Life Corridor, the Dawn Leading to the Future

"Get back to the classroom first!"

Shizuka Hiratsuka shoved the door open and decisively pointed at Bai Yu.

You're the root of the problem here!

Bai Yu gave an awkward smile, quite aware of himself. He then rose from the windowsill and headed for the door.

After briefly telling his friend to take care of herself, he brushed past the two teachers and returned to the classroom alone.

Shizuka Hiratsuka withdrew her gaze from his receding figure and could not help recalling the conversation between the two in the hospital room.

"Advanced Nurturing... it really is a school that suits this guy."

"I only hope the teachers there can do what I couldn't—correct that flighty, eccentric personality of his..."

Shizuka Hiratsuka leaned against the windowsill Bai Yu had just left, habitually taking a drag from thin air as she held her fingers to her lips to satisfy her craving.

Only after the accident victim beside her, Yanami Anna, came back to life did she turn a concerned gaze toward the bed.

"Yanami, are you all right? Some things might be easier if you learned to let them go."

The female teacher's opening was tactful. Put bluntly, the girl's romance had gone completely cold.

Sleeping could help her hide for a while, but not forever.

Some things had to be faced rationally in the end. Perhaps the two of them had never been meant to walk the same path from the start.

Shizuka Hiratsuka looked at the girl on the bed with a gaze that seemed to expose everything.

Yanami Anna's tense body relaxed slightly. Realizing that the teacher before her had seen through her poor acting, she stopped deceiving herself when it had clearly achieved nothing.

"Teacher..."

She raised her head, tears beginning to well in her eyes.

"Three years is a long time. Long enough for someone to remember another person deeply... so can it also be long enough for her to forget?"

The girl's voice choked up a little more.

Shizuka Hiratsuka lowered her gaze. After silently pausing for a while, she said,

"How will you know if you don't try?"

Youth was always full of regrets, and failure always ran through it from beginning to end.

But weren't they also seasonings of a sort?

Like fine wine that needed years of brewing before it could develop an exquisite flavor.

All disappointment and frustration existed so that, on some night many years later, when you looked back on them, your heart would feel incomparably full and moved, and you would not regret any of the youthful decisions you had made.

After enduring countless trials, gaining countless mixed emotions, and recalling them years later with every flavor lingering in your heart, they would be as rich and sweet as fine wine, leaving an endless aftertaste.

"That's why it's called youth, isn't it?"

The female teacher's heartfelt counsel gave Yanami Anna's wounded heart a moment of comfort.

She tried to let go of her deep feelings for Bai Yu, burying them in her heart and silently turning them into wishes for the boy's future.

Tokyo Advanced Nurturing.

A free-spirited school culture, with tuition fully waived.

Covering roughly 600,000 square meters, it was one of Sakurajima's leading college-preparatory high schools. It drew students from all over the country with its officially touted high advancement and employment rates, then put applicants through another round of interviews after the entrance examination for further evaluation and selection.

Given that no one had ever stepped forward to question its credibility in all the years since its founding—and setting aside such bottomless practices as making students sign nondisclosure agreements—for now, he would assume the information on the official website had some degree of truth to it...

Inside a low-rent apartment.

Darkness enveloped the boy's body. In the freezing weather of February, the underfloor heating that was not running displayed the room owner's admirable environmental consciousness and energy-saving spirit.

Bai Yu's fingers flew over the keyboard, ignoring the fierce cold air seeping in through the window and tearing at his thin school uniform.

He was utterly focused, as if he were a webnovel author who had awakened his latent potential at the final moment before a deadline and shouted, "My fate is mine to command, not Heaven's!"

So far, there was very little information online about this school.

It gave off a somewhat mysterious feeling. Could there be something suspicious hidden beneath the surface?

Bai Yu stopped typing. The stream of characters leaping across the webpage froze on a flashing icon, while an invigorating voice rang out in his mind.

"Objection!"

Why was the number of students graduating from the school each year never a whole number?

Why had every one of them, without exception, gone to relatively private domestic companies?

Why was it nearly impossible to find a complete class graduation photo?

Tch. There was more than one suspicious thing here.

But time no longer allowed him to make more choices or considerations.

Recently, he had felt himself growing more anxious every day. Even when girls confessed to him, his heart remained completely unmoved.

He lived a hollow life shuttling between school and his rented room, avoiding the eager gazes of people inviting him out after class and muddling through life like a rat.

If he had to pinpoint the reason, it felt as though his eyesight was currently plummeting off a cliff.

That was right.

He was almost unable to see the money in his wallet anymore.

In the cramped, dim room, the computer screen gave off the only light.

