the great escape
Rainy Tenko Koharu’s military unit was about to receive its orders.
Around the same time, while Gorai Otome was still considering her next move after speaking with Shu Hiiragi of the International Syndicate, there was a boy living quietly somewhere else.
He lived modestly.
Not poor enough to suffer, not wealthy enough to care.
Yet somehow, he never quite fit into society.
He was bored.
The boy already knew he had something.
A manifested equipment—his own trajectory.
People around him had told him so, and he believed them without much doubt.
So he never really struggled with it.
He just couldn’t name it properly.
He tried, a few times.
Read what he could.
Traced things back as far as possible.
His family, it seemed, had been settlers—moving across lands long before the world took on its current shape.
Even after industrialization, things hadn’t changed much. It felt no different from what he had once read about a place called “Earth.”
He wondered when it had started.
This thing.
Was it part of evolution?
Accumulation?
Something tied to the soul?
Or interference from outside?
He thought about it, vaguely.
Like a boy would.
And eventually—
“Yeah… everyone’s probably like this.”
He stopped there.
There were others like him.
Even among teenagers, manifestation wasn’t rare.
But his felt… slightly different.
It resembled his grandfather’s.
He didn’t dwell on it.
Just quietly thought,
Rich people must have it easier.
Then one day—
his grandfather collapsed.
Critical condition.
The boy went to see him.
He was sad. Nothing special about it.
Just… normal.
The nameplate on the intensive care room read:
“Husky · Shaga · East Coast”
A strange name.
He entered.
Spoke with his grandfather.
Or tried to.
They exchanged fragmented words, maybe even meaning.
Then—
someone else entered.
An old man.
Probably someone his grandfather knew.
The man spoke.
“Hey.”
“When was the last time you used the Yoikujira Trajectory?”
The grandfather paused.
“Ten… no, maybe twenty years ago.”
“Back when I was doing forestry work. Everything lined up—echo, intake, output… I got myself a damn good katsudon out of it.”
A trivial story.
That was when the boy realized—
his own ability had something to do with “whales.”
But it didn’t shock him.
The world worked like that.
People with abilities didn’t just win by default.
It was more like… a gun society, something he had once read about.
Yoikujira.
To him, it still felt like nothing more than a vacuum cleaner, or an echoing tool.
Maybe there was more.
Maybe not.
He stayed quiet.
Didn’t interrupt.
The old man spoke again.
“You’re not using the Panacea fragments?”
The grandfather replied,
“Sold them all.”
“You idiot. That was your thing. Traditional remedies, side hustles—you were making a killing.”
“Things got… complicated after I settled in Jipang. But it wasn’t bad.”
Silence.
A quiet farewell.
The old man turned to the boy.
“You, kid…”
He paused.
“That thing of yours might wreck the pharmaceutical industry.”
He shrugged lightly.
“Or maybe not. Different times now.”
“What’s your name?”
The boy answered.
“Shiga Kaisei.”
The man nodded.
“Good name. Take care.”
He left.
The boy turned back.
His grandfather had already passed.
The funeral was small.
Afterward, the boy thought about it.
A little.
His ability.
His past sixteen years.
Panacea.
But not much.
He didn’t try to improve.
Didn’t train.
Skipped school more often than not.
Listened to whatever songs drifted his way.
Muttered,
“This is stupid.”
And lived on.
Looking for an easy way to survive.
Playing games.
Testing his ability in half-hearted guesses.
Assuming it was all pointless.
And then—
he realized.
This world…
was nothing but game theory.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
So—
what came next
was up to him.
