The silence in the gymnasium was absolute.
Every eye was on Kafka Hibino. He stood frozen on the other side of the malfunctioning scanner, a middle-aged man in a sweat-soaked tracksuit who had somehow broken a multi-million-yen piece of military hardware with his mere presence. He felt like an insect under a microscope.
One of the proctors, a large, bull-necked man, grumbled and walked over to the scanner. "Piece of junk. Tanaka's R&D department keeps sending us these 'upgraded' models, and they're more fragile than a..." He trailed off as he saw the error message. It wasn't the standard 'System Malfunction' or 'Power Fluctuation' message. It was a categorical denial of service. The machine wasn't saying it was broken; it was saying the subject was unreadable.
He looked at Kafka with a new, suspicious glint in his eye. "What's your name and number?"
"Hi-Hibino. Kafka. Applicant 3217," Kafka stammered, his mind racing. They know. It saw the Kaiju in me. It's over.
Soshiro Hoshina stepped down from the platform, his movements fluid and precise. The nervous energy in the room immediately intensified. The Vice-Captain rarely involved himself directly with the applicants.
He walked over to the scanner, his gaze not on the machine, but locked onto Kafka. His eyes, honed by a thousand battles, missed nothing: the barely suppressed panic in Kafka's expression, the way his muscles were tensed not for a fight, but for flight.
"Hibino," Hoshina said, his voice level. "You are thirty-two years old. You work for Monster Sweeper Inc. This is your eighth attempt to join the Defense Force. Every previous attempt has ended in failure."
He was reciting Kafka's file from memory. Each word was a factual, dispassionate nail in the coffin of Kafka's dream.
"Your physical scores today have been, to be frank, unimpressive," Hoshina continued. "You are just barely meeting the minimum requirements. And yet, you have caused a machine designed to withstand the energy readings of a small Kaiju to suffer a catastrophic logic failure."
He circled Kafka slowly, like a wolf inspecting a strange, new creature that had wandered into its territory.
"There are two possibilities," Hoshina said, stopping directly in front of him. "Either this is the single most unlikely mechanical failure in the history of the Defense Force... or there is more to you than meets the eye."
Kafka's throat was sandpaper. He couldn't speak. He just stood there, bracing for the accusation, for the blare of alarms and the feel of a containment team's rifles on him.
But Hoshina's next words surprised him.
"You have an injury on your left forearm," the Vice-Captain stated, his gaze flicking down.
Kafka automatically looked. There was a small, almost healed gash, half-hidden by his sleeve. He'd gotten it during the Yoju swarm cleanup, a piece of shrapnel from a collapsing wall.
"An old injury, sir," Kafka managed to say.
"Let me see it," Hoshina commanded. Before Kafka could react, Hoshina's hand shot out with blinding speed and pushed up his sleeve. The gash was unremarkable. But Hoshina wasn't looking at the cut itself. His thumb gently pressed the skin around it.
"Cellular regeneration is rapid. Far more so than your age would suggest," Hoshina noted, his voice a low murmur. "Your muscle density is also... uneven. Some areas are consistent with a man your age who engages in manual labor. Others..." He squeezed Kafka's bicep lightly, his eyebrows raising a fraction of a millimeter. "...are orders of magnitude higher. It is a biological contradiction."
He let go, his expression a mask of cold analysis. He was the world's foremost expert in close-quarters combat. To him, the human body was a weapon, a machine. And Kafka Hibino's machine was full of bugs, inconsistencies, and impossible readings.
A tech finally managed to reboot the fortitude scanner. "It's back online, Vice-Captain!"
"Good," Hoshina said, his eyes still locked on Kafka. "Applicant 3218, step forward. Hibino, you will go to the infirmary and have a full biological work-up. Blood panel, genetic sequencing, the works. Do not leave until you are dismissed."
He turned and walked away without another word. It was a dismissal, but it felt like a stay of execution.
As Kafka was escorted out by a proctor, feeling the burn of a thousand curious stares on his back, Reno Ichikawa watched him go, a profound sense of confusion on his face. He remembered the grey Kaiju appearing from nowhere, its impossible strength. He remembered his old, washed-up partner, Kafka. His brain was desperately trying to keep the two from colliding, but the idea was already there, a tiny, terrifying spark.
Later, in his private office, Soshiro Hoshina sat staring at two files on his holographic display.
One was the preliminary, and deeply confusing, medical report on Kafka Hibino. His biology was a mess of contradictions. He possessed several unique genetic markers never seen before, and his cellular regenerative properties were off the charts, but they seemed to be... dormant. Latent. It was as if he was a supercar with the engine turned off.
The other file was a highly classified report he had just received from Project Bald Cape. He didn't have full clearance, but as an officer who had made direct contact with the Anomalies, he had been given a brief summary.
His eyes fell on a single line in the report on Alpha.
[Subject demonstrates an ability to defy all forms of quantitative analysis. Scanners do not measure him; they break when trying. He is a living 'scanner error'.]
Hoshina leaned back in his chair, tapping a finger on his desk. He brought up a third file: the capture order for the new, intelligent Kaiju, "No. 8." A Kaiju that had appeared out of nowhere to save civilians, a Kaiju whose motivations were a complete mystery.
A monster-saving sweeper. A medically impossible applicant. A mysterious Kaiju with a human-like energy signature.
And two impossible scanner errors in the space of a single week.
Hoshina was a man of tactics and tangible evidence. He didn't believe in wild speculation. But his instincts, the instincts that had kept him alive against monsters his entire life, were screaming at him. These were not disconnected events. He was looking at ripples spreading from the same two stones that had been dropped into their world.
Anomaly-Alpha was a singularity, a being beyond his reach. Hoshina knew he couldn't touch him.
But Kafka Hibino... Kafka Hibino was right here. He was an anomaly Hoshina could touch. One he could observe up close.
He brought up the list of applicants who had passed the physical examination. Kafka Hibino was on it, just barely. His final score, calculated without the fortitude test, was the lowest of all the successful candidates. By all rights, he should be cut.
Hoshina stared at the name for a long time. Logic dictated he remove the applicant who broke his equipment and whose file was riddled with red flags.
But Hoshina's success had never come from following the logical path. It came from exploiting chaos, from understanding the unpredictable.
With a deft flick of his finger, he moved Kafka Hibino's name from the "Provisional Pass" list to the "Confirmed for Phase Two" list. Then, he added a small, private annotation to the file, visible only to himself and the Director General.
It read: Keep a very close watch on this one.
Soshiro Hoshina didn't know what Kafka Hibino was. But he knew, with an unshakable certainty, that he was interesting. And in a world that now contained a being of infinite, soul-crushing boredom, "interesting" was the most valuable, and dangerous, commodity of all.