Vol 1 Chapter 2 (1/2)

CHAPTER 2

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Rei was drowning in despair.

It was winter, and the chill in the air was enough to freeze, leaving him well aware of how his body heat was being slowly but surely sapped away as he lay with his back on the cold asphalt beneath him.

He’d long stopped caring, though. About anything–and when he’d thoughtlessly picked a fight, he’d come to lying flat on his back, limbs spread wide, in an alley in a bustling market district.

He’d probably wind up freezing to death if he just closed his eyes and slipped off to sleep–but at this point…that might not be so bad.

The city beyond the alleyway was steeped in light, glittering illumination twinkling brilliantly, and he could catch countless boisterous voices chattering noisily. As he lay there, staring blankly ahead, he released a soft puff of white breath, reflecting distantly thatoh…it was December 24th.

‘Right…it’s Christmas Eve tonight…’

That was probably why the crowds bustling by looked so happy–and this realization made them seem all the more distant. The fact that it was Christmas…and the warm, friendly sights as well…

“I feel like the little match girl…” Rei muttered to himself, voice trembling as it spilled over his lips. He recalled the tale of the little girl selling matches on a street corner in the middle of winter, with no one to care for her.

‘Right…I’m gonna wind up just like her… Disappearing from this world with no one to give two s.h.i.+ts about me…’ And with this…he closed his eyes, and the world began to fade away. All light…all sound…even the sensation of cold and chill all grew distant. This must be what it felt like…to die.

An image of his mother, who’d died in an accident only a few days prior, flickered to life in the back of his mind. They hadn’t exactly been close, but she’d been the only family he had, since his father wasn’t in the picture. Apparently she’d been someone’s mistress, but they’d been cut off from contact with the man around when Rei had been born, so he’d grown up not knowing his father’s face or even his name.

But even his mother…had been someone far removed from Rei’s consciousness. She’d raised Rei using money she made as a prost.i.tute, and given the nature of her business, she’d never been around much when Rei was at home. He’d spent many long hours alone from a young age.

He’d stopped really caring for her sometime in elementary school, and when he’d entered middle school, he’d started picking fights with anyone who crossed his path. While he’d managed to make it to high school, his behavior had only worsened, and he got involved in a fair number of dirty dealings.

But despite his lack of studying, he’d still managed to make decent grades, and his teachers had even recommended that he take exams to get into a university, but he’d had to give up that dream due to a lack of funds. Feeling like his future had been s.n.a.t.c.hed away by his family situation, he’d grown even more violent.

Lately, he’d stopped dropping by his mother’s home altogether and rarely saw her…until just recently, when he’d received an emergency phone call. It had been the police, informing Rei that his mother had been in an accident. He’d rushed to the hospital, but she had already slipped away.

The moment he’d seen her lying there in that small, white bed, her face pale…it had felt like a hole had just opened up beneath him. He’d avoiding having to see her for so long…but he still needed a mother. But it was only at that point, when Rei had been left all alone, that he’d finally realized as such.

They hadn’t spent much time together at all, but she’d been the one to raise him. She had been his only family, the only person he had any real ties to in the whole world.

He’d found himself regretting not spending more time with her, but there was nothing much he could do when that person was already dead. He couldn’t even give her a proper funeral, in financial straits as he was, and he hated himself from the bottom of his heart for this.

He couldn’t do anything. He didn’t have anything.

No family, no money, no hope. He had nothing.

And it was that sense of utter self-loathing that had him where he was now–flat on his back in an alley. He couldn’t muster up the strength to care anymore and felt everything just fade far away into the background.

The world would just keep slipping away…and maybe he could die like this. Was this all his mother had left him? A life of a.s.sured solitude and distance from others?

And that was when it happened.

The air around him suddenly changed–and he felt his consciousness snap back to the here and now. He could sense someone else near him–he’d been alone before, but there was someone else here now. It was oppressive, demanding he respond…

Someone else…was here.

A cool, refres.h.i.+ng scent brushed his nose–and his suspicions were immediately confirmed. He couldn’t ignore the presence now, and he slowly opened his eyes, his lids stiff from the icy chill about him–

–and found himself face to face, with only perhaps 30 or 40 cm separating them, with the face of a foreigner.

