely exceed the world record for the hundred meters by several times.
Seven did not stop.
He simply adjusted his stride, letting his body adapt to this new structure of movement.
Then—
At the corner ahead, a stray dog suddenly ran into the path.
Thin.
Dirty.
Its ribs were visible beneath its skin.
Its eyes were wary.
Seven instinctively bent down and picked up a small stone from the roadside.
He only intended to scare it away.
He raised his hand.
Threw.
The motion was minimal.
But the moment the stone left his fingers, he realized something was wrong.
The sound of air tearing apart was too sharp.
That was not a throw.
It was a shot.
The stone passed through the dog's skull almost instantly.
Blood burst into the air.
The dog did not even have time to release a full cry. It collapsed to the ground immediately, twitched twice, and went still.
Seven stood there.
His breathing paused briefly.
He looked at the body rapidly losing all signs of life.
He felt no fear.
No pity.
Only a calm conclusion formed in his mind.
The kinetic energy output of that throw had exceeded normal human parameters by a massive margin.
He turned and left immediately.
He did not look at the dog again.
Not avoidance.
Priority.
Remaining in an open area under this condition was unsafe.
He turned into a nearby alley.
The passage was narrow.
The walls were damp.
Garbage bins released a thick, rotten smell.
Seven sat down in a wind-sheltered corner.
Back against the wall.
Slowly closing his eyes.
But the world did not disappear.
Instead, a new layer of perception unfolded.
It wasn't sight.
It was coverage.
He could vaguely sense the spatial structure within a certain radius around him.
Like a low-resolution third-person map in a game.
People and animals appeared only as shadow outlines.
Walls and ground surfaces formed uniform white planes.
Air itself was an empty transparent zone.
The information was drastically simplified.
But the sense of direction was extremely precise.
Seven kept his eyes closed.
Allowing his body to adapt to this new perception system.
Then—
Voices appeared in the distance.
Several people.
Messy footsteps.
Rough tones.
A few of those voices were familiar.
Among street wanderers, these were quietly marked as dangerous individuals.
They sought out people who couldn't fight back.
They stole food.
They inflicted violence.
They enjoyed tormenting others.
Seven did not open his eyes.
He continued resting against the wall.
The group gradually approached.
Their silhouettes entered his sensing range.
They surrounded him.
Someone snorted.
"Look at this filthy little kid."
"Does he even need to be alive?"
"Let's call it cleaning up trash today."
One of them kicked the empty ground beside him.
"Hey kid, why aren't you opening your eyes?"
"You looking down on us?"
Seven slowly opened his eyes.
The man froze briefly.
Then his expression twisted with disgust.
"…Damn. He's blind."
"That's unlucky to look at."
Seven closed his eyes again.
The internal reinforcement layer activated once more.
He spoke calmly.
"So which is it?"
"Do you want me to open my eyes… or keep them closed?"
Silence.
Then angry shouting.
"Little brat still talks back?"
One of them raised his leg and kicked toward Seven's head.
Seven shifted sideways.
Lowered his center of gravity.
Sweeping kick.
The attacker lost balance instantly and slammed to the ground.
The others rushed in together.
Seven planted one hand on the ground.
His body rotated.
While inverted, his legs lashed out repeatedly.
Bones collided.
Muffled groans filled the narrow alley.
Several people were kicked backward.
Using the momentum, he flipped back onto his feet.
The motion flowed as if it had been practiced countless times.
Someone behind him pulled out a knife and stabbed forward.
Seven stepped aside.
Grabbed the wrist.
Twisted inward.
Rotated.
A sharp crack of dislocated bone sounded.
The attacker was thrown through the air in a full arc before crashing heavily onto the ground.
The remaining men finally realized something was wrong.
"…This kid isn't normal."
"Run!"
They scattered.
Seven did not chase them.
He bent down and picked up the knife.
Then slipped it into his clothing.
After that, he walked out of the alley.
Far away—
Hidden deeper within the shadows—
A pair of eyes had watched everything.
And recorded it all.