CHAPTER 1: "The Art of Controlled Chaos"
(POV: Kaito Endo
Word Count: ~3,200
The thing about being deliberately obnoxious is that it requires more intelligence than people think.
Kaito Endo sat at his desk in the back corner of Physics class, third period on a Thursday afternoon that felt like it would never end, watching Mrs. Yamamoto write momentum equations on the board with the kind of methodical precision that made his skin itch. Around him, thirty classmates pretended to pay attention—some actually taking notes like it mattered, others staring blankly at their phones hidden under their desks, a few just openly sleeping because Mrs. Yamamoto had given up caring about that particular battle months ago.
Kaito wasn't sleeping. He was calculating.
Three desks ahead and two rows over sat Ayumi Sakamoto, her posture so perfect it looked uncomfortable, dark hair pulled back in a neat ponytail that probably took her exactly three minutes to arrange this morning because she was the type of person who timed things like that. Her notebook was open, color-coded notes organized with the kind of obsessive precision that spoke of deeper issues, and she was actually listening to Mrs. Yamamoto drone on about conservation of momentum like any of them would ever need to know this shit outside of a classroom.
She was perfect. Organized. Controlled. Everything in its place.
Kaito hated it.
No—that wasn't quite right. He didn't hate her. He hated what she represented. That illusion that if you just followed the rules and colored inside the lines and smiled politely and studied hard enough, everything would work out fine. That life was something you could control through sheer perfectionism and effort.
It was bullshit. He knew it was bullshit. The universe didn't care how organized your notes were.
Under his desk, hidden from view by his slouched posture and the strategic placement of his backpack, sat his masterpiece. Three days of work in the school workshop during lunch periods, carefully machined components assembled with the kind of focus he never brought to actual schoolwork. A modified bicycle pump connected to a shaped nozzle through reinforced tubing, with a pressure gauge jerry-rigged to the side that currently read 3.8 PSI.
Close. He needed 4.0 PSI for optimal results. The sweet spot was between 3.8 and 4.5—enough pressure to make an impact without causing actual injury. He'd done the math. Calculated trajectory, air resistance, the optimal angle given their relative positions. Accounted for the fact that she was seated, which changed the target zone and required adjustment to his initial estimates.
The device looked, quite deliberately, like a penis.
Crude. Juvenile. Completely intentional.
Kaito's hand found the pump handle and gave it two more careful squeezes. 3.9 PSI. One more. The gauge crept to 4.0.
Perfect.
Mrs. Yamamoto turned to write another equation, her back to the class. In that moment—the perfect window he'd been waiting for—Kaito's finger found the trigger.
The shaped air blast launched with a pressurized THWAP that was somehow both quieter and louder than he'd expected. It traveled the calculated 2.4 meters in a fraction of a second, a focused column of air that hit Ayumi Sakamoto directly in the lower back, right at the boundary between her spine and her upper ass.
The effect was immediate and spectacular.
Ayumi yelped—an undignified sound that she'd probably be mortified about later—and literally jumped from her seat, hands flying to her rear like she'd been stung by something. Her face cycled through confusion, shock, realization, and then a shade of red that Kaito hadn't known human skin could achieve.
"WHAT THE—" she started, catching herself mid-curse because even in extreme distress she was still too well-trained to swear in class, which was somehow even funnier.
The classroom exploded.
Kenji Nakamura, three seats over, actually fell out of his chair laughing. Mina Yoshida was covering her mouth but her shoulders were shaking so hard her desk was rattling. Even Takeshi Ren, the quiet third-year who usually kept to himself, had a small smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.
Four minutes thirty seconds. That's how long it took for the chaos to peak and then start to settle. Kaito had calculated four minutes forty-five, but close enough. He'd been getting better at estimating human behavior patterns, turning social dynamics into something quantifiable and predictable.
Ayumi was still standing, still red-faced, hands still pressed to her rear as if checking that nothing had actually penetrated her clothing. She looked violated in a way that made something uncomfortable twist in Kaito's chest—something he immediately shoved down because feeling bad about it would ruin the entire point of the exercise.
Mrs. Yamamoto had turned around, her expression caught somewhere between exhausted resignation and genuine anger. Her eyes scanned the classroom, landing immediately on Kaito because of course they did. He was always the first suspect, and for good reason.