“–Uwah!” Rei immediately leapt up, scrambling back to place s.p.a.ce between himself and the man as his heart pounded from shock, but his joints mounted a protest, sore and stiff from the cold, and he grimaced in pain.

“Oh–you’re alive! Thank goodness, I was worried you were dead!”

Rei gave a start at the perfectly fluent j.a.panese delivered from a rather unexpected source, raking the man over with a glance. Huh…? His face was…

On first glance, the deep lines in the man’s face had suggested he was a foreigner, but on taking a closer look, it was clear he had some mixed ancestry. On top of it all, Rei was getting the eerie feeling that he’d seen this man somewhere before.

Where, though? He wrinkled his brow suspiciously, but the man didn’t seem intimidated in the least, extending a hand. “You’re hurt! Let’s get you to a hospital.”

Rei froze for a moment at the unexpected suggestion, then shook his head. “…I’ll be fine. This is nothing.” And he truly believed that; sure, he’d thought he might shuffle off the mortal coil, as it were, just now, but that hadn’t been because of his injury–merely the chill. For the rather quarrelsome Rei, who jumped into fights without thinking, this kind of injury was just part of a day’s work.

But the foreign-looking man didn’t seem so convinced. “But–if it gets infected…”

Rei felt his irritation flare at the worried tone in the man’s voice. For someone like Rei, drowning in despair, these were nothing more than pretty words, seeming merely like hypocritical niceties.

“I said I’m fine! I’m broke, I’ve got no parents, and I don’t feel like moving from this spot!” He turned on his heel and placed his back to the man–before pointedly flopping back to the ground with his limbs spread. The man would soon leave him in peace, and if Rei happened to die, the he would likely suffer nothing more than an uneasy conscience.

Maybe he’d gotten caught up in the spirit of the Eve, hoping to do some good deed for another. Regardless, Rei wanted no part in his hypocritical experiment. It only made him irritated that now he wouldn’t be able to die in peace, unknown and uncared for by anyone.

He just wanted to get this over with already. Consequences be d.a.m.ned. Any feelings this man had for a stranger he pa.s.sed on the street would likely disappear as soon as he left this place and melded back into his everyday life.

But while Rei struggled internally with these thoughts, the man still refused to be moved, and after a long silence that suggested he’d been mulling something over, Rei caught the sound of not feet sc.r.a.ping the concrete…but something rustling. Rei wouldn’t lie and say he wasn’t curious as to what was going on, but he stubbornly refused to give in, keeping his back to the man and closing his eyes as he waited for the man to leave.

“…All right then. I’ll leave you some money here, so get yourself to a hospital, okay? And also…”

With these words, something warm and heavy draped itself over Rei’s shoulders. “?!”

“There’s a ticket in the pocket there; come and check out the show if you have time.” The man didn’t seem put off at all by Rei’s att.i.tude, instead speaking to him with a voice as light and soft and–he didn’t want to confirm, but warm as whatever he’d just laid across Rei.

In the end, he couldn’t bear it any more, and his eyes popped open as he scrambled upright again–where he realized that the man had covered him with the rather expensive-looking coat he’d been wearing…and on top of it, a wallet–cash and all–that looked very much like something the man would own.

“Wai–are you insane?!” His eyes flashed wide, and he glanced around frantically–but the man had disappeared.

‘He…seriously just left this and took off?’

He spent a few long moments in shock, just staring at the wallet. Unlike the illusions experienced by the little match girl, neither the coat nor wallet faded away, no matter how long he spent looking at the items.

“………” After much internal debate, though, Rei warily reached to take the wallet in hand, and on opening it, his eyes goggled at the sight of a thick stack of cash, a sum far greater than he’d ever before held. And it wasn’t just cash–there were credit cards and debit cards as well, all just sitting there.

“Seriously…? Looks like the little match girl’s just become little Princess Sarah…” he mumbled to himself with a bitter smile in his tone, though he couldn’t bring himself to laugh.

Was this actually happening right now? His imagination ran wild with fantasy, so unable was he to accept that this was real–maybe he’d already died and this was just some post-mortem dream. Amazing strokes of luck like this only happened inside fairy tales; never to real people like him.

