✦Chapter 0 - PROLOGUE ✦
This is not a story about heroes.
Heroes save worlds.
This is what comes after saving is no longer possible.
When the future itself becomes a threat.
When existence demands a conclusion.
Someone must decide where it ends.
> "Do not hesitate," the voice said.
"Hesitation breaks dimensions."
I hesitated once.
I won't again.
Something has already gone wrong.
A voice—
not mine,
not human—
echoes through the void.
> "Find the Axis… before the dimensions break."
Then everything shatters.
---
✦ CHAPTER 1 — FRAME DESYNCHRONIZATION ✦
The pool always smelled like chlorine and ambition.
Not because people stopped talking—
but because sound stopped mattering.
Water wrapped around my body like a second skin as I cut forward, arms burning, lungs screaming. Every movement was instinct now. No thinking. No hesitation. Just rhythm carved into muscle and bone.
Pull.
Kick.
Breathe.
Tokyo's National Aquatic Center blurred into a blue tunnel around me. The ceiling lights fractured into wavering ribbons above the water's surface, bending with each ripple. I didn't need to see the stands to know they were full. I could feel it—the weight of eyes, expectations, cameras waiting for tomorrow.
None of it mattered.
The pressure against my fingertips told me more than any stopwatch ever could. The resistance of water sliding past my shoulders, the way it parted cleanly when my stroke was right—this was a language my body understood better than words.
My heartbeat synced with my strokes.
Everything else dissolved into the dull roar inside my ears.
Good, I thought distantly.
Pain meant precision.
By the halfway mark, my lungs burned hot, but my form didn't break. Core tight. Hips steady. Turns clean—cleaner than usual.
Almost effortless.
I'm fast, I realized.
Faster than I should be.
The thought didn't slow me down.
One last push.
I extended my arm and felt the wall strike my fingertips.
Solid.
Final.
Silence.
For half a second, nothing existed—not the pool, not the crowd, not even myself.
Then the digital board flickered.
[ MEN'S 100M FREESTYLE — PRACTICE HEAT ]
NATIONAL RECORD: 47.89
WORLD RECORD: 46.40
RECORDED TIME: 39.58
For a moment, I thought I was still underwater.
The number didn't register as information — it registered as noise. Like static bleeding into a signal that wasn't meant to exist.
My first instinct wasn't excitement.
It was correction.
That's wrong, my body said calmly, with the same certainty it used to adjust my stroke mid-lap. That doesn't match output. That doesn't match resistance.
The board flickered again.
Not broken.
Hesitating.
The numbers blurred.
Not changed.
Skipped.
Like the display hesitated—then snapped into place late, as if it had missed the moment it was supposed to record.
I sucked in a breath as I surfaced.
The pool went silent.
It wasn't the stunned silence of applause waiting to happen.
It was the kind that comes when people don't know what they're allowed to feel yet.
No one celebrated.
No one moved.
The lifeguard near the deep end glanced instinctively at the clock — then at the board — then back at the water, like checking whether the pool itself had done something wrong.
Then the silence shattered.
"YO—KAIEN!"
Toma Ishikawa's voice tore through the hall. He was half-hanging over the railing, fists pumping like he'd personally won the race. His short dark-brown hair was a mess from the humid air, eyes shining with unfiltered excitement.
"That was insane!" he shouted. "You didn't just break the record—you destroyed it!"
Beside him, Mika Aoyama clapped so hard her palms turned red. She didn't notice. Her blonde ponytail whipped as she spun toward the board, sharp steel-blue eyes flicking back to me almost immediately.
"That turn was beautiful," she said, breathless. "Did you see how smooth it was? Perfect."
Phones came out.
Coaches leaned forward.
I heard my name ripple through the stands—whispered, laughed, recorded.
Kaien.
National gold hopeful.
Famous.
Across the lane, Ryo Kanzaki didn't clap.
He stared at the board, jaw tight behind his glasses, fingers rising to adjust them—a nervous habit he'd never shaken. His eyes weren't excited.
They were calculating.
"That's…" he muttered.
Someone laughed nearby—sharp, uncertain.
"…That's a glitch, right?"
A sharp beep cut through the air.
