As the Duchess...no the Concubine held the newborn child in her arms, she rested her body on the pallet of the chamber's interior of which
smelled of musk, stale linen, and expensive perfume was now accompanied by a heavy, cloying scent of dried roses and ancient, unfamiliar incense. The room was a stark contrast to the sterile, albeit cluttered, bachelor pad kitchen in Shinjuku. Here, candlelight flickered in ornate sconces, casting long, dancing shadows across walls draped in heavy, dark tapestries depicting a snarling beast As Keisuke woke up
"Okay, everything is slightly more tolerable now than the whole 'being pushed through a meat grinder' phase," Keisuke's intellect thought, trapped behind eyes that couldn't focus more than a few inches.
The midwife, a stout woman with a rough uniform under a pristine white apron, bustled about. The concubine, still pale and breathing heavily on the grand four-poster bed, motioned the midwife closer.
"Go," the concubine whispered, her voice laced with an anxiety that cut through the exhaustion. "Go and fetch the Duke. Tell him the child has arrived safely. A boy."
"Yeah, a boy. Congrats. You've successfully made a human who can't even scratch his own nose yet. High five," Keisuke thought with a dry, internal sarcasm, trying in vain to will his tiny, wet fingers to curl into a fist with the precision of a data-entry clerk. The effort resulted in a spastic twitch of his entire arm, a humiliating reminder of his total lack of agency.
The midwife answered," at your service" and with that curtsied and scurried out the door. Silence descended on the opulent nursery chamber, broken only by the crackle of the hearth fire and the concubine's shallow breathing.
She rested for a few moments, gathering her strength, before her gaze fixed upon the swaddled bundle on the side table. Her expression was initially one of a mother's relief, but as she peered closer, the relief curdled into an icy dread.
"What's with the face, Lady? Did I just activate a trap card?"
Keisuke looked different. While the concubine's hair was a striking, luxuriously red, and the Duke's Chevernyl lineage was famous for its deep,bold noble colors, the infant staring back at her had hair the color of weak tea—light brown. His eyes, just opened, were a dull, flat hazel. They were hollow, lacking the vibrant life expected of a newborn. To her, they looked like the eyes of something old and tired.
The bad thing was, brown hair in this specific family line was non-existent. It was a physical impossibility, a genetic aberration that sullied the pure lineage of the black or blue uniform hair colors typical of the Duke's bloodline.
A small, wet sound escaped the baby's lips a burp perhaps, which Keisuke mentally interpreted as his own sardonic commentary. "Well, lady, imagine dying to the zing of pickled ginger, waking up in your mother's guts, and then getting born. I want to see you smiling then."
The heavy oak door creaked open, and the Duke entered. He was a tall, imposing man wrapped in furs and formal attire He's strikingly piercing blue eyes and Tall stature demanded respect and the responsibility of nobility. He took one look at the concubine's face, then at the child, and his own expression hardened into granite.
He didn't need to be told. The evidence of the concubine's infidelity, real or perceived, was clear as day in the infant's hair. The Duke's authority was absolute, his fury quiet and chilling.
The concubine sat up, her eyes wide with a different kind of fear—fear of the Duke's displeasure and her own ruin. "My Lord," she whispered, her loyalty to her station overriding any maternal instinct, "It is a mistake. A deformity. We must deal with it."
"Take it away... but first I shall have it tested" he ordered, his voice a low growl. "Fetch the Inquisitor. Now. We must ensure its total worthlessness before we dispose of it." as the servant who followed him in was given the order A short while later, a thin man in robes of purple and silver entered. This was the mage who checked for mana levels and potential. Keisuke observed the man with detached fascination. "Okay, so we have magic here. That explains the lack of electric light."
The Inquisitor performed a brief, arcane ritual, a glow of faint blue light hovering over Keisuke's tiny chest. A strange, shimmering meter made of what looked like crystal glowed for a moment before the light completely fizzled out.
"There is nothing here, Your Grace," the Inquisitor stated with a tone of clinical dismissal. "No potential. He is empty."
"Empty?" Keisuke thought, the indignity of the assessment cutting deeper than the banishment. "I was a valuable data-entry clerk! I had a 401k!"
"An empty vessel," the Duke repeated, a sneer curling his lip. "Perfect. Have one of the assistants dispose of him somewhere far from the Dukedom. Somewhere no one will find him."
An assistant, a young, nervous man named Barnaby, was tasked with the grim chore. The infant was wrapped in a rough burlap sack—a far cry from the silk swaddling—and taken from the chamber.
As Barnaby slipped out a side gate and into the winding streets of the castle town, Keisuke's mental state began to falter. The combination of the cold air, the jouncing movements, and the sudden shift in sensory input was overwhelming his adult consciousness.
The assistant hurried through the lower city, a maze of timber-framed houses and muddy streets. Other figures within the space of the Dukedom—guards on patrol, merchants closing their stalls, the occasional prostitute on a street corner—paid them no mind. Just another errand. The assistant needed to get this done quickly, perhaps leave the child near the outer farmlands where it might be found by a kind farmer, easing his own conscience just a little.
But Keisuke was fading. The sharp, pungent taste of ginger that had lingered since his arrival was gone now, replaced by the smell of damp earth and stale straw in the sack. His internal monologue became fragmented.
"Okay… new mission… survive… maybe find a 7-Eleven…" The thoughts were losing coherence. His life in Shinjuku felt less like a memory and more like a fever dream. The rules, the logic, the name "Yamano Keisuke"—all of it was slipping away, replaced by the raw, primal needs of the infant body.
"Stupid way to die... stupid way to live... stupid... just..."
He finally succumbed to the darkness. Keisuke, the man, was gone. The unwanted, empty child, was just a small bundle of silence, his consciousness retreating deep within the new flesh.
The assistant, driven by a flicker of mercy, didn't leave him in the wilderness. He stopped in a poorer but respectable outer district of the city, placing the sack on the doorstep of a small, neat stone cottage. He knocked hard twice and fled into the night.
Leaving the newborn, laid out still on the cold stone doorstep, slowly, surely falling asleep in the makeshift of his cradle. The world had abandoned him, and in turn, he was forgotten under the rain under the doorstep of a stranger.