Ever since the night he committed that plan to paper, Asou Akiya felt as though a vast new gate had swung open before him.
His heart settled into an unfamiliar calm. He ate well, slept deeply, trained his body every day, and pushed toward the hopeful mark of one hundred and eighty centimeters, no longer pacing like a caged animal, no longer waking each morning with dread coiled in his gut.
How hard could the future really be?
It wasn't hard anymore.
The greatest strategists could see ten moves ahead while making only one; a traverser, however, held the entire script in his hands and became a prophet by default. All he had to do was lay the pieces exactly where he wanted them as the years marched forward.
"Survive. Survive until that day three years from now."
As he stepped out the door to work, Asou Akiya quietly set that single goal in stone.
The change in him was subtle enough that no one looked twice. Young men were supposed to carry a spark of life; to the others, he simply seemed to have crawled out from under the shadow of his parents' deaths and returned to something resembling normalcy. He began haunting bookstores, teaching himself French from scratch, brushing up on English, determined to become a translator fluent in Japanese, Chinese, English, and French — the fastest, cleanest path he could see out of the underworld's lowest rungs and the one that best leveraged the linguistic edge of two lifetimes.
Study alone would never fill his pockets. Without hesitation he withdrew every yen of the condolence money paid out after his parents' deaths and poured it into a brokerage account. The companies themselves were different between worlds, but certain trajectories overlapped perfectly: the birth of the VCD, the rise of the DVD, the shift from flip phones to smartphones, and so on.
The technology of this world lagged roughly twenty years behind his old one.
Asou Akiya had grown addicted to the effortless convenience of modern life; every commonplace gadget he now missed represented a potential gold mine in this timeline, and stock trading rewarded nothing if not long-term vision.
Work, train, read, make money — and write.
Writing was never about putting food on the table; that would have earned him pennies and cost him brain cells he could not spare. No, he wrote to lay the groundwork for every connection he would need later.
He required a respectable second identity.
A writer, for instance.
That single thread could reach Oda Sakunosuke, the man who dreamed of laying down his gun to write; Dazai Osamu, who would one day debate literature with friends; Sakaguchi Ango, reluctantly dragged into the middle to play the exasperated commentator; even Natsume Souseki, who had already published his work in this world. As long as the manuscript rose above mediocrity and contained at least one flash of brilliance, those authors-turned-soldiers might take an interest. One day, without warning, a casual favor from one of them could pull him back from the edge of a grave.
"Time is so tight," Asou Akiya muttered, staring at the schedule he had crammed onto a single sheet of paper until every minute bled into the next. He exhaled a long, hissing breath. "All these tiny, suffocating demands."
Yet every second he invested was proof — undeniable proof — that he was no longer waiting for fate to crush him.
He was rewriting it, one painstaking stroke at a time.
"You can do this, Akiya."
He whispered the words like a charm against the dark.
Where there's a will, there's a way — and a traverser has nothing to fear.
One morning he caught sight of the calendar and realized, almost with a jolt, that his eighteenth birthday was nearly upon him.
January, 10th.
It's the same day as Fukuzawa Yukichi and Ozaki Kouyou.
"We share a birthday," he murmured, tracing the date with his finger. "My starting line is just a little farther back than yours — that's all."
He would never surrender to mediocrity.
That year, Hirotsu Ryuurou surprised him with a birthday present — a beautifully bound book on foreign languages.
Hirotsu had taken notice of the boy's relentless self-study. After a short conversation conducted entirely in English, the older man nodded approvingly. "Akiya-kun, your English is already quite solid. I hear your Chinese is native-level. Master French as well, and the Port Mafia's shipping division will be fighting over you — we're desperately short of translators who can handle that many languages."
For the first time in this life, Asou Akiya felt the warm glow of genuine recognition settle over him.
A good beginning meant everything that followed would flow more easily. He broke into a smile so unguarded it could have belonged to any ordinary university freshman — eyes still bright, still untouched by the tar-black cynicism of the underworld, still daring to yearn for a life filled with light.
"Thank you so much, Mr. Hirotsu!"
Even Hirotsu Ryuurou was momentarily taken aback by the sudden radiance in the boy's eyes, and after a pause he asked, almost gently, "Do you still want to go to school?"
Asou Akiya shook his head. "School can only teach knowledge. Society is the one that teaches a man how to live."
Hirotsu's fingers brushed the cigarette pack in his pocket. "That's an interesting way to put it." He was already turning to leave when Asou Akiya produced a fresh pack of his own and held it out.