ERROR LOG: FRAME DESYNCHRONIZATION DETECTED
My chest tightened.
Frame… desynchronization?
The technician froze, fingers hovering over the console, face draining of color.
"…The system skipped," he whispered.
"Like—time bent for a moment."
The words spread faster than sound.
Murmurs rippled through the stands.
Coach Morita's expression hardened instantly. "Reboot the system," he ordered. "Now."
Screens flickered.
The number vanished.
Ryo swallowed. His voice dropped, barely audible.
"…That was the hundred."
He pushed his glasses up again, eyes never leaving the blank display.
"That's not sprint speed," he continued. "That's sustained output. No human body can maintain that for a full hundred."
His fingers trembled slightly as they hovered near his glasses.
"Even sprinters spike," he continued, more to himself now. "There's decay. Always decay. Oxygen debt, micro-lag in muscle response, neural delay—"
He stopped.
Looked at me.
"…But you didn't slow."
In the next lane, my rival slowly let go of the pool's edge. His shoulders trembled—not from exhaustion, but shock.
"Almost forty seconds…?" he whispered hoarsely. "That's…the new world record."
Even I knew that time shouldn't exist.
A coach near the back muttered, "That's not breaking a record…"
"…That's erasing it."
The words settled heavily in my chest.
Not pride.
Not fear.
Something else.
Recognition.
Like my body remembered something my mind didn't.
The air around the pool felt wrong.
My skin prickled — not from cold, not from adrenaline.
From alignment.
Like something had just adjusted its angle to look directly at me.
I felt it behind my eyes first. A faint pressure. Not pain — anticipation.
The same feeling I got right before the starting horn.
Except this time, no one had told me to get ready.
Not thick—
attentive.
Cold.
Something is watching.
The sensation wasn't dramatic. No pressure. No pain.
Just awareness.
As if the world itself had leaned closer.
The rival glanced at me again, jealousy twisting across his face—quiet, bitter, poisonous.
"…His turns aren't even clean," he muttered to his coach. "He's wasting motion."
His eyes narrowed.
"…That doesn't make sense. He still beat us."
I pulled myself out of the pool, water dripping from my fingertips, towel draped over my shoulders. My heart wasn't racing from fear.
It was racing from life.
I reached up to wipe the water from my eyes, but stopped.
I looked at my hands.
They weren't trembling—at least, not in the way muscles shake after a sprint. They were... unstable. For a heartbeat, the edges of my fingers didn't seem to meet the air cleanly. There was a faint, jagged blur, like a low-resolution image struggling to render.
I blinked, and it was gone.
"Focus, Kaien," I muttered under my breath, my heart hammering against my ribs.
It had to be the chlorine fumes. My brain was misfiring because I'd pushed too hard—a sensory glitch, nothing more. A visual artifact born from oxygen debt and a racing heart. My eyes were just tired; they had to be.
But the skin there felt cold. Not pool-water cold. Void cold. Like those ten fingers had briefly existed in a different room than the rest of my body.
From the stands, whispers surged again.
"Look at his shoulders—" "He's insane…" "Isn't he competing tomorrow?"
A few girls near the railing leaned forward openly, cheeks flushed. One covered her mouth, giggling. Another pointed without shame.
I pretended not to notice.
Coach Morita approached at last.
Up close, he radiated discipline. His short silver-gray hair clung damply to his head, dark eyes sharp as they studied me—breathing, posture, recovery time.
Then his lips curved into a rare smile.
"You amazed everyone," he said.
I laughed softly, still catching my breath. "Guess I owe the record books an apology."
"Half a second," he replied calmly. "Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" I blinked. "Another lap now, then?"
"No." He shook his head. "Nationals are tomorrow. You're done for today."
"But—"
"I said you're done," he cut in, then softened. "Go enjoy being human."
I nodded.
As I walked away from the pool, towel slung over my shoulder, the sensation returned.
A hitch.
Like reality lagged half a beat behind me.
I didn't speed up, I realized.
The world slowed down.
And somewhere—
just beyond perception—
something cold and patient had noticed.
The feeling stayed with me long after practice ended.
Quiet.
Unsettling.
Like a breath being held.
✦ End of Chapter 1 — Frame Desynchronization ✦