"There are two kinds of dangerous people in this world. The ones who let you see the knife. And the ones who smile so wide you forget to check their hands."
The Hunter Association's Tokyo Branch was a monument to controlled power.
Twelve stories of glass and steel rising out of Chiyoda like a blade planted in the heart of the city. The building was designed to impress—and to intimidate. Every angle, every surface, every carefully placed security checkpoint whispered the same message: We are in control. We are watching. We are the line between civilization and the things that crawl out of Gates.
I'd been here hundreds of times in the original timeline. First as a wide-eyed recruit. Then as a national hero. Then as a tired, paranoid soldier who trusted nobody inside these walls.
Standing at the entrance now, sixteen years old and bandaged and carrying a corruption percentage that pulsed behind my eyes like a warning light, I felt all three versions of myself existing simultaneously. The boy. The hero. The ghost.
It was exhausting.
The lobby was enormous. Marble floors polished to a mirror shine. A reception desk staffed by three people who managed to look bored and alert at the same time. Digital displays on the walls cycling through Association announcements, Gate status updates, and recruitment advertisements.
One of the displays caught my eye. A recruitment poster for Crimson Vanguard—Akira's guild. His face filled the screen, that golden smile radiating warmth and trustworthiness. The tagline read: "PROTECTING TOMORROW, TODAY."
I looked away before the anger could spike high enough to register on my face.
"Ryu Takahashi," I told the receptionist. "I have a 2:00 PM appointment. Floor 12."
She checked her screen. Typed something. Looked at me with the vaguely curious expression of someone who'd probably seen the news footage.
"Coordinator Tanaka's office. Elevator bank B, turn left when you exit. You'll need this." She handed me a visitor's badge. "Please keep it visible at all times."
"Thank you."
I clipped the badge to my jacket and walked toward the elevators. The lobby was busy—Association staff moving with purpose, Hunters in tactical gear checking in for missions, a cluster of teenagers in the corner who looked like fresh awakeners waiting for orientation.
One of the teenagers was staring at me. A girl, maybe sixteen, with short dark hair and wide eyes. She was whispering to the boy next to her, and he turned to look at me too.
They'd recognized me. From the footage. From the trending topic. From whatever name the internet had decided to give me.
The Phantom of Chamber 12.
I kept walking. Head down. Shoulders relaxed. Nothing to see here.
The elevator was empty. I pressed 12 and watched the doors close, and for thirty seconds I was alone.
I used those thirty seconds.
Void Sense activated automatically as I extended my awareness through the building. The skill was passive—a constant, low-level scan of my surroundings that registered spatial distortions, mana signatures, and potential threats. At Rank F, its range was limited to twenty meters, but within that radius, the information was remarkably detailed.
Twelve distinct mana signatures on the floor I was ascending to. Three were strong—B-Rank or above. The rest were civilian-level, probably administrative staff. No spatial distortions. No hidden threats.
At least, none within twenty meters.
The elevator opened. I stepped out into a corridor that was quieter than the lobby—carpeted floors, recessed lighting, the kind of professional calm that came with being high enough in the hierarchy to have actual offices instead of cubicles.
Coordinator Tanaka's office was at the end of the hall. The door was open.
I knocked on the frame.
"Come in."
The woman behind the desk was younger than I'd expected—early thirties, maybe. Sharp features softened by an expression of genuine warmth. Her hair was pulled back in a neat bun, and she wore the Association's standard administrative uniform with the kind of casual ease that suggested she'd stopped thinking about it years ago.
I didn't recognize her from the original timeline. She was either new to the position, or she'd been someone I'd never had reason to interact with.
"Ryu Takahashi." She stood and extended her hand. "I'm Coordinator Tanaka Mei. Thank you for coming on such short notice."
Her handshake was firm. Professional. No hidden pressure, no subtle power play. Either she was very good at concealing her intentions, or she was genuinely straightforward.
In this world, I couldn't afford to assume either.
"Please, sit." She gestured to a chair across from her desk. "How are you feeling? I understand you were injured during the incident."
"Healing well. Thank you."
"Good. Good." She sat down and opened a folder on her desk—a physical folder, not a tablet. Old school. "I'll be direct, Ryu. This meeting has two purposes. First, the standard administrative processing for your awakening registration. Classification confirmation, Hunter license application, that sort of thing. Straightforward paperwork."