"Have one of mine, sir."
Hirotsu glanced at him, then accepted with a small, approving nod.
Asou Akiya himself did not smoke, yet he understood people — and more importantly, he had begun to forge an iron conviction inside his chest.
"There is one more thing I should tell you," Hirotsu said after a moment's hesitation. "Your parents… they were caught in a fight between ability users. The man who killed them is still alive."
Asou Akiya's fingers tightened imperceptibly.
Hirotsu continued, voice low and grave. "He recently joined the Port Mafia. He's under the Black Lizard unit now. Do not provoke him. He may not even remember your parents' faces."
Asou Akiya's question came sharp and immediate. "He truly doesn't remember?"
"No," Hirotsu confirmed with a slow nod, the weight of old regrets in his eyes. "I'm sorry. But the Port Mafia does not turn away a combat-type ability user. The moment he swore loyalty, every debt from his past was wiped clean. He will not come after you, and you must never go after him."
The mafia was built on favors and face.
But above favors and face stood profit — always profit, and only profit.
Asou Akiya understood perfectly. He was a nobody; the fact that an ability user had chosen to leave him untouched was already the greatest mercy he would ever receive. To seek revenge would be to sign his own death warrant.
"…I understand," he answered quietly, the words measured and calm. In the back of his mind he recalled the optimal solution once employed by a certain doctor surnamed Mori.
Hirotsu blinked, clearly expecting at least a few more minutes of persuasion to cool the boy's anger.
He realized a second later that he had misread the room entirely.
Because Asou Akiya simply looked up with the most obedient expression imaginable and asked, "May I know the ability user's name, sir?"
Hirotsu exhaled, half resignation, half reluctant admiration. "…Kimura Seimei."
In the space of a heartbeat, every trace of chill vanished from Asou Akiya's body, as though it had never existed at all.
That name meant nothing to him — which also meant the man carried no protective halo from the "literary greats."
As Hirotsu turned to leave, satisfied that their conversation had gone well and that the boy would not do anything rash, he added almost casually, "That look in your eyes… it's the look of an ability user."
When a teenager could suddenly rein in raw hatred and feel no fear toward the ability user who had orphaned him, there were usually only two explanations: he was extraordinarily rational, or he possessed absolute confidence in eventual revenge.
Asou Akiya gave a bitter smile. "I don't have an ability."
Sunlight broke through the drifting clouds and poured across the earth. The five towering headquarters of the Port Mafia rose like naked blades, lording over Yokohama. On a deserted roadside where no one passed, the boy's face shifted from shadowed gloom to quiet calm, his eyes still carrying the greenness of youth yet burning with the fearless daring of a newborn calf that has never seen a tiger.
"I just happen to have a decent amount of guts, that's all."
The following year.
A fire broke out in Asou Akiya's apartment and razed it to the ground. After reporting the incident to the Port Mafia's personnel department, he gritted his teeth and purchased a house in one of the most expensive districts near the Yokohama Settlement.
Every morning when he opened the window, his gaze fell on the landmark that stood not far away: the building that, sixteen years from now, would be called "Bones of the Dead" and briefly house the White Girrafe, Shibusawa Tatsuhiko.
That year he seized every excuse to travel.
He drank at Bar Lupin, rode the Yokohama Ferris wheel alone in perfect silence, bought a single coffee at the café that would one day sit beneath the future Armed Detective Agency and nursed it for an entire afternoon. He took countless photographs of the Settlement, preserving its face before the coming destruction. To temper his nerves he even imitated Dazai Osamu's suicidal hobbies once — climbing to a cargo crane at the docks and letting himself free-fall within the margin of safety, afterward claiming it had been an unfortunate slip.
Everything he had ever wanted to try, everything that could be done without crossing the line into actual death, he did.
A man should find his own joy in life.
Beyond wandering, Asou Akiya also made a point of cultivating warm relationships with the Port Mafia hospital staff, showering the nurses with honeyed words and visiting whenever a minor injury gave him an excuse to linger.
The results were negligible.
In the end he chose the most straightforward approach of all.
"I want priority treatment whenever I need medical care."
"OK."
The surgeon who had just pocketed the envelope spoke with practiced nonchalance.
"You're a Port Mafia. Under normal circumstances you already get priority. In an emergency, if you absolutely have to cut the line and no executive is bleeding out on my table, I can pull strings for you exactly once."
Asou Akiya raised two fingers. "Twice. I'll pay extra."
The surgeon exhaled through his nose. "…Fine."
