Chapter 7

Watching Chūya Nakahara leave, Kamiki Yūhaku tilted his head slightly in the tree, Chūya's figure reflected in his red eyes.

His gaze remained fixed on Chūya Nakahara until he disappeared into the night.

Kamiki Yūhaku leaned against the trunk and blinked.

"Chūya Nakahara, one of the Port Mafia's five executives, known to outsiders as the Gravity User. Ability: Upon the Tainted Sorrow. He can manipulate the gravity of things he touches. He has an out-of-control form that cannot be controlled once released and possesses tremendous destructive power."

"Born fifteen years ago in the French Concession, pulled into the human world as Arahabaki's human vessel, the cause of the explosion in the French Concession, and a victim of human experimentation."

As Kamiki Yūhaku spoke, a smile appeared on his face, and a beautiful light shone in his red eyes.

"He's just like me."

Murmuring to himself, Kamiki Yūhaku opened the transparent system screen that no one but him could see.

[Recognition increased to 70%]

Chapter 7

Kamiki Yūhaku was an artificial ability user.

When the system gave Kamiki Yūhaku this character setting, he had thought it would be just like in a novel: he would suddenly gain the basic traits of his so-called character setting, a fabricated identity, and the skills that came with it, setting him on the path of a

wish-fulfillment story

.

But sure enough, he had thought far too simply, completely forgetting the system's warning that "this is real life."

When Kamiki Yūhaku opened his eyes, he did not find himself cutting a swath through his enemies after loading his character setting. Instead, he found himself in a young body, captured before he was even familiar with the world and subjected to so-called ability experiments.

That was to say, human experiments intended to give an ability to someone who did not have one.

The [artificial ability user] character setting was real and valid because Kamiki Yūhaku had truly experienced the process of being changed from an ordinary person into an ability user.

The system gradually wrote this part of his experience into his character's backstory. Only then did Kamiki Yūhaku understand what it meant to supplement and complete a character setting.

Wearing that shell, he would experience a different life called a "character setting." His experiences would be written into that setting, becoming what the character needed to be a complete person. That was the bargaining chip the system could use to bring Kamiki Yūhaku back to life.

One life in exchange for another.

An equivalent exchange, fair to young and old alike.

Kamiki Yūhaku had also experimented extensively with recognition. In the end, he determined that recognition would only arise when people attached numerous labels to him based on his identity as an [artificial ability user]. Likewise, without any labels to support him, simply acting as an artificial ability user might not be very effective.

Thus, Kamiki Yūhaku would first attach other labels to himself. Once he had enough, he would reveal the fact that he was an artificial ability user.

Those labels would then change accordingly.

That was why Kamiki Yūhaku had returned to Yokohama and begun to act.

After leaving the Port Mafia, Kamiki Yūhaku sent the photos he had taken earlier to the social media account of the woman who had commissioned him.

Something so significant happening within the Port Mafia would be hard to conceal. Everyone who needed to know would find out, but that did not include ordinary people, so he had to take photos to prove he had completed her revenge. Getting the woman's social media account had not been difficult; after all, it was part of his methods.

"I can't wait to see Chuuya again."

Kamiki Yūhaku spread his hands and closed his eyes, feeling the wind brush gently against his cheeks.

He believed Chūya Nakahara would find him soon.

After all, his features were so distinctive: white hair, red eyes, and a pet crow. He had no home in Yokohama and wandered aimlessly every day. Every military police officer had seen him and knew there was a drifter on Yokohama's streets who let his crow roam free.

A little investigation was all it would take to find him.

Pressing an index finger to his temple, Kamiki Yūhaku tilted his head and smiled. His red eyes were like a sickly sweet candy, giving off a sweet air, but they were merely glass marbles with the appearance of candy.

"Are you looking forward to it too?" Kamiki Yūhaku looked at the crow on his arm and pulled some bird feed from his coat pocket.

Little Crow fluttered its wings but made no annoying sounds. It simply ate what Kamiki Yūhaku fed it, so well-behaved that it seemed less like a bird than a mechanical pet.

After Kamiki Yūhaku finished feeding the crow for the day, he took the bird feed out of his pocket and put it under the bench. Before he could stand up, he heard footsteps behind him.

"I found you." Chūya Nakahara's voice sounded behind him. "Kamiki Yūhaku."

Kamiki Yūhaku raised his head and turned to look at Chūya Nakahara, a gentle smile in his red eyes. The crow stood on his shoulder without moving, as if welded there, while the setting sun quietly bathed the two young men.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Chuuya." Kamiki Yūhaku greeted him gently. "I was terribly rude when we last met. Please forgive me."

"Huh?" Chūya Nakahara frowned at him. "That's all you have to say?"

