Chapter 109: Chapter 30
Haruka sat in the center of the living room in her previous house, her posture rigid while sitting on the couch, deep in thought.
The floorboards were layered with dust, but she didn't mind. Her gaze was fixed on a specific knot in the wood of the low table, her expression a mask of clinical detachment.
She had failed.
The ritual was executed with mathematical precision; she knew deep in her heart that their old house is the most significant place in her heart, after all this is where her old life ended and her new life began.
Then, she had done the incantations Retsu told them and she believes it was phonetically perfect, and indeed it was, as the spirits had manifested.
Yet, none of them wanted to sign a contract with her.
The spirits had looked through her, and had dismissed her not for a lack of aptitude, but for a lack of intent.
"You are worthy," they had whispered, "but you are a warrior wanting to go to a battlefield not knowing why you fight. We do not lend swords to people who only wishes to wield it for the sake of wielding it."
Those were the words they said before they disappeared, and now, she was attempting to dismantle that rejection using the only tool she trusted: logic.
They said she wanted to go to battlefield not knowing why she wants to fight, which thinking about it was probably how she was exerting an irrational amount of effort for Kageyama Seijirou.
Why?
To an outside observer, her devotion might look like loyalty, or worse, love.
But Haruka systematically discarded these hypotheses.
Romantic Love? That's invalid. Love is not real, it is simply a chemical cocktail—oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin—designed by evolution to ensure pair-bonding for the protection of offspring.
She had no desire for offspring, and Seijirou was more than capable of self-protection. Therefore, it couldn't be love.
Sexual Attachment? Also invalid. The act of giving away her virginity to Seijirou was simply a physical transaction.
The myth of "purity" or the "sanctity of the first time" was a social construct used to regulate female autonomy.
Since she placed no value on her virginity, losing it should have had a net-zero impact on her psychological state.
Haruka pressed her palm against her sternum, feeling the rhythmic thumping of her heart.
Why did her pulse quicken when his blood was spilled? Is it because biologically, a sympathetic response occurs when a vital asset is threatened?
If Seijirou died or get hurt, her current lifestyle and security would be compromised.
It was logical to protect an asset.
However, the sensation in her chest wasn't the cold calculation of "asset management."
It was a visceral, jagged ache that defied her internal mapping. It felt like a hardware error—a piece of code running in the background that she couldn't force-quit.
"This is a failure of variables," she whispered to the empty room. "If A plus B equals C, and I am feeling D, then my definitions of A and B must be flawed."
She began to pace the room, her footsteps silent, her finger pinching her chin.
The spirits said she didn't know what to do with the power. But she did: she wanted to protect him. Why wasn't that enough?
Ah.
She paused, the answer was irritatingly elusive, but she finally understood.
Protecting him was a function, not a purpose.
A sword protects its wielder, but the sword doesn't choose to do so. It is simply its function to protect its wielder and cut down the wielder's enemy.
And just like that sword, the spirits wanted a choice, a "why" that originated from her own ego, not from her subservience to Seijirou.
She asks for power to protect Seijirou...but why does she want to protect him? She couldn't answer that, and that was probably why the spirits had deemed her unworthy.
As she pondered over the 'why', a distant voice, a voice so incredibly familiar, resounded in her mind..."Don't forget. You must never forget."
The voice wasn't an external sound, it was like a retrieval error in her own memory bank, a ghost of a thought surfacing from a suppressed layer of her consciousness.
"...Don't forget what?" she demanded of the shadows.
She searched her mind for a repressed trauma or a hidden promise, but she found only the cold, hard facts of her upbringing.
There was no room for "forgetting" in her meticulously organized mind. Yet, the phrase persisted, rhythmic and haunting, suggesting that her lack of "purpose" wasn't because she didn't have one—it was because she had intentionally buried it.
She sat back down, closing her eyes.
If she couldn't find the answer through logic, she would find it through exhaustion.
She would stay in this room, the site of her origin, until the anomaly was identified or her heart stopped mimicking the pain of a man she claimed not to love.
*
*
*
At this moment, Seijirou was looking annoyed, panting heavily as they finally reached the top of the mountain after hours of climbing.
He stared at the sky and felt like crying. It was already night!
They could've reached the peak ago, but Retsu had treated the arduous climb like a leisurely Sunday stroll.
Every scenic overlook became a ten-minute photo op; every rustle in the underbrush was an excuse to lean into Seijirou, her eyes sparkling with a possessive, predatory warmth that made the "training" seem like a distant afterthought.
"Alright! Seijirou, let me take you to where grandfather is."
Retsu's earlier fury at her grandfather's spying had evaporated into the crisp night air, replaced by a hum of domestic satisfaction.
