I stood in front of the bathroom mirror for what felt like hours.
Actually, it was exactly seventeen minutes. I know because I counted every single second. Counting helped. Counting was logical, methodical, sane. And right now, sanity felt like a rope I was clinging to with bleeding fingers, terrified of what would happen if I let go.
Sixteen years old.
The face staring back at me was mine, but it felt like looking at a stranger. Someone young and unmarked by the world's cruelty. My jawline was smooth—no scar from the sparring accident with Kaito when I was eighteen. My neck was clean—no burn marks from that B-Rank fire elemental that caught me off guard during my first solo dungeon raid. My left eyebrow was intact—no thin white line from the assassination attempt that came six months after I hit S-Rank.
This face had never been broken. Never been scarred. Never learned that trust was just another word for vulnerability.
I wanted to put my fist through the mirror. Watch it shatter into a thousand pieces, each fragment reflecting a different version of this impossible reality back at me. Maybe that would make more sense than what I was seeing now.
Instead, I gripped the edge of the sink until my knuckles turned white and my hands started shaking. The porcelain was cold and solid under my palms. Real. Grounding. A physical anchor in a world that had apparently decided the laws of reality were more like suggestions.
Breathe, I told myself. Just breathe.
In for four counts. Hold for seven. Out for eight.
It was a technique Mira had taught me after my first panic attack. I'd just finished a brutal C-Rank Gate clear—seventeen hours of non-stop combat that left three Hunters dead and the rest of us traumatized. I'd locked myself in the Association's bathroom and couldn't stop shaking. Mira had found me there, sat down on the floor beside me without saying a word, and taught me how to breathe again.
The memory of her voice—warm and patient and alive—hit me like a physical blow.
Mira was dead. I'd watched her die. Watched a tentacle pierce through her chest while she tried to crawl to safety on a broken leg. Watched her mouth form my name even though no sound came out.
Except she wasn't dead. Not yet. Not in this timeline.
Right now, Mira Santos was twenty years old and working as a low-level analyst at the Hunter Association's Tokyo branch. She was alive and breathing and had no idea that some kid named Ryu Takahashi would eventually watch her die in a Gate she should never have entered.
The thought made me dizzy.
I looked down at my hands. They were shaking worse now. Young hands. Soft hands. Hands that had never gripped a sword for eight hours straight or pulled a comrade's body out of rubble or cradled a dying friend while lying about how everything would be okay.
Ten years of calluses, gone. Ten years of muscle memory, stored in a body too weak to execute it. Ten years of scars—each one a lesson written in pain—erased like they never happened.
But they did happen. To me. In a future that this timeline would never see.
I forced myself to look back at the mirror, past my reflection, to the translucent interface hovering at the edge of my vision.
[VOID SYSTEM - STATUS]
Name: Ryu Takahashi
Level: 1
Class: Void Sovereign (Locked - Awakening Required)
HP: 100/100
MP: 15/15 (Base Unawakened)
STR: 8 (Average Human)
AGI: 9 (Average Human)
END: 7 (Below Average)
INT: 12 (Above Average)
WIS: 14 (Above Average)
CHA: 10 (Average)
LCK: 3 (Abysmal)
Corruption: 0%
Skills: None (Awakening Required)
Absorbed Skills: None
Active Quests:
[PRIMARY] Prevent the Cataclysm - 10 Years, 7 Days, 2 Hours remaining
[SECONDARY] Eliminate All Traitors - 0/7 identified
[HIDDEN] ??? - Conditions not met
Fifteen MP. At my peak, I'd had over 50,000.
The difference was almost funny. Almost. Like comparing a candle to the sun and being told they both produce light, so really, what's the difference?
My body felt wrong. Too light. Too slow. Like I was trying to move through water while wearing weights. My mind screamed instructions based on ten years of combat experience, and my body responded with the physical equivalent of "Sorry, I don't understand that command."
I was an S-Rank consciousness trapped in an F-Rank shell.
"This is going to be a problem," I muttered to the empty bathroom.
The apartment was exactly how I remembered it. Small. Cramped. The kind of place where you could hear Mrs. Nakamura's television through the walls at all hours. Two tiny bedrooms, one bathroom that barely fit a shower, and a kitchen the size of a closet.
Home.
Except it wasn't supposed to exist anymore. This building was destroyed in 2021 during the Tokyo Gate Break. I remembered standing in the rubble, staring at the spot where our apartment used to be, feeling nothing because I'd already lost so much that one more loss barely registered.