"ENDO!" Her voice cut through the residual laughter like a knife. "What did you just—is that a device?"
Kaito spread his hands in a gesture of innocent confusion that fooled absolutely no one. "Just demonstrating practical applications of pneumatic pressure systems, Mrs. Yamamoto. I thought hands-on learning was encouraged?"
"PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE. NOW."
He stood slowly, making a show of carefully packing his device back into his backpack—evidence of the crime preserved for posterity—and made his way toward the door. As he passed Ayumi's desk, she was staring at him with an expression that combined humiliation, rage, and something that looked almost like hurt.
Their eyes met for just a second.
He grinned. Shameless. Unrepentant.
She looked away first, and that felt like victory.
The walk to Principal Ishida's office was a familiar route that Kaito could navigate blindfolded. Down the main hallway, left at the science wing, past the trophy cases full of achievements from students who actually gave a shit about their futures, up the stairs to the administrative floor where the air somehow always smelled like disappointment and cheap coffee.
Four minutes twenty seconds this time. More efficient than the last walk of shame two weeks ago.
He pushed open the door to the main office, nodded to Secretary Tanaka who just sighed and pointed toward Ishida's door without a word, and knocked twice before entering.
Principal Ishida sat behind his desk looking like a man who'd been having the same conversation for years and was tired of his own script. He was maybe fifty, graying at the temples, wearing a shirt and tie that probably cost more than Kaito's entire wardrobe but somehow still looked rumpled and defeated.
"Endo," he said, not even looking up from whatever paperwork he was pretending to review. "Third incident this month. It's only the eighteenth."
"I'm overachieving," Kaito offered, dropping into the chair across from the desk without being invited.
Ishida finally looked up, and there was something in his expression that went beyond the usual administrative frustration. Something that looked almost like genuine concern, which was worse than anger.
"You're in the top three percent academically," Ishida said quietly. "Your entrance exam scores were exceptional. Your teachers tell me that when you actually engage with material, you grasp concepts faster than students two years ahead of you. So I have to ask, Endo—why are you so determined to waste every advantage you've been given?"
The question hung in the air between them. It was a good question. Probably deserved a real answer.
Kaito shrugged. "I'm just enjoying high school, Principal. Isn't that what we're supposed to do? Make memories?"
"By humiliating your classmates?"
"By making an impact. People will remember this day. Can you say the same about any of Mrs. Yamamoto's momentum lectures?"
Ishida removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, and Kaito recognized the gesture as the prelude to the conversation ending. "Three-day suspension. You'll write a formal apology to Miss Sakamoto—and I mean formal, Endo, not one of your sarcastic masterpieces. You'll stay away from the workshop for the remainder of the semester. And I'm calling your aunt."
"She's going to love that."
"I've read your file," Ishida said, and his voice dropped to something quieter, more careful. "I know about your parents. I know you've been through—"
"Don't." The word came out sharper than Kaito intended, cutting through the air like a blade. "We're not doing that. We're not having that conversation."
For a moment, Ishida looked like he might push anyway. Then he just sighed and handed over the suspension notice, already filled out and signed. "Three days, Endo. Use them to think about whether making people laugh at someone else's expense is really the legacy you want to leave here."
Kaito took the paper, folded it precisely in thirds, and slipped it into his pocket. "Thanks for the life advice, Principal. I'll take it under consideration."
He was out the door before Ishida could respond.
The afternoon sunlight hit him as he exited the school building, and Kaito felt the familiar hollowness settling back in. The satisfaction from the prank had already evaporated, leaving behind nothing but the same empty feeling that had driven him to plan it in the first place.
Three days. Three days of nothing.
He pulled out his phone and texted his aunt: Suspended. Coming home early. Don't freak out.
Her response came before he'd made it to the school gates: KAITO. PRINCIPAL ALREADY CALLED. WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THIS.
He pocketed the phone without replying and started the walk back to her apartment. It was a twenty-minute route through streets he'd memorized over the past six years, ever since his father's car accident and the social worker had delivered him to his mother's sister with a plastic bag of belongings and a file full of tragedy.
