"The doors are closing. Next stop, Asukayama Park..."
As the train announcement sounded, the young man, realizing he had almost drifted off again, twitched his brow. Using the motion of rubbing his forehead, he extracted several tiny 'DISCs' from his brow.
This was the third time today he had extracted his drowsiness.
Also extracted were feelings of fatigue, hunger, and dryness from his eyeballs.
This behavior was merely treating the symptoms, not the root cause. As long as his body remained fatigued, these uncomfortable signals would continuously be produced.
Of course, he had considered extracting [Spiritual Energy] from others to replenish himself, but the act of precisely extracting spiritual energy itself consumed a great deal. A slight error could result in fragments of the other person's memories being mixed in.
This wasn't because Fuuki was kind-hearted and worried about causing others to lose their memories, but rather because he didn't want his own thoughts to be unnecessarily influenced.
To be honest, ever since that day, too many 'external elements' had been mixed into his mind.
Fragmented memories of Enrico Pucci from another world, part of the spirit of his [bosom friend]—DIO—who looked seventy percent like him, and that intense obsession with 'Heaven'.
Fuuki chose not to accept everything at once. To avoid mental collapse and being possessed, he spent two years absorbing and understanding the crucial parts.
Even so, he would still occasionally hear the blurred whispers of that bosom friend.
Now, he felt as if he was caught in some 'torrent,' pulled by some [Gravity,] falling towards a predetermined future.
He was tired of this powerlessness.
"Asukayama station has arrived..." The train announcement sounded again.
Feeling the increasingly distinct stinging sensation in his palm, a black flame ignited in the young man's pupils.
The former Enrico Pucci, now Togawa Fuuki, had made up his mind.
He would become 'fundamental' and obtain his own, true 'Heaven'.
============
Asukayama Park had not yet welcomed the bustle of cherry blossom season; its place was temporarily taken by a serene, rustic beauty.
Walking slowly up the winding mountain path, lush trees wove into a verdant canopy. Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the branches, casting dappled light and laying a layer of shimmering gold leaf on the path.
A gentle breeze rustled through the mountains, occasionally bringing the crisp calls of birds, perhaps red-backed shrikes or tits hopping and foraging in the woods.
Maehara Naoto slumped on a wooden bench in the park square, his gloomy eyes reflecting the desolation before early spring arrived.
There was no youthful vigor to be seen in this young man in his early twenties.
His skin had a greyish-blue tint, as if it hadn't seen light in a long time. His eyebrows drooped, like withered branches covering two pools of stagnant water. His hair was disheveled and stood on end, like reeds dried by the autumn sun. His gnarled hands hung limply over the backrest, the lines on his palms cracked into countless tiny patterns.
The young man's breathing rhythm was also very strange; his chest would always abruptly pause at its highest point when he inhaled, like a withered branch swaying to its limit in the wind but refusing to break.
In fact, Maehara Naoto's life had indeed reached a dead end.
A year ago, his mother, with whom he had been inseparable since birth, was involved in a horrific car accident.
The driver responsible had severe psychological problems. On that day, after injecting himself with a large amount of controlled substances, he drove a truck loaded with goods, crashing indiscriminately onto the pedestrian walkway.
30 people died on the spot, and 19 were seriously injured.
Maehara Naoto, who was out with his mother, was also caught in the disaster. Fortunately, he lost his balance and fell backward just before impact, narrowly missing the out-of-control steel beast, and ultimately only suffered minor scratches.
But his mother was not so lucky. Although she was not directly hit, she was still snagged by a wire protruding from the truck's tailgate, dragging her for dozens of meters.
Powerlessly watching his mother, covered in injuries, being loaded into an ambulance, Maehara Naoto felt despair for the first time in his life.
However, the first words uttered by the culprit of the incident, after being apprehended, were [The number is wrong.]
"No, the number is wrong. 36 people will die. You should count carefully..."
"Excluding the 31 people who died on the spot, another 5 will die due to failed rescue efforts. You must count carefully..."
Seeing this unforgivable criminal still spouting nonsense, the Police Officers immediately escorted him into a Police Officer car, preparing to send him away.
