The digital numbers on his smartphone shifted to 12:55 PM. Five minutes before the scheduled operation on a bright Saturday afternoon.
Kazuya stood motionless beneath the colossal entrance archway of central Tokyo's largest amusement park. He dressed in a manner that bordered on bizarre for the situation: a plain white t-shirt underneath an oversized white hoodie, paired with minimalist black shorts and walking sneakers designed for endurance rather than style.
To Kazuya, the impending event was not a romantic date. It was more like public torture.
The clock struck 1:00 PM. Right on cue, a petite silhouette bounded into his field of vision. Sarashina Ruka had arrived.
In jarring contrast to Kazuya's sterile appearance, the girl radiated energy beneath the sun. Ruka wore a cream-colored turtleneck sweater that clung to her developing frame, paired with a short, pleated navy skirt and black thigh-high socks. The most striking feature of her ensemble was the vibrant blue ribbon tied into her dark, shoulder-length hair, bouncing with every step.
They had arrived at the designated meeting point at the same time, down to the second.
"You must be Kazuya-kun, right?!" Ruka jogged the final few meters. Her breathing came heavy, but her lips stretched into a blinding smile. "I am Sarashina Ruka! It's a pleasure to meet you for our date today!"
Kazuya shoved both hands deep into his pockets. His dark eyes swept over her figure, scanning her from the blue ribbon down to the tips of her shoes. He didn't blush. His heart rate remained steady. No trace of masculine fluster.
"Let's go."
Kazuya delivered the words in a dry, monotonous voice, turning his back to her and walking toward the ticket gates. He offered no praise regarding her outfit. He displayed none of the stuttering awkwardness she was trained to expect.
Ruka blinked. For a fraction of a second, her momentum faltered against the freezing apathy of her new client. But her recovery was fast. She let out a cheerful chirp, jogging to catch up. Taking the initiative, she reached out and grasped his hand.
"Let's conquer the giant roller coaster first today, Kazuya-kun!"
The transmission of soft texture and warm body heat against his palm caused Kazuya's eyebrows to furrow, but he didn't pull away. He allowed the contact, his mind continuing its analysis.
Her palm is damp with nervous sweat. The physical pressure of her grip is tight. This differs from the loose, elegant hand-holding techniques utilized by top-tier service escorts.
That glaring abnormality persisted for the duration of the afternoon.
Following the chaotic itinerary Ruka dragged him through, the pair swept through a gauntlet of thrill rides. She screamed at the top of her lungs as the roller coaster plummeted. She laughed, clutching her stomach while ramming her bumper car into his. She devoured a massive strawberry crepe with such genuine enthusiasm that whipped cream smeared around the corners of her mouth.
Kazuya walked silently beside her, carrying a cold bottle of water, his eyes never breaking contact. He monitored every movement, every micro-expression.
He waited for the inevitable, pre-rehearsed romantic lines. He waited to detect the exhausting stiffness hiding behind her smile. He anticipated the moment she would discreetly check her wristwatch, praying for her shift to end.
But that moment never arrived.
From the beginning of the afternoon until the sun began to lower, Sarashina Ruka projected an aura of unadulterated, decisive joy that bordered on foolishness. She displayed unfiltered frustration, puffing her cheeks and stomping her foot when the claw machine failed to grab the stuffed animal she wanted. Conversely, she exploded into euphoria, jumping up and down when Kazuya won the plush bear on his first attempt.
She was blunt. She was impulsive. Above all, she was transparently honest regarding her emotions. Every facial expression she made was raw and wild. Zero trace of corporate acting or calculated manipulation.
Sitting on a stone bench, Kazuya observed Ruka as she finished her crepe. He let out a soft sigh. The heavily fortified foundation of his cynical worldview wavered.
Back when he was a naive teenager taking his first steps into the cutthroat arena of professional Esports. Back then, he possessed that same aura of genuine, foolish joy. He remembered laughing when his team secured a crucial victory. He remembered weeping when his home team suffered a crushing defeat. He had handed out his trust with a pure innocence that ignored personal gain.
Kazuya narrowed his eyes against the glare, locking onto the blue ribbon fluttering atop Ruka's head.
Two logical possibilities. Neither this teenage girl is a generational genius of psychological manipulation, playing the innocent maiden with such terrifying perfection that she has deceived my eyes; nor she is quite literally just an idiot.