But here, Rei recalled what the man had said to him and shoved a hand into the pocket of the coat hanging from his shoulders. “He said there was something in the pocket…this?” He tugged out the small slip of paper his fingers brushed over–and realized it was a ticket.

Musical Benetnasch, Theater Capella, Starring: Sena Seiya…

“AH!” He remembered now–where he’d seen that man before! It was a face he’d watched from the other side of the television screen several times. Wasn’t he a singer…or wait, maybe an actor? Rei wasn’t exactly well-versed in these kinds of things, so he couldn’t be sure, but if the guy was starring in a musical, he had to be at least one of those.

“…Guess high and might celebrities have money to burn on charity cases, huh…” he muttered with a bitter smile before standing and shoving the ticket back into the coat pocket.

He still couldn’t quite believe what had just happened, but now that he knew the man was at least a real, living human being, he was starting to regain a sense of reality. At the very least, it was no mistake that he was now in possession of the windfall he’d always so desperately longed for time and time again.

“Well, if I’m gonna kick the bucket, I may as well at least use this generously donated cash first!” he boasted as a bit of self-encouragement, and set off down the dimly lit alleyway.

The man had urged him to head to a hospital, but Rei had absolutely no intention of doing so. Injuries like this were an everyday occurrence for him, so he didn’t think he needed any treatment for one, and what was the point in getting medical care anyway, when he was just going to die soon enough?

No–he was going to do what he wanted right now, buy what he wanted, and live the high life he’d never been able to experience before. He was planning on dying anyway, so he wouldn’t have to worry about what might happen tomorrow if he spent all of the cash in one blow tonight.

But…try as he might to convince himself he was doing the smart thing…he just couldn’t get in the mood. He felt no desire to enter any of the shops he saw as he walked along, nor could he find anything that he felt compelled to purchase.

Instead, he felt his mood spiraling downward once again, hastened there by his lonely presence in the middle of so much festivity and merriment, with all manner of Christmas songs piping over speakers wherever he went and happy couples and families filling the streets.

He stopped in before the show window of a building near the train station, noting the boxes of presents wrapped in s.h.i.+ny silver paper and fir tree covered in what looked like snow with a white reindeer-like animal standing to its side–a beautiful Christmas display. He stared blankly at it for a long while before sighing. “What’s a guy who wants to die need money for anyway…?”

It would’ve been nice if he could convince himself that having money meant he ought to try living, but the despair that resided deep within Rei was too ingrained to be so easily dispelled, and any desires he might have had were sucked soundlessly down into a dark, black pit.

He could think of nothing he wanted, nothing he wanted to do. He didn’t need anything now, it was all pointless.

Maybe he should have just stayed where he was, just slipped off into a dreamless death flat on his back in an alleyway.

“There’s a ticket in the pocket there; come and check out the show if you have time.”

The man had had a strange voice… A deep, masculine tenor…but somehow still soft and gentle, with a lightness far from superficial. So…very, very warm.

He wanted to hear it again.

“It said he was the star, right…?” He was pretty sure the theater indicated on the ticket was around her, so if he went, he’d be able to hear that voice.

He pulled the ticket out of his pocket again–indeed, the theater was quite nearby, perhaps only a ten-minute walk. He ran his eyes over the words Starring: Sena Seiya, noting the date right below it: December 24th, 8 PM.

‘Wait…December 24th…?’

“f.u.c.k, that’s today!” he yelped, and he frantically glanced around for a clock display. Thankfully, since he was right in front of a station, there was a clock set up by the bus rotary–7:55 PM.

The moment he glimpsed the time, he set off for the theater at a dead run.

In the midst of the buzz of the crowd and an excited stir in the theater, Rei felt his awareness slowly settle back into the real world. The curtain had now dropped, and the lights had come back up in the audience’s seats.

Words of praise dropped from the lips of nearby spectators as they stood and began to make their way to the exits—except for Rei, who couldn’t bring himself to stand just yet.

Something had filled him inside—he’d thought he’d been empty, a blank void of nothingness, and now he felt full again, and he couldn’t move a muscle, not just yet.