Aunt Yuki—named after his mother, which made conversations occasionally confusing—had done her best. He knew that. She'd taken him in when she didn't have to, fed him, clothed him, made sure he went to school. Uncle Hiroshi worked long hours at some company doing something Kaito had never bothered to learn about. Their daughter Hana was thirteen and too perceptive for her age, always watching him with eyes that seemed to see through his bullshit in a way that made him uncomfortable.
He turned into the building, climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, unlocked the door to apartment 403.
Hana looked up from her homework at the kitchen table. "Mom says you're in trouble again."
"Mom's well-informed."
"She also says you're smart enough to not be doing this stuff." Hana's eyes were serious behind her glasses. "So why do you?"
Kaito paused, one hand on his bedroom door. "Because being smart is boring, Hana. Trust me on that."
He closed the door before she could respond.
His room was small but organized in a way that would surprise people who knew him at school. Bed made. Desk clean. Books arranged by subject on a small shelf that Uncle Hiroshi had mounted for him three years ago. The only thing out of place was the small glass raven that sat on the corner of his desk, catching the afternoon light and scattering it into tiny rainbows across the wall.
His mother's glass raven. The one thing he'd kept from before.
Kaito sat down at his desk and picked it up carefully. It was surprisingly heavy for its size, clear glass with just a hint of blue in its depths, shaped with enough detail that you could see individual feathers carved into its wings. His mother had kept it on her desk in her study, back when she'd had a study, back when she'd been alive.
"Stay curious," she'd always said. Usually when he was asking too many questions or taking something apart to see how it worked. "Don't let the world make you boring, Kaito. Don't let it make you stop wondering."
He'd been eight years old when she died. Nine years ago now. Long enough that her face had started to blur in his memory, replaced by photographs and second-hand stories. Long enough that he should be over it.
His hands were shaking.
Why were his hands shaking?
The raven slipped. Time seemed to slow as it tumbled toward the corner of his desk, and Kaito thought—not for the first time—that maybe some things were better left forgotten.
The glass shattered against the desk corner with a sound like tiny bells breaking. Pieces scattered across the desk, across the floor, catching the light and throwing it in a thousand different directions.
And then the room filled with something that shouldn't exist.
It started at the edges of his vision—a mist, greenish-blue like the color of the ocean where it got deep, wisping into existence from nowhere. Kaito's breath caught in his throat. He stood up so fast his chair fell over backward, but the mist was already spreading, already coalescing, and his hands were the epicenter.
The substance poured from his skin like smoke, but denser, more present, real in a way that made his brain scream that this was impossible. It filled the space around him, and Kaito stumbled backward until his shoulders hit the wall.
This wasn't real. This was a dream. He'd fallen asleep at his desk and this was just some weird stress dream about breaking his mother's figurine and—
The substance was forming shapes now, responding to something he couldn't name. It was pooling, solidifying, and Kaito realized with a horror that punched through his chest that it was creating a shell around him. Like walls closing in, like a cage, and he was trapped inside it and the air was already getting thin and—
He couldn't breathe.
Kaito clawed at the substance, but his hands passed through it like water, and then it was solid again, and he was trapped, and he couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't—
The world started to go dark at the edges.
His last conscious thought was that this was a really stupid way to die.
When awareness returned, it came with the taste of copper and the sensation of hands gripping his shoulders. Kaito's eyes snapped open and he gasped, air rushing into his lungs so fast it hurt.
"Breathe," a voice said, calm and steady. "Just breathe."
The shell was dissolving. Pieces of it falling away like mist evaporating, turning back into that greenish-blue substance that was now retreating back toward his skin. Fresh air rushed in, and Kaito gasped again, choking, his lungs burning.
Multiple hands were pulling him free of the wreckage. Kaito blinked, vision clearing, and saw two figures kneeling beside him in his bedroom. He'd never seen them before in his life. Had no idea who they were or how they'd gotten into his aunt's apartment.
But somehow, impossibly, they'd been waiting for him.
The first one had warm brown eyes and the kind of face that immediately made you feel safer. He was maybe eighteen, athletic build, dressed in casual clothes that looked comfortable and lived-in. He was the one holding Kaito's shoulders, the one who'd told him to breathe.
"First manifestation?" he asked, and his voice had a gentleness to it that made Kaito want to punch him on principle.
