Confusion

The sudden burst of flames left him at a loss. By the time he came to his senses, it was already too late—the entire apartment was engulfed in flames.

What puzzled Ito was that, despite the room burning fiercely, he couldn't feel any heat at all. Even his clothes were completely unharmed.

He tried reaching out to touch the flames. The little tongues of fire clung obediently to his fingertips like tame birds, dancing at his whim and changing shape.

"This is... a superpower? No!"

Ito hurried outside. Smoke had already spread, alarms were blaring, and people were rushing down the stairwell. The cries and screams of adults and children echoed without end.

He could clearly sense the jubilant flames, as if they were singing at the top of their lungs. Every floor above his had been set ablaze, and the fire was spreading uncontrollably in every direction.

The fire had started far too suddenly and fiercely. Unlike other fires, it had given people almost no time to react. Many had been jolted awake in their beds by the flames, with nowhere to escape.

Ito lowered his head, pulled up his hood, and put on a mask to hide his face. Then he ran downstairs with everyone else.

By the time he reached the open area outside, many people had gathered at a considerable distance to watch.

He looked back up. The apartment building was like a burning rose, releasing an intoxicating fragrance just for him.

"Mr. Ito!"

Ito shuddered and looked toward the voice. It was his landlady.

She seemed to live on the third floor, so she had made it down especially quickly.

"Mr. Ito, I'm so glad you're all right!" His landlady remembered Ito Seigo well, not only for his appearance and usual style of dress, but also because she had followed the story of the "White Dragon of the Fire" back then.

Ito felt a little uneasy. He wondered if his landlady had noticed that the fire had started in his apartment.

But when he'd looked back just moments ago, he'd seen thick smoke billowing from the floors below him too. It probably wasn't easy to tell at a glance which apartment had started the fire.

The people around them were also mostly blaming the gas pipes. Otherwise, there was no way so many floors could have caught fire all at once.

"I'm really lucky to be okay," Ito said, trying to act as though he'd just escaped by the skin of his teeth. "But I got hurt in a few places. I should go to the hospital and get checked out."

"Right, right. Go quickly. Don't put it off." His landlady nodded, then continued looking up at the fire with a worried expression, muttering to herself, "Oh, it's all gone. My home is gone."

Ito quietly left the scene, passing people who were holding up their phones to film, exclaiming and discussing what they saw.

He kept walking until he reached a park, where he gradually slowed down. Pressing his right hand to his chest, he gasped for breath.

He knew how terrifying a fire could be.

In a fire that fierce, even oxygen became a luxury. The heat seared your whole body, and every breath choked you with smoke. The filthy air seemed to burn your lungs.

That meant the people living on the floors above his were almost certainly doomed.

In other words, he had killed people.

But it didn't feel real. Maybe that was because he hadn't witnessed anyone's death with his own eyes.

As he'd fled the scene in a hurry, hadn't part of him been trying to avoid seeing the dead, deceiving himself as he did so?

He sat on a bench in the park, a solitary streetlamp beside him. He stared blankly into the distance. The night sky, tinged blue by the neon lights, was filled with rising smoke.

There was no going back.

Society was so advanced now. Once the authorities responded and launched an investigation, they would see that the fire had started in his apartment and would surely list him as a major suspect.

He had no confidence he could withstand an interrogation, and he didn't want to get caught. How would he explain his ability? That some weirdo called The Faker had given him a round stone, and after he swallowed it, he caught fire?

He didn't want to become some oddity they studied every day, either.

But if he wanted to hide, where could he go?

He had his wallet, but not much cash. His face and clothes were too distinctive. There was no way he could evade pursuit.

"I think... I have another ability?" Ito hesitated, then tried to activate it by instinct.

But compared to controlling fire, this ability didn't seem to change anything about him.

Only the ability, now embedded in his instincts, gave him a faint sense of what it did.

Lowering his presence.

Like DoraCmon's Stone Hat?

He glanced at a nearby chain convenience store and used his ability as he walked toward it.

There wasn't a single customer inside. A woman at the register was idly playing with her nails.

The door chime rang, but she didn't even look up.

Ito didn't try to quiet his footsteps. He walked to the shelves and picked up a bag of chips. The crisp rustle of the plastic bag sounded as he stared straight at the woman.

She still didn't react.

So people ignored any noise he made himself?

"Check out."

The woman suddenly jolted, her whole body twitching.

"Y-you scared me! You walk so quietly, customer!" she complained, patting her chest.

Ito said nothing more and paid as usual.

After leaving, he casually tossed the chips into a corner. He circled around to make sure he was out of the clerk's sight, then went back into the convenience store.

The door chime rang again. Although the woman was looking toward the entrance, her gaze wasn't actually on Ito.

It seemed that even if someone became aware of his presence, he could reactivate the ability as soon as he left their field of vision.

The ability's weaknesses were speaking to someone of his own accord, touching someone, and... He glanced up at the security camera.

After testing the ability, he formatted his phone and tossed it into the park pond. Then he wandered aimlessly through places with few security cameras.

He had no idea what to do with his superpower.

If he could, he just wished he could trade all of this for his parents.

Shiraishi Wataru, who had been keeping an eye on him, was a little disappointed. Ito Seigo was his first carefully selected attempt at finding a symbiotic host.

Both parents dead, disfigured, riddled with illness, dumped by his girlfriend, and the child he'd saved had gone astray. He was practically a walking tragedy. And just as Wataru had expected, such painful experiences had filled Ito's subconscious with regret. He could only suppress it through self-delusion. Then, when Wataru had torn the truth wide open, Ito Seigo had finally been unable to keep avoiding his subconscious. His negative emotions had exploded in an instant, and he had undergone a mutation, producing what Wataru considered the most ability-like ability so far.

[Combustion]

He could control fire. Neither his body nor his clothes could be harmed by it. The more flammable materials nearby, the stronger and more powerful the flames became.

He even had a passive ability that Ito Seigo himself didn't know about.

[Firework Knight]

By handing control of his body over to his negative emotions, his [Combustion] ability would become ten times stronger. His body would transform into fire, making him immune to all physical attacks. He could appear in an instant within any flame in his sensory range, which had a radius of one hundred meters.

It was the very definition of a tenfold increase after turning evil.