March 10, 2005, Tokyo, Japan.
March in Tokyo was still wrapped in a chill wave of late spring cold, but the streets had already entered a prematurely restless season.
Yasui stood at a crossroad on a side street in Shibuya, lazily yawning as he watched the crowd flow before him.
He looked a bit out of place.
Hehehe, because he was just too good-looking.
He wore a black windbreaker, the zipper pulled only halfway below his collarbone, revealing half of his pale neck.
His crossbody bag was black, its strap adjusted to a length that just avoided putting pressure on his shoulder blades.
His waist-length black hair was left unbound, held loosely at the very end with a dark red thin cord.
As he walked, that tail end swayed behind his waist, looking like a lazy little cat tail.
The most eye-catching part was his face.
At fifteen, his face still carried a touch of soft, un-lost baby fat, yet the contours of his facial features were already handsome to a near-sharp edge.
His deep purple eyes were mostly obscured by a pair of sunglasses.
Framed against his pale complexion, the red speck between his brows looked as vibrant as a mole that could ooze blood at any given moment.
He held a can of Sprite in his hand.
The aluminum can was crushed slightly out of shape, the carbonated bubbles inside letting out tiny, bone-chilling protests.
With his hundredfold five senses fully active, the streets of Tokyo were nothing short of a torture chamber for him.
Even with his sunglasses filtering out most of the light, his vision remained terrifyingly sharp—he could clearly see every single pixel defect on a billboard fifty meters away.
Even with earplugs dampening his hearing, he could still capture every conversation, every heartbeat, and every scrape of a shoe sole against the pavement within a hundred-meter radius.
Countless scents floated through the air—the aroma of oden, the burnt smell of car exhaust, the cheap antiperspirant spray under a passerby’s armpit, and the nauseating residue clinging to garbage cans.
This information pelted his central nervous system like an unrelenting downpour.
Speaking of which, since molecules are constantly undergoing thermal motion and he wasn’t about to eat literal trash, he actively steered clear of places like public restrooms.
(Ah, he kept wondering: if you sit in a stall for too long and smell the odor, does that count as an alternative way of eating shit?)
“…So lively.”
Yasui narrowed his eyes, gazing at this world that felt a bit too vivid for him through the dark lenses of his sunglasses.
He unscrewed his Sprite, tilted his head back to take a swig, and let out a comfortable sigh as the stinging sensation of exploding bubbles hit his tongue.
Then, he felt it.
Behind his right shoulder, at three o’clock, a creature weighing roughly seventy kilograms, deliberately accelerating its pacing, and sporting a heart rate of a hundred and ten beats per minute was charging straight toward him.
Yasui didn’t dodge.
He even turned his body slightly, better exposing his left shoulder to the collision trajectory.
“Bang!”
The impact was solid.
Yasui’s left shoulder felt as if hit by a piece of pig iron, a bone-chilling thud sounding between his joints.
His hundredfold pain perception disassembled that instant of impact into countless fine, scalding needles, driving straight down his shoulder’s muscle fibers into his nerve plexus.
“Hss—”
Yasui drew in a sharp breath.
That hurt quite a bit.
But his punching bag had arrived.
The guy who bumped into him was a young salaryman in a rumpled suit, his tie skewed to one side, and his hair gelled into a greasy shape.
The other party clearly hadn’t expected the impact to be so solid either, stumbling back half a step himself as his briefcase hit the pavement with a *clack*.
The salaryman’s expression rapidly shifted from astonishment to anger.
He sized Yasui up from top to bottom—long hair, sunglasses, skin so pale he barely looked alive, and that excessively beautiful, inexplicably irritating face.
“Watch where you’re going, you blind brat!”
The salaryman took the offensive, his voice laced with the typical bravado of a bully who picks on the weak.
Wow, what a shameless old bastard.
Yasui tilted his head, his sunglasses slipping down a fraction to reveal a pair of deep purple eyes filled with amusement.
“Ehh~ mister,” he spoke, his voice lazy, pitched with a subtly rising Kansai accent.
It sounded quite pleasant, blatantly playful.
This was a Kansai accent he had specially learned, and learned well.
“I’m so sorry~ But why did you fall on the floor?”
Before his words even landed, Yasui’s right foot was already in motion.
That kick was so fast its trajectory was practically invisible, striking with precision against the outer side of the salaryman’s knee.
Hearing a crisp *crack*, the man collapsed like a de-boned ribbonfish, dropping to his knees with a *thud* before pitching forward face-first onto the asphalt.
“Argh!”
The salaryman let out a pathetic shriek, blood instantly smearing all over his face from his broken nose.
Yasui crouched down, pulling a thick stack of ten-thousand-yen notes from the inner pocket of his windbreaker.
Sons always recognize their father’s cash, right?
He held the stack of cash and slapped it hard across the salaryman’s face like a sting of a slap.
Not a light blow.
“Medical fees~”
Yasui’s voice was as gentle as if he were coaxing a child.
“Hold onto it tight~”
The salaryman was left dizzy and disoriented from the slap, his nasal bone letting out a strained groan.
Just as he tried to scramble back up, his back collar was seized by an icy hand.
Grabbing the collar of his dress shirt with a single hand, Yasui hoisted him off the ground like a bag of trash.
“Sigh!”
Yasui let out a sigh, his tone overflowing with disappointment at his lack of progress.
“You can’t just sleep around in public places!”
With that, he swung his arm, hurling the seventy-kilogram grown man toward a roadside utility pole like throwing a shot put.
“Bang!”
The dull thud of flesh slamming into concrete resonated down the street.
Sliding down the pole, the salaryman slumped into a sit, his eyes vacant as a thread of white foam leaked from the corner of his mouth.
Yasui walked over, crouched down in front of him, and reached out to pat his pale cheek.
“You should thank me, you know?”
Yasui’s expression was grave and earnest, as if instructing an ignorant elementary school student.
“I helped correct your habit of sleeping anywhere.
Sleeping wherever you feel like it is very impolite.”
The salaryman parted his lips, letting out raspy gasp from his throat, unable to squeeze out a single word.
He didn’t dare speak either, merely nodding in silence while clutching the thick stack of cash.
He felt he had encountered a lunatic—a lunatic with absurd strength, absurd beauty, and a clearly dysfunctional brain.
Yasui stared at him for a few seconds.
Seeing him merely gaping like an idiot, the smile on his face gradually faded, replaced by a subtle trace of disappointment.
” What an impolite person,” Yasui stood up, brushing off non-existent dust from his hands before putting his sunglasses back on.
“Can’t even say a simple thank you.”
He turned and walked away, the hem of his black windbreaker cutting a sharp arc in the spring breeze.
The red cord at the end of his hair traced a dark red arc through the air like a drop of congealed blood.
Behind him, the salaryman clutched his money tight, finally bursting into tears with a loud *wah*.
Quite a few onlookers nearby were secretly taking photos.
Yasui curved his eyes and flashed a peace sign toward them.
He wasn’t afraid of jail or deportation.
In a world with special abilities, one might as well try out new things.
Quite fun, isn’t it?
…
At four in the afternoon, after wandering aimlessly around, Yasui casually ducked into a small alley and sought out a little shop that looked like it could go out of business at any moment.
Delicious eateries were always hidden in obscure corners—who knew if this place might be hidden gold?
The storefront was as narrow as Uncle LanLi’s eye distance (Uncle LanLi’s eyes were set very close together), smelling of a bizarre mixture of aged curry and mold.
The owner was a balding old man sitting behind the counter, dozing off.
Hearing the door chime, he raised his head, his cloudy eyes brightening the second he caught sight of Yasui’s face.