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Rain patters on rusted rooftops, the dull thump of droplets echoing against a crumbling city that forgot how to care.
The neon lights of downtown Tokyo flicker like tired eyes, strained and pale against the night. Beneath them walks a man no one notices. His boots are cracked, soles flapping with each step. A faded blue construction uniform clings to his aging frame, soaked through. A plastic bento box swings half-empty in his calloused grip.
Yamato Akio.
Seventy years old, bones stiff from three decades of hauling steel and cement. He trudges past a shuttered izakaya, its lantern extinguished like every dream he ever dared to chase. Once, long ago, his name meant something. Akio — "bright hero." His father had chosen it proudly.
He chuckles bitterly under his breath. A bright hero doesn't spend thirty years being yelled at by contractors who were children when he began. A hero doesn't get betrayed by his wife, accused of fathering a child that wasn't his, then forced to pay child support anyway. A hero doesn't eat konbini rice balls alone every night in a one-room apartment that smells like mold and regrets.
The weight of the steel pipe in his grip is comforting. Not as a weapon — just a tool, just habit. Something solid to lean on.
**9:48 PM.**
The old digital clock above a closed pachinko parlor buzzes as he passes it.
He turns into an alleyway shortcut. Garbage bags piled like offerings to apathy. Rats scatter.
His knees crack as he climbs the stairwell to his unit. **Room 3C.** The door sticks. He kicks it, winces, and pushes inside.
Silence.
The kind that isn't peaceful. The kind that *presses.*
He drops the pipe by the shoe rack. A breath escapes him as he lowers himself onto the futon. The bento is cold now. He eats it anyway. Tuna and pickled radish.
Every movement aches.
He takes two painkillers from a bottle with a peeling label. No water. Just swallows them dry.
Outside, thunder rolls.
And then — glass shatters.
He freezes. Time thickens.
**Footsteps. Inside his apartment.**
He grabs the pipe.
A man in a ski mask stumbles into view, clutching a kitchen knife. Drunk? Desperate?
Akio raises the pipe instinctively.
"Get out!" he shouts, voice hoarse.
The man lunges.
Akio swings. Misses.
White-hot pain. Something pierces beneath his ribs. Again. Again.
The pipe clatters to the floor.
He gasps.
The man runs.
Akio collapses.
**9:57 PM.**
Blood pools around him, dark and slow. The world blurs, vision turning gray at the edges.
"If only I could get another chance like in the novels but I know that's not possible. That's just a fantasy." Akio said while sobbing.
And then —
A voice.
Warm. Ancient. Gentle.
> "Akio... Your story ended in silence. But that is not the story you deserved."
He tries to move. He can't.
> "You lived with weight no man should carry. You endured betrayal, suffering, erasure. And yet, you did not fall into evil."
The rain falls heavier now, as if the sky weeps for him.
> "Rise again. Not as a broken man—but as one the world will never break again."
Everything slows. The pain fades.
A light blooms behind his eyes. Not fire. Not heaven.
But a **chance** to live once again.
> *System initializing...*
And Yamato Akio draws his last breath — not in despair, but in the moment just *before* rebirth.
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