The late afternoon sun was baking the pavement, making the walk back from high school feel like a march through an oven. But the heat wasn't what was giving me a headache. No, that honor belonged entirely to the guy walking next to me.
"I'm telling you, Sōji, it's peak! Absolute peak!" Tatsuki shoved his phone practically into my left nostril. On the screen, a bunch of anime girls with halos and oversized firearms were running across a chibi battlefield. "Blue Archive is a masterpiece of modern literature and gameplay!"
I swatted his phone away. "Watch where you're waving that thing. And nobody plays games for 'modern literature' when half the cast looks like they haven't graduated middle school."
Tatsuki gasped, clutching his chest as if I had just stabbed him with a rusty butter knife. "You take that back! The story is deeply moving! You just don't understand the complex lore!"
"I understand that you haven't looked up from that screen since homeroom," I sighed, adjusting my backpack strap. "Look, I just don't play gacha games, okay? You're the only one who plays those things."
Tatsuki stopped dead in his tracks. The dramatic pause was so sudden a guy behind us almost bumped into him.
"Wait," Tatsuki said, his voice dropping to a horrified whisper. He slowly turned to face me. "What do you mean, you don't play gacha? What *do* you play?"
I blinked. "Nothing."
"Nothing?!" he shrieked, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me back and forth. "What do you mean, nothing?! How do you live?! How do you experience the thrill of the draw? The agony of the pity system?!"
"I read manga. I watch TV. I sleep," I said, trying to pry his sweaty hands off my uniform. "Normal things, Tatsuki. Normal human things."
"Unacceptable!" he declared, slapping his hands on his hips. "I have failed as your best friend. I must rectify this immediately. Prepare yourself, Sōji! I am going to show you the beauty of *Goddess of Victory: Nikke*!"
I eyed him suspiciously. Whenever Tatsuki got that manic gleam in his eye, it usually meant trouble. But I was tired, and if letting him talk meant he'd stop shaking me, I figured I'd humor him. "Fine. What's so good about it?"
Tatsuki grinned, a lecherous, thoroughly unashamed grin. "Bro. You literally just watch the females' asses shake whenever they shoot their guns. It has jiggle physics that defy gravity!"
I stared at him. Just deadpan stared.
"I decline," I said, turning and walking away.
"Wait, wait, wait!" Tatsuki scrambled after me, throwing his arm around my neck in a messy headlock. "Don't be a prude! It's art! Okay, fine, if you don't want the sci-fi jiggle, we go a different route."
He whipped out his phone again, his fingers flying across the screen. Before I could stop him, he snatched my phone from my pocket.
"Hey! Give that back!" I yelled, reaching for it.
"Just hold still! I'm expanding your horizons!" he grunted, twisting away and using his body to shield my phone. We ended up in a weird, shuffling wrestling match on the sidewalk. I pinched his side hard.
"Ow! Dude, cheap shot!" Tatsuki yelped, but he didn't drop my phone. He just jammed his elbow into my ribs, laughing like a maniac. "Done! I just queued up like five games."
He tossed my phone back. I caught it and looked at the home screen. There were several downloading icons. I recognized a few names from his endless rambling, but one icon caught my eye. It was aggressively pink, and the title made absolutely no sense for an app store.
"Tatsuki," I said slowly. "Why is there a literal hentai game downloading on my phone?"
"Ah!" Tatsuki pointed a finger in the air, looking incredibly proud of himself. "That, my friend, is so you can experience the joy of a world with a higher female-to-male ratio! A paradise where you are the sole source of masculinity! It's an educational tool!"
"I'm deleting this," I said, instantly pressing down on the app to uninstall it.
"No! My masterpiece!" he whined, trying to grab the phone again, but I shoved him by the face.
"Get help, Tatsuki," I muttered, shaking my head as the little 'X' appeared and I purged the degeneracy from my device. "Seriously. Get help."
***
Four years. It's funny how fast four years can just vanish.
I, Sōji Tenkoshi, was now twenty years old. The days of wrestling on the sidewalk over mobile games felt like a distant, slightly embarrassing dream. Now, I was a working man. Well, a part-time cafe worker, but a man nonetheless.
I stretched my arms over my head, feeling my spine pop in a satisfying way. My shift at the cafe had just ended. It was late, the streetlights were flickering on, and the air was finally cooling down. The smell of roasted coffee beans still clung to my apron, which was stuffed into my bag.
Walking home at this hour was usually peaceful. The streets were mostly empty, save for a few stray cats and the occasional car driving by. I took my usual shortcut, which routed me past a massive construction site. They were building a new commercial complex, and the skeletal steel structure towered over the street.
I shoved my hands into my pockets, thinking about what to make for dinner. Instant ramen sounded easy, but maybe I had some leftover rice I could fry up.
A sharp, metallic crack echoed through the quiet night.
I stopped. I looked up.
The scaffolding at the top of the construction site wasn't where it was supposed to be. It was tilting. And the massive crane holding a literal ton of steel beams seemed to be leaning way too far to the left.
