Kaito Hayashi hated Mondays.
Not in the dramatic way that people claimed to hate things online. He genuinely, deeply despised them. Mondays meant waking up at 5:30 AM, catching the crowded train to Sakura University, and sitting through three hours of Advanced Organic Chemistry while Professor Tanaka droned on about molecular structures.
Today was particularly bad.
Kaito stood in front of his bathroom mirror, staring at his reflection with growing frustration. His black hair stuck up at weird angles no matter how much water he used. His school uniform—a crisp white shirt and navy blazer—looked perfectly fine on everyone else but somehow always seemed wrinkled on him.
"Kaito! Breakfast is ready!" his mother called from downstairs.
"Coming!"
He grabbed his bag and hurried down, nearly tripping over his younger sister Yuki's backpack in the hallway.
"Watch it!" Yuki yelped, clutching her cereal bowl.
"Maybe don't leave your stuff everywhere," Kaito shot back, sliding into his chair.
His mother, Emiko, set a plate of toast and eggs in front of him. "You two need to get along better. Yuki, your brother has important exams coming up."
"So do I," Yuki muttered.
Kaito ignored her and checked his phone. Three missed calls from his best friend Renjiro, and about a dozen messages in their group chat. He scrolled through them quickly.
**Renjiro:** *Dude where are you*
**Renjiro:** *The professor said there's a surprise quiz today*
**Renjiro:** *KAITO ANSWER YOUR PHONE*
Kaito's stomach dropped. A surprise quiz. On a Monday. Of course.
He shoved toast into his mouth and stood up. "I have to go."
"Kaito, you just sat down—"
"Sorry Mom, emergency!" He grabbed his bag and bolted out the door.
The train station was fifteen minutes away if he walked. Kaito ran it in eight.
He made it onto the train just as the doors were closing, squeezing into a tiny space between a businessman reading a newspaper and an elderly woman with far too many shopping bags. The train lurched forward and Kaito grabbed the overhead rail to steady himself.
This was his life. Wake up, rush to school, study until his brain felt like mush, go home, sleep, repeat. Nothing exciting ever happened to Kaito Hayashi. He wasn't athletic like Renjiro, who played on the university soccer team. He wasn't charming like his other friend Daichi, who somehow always had three different girls interested in him at once.
Kaito was... ordinary.
Brilliantly, frustratingly ordinary.
He was good at chemistry—really good, actually. Top of his class. But that just meant more pressure, more expectations. His professors talked about him applying to prestigious graduate programs. His parents beamed with pride whenever his grades came up.
But Kaito felt like he was running on a treadmill that kept getting faster and faster, and he couldn't remember why he'd gotten on it in the first place.
The train pulled into Sakura Station and Kaito rushed off, joining the flood of students heading toward the university. The campus was beautiful, even he had to admit that. Cherry blossom trees lined the main walkway, their petals drifting down like pink snow. The buildings were a mix of traditional Japanese architecture and modern glass structures that reflected the morning sun.
Kaito spotted Renjiro waiting by the fountain, his soccer bag slung over one shoulder.
"There you are!" Renjiro jogged over. "I've been calling you for thirty minutes!"
"I know, I know. I overslept." Kaito fell into step beside him as they headed toward the science building. "How bad is this quiz supposed to be?"
"Tanaka said it covers everything from the past three weeks."
Kaito groaned. "Of course he did."
They climbed the stairs to the third floor and entered the lecture hall. It was already packed with students, everyone wearing the same expression of mild panic. Kaito found his usual seat near the middle and pulled out his notebook, flipping through pages of chemical formulas and reaction mechanisms.
Professor Tanaka entered exactly three minutes before class started, as he always did. He was a thin man with wire-rimmed glasses and a perpetual look of disappointment, as if every student was a failed experiment.
"Good morning," Tanaka said, though his tone suggested it was anything but good. "As I mentioned last week, today you'll be taking a comprehensive quiz on synthesis reactions. You have forty-five minutes. Begin."
Papers rustled as the quiz was distributed. Kaito stared down at the first question and felt his confidence drain away. This wasn't just covering the last three weeks—this was material from the entire semester.
He picked up his pencil and began writing, his mind automatically sorting through mechanisms and reaction pathways. This was one thing Kaito was genuinely good at. When he was solving chemistry problems, everything else faded away. No expectations, no pressure, just him and the molecules.
The forty-five minutes flew by. Kaito finished with two minutes to spare and used the time to double-check his answers. When Tanaka called time, Kaito felt reasonably confident he'd gotten at least an eighty-five percent.
"That was brutal," Renjiro muttered as they handed in their papers.
"Yeah," Kaito agreed, though honestly, it hadn't been that bad.
They had a two-hour break before their next class, so they headed to the campus cafeteria. Daichi was already there, surrounded by his usual crowd of admirers. He waved when he spotted them.
"Hayashi! Renjiro! Over here!"
They navigated through the crowded cafeteria and joined Daichi's table. He was in the middle of telling some elaborate story about his weekend, complete with dramatic hand gestures.
"So then the girl's boyfriend shows up," Daichi continued, "and I'm thinking, this is it, I'm going to die. But then—"
"Then what?" one of the girls asked, leaning forward eagerly.
"Then I explained I was just helping her study for our economics exam, showed him our textbooks, and he apologized." Daichi grinned. "Crisis averted."
Everyone laughed. Kaito nibbled on his lunch—a sad-looking sandwich from the vending machine—and let the conversation wash over him. This was nice, he supposed. Having friends, being part of a group. But sometimes he felt like he was watching everything from behind glass, not quite connected.
"Hey, Earth to Kaito." Renjiro waved a hand in front of his face. "You okay?"
"Yeah, just tired."
"You're always tired," Daichi observed. "You need to live a little! Come to the party this Friday. Yuki's throwing it at her place."
"Different Yuki," Renjiro clarified, seeing Kaito's confusion. "Yuki Tanaka from our philosophy class."
"I don't know," Kaito said. "I have a lot of studying—"
"You always have studying," Daichi interrupted. "Come on, man. One night. What's the worst that could happen?"
Kaito was about to respond when the cafeteria lights flickered. Once, twice, then went out completely. The room plunged into darkness and several people screamed.
Emergency lights kicked on a moment later, bathing everything in an eerie red glow.
"What's going on?" someone asked.
The ground began to shake. Gently at first, then more violently. Earthquake, Kaito's brain supplied automatically. They were common in Japan, but this felt different. Wrong.
The shaking intensified. Students scrambled under tables, following the earthquake safety drills they'd practiced since elementary school. Kaito dove under their table, Renjiro and Daichi right behind him.
And then the world ended.
Not gradually, not with warning. One moment Kaito was crouched under a cafeteria table, and the next, reality itself seemed to tear apart. The air split open like someone had taken a knife to the fabric of existence, revealing something impossible beyond.
Colors that shouldn't exist. Shapes that hurt to look at. A sound like the universe screaming.
Kaito felt himself falling, though he wasn't moving. His body was here but also not here, stretched across impossible distances. His mind fractured into a thousand pieces and reformed into something new.
The last thing he remembered before everything went black was a single word, echoing in his head in a voice that was and wasn't his own:
**Ascension.**
Then nothing.