When he’d burst through the doors of the theater written on the ticket, the curtain had risen as if everyone had just been waiting for his arrival, and Rei had settled in to enjoy the musical without much background on the activity or expectations.

It had been his first time taking in a musical—h.e.l.l, he’d never seen anykind of movie or play or any performance of that sort. He’d honestly always thought they were stupid, nothing more than stories full of farces with made-up lives. What was the point of sitting and watching that kind of thing?

But when the musical had ended—the musical, which should have been little more than a fairy tale—Rei had sat there in his seat…and broken down in tears. “……!”

Everything burned—his eyes, the inside of his nose, his. .h.i.tched breaths, his flushed cheeks. He couldn’t recall when the last time he’d cried like this had been, and try as he might to wipe away the tears, they just kept flowing. The sight of the main character refusing to let the loss of his family and lover ruin all human relations.h.i.+ps for him, the way he charged forward and continued on without giving up had really hit home, and it hurt.

That character…was completely different from Rei, who had peered into the abyss of despair, finally tipped by the loss of his mother, unable to do more than crouch there and wait for death to take him.

And it was this difference between himself and the man in the musical that so strongly shook him to the core. However, he understood that he hadn’t experienced this in the form of a musical, he wouldn’t have been able to so easily accept the lessons.

’It overwhelmed me…’

He’d never known how strongly a human voice could resonate within his heart. The voices, the music, the lights, had all worked in concert to force his tear ducts to burst, and it felt as if that warm voice he’d heard a mere few hours before in a cold, dark alley…was echoing even more strongly and fiercely within him now. His heart feltreplenished again, as if the thoughts from before of having nothing left were little more than a dream. Something had bubbled up, warm and bright, from the bottomless pit that he’d thought of as an abyss of despair.

He would never have imagined…that this single slip of paper he’d found in the pocket of a coat could inspire such change within him. After all, absolutely nothing had changed as far as his situation went—except that he no longer wanted to die. He had even started thinking about how to go about ensuring he kept on living.

And it was all thanks to that foreigner, Sena Seiya.

“Umm…we’re closing up soon, so…”

At the staff member’s hesitant reminder, Rei shouted, “I have something I need to return to Sena Seiya-san! Please let me see him!”

The poor man likely hadn’t been expecting to hear that from Rei, and his eyes goggled in shock, before blinking a few times in confusion and offering sadly, “I’m sorry, but there’s really nothing I can…”

“Please!” He dropped his head in a deep bow as the man tried to gently refuse him. He had to see Sena Seiya. He wanted to see him, return the coat and wallet, and apologize.

The staff member continued trying to turn him down but was eventually won over by Rei’s persistence, allowing with a sigh, “…All right, I’ll check with Sena first.”

“Th…thank you so much!!” He bent into another bow as the man walked away, finally reaching up to wipe roughly at his eyes and staring holes into the door through which the man had left, pinning all his hopes on this moment.

When he stopped to think about it, the man had likely been a mere staff member of the theater, in no position to speak with or convince Seiya to do anything, but if Rei let this chance pa.s.s by, he was certain he’d never have the chance to see Seiya again. He and Rei walked in completely different worlds.

After a few long moments, though, the man returned: “It seems…Sena is willing to see you.”

The words were delivered with a measure of hesitation, but Rei released a sigh of relief, and fighting back the tears that threatened to start flowing again, he dipped his head into a bow of grat.i.tude. “Thank you very much…!”

“Not at all—this way, please.” They pa.s.sed through a side door out of the theater hall into the wings, down a long hall still buzzing with energy and unbanked fervor—before pausing at the door to a dressing room. The man knocked on the door—and a response came from within, which set Rei’s heart to pounding. “I’ve brought him, as requested.”

“Great, thanks.” Seiya’s caught Rei, standing stiff and straight with nervousness. “So…you came after al!” His eyes crinkled at their corners as he spoke. “Wait…huh? Did you not go to the hospital?”

Rei felt his eyes heat again with unshed tears when met with the same smile as before and the gentle question, and biting back the urge to weep, he thrust out the coat and wallet.

“Huh…? But—I gave those to you?”

