Chapter 3: Who am I ?
The Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel rose above the silent streets of Shibuya like a monolith of glass and steel. In the old world, a night in the executive suite would have cost a month's salary for the average salaryman. Tonight, the price was merely the strength to shatter the electronic lock on the front doors.
Renji Kurosaki stood by the floor-to-ceiling window of the thirty-fifth floor penthouse. The city below was a sprawling necro-grid. Without the light pollution of millions of bulbs, the stars were visible, hanging uncomfortably close in the sky.
He swirled a glass of vintage whiskey Hibiki 30-year-old—which he had looted from the hotel bar downstairs. He didn't drink it for the buzz; his metabolism, enhanced and efficient as a furnace, burned through toxins too quickly for that. He drank it for the texture, for the sharp burn that confirmed his physical reality.
He raised his free hand to the glass of the window. His reflection stared back. The white hair, the sunglasses perched on his head, the terrifyingly symmetrical face.
"Kurosaki Renji," he whispered. The name felt good on his tongue. Sharp. Powerful.
It was a far cry from the name he had worn in his previous life.
Before the Borderland, before the empty streets of Tokyo, there was a white room. Not a metaphorical White Room of psychological training, but a literal one. A sterile, hospital isolation ward.
His name had been Kaito.
Kaito had been dying since he was twelve. A degenerative neuromuscular condition—rare, aggressive, and incurable. By the time he was eighteen, his world had shrunk to the four walls of his room and the digital window of his tablet screen.
His body was a cage of atrophy. He couldn't walk. He couldn't lift a spoon without trembling. His muscles were wasting away, betraying him cell by cell. But his mind remained sharp, a cruel irony that felt like a cosmic joke. While his limbs withered, his intellect sharpened, fueled by a voracious appetite for information.
He became an Observer.
He watched people. He watched dramas. He watched anime. He devoured psychological thrillers, strategy guides, and lectures on game theory. He became obsessed with characters who possessed what he lacked: agency.
He idolized Kiyotaka Ayanokōji from Classroom of the Elite. He admired the boy's ability to treat the world as a chessboard, to detach emotions from actions, to view human beings as tools to be calibrated and utilized. Kaito practiced this detachment. He learned to read the micro-expressions of his nurses, to manipulate his doctors into giving him extra screen time or different meds, not out of malice, but to prove he still had some control over his existence.
And then there was Satoru Gojo from Jujutsu Kaisen. If Ayanokōji was the shadow Kaito lived in, Gojo was the light he craved. The Limitless. The Six Eyes. The sheer, unadulterated arrogance of a being who knew, with absolute certainty, that he was the strongest. Kaito fantasized about that strength. He hallucinated the feeling of 'Infinity'—an invisible barrier that kept the pain, the pity, and the sickness away.
He died on a Tuesday. It was unremarkable. His lungs simply decided they were too tired to expand.
As the heart monitor flatlined, Kaito didn't feel fear. He felt a surge of frustration. I didn't get to play, he had thought. I only watched.
The darkness took him.
And then, he woke up in a toilet stall in Shibuya.
Renji squeezed the heavy crystal whiskey glass.
Crack.
The thick glass shattered in his grip, not from a violent spasm, but from a controlled application of pressure. Shards dug into his palm, but there was no blood. His skin was dense, his muscle fibers woven like steel cables.
He looked at his hand. The skin hadn't even broken.
"Zero damage," he noted.
This body was a gift. It was a amalgamation of his desires. He possessed the physical aesthetics and the overwhelming aura of Gojo, coupled with the cold, analytical processing power he had cultivated modeling himself after Ayanokōji.
But it wasn't magic. He didn't have Cursed Energy. He couldn't fire a Hollow Purple.
What he had was biology dialed up to eleven.
His "SixEyes" (Rikugan) were a mutation of sensory processing. He didn't see curses; he saw data. When he looked at the window frame, he saw the stress points in the aluminum. When he looked at his own hand, he saw the precise tension of the tendons. He could process visual information three hundred times faster than a normal human. To him, the world moved in slow motion.
