Chapter Text
From all the media that he had consumed prior to now, he should have woken up to a world full of dungeons and dragons, elves and dwarves, knights and princesses. Hell, he could have woken up to a world where he was a poorly mistreated wife of a grand duke who would later go through a major character development out of love - or an otome game where all the capturable love interests were batshit-crazy yanderes.
As long as there was an element of magic existing in the world, then he could say that he had been properly isekai-ed.
Instead, the only magical factor seen here was him waking up in the body of one of the most reviled characters of this anime season - Kisaki Tetta of Tokyo Revengers.
Well, he could at least say that he was in the reincarnated-villain trope... And the situation wasn't beyond salvaging. In fact, there was probably nothing to salvage.
As he - Kisaki Tetta - had gained his bearings of his surroundings, he then meticulously studied his features in the mirror of the bathroom. Initially, he hadn't been able to recognize the person in his reflection, but after pushing his bangs up and narrowing his eyes, he could clearly see just who he was looking at.
Those arched brows? That piercing gaze? Yup, definitely the bad guy. The fringe and the way his hair fluffed up really softened his features.
Hm. In the manga and anime, Kisaki had always looked too...edgy for him to have any physical appeal. But now... He tried smiling, imagining himself to be the princely type, and... Aha! He didn't look half as bad as he had thought! He then straightened his posture and smiled softly over his shoulder. He appeared like an elegant young man.
Heh. He shifted his pose to grinning triumphantly and holding his chin between his fingers, looking and feeling like a shounen protagonist. If only Kisaki had worked on being more of a student body president than a gangster wannabe. He might not have been able to score Tachibana Hinata, but at least he would have been popular.
He vaguely recalled the Moebius leader, Osanai, having described Kisaki as a creepy-looking brat, which made sense since Kisaki's sinister intentions would have manifested themselves on his face.
Speaking of which... He ran back to his bedroom and grabbed the phone from the desk. Upon flipping it open, the date read that it was mid-April of the year 2004.
He sighed, relieved. According to Osanai, Kisaki had helped him climb up the chain of command within a year. In this case, it was unlikely that Kisaki had approached the guy yet, thus absolving him of any gang-related activities.
He flipped the phone closed. That was good. He didn't want to have anything to do with gangs or delinquents. He especially didn't want anything to do with the main cast or the side characters. Any interaction with them could potentially spell out trouble for him, and he rather maintain an easygoing life. However easygoing life could be for Kisaki Tetta before his gangster-fication, that was.
He looked down at the desk and sighed at the notes spread across the surface. Kisaki certainly had worked hard on his decade-long plan. He picked up the top sheet and scanned through the twenty-step process in utilizing Moebius against Toman the following year; scribbled beneath that were contingencies. Another page listed all the blackmail-worthy material that could be used against certain members of Moebius, although he didn't recognize the names aside from Osanai's.
What a meticulous evil genius. Was Kisaki seriously thirteen? Well, he was eleven now. No, twelve if his birthday had already passed.
And judging by that middle school uniform hanging from his wall, Kisaki had also skipped a whole grade. An overachieving evil genius.
Talk about pressure. In his past life, he had done alright for himself in school, but he doubted that he could live up to the academic excellence that Kisaki had built up throughout the years. Would it be suspicious if he started falling behind or could he excuse this as burn-out?
He looked down again at the notes. Strangely, he felt a tad guilty that Kisaki's efforts wouldn't get to see the light of day. Oh, he definitely did not want to put them into action - nope, never ever - but it did feel like a waste. Like...there should be an audience to read this kid's mastermind plot to be in awe of; hell, he certainly was.
Maybe one day he would convert Kisaki's notes into a published novel. He would just change the names and some details so that Kisaki's incriminating case of stalking - and, yes, the boy had obviously been stalking to get this much dirt on these people - wouldn't come back to bite him in the ass.
But for now, he would live his life as Tetta - unassuming, quiet, boring, good boy Tetta.
Accepting his new life as a fictional character had been a relatively easy transition for a variety of reasons.
His previous life in the real world hadn't been terrible, but it hadn't been great either. He had no friends, no family, no hobbies, no dreams. He had a steady nine-to-five job. He had a steady routine of going to work, going back home, going to sleep, and rinse and repeat.
He had carried a frankly dull existence, so waking up one day to a world of 2D had been quite the excitement.
But too much excitement could be too much for him to handle, so he was glad that he hadn't been sent to a world where he had to slay dragons or watch out for red flags from any obsessive suitors. The only notable downside to this reality was that the internet was not yet so easily accessible. How many years would that take? And when did smartphones become the norm again?
That aside, becoming Kisaki Tetta hadn't been too difficult either.
Kisaki Tetta came from a well-to-do family. Naturally, with a doctor for a father and a businesswoman for a mother, the household was not only grand but quite empty. He might have seen the parents once or twice, and none of them had batted an eyelash if they had ever caught on to their son's change in personality. They probably didn't know their son at all.
That suited him fine. He had grown up without parents in his original life, and he was left alone to his own devices. The familial negligence that a lonely boy his age had was a welcoming one for a grown-ass man who valued his autonomy.
Kisaki Tetta also had no friends. He had been isolated from his peers due to his consistently high scores, making him a social pariah. That was also fine - his classmates wanted nothing to do with him and he wanted nothing to do with them. He wouldn't know how to interact with kids and behave like one himself.
The relief that he had felt when he surmised the sad and desolate life of a child (which made sense as to how he had turned into a conniving villain) was such a depressing reflection of his own asocial personality that he deigned not to dwell on too much.
Anyways...
Even if he carried on this... Well, it wasn't so much a facade as it was him being himself. But even if he continued this, that didn't mean that Toman was in the clear from becoming the biggest crime syndicate in all of Japan.
Even without Kisaki's influence being the catalyst for Toman's corrupt future, Mikey's impulses would nonetheless carve a path of violence and bloodshed, and those in proximity would either perish or fall prey to the same darkness.
Would that affect him in some way? He doubted that. He had zero contact with any delinquents whatsoever. Did he care? Not really.
Perhaps he could play the hero and insert himself in some fashion, but there were too many people to be bothered by, and he didn't have the energy for that. It was just easier to maintain his distance. Besides, even if this world was his reality now, he couldn't help but still see the people around him as nothing but fiction.
They were characters in a manga. Nothing more.
At any rate, it wasn't like Mikey and his little buddies were totally hopeless. Tachibana Hinata's life might no longer be in danger, but a story still needed its hero to save the day, and who better than the time-leaping crybaby Hanagaki Takemichi?
And, so, Tetta sat passively on the sidelines, watching the year go by without a hitch. And whatever would happen the following year, he would remain in the sidelines because that was what a good no-face mob character would do.
At least, that had been the plan.
Never had he accounted for Hanagaki Takemichi to come barreling into his life and dragging him into the plot.
Damn it.