Mrs. Nakamura died in that Break. So did the Tanaka family on the third floor with their twin daughters who were always running up and down the hallways. So did Mr. Sato from 2B who used to complain about noise but always slipped me money for ramen when he thought Hana wasn't looking.
All of them gone. All of them ash and memory.
Except right now, they weren't. Right now, Mrs. Nakamura was probably watching her morning news. The Tanaka twins were probably getting ready for school. Mr. Sato was probably making his terrible instant coffee that smelled like burnt rubber.
The thought made something crack inside my chest.
I could save them. All of them. I knew exactly when that Gate would appear, exactly where it would Break. I could evacuate the building. I could—
"Onii-chan?"
The word hit me like a bullet.
I froze. My hand was still on the bathroom doorframe, my body halfway through stepping into the hallway. My heart, which had been maintaining a steady rhythm through sheer force of will, suddenly forgot how to beat properly.
Hana.
She was standing in her bedroom doorway, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Thirteen years old. Black hair pulled into a messy ponytail that was already half-falling out. Oversized pajamas with cartoon cats on them—the ones she'd begged me to buy last month from the discount store on the corner, the ones I'd complained about spending money on because I was a selfish idiot who didn't understand that time with her was finite.
There was a small bandage on her left knee. I remembered that. She'd tripped during gym class last week trying to show off during volleyball. She'd come home with scraped knees and tears in her eyes, and I'd barely looked up from my studying because the Hunter Exam was more important than my little sister's pain.
I'd been such an asshole.
Alive. She was alive. Breathing. Real. Standing right there with bed-head and sleepy confusion and absolutely no idea that in another timeline, another life, she'd been dead for years.
In my timeline—the real timeline, the one that counted—Hana Takahashi died at age twenty-one.
It happened during the Cataclysm. She'd been volunteering at a civilian shelter in Shibuya, helping evacuate people who couldn't afford private Hunter protection. The shelter took a direct hit from the initial Gate Break. The blast radius was three kilometers.
They never found her body. Just her student ID in the rubble, the plastic melted and warped but her smiling photo still visible under the blood.
I'd carried that ID for three years. Kept it in my pocket during every mission, every fight, every moment when I wanted to give up. A reminder of what I'd failed to protect.
"Onii-chan, are you okay?"
Hana tilted her head, her brown eyes—our mother's eyes, the ones I'd inherited too—narrowing with concern. She was too perceptive. Always had been. Even at thirteen, she could read people better than most adults.
"You look weird," she added, taking a step toward me.
I couldn't speak. My throat had closed around something sharp and terrible, and if I tried to force words past it, I was going to shatter. I was going to break apart right here in this narrow hallway, and all the pieces of me would scatter across cheap linoleum, and I would never, ever be able to put them back together.
Hold it together, a voice in my head commanded. It sounded like Akira. Cold. Tactical. The voice of a commander who couldn't afford weakness. You're a soldier. You're a Hunter. You've killed Catastrophe-Class monsters. You can handle seeing your sister alive.
But I couldn't. Because this wasn't a monster. This was Hana. My Hana. Standing there in her ridiculous cat pajamas, alive and breathing and so achingly real that it hurt to look at her.
"Onii-chan, seriously, you're being creepy." Her voice took on that edge of annoyance that only little sisters could master. "Did you have a bad dream or—"
I crossed the hallway in two steps and pulled her into a hug.
"O-Onii-chan?! What are you—"
I held her tight. Not hard enough to hurt—I'd never hurt her—but firm enough that she'd know this was real. That she was real. My arms wrapped around her small frame, and I pressed my face against the top of her head, and I breathed in the scent of cheap strawberry shampoo and laundry detergent.
And the thing in my throat finally broke loose.
I cried.
Not the dignified tears of a hero in some dramatic movie scene. Not the single manly tear rolling down a weathered cheek. I cried like a child who'd lost everything and somehow gotten it back. Ugly, wrenching sobs that tore out of my chest with enough force to make my whole body shake.
Ten years of grief poured out of me. Ten years of rage and guilt and loneliness and desperate, howling loss. It soaked into my little sister's cartoon cat pajamas while she stood frozen with shock in my arms.
"R-Ryu?"
She never called me by my name. It was always "Onii-chan" or "stupid brother" or "hey, idiot." The fact that she was using my actual name told me exactly how frightened I'd made her.
I was scaring her. I was supposed to protect her, and instead I was having a breakdown in the hallway at six in the morning, and she had no context for any of this.
"Ryu, what happened?" Her voice was small. Worried. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?"
Yes, I wanted to say. I'm hurt in ways that would take me years to explain. I watched everyone I loved die. I was murdered by the man I called father. I'm carrying ten years of hell inside a sixteen-year-old body, and I'm terrified that if I blink, you'll disappear and I'll wake up back in that Gate with my body crushed and everything I love just out of reach.
