The rain in Leekelo always came without warning.
One moment the sky was a dull, tired grey, the kind that made streetlights look like they were bleeding; the next, water hammered down in thick sheets, turning sidewalks into shallow rivers and drowning the sound of honking scooters. Lookon liked it that way. Rain gave the city permission to be quiet.
He was twenty-three, working a night shift at a small call-center on the third floor of a building that smelled permanently of damp concrete and instant coffee. The job paid enough for rent, manga deliveries, and the occasional late-night biryani run. It wasn't glamorous. It wasn't even interesting. But it left his evenings free, and that was all he really asked for.
Tonight he had clocked out at 11:47 PM, pulled his hoodie over his head, and stepped into the downpour without an umbrella. He never carried one. Umbrellas were for people who believed the rain could be negotiated with.
The street was mostly empty. A few delivery bikes zipped past, their headlights cutting yellow tunnels through the water. Neon signs from the tea stall and the mobile recharge shop flickered like dying stars. Lookon walked with his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, letting the cold soak through his sneakers. His phone buzzed once in his pocket—probably the group chat reacting to the latest chapter drop of *Jujutsu Kaisen*. He ignored it. He wanted to feel the rain first.
He had just finished volume 28 of *One Piece* on the bus ride home. Luffy had punched through another impossible wall, grinning like the world was still worth saving. Lookon had stared at the last page for a long minute, thumb resting on the panel where the Straw Hats laughed together under a clear sky. Something in his chest had tightened—not sadness, exactly, but a dull, familiar ache. The kind that came from knowing those pages would end, and real life didn't come with volume covers or "To Be Continued" text.
He turned onto the narrower lane that led to his one-room apartment. The road was slick, reflective. Puddles mirrored the orange streetlamps in fractured pieces. He stepped carefully, avoiding the deeper ones out of habit.
That was when he heard it.
A low, wet rumble. Not thunder. Something mechanical and wrong.
He looked up.
Headlights—too bright, too fast—barreled around the corner of the side street. A delivery truck, overloaded, tires losing grip on the wet asphalt. The driver must have panicked; the horn blared once, sharp and useless.
Lookon froze.
Time didn't slow down the way it did in movies. It simply... stopped mattering.
He had half a second to think: *This is how it ends? On page whatever of my own shitty story?*
No dramatic last words. No flashback montage of every anime opening he'd ever loved. Just rain in his eyes, cold seeping into his bones, and the truck's grille rushing forward like the end of a chapter he hadn't finished reading.
Impact.
Dark.
Nothing.
—
When awareness returned, it wasn't pain.
It was silence.
Absolute, perfect silence. No rain. No traffic. No heartbeat in his ears.
He opened his eyes—or thought he did. There was no difference between open and closed. Just darkness, soft and endless, like floating inside black velvet.
Then light.
Not bright. Not blinding. Just... present. A faint blue-white glow forming in front of him, resolving into clean, geometric lines.
A rectangle. Translucent. Floating.
Text appeared inside it, crisp and unemotional.
**SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE**
**Auditor Designation: Lookon**
**Origin Universe: Leekelo-Prime**
**Status: Reconstituted**
**Immortality Protocol: Active (Tier ∞ – Absolute Regeneration / Temporal Stasis)**
**Core Directive: Multiversal Equilibrium Maintenance**
**First Audit Target: Pending Assignment**
Lookon stared at the words.
He tried to speak. No sound came out at first. Then, slowly, his voice returned—calm, a little hoarse, exactly the same as it had always been.
"...What the hell is this?"
The panel didn't blink. New lines scrolled in.
**Clarification Query Received**
**You are no longer baseline organic. You have been selected as Celestial Auditor.**
**Previous existence terminated at 00:03:17 IST, October 14, 2025.**
**Cause: Vehicular collision.**
**Post-mortem evaluation: Acceptable candidate profile – High narrative affinity, low ego attachment, moderate observational discipline.**
**Reconstitution complete. No residual trauma retained.**
He laughed once—short, disbelieving.
"So I died. And instead of... I don't know, reincarnation as a slime or something, I get... a cosmic Excel sheet?"
**Incorrect analogy detected. The System is not gamified entertainment. It is an enforcement mechanism.**
**Your role: Observe designated universes. Identify power imbalances, dimensional bleed, existential anomalies.**
**Intervention priority: Minimal until critical threshold.**
**Failure to maintain balance may result in cascade collapse across adjacent realities.**
Lookon floated there, weightless, staring at the glowing text.
He thought of his apartment. The half-eaten packet of chips on the table. The stack of unread *My Hero Academia* volumes beside his bed. The group chat probably blowing up right now with memes about the truck-kun trope.
He thought of how he'd always joked about it. "If I get isekai'd, please let it be with cheat skills and a cute companion."
This wasn't that.
This was quiet. Cold. Eternal.
He exhaled slowly, even though there was no air to breathe.
"Okay," he said. "Let's say I accept this. What happens next?"
**Assignment loading.**
**Primary universes flagged for audit (initial sequence):**
1. **Potter-verse** – Magical entropy rising. Soul-fragment anomalies creating micro-rifts.
2. **Shinobi-realm** – Chakra cycle instability. Entity-level threats approaching dimensional echo stage.
3. **Quirk-society** – Power-theft cascades risking parasitic invasion.
... (additional entries redacted for initial briefing)
**Travel protocol unlocked.**
**Adaptive power acquisition: Online.**
**You may now open rifts at will. Cloaking field active by default.**
**Recommendation: Begin observation phase. Do not engage until directed.**
A new panel appeared beside the first one. Smaller. Cleaner.
**Current Status**
- **Name**: Lookon
- **Age**: Frozen (apparent 23)
- **Physical Form**: Baseline Leekelo human (modifiable per universe)
- **Abilities**:
- Absolute Immortality
- Dimensional Transit
- Passive Observation Cloak
- Power Analysis & Temporary Mimicry (Tier 1)
- **Emotional State**: Processing...
Lookon read the last line twice.
"Processing," he muttered. "Yeah. That's one way to put it."
He reached out—slowly, experimentally—and touched the glowing rectangle.
It felt like cool glass under his fingertips. Solid. Real.
He pulled his hand back.
"So... I just... go?"
**Affirmative.**
**First destination recommended: Potter-verse. Low-threat entry point. Ideal for calibration.**
**Rift opening in 3... 2... 1...**
The darkness around him cracked.
Not violently. Quietly. Like paper tearing along a careful fold.
Light poured through—soft, golden, tinged with green. The smell of wet stone, old books, pine trees.
Hogwarts.
Lookon felt something shift inside his chest. Not fear. Not excitement.
Curiosity.
The same curiosity that had kept him up until 4 a.m. reading theories about hidden One Piece lore.
He took one last look at the System panel.
Then he stepped forward.
The rift closed behind him without a sound.
Rain still fell somewhere, in some world.
But not here.
Here, the story was just beginning.