She led Seijirou in the central courtyard where her grandfather was before she vanished toward the residential wing, humming a tune about "preparing his nest" for the night.
Left alone, Seijirou turned to face the figure waiting by the massive, still pond.
His breath hitched.
Sitting on a weathered boulder was an old man who seemed carved from the mountain itself.
Bald, with a snow-white beard that reached his chest and eyes that held the terrifying clarity of a hawk, Shirohara Ichibei radiated an aura of compressed power.
'No way,' Seijirou thought, his gamer instincts screaming in recognition. 'In the game this guy is the legendary 'Grandmaster of the East.' He's the ultimate mentor who teaches the protagonist how to break the level cap with Ki. He's supposed to be a hermit found through a hidden quest line... and he's Retsu's grandfather?!'
Ichibei's brow furrowed as he observed the boy's wide-eyed expression.
"You look as though you've seen a ghost, boy," the old man's voice rumbled like shifting tectonic plates. "Have we met?"
'I played your tutorial more than fifty times!' Seijirou wanted to say, but he forced his racing heart to slow, clamping down on his surprise.
"Um..." Okay, so how does he answer without appearing suspicious?
Ichibei grunted, a flicker of amusement crossing his features. "Ah, I remember now. I was with Retsu when she first became your personal doctor and caretaker. We met then, but it's surprising you'd remember an old man from the periphery of your childhood."
Seijirou gave a stiff nod. "I have a good memory."
"Hmph. Let's see if that brain is as sharp as your tongue," Ichibei said, standing up.
The sheer weight of his presence seemed to double as Seijirou felt an oppressive feeling pressing down on him.
"My granddaughter has practically held me at needle-point to teach you. But before we begin, answer me this: Why? Why do you seek Ki? You are a Kageyama. Your family has enough Karyoku users and hired Ki-masters to flatten a city. Why do you, the heir, seek to soil your own hands with the blood of training?"
'They do?' he didn't know that.
"...Is it wrong to want power for the sake of power?" He asked.
The old man shook his head slowly. "Not wrong. Merely shallow. Power without a goal is a flood, it destroys everything it touches, including the vessel. A goal without power is a tragedy, a man watching his dreams burn because he lacks a bucket of water. If you want power just to have it, I will teach you, but you will be nothing more than a well-armed child in my eyes."
Hearing that, Seijirou stared at Ichibei and hesitated. His initial thought was to say something cliché like "for revenge," or "to protect those he cared about."
But standing before Ichibei, those reasons felt like cardboard.
He thought of Shou, Renji, and Sakai lying in the dirt, their loyalty rewarded with broken ribs and bruised pride.
He thought of the girls—Haruka, Yukina, Emi, Suzune—who had been beaten after trying to help him while he was getting beaten by Ayano.
Thinking back further, when he first woke up in this world, his only goal was survival through distance.
He wanted to stay away from the heroines because the "NTR" plotlines of the original game haunted him—the fear that he would grow to love them only for some plot-armored villain to snatch them away, or for their own "irrational" traits to lead them to ruin.
He had seen it with Rei, that girl was willing to strip for him when he threatened her to, all because she doesn't want him to report that she was working part time.
What if some other villain would do that to the girls he had grown attached to while he wasn't looking?
'My heart is too fragile for this world,' he had once thought. 'Better to be a loner than a victim.'
But the world hadn't allowed him that luxury. It had reached out and crushed his friends to prove a point.
"I used to think that being a bystander was enough to keep me safe," Seijirou said, his voice dropping an octave, filled with a sudden, dark intensity. "I thought if I didn't care, I couldn't be hurt. But I was wrong. The world is irrational. It's not a game where the rules protect the players. It's a slaughterhouse."
He looked Ichibei directly in the eye, his gaze burning. "I want strength so the world can no longer 'teach me a lesson' through pain. I don't want people I've allowed into my circle get broken because I lacked the weight to tip the scales. I want power so that if I ever lose someone, it is because I chose to let go, not because some bastard with a golden aura forced us apart."
Seijirou clenched his fist, the bandages on his hand creaking. "To me, power isn't about dominion. It's about choice. It's the freedom to say 'no' to fate. I want to be the one who decides who stays and who goes."
Ichibei remained silent for a long moment, the wind whistling through the pine trees.
Finally, he gave a slow, measured nod.
"Choice... freedom through strength," the old man mused.
Seijirou remained firm, his eyes determined.
"An arrogant answer. A selfish answer. A Kageyama answer. But," he stepped forward, the ground beneath his feet glowing with a faint, silver resonance, "it is a real answer. Very well, boy. Tomorrow, we begin. But be warned: I'm going to make you hate every second of your existence until your soul decides it would rather break its limits than endure another minute of my tutelage."
Seijirou grinned.
"Bring it on, old man."