Command over Tokyo's military. That was what he deserved.
Not a Guard Captain trailing after Seitenshi, handling trivial, tedious nonsense.
Put military authority in his hands and what would Gastrea matter? He'd run the arithmetic in his head a hundred times. Varanium weapons, plus the Cursed Children everyone despised. Force those girls onto the battlefield as the vanguard and the counterattack would work. Every rampaging Gastrea, wiped out.
Tokyo held so many of them now. Cast off by society, hated, drifting with nowhere to sleep. Better to use them than let them stand as destabilizing elements, ticking bombs threatening everyone else. Drive them into the fighting and let them serve Tokyo's safety.
Their strength would grind the Gastrea down and shrink the threat to the city, and their numbers would thin at the same time, solving a problem that had plagued Tokyo for years.
As for Stage 4 or Stage 5 Gastrea, let them show themselves and Heaven's Ladder would answer instantly. Creatures that size moved slowly. Nothing they did could dodge a railgun round. Locked on meant dead.
Killing even one Stage 5 Gastrea by his own hand would make his name. It would lift him out of this post, hand him real power and standing, put his ambition within reach.
Becoming Tokyo's ruler outright wasn't beyond imagining.
And yet.
All of it lived in his head. A daydream he'd built for himself, nothing more.
However beautiful the vision, however careful the calculation, thinking was as far as it went. No opening existed. No path forward.
He couldn't move troops. He couldn't force Cursed Children into combat. He couldn't order Heaven's Ladder to fire. All he held was the scrap of authority that came with captaining a guard detail.
Nothing in that could be changed. He watched his ambition rot where it stood and spent day after day on work he despised, the bitterness swelling.
Which explained why learning about magic had lit him up the way it did.
Magic was a new road. A road out of this, toward everything he wanted, toward power that would put him above other men instead of beneath them.
Except that road stayed shut too.
Satoru wouldn't teach him. Seitenshi wouldn't speak for him. He could only watch from a distance and envy in silence, and wanting something that far out of reach was driving him half mad.
Following that thread, his resentment toward both of them burned hotter, a fire climbing through his chest, pressing to break out.
It's them. Without those two I'd have mastered magic already. I'd be holding real power. I'd have everything I wanted.
Yasuwaki's mouth twisted into a jagged smile, his eyes gone cold enough to frost the air around him.
The rage stacked up in him had reached its ceiling. It needed somewhere to go.
That was the real reason he'd come to the 39th Area himself.
Otherwise a search this trivial would have gone to subordinates. A Guard Captain had no business walking through a ruin full of garbage.
Discovery didn't concern him.
Places like this had been written off by mainstream Tokyo long ago. Broken, lawless, no surveillance equipment to speak of, and whatever had once existed lay smashed beyond use.
The population barely registered either. Vagrants, beggars, the homeless, a handful of abandoned Cursed Children. People who could hardly keep themselves alive paid no attention to anyone else, and they certainly didn't file reports.
A little care, clean work, loose ends tied off, and nothing would ever surface.
Besides, a Cursed Child ranked lowest even here. Nobody cared whether they lived. Nobody chased it up when one vanished.
The three of them wandered the rubble for a while, eyes sweeping the broken walls, hunting for anything hidden in the wreckage.
Then, in an out-of-the-way corner behind a heap of scrap boards and shattered stone, they found what they wanted.
"There we go."
Yasuwaki's lips peeled back. His stare fixed on a girl dragging a heavy length of timber, moving slowly, and in his mind she was already on her knees begging.
Small, in clothes worn through to threads.
Every step came hard for her.
While Yasuwaki and his men prowled the 39th Area looking for an outlet, down in the sewers beneath central Tokyo, Elder Matsuzaki had just ended a call with Satoru. A pleased smile sat on his face as he rounded up the children to pack.
The tunnels were dim as ever, though the mood down there ran bright.
Children crowded around him, faces lit with curiosity, chattering over one another, a rare cheer running through the stale air.
"Settle down a moment, children, and listen."
Matsuzaki clapped his hands, his voice warm and gentle, and every head turned toward him.