"And the second purpose?"
She paused. Not long—half a second, maybe. But I caught it. The slight hesitation of someone choosing their next words carefully.
"The second purpose is more of a... conversation. About your future. Your options." She opened the folder and turned it so I could see. "You awakened as C-Rank, Shadow Walker class with Void-Aspect. As I'm sure you know, this is an unusual classification. The Shadow Walker class has been documented before—it's rare but not unprecedented. But the Void-Aspect modifier..." She tapped the relevant line in the file. "That's entirely new."
"So I've been told."
"The practical implications are significant. Because your abilities don't fit neatly into existing categories, the standard training programs and guild placements we'd normally recommend for a C-Rank awakener aren't entirely appropriate for your situation."
Translation: We don't know what to do with you.
"What are you recommending?" I asked.
"We have several options." Tanaka pulled out a second document—a list. "Guild recruitment, obviously. You've already received offers, I'm sure. For a C-Rank with a rare class, the major guilds will be very interested. Crimson Vanguard, Silver Phoenix, Iron Bastion—all have excellent training programs for new awakeners."
"I've seen the emails."
"I'm sure you have." A faint smile. "The alternative is independent registration. You'd operate as a solo Hunter—taking Association-posted missions, managing your own training, building your own reputation. It's a harder path. Less support, less resources, higher risk. But more freedom."
In the original timeline, I'd never considered independent registration. Akira had swooped in so quickly and so persuasively that the idea of operating alone had never occurred to me.
This time, independence was the only option. Joining a guild meant oversight. Oversight meant scrutiny. Scrutiny meant discovery. And discovery, at this stage, meant death or worse.
"What about the training programs?" I asked, not because I needed training—I had ten years of combat experience locked in my skull—but because asking the expected questions was part of maintaining the cover.
"The Association runs a New Awakener Development Program. Eight weeks. Basic combat training, mana control exercises, Gate safety protocols, legal frameworks for Hunter operations. It's mandatory for anyone planning to enter active duty."
I knew this program. I'd gone through it in the original timeline. Eight weeks of being taught things I'd already mastered by age eighteen. Eight weeks of hiding my abilities while pretending to learn skills I could do in my sleep.
But it was also eight weeks of structure. Eight weeks inside the Association's ecosystem, observing, gathering intelligence, identifying potential allies and threats.
"I'll do the training program," I said. "And I'd like to register as independent."
Tanaka's eyebrows rose slightly. "Independent? Are you sure? The guild offers you'll receive—especially with your combat performance at the Assessment Center—will be very competitive. Financial support, equipment access, mentorship from senior Hunters..."
"I'm sure."
She studied me for a moment. That same evaluating look Hayashi had given me. The look of someone recalculating their assumptions.
"Alright," she said. "Independent registration it is. The training program starts next Monday. I'll send the details to your registered contact information." She closed the folder. "One more thing."
"Yes?"
"The Bureau of Hunter Intelligence has flagged your file for monitoring. That's not unusual after an incident like yesterday—anyone involved in a Gate manifestation gets flagged for a standard observation period. But I want you to understand what that means practically. Your activities, your missions, your training progress—all of it will be documented and reviewed."
Hayashi's doing. The man was thorough.
"For how long?"
"Standard observation is six months. After that, if nothing unusual is flagged, the monitoring is downgraded to passive."
Six months of being watched. Six months of hiding my true power level, my corruption, my system interface, my entire identity as a regressed time traveler.
Piece of cake.
"I understand," I said. "Is there anything else?"
"Actually, yes." Tanaka reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a small envelope. "This is your provisional Hunter license. It's temporary—valid for ninety days pending completion of the training program. It allows you to accept E-Rank and D-Rank missions from Association boards. C-Rank missions require the full license."
I took the envelope. Inside was a laminated card with my photo—pulled from my registration, apparently—my name, my rank, and a serial number.
HUNTER ASSOCIATION — JAPAN
PROVISIONAL LICENSE
Name: Takahashi, Ryu
Rank: C
Class: Shadow Walker (Void-Aspect)
Status: PROVISIONAL
Serial: HL-2024-C-0847
Hunter License number 0847. The same number as my Assessment Center registration.