Before my brain could even process the words 'run' or 'move,' a horrific groaning sound tore through the air. The cables snapped.
The sky went dark with falling metal.
There was a deafening roar, a rush of wind, and then—
Nothing.
I wasn't standing on the sidewalk anymore. I wasn't feeling the night breeze. I wasn't even feeling the crushing weight of a steel beam, which is honestly what I expected.
I was floating.
I looked around, but there was nothing to see. Just an endless, empty void of swirling, dark purple and blue hues. It felt like floating in deep water, but I could breathe perfectly fine.
"Am I... dead?" I muttered aloud. My voice sounded flat, swallowed up by the vast nothingness. "Did I just get squashed by a building?"
Before I could start panicking, a bright light flashed directly in front of me. I squinted, throwing my arms up to shield my eyes. As the light faded, three massive objects materialized out of thin air.
Wheels.
Three gigantic, glowing roulette wheels, floating right in front of my face.
I just stared at them. They looked like game show props. I drifted a little closer, reading the glowing neon text hovering above each one.
The wheel on the far left had a sign that read: [CHEAT / POWER].
The middle wheel read: [WORLD].
The wheel on the far right had a longer sign: [WORLD ALTERATION]. Beneath that, in slightly smaller, very unhelpful text, it read:
(Most obvious will be male or female ratio difference).
"Wait a minute," I said to the empty void. "Is this a joke? Am I being isekai'd through a gacha system? Tatsuki, if this is your doing, I'm going to kill you."
Suddenly, a loud, cheerful chime rang out, the kind you hear at a casino right before someone hits a jackpot.
Click. Click. Click.
The wheels began to spin. First slowly, then picking up speed until the colors blurred together into a dizzying streak of neon light.
I watched, mesmerized, as the spinning noise grew louder and louder.
"Okay," I muttered, crossing my arms as the void hummed around me. "Let's see where I'm going."
The wheel snapped to a halt.
A loud, triumphant brass fanfare blared through the void, completely drowning out my pathetic pleading. The massive screen for Option 1 expanded, swallowing the other four screens, until the only thing illuminating the darkness was the glowing title.
[DESTINATION LOCKED: BLEACH (SOUL SOCIETY - RUKONGAI DISTRICT)]
"No!" I shrieked, my voice cracking so hard I sounded like a squeaky toy. "No, no, no! That's the sword one! That's the one with the giant screaming hollows and the crazy people in bathrobes! I don't want to go to the afterlife! I was just making coffee twenty minutes ago!"
The mechanical voice chimed, utterly indifferent to my mental breakdown.
[Transfer Initiated. Best of luck, Sōji Tenkoshi. Remember: A smile is a businessman's greatest weapon. That, and a handful of table salt.]
"Salt isn't going to stop a laser beam!" I yelled, waving my arms frantically. "Cancel! Ctrl-Alt-Delete!"
The white light swallowed me whole. The feeling of weightlessness vanished in an instant, replaced by the jarring, extremely painful sensation of gravity reasserting itself on my body.
Thud.
"Gah!"
I coughed, a massive cloud of dust invading my lungs. I blinked rapidly, my eyes stinging. I wasn't floating anymore. I was lying face-down on something hard, uneven, and incredibly dirty.
I groaned, pushing myself up onto my hands and knees. My palms scraped against broken wood and loose gravel. I sat back on my heels and spat out a mouthful of grit.
"Okay," I muttered, brushing off my knees. "Okay. I'm alive. Or... well, considering where I am, I guess I'm officially dead. But I have a body."
I looked down at myself. Sure enough, the cheap grey suit and the obnoxiously pink tie were still there. The suit was already covered in a fine layer of grey dust. I patted my chest, my pockets, my face. I felt normal. I didn't have a giant hole in my chest. I didn't have a chain hanging off me. I was just... me. Well, me dressed like a sketchy real estate agent.
I looked around to take in my surroundings. I was sitting on top of a collapsed pile of rubble that used to be a wall. Beyond the rubble was a sprawling, chaotic shantytown. Dilapidated wooden huts with thatched roofs were crammed together as far as the eye could see. The dirt roads were narrow and winding. The sky above was a bright, indifferent blue, completely at odds with the poverty surrounding me.
"Rukongai," I sighed, my shoulders slumping. "The slums of the afterlife. Fantastic. Five-star accommodations."
I stood up, wincing as my stiff joints popped. I raised my hand, pointing my index and middle finger together in a classic anime pose.
"Bankai," I whispered dramatically.
A light breeze blew past, rustling my pink tie. A stray dog across the street scratched its ear and gave me a judgmental look.
"Right," I dropped my hand, feeling my face heat up with embarrassment. "No powers. Just... deep tissue massage and lying. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. I am going to be eaten by a Hollow ever recorded in the soul society."
I stepped off the rubble pile and onto the dirt path. The moment I did, I noticed something immediately.
There were people walking around. Poor people, wearing ragged, traditional Japanese clothing. But as I looked up and down the street, the reality of the [WORLDALTERATION] slapped me right in the face.