"Satoru called just now. He says we only need to pack personal belongings. Nothing bulky, or it becomes a hassle."
"Spend today sorting your things out. Tomorrow a vehicle comes for us, and we all go to live somewhere new."
The words barely landed before the place erupted, grins spreading wide, cheering bouncing off the narrow walls.
"Finally! We get to leave!"
"We'll see Satoru again! He's the strongest!"
"What's the new place like? Will there be a clean house? Will there be good food?"
Voices tumbled over each other, eyes full of longing for whatever came next.
They'd lived here too long, in damp and dark, worrying about food, about safety, about dodging people who wished them harm. A chance to go somewhere else and live a different life was worth every bit of that excitement.
"But Elder, so many of these things are still fine. We can still use them. Isn't throwing them out a waste?"
A thin little girl spoke up softly. Reluctance filled her eyes as she looked around at the battered chairs and tables, the thin bedding, the salvaged odds and ends that still worked well enough.
They say poor children grow up early, and it held true here.
Hard days had taught these girls the cost of everything. They knew to treasure whatever could still be used, however broken, however worthless in anyone else's eyes.
Faced with abandoning it all, they didn't know what to keep and what to leave.
Matsuzaki felt the same pull, if he was honest with himself.
Battered, yes. Still usable, though.
But he understood something the children didn't. What looked precious and practical to them read as a heap of junk to everyone else. Carrying it would only weigh them down and burden Satoru. Better to leave it and walk into a new life unencumbered.
"Here's what we'll do, children."
He thought for a moment, his smile holding. "Pack up whatever you think is useful, then carry it outside and leave it all together in one place."
"Anyone else who needs it will see it and take it. Nothing gets wasted, and we do a small kindness for people whose luck runs as thin as ours."
"Okay!"
They answered as one, the reluctance easing, something happier taking its place.
The world had shown them nothing but cruelty. They'd been beaten down, cast out by every part of society. Still they wanted to be kind, wanted to help others stuck in the same misery.
Then they scattered to work, gathering worn clothes, simple household bits, one or two clutching a single toy with great care, every face serious.
"Elder, can I take some of it to give to my friend?"
From a corner, while everyone else bustled about, a scrawny girl raised her hand. Her voice came thin and soft, hopeful and nervous at once.
Tiny, in clothes washed pale and patched over patches, dry yellow hair falling loose around her shoulders. Timid in the face, hope in the eyes.
In that murky light she blended into the shadows so well that anyone not looking would miss her.
"Of course you can, Konatsu."
Matsuzaki chuckled, his gaze soft, indulgence in every word. "If your friend needs anything else, bring her here to take it. Plenty down here we won't be using. Any help we can give is worth giving."
Cursed Children lived under scorn and hatred, thrown away by society as a whole.
But not everyone hated them equally, and the ones who hated least were often other children, drifters themselves, raised on the same hard bread.
Too young to have absorbed the prejudice, untouched by adult malice, those children saw no line between a Cursed Child and anyone else. Only playmates. Only people surviving beside them.
They didn't shun Konatsu or torment her for what she was. They picked through trash with her, scavenged food with her, searched the ruins alongside her for some thread of a future.
The 39th Area held a fair number of children like that.
Living down here as long as they had, the girls had made friends and kept them. Nothing strange in it.
Permission granted, Konatsu broke into a smile, timidity falling away, delight and excitement lighting her face.
She turned and scooped up a few of the cleaner rags she'd set aside, plus a small cup she'd salvaged that still held water, and hurried for the sewer exit with a light step.
Leaving meant leaving her friend behind, and the thought sat heavy in her chest.
Before Elder Matsuzaki found them, the two of them had drifted through the ruins together, weathered the worst days together, split whatever food they found, huddled close at night for warmth. That bond was the most precious thing Konatsu owned in a cold world.
She didn't know whether her friend could survive alone. Whether people would hurt her. Whether they'd ever see each other again.
All she could do was help however she could, hand over what she no longer needed, make her friend's days a little easier and her chances a little better.
Clothes and cup gathered in her arms, Konatsu wound through the rubble along paths she knew by heart.