"Welcome to the Hunter Association, Ryu," Tanaka said with a smile that seemed genuine. "Try not to fight any more Gate monsters until you've at least completed orientation."
"I'll do my best."
I left the Association building at 3:15 PM.
The afternoon sun was harsh—late March in Tokyo, the light sharp and clear in a way that made everything look slightly overexposed. I stood on the front steps and blinked against the brightness, and for a moment I let myself feel the weight of what had just happened.
I was a registered Hunter. Again. In a system I'd once trusted with my life. A system that had been infiltrated, corrupted, and weaponized by the man who'd killed me.
The license in my pocket felt like a loaded gun. Useful. Dangerous. Capable of pointing in any direction.
I started walking toward the train station. I had three hours before Hana expected me home, and I intended to use every minute.
Training location.
In the original timeline, there were dozens of unofficial training spots scattered across Tokyo—abandoned buildings, unused basements, natural mana concentration points where the boundary between reality and Gate-space was thin enough to create mild environmental effects. Hunters used them for private training when they didn't want Association oversight.
I knew the locations of seventeen such spots. Three of them wouldn't be discovered by other Hunters for another two years. One of them—an abandoned subway maintenance tunnel beneath Ikebukuro—was particularly useful because the residual mana from a closed Gate had created a mild gravity enhancement effect that made physical training twice as effective.
That was where I was going.
The tunnel entrance was hidden behind a utility access point in an alley three blocks from Ikebukuro Station. The door was rusted but functional, the lock so old that a firm push was enough to pop it. I slipped inside, pulled the door closed behind me, and descended into darkness.
Dark Shroud activated instinctively, the shadows wrapping around me like a familiar coat. At Rank F, the skill wasn't powerful—a 60% visibility reduction and mild sound dampening. But in complete darkness, it made me functionally invisible to anyone who might wander down here.
Not that anyone would. The tunnel had been sealed after the Gate incident three years ago. The Association had classified it as "residual mana contamination—no public access" and promptly forgotten about it.
Their loss. My gain.
The tunnel stretched for about two hundred meters before opening into a wider maintenance chamber. The ceiling was high enough to stand in, the floor was flat concrete, and the ambient mana was dense enough that I could feel it pressing against my skin like warm water.
Perfect.
I took off my jacket. Folded it neatly. Placed it against the wall next to my bag.
And then I began.
Training, for a regressed Hunter in an unawakened body, was an exercise in humility.
My mind knew a thousand techniques. My body could execute maybe twelve of them. The disconnect was maddening—like being a concert pianist trapped in the hands of someone who'd never touched a keyboard. I could hear the music in my head, could feel exactly how each movement should flow, but the physical reality refused to cooperate.
I started with basics. Foundation work. The kind of tedious, unglamorous conditioning that every Hunter skipped in favor of flashy skill training—and that every veteran wished they hadn't.
Stance work. Footwork. Breathing patterns. Core stability exercises that looked like nothing but built the physical infrastructure that combat techniques depended on.
In the enhanced gravity of the tunnel, every exercise was harder. My muscles burned after ten minutes. My lungs ached after twenty. Sweat soaked through my shirt and dripped onto the concrete in dark spots that multiplied as I pushed harder.
The gravity effect was roughly 1.3 times normal—enough to make a significant difference in training intensity without being dangerous. In six months, this environment would have my physical stats climbing at a rate that normal training couldn't match.
I didn't have six months. But I had today. And tomorrow. And every day after that.
After thirty minutes of physical conditioning, I shifted to mana control exercises.
Mana was, at its most basic, an internal energy that Hunters could generate and manipulate. Raw mana had no inherent properties—it was potential energy, shapeless and neutral. Hunters gave it shape through skills and attributes, channeling it into fire or ice or shadow or whatever their class specialized in.
My class specialized in Void.
I held out my hand and reached for the mana in my core. It responded sluggishly—my reserves were modest at Level 4, and the efficiency of my mana channeling was poor. Like trying to pour water through a pipe clogged with debris.
A wisp of dark energy formed in my palm. Not shadow—I'd worked with shadow-users enough to know the difference. Shadow was the absence of light. This was the absence of everything. A tiny point of nothing that seemed to eat the surrounding air, creating a faint visual distortion like heat haze.
