The bitter cold of January seeped through the thin walls of apartment 403, making the small heater in the corner work twice as hard with half the effect.
Shiratori Shin pulled his threadbare blanket tighter around his shoulders as he hunched over the flickering laptop screen, his bony fingers carefully typing one character at a time to avoid fracturing his joints.
Just five hundred more characters, and I can rest.
The data entry job paid poorly, but it was one of the few occupations Shin could manage from his apartment.
No commute meant no risk of jostling crowds that could shatter his bones, no office meant no stares from colleagues who couldn't understand why a thirty-two-year-old man moved like he was made of glass.
Because he essentially was.
Osteogenesis imperfecta, type III—the doctors had diagnosed when he was just an infant. "Brittle bone disease" was the simpler term, though "brittle" hardly conveyed the reality of bones that could fracture from something as mundane as a sneeze.
Combined with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome that made his skin tear like wet paper, Shin's body was a prison of fragility, a constant reminder of life's cruelty.
A series of coughs wracked his body, and Shin instinctively curled inward, protecting his ribcage.
The pain that followed told him he'd been too late—another rib had likely cracked. He reached for the bottle of painkillers on his desk, only to find it empty.
"Not again," he whispered, his voice barely audible over the rattling of the ancient heater. The prescription wouldn't be refilled for another week. He'd have to endure, as he always had.
The laptop screen blurred as tears of pain formed in his eyes. Shin blinked them away, refusing to indulge in self-pity. Self-pity was a luxury he'd abandoned long ago, around the time he realized no one was coming to save him.
The orphanage was his first clear memory—St. Mary's Home for Children on the outskirts of Tokyo.
He'd been abandoned there as an infant, left with nothing but a note explaining his condition and a name scrawled in hasty handwriting: Shiratori Shin.
"Your parents loved you," Sister Nanako had told him once when he was six, after he'd asked why no one had ever come for him.
"They just couldn't give you the care you needed."
Even as a child, Shin had recognized the lie. Love didn't abandon. Love didn't disappear without a trace.
Between the ages of four and twelve, he had broken sixty-three bones. Each fracture carefully noted in the medical file that grew thicker with every passing year.
Each foster home placement shorter than the last as families realized the extent of his needs.
"He's too fragile."
"We can't afford his treatments."
"What kind of life can he possibly have?"
These whispers followed him, spoken in hushed tones when adults thought he couldn't hear. But Shin heard everything. His body may have been weak, but his senses had compensated with extraordinary acuity.
The worst had been the Tanaka family, his fifth foster placement. Mr. Tanaka had seemed kind at first, patient with Shin's slow movements and careful not to touch him too roughly. But kindness faded with familiarity, and after three months, patience turned to resentment.
"We're spending more on your medications than food for our own children," Mrs. Tanaka had hissed one evening, when the sake had loosened her tongue.
"What use are you to anyone?"
Shin had no answer then. He still didn't now, two decades later.
...
...
The laptop beeped, indicating the completion of his data entry task. Shin carefully saved his work and sent it off to his employer, another faceless entity that didn't care about his condition as long as the work was done correctly and on time.
With trembling hands, he closed the laptop and attempted to stand. Pain shot through his hip—another fracture from simply sitting too long in one position. He bit his lip to keep from crying out. The neighbors had complained about the noise last time.
He shuffled to the small kitchenette, each step a calculated risk. The refrigerator contained half a container of rice, some pickled vegetables, and a carton of milk approaching its expiration date. Dinner would be meager again tonight.
As he waited for the rice to warm in the microwave, Shin's gaze drifted to the small bookshelf beside his futon—the only luxury he allowed himself.
Fantasy novels lined the shelves, dog-eared and read so many times the spines had cracked. Tales of brave warriors, powerful mages, and worlds where the impossible happened daily.
Yuusuatouri: ANew Life Being a Legend is his favorite, a little-known series by an author who had died before completing the final volume.
Shin had read the existing books until he could recite passages from memory, had drawn maps of the fictional world with its floating islands and crystal forests, had even begun writing his own continuation of the story in a notebook he kept hidden under his futon.
