Arrival in Tokyo

March 10, 2005. Tokyo, Japan.

Tokyo in March was still wrapped in the lingering chill of a spring cold snap, but the streets had already entered a season of restless energy.

Yan Si stood at an intersection on a side street in Shibuya, watching the stream of people before him as he gave a lazy yawn.

He looked a little out of place.

Hehehe, because I'm just too good-looking.

He wore a black outdoor jacket, zipped only to just below his collarbones, exposing part of his pale neck.

His crossbody bag was black, its strap adjusted to a length that put no pressure on his shoulder blade.

His waist-length black hair hung loose, with only a thin, dark red cord loosely tied around the ends. As he walked, those ends swished behind his waist like a lazy kitten flicking its tail.

The most striking thing was his face.

At fifteen, he still had a little baby fat in his cheeks, but his features were already so beautiful they were almost sharp.

A pair of sunglasses concealed most of his deep purple eyes. Against his pale skin, the red mark between his brows was painfully vivid.

He held a can of Sprite, the aluminum slightly dented in his grip, its bubbles voicing tiny, teeth-aching protests inside.

With all five senses running at a hundred times their normal strength, the streets of Tokyo were sheer torture for him.

Even with his sunglasses filtering out most of the light, his vision remained terrifyingly sharp. He could make out every flaw in the arrangement of pixels on a billboard fifty meters away; even with earplugs dulling his hearing, he could still catch every conversation, every heartbeat, and every scrape of a shoe against the ground within a hundred-meter radius.

Countless smells drifted through the air-the aroma of oden, the burnt stink of exhaust fumes, cheap antiperspirant under some passerby's arms, and disgusting residue on a trash can.

All that information battered his central nervous system like an endless, pelting downpour.

Incidentally, molecules were constantly in thermal motion, and he was no Lao Ba, so he always gave places like restrooms a wide berth.

(Ah, I keep wondering: if you squat in a restroom long enough to smell it, does that count as an alternative way of eating/shit?)

"...What a lively place."

Yan Si narrowed his eyes, gazing through the dark lenses of his sunglasses at a world that was far too vivid for him.

He opened the Sprite and tipped his head back for a gulp. The sting of bubbles bursting on his tongue made him sigh in pleasure.

Then he sensed it.

Behind his right shoulder, at three o'clock, a creature weighing roughly seventy kilograms, with deliberately quickened steps and a heart beating a hundred and ten times a minute, was heading straight toward him.

Yan Si did not dodge.

He even turned slightly, offering his left shoulder more fully to the approaching collision.

"Thud!"

The impact landed solidly. Yan Si's left shoulder felt as if it had been struck by a lump of pig iron, the collision between bones producing a dull, teeth-aching sound.

His hundredfold pain sensitivity broke that instant of impact into countless tiny, scorching needles that pierced along the muscle fibers of his shoulder and into his nerve plexus.

[Points +1]

"Hiss-"

Yan Si sucked in a sharp breath. That hurt quite a bit.

But his punching bag had arrived.

The man who had bumped into him was a young office worker in a rumpled suit, his tie crooked and his hair gelled into a greasy shape.

Apparently, the man had not expected such a solid collision either. He staggered half a step backward instead, dropping his briefcase to the ground with a clatter.

The office worker's expression swiftly shifted from surprise to anger. He looked Yan Si up and down-long hair, sunglasses, skin too pale to belong to a living person, and that excessively beautiful face that was somehow infuriating.

"Watch where you're going!"

The office worker struck first verbally, his voice carrying the typical empty bluster of someone who bullied the weak and feared the strong.

Bravo. Shameless old bastard.

Yan Si tilted his head, letting his sunglasses slide down a little to reveal a pair of smiling, deep purple eyes.

"Heey~ mister," he began in a lazy Kansai dialect, his intonation rising slightly at the end. His voice was lovely, and shamelessly sultry.

He had specifically learned this Kansai dialect, and learned it well.

"Sorryyy, how'd you end up on the ground?"

Before he finished speaking, Yan Si's right foot was already rising.

The kick moved almost too fast to follow, striking the outside of the office worker's knee with precision. A sharp crack rang out, and the man crumpled like a pathetic ribbonfish stripped of its bones, dropping to his knees with a thump before pitching forward and slamming face-first into the asphalt.

"Aah!"

The office worker screamed, blood from his nose instantly smearing his face.

Yan Si crouched and pulled a thick stack of ten-thousand-denomination banknotes from his jacket's inner pocket-he had grabbed them casually from a drawer before leaving, and they were all US dollars.

A son ought to recognize his daddy's money, right?

Holding the stack, he smacked it against the office worker's face like a slap.

He did not hold back.

"For your medical bills~"

Yan Si's voice was as gentle as if he were soothing a child.

"Hold on tight~"

The blow left the office worker dizzy, the bridge of his nose groaning under the strain. He had just tried to get up when an icy hand seized the back of his collar.

With one hand gripping the collar of the shirt beneath his suit, Yan Si hauled him off the ground like a bag of garbage. His feet dangling, the office worker stared in terror at the brightly smiling boy before him.

"Ah!"

Yan Si sighed, his tone full of exasperation at the man's failure to do better.

"You can't just sleep wherever you like in public!"

With that, he swung his arm and hurled the seventy-kilogram adult man toward a roadside utility pole as though throwing a shot put.

"Thud!"

The dull sound of flesh striking a concrete utility pole echoed down the street. The office worker slid down the pole and slumped on the ground, his gaze unfocused and a trace of white foam leaking from the corner of his mouth.

Yan Si walked over, crouched before him, and patted his deathly pale cheek.

"You should thank me, you know?"

Yan Si's expression was solemn and earnest, as though he were instructing a clueless elementary school student.

"I helped correct your habit of sleeping wherever you happen to be. Sleeping just anywhere is very rude."

The office worker opened his mouth, but only breathy rasping sounds escaped his throat. He could not get a single word out. Nor did he dare to speak; he simply hugged the thick stack of money and nodded silently.

He felt he had run into a lunatic-one with absurd strength, absurd beauty, and something clearly wrong with his head.

Yan Si watched him for a few seconds. Seeing him merely sitting there with his mouth hanging open, the smile gradually faded from his face, replaced by faint disappointment.

"Rude Japanese people," Yan Si said, standing and dusting nonexistent dirt from his hands before putting his sunglasses back on. "Can't even say thank you."

He turned and left, the hem of his black jacket sweeping into a sharp arc in the spring breeze. The red cord at the ends of his hair traced a dark red curve through the air.

Behind him, the office worker clutched the money for dear life and finally burst into loud sobs.

Quite a few bystanders were sneaking photos and the like.

Yan Si raised a hand in a peace sign, his eyes curving with his smile.

He was not afraid of imprisonment or deportation.

It's a world with special abilities, after all. Might as well try some new things.

Pretty interesting, isn't it?

At four in the afternoon, after wandering aimlessly, Yan Si turned into a random alley and found a little shop that looked as if it might go out of business at any moment.

In China, the places with good food are all tucked away in corners. Maybe this shop is a hidden gem?

The storefront was as narrow as the space between Uncle Li's eyes (Uncle Li's eyes were very close together), and the interior was filled with a bizarre mixture of stale curry and mildew.

The owner was a balding old man dozing behind the counter. At the sound of the door, he raised his head, and his cloudy eyes brightened a little when he got a clear look at Yan Si's face.