Void energy.
I studied it. Rotated it. Compressed it. Expanded it. Each manipulation cost mana—tiny amounts, but my reserves were small enough that every point mattered.
The energy was cold. Not temperature-cold, but conceptually cold. It radiated a sense of emptiness that I could feel in my bones. Like standing at the edge of a cliff and looking down into a drop that never ended.
This was what the corruption was made of. This was what Erebus was made of. This was the power that had brought me back from death and was slowly, steadily, rewriting me from the inside out.
I should have been afraid of it. A sane person would have been afraid of it.
Instead, I found it... familiar. Like rediscovering a language I'd spoken in a past life.
I spent forty minutes on mana exercises, cycling through the basic control patterns until my reserves were nearly depleted. Then I sat cross-legged on the concrete floor, closed my eyes, and focused on recovery.
Mana regeneration was passive—the body naturally absorbed ambient magical energy and converted it into personal reserves. In a mana-rich environment like this tunnel, the regeneration rate was noticeably faster. I could feel my reserves refilling like a slow tide coming in.
While I waited, I activated Void Sense and mapped the tunnel around me. Twenty-meter radius. The skill painted a three-dimensional picture of my surroundings in my mind's eye—walls, floor, ceiling, structural supports, even the faint mana currents flowing through the air like invisible rivers.
No threats. No presences. Just me and the dark and the patient pulse of residual Gate energy.
I opened my eyes.
One session. No visible progress. Just numbers ticking up by fractions.
This was the reality of power building. Not the dramatic montages or sudden breakthroughs of fiction. Just repetition. Pain. Incremental improvement measured in percentages that rounded to zero.
I'd done this before. For ten years. I could do it again.
I packed my things, deactivated Dark Shroud, and made my way back to the surface. The evening air hit me like a wall—cool and clean after the heavy mana atmosphere of the tunnel.
My phone showed two missed calls. One from an unknown number. One from Kaito.
Kaito. He'd gotten my number somehow. Probably from the Assessment Center's registration records—they weren't exactly classified, and Kaito had always been the type to find what he wanted through sheer persistence.
I stared at his name on the screen for a long moment.
In the original timeline, our friendship had developed organically over the first few months after awakening. We'd been assigned to the same training cohort, bonded over shared experiences, gradually built the kind of trust that only comes from fighting beside someone and knowing they'll watch your back.
This time, he'd watched me fight goblins and save his life. The dynamic was already different. He didn't see me as an equal—he saw me as something extraordinary. Something to aspire to. Or something to be wary of.
I needed him to see me as a friend. A real one. Not because the system told me emotional bonds reduced corruption—though they did—but because Kaito Yamamoto was one of the best people I'd ever known. Loyal to a fault. Brave beyond reason. The kind of person who'd charge into an SSS-Rank Gate with nothing but his fists if it meant protecting someone he cared about.
He'd charged into one. It had killed him.
I called him back.
"RYU!" The volume nearly blew out my earpiece. "Dude! I've been trying to reach you all day! Are you okay? I saw the news—well, I mean, I was THERE, but the news footage shows way more than I saw because I was busy bleeding and running—are you okay?"
Despite everything, I almost smiled. Same Kaito. Same energy. Same inability to use one word when thirty would do.
"I'm fine. How's your shoulder?"
"Twelve stitches. The doctor said I'm gonna have a wicked scar. I'm already planning how to make it look cool. Hey, listen—I need to talk to you. In person. Can you meet?"
"When?"
"Now? Tomorrow? Whenever. I don't care. I just—" His voice shifted. Dropped lower. The bravado cracking to reveal something genuine underneath. "You saved my life, man. That goblin was going to kill me. And you just appeared out of nowhere and—I need to say thank you. Properly. Face to face."
"You don't owe me anything, Kaito."
"Bullshit I don't. You literally stopped me from being goblin food. That earns at least a coffee and a conversation. Come on. There's a place near Shinjuku Station—Café Twilight. You know it?"
I knew it. In the original timeline, it had become our regular spot. We'd spent hundreds of hours at that café, planning missions, arguing about tactics, just existing in each other's company the way friends do when words aren't necessary.