In Yuusuatouri, people could fly. They could channel elemental magic through their fingertips. They could heal any wound with a simple incantation. In Yuusuatouri, no one was trapped by their bodies.
The microwave beeped, jolting Shin from his reverie. He carefully removed the bowl of rice, added the pickled vegetables, and returned to his desk.
As he ate, he opened his battered copy of Yuusuatouri: The Beginning of a Legend to the passage where the protagonist Shiryou discovers he is descended from the Legend race, beings of pure light who could reshape reality with a thought.
"A Legend's strength comes not from their body, but from their connection to the world's heart," Shin read aloud, savoring the words like they were a feast instead of the simple rice he consumed.
"When you exist as part of everything, nothing can truly break you."
Outside, snow began to fall. The temperature in the apartment dropped further.
...
...
Three days later, the heater stopped working entirely.
Shin called the building manager, who promised to send someone "when possible." In a building full of tenants paying minimal rent, a single man with no family and no connections was at the bottom of the priority list.
The cold crept in, settling into Shin's bones like an unwelcome guest. He wore every piece of clothing he owned, layered sweaters over long-sleeved shirts over thermal underwear. Still, he shivered.
By the fourth day without heat, breathing had become difficult. Each inhalation felt like ice crystals forming in his lungs. Shin recognized the symptoms of pneumonia beginning to take hold. He should go to the hospital.
But the hospital meant questions. It meant social workers looking at his living conditions and determining them unsuitable.
It meant potentially being placed in a facility "for his own good"—he'd narrowly escaped that fate twice before, fighting with what little strength he had to maintain his independence.
Independence was all he had left.
The fever came that night, wrapping his thoughts in cotton wool and blurring the boundaries between reality and dreams.
Shin lay on his futon, too weak to reach his phone on the desk just two meters away—it might as well have been on another planet.
In his delirium, the walls of his apartment seemed to shimmer and shift, revealing glimpses of crystal spires and floating islands. The world of Yuusuatouri bled through the cracks of reality, beckoning him.
"Not real," Shin murmured, his lips cracked and dry.
"Just stories."
But as consciousness slipped further from his grasp, the distinction seemed less important. The pain in his chest eased as his breathing grew shallower.
The cold that had been his enemy now wrapped around him like a numbing blanket, bringing a strange comfort.
I'm dying, he realized with odd clarity. There was no fear in the thought, only a distant sadness that his existence would end as it had been lived—alone and unremarkable.
As darkness gathered at the edges of his vision, Shin's gaze fell on the open pages of Yuusuatouri: The Beginning of a Legend beside his futon.
The illustration showed the great Tree of Worlds at the center of Yuusuatouri, its branches extending into different realms, its roots drawing strength from the collective dreams of all living beings.
With the last of his strength, Shin reached out a trembling hand toward the book.
"Just once," he whispered, his voice barely a breath.
"Just once, I want to know what it feels like... to be whole. To be strong. To matter."
His fingers brushed the page as his eyes closed for the final time.
And somewhere, across the veil between worlds, something answered.
...
...
Darkness.
Then, warmth.
Shin floated in a strange liquid embrace, awareness coming in waves. There was no pain here, no cold, no sense of his broken body. Just the rhythmic sound of a heartbeat not his own surrounding him.
Am I dead? The thought formed without words, more an impression than a conscious question.
A response came, not in language but in sensation—a gentle pulse of energy that seemed to say: Not dead. Becoming.
Time stretched and compressed in this strange space. Shin had no way to measure its passage, only the growing awareness that something fundamental was changing.
Then came pressure, movement, a sudden rush toward light and sound. The protective darkness that had surrounded him gave way to brightness so intense it would have blinded him if he still had eyes to see.
A voice—the first clear sound in this new existence—spoke words in a language Shin had never heard yet somehow understood perfectly:
"The child bears the Mark of the Origin Light. The prophecy is fulfilled."
Cold air filled lungs that had never breathed before. A cry—his cry—echoed through the chamber.
And Shiratori Shin, once a man of glass, was born anew in the realm of Yuusuatouri.