Chapter 86: Fractured self.
"That's… unexpected..." Miyake exhaled, eyes wide with surprise.
"I know, right? But I get why they're given such a reward," Haruto stated, leaning back casually.
Everyone except Akeshi was gathered inside a medium-sized room. Most sat on the floor, except Keitaro and Namakemono, who lay on the bed, asleep in just their pants. The rest ignored them, chatting among themselves.
"Why does it have to be my house, though?" Myushi scoffed, crossing his arms in frustration.
"Because your house is closest, and with the rain starting, this was the best way to avoid getting sick," Okabe argued, shrugging.
"...Forget it," Myushi sighed, giving up.
"Hey, does this happen a lot?" Chen asked, turning to Mikage, who nodded.
"Kind of. It's like this place is our group's hangout spot," Mikage explained.
"Do you guys have a hangout spot too?!" Okabe suddenly shouted, causing everyone to flinch. The outburst was loud enough to wake Keitaro, though Namakemono remained fast asleep.
"What the hell…?" Keitaro groaned, rubbing his eyes, "What was up with that thunderous voice?"
"Ah, my bad." Okabe clapped his hands together, bowing slightly. "Didn't mean to wake you."
Keitaro stretched, sitting up and leaning against the wall. "What's going on, anyway?"
"I was asking if you guys have a hangout spot like we do," Okabe admitted sheepishly, scratching the back of his neck.
Keitaro turned his gaze to chent, Yuuki, and Ren in turn, waiting for someone to answer.
"Ahem!" Ren cleared his throat, glancing at the others. "Yeah, we do, apparently."
"And where's that?" Kagami, perched on the study table with his legs swinging, chimed in, curious.
"Our classroom," Chen replied with a casual smile.
The Chidori group exchanged puzzled glances.
"Could you explain what you mean by 'our classroom'?" Haruto asked, looking genuinely confused.
"If we need to discuss something, we use this." Yuuki held up his phone, showing a group chat where every student of the default class was listed.
"And if it's something that requires a one-on-one discussion, we postpone it to the next day. We arrive early and sort it out then. Been doing that for a year," Chen elaborated.
"Whose idea was that?" Rentaro asked, intrigued.
All three of them – Ren, Chen, and Yuuki – pointed at the still-sleeping Namakemono.
"It was that lazy idiot's idea," they said in unison.
The others nodded in understanding. Given how much Namakemono loved to sleep, it made perfect sense.
"That's actually pretty neat," Mikage commented. "We always set a location for discussions. No group chat for us." The guys from Chidori, except Kagami, nodded in agreement.
"Must've felt left out, huh?" Namakemono suddenly muttered, eyes still closed but clearly awake now.
"Who are you talking about?" Ren asked, a knowing smile on his face.
"Hirokima Kagami, of course," Namakemono replied lazily, cracking his arms.
"What makes you think that?" Yuuki asked, holding back a chuckle. He knew where this was going.
"Well, we're all talking about daily stuff – how we meet up, our school life, hanging out. He probably feels envious. His daily life was likely full of training, studying, no real friends to talk to. Even if he had games or manga, it's not the same. Sounds like enough to make him envy our lives."
Kagami's eyes widened in shock. 'How…? That's exactly how my life was…'
"So, what do you all have in common?" Rentaro asked, tactfully steering the conversation away from Kagami's discomfort. He was good at reading the room.
"Why don't you guys answer that?" Haruto asked, looking to the Chidori group.
"What, you don't know?" Myushi raised an eyebrow, surprised.
"Not really, no. Why don't you start?" Ren shrugged.
Keitaro spoke up this time, his voice calm. "Soccer. We play during lunch breaks. It's a common activity – sometimes between classes, sometimes between years."
"Oh, that's what he meant," Ren nodded. The Roward students finally understood the question.
"We don't really have anything like that…" Ren trailed off, scratching his head.
"We actually do," Namakemono spoke up, surprising Ren.
"We do?" Ren blinked, trying to think. What could he be missing? He dug through his memories but came up empty.
"Yes, we do." Chen nodded, confirming. "You're talking about ｢The Story of the Sun｣, right?"
"Exactly," Yuuki added. "Seems like Ren doesn't know about it, though." They all turned to Ren, who shook his head, confused.
"What's ｢The Story of the Sun｣?" Okabe asked, his curiosity piqued.
"It was a novel a few months ago. Now it's a manga," Namakemono explained casually.
"Who's the writer?" Mikage asked.
"No one knows," Haruto answered, shrugging.
"What about the artist?" Kagami inquired.
"From what I know, multiple artists work on the project," Yuuki explained.
