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FOOLISH WESTER: Orokana Seiyō Hito — 愚かな西洋人

He did not want to be remembered. He only wanted to disappear. Utsu Enzu spent twenty-three years learning to make himself smaller — smaller than the Osaka apartment where his family's warmth went cold, smaller than the Tokyo desk where a supervisor's voice carved out whatever was left, smaller than the four-point-two tatami mats he measured one sleepless November night because there was nothing else to do with a mind that had already decided. He died quietly, without a note, without a name left on anyone's lips that would take long to stop being said. He woke up screaming in 1865. Six years old. American frontier. Dirt under his hands and a sun that had never once been that honest about itself. A new name — Yasei Nishi — and a new mother who held his face in warm hands and a new father who passed him bread across a lamplight table, and for one impossible year the machinery inside him that had been rusting since he was eleven began, slowly, to turn. Then the sheriff came. Two gunshots. Clean and unhurried. And Yasei Nishi crawled out of a cellar at age seven and made a decision as cold and absolute as anything Utsu Enzu ever made — only this one pointed outward. FOOLISH WESTER is the brutal, heartbreaking, and extraordinary story of what follows. Of six years surviving the American frontier alone — stealing, bleeding, teaching himself to shoot in the dark before dawn. Of a kid who did not want a name becoming a legend across territory he never intended to inhabit. Of four broken children — Wyatt, Rion, Aran, Ken — who refuse to be left behind no matter how hard he walks. Of a corrupt sheriff who has never once lost sleep. Of a fifteen-year-old kid with a ledger and unsteady hands who has been filing terrible things away for years and cannot do it anymore. It is not a story about healing. It is not a story about easy redemption or the small truths of the wild west or the comfort of a second chance. It is a story about what depression does to a person across two entire lifetimes. About revenge and its hollow, costly promise. About five children in a dangerous era learning that survival alone was never the point. The west does not care about your pain. But the people riding beside you might. RATED MA21+
Locke_Weisz · 8.1k Views

ROOT: Awakening

For decades, humanity has lived in a world that isn't quite what it seems. Since the Great Awakening of 1952, magic, monsters, and people capable of supernatural feats have existed beneath the surface of ordinary society. And while most people remain blissfully unaware of the hidden world around them, eighteen-year-old Cyrus Moore is about to have that ignorance ripped away, whether he wants it to or not. After a devastating accident leaves him on the brink of death, Cyrus awakens to something impossible: a power he never knew that existed within him. Suddenly thrust into a world of sorcerers, supernatural creatures, secret organizations, and dangerous mysteries, Cyrus discovers that surviving is far more complicated than simply learning how to control his newfound abilities. Every answer seems to uncover another secret, and every step forward draws him deeper into a conflict that has been unfolding long before he was ever made aware of it. With enemies lurking in the shadows and allies whose true intentions aren't always clear, Cyrus must learn who he can trust while struggling to understand what is happening around him. But the deeper Cyrus ventures into this hidden world, the more he realizes that his awakening may not be all that it seems. Something is changing. Reality is beginning to crack at the edges. Old mysteries are beginning to surface. Dangerous forces are moving in the shadows. And the boundary between humanity and the supernatural is becoming increasingly fragile. Cyrus wanted an escape from an ordinary life. Instead, he awakened to a world where magic is real, monsters are hunting, and the greatest danger may be the truth waiting to be uncovered. The awakening has begun, and reality will never be the same….
Akakaze22 · 181.5k Views