Somewhere on the floor lay a wallet, carrying the weight of only a few remaining coins, howling that it was about to lose its battle against an opponent called life...

It looked like he would have to find a part-time job before school started and tough it out for a while.

His gaze fell on the wallet, even skinnier than he was. After pondering for a long while, Bai Yu reached out and closed the laptop. Darkness instantly filled the entire room.

A quiet environment was more convenient for carrying out his thoughts.

Even while imagining the dramatic script he could use to make a living and recalling the job advertisement at a mall he had passed on the way to school that morning, Bai Yu could handle both without the slightest pressure.

That was all thanks to a special ability he had awakened when he transmigrated here. After mastering and summarizing its characteristics, Bai Yu had aptly named it "Life Corridor."

At first.

When Bai Yu had just transmigrated, he had not realized what changes had happened to his body. He had merely marveled that he had encountered a supernatural phenomenon that could only be seen in novels and on screens.

Like many transmigrators, he encountered all kinds of objectively real troubles in the early stages of arriving in another world.

Identity acquisition, living habits, social interactions... but as he gradually solved these problems, he began noticing certain things about himself that differed from ordinary people.

Or rather, compared to his former self, he had undergone a subtle change. This change mainly manifested in his spiritual world and in the body that carried that spiritual will.

First of all, he felt that his memory had taken a qualitative leap.

Anything he had seen, he could perfectly reproduce the image from his field of vision and store it in his mind, ready to retrieve whenever he wished.

As this ability was subtly used and strengthened throughout his daily life, he could now wield it with complete ease.

For example.

He could write a story during class while simultaneously following the lesson, without missing a single detail.

He could even occasionally split his attention further and play a round of tic-tac-toe with his deskmate in the cramped space between them.

Or, while facing the confession of an underclassman who admired him and giving a thoughtful yet polite response, he could roam through his sea of consciousness and savor the television program from the previous night.

Monstrous as that was, it still was not his limit.

By relying on Life Corridor, he could also exquisitely control every inch of muscle in his body, making them unleash their greatest strength at precisely the most appropriate moment.

Sometimes, the inhuman force that unconsciously erupted from within him would leave even Bai Yu himself stunned, plunging him into a brief moment of surprise and bewilderment.

My power is ridiculously strong!

And so.

Relying on that unstoppable, majestic power, Bai Yu—who had originally arrived in Sakurajima with no family or friends—successfully put down roots here.

The house was rented, but at least it proved he had left some trace of existence.

He had learned Japanese from scratch, enrolled in school himself, built connections himself, and asked the owner of the shop where he worked part-time to act as an intermediary guarantor for his rental.

Even with a cheat ability comparable to the Stand users in the JoJo series, living in a country where he knew neither the people nor the place, he still had not found it so easy to live a smooth life as a law-abiding young man.

What was more.

After Bai Yu's careful observation, he discovered that this world's course of development differed somewhat from that of the world where he had once lived. As a result, he could not take the lucky route of becoming rich overnight, which often left him at that time feeling as though he had strength but nowhere to use it.

Fortunately.

All of this would soon

END!

As long as he endured these two months, he could go to the noble academy he had dreamed of, be raised by capital, and become the proud holder of an iron rice bowl.

Of course, as he had said before, that was only assuming all of it was real.

Bai Yu tilted his head toward the sky and took a deep breath of the biting cold wind boring in through the gap in the window.

Tonight, I forgive your final transgression.

From now on, if you dare take even one step further, heaven and earth will be overturned!

Bai Yu passionately declared a string of incomprehensible heroic words, then reached out, pulled over the large newspaper spread beside him, covered himself with it, and fearlessly went to sleep.

The morning sun illuminated the darkness that had settled in the room overnight, casting a glow over the sleeping boy's lowered lashes.

The light brought warmth. Unable to bear the ambiguous teasing, someone's eyelids twitched several times before opening fully.

He got up, stretched simply to loosen his body, and casually ran a hand through his thick, naturally wavy hair.

Bai Yu put on a loose game collaboration jacket with a large arcade-style "7" printed on the back. It was perhaps the most valuable thing in his room.

He then put on the baseball cap beside his laptop and a pair of non-prescription tinted glasses. Though his outfit looked shabby on the surface—and in truth was not worth much at all—it still stubbornly revealed a hint of carefree style.

Go, go, go!

Today was the first day, full of hope and new beginnings!

First, he would go ask about job openings at the large mall he had seen yesterday, get through these two months, then pack his bags, sell off his possessions, and head alone to be raised by capital!

I have nothing. What do you have to bet against me?

That ought to be a future full of promise.

Bai Yu reached out and pushed open the cheap, weathered metal door. What he saw was a brilliant dawn leading toward the future.