Somewhere in Tokyo – Three Years Ago – A Boardroom
The boy was eleven years old, and he had already learned that adults were the most predictable creatures on earth.
"You're telling me you want to quit?" The man in the expensive suit laughed. Not a kind laugh. The laugh of someone who had just been told a joke by a dog that had learned to speak. "Ren-kun, you're the youngest winner of the National Mathematics Olympiad in history. Universities are already fighting over you. Corporations are offering sponsorships. Your IQ is 167—do you understand what that means?"
Ren Akiyama understood perfectly. It meant that every question he answered, every equation he solved, every single breath he took was being converted into yen. It meant that his mother, before she died, had signed away his childhood to a management agency in exchange for her hospital bills. It meant that his father, who remarried three months after the funeral, had never once looked at him as a son—only as an investment portfolio with legs.
"I understand that I'm tired," Ren said. His voice was flat. Not angry. Not sad. Just empty. That was the thing about being a genius—you learned early that emotions were inefficient. "I want to go to a normal school. I want to have no expectations. I want to be average."
The boardroom erupted.
Three hours of negotiation followed. His father screamed. The agency threatened lawsuits. A producer from a television network offered triple the appearance fees. Through it all, Ren sat perfectly still, his hands folded on the mahogany table, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows where the Tokyo skyline glittered like a cage.
In the end, they compromised. He would continue his "prodigy activities" until the end of middle school. Then he would be allowed to disappear.
Ren agreed.
But he had already learned another lesson: adults never kept their promises.
One Year Ago – A Hospital Corridor
The girl was crying.
She was beautiful—even Ren could admit that, though he rarely noticed such things. Long black hair, skin like porcelain, eyes that held the kind of light that made people want to protect her. She was kneeling on the cold linoleum floor, clutching a small carrier cage. Inside, a white cat mewled weakly.
"Please," she sobbed into her phone. "I don't care how much it costs. He's the only thing I have left from—" Her voice broke. "Just save him."
On the other end of the line, the emergency vet was explaining that they were fully booked. Come back tomorrow. Or try the clinic across the city. The girl's shoulders shook.
Ren was walking past because the hospital's cafeteria had cheap coffee. He had no intention of stopping. He had no intention of caring. That was his rule: don't get involved, don't feel, don't remember.
But the cat made a sound. A small, pathetic wheeze that reminded him of something he had buried so deep he thought it was gone forever.
He stopped.
"Give me the cage."
The girl looked up, startled. Her tears had smeared her mascara into dark rivers. She was wearing a school uniform from an academy he didn't recognize. Rich school. Rich girl. Rich problems.
"What?"
"I said give me the cage." He held out his hands. "There's a twenty-four-hour clinic three blocks east. They're cheaper and they don't ask questions. But you have to go now."
"I—the vet said—"
"The vet wants your money." Ren's voice was still flat, but something flickered behind his eyes. "That clinic doesn't care about your credit card. They care about animals. Go."
He didn't wait for her response. He turned and walked away, the cat carrier already in his hands, his long legs eating up the corridor. Behind him, he heard her scramble to her feet, her footsteps echoing as she ran to catch up.
She never got his name.
But she remembered his face.
Present Day – Ren's Apartment – 5:47 AM
Ren woke up to the sound of rain and the smell of nothing.
That was normal. His apartment was a six-tatami-mat shoebox in a building so old that the walls had started to sweat. The refrigerator contained expired milk, a single egg, and half a cabbage. His futon was unwashed. His textbooks were unopened. His life was a monument to the art of doing absolutely nothing.
He checked his phone. One message from his part-time boss: Come in at 3 instead of 5. Inventory. One message from the school's attendance system: You have missed 12% of classes this semester. Please consult your homeroom teacher. One message from an unknown number: I know where you live.
He deleted the last one without reading it twice. He had received messages like that before. Fans of his prodigy days who had tracked him down. Journalists looking for a comeback story. Debt collectors from his father's failed business ventures. They always went away eventually.
He got dressed. School uniform, slightly too large to hide his frame. Hair unstyled, falling over his eyes. Backpack with exactly one notebook and a broken pencil. He looked like every other tired, unremarkable high school boy in Tokyo.
That was the point.
The walk to Meiji Gakuen took twenty minutes. Ren used that time to plan his day: sleep through first period, answer exactly three questions in second period to maintain his C average, eat lunch alone on the roof, sleep through afternoon classes, go to work, come home, sleep. Repeat.
But when he arrived at the school gates, something was different.
A crowd had gathered. Students whispered behind their hands, phones held up like offerings. And at the center of the chaos, standing in the rain without an umbrella, was the most beautiful girl Ren had ever seen.
She was taller than he remembered. Her hair was shorter, cut to shoulder length in a way that framed her sharp jawline. She wore the Meiji Gakuen uniform, which meant she had transferred in—no, that wasn't right. The school year had already started. She would have had to—
Then she looked at him.
Her eyes were the same. That impossible light, undimmed by tears or time. But there was something else now. Something harder. Something that looked like a mirror.
"You're late," she said. Her voice carried across the courtyard, silencing the whispers. "I've been waiting for two hours."
Ren stopped walking. A raindrop slid down his cheek.
"I don't know you," he said.
She smiled. It was not a kind smile. It was the smile of someone who had already won.
"You will."
And then she walked past him, her shoulder brushing his, and disappeared into the school building.
The crowd erupted.
Ren stood in the rain for a long moment. His heart was beating faster than it should have been. His hands were cold. And somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice that he had spent years trying to kill whispered:
This is going to be a problem.