The first omen was not fire from the heavens or the dead rising from the grave. It was the vending machine behind Fukuju's ramen stall giving birth to a pigeon.
At precisely 9:12 a.m., the machine trembled, blinked its digital display twice, and ejected—after a rattle that sounded suspiciously like hiccups—a gray pigeon covered in condensation and confusion. It stood on the counter, fluffed its feathers, cooed in indignation, and flew off toward the east, leaving behind a faint scent of lime soda and mild existential dread.
Fukuju stared after it with the squint of a man who'd seen far too much weirdness to be surprised anymore, but still retained the decency to be mildly offended.
"Not again," he muttered, ladling miso broth into a chipped bowl. "Last week it was a turtle. I don't even sell beverages cold enough for that."
The customers sitting on the cracked red stools outside his stall—a narrow tin-roofed contraption wedged between a pawnshop and a fortune teller's shack—didn't seem to care. One was a bus driver eating with the intensity of a man preparing for combat. Another was a student in a rumpled uniform, scrolling through his phone with thumb speed rivaling a trained pianist.
Beyond them, the city of Kurokawa simmered in its usual chaos: drones flitted between neon signs, street vendors yelled in seven dialects, and the sky hung low and uncertain, a pale silver canvas that looked too tired to be blue.
Then came the second omen.
A soundless crack tore across the clouds like invisible glass shattering. Everyone looked up at once—the sort of universal reaction usually reserved for eclipses, fireworks, or falling space debris. The sky began to peel. Literally peel—like paint coming off a wall—revealing beneath it not darkness, not stars, but a layer of shimmering geometric shapes. Hexagons, triangles, and impossible polygons rearranged themselves in slow, mesmerizing motion, as though the universe had been hiding a circuit board behind the firmament.
The bus driver dropped his chopsticks. The fortune teller next door gasped so violently her crystal ball fell off its stand and rolled into the gutter.
Fukuju sighed. "Here we go again."
He reached under the counter and pulled out a battered walkie-talkie the size of a brick. It was labeled AREA 44 FIELD DEVICE and held together with tape, stubbornness, and nostalgia.
"This is Fukuju," he said into it. "Area 44 reporting an atmospheric anomaly over Kurokawa. Sky's glitching again. Tell HQ I want hazard pay this time."
A burst of static, followed by a voice as lazy as his own. "Fukuju, it's too early for your nonsense. Did you spike your ramen again?"
"Junpei, I am looking at the architecture of the universe like it's under construction. Don't tell me it's a weather balloon."
There was a pause. Then, the unmistakable sound of slurping. "Hold on," Junpei said, chewing thoughtfully. "You mean, like last time? The polygon thing?"
"Worse. The polygons are moving this time."
As if on cue, a beam of light lanced down from the geometric veil and struck the alley behind the ramen stall. The concrete cracked, and out from the fissure crawled something best described as a jellyfish made of chrome, its tendrils shimmering like liquid mercury.
The student screamed. The bus driver fainted. The fortune teller crossed herself, then started livestreaming.
Fukuju didn't move. He looked down at his broth, then at the chrome jellyfish, then back at his broth. "I just cleaned the floor."
The creature pulsed, emitting a low hum that vibrated in the bones. It spoke—not in words, but in concepts. Its meaning flooded into Fukuju's head like an intrusive daydream:
Is this the Prime Contact Zone? Identify custodian.
He wiped his hands on a towel. "You're about two streets off. Prime Contact Zone's over near the recycling center."
The creature's colors flickered. Confusion, irritation, and a faint note of bureaucratic despair rippled across its translucent body.
Recalibrating… recalibrating…
"Yeah," Fukuju said. "Happens to the best of us."
The walkie-talkie crackled again. "Fukuju, HQ says not to engage. They're sending a containment squad."
"Tell them to bring mops."
Custodian, the creature insisted, its form expanding into an iridescent cloud. You carry residual resonance. You are part of the Fukuju Field. You will comply.
Fukuju blinked. "Oh, hell. Not this again."
The jellyfish lunged forward, wrapping him in light. For a moment, he was nowhere—no ramen stall, no street, just white noise and the feeling of being peeled apart by mathematics. When the world reassembled, he stood knee-deep in water.
But this wasn't Kurokawa Bay. The horizon was filled with impossible towers spiraling in ways Euclid would've called rude. The sky shimmered with layers of translucent panels—dozens of versions of reality stacked like pages of a transparent book.
Fukuju groaned. "Damn it. Area 0 again."
A shadow moved across the water. A colossal machine drifted overhead—part spaceship, part shrine, its hull carved with symbols that burned faintly. He could see figures on its deck: humanoid, but taller, with elongated arms and faceless masks.
They were arguing. Loudly.
From this distance, he couldn't hear them, but he could tell it was the sort of argument bureaucrats had when paperwork threatened to become real work.
"Typical," he muttered. "Even the cosmic ones can't file correctly."
A ripple spread through the air, and a small drone descended toward him, projecting a holographic sigil: the emblem of the Interdimensional Maintenance Bureau.
"Custodian Fukuju Tanabe," said an electronic voice. "You have been reactivated under Clause 7, Subsection Omega, regarding interference between Terran Layer 44 and the Primary Simulation Mesh."
Fukuju rubbed his temple. "I was supposed to be retired."
"Retirement denied," said the drone. "You have noodles to serve and worlds to stabilize."
The machine's logic was impeccable, in that uniquely bureaucratic way where it made no sense but sounded official.
He sighed. "Fine. But I'm not doing it on an empty stomach."
The drone hummed. "Authorization granted for one bowl."
He grinned faintly. "At least the universe still has priorities."
Somewhere in the layers above, thunder—or something pretending to be thunder—rolled through the fractured sky.
The day the sky forgot itself had only just begun.
And Fukuju, reluctant custodian of Area 44, ramen chef by day and part-time reality janitor by accident, was once again on cleanup duty for the cosmos.