He was probably being serious—but Rei shook his head at Seiya’s curious expression. “I can’t take them, not this much. I’m returning them to you.”

But—you don’t have any money, right? Without money, you can’t make it to a hospital.” Those words from anyone else but Seiya would have made Rei want to snap Are you treating my like an idiot?! but when Seiya said them, it sounded like nothing more than a truthful relation of the facts.

Seiya was likely a man of pure heart, merely innocently worried for Rei’s good health. “But…” He shook his head, pressing home the fact that he still couldn’t accept such a large sum. He was no longer the Rei that had wanted to use up the funds and then slink off somewhere to die. Seiya was his savior, and he didn’t want to cause the man any further trouble.

Seiya watched him for a while, scratching idly at the back of his neck—before his expression brightened as an idea came to him. “Then—how about this! Instead of accepting the cash, become my a.s.sistant!”

a.s.sistant…? “Huh…?!” Rei gaped openly at Seiya, eyes wide at the unexpected suggestion. But Seiya didn’t seem to notice Rei’s shock, instead smiling merrily.

“That seals it, then! This is great! I’ve actually been looking for an a.s.sistant—perfect!”

“Eh…? Eh? EEEEHHHH??” Rei had simply wanted to return the money—how had he gotten from that to this?

“Oh right—how old are you?”

“Huh? I’m 18.”

“A high schooler?”

“No—I’ve graduated…” he answered blankly, still half in shock from the unexpected turn of events—then zipped his lips. What was he doing, telling a stranger his life’s story? It was almost as if he wastrying to earn the opportunity to work as this man’s a.s.sistant…

“Excellent! Would’ve been tough, having you work as my a.s.sistantand attend cla.s.ses.” This made it clear Seiya was entirely serious. It had definitely been a sudden decision, that much was clear, but Rei could tell it wasn’t a joke and that he wasn’t being teased or led on. Rei could feel that Seiya just wasn’t that sort of person.

But…that didn’t make him the kind of person who could just nod with a polite ‘yes’ and let Seiya take care of him.

Rei had never met someone so angelically pure-hearted as Seiya—let alone someone so blessed with talent and finances… For someone like him, with no education and poor behavior, to be around such a brilliant person just couldn’t be good. And yet…

“Oh right—when should we get you moved in?”

“M—moved in?!”

“Yeah; you said you didn’t have parents, right? Then you should just come live with me!” Seiya suggested lightly.

“Huh?!” Rei blinked, not quite grasping the concept of ‘with me’ at first.

“I just figured it’d be easier for you to be my a.s.sistant if you lived in my home. That way I could ask you to take care of personal business as well!”

And this explanation finally clarified what ‘with me’ mean—he would be living in Seiya’s home. “Ah-ah-aha-ahhh umm—!!” He knew he needed to turn down the offer to work as Seiya’s a.s.sistant, so how had they gotten to Rei living with him now?!

“Hm?”

“Just…why? Why are you…trying to hire some stranger off the streets?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I’ve been looking for an a.s.sistant.”

“Yes, you said that!” That wasn’t what he’d been asking. He didn’t even really know what kind of work an a.s.sistant did—but it sounded like it involved being around Seiya and taking care of various managerial tasks.

And then on top of that, to live with the guy…? They had just met that day—and with Rei flat on his back in an alleyway; Seiya was being far too trusting here. “But…what if I wind up being a really bad person?”

Seiya simply smiled. “I know you aren’t.”

“You know…?” Despite the horrible circ.u.mstances of their first meeting?

Rei’s brows drew together in confusion, but Seiya continued with a grin, “I could see the beautiful tears you shed from the stage—that made it clear to me…that your heart must be beautiful as well.”

’Beautiful…?’

Shocked as he was that Seiya had noticed him crying, it was even more unbelievable to hear these words from the most beautiful person Rei had ever met, and he stared up at Seiya in awe. Was this…how he truly saw Rei? He didn’t see the type to lie, but Rei just couldn’t accept it.

“Plus—you came to see me,” Seiya added, perhaps detecting Rei’s suspicions. Still, Rei couldn’t believe him.

“That’s…really all?”

“‘All’? That’s more than enough, don’t you think? Not to mention, people tell me all the time I’ve got a good eye.” He punctuated this declaration with another blinding smile.

