The sound of rain splattered against the cobblestones, the rhythm irregular, as if nature itself hesitated to speak. Beneath the gray canopy of clouds, a lone figure stood motionless, staring at a thin crack running along the foundation of a centuries-old shrine. The crack—barely noticeable to most—was all he could see. It stretched out before him like the jagged fault lines in his own mind.
Katsuragi Kyouya had turned eighteen only a week ago. He hadn't celebrated, nor had anyone congratulated him. Instead, the milestone felt like a closing door, locking him in an existence he wasn't sure he'd chosen. His adulthood, like everything else, was a vague, fleeting concept, as intangible as the dream he couldn't remember from the night before.
The world had always been fractured, hadn't it? Words, meanings, and forms—everything fragmented by the sin of perception. The moment you gave something a name, it stopped being whole.
He lit a cigarette, the smoke curling upward into the damp air, dissipating like a thought he couldn't hold onto. The taste was bitter, like the medicine he'd taken since he was a child, prescribed to dull the edges of a mind that saw too much. A mind that tore reality apart, piece by piece, and reassembled it in grotesque shapes.
The cigarette burned down to its filter before he even took a drag. He crushed it beneath his shoe and looked up at the shrine's torii gate. The red paint had chipped away over the years, revealing the raw wood beneath. It reminded him of flesh beneath skin—of what lies hidden when the surface erodes.
This place, like the world, was a lie.
The story began long before Katsuragi Kyouya existed, though. Perhaps it began with the first utterance of language, when humanity's collective will split into countless forms. Or perhaps it began when a young girl named Ayane knelt before the same shrine a decade earlier, clasping her hands together in desperate prayer.
She prayed for salvation, but the gods never answered.
Ayane's story was one of despair, not because the world was cruel but because it was indifferent. She would spend her life searching for truth, only to find that truth had no substance—only shadows cast by fleeting light. Her fate, entwined with Kyouya's, would weave a tapestry of tragedy, beauty, and understanding.
Kyouya took a step forward, the rain soaking through his clothes. He stood beneath the torii gate, staring up at the faded inscription carved into its beam. The characters were ancient, their meanings eroded by time.
The rain stopped abruptly, as if the world had held its breath.
Then, a voice—a whisper at first, almost imperceptible—called his name.
"Kyouya."
He turned, but no one was there. Only the crack in the shrine's foundation seemed to deepen, spreading like veins across the stone.
And then, for the first time in his life, Katsuragi Kyouya saw the world as it truly was.
It was terrifying. It was beautiful.
It was everything and nothing.