Regardless of the correct hypothesis, Kazuya realized something frustrating. Wasting financial resources to analyze this specific girl was like attempting to solve a mathematical equation lacking a definitive answer.
...
The setting sun dyed the expansive Tokyo sky in shades of burning crimson and deep orange. Fading sunlight cast shimmering reflections across the massive metallic framework of the park's largest attraction: the giant Ferris wheel. The designated final destination of their date.
"Wow! It's beautiful!" Ruka gasped, pressing her face against the thick glass window of the spherical cabin. Her eyes sparkled as the mechanical wheel elevated their enclosed space dozens of meters into the glowing sky.
Kazuya sat on the cushioned bench opposite her. His arms were crossed, his back resting against the curved fiberglass wall. He half-closed his eyes, waiting for the timer to tick down to zero so he could go home.
CRACK
A horrifying noise of grinding metal and mechanical failure echoed through the air.
The passenger cabin jerked and shook from side to side. The loss of momentum caused Ruka to lose her balance. She pitched forward, crying out as she fell onto her hands and knees.
Outside, the massive structure of the giant Ferris wheel came to a dead halt, leaving their cabin suspended motionless in mid-air, resting near the highest possible altitude.
"Wh-What is happening?!" Ruka shrieked, her hands scrambling to grab the metal safety railing.
"A power grid failure."
Kazuya didn't move a muscle. He opened his dark eyes, his tone as steady as a newscaster reading the weather report. He shifted his gaze out the window, looking down at the theme park far below. Crowds of tourists began to panic, swarming like confused ants while security personnel ran in chaotic patterns.
"It appears we are trapped."
"Trapped?! Up here?! We are suspended over sixty meters in the air!"
Ruka's eyes widened. Her previous joy evaporated, replaced by a tidal wave of terror. The young girl scrambled to her feet and threw herself against the thick glass door.
"Is anybody out there?! Help us!! Please!! We are trapped!!" She screamed until her throat was raw, slamming her fists against the glass.
"Conserve your energy. It's useless. At this altitude, no one on the ground will hear a sound." Kazuya clicked his tongue in annoyance.
The heavy silence of the powerless cabin, combined with the restrictive physical dimensions of the space, acted as an immediate trigger. It activated a severe claustrophobic panic response within the fragile psyche of the seventeen-year-old girl.
Ruka's breathing became shallow and jagged. She hyperventilated. She shrieked, pounded her knuckles against the unyielding door, and finally, her legs gave out. She collapsed onto the floor, burying her face into her hands as she sobbed.
"What are we going to do... Kazuya-kun... No one is coming to save us... What if we are stuck up here forever and we die..." The pathetic wailing filled the tiny space without pause.
Kazuya's brow furrowed into a deep scowl.
He possessed zero fear of extreme heights, nor did the concept of death frighten him. However, his brain stared at a critical biological problem.
This specific Ferris wheel cabin model was designed as a sealed airtight box reliant on active air conditioning. Even if they didn't suffocate, the sunlight outside, even as the sun was setting, would be enough to cook everyone inside the cabin like steamed shrimp in about a few dozen minutes.
He let out a slow sigh, then reached deep into the pocket of his hoodie. His fingers wrapped around the micro recording device. He pressed the kill switch, terminating the recording, held it tight and took a deliberate step forward until he towered over Ruka's trembling form.
"Hand over the ribbon." His voice was sharp and cold. Not a request, but a command issued by a military officer.
"Huh? What... what did you say..." Ruka looked up at him in bewilderment, her large eyes clouded with tears.
He possessed zero patience to wait for her brain to process the demand. Kazuya reached his hand forward, his fingers digging into the back of her head. With a single yank, he ripped the blue ribbon out of her hair, causing her dark locks to cascade around her face.
Moving with practiced efficiency, Kazuya wrapped the silk ribbon around his right hand. He layered the fabric over his knuckles, ensuring it formed a dense protective padding.
From the moment he stepped inside the cabin, his eyes had scanned the structural of the enclosure. He had deduced a critical manufacturing detail. In a blatant corporate effort to cut costs, only the primary observation windows at the front and rear were constructed from solid tempered safety glass. Conversely, the two smaller ventilation windows located at waist height on the side walls were constructed from standard, cheap float one.