To my left, three women carrying baskets of laundry. To my right, a group of five older women haggling over some root vegetables. Across the street, a few teenage girls kicking a woven ball.
I walked for about two blocks, my shiny dress shoes clicking awkwardly against the dirt and stone. Out of the forty-something people I passed, I counted exactly three men. And two of them were grandpas missing half their teeth.
The 1:3 ratio wasn't a joke. The population was aggressively skewed.
And they were all staring at me.
"Who is that?" I heard a woman whisper loudly to her friend as I walked by.
"Look at his clothes. Is he a noble?"
"He's a man! And he's... wearing strange fabric. Do you think he's lost?"
I stiffened. Don't panic, Sōji, I told myself. You're a master conman now. Or at least, the system says you are. Fake it till you make it. Confidence is key. Walk like you own the slum.
I puffed out my chest, adjusted my tie, and strode forward with the purposeful, slightly arrogant walk of a man who definitely knew where he was going. I offered a polite, professional nod to a group of women staring at me from a doorway. They immediately giggled and hid their faces behind their sleeves.
"Okay, this is weird," I muttered under my breath, keeping my fake smile plastered on. "I need to get off the street before I attract a crowd. Or worse, a Shinigami."
I needed a base of operations. A place to sleep, and more importantly, a place to set up my completely fraudulent business. Because according to the system, if I didn't start building relationships with powerful people, I wouldn't get any stats. And without stats, I was basically a walking juice box for monsters.
I wandered deeper into the district, specifically looking for the most run-down, abandoned sections. If I was going to squat, I needed a place nobody cared about.
After about an hour of walking in the heat, my suit feeling like a wearable sauna, I found it.
It was a small, miserable-looking wooden hut at the dead end of an alleyway. The roof was missing a good chunk of its thatch, the sliding door was completely off its tracks and leaning against the wall, and the inside was pitch black.
"Perfect," I said, clapping my hands together. "Prime real estate."
I marched up to the hut and peeked inside. It was empty, save for a thick carpet of dust, a few cobwebs the size of dinner plates, and a suspicious pile of what looked like animal bones in the corner.
"Right. Time to earn my keep," I sighed. I stripped off my suit jacket, carefully folded it, and placed it on a relatively clean rock outside. I rolled up the sleeves of my white dress shirt.
For the next two hours, I engaged in the ultimate battle: Sōji Tenkoshi versus the filth of the Soul Society. I found a leafy branch outside to use as a makeshift broom, violently sweeping the dust out the front door. I kicked the suspicious bone pile into the alley. I managed to heave the sliding door back onto its tracks, even though it squealed like a dying pig whenever I moved it.
By the time I was done, I was sweating profusely, my white shirt was smudged with dirt, and my hair was a messy blonde bird's nest. But the hut was... tolerable. It was just a square wooden room, but it was *my* square wooden room.
"Now, for the interior design," I wheezed, wiping my forehead with the back of my arm.
I scoured the nearby alleys for anything useful. I managed to find an old, sturdy wooden crate that someone had tossed out. That became my desk. I found two slightly uneven wooden buckets. Those became my chairs—one for me, one for the client. I placed them on opposite sides of the crate.
It looked incredibly pathetic. It looked exactly like what it was: a teenager playing office in an abandoned shed.
"It lacks flair," I concluded, placing my hands on my hips. "It needs that professional touch."
I walked back outside and found a relatively smooth plank of wood from the rubble pile I woke up on. I dug around in the ashes of a dead fire pit nearby and found a solid chunk of charcoal.
Sitting cross-legged on the dirt outside my new office, I began to draw. If I was going to be Reigen, I needed to channel his absolute, shameless audacity.
I wrote in big, bold, dramatic kanji:
[SPIRITUAL CONSULTATION OFFICE]
Master Sōji Tenkoshi - Greatest Psychic & Wellness Expert of the Century!
Services include: Curse Removal, Bad Vibe Cleansing, Life Coaching, and Premium Deep-Tissue Massage.
(Rates negotiated upon entry. No refunds.)
I blew the excess charcoal dust off the plank and admired my handiwork. It was beautiful. It was a masterpiece of capitalism and deceit.
I carried the sign to the front of the hut and propped it up against the wall, right next to the squeaky sliding door. I stepped back, admiring the establishment.
"Not bad for day one of the afterlife," I murmured.
I walked back inside, grabbed my suit jacket, and put it back on. I dusted off my shoulders, straightened my pink tie, and ran a hand through my hair, trying to make it look intentionally messy rather than 'I just wrestled a dusty floor' messy.
I walked over to the wooden crate. I sat down on the overturned bucket. It creaked dangerously under my weight, but it held.
I placed my hands flat on the wooden crate, fingers laced together, resting my chin on my knuckles. I looked toward the open doorway, out into the dusty alley of the Rukongai.
I took a deep breath, letting the chaotic reality of my situation wash over me, and then pushed it all down beneath a thick layer of professional bravado.
I pulled my lips back into a wide, impossibly confident, completely 'non' fraudulent smile.
"Alright," I said softly to the empty room. "The doctor is in. Let's see who's dumb enough to walk through that door."