"I'll be there in thirty minutes," I said.
"Awesome! I'll grab us a table. Oh, and Ryu?"
"Yeah?"
"You're buying. Hero tax."
He hung up before I could argue.
Café Twilight was exactly as I remembered—small, warm, tucked into a side street near the station with a hand-painted sign and windows fogged with steam. The kind of place that survived on regulars and reputation rather than foot traffic. The owner, an elderly woman named Fumiko, made the best coffee in Shinjuku and had zero tolerance for nonsense.
In the original timeline, she'd survived the Cataclysm. One of the few. I'd found her in a refugee camp two weeks after the SSS-Rank Gate Break, serving coffee from a salvaged machine to shell-shocked survivors because "people need something normal, or they forget how to be people."
She was behind the counter now, wiping glasses with practiced efficiency. Seventy years old, maybe. Iron-grey hair. The kind of face that had been beautiful once and had settled into something better—character.
"What can I get you?" she asked without looking up.
"Two coffees, please."
She looked up then, studied me for half a second, and nodded. "Sit anywhere."
Kaito was already at a corner table, waving enthusiastically. His left arm was in a sling—the shoulder wound more serious than his phone manner had suggested. But his grin was intact, which meant his spirit was undamaged.
I sat down across from him.
For a moment, neither of us spoke. Kaito's grin faded into something more serious—still warm, but tempered. He was looking at me the way Hana had looked at me. The way Hayashi had looked at me. The way everyone was looking at me now.
Like I was a puzzle they couldn't solve.
"So," Kaito said.
"So," I replied.
"You fought like thirty goblins."
"Seventeen. The security team handled the rest."
"You teleported."
"It was more of a fast step—"
"Ryu. You teleported. I watched you do it. You were in one place, and then you were in another place, and there was no in-between." He leaned forward. "That's not a C-Rank ability. I've been reading up on this stuff since yesterday. C-Rank Hunters can do enhanced physical feats, minor elemental manifestation, basic mana reinforcement. They cannot teleport."
"The Association classified me as C-Rank. I trust their assessment."
"The Association also failed to prevent a Gate from opening inside their own building. Forgive me if my trust in their competence is at an all-time low."
Fair point. I didn't have a rebuttal, so I said nothing.
Fumiko brought our coffees. Black, strong, no sugar. I hadn't specified, but she'd read us correctly. She always did.
Kaito wrapped both hands around his cup—awkwardly, with the sling—and stared into the dark liquid.
"I thought I was going to die," he said quietly. No bravado now. Just honesty, raw and unvarnished. "That goblin was standing over me, and my arm wasn't working, and I could see its eyes. Yellow. Empty. Like looking into a machine that only knew how to do one thing." He swallowed. "And then you were there. Between me and it. And you killed it like it was nothing."
"It wasn't nothing."
"It looked like nothing. From where I was lying, bleeding on the floor, it looked like the easiest thing in the world for you." He looked up. "How?"
I sipped my coffee. Buying time. Constructing the lie.
"I don't know," I said. "Honestly. My father was a Hunter—he died when I was six. Before that, he used to tell me about combat. Techniques. Principles. Maybe some of it stuck in my subconscious. Maybe the awakening brought it to the surface."
"Your dad was D-Rank."
"Yeah."
"D-Rank Hunters don't fight like that. Nobody fights like that. Not at our age. Not without years of training."
"I can't explain it, Kaito. I wish I could."
He studied me. I let him. Sometimes the best way to sell a lie was to let people see you being uncomfortable with it. Genuine discomfort was hard to fake—but I wasn't faking. I was genuinely uncomfortable. I hated lying to him. In the original timeline, I'd trusted Kaito with my life more times than I could count.
But telling him the truth would put him in danger. The same calculation I'd made with Hana. The same impossible choice between honesty and protection.
"Okay," Kaito said finally. "I don't believe you. Just so we're clear. I don't believe the adrenaline excuse or the subconscious training theory or any of it."
My stomach tightened.
"But," he continued, "I also don't care."
I blinked. "You don't care?"
"You saved my life. Whatever you're hiding, whatever you really are—you used it to save people. Three hundred people, give or take. That includes me." He took a sip of coffee. "So no, I don't care about the how. I care about the who. And the who is someone who saw people dying and chose to do something about it."