What I actually said was: "Bad dream."
"Must have been a really bad dream," Hana murmured. Her voice was soft now. Gentle. And then—slowly, awkwardly, like someone who wasn't used to her older brother showing vulnerability—her arms came up around my waist. She hugged me back, one hand patting my spine with uncertain tenderness.
"It's okay, Onii-chan," she whispered. "It wasn't real."
But it was real. It was all horrifyingly, devastatingly real.
I pulled back, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. Trying to pull myself together. Trying to be the older brother she needed instead of the broken thing I'd become.
"Sorry," I managed. "Didn't mean to freak you out."
Hana studied me with those sharp brown eyes. She'd always been too smart for her own good. In the original timeline, she'd been accepted to Tokyo University's psychology program at sixteen. Youngest student in the department's history. She could read people the way I read combat situations—instinctively and accurately.
"You're different," she said quietly.
My stomach dropped. "What?"
"You're... I don't know." She frowned, chewing her lower lip the way she always did when she was thinking. "You seem different this morning. Like you got older overnight. But not physically. Does that make sense?"
It made perfect sense. And it terrified me.
"Just the dream," I said, forcing a casual shrug that felt like lifting weights. "You know how vivid nightmares mess with your head."
She didn't look convinced. But she was thirteen, and the complete absence of cooking smells from the kitchen reminded us both that we had more immediate concerns than her brother's existential crisis.
"You forgot to buy groceries again, didn't you?" The concern in her eyes shifted to familiar exasperation.
Guilt hit me like a slap. In the original timeline, I'd been a terrible older brother. Self-absorbed. Always training, always studying for the Hunter Exam, always chasing the dream of becoming powerful enough to protect us financially. I'd been so focused on the future that I'd ignored the present.
Hana had practically raised herself. She'd learned to cook because I couldn't. She'd managed our budget because I wouldn't. She'd grown up too fast while I was busy being a selfish idiot with dreams of glory.
By the time I'd pulled my head out of my ass long enough to appreciate her, it was too late. She was already dead.
Not this time.
"Tell you what," I said, and the words came easier now that I had something concrete to focus on. "How about I actually make us breakfast? There's that egg place on third street—"
"You don't cook, Onii-chan." She gave me the flattest look a thirteen-year-old had ever mustered. "Last time you tried, you set rice on fire. Rice. How do you set rice on fire?"
"People change."
"In one night?"
"It was a very educational nightmare."
She stared at me for a long moment, clearly trying to decide if I'd lost my mind. Then she shrugged in that uniquely teenage way that said she'd decided it wasn't worth the effort to argue.
"Fine. But if you burn down the kitchen, I'm telling Mr. Sato."
"Deal."
She retreated to her room, muttering about weird brothers and their weird moods. I stood in the hallway, listening to the sound of her moving around—opening drawers, humming some pop song that was popular right now, complaining to herself about not being able to find her other sock.
Normal sounds. Living sounds.
I made a promise right then. Silent but absolute. The kind of promise that resonated in every cell of my reborn body, in every fragment of my shattered soul.
You will not die again, Hana. Not in this timeline. Not while I draw breath. I will burn this world to ashes before I let anyone take you from me. I will become a monster if that's what it takes. I will do anything—ANYTHING—to keep you safe.
A system notification pulsed at the edge of my vision:
[EMOTIONAL ANCHOR DETECTED]
Subject: Hana Takahashi
Bond Status: [CRITICAL - HIGHEST PRIORITY]
Effect: Maintaining emotional connections reduces Corruption accumulation by 5% per bond.
Note: Strong emotional bonds anchor your humanity. Do not sever this connection.
Warning: Loss of anchors accelerates Corruption.
The Void System's clinical analysis of my love for my sister should have disgusted me. Reducing the most important relationship in my life to a game mechanic, to a percentage modifier on a corruption meter.
Instead, I filed the information away with cold precision.
Emotional bonds reduce corruption. That was useful data. That was a tool I could use. Every advantage mattered, no matter how cynically it was framed.
The old Ryu—the one who died in that Gate—would have raged at the system for this. Would have rejected the idea that human connection could be quantified.
The new Ryu understood that rage was a luxury I couldn't afford. Every advantage, every tool, every scrap of information was a weapon to be wielded in the war I was about to fight.
I had work to do.
I made breakfast.
"Made" was a generous term for what I actually accomplished. The original Ryu's complete lack of culinary skill wasn't something my ten years of future knowledge could fix, since I'd spent most of those years either eating military rations in Gates or grabbing whatever processed food was fastest between missions.