Asou Akiya leaned forward across the desk, lowering his voice. "What if the patient is my lover?"
The doctor, who had known this kid long enough to dread these conversations, shot him a sideways glare that could curdle milk. The boy was unfairly good-looking — the type women tripped over themselves for — and clearly aware of it.
"No lovers. Family only. House rules."
"I'm an orphan. Both parents were Port Mafia. Died in a turf war."
The surgeon pinched the bridge of his nose. "…It's not an ironclad rule. If you swear on your life that she'll be your legal wife one day and you sign a liability waiver taking full responsibility for anything that goes wrong, I'll look the other way."
"Deal!"
The channel to treat Randou was secured.
In this world, any problem that could be solved with money was, by definition, a small problem. The real headaches were the ones money could not touch.
"Ease up on the training," the surgeon muttered without looking up from his paperwork. "Stop wringing your body out like a dishrag. Hidden injuries now mean a wheelchair when you're fifty." He paused, pen scratching across the page. "Your frame was never built for close-quarters combat. Your foundation is paper-thin. Transfer to a desk job before you break something that doesn't heal."
Asou Akiya listened intently, nodding with genuine respect. "I understand completely. Truth be told, the job I've always dreamed of is doctor."
The surgeon rolled his eyes so hard it was audible. "And you think this profession is easy to survive in?"
Asou Akiya grinned. "Mostly because it's cool."
The image of Mori Ougai flourishing a scalpel like a conductor's baton flashed through his mind, and he added with even more enthusiasm, "Insanely cool!"
The surgeon: "..."
Over the course of the year, Asou Akiya's savings dwindled alarmingly.
By year's end he had politely turned down the rare and rather persistent advances of several female colleagues in the Port Mafia, then returned to his modest two-bedroom apartment and stopped eating out altogether. Instead he cradled cookbooks like sacred texts, disappeared into the kitchen, and cooked while humming along to French songs drifting from the television.
In the quiet of his heart he thought: Next year, I'll be cooking for someone else. Maybe a young man, maybe a child. Either way, another person will step into my life.
He gazed down at the plate of Chinese food he had just arranged and felt, for the first time in a long while, a bright, uncomplicated surge of anticipation.
Asou Akiya carried his dinner out of the kitchen, pushed the stack of books aside on the coffee table, and chose the sofa over the dining table. There he ate alone, savoring every bite while the television murmured in the background.
He had learned to keep his secrets locked behind his teeth; this apartment was still far too expensive to risk careless words within its walls.
In the dead of night he jolted awake.
The black-haired young man — whose features had sharpened and opened into something strikingly handsome over the past months — sat up in bed, breathing hard, eyes still glazed with lingering heat and a trace of delicious confusion. He threw off the covers, padded to the bathroom, and turned the shower to cold.
Fine.
He had been dreaming of Randou.
The beautiful Frenchman with long, curling black hair that spilled like ink over his shoulders, skin so fair and flawless it looked poured from the finest cream — with not a trace of the coarse pores or leg hair that plagued ordinary men in the three-dimensional world. He was the perfect lover made flesh, and those eyes, the color of sunlit peridot shot through with gold, gazed at Asou Akiya with unmistakable tenderness.
His lips, brushed with the delicate pink of wild roses, were more seductive than any woman's and carried an unexpected, heartbreaking cuteness.
That Randou had succeeded in seducing him completely.
Well… what else could he expect when the heart thinks of someone by day and the night obediently delivers him in dreams?
There is a reason why the character for knife is poised above the character for lust, after all*.
*{Note: 色字头上一把刀, (Lit: "Above the character for 'lust' (色) there is a knife.".
The Chinese character 色 (sè) means lust, desire, sex, or beauty that arouses desire.
If you look at the actual character, the top radical is 刀 (dāo) — the exact symbol for "knife" or "blade."
"Calm down," Asou Akiya muttered through chattering teeth as the icy shower punished his overheated skin. "Randou and Chuuya are both vital, but I absolutely cannot bring them both home with me." He argued fiercely with himself under the freezing spray. "Chuuya will have memories from the moment he was 'born' — it's best to tell him the truth from the start. But if Randou, amnesiac and fragile, sees Chuuya too soon, the shock could trigger his memories to flood back. Raise them together and they'll both send me straight to game over!"
One or the other. Whichever he reached first would be the one he kept. And what if he found neither?
Asou Akiya clenched his jaw until it ached and made the decision.
I'll need to prepare for both then.