Something expanded in my chest. Warm. Painful. The feeling of being known—even partially—by someone who chose to accept what they saw rather than demand what was hidden.
"That said," Kaito added, the grin creeping back, "I have decided that we're friends now. Non-negotiable. You saved my life, so by every anime and manga convention in existence, we're bonded for life. I don't make the rules."
"I'm pretty sure you literally just made that rule up."
"Irrelevant. It's in effect. You're stuck with me, Takahashi."
In the original timeline, this friendship had taken weeks to develop. Here, compressed by crisis and near-death, it was forming in hours. The butterfly effect wasn't just changing events—it was changing relationships. Accelerating connections. Deepening bonds that had been slow-burning before.
Probability of betrayal: less than 0.3%. The system confirmed what I already knew. Kaito was incapable of betrayal. It simply wasn't in his DNA. He'd been loyal to me in the original timeline even when loyalty was suicide, even when everyone around us was cutting deals and switching sides.
He'd died loyal.
I wouldn't let that happen again either.
"Fine," I said. "Friends. But I'm not buying every time."
"Hero tax, Ryu. Hero tax."
We talked for another hour. Not about the incident—we'd exhausted that topic, and Kaito seemed to sense that pushing further would cross a line. Instead, we talked about normal things. His family. My sister. School, which we'd both be returning to on Monday alongside the training program. His awakening—B-Rank, Physical Enhancement type, which was exactly what he'd gotten in the original timeline.
B-Rank at sixteen. In the original timeline, Kaito had been considered a prodigy. His natural talent for combat enhancement was exceptional, and with proper training, he'd grown into one of the strongest B-Rank Hunters in Japan. Some analysts had predicted he'd eventually break into A-Rank.
He never got the chance. The SSS-Rank Gate had ended that trajectory along with his life.
"I'm joining Silver Phoenix," Kaito announced between bites of a pastry he'd ordered. "Their training program is the best for Enhancement types. Plus, their guild master is this crazy old guy named Oda who apparently bench-presses cars for fun. My kind of people."
Silver Phoenix. A mid-tier guild with a solid reputation and no ties to Akira's network. In the original timeline, Kaito had joined Crimson Vanguard alongside me—Akira's guild. The fact that he was choosing differently this time...
Another ripple. Another change. Butterfly wings beating.
"Good choice," I said. And meant it.
"What about you? Going guild?"
"Independent."
Kaito's eyebrows shot up. "Solo? That's hardcore. Also kind of dumb. No offense."
"Some taken."
"Independent Hunters have the highest casualty rate of any category. It's like, sixty percent mortality in the first year."
"I'll be careful."
"You literally fought a Gate Break with a stolen goblin sword."
"I'll be more careful."
He shook his head, but he was grinning. "You're insane, Takahashi. Certifiable. But I respect it." He raised his coffee cup. "To being alive."
I raised mine. "To being alive."
We drank.
Outside the café windows, Tokyo glowed in the early evening light. Millions of people, living their lives, eating their dinners, watching their televisions. Oblivious to the things hiding behind the skin of reality. Oblivious to the man sitting in a corner café who'd seen the world end and was desperately trying to prevent it from happening again.
Kaito left at 6:00 PM, extracting a promise that I'd text him my training schedule so we could coordinate. "Partners," he said firmly, pointing at me with his good hand. "Whether you like it or not."
I watched him go—bouncing down the sidewalk with the irrepressible energy of someone too stubborn to let a near-death experience slow him down. The sling on his arm didn't diminish his stride. Nothing ever diminished Kaito's stride.
Except fire serpents. Except SSS-Rank Gates. Except the inevitable, merciless mathematics of a world that killed its best people first.
I sat alone in the café and finished my coffee.
The corruption counter pulsed. Twenty-eight percent. Unchanged. But I could feel it—the weight of it, the cold patience of it, the way it settled into the spaces between my thoughts like sediment in still water.
The first threshold was crossed. The system had said physical and mental changes were beginning.
Physical: the darkening around my irises. Subtle. Almost invisible.