But I managed toast that was only slightly burnt, eggs that were edible if you didn't look at them too closely, and tea that was drinkable if you had low standards and lower expectations.
Hana ate without complaint. That told me more about our financial situation than I wanted to acknowledge. We were living on the government stipend for orphans—barely enough to cover rent and basic necessities. Hana had learned not to be picky about food because being picky was a privilege we couldn't afford.
She'd never complained. Not once. She just... adapted. Made do. Survived with quiet dignity while her idiot brother chased dreams.
While she ate, I sat across from her at our tiny kitchen table and began organizing my thoughts. Planning. Strategizing.
What do I know? What can I change? What are the consequences of changing it?
I pulled up my mental timeline—years of events catalogued and filed with the obsessive precision of someone who'd lived through them once and couldn't afford to forget.
Year 1 (Current Year - Age 16):
Hunter Awakening Ceremony: Tomorrow My original awakening: S-Rank Fire/Enhancement dual class Recruited by Akira's Crimson Vanguard within one month Several predictable Gate incidents I could exploit
Year 2 (Age 17):
"Night of Black Stars" incident in Osaka: 4,000 casualties My first official S-Rank certification Kaito's family murdered by Phantom Guild operatives
Year 3 (Age 18):
International Hunter Summit (first attendance) Discovery of the Hidden Dungeon network across Asia Yuki's family threatened by Akira (beginning of her coerced cooperation)
Years 4-8:
Escalating Gate frequency worldwide Guild territorial wars Akira's rise to power across Japan My ascension to peak S-Rank status
Year 9:
Cataclysm preparation begins Akira initiates the "Sacrifice Ritual" conspiracy My final Gate raid Betrayal and death
Year 10:
The Cataclysm 80% of humanity perishes Hana dies The world ends
I had ten years. Ten years to prevent an apocalypse that nobody except me knew was coming.
But there was a problem.
Butterfly effect.
Every action I took would create ripples. Some predictable, most not. If I deviated too far from the original timeline too quickly, my future knowledge would become worthless. Worse—I might accidentally accelerate events, make things happen faster, trigger consequences I couldn't foresee.
I needed to be smart about this. Surgical. Change things gradually while maintaining the overall timeline structure.
Strategy: Build power in secret. Don't attract attention early. Appear weak while becoming strong. Sun Tzu would approve.
Tomorrow was the Awakening Ceremony. In the original timeline, I'd awakened as an S-Rank with Fire and Enhancement dual attributes. It was the highest-level public awakening in Japan's history. Every guild wanted me. Every government agency tracked me. I'd been famous overnight.
And that fame had made me a target.
This time, I needed to be smarter.
A new quest notification appeared:
[QUEST ALERT]
Quest: The Awakening Deception
Objective:
Attend the Hunter Awakening Ceremony Conceal your true power level Register as D-Rank or below
Reward: Skill Point x1, [Stealth Passive - Rank F]
Penalty for Failure: Increased attention from hostile factions. Timeline acceleration. Loss of tactical advantage.
Accept? [Y/N]
I mentally selected [Yes].
Appear weak when you are strong. Appear strong when you are weak. Basic tactics. Basic survival.
"Onii-chan."
I looked up. Hana had finished eating and was staring at me with that unsettling intensity again.
"Yeah?"
"You've been staring at the wall for like five minutes. And your eyes are doing something weird."
Ice water flooded my veins. "Weird how?"
"They keep... flickering? Like there's a light behind them or something. It's probably just the sunlight from the window, but..." She trailed off, frowning. "Are you sure you're okay? Maybe you should see a doctor."
Panic spiked through me. Could she see the system interface? No—impossible. The system specifically stated only I could perceive it. But the physical manifestations...
I stood and checked the mirror in the hallway. My eyes were their normal grey. But as I focused on the system interface, I caught it—a faint flash of crimson in my irises. Barely perceptible. Gone in an instant.
The corruption. Or not corruption exactly, but the system's presence. Like a pilot light waiting for fuel.
"Just tired," I told Hana, forcing my voice to stay casual. "Didn't sleep well."
"Obviously." She picked up her plate and carried it to the sink. Started washing it without being asked because that's who she was—responsible, capable, far too mature for thirteen.
"I'm going to study at the library today," she said. "Entrance exams are in two months."
She'd ace those exams. I knew because I'd been there when the results came. Top of her class at Seiran Middle School. But she didn't know that yet, so she studied like her life depended on it.
"Hey, Hana?"
"Mm?"