Rei felt something deep inside his chest warm in the face of that expression, urging him to return the smile himself—which cause the tears he’d been fighting back to at last overflow their banks.

“…So? You’ll be my a.s.sistant?”

’If this man believes in me…then I’ll do anything for him…’ This thought, welling up from within, was the final push he needed, and he nodded.

And that is how, from that day on, Rei became Seiya’s personal a.s.sistant.

The house was a grand three-story building, and likely out of consideration for ensuring its occupants’ privacy, it was difficult to tell from the outside what was going on within. However, along with the usual collection of windows along the crisp white outer walls, thin skylights could also be seen, making it easy to imagine the bright sunlight streaming inside.

“Welcome home; this is where you’ll be living from now on,” Seiya said, opening the door to the side of the garage—which to Rei seemed more like a gate leading to a whole new world, and with some trepidation, he followed Seiya into the inner entryway.

Truthfully, it still hadn’t quite sunk in yet—which was to be expected; after all, it had barely been three days since he’d first met Seiya and been invited to be his a.s.sistant. But in that short span of time, the environment around Rei had s.h.i.+fted dramatically, exposing Rei to probably the most shocking changes he’d experienced since slipping from his mother’s womb. That’s how sudden and ma.s.sive a change this was.

The time that had stalled with his mother’s pa.s.sing seemed to have suddenly started flowing again at great speed, and Seiya carried out all of the necessities using staff members from his own, self-run agency, SenaPro. He’d taken care of canceling the contract for the apartment Rei had been living in, transferring his ID card information, even his mother’s burial arrangements… More than anything, Rei had been so glad to be able to hold a proper memorial service for his mother at last. Because he hadn’t had any savings, he hadn’t been able to bury her, after all, even after the mandated 49 days had pa.s.sed.

And then, on top of everything, he’d come to welcome Rei…

“This is the living room—come inside.” Seiya welcomed him in with a warm smile, and every time Rei met that expression, something warm and light blossomed within his chest.

’Starting from today…I’m going to be living my life in time with his…’Such thoughts just bubbled up unbidden.

He still couldn’t manage to see himself as pure-hearted a person as Seiya had claimed that night in the dressing room, but he had vowed to change his life for Seiya’s sake, at the very least. He would pour himself fully into living for Seiya, this he promised.

Until—

“Don’t tell my you’ve actually taken in a stray human this time!” A bracing but sweet voice cut through the air, and Rei whirled around in the speaker’s direction—where he was met with a woman of unparalleled beauty. It was immediately clear that this woman was the great actress—and Seiya’s wife—Sena Nagisa.

Seiya had said he’d already spoken with his family and gotten their permission, a.s.suring Rei that Nagisa would welcome him with open arms, but given this remark just now, she certainly didn’t seem all that happy that a stranger was barging into her home.

However, it still somehow seemed…completely normal. In fact, Seiya was the strange one here, inviting a person he’d just met to come live and work with him. Rei steeled himself, understanding this to be only the first of many hurdles he’d likely be met with.

“Now, now. Rei-kun, this is my wife, Nagisa.” He spoke in a soothing manner, and Rei dipped his head into a polite bow. Even if he couldn’t earn Nagisa’s favor right off the bat, if he worked hard and honestly, he was sure he’d eventually be able to.

Or at least—that’s what he’d thought.

“I’m Sagara Rei. I hope we can—UWAH!” He cut off his introduction as Nagisa slipped in close, her face right in front of his, and stepped back from her with a startled cry.

“Hmmmm…” She looked him over, as if evaluating a piece of merchandise she was strongly considering purchasing.

Rei felt the urge to flee well up inside but knew it wouldn’t do for him to look away just now and met Nagisa’s gaze head-on, taking care to ensure it didn’t look like he was glaring at her.

And then, after a long moment, Nagisa’s expression broke into an excited grin. “Marvelous! He’s absolutely gorgeous! Yes yes, he’ll do quite nicely! Oh, every day is just going to be grand, now!”

“………I’m sorry?” Rei gaped at Nagisa, who had her hands clasped before her.

’…Gorgeous? Grand?’