Mental: harder to define. I noticed it in how I processed information—faster, colder, more efficient. Emotions didn't hit as hard as they should have. The grief was still there, but it was muffled, like hearing music through a wall. The rage was still there, but it was controlled, channeled, almost comfortable in its precision.
I was becoming sharper. Harder. More effective.
And some part of me—a part that was growing larger with every passing hour—didn't mind.
That was the most terrifying thing of all.
I got home at 7:30 PM.
Hana was at the kitchen table, textbooks spread around her like a defensive fortification. She looked up when I came in, scanned me head to toe—checking for new injuries, I realized—and then returned to her work.
"How was the meeting?" she asked, casually, as if she hadn't been worrying about it all afternoon.
"Fine. Paperwork. I'm officially a registered Hunter." I pulled the provisional license from my pocket and set it on the table beside her textbook.
She picked it up. Read every word. Studied the photo. Turned it over to check the back.
"Shadow Walker," she murmured. "Void-Aspect." Her eyes flickered to me. "What does that mean?"
"Spatial manipulation and stealth abilities, mostly. The Void-Aspect part is... new. They haven't fully categorized it yet."
"Hence the additional testing they'll probably ask you to do."
"How did you—"
"It's what I would do if I were them. An uncategorized ability type in a teenager who shouldn't be able to fight? They'll want to study you." She set the license down. "Are you going to let them?"
"As much as I need to. No more."
She nodded. Slowly. Processing.
"Onii-chan."
"Yeah?"
"I started a file."
My blood cooled. "A file?"
"On you. On everything that's happened since the ceremony. The footage, the news reports, the class information, your behavior changes." She met my eyes squarely. "I know you won't tell me the truth. Fine. I'll find it myself."
Of course she would. This was Hana. The girl who'd be accepted into Tokyo University's psychology program at sixteen. The girl who could read people like open books.
"Hana, some things are better not—"
"Don't." Her voice was quiet but absolute. "Don't tell me what's better for me. You're my brother, not my parent. And even parents don't get to decide what their children are smart enough to handle."
We stared at each other across the kitchen table. Two Takahashis—equally stubborn, equally determined, equally certain they were right.
"I'm not going to stop you," I said finally. "But I'm asking you—please—to be careful with what you find. Some information is dangerous just to possess."
"More dangerous than fighting Gate monsters with a stolen sword?"
"Different dangerous."
She held my gaze for another moment, then nodded. A concession, not a surrender. She'd be careful. But she wouldn't stop.
I went to my room. Closed the door. Sat on the bed.
On my desk, the notebook waited. Pages full of plans and timelines and the names of people who would die if I didn't get this right.
I pulled out my phone. Opened the blocked contacts list. Akira's guild email was there—blocked but not deleted. I could see the preview of the message:
"Dear Mr. Takahashi, Crimson Vanguard would like to extend an invitation to discuss..."
I stared at it for a long time.
Somewhere in Tokyo, behind the glass walls of the most powerful guild in Japan, Akira Kurogane was watching. Planning. Calculating. The golden predator with the warm smile and the cold, cold heart.
And here I was. Level 4. C-Rank. Twenty-eight percent corrupted. Armed with nothing but future knowledge, a handful of weak skills, and the stubbornness of a man who refused to die quietly.
It wasn't enough. Not yet. Not by a long shot.
But I had time. Three thousand, six hundred and fifty-four days of it.
And I would use every single one.
I opened the notebook. Picked up my pen.
And began to plan tomorrow.
In the darkness behind my eyes, just before sleep took me, I felt Erebus stir.
Not words this time. Not even impressions. Just a feeling. A sensation like standing at the edge of an ocean so vast that the concept of "shore" lost all meaning.
And beneath that ocean, something moved.
Something ancient.
Something patient.
Something that was beginning to wake up.
[Day 3 of 3,657 Complete]
[Corruption: 28%]
[Lives Saved: 286]
[Lives Lost: 14]
[Bonds Active: 2 (Hana — STRONG, Kaito — FORMING)]
[Public Profile: RISING — "Phantom of Chamber 12"]
[Bureau of Hunter Intelligence: MONITORING]
[Akira Kurogane: OBSERVING]
[You are building foundations, Void Sovereign.]
[Foundations are invisible.]
[But everything that stands — stands on them.]
[Build well.]
[END OF CHAPTER 5]