His "Infinity" was not a spatial distortion, but a mastery of spacing and reflex. He could perceive an incoming attack—a punch, a knife, a bullet—calculate its trajectory, and move his body by the millimeter required to dodge it. To an observer, it looked like the attack passed through him or was stopped by an invisible wall. It was the ultimate "Perfect Dodge," executed with such laziness it appeared magical.
He was a supercomputer housed in a tank.
"I am not a participant," Renji said to the empty room. "I am the Admin who hasn't logged in yet."
Hunger was a new sensation as in his old life, he was fed through a tube. Now, his stomach growled with the ferocity of a wolf.
Renji left the penthouse and descended to the streets. The silence of the night was broken only by the distant sound of shattering glass.
He walked toward a high-end convenience store a few blocks away. The automatic doors were jammed open. Inside, the shelves had been ransacked, but there was plenty left.
As he grabbed a bento box and a bottle of water, three men stepped out from the back storage room. They were holding metal pipes and kitchen knives. They looked ragged, their eyes wide with the frantic energy of men who had realized there were no laws.
"Drop it," the leader, a man with a dyed buzzcut, snarled. "This is our turf. The Kanto Union controls this block."
Renji didn't turn around. He continued reading the nutritional label on the bento box. High sodium. Acceptable for energy replenishment.
"Did you hear me, pretty boy?" Buzzcut stepped closer, tapping the pipe against his palm. "Turn around and strip. That jacket looks expensive."
Renji sighed. It was a sound of profound boredom.
He turned slowly. He pushed his sunglasses down his nose, revealing the electric blue eyes.
"The Kanto Union," Renji repeated. "That wasn't in the script. You must be extras."
"Huh?" Buzzcut lunged, swinging the pipe at Renji's head.
To Renji, the swing was pathetic. He could see the tension in the man's shoulder telegraphing the move a full second before it happened. He could see the uneven weight distribution of the pipe. He could see the dust particles floating in the air.
Renji didn't block. He didn't duck. He simply shifted his weight.
The pipe whistled past his face, missing his nose by less than a millimeter. It looked like the pipe had passed through him.
"Too slow," Renji whispered.
Before the man could recover his balance, Renji's hand moved. He didn't punch; he flicked his finger against the man's forehead.
It was a motion Gojo used to dismiss ants. But backed by Renji's strength, the flick hit with the force of a hammer.
Thwack.
Buzzcut's head snapped back. His eyes rolled up into his skull, and he collapsed instantly, unconscious before he hit the linoleum.
The other two thugs froze. They looked at their fallen leader, then at the white-haired demon standing over him.
"M-Monster!" one screamed, dropping his knife.
"You have three seconds," Renji said, opening the bento box. "One."
They scrambled over each other to get out the door, slipping on the spilled milk on the floor.
"Two."
They were gone.
Renji took a bite of the cold rice. It tasted incredible. It tasted like freedom.
_____________________________
Renji sat on the curb outside the store, finishing his meal. He checked his phone.
VISA: 3 DAYS.
He had saved Arisu, Karube, and Chota. In the original timeline, Saori Shibuki had manipulated them, causing friction. Renji had bulldozed through that dynamic, establishing himself as the leader.
This was a risk. Arisu needed to suffer to grow. He needed to lose to understand the weight of life. By carrying them through the Three of Clubs, Renji had robbed Arisu of his awakening.
"I can't coddle him," Renji mused. "If he relies on me, he'll die in the Seven of Hearts."
He stood up, dusting off his pants.
He needed to go to the Beach. Not to join them, but to secure his position before the militants took over completely. He knew the location: the Seaside Paradise Tokyo Resort.
But first, he needed cards. He needed a deck to bargain with.
He looked at the digital moon hanging in the sky.
"Next stop: The Spades," Renji decided. "I need to test the limits of this body against something that shoots back."
He walked into the shadows, his white hair glowing faintly in the moonlight, a ghost haunting a machine that he intended to break.
(To be Continued)