"So you guys have your own manga?" Rentaro asked, amused.
"Pretty much," Chen confirmed.
"How do you know when the next chapter's coming out?" Myushi asked, intrigued.
"We have a group chat for that too," Chen answered. "I hear the writers and artists also have their own chat."
"Does everyone at your school know about it?" Rentaro asked.
"Not everyone," Yuuki admitted. "But I'd say around 97% of the students do."
"Including the teachers?" Okabe asked, excitement flashing in his eyes.
"Hell no!" Yuuki shook his head vigorously. "If the teachers knew, things would get… complicated."
While the Q&A continued, Ren fell deep into thought. 'None of this happened in my past life…'
He couldn't shake the feeling that everything was diverging from the path he remembered. The football match, the novel, meeting the Chidori kids – none of it matched his previous experiences.
'Is this the butterfly effect?' Ren wondered. He knew about the concept, but this wasn't what he had expected. Instead of a massive, chaotic shift, everything was subtly falling into place in a positive way. But something still felt wrong.
'Wait…' A sudden realization hit him. 'Akeshi said he had a girlfriend… but that never happened before…'
Before he could dwell on it further, a loud notification interrupted his thoughts. Myushi's phone blared with a news alert.
"In Chicago, a powerful explosion has occurred due to a misdirected missile. Reports suggest interference by Inhumans. We advise all residents to seek shelter immediately."
Ren's heart raced. 'Inhumans? What's that?'
"Whoa!" Okabe exclaimed, eyes wide. "We didn't get much news about Inhumans here in Japan, did we?"
"How the hell did that thing even misdirect a missile?" Namakemono asked, now fully awake and looking at Myushi's phone.
"Maybe they used their bodies or something?" Yuuki shrugged. "I'm just guessing."
"That sounds like the most reasonable explanation," Kagami agreed.
Ren's thoughts spiraled. 'None of this happened before. There were no Inhumans, no misdirected missiles, no Chidori kids, no football match, no secret school manga… and Akeshi never had a girlfriend.'
"I'm going to the washroom," Ren suddenly stood up, his mind a whirlwind of confusion. "Where is it?"
"Downstairs, to the right," Myushi replied, barely looking up.
"Thanks," Ren mumbled, heading out.
.
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.
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*Splash!*
Ren splashed water on his face, staring at his reflection in the mirror. His once-bright eyes now appeared void of emotion – hollow, like his adult self's had been.
In the mirror, his adult self stared back at him, as if waiting for Ren to speak.
'You've joined hands with that weak, pathetic self, and now look what's happening…' his older self sneered.
"But there's still something I can do!" Ren protested, clenching his fists.
'Why are you even doing this? ' the older Ren asked coldly. 'What's your goal here?'
"I…" Ren hesitated. "I want to change the future."
'Why? You know damn well you don't have the power to change anything. You have no influence, no connections. You're not even that strong. And now, there are Inhumans. Do you really think one person can change all this?'
"I can try–"
'Try? You're up against beings who can redirect missiles with their bare hands! You can't stop the butterfly effect. Not against something like this. So now, you'll either watch everything you've built crumble… or lose your life.'
Ren bit his lip, trembling. "Is there another way?"
The world felt like it was crumbling. Or maybe it wasn't the world—it was him.
Everything seemed skewed, wrong, out of place. For a long time, Ren had believed he knew this world, understood its nuances. But that certainty had shattered into a million pieces the moment he learned that it wasn't his world at all.
His head pounded, thoughts racing through his mind at an uncontrollable pace. He clenched his fists, feeling the frustration swell inside him like a tidal wave. This world wasn't his. It never had been. His life, his actions—they had all been puppeteered by something larger, something beyond his comprehension. And now, he stood at the crossroads, staring at the broken reflection of himself.
'No. Choose – the puppet or naivety?'
The voice was deep, familiar, yet distant. It belonged to the version of himself that had always been there, lurking in the shadows of his mind. The adult Ren. The one who had been rejected by the world, by humanity, by light itself.
Ren raised his head slowly, eyes narrowing at the figure before him. "What are you saying?" His voice trembled, barely masking the rising panic in his chest.
His adult self stood tall, looming over him like a reflection that had broken free from the mirror. He was colder, harder, the edges of his existence sharper than Ren had ever seen before.
'I'm saying you have a choice to make,' the adult Ren said, his voice low but commanding. 'You either remain a puppet, dancing to the tune of a world you don't even belong to, or you embrace the truth. But make no mistake—there is no going back. Once you choose, that's it. You either continue living in the bliss of ignorance or tear apart everything you thought you knew.'
Ren's lips pressed into a thin line as he processed the words.
