Click. Click. Click.
The camera flashes burst like tiny explosions across the press hall. Ash squinted from his seat in the back row, watching his sister stand behind the podium. Angela's grey hair, and green eyes caught the stage lights, those distinctive white and black stripes making her unmistakable. She smiled, that warm, genuine smile she'd always had, even as kids.
"Miss Sinclair, how does it feel to be the second S-rank in your family?"
"What message do you have for aspiring hunters?"
"Will you be joining your brother's guild?"
Angela answered each question with grace. Ash's fingers curled around the armrest. His reflection stared back from a nearby camera lens, messy grey hair, dark circles carved beneath his eyes like bruises that wouldn't fade. He looked like he hadn't slept in days. He hadn't.
A reporter turned. Then another. The whispers started like a wave.
"Wait, isn't that—"
"The failure?"
"The E-rank Sinclair?"
The cameras swiveled. Ash's face appeared on the massive screens flanking the stage. Every flaw magnified. Every imperfection broadcast. The flashes came at him now, so bright they burned white spots into his vision.
He smiled. Wide. Empty. The smile he'd practiced a thousand times in the mirror.
Angela's expression faltered on stage, but she couldn't leave. Not yet. Not with every camera in Japan watching.
---
The Sinclair mansion rose against the Tokyo skyline like a monument to success. Ash walked through the front doors, and the cool air-conditioned air hit his face. Marble floors reflected the crystal chandeliers overhead. Everything polished. Everything perfect. Everything cold.
He collapsed onto the leather couch in the main room and grabbed the remote. The TV flickered to life.
"—the Sinclair family continues to prove why they're essential to humanity's survival. With their advanced gate management systems and cutting-edge equipment, they've saved countless lives. And now, Angela Sinclair, at just Eighteen, has awakened as an S-rank—"
"Ash."
He didn't look up. Angela stood in the doorway, still in her formal dress from the conference.
"Please turn off the TV."
"—following in the footsteps of her older brother, who awakened two years ago. The Sinclair family truly is—"
"Ash."
He pressed the power button. The screen went black.
Footsteps echoed from the hallway. Heavy. Deliberate. Uncle Asashi appeared, his suit immaculate, his expression carved from stone. He looked at Angela first.
"Excellent work today. Another asset to the family."
Then his eyes shifted to Ash. The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
"And you. Still sitting there. Still useless." His voice was quiet. Controlled. Somehow worse than shouting. "An E-rank. An embarrassment with the Sinclair name."
Ash's jaw tightened. He stared at the black TV screen.
"Five years we've tolerated this. Five years of watching you waste space in this house while your siblings carry the weight you should be—"
"Uncle." Angela's voice was soft but firm. "That's enough."
Asashi's lip curled. He adjusted his cufflinks and walked away, his footsteps fading down the hall.
The maids near the doorway glanced at each other. One whispered something. Another nodded. Ash stood and walked toward the stairs.
More whispers followed him. They always did. The words changed, but the tone never did. Pity. Disgust. Relief that they weren't him.
---
Ash's room sat at the end of the third-floor hallway. He pushed the door open and stepped into the darkness. Clothes draped over his chair. Books stacked haphazardly on the desk. Empty coffee cups lined the windowsill.
He walked past it all to the corner where a single lamp cast a circle of light. His chair waited there, surrounded by frames and plaques gathering dust.
Tokyo University Mathematics Prodigy - First Place
National Academic Excellence Award
Martial Arts Championship - Black Belt Division
He pulled out a crystal bottle from the drawer. Expensive whiskey. The kind his father used to drink. The cap twisted off with a soft *click*, and he poured two fingers into a glass.
The liquid burned going down. He picked up the mathematics award, staring at the engraved words until they blurred.
"A prodigy," he whispered to the empty room.
The door creaked open behind him. Arms wrapped around his shoulders, and Angela's chin rested on his head.
"Ash."
His throat tightened. His eyes stung. But he forced it down, pushed it back into whatever dark place it came from.
"I'm sorry." Her voice cracked. "Maybe I shouldn't have taken the awakening test. Maybe if I'd just—"
"Don't." The word came out harsher than he intended. He set down the glass and turned slightly. "Don't say that. I'm happy for you. Really."
He smiled. That same practiced smile from the
press conference.
Angela looked into his eyes. Her own eyes widened, and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.
"Your eyes," she whispered. "Ash, your eyes..."
They were green. They'd always been green. But now they looked like glass. Like windows to an empty house.
"I don't want to lose you." She grabbed his shirt, her voice breaking. "I can't lose anyone else. Not after Mom and Dad. Not after our brother disappeared. I can't be alone. Please, Ash. Please don't leave me."
The dam cracked. Just a little. Just enough for something to flicker behind the glass in his eyes.
He pulled her close, his hand stroking her hair like he used to when they were kids and she'd had nightmares.
"You won't lose me," he said quietly. "You're my little sister. I'd never—" His voice caught. "I'd never leave you alone."
She cried until her breathing slowed, until her grip loosened, until sleep finally took her.
Ash called softly. The door opened, and his personal maid stepped inside, her expression carefully neutral.
"Lord Ash?"
"Take her to her room. Carefully."
The maid and butler lifted Angela gently. As they carried her out, the maid paused.
"Do you need anything, Lord Ash?"
He stared at the awards in the lamplight.
"No."
The door clicked shut.
---
Ash sat alone in his circle of light, surrounded by darkness. He thought about ten years ago, before the rifts tore open across the world. Back when being a genius meant something. Back when his parents were alive, smiling in their Tokyo home, enjoying his mother's homeland in peace.
He thought about his older brother. The first S-rank Sinclair. The one who carried the world on his shoulders until three years ago when he vanished into a gate and never came back.
"Bro," Ash whispered. "I thought I could handle it."
His hands started shaking. The glass trembled in his grip. Something hot rolled down his cheek, and he realized with distant surprise that he was crying.
The sobs came silently, his body convulsing while no sound escaped. All the years of insults, all the comparisons, all the worthlessness, it poured out in the darkness where no one could see.
He looked at the window. He wanted to end it all
But Angela's voice echoed in his head. "Please don't leave me."
Ash set down the glass and wiped his face with shaking hands.
"The E-rank," he said to himself, voice hollow. "That's all I am now."
Every research paper he'd published on monster biology. Every academic achievement. Every championship. Meaningless. In a world where power was measured by your rank, genius meant nothing.
Living felt like punishment.
BOOM.
The mansion shook. The lamp flickered. Ash's awards crashed to the floor as a wave of energy slammed into the Sinclair estate like a physical force.
Alarms began to scream.