Four years had slipped past in the blink of an eye since he arrived in this world, and now, at long last, Asou Akiya had clawed his way to twenty. In Japan that meant legal adulthood — no longer a minor, no longer helpless. Mere days after his birthday the good news arrived: he had been promoted to the Port Mafia's external negotiations division, officially a cultured translator with underworld polish.
Four languages at his command, all supposedly self-taught — a dazzling display of "natural talent" that left his superiors impressed.
Only he knew the truth, of course. Every single word had been memorized one painful syllable at a time.
Standard operating procedure for a two-life genius, nothing more.
Asou Akiya exhaled a long, satisfied breath, spritzed on a touch of men's cologne, and settled into the chair behind his brand-new desk. Sharing the office with colleagues could not dim the soaring joy in his chest.
[I'm just a hardworking little snail, crawling inch by inch toward safety~.]
The tune bubbled up unbidden in his heart.
Next step.
Three months left on the countdown. Time for the final preparations.
After work, Asou Akiya was dragged along by his new colleague — Takekawa Izumi, a man with a Kyoto University degree who for some unfathomable reason had chosen to work for the Port Mafia — into the sacred rite of "corporate culture." New guy pays the tab while the whole department drinks itself stupid.
They poured sake into him until the room tilted pleasantly, and when someone inevitably asked what kind of girl he liked, Asou Akiya answered without a second's hesitation, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. "I already have someone I love!"
The clerical staff of the Port Mafia exhaled in collective relief. One less predator in the dating pool.
Takekawa, already half-drunk and grinning like a fox, leaned in. "Is she one of ours?"
"Nope!"
Asou Akiya denied it with cheerful confidence.
The Port Mafia was surprisingly lenient with its male members on matters of romance; there was no iron rule forbidding relationships with outsiders. Women inside the organization were scarce enough already. If they were to actually force internal pairing only and most of the men here would be doomed to die lonely bachelors.
"Pretty?" someone shouted over the clink of glasses.
"Beyond pretty," Asou sighed, eyes sparkling like a man already lost. "French. Writes poetry."
A chorus of impressed whistles. "French, huh?"
"The person I love has long black hair like midnight clouds, eyes like melancholy jewels that light up whenever a poem is read aloud… ah, and hands that look as if the Muse herself came down and kissed every fingertip."
The table erupted.
Takekawa slammed his cup down. "Come on, spill — how is she in bed?"
Asou Akiya's blush deepened to scarlet. "Not telling. I haven't won them over yet."
Before he finally slid under the table, Asou Akiya announced the words in the dreamy, syrupy tone of a man already half in love. Two spots of feverish pink bloomed across cheeks that could have belonged on the cover of any teen idol magazine, and his eyes turned soft and round, harmless as a hamster begging for sunflower seeds.
The sheer happiness threaded through his voice made every man at the table want to punch him and buy him another round at the same time.
Takekawa Izumi muttered sourly into his cup, "All the girls secretly crushing on Asou-kun are going to wake up tomorrow and cry themselves into comas."
Asou Akiya, already drifting toward sleep, murmured like a child clutching a treasured dream, "…Mine… my dream lover…"
Randou.
We will meet soon enough.
Far beyond the borders of the Yokohama Settlement, a European intelligence operative on solitary reconnaissance felt an icy wind slip beneath his collar and sneezed hard, utterly unable to adjust to the bite of a Japanese winter.
Arthur Rimbaud, wrapped head to toe in a heavy wool coat, rubbed the tip of his chilled nose.
"Have I caught a cold?"
He tilted his head back to gaze at the low, iron-gray Yokohama sky. Winter here was far crueler than anything he had known in France.
"Never mind. Solo investigation isn't yielding much anyway. I'll rendezvous with Verlaine."
This temperature was his natural enemy.
The long-haired beauty from a distant land passed directly beneath the windows of Asou Akiya's apartment building, heading steadily northward as though he walked through a separate, golden dimension that overlapped the city yet never truly touched it. He brushed shoulders with the residents of Yokohama without sparing them a glance; to him, even a single fallen leaf drifting in the wind deserved more attention than these ordinary souls.
To a European ability user, Japan was little more than the countryside.
Pathetically weak.
Had it not been for the mission to investigate the mysterious energy mass sealed within a military research facility, neither he nor Verlaine would ever have set foot in Yokohama. Europe, after all, was the true cradle of ability users.
At that moment, Arthur Rimbaud's thoughts were filled only with Verlaine. It never once crossed his mind that he might come to grief in Japan.
And certainly not that he would fall so hard, so ignominiously.
…
Three months remained until the birth of Arahabaki.