Just before the Police Officer car holding him was about to drive off, the madman suddenly lunged past the nearby Police Officer, pressing his face tightly against the car window's guardrail, staring at Naoto with wide eyes.
"That's right, it's you, haha..."
"You and that woman are so alike, are you mother and son, haha? So that's it, it makes sense now..."
The man acted like a maniac, shouting and screaming under the Police Officer's control.
"You will personally avenge your mother! Come and kill me!"
"Because she is destined to die! And so am I, we will all die!"
"This is 'Destiny'!'"
Finally, as the rear window slowly rolled up, the mad howling subsided into silence.
The ambulance and Police Officer car drove off into the distance one after another, while Maehara Naoto merely knelt on the cruel street, the word echoing in his mind.
'Destiny'.
============
A rustling sound came from the bushes behind him. This discordant sound, to Maehara Naoto, who was accustomed to silence, was like the incessant buzzing of mosquitoes in summer, making him feel extremely agitated.
He angrily stood up, stepped into the flowerbed, and pushed aside the abnormally shaking clump of shrubs.
It was a girl with grey-purple hair, dressed in sportswear, looking like a middle school student. She was like a small foraging animal, searching for something in the grass with her fair, delicate hands.
Maehara's mood was still irritable, and without caring that the other person was just a child, he walked straight up, grabbed the back of the girl's collar, and lifted her up.
"What are you doing here, you stinky brat!"
"Uwaaaah—" The girl let out a cute yelp, and several pebbles slipped from her hands to the ground.
"What the heck, this girl..."
"She's just like a pill bug under a rock."
Maehara looked speechlessly at the girl, who had curled into a ball in mid-air, his gaze falling on the stones on the ground.
To actually come to a park famous for its scenery and culture to pick up stones, there were truly more and more eccentric people in Tokyo.
Seeing that the girl was so scared she even forgot to ask for help, Maehara abandoned the idea of kicking the little girl away.
At this moment, he also noticed a long, thin bloodstain inexplicably appearing on the back of his hand, which was holding the girl, with small beads of blood seeping out.
"Forget it, you little brat, you can pick up stones wherever you want, just don't bother me."
Gently placing the pill bug girl back on the ground, Maehara put on a fierce expression and stared at her as he spoke.
However, the girl did not leave. Instead, she looked at the wound on the back of his hand and asked worriedly.
"Um... did your hand get hurt?"
"Was it just cut? I'm sorry..."
'She didn't run away, but actually showed concern for me?'
'Indeed, Tokyo is getting stranger and stranger.'
"No, this has nothing to do with you," Maehara explained impatiently to the girl, "You little brat and those few stones can't hurt me, understand?"
"Many things in the world are already arranged. Whether you do them or not, they will happen."
"Just like this scar, even if I had done nothing just now, still spaced out in my chair, it would still appear when it was supposed to."
"This is 'Destiny'."
"Yes, just as that scumbag said, everything has a fixed trajectory."
"Now I, too, believe this fact deep down..."
Maehara lowered his head, looking at these hands, which had been stained with the blood of his enemy according to the [prophecy,] his eyes growing even darker.
As a nobody, he had always only wanted to pursue 'happiness'.
But why were the conditions for obtaining happiness so harsh!
Ever since that day... no, it was that much more distant night, that night of shooting stars.
His life felt like a checklist, densely filled with 'predetermined matters'.
Although he had now met a group of [kindred spirits] with similar circumstances, and together they had set the goal of destroying this cruel 'Heaven', who could be sure that this wasn't part of the arrangement?
"Sir... if you don't mind, please use this!"
"The wound is still bleeding, and bleeding is never good..."
Coming back to his senses, Maehara found a band-aid suddenly appearing before him.
Each one was printed with different animal patterns: penguins, whales, walruses... and more penguins.
"If it's destined to get hurt, then a band-aid must be needed... I, I think so!"
The girl's eyes held timidity, and a determination that had appeared at some unknown point.
The young man was momentarily lost in thought, frozen in place.
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