Kazuya took half a step backward, planting his left foot into the floor to establish a balanced center of gravity. His dark eyes sharpened into daggers, locking onto the exact center point of the weakest structural axis on the small glass pane to his left.
He swung his arm.
It was a brutal, kinetic straight punch. He channeled the muscular strength of his upper body, combined with the rotational torque generated from his hips, into his padded fist.
CRASH
The deafening sound of destruction filled the small space. The cheap float glass shattered into dozens of jagged shards, exploding outward into the empty sky.
Kazuya didn't pause. Maintaining his fluid momentum, he twisted his torso in the opposite direction, unleashing an identical punch into the small window pane on the right wall.
CRASH
The instant the barrier broke, the freezing autumn wind roaring at an altitude of sixty meters flooded into the cabin. The gale whipped both of their hair around their faces. A wave of freezing, oxygenated fresh air saturated the enclosed space, sweeping away the suffocating heat and eradicating the deadly threat of carbon dioxide poisoning.
Ruka sat paralyzed on the floor. Her mouth hung open in stunned silence. She stared blankly at the jagged holes of shattered glass and felt the freezing wind slapping against her tear-stained cheeks.
Kazuya slowly turned around to face her. Moving with deliberate slowness, he unwrapped the bound silk ribbon from his hand. Despite the protective layer of fabric, the explosive force of the impact against the jagged edges had sliced through the material and torn the skin across his knuckles. Bright crimson blood seeped from his wounds, heavy drops splattering against the white floor of the cabin.
"Done. We are no longer going to suffocate or being steamed to death." He flicked his bleeding hand, trying to shake off the excess liquid. His voice remained dry as he tossed the blue ribbon, now stained with his blood, onto Ruka's lap. "Stop crying."
However, Ruka did no such thing.
The girl experienced a massive psychological system shock. She had just witnessed an explosive display of physical violence from a boy she thought was a pushover. This, combined with the paralyzing terror of being suspended high in the sky, caused her body to convulse. The choking sounds of her sobbing grew louder, echoing off the remaining glass walls.
Kazuya gritted his teeth until his jaw popped. He harbored a burning hatred for displays of emotional weakness. He loathed the concept of lowering himself to comfort another human being. But he had no estimate of how long the rescue operation would take, and he couldn't afford to let this foolish girl pass out or hyperventilate into a seizure.
Swallowing his irritation, Kazuya stepped forward and dropped into a low crouch in front of Ruka.
Without a word, he reached his arms around her back pulled her convulsing body forward, trapping her against his solid chest in an inescapable embrace.
"Stay calm, and everything will be fine." He spoke the command into her ear. His vocal tone was deep, warm, and rhythmic. He used his steady breathing pattern as a metronome, forcing Ruka's erratic lungs to synchronize with the slow, powerful rising and falling of his chest.
Ruka's body went rigid, stiffening like a wooden board.
When a human subject is thrust into a life-threatening situation, the adrenal glands pump massive quantities of adrenaline into the bloodstream. This causes an accelerated heart rate, heavy breathing, and a profound weakness in the extremities.
If a member of the opposite sex is physically present during this physiological spike, the human brain becomes susceptible to a misinterpretation. It will frequently misdiagnose the severe physiological symptoms of "Extreme Terror" as the intoxicating sensation of "Love".
She tilted her tear-stained face upward. The brilliant crimson light of the dying sunset pierced through the shattered glass windows, casting deep shadows across the sharp, angular profile of Kazuya's face. He looked statuesque, radiating an aura of total calmness without a trace of fear in his eyes.
Her gaze dropped. She saw the bright red blood seeping from his hand. Her senses were overwhelmed by the scent clinging to his hoodie. The crisp scent of unscented fabric softener mixed with a faint hint of sharp mint. It lacked the nauseating stench of cheap cologne or the fabricated flattery she endured from the pathetic men who usually rented her.
Thump
Thump
Thump
The tempo of Ruka's heartbeat spiked to an unprecedented, almost painful threshold. It hammered against her ribcage like a war drum.
But this time, the biological rhythm was no longer driven by pathological panic.
"It's him."
A naive, delusional, yet explosive thought erupted within the fragile mind of the seventeen-year-old girl.
"This vibration in my chest... this is my fated destiny!"
Hijacked by the flood of adrenaline and suffering from a misinterpretation of her own neurochemistry, Ruka executed an action that shattered every predicted variable in Kazuya's mental script.