Smiling, Kamiki Yūhaku raised his arm. The crow took off at once, flying into the sky and disappearing in an instant.

To Chūya Nakahara, it seemed he was keeping the crow from getting caught up in what was about to happen. According to Chūya's investigation, Kamiki Yūhaku always seemed to have a crow around him. He liked keeping crows and often used them as tools, and people even called him "that crow" behind his back.

A crow man?

"You're the one who had that crow blow up the Port Mafia's warehouse?"

"Don't you find it interesting, Mr. Chuuya?" Kamiki Yūhaku did not answer, instead asking a question of his own. "Look, I raised Little Crow, so it listens to me. I feed it, and it obeys my orders. It's a loyal animal, but people aren't like that."

"No matter how you feed them, people will betray you, and they certainly won't follow you just because you have food."

Chūya Nakahara frowned. "Huh?"

He finally understood why Kōyō Ozaki had specifically warned him not to chat casually with Kamiki Yūhaku after he received the mission. Kamiki Yūhaku liked to talk nonsense. He was completely mad, and no one knew what he was thinking, much less what was inside that little head of his that was so different from everyone else's.

If Osamu Dazai could see through a person's life because he was too smart, then Kamiki Yūhaku was so mad that even Dazai could not predict him.

"You don't understand?" Kamiki Yūhaku looked at Chūya Nakahara. "Then do you know? It's precisely because humans have self-respect and won't be loyal for no reason that some people get the wrong idea and want to create a human-shaped tool that will obey their every order."

"What did you say?!" Chūya Nakahara rushed at him. At the same time, Kamiki Yūhaku jumped straight behind the bench.

Chūya Nakahara was no fool. On the contrary, he was smarter than one might expect.

He easily caught the mockery in Kamiki Yūhaku's words.

Kamiki Yūhaku had once been the Port Mafia's exclusive informant. As someone hailed as its best informant, it was only natural that he knew about what had happened with Arahabaki back then. The rise of the previous leader's legend and the death of Rimbaud, an executive candidate, were secrets, but to an informant, they hardly counted as secrets at all.

He was saying that Chūya was an artificially created human-shaped weapon.

"Don't you feel sick when you use your ability?" Kamiki Yūhaku dodged his attack.

He pulled a dagger from his sleeve, but the moment it came close to Chūya Nakahara, it grew heavy and warped. Kamiki Yūhaku quickly let go of it and slipped past Chūya's gravity-laden blow. The moment he regained his footing, the dagger came flying through the air. Though he tried to dodge, his body simply could not move out of the way, and in the end, his own dagger slashed his arm.

"I don't feel sick at all." Chūya Nakahara looked at Kamiki Yūhaku, danger in his eyes. "I don't know where you learned all that, but I'm definitely not going to stop using my ability because of it. It's just a useful card to play."

"Ah, is that so?" Kamiki Yūhaku murmured in a languid, listless voice. "But it makes me feel sick."

Chūya Nakahara froze for a moment. "What?"

"I'm so envious of you. You don't remember anything that happened back then." Kamiki Yūhaku smiled, though there was a trace of helplessness in his voice. "You were a blank slate from the moment you were born, with all the pain forgotten. But I can't forget those things."

"Being tied to an operating table, having an ability forcibly infused into me, and even having my body cut over and over to test that ability."

"All of it makes me feel utterly sick."

"Wait, what did you say?" Chūya Nakahara's eyes widened at the information in Kamiki Yūhaku's words.

Kamiki Yūhaku looked at Chūya Nakahara. After a silence that lasted a full ten seconds, he suddenly burst out laughing, as if his prank had succeeded. "You believed me?"

Chūya Nakahara: ...

"Damn it!"

The feeling of having been made a fool of lingered in Chūya Nakahara's mind. He felt he had not been this angry in a long time. Gravity boiled around his body, and his explosive ability shattered the road beneath his feet into small stones. This guy was truly awful.

So awful that Chūya wanted to shut him up.

Kamiki Yūhaku looked at Chūya Nakahara, a hint of gentleness in his red eyes. "I actually don't want to fight you."

"But someone once told me that reality is reality. It won't change just because you run into something out of the ordinary."

"Shut up!"

Chūya Nakahara charged straight at him, his entire body enveloped in his orange-red ability. Kamiki Yūhaku instantly raised his arm in front of himself. Blood soaked through his long sleeve and dripped steadily onto the ground. The moment he came into contact with Chūya, a gentle white ability slowly lit up as more blood flowed.

When Kamiki Yūhaku bled, his ability triggered a passive defense.

"You think that's enough?!" Chūya Nakahara pushed harder. With a bang, the ability in front of Kamiki Yūhaku shattered. Chūya's force sent him flying, and he crashed heavily to the ground as blood slowly spread across it.