Chapter Text
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My name is Masato Kurogane, I am 45 years old, and I work for Mori Corporations.
I work as their data integrity analyst, on the 13th floor of the 4th building.
I have a beautiful wife and son, both of whom I love dearly.
Today was an average day as always, I woke up and…
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This is stupid. Masato thought to himself. A black ball point pen is lingering in his hand over the open pages of his brand new journal. His wife bought it for him the week before to "help sort out his thoughts", but everytime Masato tries to write out his thoughts, he gets stuck staring at the blank page of the journal. He never knows how to start. How is he, a middle-aged man, supposed to start a journal entry? "Dear Diary, my life sucks." Of Course not. That's childish.
Masato continues staring at the first two empty lines. His face begins to heat up as the comparison becomes clearer in his head. He's acting like a tween girl who writes about crushes and favourite TV shows. Masato, now more frustrated than before, closes the journal and puts it away in one of the table drawers. He gets up from his chair and heads to the shower.
Now that he's back in the shower, he can think again. The thoughts, the anxiety, they all come crawling back. As if it's in the water that is pouring onto his balding scalp, drumming out the thousands of words he left unsaid, and seeps through the follicles of his graying hair. Why is it that when he tries to latch onto them, drag them onto the paper, they are suddenly nowhere to be found. When facing the dreadful pages of the journal he couldn't even remember what he had been thinking about. Not even vague threads could be stuck out of his mind. It was just empty. Nothing.
He gets out of the shower, and heads to bed. On the way, his eyes wander to a stack of documents on the table, they are a copy of his contract papers he had to sign before he was allowed to work for the Corporation. Some of the points in the contract still linger in his mind even after working for almost 2 months without issue. He pushes the thoughts out of his mind again, and gets under the covers. He wraps his arms around his wife who is fast asleep. And he too, joins her.
The next morning Masato follows his usual routine—waking up, having breakfast, putting on his suit, and walking to the office. He goes about his work, takes breaks, and drinks his coffee. Things go as usual for a while, he sits obediently at his computer and goes through all of the files emailed to him, sorting it into tables and tables of data. Then his second break comes by. After sending his last email to his supervisor, Masato leans against his chair and stretches his aching back. He gets out of his chair, grabs his phone and wallet, and heads to the door. He pauses to look over at his co-workersbunch of people in their cubicles, some still typing at their computers, others are getting up to leave.
The office is peaceful for the moment, that is until chaos erupts as a bloodied body crashes through the office window. Bloodied shards of glass hit the floor, people jump out of their seats screaming, some knock over chairs, others fall to the ground themselves, but none of them can take their eyes away from the lifeless body on the glass-filled floor. And neither can Masato. His eyes wouldn't leave the shining hole in the dead man's head. The moment felt like it stretched for hours, Masato's ears rang, he can feel every tremble in his body like cold shockwaves running up his spine to the hairs at the nape of his neck. But the moment of morbid silence had to end. Men in suits rush into the office, and swiftly remove the body, cleaning the mess, while their supervisor, Hirotsu, instructs everybody in the office to carry on as if nothing happened. The day ends, leaving Masato unsettled.
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Some days later
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Masato's following nights were filled with nightmares of the body. The black hole in the man's head was staring back at him throughout the dreams. He was imagining the look of horror that was frozen on the man's face.
But despite the traumatic incident, it feels like the office took Hirotsu's command to heart and carried on as if nothing happened. Days continue to pass in apparent normality, even Masato begins to treat the event as if it was never there – as if it was nothing but a fever dream.
Another day comes by. Masato arrives at the front of the office and his stomach drops. It became a habit shortly after the incident. His palms would start to sweat profusely and his stomach twist and turn in preparation of a tragedy. But everytime Masato pushes away the thoughts and steps into the office.
He sits in his office chair and turns on the computer. But instead of opening the email as he usually does, Masato turns his gaze towards the window and notices a bird pecking at the glass. He watches the bird fly around doing spins and twirls, all in close proximity to the window, but inevitably it returns to pecking at the glass again.
But his attention begins to slowly draw to something beyond. As his eyes focus away from the bird and focus on something behind it, his vision becomes clearer, instead of seeing floating blobs of colour— he sees… a boy? Masato blinks, dumbfounded. But the scene in front of him doesn't change. He stills sees the boy floating effortlessly in mid-air! Masato is taken aback, but can't take his eyes off of the flying boy: he looks to be about 15 years old, short ginger hair frames his sun kissed face with messy curls that are being tossed around in the wind. The boy is looking down at the bustling city below, with his hands in his pockets. There is no hesitation from the teen before he dives downwards.
Masato rushes to the window and smacks his face against the glass, searching for the boy, seeing if he is alive, if he somehow survived the fall.
But a soft bell rings, ripping through his train of thought, signaling that it's lunch time. His co-worker calls him from some end of the office that now feels miles away from Masato. His mind is stuck somewhere far away, somewhere high up in the sky, somewhere free, maybe somewhere where the ginger boy is. Reluctantly Masato unsticks himself from the glass, rubs his cheek, and follows the coworker.
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The anomalies continue to escalate. Later in the month, as Masato steps into the elevator to go up to his floor, he is suddenly shoved out of it by the same boy he saw outside the window. It seems that the boy was pushed into the elevator by another boy his age: a lanky teenager with dark brown messy hair that covered most of his forehead, potentially risking poking him in the eye, the other of which was covered by bandages that wrapped around his head, which Masato thought to be quite quite odd.
Masato hears the redhead shout profanities at the other.
"What the fuck was that for, Dazai, you fucking dickhead!"
The foul language grazed Masato's ears, he couldn't imagine allowing his child to speak that way.
The so-called Dazai mocks the ginger and launches after him into the elevator. The ginger drags the other to the floor.
Masato winces at the thought of how dirty the floor is.
Onlookers outside the elevator are also left puzzled by the brawl, too fearful to step inside. Despite the attention drawn to them, the two continue to engage in a violent but childish altercation as the elevator doors close. Leaving Masato bewildered, watching the elevator leave. He spends the next couple of seconds staring at the elevator doors trying to process what he just witnessed.
But one thing was clear: the flying boy survived the fall…and somehow managed to fly at all.