She pushed her upper body upward, squeezed her eyes shut, and pressed her soft, trembling lips against Kazuya's.
Kazuya's pupils contracted to pinpricks. Every neural pathway inside his brain suffered a short circuit the moment he knew what was happening.
A kiss.
The first kiss he had experienced since his reincarnation, stolen from him inside a broken Ferris wheel cabin by an idiotic teenager he had known for exactly four hours.
"What is this?! Is she high or something?!"
He didn't know what was that behavior. He could choose to shove her away, slap her across the face to shatter her delusions, and verbally abuse her for her stupidity.
However, Ruka's arms were wrapped tight around the back of his neck. She clung to his body like a drowning victim gripping a life preserver in a raging storm. If he chose to detach her right now, while she was in this unstable psychological state, she would resume her screaming, or worse, she would thrash, rocking the suspended cabin and placing both of their lives in severe physical jeopardy.
He allowed the delusional high school girl, intoxicated by her chemically induced "destiny", to press her tongue into his mouth. He refused to reciprocate the action in any form, but he also refused to push her away.
It was a French kiss defined entirely by Kazuya's agonizing endurance and his unadulterated frustration.
...
It took over a full hour before the heavy emergency rescue teams managed to deploy specialized industrial cranes to safely lower each passenger cabin back to solid ground.
The millisecond the heavy metal door of their cabin was pried open by the rescue workers, Kazuya shoved his way past them. He stepped out into the cool evening air, ignoring the frantic shouts of the medical personnel demanding to inspect his bleeding hand.
His only objective was to put distance between him and Ruka. The girl had spent the last hour staring at him with nauseating, sparkling eyes filled with pure worship and inappropriate romantic implication, her cheeks glowing red like a ripe tomato.
Kazuya felt sick to his stomach at the mere presence of this hallucination. He reached into his pocket and yanked out his smartphone, fully intending to call Kuribayashi and unleash a torrent of verbal abuse for dragging him into this nightmare.
However, the moment the digital screen illuminated his face, a single, urgent text message notification popped up.
The words displayed on the screen froze his stream of angry thoughts.
[Kazuya, get to the Central Medical Hospital immediately. Your grandmother has just suffered a massive stroke!]
The message was sent from his father, Kazuo.
Kazuya's eyes widened in shock. For the first time since his reincarnation, his heart skipped a terrifying beat. A specific, critical piece of data from the original timeline flashed through his memory banks.
He recognized the fatal error he had just committed.
By choosing to reject the rental of Chizuru, and by moving the scheduled date with Ruka to an earlier point in the timeline, he had inadvertently caused a temporal shift. He had altered the fundamental sequence of events in this world. A dangerous new variable had been introduced, and now, his grandmother was in critical condition earlier than anticipated.
Despite the fact that he was a ruthless, reincarnated sociopath who cared for nothing, Nagomi Kinoshita was the sole entity in this miserable family who had genuinely, unconditionally loved the original owner of this body. He owed her a debt.
Without hesitation, Kazuya shoved his way through the dense crowd of park security guards, ignoring their demands for a statement. He pivoted on his heel and launched himself forward, sprinting like a fired bullet toward the main entrance taxi stand.
"Kazuya-kun! Wait for me!"
A frantic, high-pitched voice echoed from behind him.
Ruka, her hair still a chaotic mess from the wind and her torn blue ribbon clutched in her small fist, was stubbornly running as fast as her legs could carry her, refusing to let him out of her sight.
At this moment, Kazuya's advanced brain was redlining, overloaded by the panic of his grandmother's life-or-death situation and the terrifying reality of a fractured timeline. He possessed zero mental bandwidth to turn around and scream at this annoying, clingy stalker to go away.
He practically ripped the rear door off a taxi that had just pulled up to the curb, throwing his body inside. Before he could slam the door shut, Ruka squeezed her small frame through the opening, throwing herself onto the seat next to him and slamming the door shut behind her.
"Drive to the Central General Hospital ASAP!!!" Kazuya barked the order at the startled driver.
His dark eyes locked dead ahead, staring through the windshield. His gaze was sharp, freezing cold, and saturated with an unprecedented level of anxiety. He ignored the existence of Ruka, who was sitting beside him, secretly stealing glances at his sharp profile with the intoxicated, helpless eyes of a young woman who had fallen irreversibly into the inescapable trap of love.