His heart was racing, and it felt like the walls were closing in around him. The reality he'd believed in had been fragile, easily destroyed by the revelation that this world was not his own.
He'd never belonged here. The idea had been sitting at the back of his mind, gnawing away at him slowly, but now it was in full view, glaring at him.
"Why should I listen to you?" Ren's voice wavered slightly, though he tried to sound defiant.
The adult Ren let out a hollow laugh, the sound echoing in the space between them. 'Because I am you. Or rather, I was you. The part of you that understood. The part of you that saw things for what they were. You've been living a lie, and deep down, you know it.'
"I don't know anything!" Ren shouted, his frustration boiling over. "I just... I just want to understand. Why... why am I here? Why does any of this matter if this isn't even my world?"
His adult self tilted his head slightly, his expression softening for the briefest moment. 'You're here because you've always been here. You exist because you've always existed. But the question you need to ask isn't why you're here—it's whether you want to continue being here. Do you want to keep living in a world that isn't yours, or do you want to reclaim your own? Even if it means destroying everything you know?'
Ren's breath hitched. "Destroy everything?"
'That's what the truth does,' his adult self said. 'It destroys illusions. You've been walking through this world, clinging to a false sense of reality. You've felt it before—the disconnect, the sense that nothing truly fits. That's because this world isn't real for you. It's a shadow of something you can't remember.'
Ren stood there, feeling the weight of the words settle over him like a suffocating blanket. His heart pounded in his chest, his mind a whirlwind of confusion and fear.
He wanted to scream, to push away everything that was being said, but something in him knew it was true. He had felt it—that sense of being out of place, that gnawing feeling that nothing ever quite made sense. But he always ignored it.
"Then what... what am I supposed to do?" he asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.
The adult Ren took a step closer, his eyes narrowing. 'You choose. You merge. You become whole.'
Ren's brow furrowed in confusion. "Merge? With what?"
His adult self gestured to the space between them, to the invisible divide that had always existed. 'With me. With yourself. You've been living as two halves, fractured and incomplete. The child who rejected the light, and the adult who was rejected by it. Two pieces of a puzzle that were never meant to stay apart.'
Ren took a step back, his body trembling. "I... I can't. I'm not like you."
'Aren't you?' The adult Ren's voice was almost gentle now, a strange contrast to the harshness he'd displayed before. 'You've been running from yourself all this time. Afraid of what you might find if you looked too closely. But you can't run forever. You have to face it, Ren. Face me. Face who you really are.'
"I don't know who I am!" Ren's voice cracked, his emotions spilling over. "I don't know anything anymore. You say I have to merge, but I don't even know what that means. How am I supposed to do that?"
His adult self sighed, crossing his arms over his chest. 'It means letting go. Letting go of the lies, the illusions, the things you've been holding onto because they made you feel safe. It means accepting that you are both the child and the adult, the one who rejected and the one who was rejected. You can't keep pretending that you're separate from yourself.'
Ren felt his knees weaken as the weight of the words pressed down on him. Everything he had believed in, everything he had held onto—it was all slipping through his fingers like sand. He wasn't whole. He had never been whole. And now, standing here in the presence of his adult self, he realized that he had been running from that truth for far too long.
"What happens if I choose to merge?" Ren asked, his voice small and uncertain.
'You become real,' the adult Ren replied, his voice soft but firm. 'You stop being a fragmented illusion and become something whole. But it's not easy. You have to confront everything you've been avoiding. You have to face the pain, the rejection, the darkness. You have to embrace it.'
Ren swallowed hard, his throat dry. "And if I don't?"
His adult self's expression darkened slightly. 'Then you stay as you are—a puppet, drifting through a world that isn't yours, clinging to a false sense of identity. You'll never know who you truly are, and you'll never be able to move forward.'
Silence hung in the air between them, heavy and oppressive. Ren felt his chest tighten as the reality of the situation began to sink in. He had a choice to make—a choice that would define his existence. Did he continue living in ignorance, content with the fragmented version of himself that he had become? Or did he take the plunge, confront the truth, and finally become whole?
"I..." Ren hesitated, his voice faltering.
His adult self stepped forward, his gaze intense. 'You know what you need to do. You've always known. But the question is—do you have the strength to do it?'
Ren closed his eyes, his mind racing. This world, this life—it had always felt wrong, like a dream he couldn't wake up from. And now he knew why. The truth had been staring him in the face all along, but he had been too afraid to see it.
But now, standing here on the precipice of his own existence, he realized that he couldn't keep running. He couldn't keep hiding from himself.
With a deep breath, Ren opened his eyes and looked at his adult self.
"I choose..."