Kaito tried to speak, but his throat was too raw from whatever the fuck had just happened. He just stared.
The second figure was standing slightly back, studying Kaito with an intensity that was unnerving. Silver-white hair that had to be natural because nobody would dye their hair that color, grey eyes that were almost colorless, lean build dressed in dark clothes that helped him blend into shadows. He looked around Kaito's age, maybe seventeen, but there was something in his expression that seemed older.
"We saw the signature from three blocks away," the silver-haired one said quietly. His voice was soft, almost monotone. "You're lucky we were close."
"Signature?" Kaito finally managed to croak out. "Manifestation? What the fuck are you talking about?"
The warm-eyed one—Takeshi, though Kaito didn't know that yet—smiled slightly. "How much do you know about what just happened to you?"
"Nothing. I know nothing. I was sitting at my desk and then there was—" Kaito gestured helplessly at the dissipating mist. "—that. And I couldn't breathe. And now you're in my room and I don't know who the fuck you are."
"My name's Takeshi Ren," the warm-eyed one said. "This is Akira Shirogane. And what just happened to you—that mist, the shell it created—that was essence. Your essence."
"My what?"
"Essence." It was Akira who spoke this time, his grey eyes never leaving Kaito's face. "Energy. Power. Whatever you want to call it. About two months ago, something happened in Shibuya. An incident. Most people didn't notice anything except maybe a flash of light, but those of us who were close enough—" He paused. "—we changed. Got abilities we shouldn't have."
Kaito's mind was reeling. This was insane. This was impossible. This was—
The mist was still there, wisping faintly from his hands, visible evidence that something had fundamentally changed.
"How many?" Kaito asked. "How many people changed?"
"We're not sure exactly," Takeshi said. "Maybe eighty in the initial incident. Most of them died."
"Died?"
"First manifestation is dangerous," Akira said flatly. "You almost suffocated in your own power just now. You're lucky it formed a shell and not something worse. I've heard of people burning alive. Freezing solid. Creating barriers inside their own hearts."
The casual way he said it made Kaito's blood run cold.
"So what—" Kaito's voice cracked and he tried again. "What happens now?"
Takeshi and Akira exchanged a look. Some kind of silent communication passed between them, and then Takeshi turned back to Kaito with that gentle, patient expression.
"Now," he said, "we teach you how to control it. Because that manifestation you just had? That was completely uncontrolled, powered by panic and instinct. You need to learn how to summon it consciously. How to dismiss it. How to shape it. Otherwise, it'll keep happening randomly, and eventually you'll kill yourself or someone else."
"And you're just... offering to help me? Out of the kindness of your hearts?"
"No," Akira said bluntly. "We were told to form groups. Teams of four. The incident—whatever caused it—it wasn't random. Someone's organizing this. And we need four people to survive what's coming."
"What's coming?"
Neither of them answered immediately. Takeshi just stood, offering Kaito a hand up. "How about we start with teaching you not to suffocate yourself, and work our way up to the bigger explanations?"
Kaito stared at the offered hand. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to refuse, to tell these strangers to get the fuck out of his room, to pretend this had never happened and go back to his normal life of calculated chaos and careful emptiness.
But the mist was still there. Still wisping from his hands. Evidence that normal had just died along with his mother's glass raven.
He took Takeshi's hand and let himself be pulled to his feet.
"Welcome to the world of essentials," Takeshi said quietly. "We've been looking for you."
Behind him, Akira was already moving toward the window, checking the street below with the practiced wariness of someone who'd learned to watch for threats.
And Kaito felt the ground shift beneath him, felt his carefully constructed world of pranks and deflection and controlled chaos crack open to reveal something underneath that he didn't understand and wasn't sure he wanted to.
But it was too late to go back now.
The mist coiled around his fingers like it was alive, like it was waiting for something.
And somewhere in the back of his mind, buried deep beneath nine years of carefully maintained forgetfulness, something stirred. A memory that his eight-year-old self had locked away so completely that he didn't even know it was missing.
Blue eyes. Watching. Always watching.
Kaito shuddered and shoved the image away before it could fully form.
"So," he said, forcing his voice to sound casual even though his hands were still shaking. "When does training start?"
Takeshi smiled. "How about right now?"