"I'm proud of you. You know that, right?"
She turned to stare at me, the dish still in her hands, soap dripping onto the floor. I'd actually stunned her into silence. In the original timeline, I'd never said anything like that. Never told her how amazing she was. Never acknowledged how hard she worked.
I'd been too busy being self-absorbed to notice the incredible person growing up right in front of me.
"Okay, you are definitely sick," she said, but her voice cracked slightly. "Whatever nightmare you had, maybe have it more often if it makes you less of a jerk."
"Love you too, kid."
"Don't call me kid! I'm only three years younger than you!"
Three years. Seventeen years if you counted my mental age. But I couldn't tell her that.
She left for the library twenty minutes later, her school bag bouncing against her hip as she walked. I stood at the window and watched her small figure emerge onto the street below, heading toward a future I was going to rewrite.
Then I closed the curtains and got to work.
The rest of the day was assessment and planning.
First priority: Physical conditioning.
I spent an hour testing my body's limits. Push-ups, sit-ups, basic flexibility exercises, shadow boxing. The results were predictably depressing.
Thirty push-ups before muscle failure. At my peak, I'd done three hundred with weighted gear during warm-ups.
My mind screamed at my muscles to execute techniques that required years of conditioning. My muscles responded with confusion and cramps.
This was going to take time. But time was something I had now. Ten years. I could rebuild my body, train it properly from the ground up.
Second priority: Financial resources.
I had 45,000 yen in savings. Two months of careful living. In the original timeline, I'd blown through this quickly, making stupid purchases on gear that turned out to be worthless.
This time, I knew exactly which items were worth buying. More importantly, I knew the locations of hidden dungeons that contained equipment worth millions. Resources that wouldn't be discovered for years.
Third priority: Intelligence gathering.
I sat at my desk with a notebook and began writing. Every significant event I could remember. Every Gate appearance. Every death. Every political shift. Every piece of information that might give me an edge.
The list of people who died in the original timeline filled page after page.
Kaito's family. Mira. Yuki. Hundreds of Hunters I'd known. Thousands of civilians.
Some I could save. Some I couldn't—not without revealing too much too early.
My pen paused over one name.
Acceptable losses.
The thought came unbidden. Cold. Clinical. The voice of the Ryu who'd been forged in ten years of war and betrayal. The Ryu who'd learned to calculate human lives like chess pieces.
No.
I pressed the pen down hard enough to tear the paper.
No acceptable losses. Not this time. I save everyone I can. And I don't become the monster they tried to create.
A system notification pulsed:
[MENTAL STATE ASSESSMENT]
Emotional Instability: MODERATE
PTSD Indicators: SEVERE
Moral Conflict: ACTIVE
Note: The Void System functions optimally when the user maintains emotional equilibrium. Excessive emotional fluctuation reduces system efficiency by 12%.
Recommendation: Resolve internal conflicts. Choose a path and commit.
"Shut up," I told the empty room.
The system didn't respond. It never did when I wanted it to.
By late afternoon, I'd completed my initial planning. The notebook went into a false-bottom compartment in my desk drawer—a hiding technique Mira had taught me during espionage training.
Mira. Who was alive right now. Who I could save if I played this right.
But not yet. Approaching a twenty-year-old woman as a sixteen-year-old kid with claims of future knowledge would end badly. Patience. Strategy.
Tomorrow was the Awakening Ceremony.
Tomorrow, Ryu Takahashi would awaken as a Hunter for the second time.
And this time, the world wouldn't see me coming.
I lay down as the sun set, painting the sky in reds and golds that reminded me too much of blood and fire.
Sleep wouldn't come easily. I knew that. The nightmares were waiting—tentacles and gunshots and Yuki's vacant eyes and Kaito burning and Hana's blood-stained ID card.
But I closed my eyes anyway.
Tomorrow required me to be sharp.
Tomorrow, everything would begin.
In the darkness between waking and sleeping, a voice whispered.
Ancient. Amused. Patient.
"Interesting. You still cling to them. To the bonds that broke you."
Erebus.
"Rest well, my Sovereign. Tomorrow, the game begins in earnest. And I do so enjoy watching you play."
I wanted to respond. To demand answers about what this entity was, why it chose me, what it truly wanted.
But exhaustion claimed me, pulling me down into a dreamless void.
And in that void, I wasn't alone.
Something was watching.
Something was waiting.
[Day 1 of 3,657 Complete]
[Corruption: 0%]
[Lives Saved: 0]
[Lives Lost: 0]
[The clock is ticking, Void Sovereign.]
[END OF CHAPTER 2: THE DAY BEFORE TOMORROW]